Pa's Life-sketch
John Wells Hanley -- I’m going to
refer to him as ‘Pa’, short for Grandpa, because that
is how we called him -- was born on May 7th, 1928 in Marlette
Michigan which is smack dab in the middle of ‘The Thumb of
Michigan’. His family had lived in Marlette since the
1890’s and Pa’s family stayed in the East until 1950
when they were lured out West by Uncle Beat, excellent weather,
and growing opportunity here in California. 70 or so years later,
Pa returned to his childhood home for a visit. Things had
changed! But he had his memories . . .
There’s a song by the
singer/song-writer James Taylor that I like called
‘Copperline’. It’s about a person just such as Pa
who goes back to his childhood town, the town of
‘Copperline’, and all the memories that come flooding
back. Parts of the lyrics go like this:
"I tried to go back as if I could,
all-spec house and plywood
Tore up and tore up good, down on
Copperline
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me, it
doesn’t touch my memory . . ."
. . . I’m sure that was much as Pa
experienced. Lots of changes, much of what was there gone, but
just enough left to bring back the memories . . . they
hadn’t been touched.
He was known as ‘Little Jack’
back then. He spoke of his earliest memories. Of New Jersey; of
Ohio; of a wooded front porch of seven steps and underneath, a
wooden lattice, that was his secret hideaway . . .
In those days, his grandmother Hanley owned
a cottage on the shores of Lake Huron at Port Sanilac. They would
travel on Memorial day to open up the cottage for the season. At
that early time of year the water of the lake was freezing . . .
but that didn’t matter to Pa, he swam anyway as all the kids
did. Forth of July would bring warmer weather and warmer water
and life on the lake was good. When not actually -in- the lake
they would play cards and Badminton in the yard, and in the long
evenings, walk with their friends to Plate’s Drug Store for
sodas. There wasn’t much there then . . . a drug store, a
grocery store, a gas station, a hardware store . . . and one
barber shop . . . but it was enough.
Pa’s grandfather was a sort of local
celebrity there because he was rumored to have made a hole-in-one
on the ninth hole of the local nine-hole golf course.
There were beautiful yachts there too.
Pa’s friend’s family had one moored at the dock. Pa
said the one afternoon they had returned from a day’s outing
on the yacht and in attempting to tie up at the dock, Pa fell
into the water. His mother naturally panicked. But Pa was a good
swimmer . . . but he did note that she yelled ‘Jack!
Jack!’ so loud that even 70 years later and thousands of
miles away he thought, at times, that he could still hear her.
;-)
Those two interests -- golf and boating
followed Pa throughout his life. He loved golfing, loved the
friendship and camaraderie it could bring. He golfed often with
SIRS -- the Seniors in Retirement organization. He golfed Hawaii
-- what could be better? ;-)
He loved boating and the water, but
strangely, not the beach . . . the sand wasn’t his cup of
tea. He and grandma owned two boats --- the motor boat
‘TRANQUILLO’ and later, in 1980, they became the proud
owners of ‘the Pacific Queen’, a large, all wood double
ender in the delta. They spent a lot of time with that boat,
painting, sanding, varnishing . . . 95% work and 5% fun Grandma
said. But it was an adventure.
Pa and Grandma were 2nd cousins.
What’s more, Grandma’s grandfather and Pa’s
grandfather were partners in an egg business back in Marlette.
She and Pa were too young to even talk back then (a toddler and
an infant) but Grandma’s little wave when they moved to
California was, according to a family joke, directed toward Pa.
Because Pa and Grandma met up again years later in California
where they fell in love and were married on March 11, 1952 at
Saratoga. Thus vexing future generations of genealogists because
the Hanley name proceeds up both sides of the tree from Barb and
Cathy ;-) It was a quick honeymoon because Pa was just out of
Basic Training at Fort Ord for 3 or 4 days for the wedding and
afterwards they moved onto the Fort where Pa entered leadership
training. He finished in May of ‘52 then they spent the next
6 months at Fort Riley Kansas in OCS (officer candidate school).
Then a 6 month’s stint at Fort Lee, Virginia where Pa
entered Quarter master’s school (June ‘53). Those were
the scary days of the Korean war, many men were sent there, but
Pa and Grandma were lucky and Pa was transferred instead to
Germany --- to Darmstadt. It was a 9 month tour of duty and when
he and grandma returned to help close down the Army base at
Pittsburgh California, grandma was 7 months pregnant with Barb.
She was born in the army hospital at Pittsburgh were she and
grandma were the hospitals only patients.
Then is was out of the army and into a tiny
two-bedroom house in San Jose. 2 years later they bought the
house on Kirkwood Drive and then Cathy was born a year later.
After 8 years on Kirkwood, they moved to the house on Olive
Branch Lane.
All these moves, twists and turns, are
chronologically correct but they don’t tell you as much
about Pa, so I’ll leave that mode to tell you more about Pa,
the man.
Pa was an athlete. Track & Field was
his sport -- running his specialty His high school was a fine
Military Academy -- Culver Military Academy in Culver Indiana.
And while there he set a new school record for the 440 -- 51.2
seconds.
He was a scholar. He attended Brown
University, majoring in economics. He loved politics, and he
loved following the market -- investing. He would spend sometimes
2 or 3 hours a day at the library perusing journals, newspapers,
magazines, whatever he resource he could find to feed his passion
for politics and business. Stocks and investing were exciting to
him. And the love of them drew him into the computer world -- the
internet -- which perhaps was confusing to him at times but an
important tool to him following his passion.
He was a creature of habit. But then again
aren’t we all. An example: for the last 15 years he had
eaten breakfast at the Blossom Hill Mcdonalds, and in that long
association had many friends there. Then he’d ‘putter
around’ the house a bit, get in his ‘Tuna-boat
cadillac’, drive to the Safeway, buy one cookie, and come
home and eat it. That was breakfast and a snack.
A job at the Title company led to a career
in Real Estate and he was a Realtor for many years. But it
didn’t end there. He loved beautiful landscaping and growing
things and so he left real estate to create a nursery business.
He knew a lot about plants, a lot about growing them, about
buying and selling them --- he knew their many names all in Latin
which confused some of us but delighted him. I know that Jon and
probably Melissa can remember riding with Pa over to Santa Cruz
and all the surrounding areas loading and delivering plants in
Pa’s large, green truck -- I think it was on its 3rd engine.
Those were pretty exciting days.
Pa love seafood but hated broccoli -- but I
think he disliked Bill Clinton even more ;-) Pa was a
conservative, a dyed through-and-through Republican. He worked at
the Republican Headquarters trying to elect ‘any and every
Republican’.
A person’s bookshelves tell much.
Pa’s are filled with real estate, boating, and nursery
related tomes. But, here and there, other interests show through
--- particularly American History and the history of World-War
II.
He was an avid ‘49er fan. And
recently, amazingly enough, had come under the spell of that
unique craze: professional wrestling. We do not know who is
favorite wrestler was, however, and probably are glad we
don’t.
He liked his ‘Tuna boat’ cadillac
that faithfully carried him to McDonald’s every day --- what
more could you ask of a car? ;-)
Pa like Rush Limbaugh and especially his
ties. Desperate to buy one of those ties, Pa called and drove all
over San Jose and surrounding areas in a focused tie hunt. He
finally cornered his quarry in far away Monterey. The successful
‘tie hunter’ proudly wore his tie on many occasions and
endured many jokes on same from us.
Pa and Grandma loved to travel. Japan,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, Thailand, Australia, New
Zealand, Fiji --- they did them all. Alaska was great adventure
for Pa, as was Hawaii where he could golf and deep sea fish
back-to-back (one trip catching a 123 pound Marlin)
Of course, when we -- the children and
grandchildren, Pa, and Grandma -- went on trips together we had
to stay a little closer to home. But we have fond memories of
Durango, Silverton, Mesa Verde, and Yellowstone.
Pa liked Lake Powell and we were lucky
enough to take him there just this past July. His health was in
decline, but he hung in there on the long boat-ride to Rainbow
bridge.
Pa died the night of August 7th. He
didn’t go in for that heart operation because he felt his
life was over or that it would end. No, he went because he loved
life, wanted more of it, felt he had more to contribute, and
wanted to spend more time with all of us.
But it was not to be.
Pull your hand out of a bucket of water.
What happens? The water ripples, swirls a little, and soon
settles back so that there is no evidence that a hand was ever
there in the first place. When a person dies, it is much the same
to the greater world -- life goes on pretty much as it did
before. The sun comes up, the planets spin in their orbits, the
news crackles at 6 and 10, traffic snarls on the free-ways,
generations come and go.
But given all that, just as in that James
Taylor song, ‘that doesn’t touch our memories’.
And we, here, we’ll treasure and
cherish those, while missing him greatly, until some bright,
future morn’ when we can once again greet him and fill our
embrace with him.
The images, articles, and concepts of this page are
copyrighted by P.S. Neeley -- copyright 1999