James William O’Brien - 452S

 October 4, 1927 – August 12, 2022 James W. O’Brien, beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, died peacefully at home in Corona del Mar on August 12, 2022, at the age of 94. Wife of 68 years, Mavis, daughter Margie, son Jim, grandsons Porter, Cooper and Ellis, granddaughter Isabel and great-granddaughter Ada.

Jim grew up in Los Angeles, attended Los Angeles High School, Menlo School, and graduated from USC, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. He graduated from Hastings College of Law, where he served as editor of the Law Review. Before starting his career in law, he served in both World War II and the Korean War, later as a naval aviation intelligence officer, circumnavigating the world on aircraft carriers.

Jim had a keen intellect, possessed compassion, an enduring sense of fairness, and a strong desire to give back to the community. He involved himself in various organizations. He served as president of the West Orange County YMCA, the Bowers Museum Foundation, and the president of the Orange County Bar Association. He was the recipient of the Orange County Bar Franklin G. West Award in 1991 for his lifetime achievements in advancing justice and the law.

He believed that because the practice of law had made a lavish life for his family, he had to give something to his profession in return. After the family moved from Los Angeles to Orange County in 1967, he began serving on the Orange County Bar Association’s board of directors. In 1987, he was elected to the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California. He also served on the California Commission on Judicial Performance and was appointed a presiding judge for the State Bar Court. Colleagues valued his ability to cut out outsiders and uncover the heart of the matter, while treating everyone with the utmost respect.

In 1980, he joined a small group of judges and lawyers to help raise free legal services for low-income residents in Orange County, and Amicus Publico was born. It later became the Public Law Center, working to address systemic injustices that plagued the poor. He firmly believed that justice should serve all equally, and worked to remove the barrier of poverty on the path of equal justice.

While his professional achievements were significant, they pale in comparison to his commitment to his family. He was a passionate skier, first skiing at Mammoth in the 1940s, when Dave McCoy was driving a moveable rope tow with a car engine. He made sure his children developed a love for the sport, and the family took the Countess of Mammoth trips and resorts across the Rocky Mountains.
Throughout his life he found new things to spark his interest; He and Mavis developed a keen interest in contemporary art, and traveled extensively. He became a master chef who enjoyed cooking for family and friends (Mavis ensured a beautiful presentation), and after his retirement he surprised us all by becoming a skilled woodworker.

He leaves a better world for his years of service and a family forever grateful for his guidance and exceptional example. His final years were transformed by Alzheimer’s disease, but even as he slowly (and sometimes painfully) left us, his cordial essence always shone. He faced the hardships of this terrible disease with grace, discovering a new wonder at the simple beauties and kindness of life.
He was the best gentleman and the best man of the greatest generation. Our heart is full of love and gratitude.

There will be a private ceremony.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his name:
Publiclawcenter.org

Published by the Los Angeles Times on August 21, 2022.

James Seeley Fuller - 261S

 

James Fuller

Father, artist, teacher

James Seeley Fuller died peacefully in his home on November 28, 2017, with his loving family and the warm regard of many friends surrounding him. He was 90 years old.

He was born October 2, 1927, to Howard and Anne Billinghurst Fuller in Pierre, South Dakota. His childhood home was in Fargo. He was one of four beloved siblings, Lucille Fuller Moses, Hiram Fuller and Thaddeus Fuller, all of whom have died.

Mr. Fuller was blessed with a long and productive life in art. He came to California in 1947, attending Chaffey College in Ontario, and studying with Henry McFee. He went to UC Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor's and then a master's degree in fine art. He was a painter in oils, watercolor and acrylics and a master printmaker and sculptor. He was always working, his family shared.

The greatest blessing in his life was to find and marry Elizabeth Moses, his family said. She preceded him in death in May 2014. "Liz and Jim were true mates and they both followed the 'Beauty Way,'" Mr. Fuller's daughter, Mary, related. "Each day, in their later years together, they would alternate with a kind of invocation: 'Well, today you do the beauty part.' Liz was a wonderful artist as well, and together they gave their gifts to the world and as praise and thanksgiving."

Mr. Fuller was a modest man for all of his gifts, yet he had a wry wit and twinkle in his eye, his family shared. He was, among other things, a beloved teacher. He taught art at UC Berkeley, Cal State University Los Angeles, UC Davis and Claremont's Scripps College, as well as numerous workshops and classes including at the Laguna Beach School of Art. He encouraged many students and colleagues over the years, his family added, "best of all in his teaching, he was open to share and listen. He was curious and graceful and masterfully skilled. He was generous."

He believed that "drawing is seeing." He always began with drawing what he sought to convey in painting, so that he could get close to the essence or presence of what was before him. He was inspired by nature: running water, stones, mountains and growing things. He thrived being outside, standing in a river, fly fishing, walking in the hills or standing on the Pacific shore. Mr. Fuller described the act of making art as "empathy," and said he sometimes felt that he "almost got there to feel the embrace of nature," as he worked. Making art was a joy he immersed himself in, his family shared.

Jim leaves behind three daughters, Mary Francesca Fuller Roberts (Griff Roberts) of Claremont, Phoebe Margaret Fuller Graham (Richard Graham) of Irvine, and Suzanne Beth Fuller Braswell (James Braswell) of Lompoc. He once said he was "a man rich in daughters."

He was the very proud grandfather of Martin James Roberts (Elizabeth Stampe) of San Francisco, Paul Griffith Roberts of Victorville, and a precious great-grandson, Aylen Stampe Roberts of San Francisco.

"Kindred Natures," a new show of Mr. Fuller's work, is on display at the Claremont Museum of Art through March 25. The museum is at 200 W. First St., in the Claremont Depot. More info is at claremontmuseum.org or (909) 621-3200.

January 12, 2018 | Claremont Courier (CA)

 

Elmo Collins 13S2

 "In this city (San Francisco), December 5, 1953, Elmo, dearly beloved father of Mrs. John (Bud) (John Cecil) Smith, loving grandfather of Jane Ann, Robert, Michael and John Smith, loving brother of Witney and Arthur Collins; a native of Kansas City, Missouri.

"Funeral Wednesday, December 9, at 9:15 a. m. from Earl J. Currivan's Chapel of the Sunset, Irving at 26th Ave. (Sunset District), thence to St. Cecilia's Church, 17th Ave. and Ulloa St., where a Requiem High Mass will be offered at 9:45 a. m.  Internment will be at Holy Cross Cemetery. Rosary Tuesday evening at 8:30 o'clock."

San Francisco Examiner December 7, 1953

Elmo lived a full and interesting life.  He was born on March 13, 1880 to Richard Collins and Elmira Norris Collins. At one time or another he claimed to have been born in Caldwell, Kansas, Kansas City, MO, Kansas City, Kansas, Mexico, and California. Because of the odd specificity of it, I assume the true location was Caldwell.  His confusion is understandable, however, as his brothers are born 16 months and five hundred miles apart from each as the family heads slowly, but reliably west.

As a young man in Phoenix, he meets a well traveled and experienced woman, 51 year-old Lucy Abell, with two husbands and four children under her belt, and despite his being merely 22, he marries her. Lucy had been the dutiful wife of a county accessor in California who'd dumped her over for an older woman; Lucy had been 17 years his junior, and Susanna was merely 8 years.  Lucy had traveled through multiple states and at least one marriage in the previous 14 years, but now she would move to Glitzy San Francisco with a husband younger than all four of her children.

A decade later, the couple decided to adopt a girl they named Virginia and Elmo worked steadily as a planer in a saw mill.  In 1923, Lucy died, and eventually, his sickly parents move in with them.  Considering that Elmira Collins dies in 1929 and Richard Collins in 1931 and Helen Frazee Collins begins divorce proceedings from Elmo's brother Arthur just after Richard's death and she and Elmo then marry March 31, 1932.  It isn't too great a stretch to imagine that they would have wanted to be together sooner had not his parents objected, perhaps as early as 1923 when Lucy had died.

Whether true or not, the couple endured until her death in 1944.  After that, like any old man wanting to move out to pasture, Elmo found a way, moving from San Francisco to the Straus dairy ranch on Tomales Bay, in Marin County.  In a romantic story, that's where his life would have ended, but in 1951 his first granddaughter, Jane Ann is born, and perhaps that pulled him back into his family's life because it was in busy San Francisco, rather than dusty Tomales Bay where Elmo died on December 5, 1953.

Helen Isabel Frazee - 13

HELEN I COLLINS

Helen Isabel Collins was born December 5, 1886, likely near Cave Creek, Arizona where her father, Wilmonte Doniphan Frazee, was the granjero for the Arizona Canal Company, maintaining the canals that fed water to Phoenix. She liked getting out of the desert, though, because she made trips to California during the summers of her 17th, 19th, and 20th years, and in that third trip, she married Arthur Lathrope Collins in Los Angeles, 

Arthur was an engineer and moved the family to El Paso, Bisbee, and Sewell, Chile, but that doesn't appear to have appealed to her because in the World War I draft documents, He lived in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico and Helen and her sons lived with her parents in Phoenix.

Eventually, the family moves to the city of Eagle Rock in the L.A. basin and Arthur works as a civil engineer and construction manager for many of the large buildings going up in Los Angeles County.  Things look great in the 1930 census, but appearances are deceiving, because they were soon divorced. Then, on March 31, 1932 she married his widowed, older brother, Elmo Collins, and moved up to San Francisco, where Elmo was an apartment manager. She took along her teenage son, Arthur Shirley Collins, this ended up working out well for Shirley because he ended up marrying Elmo's next door neighbor, Jannette Maret.

Helen died May 7, 1944. She was predeceased by sister Mary Hugg or Phoenix, and she is survived by Elmo, Richard Hill Collins of Phoenix, and Arthur Shirley (Jannette) Collins of San Francisco, as well as sister Louise Alexander of Phoenix and brother (Will)Monte Frazee of Wildwood, Georgia

Arthur Lathrope Collins 13S1

ARTHUR LATHROPE COLLINS 

20 November 1881 to 20 February 1954

TUESDAY, FEB. 23, 1954 - Funeral Planned for Arthur Collins, Engineer who had lived in Los Angeles 33 years. He was a member of the Tucson Consistory, Knights Templar; he was a 32nd degree Mason and belonged to Perfect Ashlar Lodge 12, Funeral services for Arthur Lathrop Collins, 72, construction engineer, who died of a heart attack Saturday evening in his home at 5136 Ellenwood Place, will be conducted at 2 p.m. tomorrow in the St. Barnabas Church, Eagle Rock. Masonic services will be conducted at the graveside in the Grandview Cemetery. Mr. Collins was the superintendent of construction at the F&AM, Bisbee, Ariz. He leaves his widow, Mabel T. Collins; two sons, Richard H. and Arthur S. Collins, both of Los Angeles, and a brother, Whitney Collins, of Long Beach. Arrangements are under the direction of the Utter-McKinley-Cresse Eagle Rock Mortuary, 4824 Eagle Rock Blvd.

Los Angeles Daily News

 Los Angeles Times February 23, 1954

 Please note that it was not Mabel Troutman who was the Frazee. She was his third wife. His first was Helen Isabel Frazee - 13 who divorced him in 1930. His second wife was Alcea Mack Blair with whom he seems to have been having a long standing affair while he was off in far off places working as an engineer.  Alcea died  21 May 1949 and he doesn't actually marry Mabel until 19 October 1952.  Their marriage only lasts 16 months, but Mabel lives another 35 years.  This comes of little surprise because she was 19 years younger than her husband with the bad heart.

 

W. D. Frazee's Obituary in the Redlands Citrograph

 WILLIAM DONIPHAN FRAZEE

The Oceanside Blade of last week contained this item:

"Rev. W. D. Frazee passed away Thursday, May 29, at an advanced age, at the home of his son I. J. Frazee, at Moosa.  Rev. Frazee was a familiar figure in Oceanside in early days. He has been quite active for a person of his years until just recently. All will learn with regret of the death of one who was universally liked and respected for his many kindly traits and consistent life."

This brief item brought a pang of sorrow to our heart. We had known William Doniphan Frazee ever since the early '50's. In the later '50's he and Dr. William Craig, the father of this editor, were partners in the drug business in Indiana.

Mr. Frazee married in Winchester in that state, on his return from California a successful gold digger. He was a man of most generous impulses, freely and gladly giving away his substance, in some cases, to the impoverishment of his family. One notable instance we recall, was his gift of a magnificent museum to the Indiana state university, in which was included a splendid collection of land and marine shells and many rare and valuable books.

During the Civil War Mr. Frazee was closely and intimately connected with Governor Oliver . Morton, and to him, as much as to any one man, is due the defeat of the Morgan raid, and, probably, the secession of Indiana from the Union. His experiences with the Knights of the Golden Circle form and unwritten chapter of the history of the war that is of thrilling and absorbing interest.

Mr. Frazee came to California the last time about 1874 or '75, living first at San Bernardino, where he was well Known and universally loved. His wife "Aunt Rebecca," is buried in the old city cemetery.  Of his children, three are yet living, two in San Diego County, and one in Arizona.  Mr. Frazee was a pleasing and peculiar writer and had written much for apers and magazines, as well as several books.  He was 78 or 79 years of age, and we do not believe he had an enemy on Earth. We know we have lost a good, kind and true friend, and his children a loving, devoted and indulgent father.

Scipio Craig, Editor of the Citrograph

Natalie Joan Smith - 433

 N. Joan Smith 87 of Des Moines

Natalie Joan Smith was born in Vista, California on April 29, 1926 to Meta Gertrude Frazee.  Her father, Lewis Jenkinson Frazee had died making contact with a bare electric transmission wire over seven months before.  Her mother was still in negotiations with San Diego Gas and Electric over compensation.  $80,000 was asked for, $51,000 was awarded in court on March 4th, but the company appealed and threatened to fight on. On June 3rd, 1926 the two parties agreed on a compromise amount of $22,500. The family took in boarders to make ends meet until Joan's older brothers could help work the farm.

After graduating from Vista High School, she moved to a women's dormitory in Westwood to attend the University of California, Los Angeles , and remained there getting a job from the County social services department. A few years after, the Korean War started, and like her brothers, wanted to enlist so she became one of the 9000 members of the WAVES.  

In 1955, after finishing her enlistment, she returned to Westwood where she met and married Richard Smith.  The wedding took place on December 10th. She wore her grandmother's wedding dress and her brother Roderic walked her down the aisle, with niece Kathy as a junior bridesmaid and niece Peggy as a  flower girl.  

The young couple moved to the Seattle area where Joan died on February 17, 2014. She was predeceased by her husband, and both brothers.  She is survived by nieces Kathy Kinley and Peggy Gregory, and nephew Steve Frazee.

Richard Hugh Smith - 233S

 Smith, Richard H.

45 [years-old]. Born in [Orange County,] California. Came to Seattle area in 1956. He was very active in the Washington State Elks Assn. Youth Activities. Organist for the B. P. O. E. [Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks] Lodge, Renton 1809. Very active in Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting for the past 15 years. Body was donated to the University of Washington Medical School. Memorial services will be held [Saturday] Oct. 11 at 2 p. m., at the Fairwood Community United Methodist Church, 15255 S. E. Fairwood Blvd., Renton, 98055. He wished no flowers. Remembrances to be sent to the church or the Washington State Elks Therapy Project. Survivors are his wife, N. Joan [Natalie] and his mother, Mrs. Olive Kinne, Paradise, Calif.

Ruth Elizabeth Kulin Frazee - 433S1

 Ruth E. Kulin was born November 18, 1920 to Swedish immigrants, Otto and Ellen Kulin in Seattle, Washington. At 20 she married, John David Paris, a self-described juvenile delinquent who joined the marines as young as possible.  The marriage didn't last very long, but it did move Ruth down to Oceanside, California and also gave her John David Paris, Jr.  

Shortly after his return from Germany in World War 2, she met and married Ernie Frazee. This marriage lasted nearly a decade and firmly established David in San Diego's North County area.  

After another short stint as a single mom, Ruth married Jere Branton for another decade, but eventually she returned to the Seattle area to be with her widowed mother and obtained a divorce.

A year after the divorce, she married Wendell Wold the day after his divorce from Frances Hern Wold had become final. Wold, a 50-year-old machinist, will be her husband until her death in Tacoma, January 24th, 2000.  He dies just eight months later.

She is survived by her son, David Paris of San Marcos, his wife Catherine, and granddaughter Kelli.

Ila Dale Frazee - 41S

Ila D. Frazee

 LOWER LAKE - Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. tomorrow for Ila Dale Frazee, 80, who died Thursday in a San Francisco hospital.

A native of West Virginia, she lived in California since 1906, moving to Lake County in 1954.

Survivors include her sons, Howard Frazee, Los Altos, and Glenn Moseley, Portland; her daughters, Margaret Schmidt, Montana; Beatrice David, Clearlake Oaks, and Helen Claire Logan, Alameda, and seven grandchildren.

Services will be held at the Jones and Lewis Mortuary and burial will be in Lower Lake Cemetery.

Sunday, September 1968 Santa Rosa Press Democrat page 8

Doniphan Harry Frazee - 41

Doniphan Frazee

Clearlake Oaks - Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. tomorrow for Doniphan H. Frazee, 80, of Clearlake Oaks, who died Friday at his home on Manzanita Court.

Mr. Frazee was born in Oceanside and lived in Clearlake Oaks since 1955. He was a retired machinist.

He is survived by his wife, Ila Frazee of Clearlake Oaks, his son Howard Frazee of Los Altos, his step-son Glenn Moseley of Portland, Ore., daughters Mrs. Helen Claire Logan of Alameda and Mrs. Beatrice David of Clearlake Oaks, and a step-daughter, Mrs. Margaret Schmidt of Montana.

Three brothers and a sister survive, also, and seven grandchildren.

Services will be at Jones and Lewis Chapel at Lower Lake, with Rev. Milton Mead officiating. Burial will be at Lower Lake Cemetery.

Monday, March 13, 1967 Santa Rosa Press Democrat, page 2.