Meet Our Residents
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The Noteworthy Neighbors article last month, featuring six medical doctors who are UVTO residents, promised to acknowledge any who might have been missed. Howard Wilson, recently the speaker at a Men's Club Breakfast, responded with this gracious note:
We're relatively new here and haven't been included in the Residents' Book, but I'd like to have my wife included in the physicians' list.
Miriam G. Wilson, M.D., was born in Yakima, Washington. She attended the University of Washington where she earned her BS and MS degrees and was awarded the President's Medal. She was accepted at the University of California Medical...
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- By Peggy Perry -
Yes, there be dragons! At his front door, pictured on his walls, perched around his home, along with the collections and artifacts which reveal the multifaceted interests of Tom Simondi. You may know him as the man who wears red suspenders, the unique ones that attach on the sides of his slacks, so there’s no center back clasp to scratch the furniture. That’s just one example of his distinctive and thoughtful creativity.
Another of Tom's identifying "trade marks" is his ever-present camera. When this year’s ducklings appeared, several residents called to alert him....
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- By Peggy Perry -
Dr. Goldware
Dr. Hillis
Dr. Lang
Dr. Scott
Dr. Solomon
Dr. Wilcox
Is there a doctor in the house? In University Village? Research and resident opinions agree that yes, there are six retired medical doctors living in our community. (If we missed any, we apologize and will readily acknowledge others we haven’t discovered.)
These six men are geographically scattered around our campus. Two live in the Garden Terraces with their wives: Jon and Judy Hillis are in Evergreen, while Dave and Ronnie Solomon call Sycamore home. Dan Lang is a Creekview, second floor, neighbor of Ross and Rose Goldware....
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- By Peggy Perry -
How very neat! Hal Eberle claims that his life, mostly spent with Mary, falls into four 21-year segments: schools, the Air Force, Hughes and retirement. As youngsters, Hal and Mary met in the violin section of their junior high orchestra in New Albany, Indiana. In senior high, they walked to school together and were once called to face the principal after holding hands in the hallway. Oh, and Mary’s father was the principal!
Graduating in wartime 1942, Hal enlisted in the Army and started classes at Indiana University, while Mary worked. She had...
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- By Peggy Perry -
In recent weeks, you may have spotted her anywhere, everywhere. Quietly arranging snow village tables, putting up birthday party décor, delivering home made cookies to the Maintenance Department, sorting envelopes for Employee Appreciation Fund distribution, phoning residents to confirm excursion participation, recruiting volunteers for the Activities Desk – even sorting pictures taken at three years of Family Day celebrations. She has been indispensable as the new Activities Director settled in and received Mary’s supportive help.
Mary Norris says, “I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy working with people, looking after their...
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- By Peggy Perry -
In this season of giving, it seems appropriate to feature a couple who have given themselves quietly, but graciously and generously, to help make life pleasant for their UVTO neighbors.
Both Bill and Wini Nichols were born in Whittier, California, where they grew up in families which had been long-time friends at their church. Bill’s WW II Air Corps service in radio repair took him from Atlantic City to Fresno and Delano on the west coast, through the Panama Canal to Melbourne, from Bombay to Calcutta and over the hump to China, through the...
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- By Peggy Perry -
Her name is an instant clue to Carmen Friedman's multi-faceted heritage, and multi-cultural is a bit of an understatement when Carmen describes her family origins. Her four grandparents came from four countries on three continents: Cuba, Hungary, Germany and South Africa. She didn't know all of them, but lovely portraits commemorate some of them in her Lakeview home.
Her father, of Cuban ancestry but Spanish by nationality, was a businessman, an importer of raw cocoa beans in the seaport of Hamburg, Germany. There Carmen attended school until 1943. By then her father was the Spanish Consul in...
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- By Peggy Perry -
The walls of their Villa home tell their story – displaying mementos of Mel Smokler’s career, Olga’s oil paintings and lovely views of her home city where they met.
Mel grew up in a Boston suburb and was in the Army from 1942 to 1946, serving in Africa and Italy. In Florence at the end of the war he met Olga at a Red Cross center. An office colleague had invited her to the Center one day to help teach American soldiers to dance. ("He couldn’t dance a step," she laughs.) Culturally, he could not visit...
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- By Peggy Perry -
If you've been at UVTO for a while, you certainly already know this couple — energetic Dev Leahy and always-smiling Midge, residents of UVTO for three years this month. The continental breakfast bunch is familiar with Dev stirring flaxseed into his cottage cheese and his purposeful stride on his early morning walks around the campus. You may even be one of the dozens of incoming residents welcomed with a Trader Joe's bag of goodies delivered by the Leahys, who were enthusiastic original members of the Hospitality Committee.
Dev grew up in Evanston; when he graduated from...
- By Sally Allen -
Born in Sangar, CA, Ruthie moved to Fresno to her grandparents home during the Depression, where her father and uncle had just lost the five fruit farms they had owned. She grew up playing football with the neighborhood boys. Ruth’s father died when she was thirteen years old, so her mother supported the family as a nurse. Her sister became a published poet. Ruthie saw her mother as Florence Nightingale and decided to be a Naval Cadet Nurse. She attended Fresno State College, and then trained at St. Vincent’s Hospital in LA. She hurt her...
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