June 29, 1914 – December 5/6, 2002. Phil's mother. Fred's grandmother.
Daughter of Howard P. Meyer, the man who founded Imperial Hardware Company. She went to Pomona College and UC Berkeley, got a job with a lawyer in San Francisco so Gramp could finish medical school, and raised three children in El Centro while he practiced medicine and then went to WWII and then started over.
After he retired they traveled — a nine-month world trip leaving the day after Kathie’s wedding in April 1962, Russia for a medical convention, wherever he wanted to go. She kept journals of all of it. Kathie has the world-trip journal. I have at least one from Russia.
When her mind began to go, they moved to Villa Rose in Santa Barbara. She said “I hate this place” on the first night. The Villa Rose journals are Gramp’s story, not hers — by then she was largely past the point of participation.
She died three years into Villa Rose, about a year before Gramp. He outlasted her on dialysis, alone.
Her ashes are scattered at the old picnic spot by Mount Signal. So are Gramp’s. Someday some of Phil’s should be there too.