Grandma & Grandpa Whiting

 Ralph Eugene Whiting

RE Whiting

My grandpa, Ralph Eugene Whiting died in February of 1979.  I was 11 years old. His first marriage had been to a woman named Zella Berry, it was apparently somewhat of an arranged match. Two families very closely linked in the giant metropolis of St. Johns Arizona, seemed a perfect match. Zella was a few years older than Grandpa, and although married for several years, it didn’t appear to be quite as copacetic as hoped for. I have only seen a handful of pictures of Grandpa and Zella together…neither seem very happy.  One of the things that contributed to the difficulty of their marriage was the fact that they didn’t seem able to have children.  So they decided to adopt. Now part of this story is a bit dicey, but my understanding is that they “acquired” two boys (where? Maybe an orphanage in California, maybe one of the “Orphan Trains” that traveled around back then). Adoption was a totally different world back then. Anyway, Lester and another younger boy where brought into their home.  When it appeared that the marriage was definitely not working out, they sent the younger boy back.  Uncle Lester stayed, I’m not sure who he primary lived with. 

Next Grandpa met a young woman named Alice (Aliceson) Jane Darwin. She had recently moved from Alabama to Arizona because she suffered from “consumption” now known as TB. Word was that she was a genteel southern belle and he was a rough and tumble, divorcee sheep herder.  But love triumphed and they were married, despite her mother’s misgivings.  The claim is that everyone that knew Aliceson loved her, and she even taught Uncle Lester how to drive.  Even though she was told by her doctors to not get pregnant, Aliceson gave birth to a little girl named Anna June.  Aliceson did not die in childbirth as suggested in popular family lore, she actually lived about a month after giving birth and died on her birthday, January 17^th, little Anna June followed a few weeks later.



Heartbroken, Grandpa Whiting decided to go on a mission, and served three years on the Eastern States Mission. Upon his return he went to see his sister Myn who had married and was living in Los Angeles.  Myn’s husband was a typesetter for the Los Angeles Times, and had a daughter from a previous marriage.  That daughter was named Nellie Eliza Priestley.  Nellie (Nell) had herself just divorced shortly after giving birth to her oldest son.  She had moved from Salt Lake and was living with her father and step mother in Los Angeles, when Grandpa went for a visit.  She claimed that three days later he proposed while driving on a freeway.

 Nell was nearly 18 years younger than Ralph, and certainly more cultured.  However, we need to remember that society didn’t treat divorcee’s very well back in the 1920’s & 30s. My dad once told me that if his mother hadn’t been divorced she probably would have never looked twice at Ralph.  He also told me that while he didn’t think his parents loved each other when they married, that they grew to love each other very much over the years.



One thing is for certain, when I knew them, they were certainly devoted to each other. My Grandma had a passion for theater, music, parties, and productions.  My Grandpa was a business man, but he was patient and supportive of his wife who always had a project going on, from Easter Contata’s to a pagent on the side of Kannah Creek hill, to a huge luau.

I’m not sure why I’m blogging about my Grandma & Grandpa Whiting today, maybe because I seem to have as many projects as my grandma, or because we are getting ready to gear up for hosting the reunion in July 2015.  I wish a couple things though…I wish my Grandma would have liked me and I wish I could have spent more time with my Grandpa.