How can you possibly summarize someone’s life in a few short paragraphs? There is simply not enough time or space for so many wonderful memories. My sister, Connie, was one of my closest friends growing up. We never fought with each other when we were kids - in fact, we never fought with each other when we were adults, either - but over the years as we were growing up, we did suffer occasional injuries together, mostly from playing outside, climbing trees, monkey bars, and riding bikes. We also endured knee injuries from playing football, so we both had to stop playing football.
One of my earliest memories of growing up with Connie was when we were living in Tyler, Texas, just a short distance east of the Louisiana swamp, which means you’ve got a towel to dry yourself off all the time. I was 4 or 5 and she was almost 2 or 3. We had blackberry bushes in our back yard, and Connie and I would be side by side, picking berries off the bushes and scarfing them down while our mom hovered close by, making sure we didn’t reach too far into the bushes because there were so many black widows in there. Somewhere there’s a photo from back then of Connie and me, in the sweaty summer heat of east Texas, wearing only shorts, grinning from ear to ear and covered in blackberry juice.
We both liked the same comic books; Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and so on. Her favorite super hero, though, was Aquaman. After she and I saw the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, she said, “Now they need to make ‘Aquaman,’ and I told her I didn’t think they had the technology yet. So, she was looking forward to seeing “Aquaman,” but by the time it was released, she was too ill. So, we promised her we would see it in her honor right after Christmas, which we did. She would have really enjoyed that flick.
Connie and I were a bit out of touch with each other when I started college, because she was still in high school, and I was working two jobs and attending university full time. Once she graduated from Ramona, she attended RCC for a while, then worked at a bank and a credit union, and then a finance company before she got a gig with Lily Tulip, the paper cup manufacturer in the north end of town. I remember Connie telling me back then that she did not like working in an office, so she was happy when she was promoted out of the Lily Tulip office and got a job as a production scheduler. It turned out she was the first female production scheduler in the company’s history, but that was not her goal - she just wanted to work on the production floor, to participate in the manufacturing process that actually produced something for the marketplace. She found that much more interesting, much more “hands-on” than what she referred to as “pushing paper.”
Her next venture was as the owner of Arlington Fish Market. She reckoned she could give Riverside Fish Market, which was on North Main across town, some competition, so she did - for a while. Her shop was two doors down from Palm Liquors, which was owned at that time by the Wellins family - we had been friends with Barry and Larry and Rhonda and their parents since high school. Their father, Nat, connected Connie to a guy with decades of experience who had a fish market on Fairfax in L.A., and with him as her mentor, Connie became an apprentice fish monger. Since I had a VW bus back then, I got to drive her to the pier in San Pedro at 2:00 a.m. two or three days a week so she could pick up loads of fresh fish for her shop. I was clueless about how to remove the fish smell from the bus, but Connie knew - “Get some baking soda,” she said. I could not find baking soda in bulk, so I was buying 8 or 10 boxes a week to eliminate the smell. If I think about it for a moment or two, I can still vividly recall that aroma.
Connie eventually closed the fish market since she could not effectively compete with Stater Bros. across the street and other grocery stores that started carrying seafood; even the market on North Main eventually went out of business, probably for the same reason. She did not want another office job, so what to do next? Well, why not become an electrician? Not what most women would typically choose. Connie did not plan on becoming one of the first, if not the first female electrician in the state of California, but that’s what she did. She wanted to work with her hands, she wanted work that would challenge her mentally - she was a whiz kid at math - and she enjoyed working on new construction as a member of IBEW Local 440 for almost 20 years. She loved working with everyone at IBEW; they were her second family.
Along the way Connie became a master at knitting, teaching classes at knit shops, winning competitions, and knitting everything from shoes to sweaters to jackets to hand bags, you name it. She imported a spinning wheel from New Zealand so she could spin her own yarn, and she even brushed her Siberian Husky, Basil, and spun his hair into yarn that she could knit. She had a full-size loom for weaving cloth, and she also learned how to handweave straw baskets so tight that they could hold water.
Connie also worked with me for a while back at the turn of the century as a high-tech recruiter, or head hunter, until IBEW lured her away. They wanted her back so she could be their office manager, and she worked there for about 15 years until she retired.
I had the good fortune to be Connie’s next-door neighbor for almost 20 years. We used to play tennis and run the track at Poly High School, then the UCR track, and she inspired me to get into long-distance running. She also introduced me to mountain climbing, hiking and backpacking. When I was touring the western U.S. and Canada playing music back in the early 70’s, Connie was hiking across Death Valley, up the John Muir Trail and Mount San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, and climbing rocks out in Joshua Tree. She kept telling me how great it was out in the wilderness, so I finally went with her on a backpacking run up San Gorgonio, and it was a blast. After we hiked back down the mountain, Connie helped me find an excellent pair of hiking boots that I’m still using 40+ years later. These boots have some serious mileage on them.
Connie was an avid reader; she read everything and anything. She was also an avid reader of scripture. One of her favorite verses was Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” She read a chapter from Proverbs every day. What I learned from her about Proverbs is that there are 31 of them, so you can’t get confused about which one to read on any given day - just check your calendar. So today, February 9th, Connie would be reading Proverbs 9, which says in part, “Wisdom has built her house . . . forsake foolishness . . . and go in the way of understanding.” Connie would paraphrase that to say, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
If Connie became aware of something that was not right, she would not hesitate to say so, or to take action. Back in the early 80’s I was touring with a rock band called Neophonics, and after one of our concerts at the UCR Barn, our vocalist - some of you may remember Jim Hardy - had a get together at his house. I happened to notice a guy at the party pick up Jim’s phone - back then it was a landline phone siting on a small table next to a lamp in the living room - and he was talking to someone, telling them about this cool party he was at. He started giving the other person directions to Jim’s house, and before I could say anything, Connie walked up to him, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and said, “This is not your phone, and not your house, and not your party!” Then she hung up the phone. The guy was so dumbfounded that he backed away, and then turned and left.
My sister was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, always willing to help out in whatever way she could. She was there when her nephews, Taylor and Carson, and her nieces, Kinsley and Alyx, were born, and she helped us with feeding them, giving them baths, changing their diapers, and also babysitting so we could have an occasional break. Connie also participated in getting the kids hooked on the outdoors. All our kids started going up Mt. Rubidoux with us when they were toddlers, either riding on our backs or in a stroller. Connie came to watch the kids’ chess tournaments, soccer games, basketball games, and school theater productions. And she was very happy when we found out that Taylor and Krystal are having a baby in April. She was excited about being Great Aunt Connie.
Here’s one other example of Connie’s generosity: shortly after she got the word from the oncologist that she had stage 4 lung cancer and she notified the doc she did not want chemo or radiation, Connie told us she had decided to donate her body for research to LLU Dept. of Anatomy. She said, “If they can learn something useful from what I leave behind, that would be cool.” After the school completes its research over a period of one or two years, they have the remains cremated and returned to the family. Connie said she wanted her ashes spread in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, San Gorgonio and Mt. Rubidoux, so we’ll be doing that in the near future. During one of our conversations last summer I asked Connie, jokingly, “You’re not going to pull a James Brown and check out on Christmas Day, are you? If you didn’t already know, James Brown, “the hardest working man in show business,” passed away on Christmas Day. Connie laughed at that one long and loud, and then she said, “I ain’t makin’ no promises, bro’!” Well, she beat James Brown by one day.
Connie moved in with us last October and remained with us while she was under hospice care. We are grateful she could be with us, which was where
she wanted to be, too, with her family. The last thing she said to Celia and me was, “One thing at a time.” She said it twice, “One thing at a time.” So, we’re attempting to follow her advice and take each day one thing at a time. We miss Connie - a lot. But we are glad she is now free of all the pain. Also, we look forward to seeing her again.
One of my earliest memories of growing up with Connie was when we were living in Tyler, Texas, just a short distance east of the Louisiana swamp, which means you’ve got a towel to dry yourself off all the time. I was 4 or 5 and she was almost 2 or 3. We had blackberry bushes in our back yard, and Connie and I would be side by side, picking berries off the bushes and scarfing them down while our mom hovered close by, making sure we didn’t reach too far into the bushes because there were so many black widows in there. Somewhere there’s a photo from back then of Connie and me, in the sweaty summer heat of east Texas, wearing only shorts, grinning from ear to ear and covered in blackberry juice.
We both liked the same comic books; Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and so on. Her favorite super hero, though, was Aquaman. After she and I saw the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, she said, “Now they need to make ‘Aquaman,’ and I told her I didn’t think they had the technology yet. So, she was looking forward to seeing “Aquaman,” but by the time it was released, she was too ill. So, we promised her we would see it in her honor right after Christmas, which we did. She would have really enjoyed that flick.
Connie and I were a bit out of touch with each other when I started college, because she was still in high school, and I was working two jobs and attending university full time. Once she graduated from Ramona, she attended RCC for a while, then worked at a bank and a credit union, and then a finance company before she got a gig with Lily Tulip, the paper cup manufacturer in the north end of town. I remember Connie telling me back then that she did not like working in an office, so she was happy when she was promoted out of the Lily Tulip office and got a job as a production scheduler. It turned out she was the first female production scheduler in the company’s history, but that was not her goal - she just wanted to work on the production floor, to participate in the manufacturing process that actually produced something for the marketplace. She found that much more interesting, much more “hands-on” than what she referred to as “pushing paper.”
Her next venture was as the owner of Arlington Fish Market. She reckoned she could give Riverside Fish Market, which was on North Main across town, some competition, so she did - for a while. Her shop was two doors down from Palm Liquors, which was owned at that time by the Wellins family - we had been friends with Barry and Larry and Rhonda and their parents since high school. Their father, Nat, connected Connie to a guy with decades of experience who had a fish market on Fairfax in L.A., and with him as her mentor, Connie became an apprentice fish monger. Since I had a VW bus back then, I got to drive her to the pier in San Pedro at 2:00 a.m. two or three days a week so she could pick up loads of fresh fish for her shop. I was clueless about how to remove the fish smell from the bus, but Connie knew - “Get some baking soda,” she said. I could not find baking soda in bulk, so I was buying 8 or 10 boxes a week to eliminate the smell. If I think about it for a moment or two, I can still vividly recall that aroma.
Connie eventually closed the fish market since she could not effectively compete with Stater Bros. across the street and other grocery stores that started carrying seafood; even the market on North Main eventually went out of business, probably for the same reason. She did not want another office job, so what to do next? Well, why not become an electrician? Not what most women would typically choose. Connie did not plan on becoming one of the first, if not the first female electrician in the state of California, but that’s what she did. She wanted to work with her hands, she wanted work that would challenge her mentally - she was a whiz kid at math - and she enjoyed working on new construction as a member of IBEW Local 440 for almost 20 years. She loved working with everyone at IBEW; they were her second family.
Along the way Connie became a master at knitting, teaching classes at knit shops, winning competitions, and knitting everything from shoes to sweaters to jackets to hand bags, you name it. She imported a spinning wheel from New Zealand so she could spin her own yarn, and she even brushed her Siberian Husky, Basil, and spun his hair into yarn that she could knit. She had a full-size loom for weaving cloth, and she also learned how to handweave straw baskets so tight that they could hold water.
Connie also worked with me for a while back at the turn of the century as a high-tech recruiter, or head hunter, until IBEW lured her away. They wanted her back so she could be their office manager, and she worked there for about 15 years until she retired.
I had the good fortune to be Connie’s next-door neighbor for almost 20 years. We used to play tennis and run the track at Poly High School, then the UCR track, and she inspired me to get into long-distance running. She also introduced me to mountain climbing, hiking and backpacking. When I was touring the western U.S. and Canada playing music back in the early 70’s, Connie was hiking across Death Valley, up the John Muir Trail and Mount San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, and climbing rocks out in Joshua Tree. She kept telling me how great it was out in the wilderness, so I finally went with her on a backpacking run up San Gorgonio, and it was a blast. After we hiked back down the mountain, Connie helped me find an excellent pair of hiking boots that I’m still using 40+ years later. These boots have some serious mileage on them.
Connie was an avid reader; she read everything and anything. She was also an avid reader of scripture. One of her favorite verses was Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” She read a chapter from Proverbs every day. What I learned from her about Proverbs is that there are 31 of them, so you can’t get confused about which one to read on any given day - just check your calendar. So today, February 9th, Connie would be reading Proverbs 9, which says in part, “Wisdom has built her house . . . forsake foolishness . . . and go in the way of understanding.” Connie would paraphrase that to say, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
If Connie became aware of something that was not right, she would not hesitate to say so, or to take action. Back in the early 80’s I was touring with a rock band called Neophonics, and after one of our concerts at the UCR Barn, our vocalist - some of you may remember Jim Hardy - had a get together at his house. I happened to notice a guy at the party pick up Jim’s phone - back then it was a landline phone siting on a small table next to a lamp in the living room - and he was talking to someone, telling them about this cool party he was at. He started giving the other person directions to Jim’s house, and before I could say anything, Connie walked up to him, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and said, “This is not your phone, and not your house, and not your party!” Then she hung up the phone. The guy was so dumbfounded that he backed away, and then turned and left.
My sister was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, always willing to help out in whatever way she could. She was there when her nephews, Taylor and Carson, and her nieces, Kinsley and Alyx, were born, and she helped us with feeding them, giving them baths, changing their diapers, and also babysitting so we could have an occasional break. Connie also participated in getting the kids hooked on the outdoors. All our kids started going up Mt. Rubidoux with us when they were toddlers, either riding on our backs or in a stroller. Connie came to watch the kids’ chess tournaments, soccer games, basketball games, and school theater productions. And she was very happy when we found out that Taylor and Krystal are having a baby in April. She was excited about being Great Aunt Connie.
Here’s one other example of Connie’s generosity: shortly after she got the word from the oncologist that she had stage 4 lung cancer and she notified the doc she did not want chemo or radiation, Connie told us she had decided to donate her body for research to LLU Dept. of Anatomy. She said, “If they can learn something useful from what I leave behind, that would be cool.” After the school completes its research over a period of one or two years, they have the remains cremated and returned to the family. Connie said she wanted her ashes spread in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, San Gorgonio and Mt. Rubidoux, so we’ll be doing that in the near future. During one of our conversations last summer I asked Connie, jokingly, “You’re not going to pull a James Brown and check out on Christmas Day, are you? If you didn’t already know, James Brown, “the hardest working man in show business,” passed away on Christmas Day. Connie laughed at that one long and loud, and then she said, “I ain’t makin’ no promises, bro’!” Well, she beat James Brown by one day.
Connie moved in with us last October and remained with us while she was under hospice care. We are grateful she could be with us, which was where
she wanted to be, too, with her family. The last thing she said to Celia and me was, “One thing at a time.” She said it twice, “One thing at a time.” So, we’re attempting to follow her advice and take each day one thing at a time. We miss Connie - a lot. But we are glad she is now free of all the pain. Also, we look forward to seeing her again.
How can you possibly summarize someone’s life in a few short paragraphs? There is simply not enough time or space for so many wonderful memories. My sister, Connie, was one of my closest friends growing up. We never fought with each other when we were kids - in fact, we never fought with each other when we were adults, either - but over the years as we were growing up, we did suffer occasional injuries together, mostly from playing outside, climbing trees, monkey bars, and riding bikes. We also endured knee injuries from playing football, so we both had to stop playing football.
One of my earliest memories of growing up with Connie was when we were living in Tyler, Texas, just a short distance east of the Louisiana swamp, which means you’ve got a towel to dry yourself off all the time. I was 4 or 5 and she was almost 2 or 3. We had blackberry bushes in our back yard, and Connie and I would be side by side, picking berries off the bushes and scarfing them down while our mom hovered close by, making sure we didn’t reach too far into the bushes because there were so many black widows in there. Somewhere there’s a photo from back then of Connie and me, in the sweaty summer heat of east Texas, wearing only shorts, grinning from ear to ear and covered in blackberry juice.
We both liked the same comic books; Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and so on. Her favorite super hero, though, was Aquaman. After she and I saw the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, she said, “Now they need to make ‘Aquaman,’ and I told her I didn’t think they had the technology yet. So, she was looking forward to seeing “Aquaman,” but by the time it was released, she was too ill. So, we promised her we would see it in her honor right after Christmas, which we did. She would have really enjoyed that flick.
Connie and I were a bit out of touch with each other when I started college, because she was still in high school, and I was working two jobs and attending university full time. Once she graduated from Ramona, she attended RCC for a while, then worked at a bank and a credit union, and then a finance company before she got a gig with Lily Tulip, the paper cup manufacturer in the north end of town. I remember Connie telling me back then that she did not like working in an office, so she was happy when she was promoted out of the Lily Tulip office and got a job as a production scheduler. It turned out she was the first female production scheduler in the company’s history, but that was not her goal - she just wanted to work on the production floor, to participate in the manufacturing process that actually produced something for the marketplace. She found that much more interesting, much more “hands-on” than what she referred to as “pushing paper.”
Her next venture was as the owner of Arlington Fish Market. She reckoned she could give Riverside Fish Market, which was on North Main across town, some competition, so she did - for a while. Her shop was two doors down from Palm Liquors, which was owned at that time by the Wellins family - we had been friends with Barry and Larry and Rhonda and their parents since high school. Their father, Nat, connected Connie to a guy with decades of experience who had a fish market on Fairfax in L.A., and with him as her mentor, Connie became an apprentice fish monger. Since I had a VW bus back then, I got to drive her to the pier in San Pedro at 2:00 a.m. two or three days a week so she could pick up loads of fresh fish for her shop. I was clueless about how to remove the fish smell from the bus, but Connie knew - “Get some baking soda,” she said. I could not find baking soda in bulk, so I was buying 8 or 10 boxes a week to eliminate the smell. If I think about it for a moment or two, I can still vividly recall that aroma.
Connie eventually closed the fish market since she could not effectively compete with Stater Bros. across the street and other grocery stores that started carrying seafood; even the market on North Main eventually went out of business, probably for the same reason. She did not want another office job, so what to do next? Well, why not become an electrician? Not what most women would typically choose. Connie did not plan on becoming one of the first, if not the first female electrician in the state of California, but that’s what she did. She wanted to work with her hands, she wanted work that would challenge her mentally - she was a whiz kid at math - and she enjoyed working on new construction as a member of IBEW Local 440 for almost 20 years. She loved working with everyone at IBEW; they were her second family.
Along the way Connie became a master at knitting, teaching classes at knit shops, winning competitions, and knitting everything from shoes to sweaters to jackets to hand bags, you name it. She imported a spinning wheel from New Zealand so she could spin her own yarn, and she even brushed her Siberian Husky, Basil, and spun his hair into yarn that she could knit. She had a full-size loom for weaving cloth, and she also learned how to handweave straw baskets so tight that they could hold water.
Connie also worked with me for a while back at the turn of the century as a high-tech recruiter, or head hunter, until IBEW lured her away. They wanted her back so she could be their office manager, and she worked there for about 15 years until she retired.
I had the good fortune to be Connie’s next-door neighbor for almost 20 years. We used to play tennis and run the track at Poly High School, then the UCR track, and she inspired me to get into long-distance running. She also introduced me to mountain climbing, hiking and backpacking. When I was touring the western U.S. and Canada playing music back in the early 70’s, Connie was hiking across Death Valley, up the John Muir Trail and Mount San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, and climbing rocks out in Joshua Tree. She kept telling me how great it was out in the wilderness, so I finally went with her on a backpacking run up San Gorgonio, and it was a blast. After we hiked back down the mountain, Connie helped me find an excellent pair of hiking boots that I’m still using 40+ years later. These boots have some serious mileage on them.
Connie was an avid reader; she read everything and anything. She was also an avid reader of scripture. One of her favorite verses was Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” She read a chapter from Proverbs every day. What I learned from her about Proverbs is that there are 31 of them, so you can’t get confused about which one to read on any given day - just check your calendar. So today, February 9th, Connie would be reading Proverbs 9, which says in part, “Wisdom has built her house . . . forsake foolishness . . . and go in the way of understanding.” Connie would paraphrase that to say, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
If Connie became aware of something that was not right, she would not hesitate to say so, or to take action. Back in the early 80’s I was touring with a rock band called Neophonics, and after one of our concerts at the UCR Barn, our vocalist - some of you may remember Jim Hardy - had a get together at his house. I happened to notice a guy at the party pick up Jim’s phone - back then it was a landline phone siting on a small table next to a lamp in the living room - and he was talking to someone, telling them about this cool party he was at. He started giving the other person directions to Jim’s house, and before I could say anything, Connie walked up to him, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and said, “This is not your phone, and not your house, and not your party!” Then she hung up the phone. The guy was so dumbfounded that he backed away, and then turned and left.
My sister was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, always willing to help out in whatever way she could. She was there when her nephews, Taylor and Carson, and her nieces, Kinsley and Alyx, were born, and she helped us with feeding them, giving them baths, changing their diapers, and also babysitting so we could have an occasional break. Connie also participated in getting the kids hooked on the outdoors. All our kids started going up Mt. Rubidoux with us when they were toddlers, either riding on our backs or in a stroller. Connie came to watch the kids’ chess tournaments, soccer games, basketball games, and school theater productions. And she was very happy when we found out that Taylor and Krystal are having a baby in April. She was excited about being Great Aunt Connie.
Here’s one other example of Connie’s generosity: shortly after she got the word from the oncologist that she had stage 4 lung cancer and she notified the doc she did not want chemo or radiation, Connie told us she had decided to donate her body for research to LLU Dept. of Anatomy. She said, “If they can learn something useful from what I leave behind, that would be cool.” After the school completes its research over a period of one or two years, they have the remains cremated and returned to the family. Connie said she wanted her ashes spread in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, San Gorgonio and Mt. Rubidoux, so we’ll be doing that in the near future. During one of our conversations last summer I asked Connie, jokingly, “You’re not going to pull a James Brown and check out on Christmas Day, are you? If you didn’t already know, James Brown, “the hardest working man in show business,” passed away on Christmas Day. Connie laughed at that one long and loud, and then she said, “I ain’t makin’ no promises, bro’!” Well, she beat James Brown by one day.
Connie moved in with us last October and remained with us while she was under hospice care. We are grateful she could be with us, which was where
she wanted to be, too, with her family. The last thing she said to Celia and me was, “One thing at a time.” She said it twice, “One thing at a time.” So, we’re attempting to follow her advice and take each day one thing at a time. We miss Connie - a lot. But we are glad she is now free of all the pain. Also, we look forward to seeing her again.
One of my earliest memories of growing up with Connie was when we were living in Tyler, Texas, just a short distance east of the Louisiana swamp, which means you’ve got a towel to dry yourself off all the time. I was 4 or 5 and she was almost 2 or 3. We had blackberry bushes in our back yard, and Connie and I would be side by side, picking berries off the bushes and scarfing them down while our mom hovered close by, making sure we didn’t reach too far into the bushes because there were so many black widows in there. Somewhere there’s a photo from back then of Connie and me, in the sweaty summer heat of east Texas, wearing only shorts, grinning from ear to ear and covered in blackberry juice.
We both liked the same comic books; Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and so on. Her favorite super hero, though, was Aquaman. After she and I saw the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, she said, “Now they need to make ‘Aquaman,’ and I told her I didn’t think they had the technology yet. So, she was looking forward to seeing “Aquaman,” but by the time it was released, she was too ill. So, we promised her we would see it in her honor right after Christmas, which we did. She would have really enjoyed that flick.
Connie and I were a bit out of touch with each other when I started college, because she was still in high school, and I was working two jobs and attending university full time. Once she graduated from Ramona, she attended RCC for a while, then worked at a bank and a credit union, and then a finance company before she got a gig with Lily Tulip, the paper cup manufacturer in the north end of town. I remember Connie telling me back then that she did not like working in an office, so she was happy when she was promoted out of the Lily Tulip office and got a job as a production scheduler. It turned out she was the first female production scheduler in the company’s history, but that was not her goal - she just wanted to work on the production floor, to participate in the manufacturing process that actually produced something for the marketplace. She found that much more interesting, much more “hands-on” than what she referred to as “pushing paper.”
Her next venture was as the owner of Arlington Fish Market. She reckoned she could give Riverside Fish Market, which was on North Main across town, some competition, so she did - for a while. Her shop was two doors down from Palm Liquors, which was owned at that time by the Wellins family - we had been friends with Barry and Larry and Rhonda and their parents since high school. Their father, Nat, connected Connie to a guy with decades of experience who had a fish market on Fairfax in L.A., and with him as her mentor, Connie became an apprentice fish monger. Since I had a VW bus back then, I got to drive her to the pier in San Pedro at 2:00 a.m. two or three days a week so she could pick up loads of fresh fish for her shop. I was clueless about how to remove the fish smell from the bus, but Connie knew - “Get some baking soda,” she said. I could not find baking soda in bulk, so I was buying 8 or 10 boxes a week to eliminate the smell. If I think about it for a moment or two, I can still vividly recall that aroma.
Connie eventually closed the fish market since she could not effectively compete with Stater Bros. across the street and other grocery stores that started carrying seafood; even the market on North Main eventually went out of business, probably for the same reason. She did not want another office job, so what to do next? Well, why not become an electrician? Not what most women would typically choose. Connie did not plan on becoming one of the first, if not the first female electrician in the state of California, but that’s what she did. She wanted to work with her hands, she wanted work that would challenge her mentally - she was a whiz kid at math - and she enjoyed working on new construction as a member of IBEW Local 440 for almost 20 years. She loved working with everyone at IBEW; they were her second family.
Along the way Connie became a master at knitting, teaching classes at knit shops, winning competitions, and knitting everything from shoes to sweaters to jackets to hand bags, you name it. She imported a spinning wheel from New Zealand so she could spin her own yarn, and she even brushed her Siberian Husky, Basil, and spun his hair into yarn that she could knit. She had a full-size loom for weaving cloth, and she also learned how to handweave straw baskets so tight that they could hold water.
Connie also worked with me for a while back at the turn of the century as a high-tech recruiter, or head hunter, until IBEW lured her away. They wanted her back so she could be their office manager, and she worked there for about 15 years until she retired.
I had the good fortune to be Connie’s next-door neighbor for almost 20 years. We used to play tennis and run the track at Poly High School, then the UCR track, and she inspired me to get into long-distance running. She also introduced me to mountain climbing, hiking and backpacking. When I was touring the western U.S. and Canada playing music back in the early 70’s, Connie was hiking across Death Valley, up the John Muir Trail and Mount San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, and climbing rocks out in Joshua Tree. She kept telling me how great it was out in the wilderness, so I finally went with her on a backpacking run up San Gorgonio, and it was a blast. After we hiked back down the mountain, Connie helped me find an excellent pair of hiking boots that I’m still using 40+ years later. These boots have some serious mileage on them.
Connie was an avid reader; she read everything and anything. She was also an avid reader of scripture. One of her favorite verses was Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” She read a chapter from Proverbs every day. What I learned from her about Proverbs is that there are 31 of them, so you can’t get confused about which one to read on any given day - just check your calendar. So today, February 9th, Connie would be reading Proverbs 9, which says in part, “Wisdom has built her house . . . forsake foolishness . . . and go in the way of understanding.” Connie would paraphrase that to say, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
If Connie became aware of something that was not right, she would not hesitate to say so, or to take action. Back in the early 80’s I was touring with a rock band called Neophonics, and after one of our concerts at the UCR Barn, our vocalist - some of you may remember Jim Hardy - had a get together at his house. I happened to notice a guy at the party pick up Jim’s phone - back then it was a landline phone siting on a small table next to a lamp in the living room - and he was talking to someone, telling them about this cool party he was at. He started giving the other person directions to Jim’s house, and before I could say anything, Connie walked up to him, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and said, “This is not your phone, and not your house, and not your party!” Then she hung up the phone. The guy was so dumbfounded that he backed away, and then turned and left.
My sister was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, always willing to help out in whatever way she could. She was there when her nephews, Taylor and Carson, and her nieces, Kinsley and Alyx, were born, and she helped us with feeding them, giving them baths, changing their diapers, and also babysitting so we could have an occasional break. Connie also participated in getting the kids hooked on the outdoors. All our kids started going up Mt. Rubidoux with us when they were toddlers, either riding on our backs or in a stroller. Connie came to watch the kids’ chess tournaments, soccer games, basketball games, and school theater productions. And she was very happy when we found out that Taylor and Krystal are having a baby in April. She was excited about being Great Aunt Connie.
Here’s one other example of Connie’s generosity: shortly after she got the word from the oncologist that she had stage 4 lung cancer and she notified the doc she did not want chemo or radiation, Connie told us she had decided to donate her body for research to LLU Dept. of Anatomy. She said, “If they can learn something useful from what I leave behind, that would be cool.” After the school completes its research over a period of one or two years, they have the remains cremated and returned to the family. Connie said she wanted her ashes spread in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, San Gorgonio and Mt. Rubidoux, so we’ll be doing that in the near future. During one of our conversations last summer I asked Connie, jokingly, “You’re not going to pull a James Brown and check out on Christmas Day, are you? If you didn’t already know, James Brown, “the hardest working man in show business,” passed away on Christmas Day. Connie laughed at that one long and loud, and then she said, “I ain’t makin’ no promises, bro’!” Well, she beat James Brown by one day.
Connie moved in with us last October and remained with us while she was under hospice care. We are grateful she could be with us, which was where
she wanted to be, too, with her family. The last thing she said to Celia and me was, “One thing at a time.” She said it twice, “One thing at a time.” So, we’re attempting to follow her advice and take each day one thing at a time. We miss Connie - a lot. But we are glad she is now free of all the pain. Also, we look forward to seeing her again.
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