Posts in category: blog

Birthday cake is always on the Thanksgiving menu at Lynette Bell’s home. That’s because her mother, Dolores Silva Greenslate, was born near the holiday in 1924. Back in those days, the neighborhood was mostly farmland, worked by Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands and some Japanese families. Farmhouses were two-story wood buildings with no indoor plumbing. Families raised livestock, chickens, and pigs for food. Lewis Park sits on property formerly owned by her great-grandfather, Antone Rodriques Perry.

Dolores lived with her parents, Victor and Mamie Silva, and her brother, Marvin, on an 80-acre ranch belonging to her grandparents, John and Clara Machado.  The ranch wasn’t far from where The Trap sits today. Her grandparents planted vegetable gardens and fruit trees.

Dolores liked to stand on the levee to watch the ferryboats. “They came so close, I could talk with the passengers,” she recalls. At Sutter School (now site of the Cabrillo Club), she remembers learning “bad words” from her Japanese classmates. She was a teen when she met Norman Greenslate. They both went to California Junior High, C.K. McClatchy High School, and Sacramento City Junior College. Norm liked Dolores, but his second love was baseball, and he was very good. He was scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago White Sox, but World War II interrupted his baseball plans. He served with the 398th Army Engineers and was photographed at the Battle of the Bulge. Ken Burns used this photo in his documentary film and book entitled The War.

Dolores did her part in the war effort by growing a victory garden and entertaining troops at USO dances. Lynette says her mother loves to jitterbug. Dolores is also in the Burns film, recounting when she sent a pin-up picture of herself to Norm, so he wouldn’t forget her. He certainly didn’t. They married in 1946. Norm played in local softball leagues and, years later, was inducted into Sacramento’s La Salle Baseball Hall of Fame.  He passed away in 2017 at the age of 93.

In 1962, they moved into the Greenhaven 70 development. She acquired the nickname “Duck Lady,” as she would feed day-old bread to the ducks in the clay pit (now Lake Greenhaven). In 2015, she was selected as Grand Marshal for the July 4th Pocket Parade. Signage on the vintage car she rode in said “Duck Lady.”

As a founding member of the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society, she devoted 10 years of her life interviewing Pocket’s Portuguese families. They are included in the book, Portuguese Pioneers of the Sacramento Area.  She’d visit Pocket schools wearing traditional Portuguese attire to share these stories. 

These days, she enjoys church and Sunday potlucks with Lynette, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

She remembers the special birthday cake Grandma Machado made. It had lots of whipped cream and fresh fruit, served with homemade vanilla ice cream. Kids drank root beer and adults got red wine – all homemade. This Thanksgiving, Dolores plans to indulge in cake, wine and a birthday dance.

When she was a teenager, June Bonham’s family packed up their travel trailer, leaving the cornfields and cold winters of Wisconsin for a better life out west. Her father found work as a tool and die maker in southern California. The next exciting chapter in June’s life was underway.

She was born in August 1923 in Fond du Lac, on the edge of Lake Winnebago.  She had two siblings.  June spent a lot of her time outdoors; she was a natural athlete.  In the summers, she swam; in the winter, she’d ice skate.  She left that all behind when the family relocated to Southern California. 

June was at a church social in Glendale when she spied a tall, handsome fellow.  Paul Harberts was the minister’s son and a student at UCLA. She recalls that one of the best dates she had with Paul was going to the beach. It was the first time she had seen the Pacific Ocean; what a thrill it was to touch the water!

After high school, June found work at the Bank of America, taking dictation for the bank’s vice-president. Subsequently, she found another job with Timm Aircraft in Glendale. She quit working when Paul volunteered to serve in WWII.

It was 1942; Paul enlisted in the US Air Force (Signal Corps).  He was stationed at several bases in the U.S. When he was stationed in New York, June visited him.  It was her first time in New York, and she loved touring New York City.

They were married in March 1944, when Paul was stationed in Salt Lake City. After he was discharged in 1945, they moved to Berkeley. They raised three daughters, Linda, Ellen, and Diane.  Three grand kids and six great-grandkids round out the family.

Life in Berkeley kept them very active. Paul co-founded Harberts Bros. Sporting Goods on Shattuck Avenue. He was a trustee for Herrick Memorial and Alta Bates Medical Center and a longtime Berkeley Rotary Club member. June threw herself into volunteer work with Girl Scouts, church, and at a clinic for breast cancer patients. Her weekly routine included running, tennis and golf. They traveled the world, from Europe to Africa. Her favorite trip was visiting India.

Today, she lives in Folsom with daughter Diane Bennett and Diane’s husband, Steve.  The family hosted a big birthday party to celebrate June’s 100th.  As she looks back on her life, she says she has no complaints. June now embraces a slower lifestyle … watching her favorite television shows, having a cocktail every evening, and a daily snack of chocolate candy.

The California Automobile Museum on Front Street is one of Sacramento’s gems, thanks to Irene and her late husband, Richard Ryder. They founded the museum in 1983 out of their love for collecting automobiles. One of their favorites was a luxury Pierce-Arrow coup.

Today, Irene Ryder is a centenarian, 103 years young. She is full of life and has a loving sense of humor that is unmatchable. She used to play golf a lot. When asked what her handicap was, she said, “I’m not going to tell you!”

Irene was born on April 9, 1920. Along with her two brothers and a sister, she was raised by her parents in Greenville, a small town in Plumas County in Northern California. In 1881, Greenville was burned by fire and then again by the Greenville Fire in 2021, at that time the largest wildfire in California history. The home Irene grew up in was burned to the ground. But she still has fond memories of the idyllic life that was her childhood. She says, “I enjoyed the snow and sleighing in Greenville.” 

Her father Donald McIntyre built the Light Power Company for the valley.  “He was always busy,” Irene remembers. “Mother was a good cook and kept us all fat.” Irene smiles gingerly. “I enjoyed baking, too, at one time! German chocolate cake was one of my favorites.” Her parents took Irene on the Delta King round trip to San Francisco, when she was young. Irene also has fond memories of traveling to the East Coast in 1938 and walking up to the Statue of Liberty.

Another outstanding event in Irene’s life is when she shook the hand of then-President John F. Kennedy upon his arrival at the Executive Airport in Sacramento. “I stuck my hand up and he shook it.” What an exciting moment that was!

Irene and her husband traveled extensively overseas. They visited the South China Sea for thirty days. On this trip, their ship was suddenly caught in a rough ocean storm. “We were being tossed everywhere,” she recalls. “I held onto the seat while a little boy brought me free drinks. I was the only one who didn’t get sick!”

Truly, Irene has been enjoying life.  “I have not been sick like other people, then and now. Today I am very well.” Irene is a sports enthusiast and an ardent Kings fan!

Moon Au was raised in Toisan, China.  Born in 1922, she was the “fourth daughter” of 10 children.  In 1955, Moon was living in Hong Kong when her cousin arranged a meeting with Nee Lung (Fred) Au, a widower from Sacramento. They agreed to marry. She had never traveled outside of Asia before; shortly after the wedding, she was on her way to California. 

The couple settled into a brick home that Fred and one of his sons built on 8th Avenue, off Riverside Blvd.  They were one of the first Asian families to live in the neighborhood.

Fred and his brothers owned a Chinese restaurant near the Old Fairgrounds and Oak Park Theatre. He was the head cook. One of Fred’s sons owned a grocery store across the street from the restaurant. 

During the day, Moon cared for a granddaughter, Sue (Au) Chinn. Then, she’d work the graveyard shift at Del Monte Cannery.  Because of her seniority, cannery management made her “boss over other workers,” says Moon.

She became a naturalized citizen in 1962 and embraced her new life in Sacramento. The family remembers the weekly seven-course dinners and home-made dim sum. The Au’s Chinese New Year celebrations were notorious – drawing almost100 friends and family each year. She loved playing mahjong with friends at the Ong Ko Met Association and at her home, taking casino buses to Reno and Tahoe, tending her Chinese garden, and fishing with Fred. “When I went fishing with them, they tied me to a tree so I wouldn’t fall in the water,” recalls Sue.

Fred was 30 years older than Moon and was a generous husband. Starting in 1965, he brought over all of her family members.  Most settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 2020, Moon moved into Greenhaven Terrace. She wasn’t thrilled about leaving her home but was willing to give GT a try. During the COVID 19 lockdown, she was unhappy because she couldn’t leave her apartment. Meals were delivered to her door, and she had to eat alone. Moon had to stand on her balcony to talk with family; they stood in the parking lot below her apartment to converse with her.

Life is more enjoyable now. Moon is a social butterfly and has many friends at GT. She enjoys playing bingo at ACC and watching classic Chinese movies on TV. Her family lives nearby, so she gets frequent visits from her five grandchildren and extended family members.

According to Sue, Moon has had a good long life because she’s feisty, mentally strong, and strong-willed.

More than a centenarian, Kay Ikeda is now in her 11th decade, having just turned 102.  This four-year resident of Maple Tree Village was born at home in Clarksburg with a midwife’s help in September 1921.  Kiyoko Koyasako was the middle child of eight, with an older sister and six brothers. Nicknamed “Kik” as a young girl, she has devoted her long life to her extended family.

During the 1920s and ’30s, Kik’s family grew asparagus and onions on a farm owned by their relatives. As a girl, she remembers picking asparagus and packing it in the sheds.  She suffered many headaches as a child, but that didn’t prevent her from excelling at sports in school.  She remembers playing tennis against other nearby schools.  “I was good at sports – not so good at studying!” she recalls.

She had no idea what she wanted to do after she graduated from Clarksburg High in June 1941, just six months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. The Koyasako family was sent to Tule Lake internment camp. Kay adds, “It was terrible. I left good friends behind.” All of her brothers played in camp bands that entertained other internees.  “We went to the shows and made new friends,” she recalls. She worked in a canteen as a clerk.  Now, some 80 years later, she is philosophical about her camp experience: “It wasn’t that bad.  I made a lot of good friends. I had to go, so I went.”

After camp, her family returned to farming, though not to the one they had left behind. Initially, her father wanted to pack up the family and return to Japan, but none of the kids wanted to go, so he abandoned his plans.  It was in the years just after the war that Kay met David Ikeda. He had gotten a job at the farm “sexing chicks,” i.e., dividing the females from the males.  They married and moved to Chicago. They eventually moved back to Sacramento, but after a while, David wanted to move to Nashville to be an artist.  Kay didn’t want to leave her close-knit family, so they divorced.

Kay moved into an apartment on W Street with her now widowed sister, Tsuyako, nicknamed “Chuck”. They lived together for many years. For decades, Kay worked at an elegant dress shop called Kneeland’s Apparel Shop on 9th Street, near the site of the Central Library. Nephew Mark Koyasako remembers that she dressed immaculately, like a model.  At the shop, she received and unpacked incoming clothing, supervising two other workers. 

Kay and Chuck centered their lives around family: cooking the annual New Year’s Day feast, caring for nephews on weekends, and spending summers fishing at the family’s cabin on Sardine Lake. “They always remembered all of our children on birthdays and at Christmas,” recalls sister-in-law, Alma Koyasako.  Alma is also a resident at Maple Tree Village.

“Auntie has always been sociable and outgoing,” says Mark.  She’s filled her years with family and friends and as a regular at Music Circus. She has traveled far and wide, meeting far-flung relatives in Japan, visiting friends in Hawaii, and marveling at the scenery in Canada.  

Now the only surviving Koyasako sibling, she continues to enjoy the many activities at Maple Tree with her best friend Betty. She is lovingly cared for by the next generation. Mark oversees her health and day-to-day needs; nephew-in-law Peter Look takes care of her finances.  As Mark recognizes, “Both she and her sister have been very important members of our family.”

Paul Dunn is still living a full life. He spent most of his adult years living in Italy. Now he resides at Maple Tree Village. He was born in May 1923 in Jenks, Oklahoma. His father was a butcher; Mom was a housewife. He had one sister.

Paul has fond memories about his childhood; he doted on his pet duck and rode bareback on horses. Getting his first bicycle is still a special memory. A friend of his parents fixed up a used bike and gave it to Paul for Christmas. The family didn’t have much, but Paul’s mother was always cooking and sharing meals with the neighbors.

After he graduated from high school, Paul found work on a chicken farm. Soon after, World War II began. He enlisted with the U.S. Navy in 1942 and trained as an aviation cadet. Paul served stateside and in the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre until his discharge in 1945.

He met his future wife, Jane Wright, in San Diego. He was attending San Diego Community College on the GI Bill, and she was his English teacher. They were married in December 1948. 

Paul got his BS from San Diego State University and an MS from Ohio State University. While he and Jane were in Ohio, they lived in a fraternity house with their first daughter, Paulette. Jane was the house mother and cook for the frat.

After getting his MS, the young family moved to San Jacinto, California. They had three more children, Mary, Margo, and Hayden. The family now includes eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In 1964, Paul took a job with the USDA and the family moved to Rome, Italy.  He headed up the Rome lab and worked as a research entomologist. He traveled in his VW van throughout Europe and the Middle East, looking for insects. 

Jane passed away in 1969. Paul suddenly found himself a single parent with four children.  The children were educated at an international school. He did his best to juggle his work and family responsibilities.

After living abroad for many years, the siblings returned to California. Paul remarried and stayed in Italy. Daughter Margo Fox recalls frequent visits with her father after she and her own family moved to Abu Dhabi for her husband’s work.This enabled Paul to have quality time with his grandsons.

Paul moved back to California in 2020. His apartment is filled with the art pieces he created while living in Italy. But the most important possession he brought back with him is his cat Allegra! She is his constant companion. Staff at MTV make it a point to stop by Paul’s apartment to say hello to her as well as Paul. Both of them are very popular.

It was 1943 when 21-year-old Ruth Chan enlisted in the Army Air Force Women’s Army Corps. “I really believed that if I volunteered, the war would end sooner,” she says. “I thought our fellows, including my brother Edward, could come home sooner.”

Vivacious still, though almost 101, Ruth lives with her daughter Gwen in the Pocket. She says her hearing and memory aren’t very good, but I beg to differ.  Her wartime memories are vivid, and she’s a very good mahjong player.  At our weekly games, she wins more than she loses.

Her parents were Chinese immigrants. Her father, Chuck Wing Chan, landed in New Orleans in 1906. He later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and married Lum Sue Ying from Guangdong. They eventually settled in Locke and operated the Happy Café on Main Street. Ruth and her four siblings were born in Walnut Grove; older brother Edward was born in China.

After graduating from high school, she moved to Sacramento for college and worked as a live-in maid for $20 a month. But she sought adventure and heard the patriotic call to serve in WWII.  So one day, she found herself downtown signing papers to join the military.

Basic training was in Iowa, where she was the only Chinese woman in her unit. She recalls early morning reveille and marching all day. Her first assignment was clerical work at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. Being tall, she was recruited as captain of the women’s basketball team. On game days, they traveled to different bases in cargo planes, sitting on wooden crates. “Now you couldn’t pay me to travel like that,” she says.

Ruth then moved to Mitchel Air Force Base in New York, where she helped care for injured servicemen. The work had two perks: 1) she could sleep in a hospital room and not the women’s barracks, and 2) she got to escort wounded soldiers to shows at Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway. “I enjoyed my time in the service,” says Ruth. “I was from a small town. I became more independent and confident.”

Ruth was subsequently promoted to the rank of Corporal. After her discharge in 1946, she returned to Sacramento and reconnected with a childhood friend, Harry Jang, a decorated veteran who was studying architecture at UC Berkeley.

Born in Courtland in 1919, Harry was one of 12 children. In the war, he wanted to be a pilot but was trained as a navigator and flew on B-17 bombers. Harry was sent to Thurleigh, England, and survived more than 35 missions over Germany. For his service, he was awarded the medal of Distinguished Flying Cross. The classic war movie “Twelve O’Clock High” was based on his squadron. Both Harry and Ruth received Congressional Gold Medals in 2020.

With the war behind them, the couple married, worked, raised three children and settled into retirement. Next to mahjong, Ruth’s other favorite pastime was golfing; she attained a handicap of 17. Harry died from a stroke in 1998 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. “A place has been reserved for me at Arlington. I look forward to being with Harry again,” Ruth says.

Life is made up of moments…some good, some disappointing. Teruko (Terry) Hirakida has experienced lots of these moments in her 100 years of living. But she has many more good than sad moments to remember.

She was born in August 1923 in Broderick, California. Terry’s parents were Japanese immigrants who farmed in Auburn. Masaru and Hatsuye Kitagawa harvested cherries and pears. Besides Terry, they also had one son, Henry. As most children of farmers did, Terry helped with farm chores and learned to drive a tractor at a young age.

She was in her senior year at Placer Union High School when the family received notice they had to leave their farm. It was 1942. They were sent to the Tule Lake internment camp. Before they left, Terry recalls the family buried a box of valuables in the fields. The cache is probably still there, as the family never went back to retrieve it..

Her family lived on Block 51. They shared the area with four other families. In camp, she met Ichiro Hirakida, born in San Francisco. They married in June 1944. Terry gave birth to her first daughter, Lucille Reiko, in October 1945. When the camp closed, Terry’s parents and brother returned to Auburn.

Terry and Ichiro moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. They lived with one of his uncles.  “The uncle didn’t like me because he had another girl picked out for Ichiro. But we were already married,” said Terry. The young family only stayed for two years before relocating to Sacramento.  Their second daughter, Peggy, was born there in April 1949.

Later in life, Terry found work with the State of California, working for the Department of Motor Vehicles.  She worked there for 28 years, retiring in August 1985.

She has stayed busy after retiring. She loves going to Mahoroba Japanese Bakery and shopping with friends. She was very active with Tanoshimi-Kai, attending their luncheons and organizing their casino bus trips.  She coordinated these bus trips well into her 90s.

Terry lived in her own home until October 2022, when she moved into Maple Tree Village. She enjoys the different activities they offer. One of her favorites is bingo and taking field trips with other residents. Terry’s husband passed away in 1995, and her daughter Reiko passed in 2006. Though she has experienced major personal losses, she still finds much joy these days with her daughter Peggy, son-in-law Mark Ginsberg, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren – having many good moments that she appreciates at this time in her life.

From the rural setting of Cienega Valley in San Benito County to the urban enclave of Fresno, Toshi Sakai has experienced many life-changing moments during her 100 years.

Her parents, Tsutomu and Sadae Awaya, immigrated to California from Japan. Their first child remained in Japan with relatives. Toshi was their second child; she was born on March 8, 1923, their first child born in the U.S. Three more siblings followed.

Her parents tended lettuce fields owned by the Smith family. The Smiths’ daughter, Georgia, became one of Toshi’s closest friends.  Toshi’s mother, Sadae, maintained the outdoor bathhouse and fed the other farmworkers.

Toshi remembers that she had lots of freedom growing up on the farm.  She drove tractors and trucks as early as 11 years old.  The times when the family visited friends and her father had consumed a few drinks, she would be the “designated driver” for the trip home.

She was attending Salinas Junior College in 1942 when her family was sent to Poston, Arizona. Camp was different, but okay, she says. She recalls working as the medical director’s secretary and being good at playing soccer. 

Toshi and her sister, Aki, were allowed to leave Poston in 1945 to find work to support their family. Aki went to Philadelphia; Toshi headed for San Francisco. She worked as a medical transcriber for a doctor and did housework in exchange for room and board.

Upon release from camp, the rest of her family left for Gilroy Hot Springs.  Her father was ill and went to a TB ward in San Jose. After he passed, the family moved to San Francisco.

In the early ’50s, she met Robert Sakai, who lived in Fresno. His family had been sent to the Gila River camp, but he was allowed to leave early for college in Minnesota. Soon after, he was drafted into the Army. When the war ended, he returned to Fresno and managed Payless Market.

After a short courtship, Robert and Toshi married in June 1953. They set up home in Fresno and raised two daughters, Carrie and Leslie. They loved traveling and made frequent road trips to Yosemite and Pismo Beach before Robert passed in 2013.

In her spare time, Toshi took art classes at a community college.  She was a gifted natural artist, creating large pottery pieces, watercolors, and still life drawings. Her Greenhaven Terrace apartment is filled with lots of art and family photos. 

Toshi got a surprise dinner to celebrate birthday #100. Her church minister from Fresno and numerous longtime friends attended. How has she lived so long?  She credits it to her family, good nutrition, staying physically active, and her love of creating art.

Ruby Tom was born in Hong Kong on April 24, 1924, and is 99 years young!  She lived in Hong Kong until she was 12 years old, when her family returned to their village in China. Ruby recalls great memories of school in Hong Kong and China. While living in the Guangzhou Province, Ruby met her husband, Edward Tom. They were introduced by her sister and her sister’s husband as they both lived on the same street. They migrated to the U.S. in 1948, where they settled in San Jose. They then moved to Wyoming to help her father-in-law’s restaurant business, and later returned to the Bay Area.  While her husband worked in a grocery store, Ruby worked as a seamstress for the Roughrider Men’s Jeans Factory. They then moved to Napa, where they opened a Mom and Pop grocery store, Tom’s Market.  In the early 1980s, the Toms retired and moved to Sacramento, where they doted on their grandchildren. Edward passed away in January 2018.

Ruby has three wonderful daughters, Gail, Dale, and Alice, son Raymond, four grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. Ruby is very independent, according to her daughter Gail. For decades, Ruby walked daily along the canal at Portuguese Park, where she caught up with old friends and made new friends. Ruby plays mahjong at ACC three times a week and enjoys the social interaction with all her friends. When you stop by ACC, you can see everyone having a great time, smiling, and laughing in between the serious playing of the mahjong tiles. She and her daughters are grateful for ACC and for the many activities they offer to the community’s senior citizens.  The initiative, effort, and foresight of super volunteers like Linda Fong and Jo Fong is the reason there is a mahjong club.  It offers a place that is welcoming, warm, inviting, inclusive and positive.  

Gail shared that Ruby is known for her vegetable gardening. Ruby has a “green thumb” as she grows long beans, winter melon, zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers. All the right vegetables for living a long life. Ruby says she is grateful and appreciative for the people in her life.

Ruby values her recognition by ACC as a centenarian and proudly displays her key to the city and letter from Congresswoman Doris Matsui on her living room mantel next to her husband’s Congressional Medal of Honor.