Alice Virginia (Beedle) Douglas, known to us as Gin

Gin graduated from UC Berkeley with a Liberal Arts degree a short while after the wedding. Gin and Page were fortunate to find an apartment on LaConte Avenue in Berkeley. Due to the war effort, housing was in great demand. However, when Gin became pregnant with Carol Jane, the landlord informed them that they would have to find other accommodations. With little else available, Gin and Page moved into The Cottage on Cascade Drive in Mill Valley. The Cottage was quite Spartan to say the least. The only heat source was the fireplace, and The Cottage was built before any form of insulation was common. Page was employed as the department head of production control at the H. J. Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, building various types of ships for the war effort. The commute from The Cottage to Richmond was a lengthy one for Page, and during the day, Gin would walk from The Cottage to her parent’s home on Renz Road. With The Cottage being a less than ideal solution to the young Douglas’s housing needs, Page and Gin used their meager savings to purchase a home at 805 Sea View Drive, El Cerrito, California in 1943. Shortly after purchasing and moving into this home, Page was drafted into the U. S. Army. Page was off for training in Texas, then Georgia and later Camp Roberts, California, and then served in the Pacific Theater. The house they had just purchased was rented out, and Gin returned to Mill Valley to live with her parents, Granville and Carol.

Carol Jane arrived in June of 1943: Page was shipped out shortly thereafter. From 1943 and 1945, Gin was employed as a teller at the Mill Valley Bank on Miller Avenue near the center of Mill Valley. Page return to the U.S. in November of 1946, arriving by troop ship at the Oakland Army Base and was met by Gin, Page’s folks, and the Gallaghers. Upon his return, Gin and Page were able to use Page’s terminal leave to take a honeymoon trip up the Oregon Coast, to Portland, and back home via Crater Lake. Shortly thereafter they moved back into their home at 805 Sea View Drive, El Cerrito. After the war, Page went to work for Lang and Stroh, a food broker, as a salesman. Throughout his work life, Page was involved in sales within the food industry. This included working for several bay area food brokers and one national food company (Beech-nut) where he was employed as division manager. Gin was now able to fulfill the homemaker role. Ian was born in September of 1948 and Laurie in August of 1952. The family of five moved, but not far. They found a house just one block away, on the opposite side of the neighborhood park, at 831 Park Way in El Cerrito. Ellen was born in August of 1954. The moved to 831 Park Way occurred when Ellen was 6 weeks old. It was a “water tight, habitable domain”. This new residence was soon expanded greatly to fill the needs of the now six-person household.

As the mother of four active children, Gin made sure to keep them busy in Church Choir, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, competitive swim teams, piano, violin and cello lessons and actively supported them in their activities. She was very active in the neighborhood park activities, hosting summer time potluck lunches for the families, ghost walks at Halloween and started a popular tradition of Christmas at the park – in August. Gin was a Sunday school teacher for the preschool children as well as the Cherub Choir director at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. In addition, she sang with the adults in the Chancel Choir. She was a Girl Scout leader, taking the troops camping around the S.F. bay area, teaching folk dancing for the council folk dance festival, serving on the summer day camp staff, and of course, selling cookies. When the city of El Cerrito built a new swim center with Olympic sized pools, Gin encouraged Laurie and Ellen to begin competitive swimming. At the same time she took advantage of the adult swim program and rediscovered her love of the water. She regularly swam laps and even explored the realm of synchronized swimming. This lap swimming continued when she became employed and she would swim during her lunch hour at the Berkeley Y, and there she became a member of the 50 mile club.

Gin learned to play the piano at an early age and inherited a beautiful singing voice from her mother. At almost every family gathering, after the meal had been served, Gin would head into the living room and sit down at the piano and begin to play and sing from the various music books containing the family favorites. In short order the piano would be crowded with other family members adding vocally. The various singing family members would rotate in and out as various members attended to necessary tasks or engaged in conversation, but the wonderful music flowed throughout the home.

Gin’s creative energies were not to be denied. She played the piano and sewed wardrobes and costumes as necessary, for her children. She took cake decorating, wood carving, and upholstery classes. She would read a cookbook like many read a novel and creative cuisine often appeared at dinner. Her love of gardening and floral arranging led her to the Sea View Spaders, the neighborhood garden club, where she held several leadership roles. Her design skills came to the front with the expansion and remodel of the El Cerrito house and again with the new construction of her home in Lake Grove.

Gin also had a very green thumb, perhaps inherited from her grandmother, Mammee, with whom she was very close. Gardening gloves and trowels were her constant companions in the yards surrounding her homes. During the time they spent in Mill Valley, Gin and Page would frequently go for hikes on Mount Tamalpias and the surrounding area and return home with additional plants and ferns for the garden. In fact, the wall of ferns immediately outside the laundry room door at the home at 29 Renz Road in Mill Valley was started with ferns brought back from such expeditions. So well known was her penchant for returning from family outings with vegetation or other pieces of landscape, that I can recall her brother-in-law, Don Healy, commenting that it could be detrimental to one’s health to be accompanying Gin if she spotted large driftwood or rocks that might look good in her garden at home.

Family was so very important to Gin. She loved to cook, sing, play games, and adventure with her family. She was often the one behind the camera to capture those images to refresh happy memories. Gin was always up for a new adventure. Big or small she was excited at the prospect of something ‘new’. Often, she would wake up early on a Saturday and say “let’s cook breakfast outside! Where shall we go?” This opening conversation would lead to cooking a ‘camping breakfast’ over a fire at Berkeley’s Tilden park, or a call to Mill Valley and breakfast at Pan Toll or Bootjack camp with the Mill Valley gang. Her love of family adventures took them to such places as Rough and Ready, camping trips with the Healy’s to the Oregon Caves, Van Damme State Park, Laurel Del, and day rides to ‘anywhere.’ One mother’s day her gift wish was to make no decisions for the day. The family piled into the car and the kids asked “where do you want to go?” “I’m not making any decisions today” was the response. The family then had to vote – do we turn left or right and see where it would lead us? Many miles of remote Northern California was explored that day including Jackass Hill, Columbia, and Rio Vista. Her travel adventures included a trip to Hawaii, three trips to Scotland, a trip to Victoria B.C. and many trips throughout California and Oregon. Many times with family as the ultimate reason and or destination.

While Gin did not return to full time employment while the children were very small, she did have a brief stint as a van driver for the Art Linkletter-Totten Dance Studio that lasted perhaps two years. The attraction of the Linkletter-Totten Classes was that the parents did not have to provide transportation for dance students to and from the class. Van drivers, like Gin, filled that role, freeing up the parents. With Gin being the driver, Laurie and Ellen we given lessons at reduced rates.

Between 1962 and 1985, Gin was employed by Education Testing Services (ETS) in downtown Berkeley. ETS reviewed the forms submitted by students that wished to obtain monetary assistance, and following the complicated criteria established by the state, determined who qualified and how much they qualified for. Gin was employed initially on a part-time basis, and later as a full-time employee as a screener of applications for educational financial aid.

In 1985, Gin and Page retired from their respective positions (Page with Kelley-Clark and Gin with Educational Testing Services), they sold their home at 831 Park Way in El Cerrito, California and moved to the home they built in Lake Grove, Oregon, just south of Portland. Here they both became very active in local affairs; Gin with the Lake Grove Garden Club and the Lake Grove Presbyterian Church Choir, Page with the local Lions Club. Both volunteered as drivers for the local senior center, and both were active in the Lake Grove Presbyterian Church. Both continued their education with trips offered by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and the Elderhostel program.

In the last several years of her life, Gin began experiencing heart problems. While the condition and the medications did limit her activities somewhat, and must have been disconcerting and uncomfortable, she did not complain and forged on as fully as conditions would allow. In early September of 2003 Gin passed away from complications of a minor surgery. Her death was sudden and unexpected. As Page noted, “We had sixty-one wonderful years together and two bad days.” If only we could all be so fortunate.