Grandpa Ware and Grandma Burch

You cannot choose your ancestors, no matter how hard you try.  There are some probably even Jesus didn’t want to talk about much, but the writers of the Bible did, however sordid the details.  All you can do is find out who they were and see if there is some aspect of their lives that you can find that was passed on to you by heredity or example.  So you can think about:

1.  In what ways have these ancestors made me who I am today?

2. Is there something I can relate to, that I would like to emulate? 

3. Is there something I want to do differently? 

Here’s what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 about those people we read about in the Old Testament:  

Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.

And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."

Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 

~1 Cor. 10:6-11

I remember seeing a sign once, that read:  “No one is entirely useless -- they can always serve as a bad example.”  And with this in mind, I approach the subject of the other side of my family -- my mother’s side.

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Grandpa Ware, Lee Roy Ware, Jr., was born on Christmas Day in 1915 (like Jesus!), and grew up in Independence, Missouri (pronounced “Mizurruh”).  He was the second son of Lee Roy Ware, Sr. and Jenny June Riley, and he had a sister and four brothers.

I don’t think I have any pictures of Grandpa Ware’s father, Lee Roy Ware, Sr..  He died in a traffic accident when I was pretty young, and I don’t remember him.  But when I was grown, I thought it an “adulting” type of thing to pay a visit to a great grandparent without my parents, so when my husband and I stopped by on the way across country, I got this picture of Jenny June, who was my “Great Grandma Ware in Missouri.”

In case you’re wondering, she didn’t smile much, at least not for the camera, because she didn’t like her teeth, and her face was somewhat asymmetrical, which could have perhaps been due to Bell’s Palsy.  When she wasn’t having her picture taken, she was funny and loved to laugh.  I mostly remembered her for having a bathroom up a long flight of stairs on her old house, and a claw-foot tub up there that I could barely climb into.  I must’ve been pretty young when I took those baths, but those tubs are pretty deep!

The story was often told, both by Grandpa Ware and by others, that the reasons he left his hometown in Missouri and brought his wife and daughter to California were because of lack of work during the Depression, and because it snowed there.  You couldn’t work as hard in the Midwest.  When you had snow storms, you could be snowed in.  But Out West, in the land of opportunity, spring, summer, winter, and fall were always temperate. That was the place for an ambitious man.

Grandpa was short but dapper in the 1930's.  Early on, he invested in a service station with a friend.  Back then, these businesses were called service stations because the attendants wore spiffy uniforms and provided actual services, like checking your oil and washing your windshields while they filled your tank with gas.  Times have certainly changed!

But Grandpa made most of his money by purchasing homes that needed to be moved out of the way when a freeway came in.  He paid to have them transported to a good, developing neighborhood, and did all the repairs and remodeling necessary to sell them at a goodly price.

Yes, Grandpa was one of the original “home flippers.”  It worked for him, and he taught his step-daughter, Jackie, to do the same.

Lee Ware Realty had an office on Norwalk Blvd.  Behind the office was a long driveway leading up to his house, and along the driveway, he had built apartments.  Across the driveway from the apartments were tropical flowers along a wooden privacy fence.  Grandpa’s house was huge in comparison, and it had a pool behind it.  He and his second wife, Grandma Pearl, had their hands full with being landlords.

In 1964, Grandpa and others founded a small city of less than half a square mile, in what was then Dairy Valley, California.  He led the drive to have this city incorporated before the land was swallowed up by any of the neighboring cities and turned into a landfill, and in the first official city election, the voters tapped him to be their mayor.  They called their new city “Hawaiian Gardens,” and they paved roads, added city sewage, and planted palm trees to give it a tropical look.  The City Council always wore aloha shirts to their meetings.  Today, Hawaiian Gardens is still a small city in Los Angeles County, totally surrounded by other cities.  

I found this page in an online book about the history of Hawaiian Gardens:

We were always in awe of Grandpa.  We learned at a young age not to pronounce “realtor” like “REE-luh-ter,” but like “REEL-ter.”

When I was eight, the same year Grandpa was being elected mayor, Dad had to go to the Philippines without us for six months to look for housing, so we put the trailer in storage on a friend’s farm and lived in one of Grandpa’s apartments.  I loved to squeeze and pop the pomegranate blossoms that grew across the driveway!  We spent a whole summer contracting all the childhood diseases together (measles, mumps, chicken pox), not being able to go anywhere or swim in Grandpa’s pool, and being cranky.  

Finally we were about finished with that when it was time for school to start.  I got a solo in the Christmas program and I was thrilled.  I hurried home from Hawaiian School to tell Mom that I had to learn “Here Comes Susie Snowflake.”  Although I did learn the song, we had to move to the Philippines before the program ever happened.  The teacher had to find another soloist.

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Grandma Burch was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1921 and her maiden name was Audentia Bell Burdick.  Her parents were Bernard Burdick and (wouldn’t you know it?) Audentia Bell Peak.  The Peaks were prominent (elder level) in the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints, something we weren’t thrilled about, but it wasn’t exactly something my grandma espoused anyway.

Grandma Burch was married to Grandpa Ware for a while, but they split up when Mom was eight.  There are only a few pictures of that small family together, and I don't really know why they divorced, but I figured it was adultery, hearing about the wild lifestyle that characterized Audentia’s life after the divorce. It simply could not have been Grandpa’s fault.

This picture had to have been taken while they still lived in Missouri:

We called her “Grandma Burchie,” because she was remarried to Harry Burch (“Johnny”) when Mom was still young.  She and Johnny had four more kids, and our family would sometimes visit them, always in a tiny trailer, where we could never have fit so we stayed outside.  I heard a particular story about Grandma Burchie offering me a chicken leg when I was a teething baby and Mom did not approve of that.  Mostly, Mom did not approve of Grandma Burchie.

Grandma Burchie’s mother was called “Grandma Coopie” (Cooper) because after she was married to Bernard Burdick, she married one Clinton Cooper. Grandma Coopie’s mother was “Grandma Peak,” and somewhere we have a five generation picture of all these grandmas, who were all the oldest (or only) daughters, with little baby me at the end.  It’s not clear now whether all three of these grandmas in my family tree had been divorced.  It’s possible Bernard Burdick was killed in a trucking accident.  But I grew up believing they were all divorced, and I knew my parents would never do that.  They loved each other and were committed to being married for the rest of their lives ... and so I too wanted to be just like that!

Grandma Burchie died on the 4th of July, 1968, at the age of 47, when we were living in Iowa and I was in 6th grade.  Somehow Mom was able to make it to the funeral in California, but we didn’t go with her.  Mom told us how much she hated funerals.  Of course, then I hated them too, along with hating the Beatles.  Children are like that -- they hate what their parents hate, without questioning why.

When she came back, we learned that Grandma had “drunk herself to death,” that her mother (Grandma Coopie) had arranged for a Mormon funeral for her, and that Mom heartily disapproved of that and totally disagreed with the idea that Grandma had lived the life of a good Mormon!  Grandma Burchie was cremated, and her ashes were scattered at sea.  

But despite the problems and disagreements with her mother, Mom mourned the loss. I sometimes caught her crying, and she somehow took solace in the notion that her mother was watching over her from Heaven.  I wanted to say something about this questionable theology, but decided I should just let Mom mourn in whatever way she needed to.

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Yes, I do have a problem with “recreational drinking,” and I don’t like the fact that large swaths of the major retailers like Wal-Mart and Meijer, and even several aisles in pharmacies, have become liquor stores.  I thought it disgusting that liquor stores were open and considered “essential” during the Pandemic of 2020.  I have witnessed the devastating effects of the Demon Liquor in a family, and I know that had I been alive in the days of Prohibition, I would have campaigned for it, signed a Temperance Pledge in the family Bible, and made all our kids sign it too.  I would have been devastated to see Prohibition repealed.  

I’m well aware that there are religious traditions that hold to using real wine in their communion services, and people who would argue that Germans and Irish can “hold their liquor better” than other cultures.  But the statistics say something different.  And grape juice is just fine for communion. 

A full discussion of this topic would take up more room than I want to use in the end of this post, but suffice it to say, I never want to run the risk of being an alcoholic -- or as the Bible calls it, a drunkard.  It is far better and safer to stay totally away from a cliff, than to see how close you can come to the edge without falling off.  This is something I can take away from the discussion of these, my grandparents.  

“Thank you, Lord God, for this bad example in my family tree.  In that I have learned from that, Grandma Burchie didn’t die in vain.  And I pray that my children and my children’s children can also learn from the bad examples in our family tree, and be spared the pain and sorrow.  Lead us in Your ways, and in Your Truth, O Lord.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.”