Suzanne Helms (Yanok)

I was Pat's bestfriend. We were even born in the same hospital, St. Mary's in S.F. by the same ob/gyn. Pat insisted on having her first child at St Mary's and went into heavy labor on the GG Bridge. One day in the summer of 1956, I was at the Sleepy Hollow pool and noticed a very pretty girl all alone who looked to be my age. She had short, jet black hair, blue eyes, really long lashes and a cute figure. I introduced myself and we discovered we would both be starting  Marin Catholic in September. As we walked home she told me they had just moved to Sleepy Hollow from their home in Pacific Heights. Her father, an attorney, had wanted to move to the country in Marin and he chose a fixer upper 2-bedroom, 1 bath weekend cottage in Sleepy Hollow, one road up from me. We were so excited to have met! I walked with her to her home and I got to meet her mother. I couldn't believe my eyes; on the kitchen floor was a stack of 3 wooden racks of CocaCola. Soda pop was not allowed in our home but I got one of the Cokes then another. Pat showed me the tiny house and there was already construction going on underneath. I could imagine what a zoo it must be on weekdays with school started and 3 people all heading for the one bath. When Pat showed me her bedroom, I almost couldn't see it for a three-story doll house half the size of a bathroom! She said she still moved the figures and furniture around because it helped her think, concentrate-her medidation. She had two beds in her room-I believe it had been the cottage's master bedroom. She reached way under what I assumed was her mattress and pulled out an open paperback. Pat and I discovered we were both voracious readers. At 14 I was into Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Pat, still 13, turned over her paperback and it was a French erotic novel which I'd never seen before. This was pretty wild and daring! She gave me "Chocolates for Breakfast" to take home and for the rest of the summer we'd talk about the books we read. We would even meet down by San Anselmo Creek, lay back, eat, read and drink Cokes. I wasn't impressed by "Chocolates for Breakfast" but Pat consumed those French erotic novels. Then she turned me onto "Payton Place" and I went bananas, reading as often as I could and hiding it under my mattress. Imagine, the cleaning lady dying of a disease that turned her blood into pus!  When school started, I introduced Pat to her neighbor, Mary Arata, and we became the Three Musketeers, studying together after school. Mary frequently made Honor Roll but Pat always did, never missing a quarter. Pat had over a genius I.Q. which was way over 140. The way Pat was she never said, "Guess what? I made the Honor Roll!" She was humble and we only learned when her name was called out in the auditorium. On Friday nights whether Mary was babysitting or not, we boarded the yellow bus that would take us to whichever game to cheer on our team to victory. On Saturday nights Mary always had a babysitting job (I believe Mary became the richest teen in the Hollow.) and Pat and I would become too cool to touch; we dressed all in black with blk tights and matching blk turtle-neck tunic sweater with a loose blk belt, blk. bootie shoes with blk. angora socks. We were beat and looked around 9 yrs. old. We took a cool Greyhound to North Beach and walk to whichever coffee house had an itinerary that night. I know I carried one of Kerourac's books, maybe my favorite, The Dharma Bums and Pat liked Ginsburg's Howl of poetry and carried that. We sat at a table beginning at 8, drinking coffee after coffee until our stomachs turned, waiting for the poetry to begin first. They sent out the duds to start at 11. By then we were jittery from caffiene and our curfew was 1A.M., at which time things were just beginning so in all our time spent at the various houses, we never got our heroes' autographs. We'd go to City Lights, too, or listen to jazz that started at 9p.m. About 3-4 months into Freshman year,the Smiths' home needed to have the interior construction done and Vern Sr. moved his family of 4 for 6 wks. to the motel along 101, The Corte Madera Inn where Max's restaurant is today. Pat got her own room with her own TV, phone, Room Service and no parents or sibling. We only saw each other at school-she didn't even want to go out on weekends but she phoned me every night. Back at the Smith abode, Vern Sr. had added a master suite inc. bath, a huge living room with a sweeping view, a pool room for he and Vern Jr. and a pool. When they moved back in, every day after school, Pat would swim laps. That's how she got those powerful halter-top shoulders. I cannot list all the things we did in high school so now I'm just going to do the highlights. Pat was amazing all her life with the way she did her hair. She'd be talking or listening and feeling her hair then say, "My hair's too long here." She'd grab a pair of nail scissors and trim her hair just by feeling. Sometimes she'd use a mirror but she NEVER went to a salon. From my aspect now it's amazing how carefree and irresponsible our summers were. Each of our 3 summers, but not the one after graduation, we did the same things: during the weekdays Mary, Pat and I hung out at her pool, drinking Cokes, eating dill pickles, and reading with Pat usually swimming Olympic-perfect laps every once in awhile. That pool room was a guy magnet and when they began to show up, Pat would cheerfully send Mary and I packing. I told her I'd get even some how, you dirty rat. On Saturdays the three of us would catch a ride to 4th St. in San Rafael and window-shop and have lunch and wander home. Frequently when we could get the address, Pat and I went and bothered Mary at night where she was working. We wanted to talk girl stuff and read glamorous magazines about how to become immediately beautiful. Mary bought every magazine but she had her hands full with the 5 McGee kids and got nervous with us around. We liked to tease her then left. Otherwise on Saturdays we'd go to two Olympic swimming pools, one a diving pool, that you had to payto get in which were part of the old Lord Fairfax estate right on the Fairfax city border. First Mary brought Gerry Wicks to join us and we all liked her. The idea with Pat and the other girls was not to get wet but to attract the public school teen boys, massing around and showing off with dives but I got bored, went swimming and my hair suffered for it. Eventually Flora Dade and maybe Patti Penhallow joined us. This would be a Saturday option during schooltime, too. Maybe in the beginning of Freshman year, the Penhallows divorced and Helen bought a house for herself and the 5 children in Sleepy Hollow so Patti was usually hanging with us. I believe it was in the beginning of Sophmore year that Patii was riding her bike on a back road with no helmet in those days when she had a very serious accident.Patti ended up in the hospital unconscious. Helen Penhallow had a fancy gift store on 4th St. with mostly European and Murano glass and Patti was supposed to help her Mom at the upcoming Marin Art & Garden Festival on which Mrs. P. was on the board. We all pitched in and helped her. About 15 or more of us from MC showed up, properly dressed and ready to help. Mrs. P. had probably heard my reputation for clumsiness and didn't want me amongst her Lalique so sent me up the hill to work the Cotton Candy machine on my own. What a contraption! Some others were sent to other booths, too, but Pat and Mary got to help out with Mrs. P. We were good little troopers and worked hard into the dark for which we were given little gifts. SOPH.OPERA DAY: All hail Kathy Marcone and her groovy parents! I think it was our Freshman year when Kathy and her parents got the idea for her to gather a group of us and Elaine Bernasconi for a City trip via bus for the premiere of the first Cinemascope production, The Ten Commandments, and ALL the miracles. Pat and I were pulling on each other's clothes as the miracles went by, especially the parting of the waters. How did they do that!! And afterwards, I believe we had dinner at the St. Francis and some history as to how it partially survived the 1906 earthquake and fire. To view the second release of Gone With the Wind, the adult Marcones again had the idea for Kathy to gather another flock for this event. This time Mary got to come. Pat and I were fit to be tied-we had both read the unabridged book. "Ooh, Ashley's a pill! Give us Gable!", we both cried. Elaine Bernasconi was in the group both times. Afterwards we went to another famous restaurant but, alors, I forget which. There were so many. Then came opera day and Kathy was head of our entertainment, per usual. Pat and I wanted to be oh-so sophisticated in black which my mother would't allow me to wear. I went next door to Karen Dunning's, then a Frosh at Drake, who kindly let me borrow whatever I wanted, everything black. Pat took her Mom's Macy's credit card and bought a black sheath and the highest blk. heels. With her height, she looked like our chaperone. Maybe it was LaBoheme that sister tried to explain because it was to be in Italian and the only Italian word I knew was "pizza." But sister left out all the love parts so it was 5 minutes short. Pat and I sat in the thousandth row. Short me couldn't see but at least Pat could. I was in an aisle seat and had to lean over and squint to see. My body was contorted after 5-6 hours and I was cross-eyed. Pat just laughed but she and Mary were also bored. We met up with Kathy and the others. Our first trip was for $1 items thru China Town where I bot my first back scratcher, ummmm, which I still have, and the 3 of us bot white tabis. We were giggling all the way, so grown up and on our own with Kathy a great leader. We ended up somehow via cable car at the Fairmont Hotel's dining entertainment pool and we were seated directly in front of the pool. I believe Flora Dade was with us, too. None of us had seen a floor show, we were so innocent but on came the fires and the drummers and the native dancers with the main dancer floating on the pool. Our mouths dropped collectively. Pat wanted to take Tahitian Hula lessons. The dinner was Polynesian, too, and absolutely fantastic. We all took the bus home, and Butterfield to Sleepy Hollow was the last stop. Pat and I had secret crushes on two Drake boys and Pat told us a secret. She said that that morning she called her boyfriend, Bill, the one with the car, a '49 Chevy, and told him we would be walking home around 10p.m. We were so excited the guys might meet us but when we got off the bus, they weren't there. We walked slowly but sadly and then screeeech!-Bill Ciocci pulled alongside with my boyfriend, Dick Gaither in back. Dick lived in the Hollow and his Dad and mine were horse buddies. All in the family. We put Mary front and center, the special place in a hip car and Pat rode shotgun. It was a coupla miles to Mary's house and the San Anselmo Creek ran along Butterfield in the front of the Arata house. Bill would NOT drive over that bridge because it looked like it was collapsing anytime. This bridge hung down like a swayback horse (old Blackie?)and it almost touched the water but Alice Arata said she had an engineer out (George A.?) who said it was technically safe but we let Mary out to walk over it herself. She was delighted that some of the neighbors saw her get out of this groovey car, the least we could do. Then the four of us went and parked up on Blueberry Hill, at the top of the hills where the borders of Sleepy Hollow and Fairfax met. Then the guys together took out bulky Drake rings and asked us to go steady! They had to quiet our screeching, omg. We MAY have been the first in our class to go steady. (Oct.'57) The next morning Pat phoned me at 7a.m. "Are you putting yours on a chain for your neck where it will show?" "Of course!" Giggle, squeal-sooo sophisticated! Yes, according to my Soph. yearbook, everybody noticed and knew our boyfriends' first and last names. (I must say the hulky rings around our neck were pretty ugly but we were jazzed.) Being best friends and going with best friends was like being sisters, doing everything together. Bill & Dick would pick the three of us up after school where the bus let us out and we always put Mary front and center and did NOT want her to be hurt!-but kind of like sharing. Pat's Dad was usually very liberal but not yet in Sophomore Year. Neither of us could go out on weeknights and only one night on the weekends but right after school, we went up to Pat's pool room and played pool. She had a record player and we listened to rock n roll and danced. Dick was a smooth dancer. We had to quit at 5p.m. On the weekends, usually Saturday nights, we'd go to a movie and then a fast food snack then to Pat's (Vern's but he wasn't using it.)pool room for dancing until our 1p.m. curfew. Pat and I LOVED to dance and it was rare to find a good fast dancing partner. We went steady for 5 mons. and I must say this was Pat's and I best time together in high school, united like sisters. Pat's prolific vocabulary combined with her high I.Q. always blew my mind when it came to report writing. I had to speed write just to get the assignment done and had no time for the luxury of adjectives as did Pat. I remember one example in History when everyone had to write a report on Columbus. When Pat's turn came, I turned in my seat to watch her, to see if she would again amaze me and she did within her first 3 words. "The peacock blue of the ocean's swirls..." She was incredible and could have done anything including law. Within 5 mons. our romances were no more entertaining but we were tired of doing the same thing so we broke up with Dick & Bill although every once in a while Pat would date Bill. In April of Sophomore year, I got my license even after parallel parking on the sidewalk and Dad frequently would take the bus so I could use his suped up station wagon. I would pick up Mary every morning but Pat still wanted to ride with her Dad.  After school I would load the car not just with Pat and Mary up front but the 2 rows with other classmates who wanted a ride home. I started dating another guy from Drake a year ahead of us like Bill. We never double dated but I began to like Joe more because he had a good job in a large pharmacy for someone in school and he planned to go to college and then law school. He passed my ambition test. I got to go to the Drake Jr.Prom with Joe at the Corinthian Yacht Club BUT Bill did NOT ask Pat. I don't know what happened with them but I thot he was a rat. Pat was very disappointed but Mary was very excited for me and offered to help make my gown SUMMER CAME and we were up to the same old, relaxing routine of mostly reading and swimming and talking about our books. Only this summer Gerry Wicks and Patti Penhallow were around more. And Friday nights if Mary was off, we'd cruise 3rd and 4th Sts. in San Rafael, hang out at Zip's where Kaiser is now. or get bored hanging out at the drive-in in Marin. There really wasn't much to do at night-no parties yet. That summer the only interruption was that For 3 weeks I got to go with Joe's family to Clear Lake and learned to slalom ski frontwards, backwards, jump wakes and ride disks but I kept all these activities to myself because, even tho Pat had Vern's guy-magnet poolroom with free Cokes, she didn't really have that much to do PLUS our parents always took a family vacation for a couple of weeks at my aun't house on the Balboa/Newport Beach and the Smiths never went on trips. JUNIOR YEAR: On the early morning of 17 Sept.1958, someone was parked in my front yard before Dad had left to take us to school. It was Pat! I went outside and she had gotten her Driver's License the aft. before without telling me as a surprise. I went outside and she was smiling prettily in the coolest car (for women, not guys) I had ever seen. It was a '58 all black DeSoto convertible with the top down on this cool morning with fins so long they stretched into our neighbors' yard...almost. "WHERE did you get this!!??" I asked her. "Out of our garage. Dad bought it for Mom but she doesn't want to drive anymore." I grabbed my books and jacket and jumped in. I wish I had such a garage! But Pat didn't want to pick us up in the a.m.--let my Dad still do that but she would drive everyone home. First dibs but the front seat was reserved for Mary and I. I only took Dad's car to school when I would drive him to SFO for one of his business trips. With her hands on the steering wheel, Pat became more of a rebel involving me and innocent Mary. One day at the beginning of lunch, she came and got both Mary and me. She hurried us to her car and Mary got in. She got behind the wheel as I asked what was up? She said laughing, "C'mon chicken. Let's go get a lunch off campus down by the college!" In my bewilderment I thot if Mary was going for it, why not me?" so I got in and off we went, Pat driving too fast for me to roll out like in a Western. Well, Pat finally stopped at Stinson Beach!!-Mary and I too uptight andscared to eat anything but Pat was laughing like crazy and bot a nice lunch. She sat on the beach and pulled up her skirt to sun her legs with her quick olive complexion and actually enjoyed herself while Mary and I huddled together in the car, wondering what was going to happen. Finally around 4p.m., Pat drove us home. The next morning at school, Sister Superior called us out of our same Homeroom and took the 3 of us to her office. We were suspended for three days, even uncorrupt Mary but Pat laughed in front of Sister. We were not given any special assignment and sent home with Pat. Mom said to me, "I'm not surprised this hasn't happened before...but Mary??!!" None of us were grounded so we spent three days at Pat's pool, sunning, reading, eating, drinking and chatting. When we went back to school, no one said a thing. I believe both Mary and Pat made Honor Roll. Pat did anyway and Mary did usually. During Xmas vacation, my cousin, Suzie Wilkinson from San Diego, flew up for the week after Christmas and I introduced her to Pat. We all went out that night, packing the DeSoto with girls, it's top down. One of the girls decided to sit up on top of the car where the top was tucked under. This thotless move caught the attention of a policeman who hauled us in for breaking 11 p.m. curfew. I remember Flora was there and Patti Penhallow, Mary, Pat, me and my cousin but I forget the two or three others. No one wanted to phone their Dad so I decided I would because I responsible for my cousin. Dad came down grouching but not at us but at the police for having such a stupid rule! Ha ha! Then Dad had to drive each of our classmates home and Pat didn't even say "Thank you" but everyone else did. It was gruesome to wonder what Vern Sr. would have done had he been called. For the last half of Jr. year, Pat was going out weeknights and she knew Mary and I couldn't go out on weeknights. Pat would just pick up the keys and say "I'm going to the library" and leave. I don't know if she even had a curfew. I do know sometimes she did need to reference the library but most of the time, she had already done her homework and just drove around. The next morning she'd simply tell Mary and I "Went out again last night." No details. But then she told the both of us that, because I was dating Joe on the weekends and Mary was always babysitting Sat. nights, that she and Flora Dade would get all dressed up in dressy pants, Flora all white and Pat all in black and go over to S.F. being Beatniks. They usually couldn't find any legitimate Beats so they'd go to a nightclub which had outdoor seating for those underaged and listen to their jazz. "BISS" One school day we were walking home on Butterfield and I usually left off at Joe's house where he was usually working out on his punching bag but this afternoon he gestured to the three of us and asked Mary and Pat if they would like to come with us to Donald Bissitini's home in Ross to have his baby blue '49 Ford pin-striped. As we road in his car, he told us the "Biss" was considered an artist in the Bay Area and beyond. When we got to his house, there were 3 cars ahead of us so we jumped out. A lot of teens were hanging out with American Bandstand turned up loud and kids dancing and wandering thru Biss's home with no adults home. We watched him double pin-stripe for awhile and he was an artist! He used only a thin, thin brush and his little finger as a guide and would do the whole car free hand in every position. Finally I got so excited, I asked in the middle of Joe's car if he would pinstripe my charcoal purse and he did. Mary and I were excited but Pat was beyond us. I told Mary we'd get her purse done next time-Don had done it for free. JUNIOR PROM I got to go to both our Junior Prom and Drake's Senior Bal but who has the wardrobe! (rhetorical) I got one dress for both eventsl and both Pat and Mary had dates but Pat heard about a very pretty classmate of ours who rarely dated (paternal issues at home) and she became Pat's crusade. Pat began phoning her every night, talking to her about dating guys and how much fun it was and not to be afraid. The girl was skeptical at first then Pat talked into going finally if they doubled. She went with Pat's same-age male cousin from Stockton and they doubled with Bill and Pat and everyone had fun and, because of Pat, every girl in our class had a date! SUMMER OF '59 The same old routine of reading, chatting, sitting at Pat's pool, drinking Cokes, window shopping, lunches or visiting Lord Fairfax's estate. That summer Joe's folks didn't take us to Clear Lake but instead took a family cruise to the Hawaiian Islands for 3 weeks. Joe was to start college at Eugene, Oregon, in the fall. They had left me in charge of feeding their old dog, Zeke, and given me a key. The first afternoon Mary, Pat and I went in for me to feed him, we found the kitchen counters piled with loaves of French Bread, mayo, a note to find chipped beef in the fridge and Cokes and milk. Next to the bread were stacks of iced gingerbread cookies and bags of potato chips, like I was planning a party...but I certainly wasn't. So every day Mary and Pat with me to feed Zeke and feed ourselves and play pool in Joe's poolroom. This was like playing adults with no grown-ups around. Zeke thrived on 3 teen-aged girls loving him. Summer activities went back to normal when Joe's folks came home and found their stock of food consumed by a pack of three growing teen girls. Something was afoot with Joe, I could tell. I knew him and he was distant. The first night out he took me up to Blueberry Hill for a talk, to make it short, about breaking up. We were in love, I thot, and had planned our future not to get married until we finished college and Joe finished law school but his parents convinced him to break up or I would get pregnant and he'd be a stock boy all his life. As if!!! As if I'd planned my whole life to marry a stock boy! I was furious with his ignorant parents and furious and hurt by Joe for turning and being such a wimp. I walked home too angry to cry but the exercise wore me down and by the time I was walking up our driveway, I began to cry a little but I was used to holding things in. The next day I met up with Pat and Mary and vented to them. Pat was glad we had broken up but Mary was very concerned. She knew how tight Joe and I had been and that I had planned to go to State and wait for Joe, the Idiot. Summer continued as usual and I blended with our girlfriends. All their companionship made me not ache so much until school started. SENIOR YEAR '59-'60 Pat seemed hostile and even more rebellious against her folks this year. She began "to go to the library" every weeknight and told me she would just walk thru the kitchen without telling her Dad anything. At that time I didn't know what to tell her but two negatives don't make a positive. Mary was bringing her mother's station wagon to school more and more to do errands for her Mom after school. In hindsight I believe this was because of Pat's mood and she was probably afraid of getting in more trouble but she was still eating lunch with us. In the beginning and all thru Senior yr, the new English teaching nun, Sr. Madeleine Maria who had for many years been Dean of a Catholic school in the East Bay, constantly picked on me. English was to be my college major and I couldn't get bad grades in it but no matter how hard I worked on a paper and getting Mom & Dad to critique it, it came back with a D or an F. The family knew this wasn't fair but he wouldn't pull me out like he had with my brother and put me in Drake Immediately at the beginning of the year starting MC again and seeing certain cruel girls again, I began to feel a void growing in my stomach and now with this nun against me, it grew bigger. Add on Pat's hostility out of the classroom and the loss of comforting Mary and Joe's thotless breaking up with me (even tho I got love notes from him in the mail, which were even more confusing) added to this void , on certain days, I could barely get out of bed. Dad was having his own problems with a Jr. partner at work so I'd lost my family friend. Some days I felt like I was either going to just fall apart or explode or disappear willingly into a black hole. It was all I could do but concentrate on my studies. I knew I was barely resting at night and one night when I was asleep, my kid sister of 7 or 8 awakened me, saying she couldn't sleep because I was crying so loudly in my sleep. This surprised the Hell out of me-I had no clue and I never cried when awake but my emotional pain was tremendous. I tried confessing to Pat but there was something wrong with her and she didn't want to hear about my problems and said she had none of her own. Then one day I walked down to her car in the parking lot and she left already! I took the Greyhound to Butterfield but she began to do this to me repeatedly. I could never get angry with Pat-I loved her too much but she did hurt me but I got a clue and would get a ride with Mary or automatically take the Greyhound home with Dona Sutherland and June Chisholm. I felt querky with this Void in the pit of my stomach which constantly made me emotionally ache, I knew I should do something about it but what?-tell a priest? They'd think I was nuts so I did get an idea that caused a lot of emotional work; in the pit of my stomach where this black hole grew, I put lengths of lumber over the hole for a platform and keep me from falling in until...I could get some help. One weekend night the three of us were reunited and it was like old times, very chummy. I asked Pat to drive us to this place in Mill Valley where Joe used to take me called Brown's Hall for some great music and dancing. The place was packed per usual and all 3 of us danced with different partners. Halfway thru the night a really smooth, good looking, well dressed guy from San Rafael High, Bruce Greene, continually asked me to dance. I was really enjoying myself and he got my phone number. Pat had given hers out to several guys and she seemed happy again. Like me Mary had given her name out to one guy but on the way home (carefully after 11p.m. curfew), she said she was scared of that place and never wanted to go back. Mary had good common sense so I asked her why. She had seen a series of Black guys supposedly from Tam with switchblades!! Creepy; I didn't want to go back there either unless with a male partner. Back at school after the Christmas Holidays we each resumed our separate ways except at lunch. Pat was just not more hostile but more quiet; Mary went her own way and I dated Bruce every weekend. He found a dance for us every night we went out and he helped to slightly fill the mysterious, painful void...plus the exercising of rocking the night away really helped. I did NOT want to go steady so we didn't but he planned on going to S.F.State where I was going. I have to thank Chris Hyatt who talked me into trying out for the Senior Play, "You Can't Take It with You" and we both got parts! Scream and giggle. I got to play the perenially drunken eccentric actress, Gay Wellington, and Pat and Mary were going to do makeup. Good times were happening again for us and Pat seemed less hostile so we relaxed and were chums again. Then the first week in March on Monday or Tuesday with my playing opening that coming Friday night and the other cast's Saturday night, as the three of us walked across the courtyard, Pat casually said, "My Dad had me arrested last night." Whoa! What? What happened was that Pat had gone from school in her uniform with her books straight to the Fairfax of her then boyfriend, good looking but brainless, sports coat wearing Kim Taylor who had graduated high school and went from there to unemployment. She did her homework there and I don't know what else but a male friend of Kim's came and camped on his bed. Pat said she refused to go home or to neck with Kim. She was testing her Dad. I told her it was too negative, that she should try something positive like her 4.0 average but she commented that her Dad never said a word to her when she showed him her report card. Mary and I were amazed. Anyway around 6 a.m. some cop was yelling thru a megaphone for everybody to come out singles file. Pat looked out the window and there was every Fairfax cop circling the place with her Dad standing in the middle. I guess she had "gotten" him. Vern Sr. had her quickly released in his power and sent her right back to MC in the uniform she had been wearing. Friday day which would be the night of my debut, Pat was a no-show that day and that evening I believe Gerry Wicks was Mary's make up partner. The play was great fun. Sunday afternoon and Pat wasn't home. No one at the Smiths' would tell me where she was. Finally she phoned me at home that afternoon. She had been dragged to Stockton! to her maternal aunt and uncle Cordova's big home and her male cousin and had to finish the last quarter at the Catholic high school in Stockton. OMG, she had only 1 quarter to go and her Dad had pulled her out. That was pretty severe but she had received some attention. She sounded very pleased and happy over the phone. Then she phoned Mary. Pat would phone me and Mary almost every weekday night but not on the weekends. She seemed to like Stockton and her new school. She was no longer hostile or rebellious but her sweet self. I was so glad for her. She made honor roll that quarter which made 12 quarters of Honor Roll and a 4.0 average. She would have been Valedictorian except you had to go to the same high school for 4 consecutive years. I have a beautiful picture of her in a white cap and gown, a large bouquet of roses and a big smile on stage receiving her degree. Pat's SATs were so high that the eastern ivy league colleges were courting her. She didn't even brag about this-her brother, Vern, told me. But Pat had settled on either College of the Pacific by Stockton or Dominican and was gladly accepted at both. Her father wanted the latter. SUMMER OF '60: Mary was off to Holy Names College, I think, and my college plans had been abashed. Mom had insisted I go to college" to find a husband" and I didn't want to be married and become a housewife and have people call me "Sue." I started working at Fireman's Fund Ins. in S.F. and went to COM at night.   Instead of going to college with that brain, Pat hurriedly decided to marry arounf August '60.  She had a babygirl, Betsy then divorced.  She remarried and had a son, Bobby. 1976, Betsy was awakened by strange sounds, sights and smells; the wiring in her electric blanket was sparking all along the cord then little fire were breaking out. 15-yr-old Betsy screamed for her parents who came rushing in and the three of the them successfully got her burning blanket out of the house. Pat went back in for Bobby while Vic phoned the Firefighters. The fire spread quickly and the house was burned to the ground by the time the Firefighters got their in just several minutes-it went quickly. Pat was hysterical not only about the house but all of her mother's antique French Provincial furniture lay in ashes. Pat couldn't function 100% so Vic found them a rental home just around the corner for a year while they rebuilt...then, just two weeks later, Vic moved to Alameda County and filed for divorce. Pat was aware enough to counter-sue. During this year of rebuilding, Vern Sr. passed away and his "Bride" inherited 50% of his estate while Pat and Judge Vern split the other half. (I believe Vern Sr. had left something like $30,000 each to Betsy and Bobby in trust through Vern Jr. Came 1978 and Pat's Eichler was rebuilt just as alike as it had been (luckily insured) and, of course, Pat was wealthy enough to refurnish it in cash but I never got to see it. She had changed so much, it was strange. I couldn't figure this irradic, changing character out. I was very sad. Maybe it was the early '80s when Vern Jr. and Pat's Stockton aunt or uncle passed away, being the last of that generation, leaving them with even more money, stocks, bonds, and various parcels of land around Northern California. Such a large estate was written up in the Stockton paper, reprinted by the Ind. Journal probably because of Judge Vern's "celebrity" status and the hefty estate. Mom clipped and mailed me this notice. Pat started phoning my Mom, confiding in her at various times, sensing I was at odds with her. "Odds"!!-she was a stranger---I didn't know this person. Pat had been independantly wealthy since her maternal aunt had passed away and never worked again. She kept her Eichler, furnishings, and clothing and a new car for the rest of her life. When Betsy was 30 and Bobby was only 24, Patricia Elizabeth Smith passed away in 1991, a month to the day after her 49th birthday on Oct. 16. The Coroner's Report says it was a stroke just like her Mom around the same age. Her family gathered around and had a Memorial at Judge Vern's home. He planned out her estate between Betsy and Bobby and found a bucolic setting in Bahia Cemetary for the former best girlfriend of my life. Fini

JoAnne Thomas (Hooper)

Tom O'Doul

Melodie Yoell (Behm)