"My sister, Marian Ruth Johnson was born November 25 1921 in Ironwood Michigan. Her father, Michael Thorwald Johnson (Turv) was a mine hoist operator. Her mother, Judith Hedwig Peterson (Judie) was an elementary schoolteacher. That post-war depression year, Thorwald became unemployed and was offered employment by his uncle Magnus Sebelius in Los Angeles California, so the family moved to Los Angeles.

"Thereafter, Judie was a stay-at-home mom during our childhood. Magnus, who began as a 20 mule teamster, was in the dump truck business, and soon Turv saved enough money to buy his own truck and started his own business and was fairly successful until the 1929 economic crash, and was forced into bankruptcy.

"Turv was a talented athlete. In Ironwood he competed in Ski Jumping and was once a player on a farm club of the Chicago Cubs. He was a juggler of many balls and when asked to, would walk on his hands with feet dangling overhead around our lawn. He was our inspiration. He was working for the Bethlehem Steel Company as a steel ingot "chipper" to support the family, a physically demanding job when he damaged his spine, making any work impossible.

"This put his family on County Relief, and subsisting on a small allowance for rent and utility bills including a weekly box of staple groceries. He made a slow physical recovery. During this period, Judie worked at sales clerking and housekeeping jobs. The family living standard gradually improved from a very low level, first as Roosevelt's make-work programs got Turv jobs, and then as his Steam Engineer’s License and WW II got him a crane operating job in the shipyards.

"He bought the house we had been renting before us kids graduated from high school. I had been working at insignificant jobs the year before Marian graduated when she immediately got a job as a telephone operator and was soon driving her own 1931 Model A Ford, all while I was still burning shoe leather looking for my first job in which I could afford my first car. Marian was working a split shift with her job, giving her 4 hours free in the middle of her day.

"The spare time gave her an opportunity to attend a fashion modeling school, and soon she was earning money as a model while still doing her telephone job. Her schoolmate, Florence Lundeen, briefly got her a job dancing at the Paramount Theater in a chorus-girl line. I was impressed by the boy friend’s she brought to our parents' house. Her social life was oriented around her riding her surfboard at Malaga Cove every weekend. Because she was tall, her friends were taller, approaching gigantic, and she was proud to be associated with the "Tip-Toppers Club".

"She met Francis Orville Rupp while once bowling with these friends. She took our family to the bowling alley one Saturday afternoon to show that Francis could bowl 100 points higher than Turv. Francis had a good job at Lockheed so soon they were married and were renting their own apartment. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Francis immediately volunteered for service in the Navy and Marian, pregnant, followed him around the country during his state-side training.

"When he was shipped overseas, Marian and her baby, Janet, lived in Turv's house, and she and Judie got jobs working as "Rosie-the-Riveters" at North American Aviation. When I was on Okinawa, I got word in a letter from home that Francis was also there, so I hitched a ride over to his camp (He was an Aviation Metal Smith, First Class) He was living with his shipmates in a pyramidal tent that had a wooden floor, I was quite surprised when he lifted up a well-concealed trapdoor in the floor, revealing a vast supply of hard liquor neatly stowed, then closed it. He explained that he serviced aircraft ferried to the island from the states, that these planes had empty ammo compartments, which made possible a conspiracy with the pilots for him to black market, on shares, smuggled bottles, which was a dear and rare commodity among us invading military.

"After the war, Francis went into the grocery store business and built their house in the San Fernando Valley, where Joanne was born in 1945, brother Richard about 1950.

"Francis had been football player at Taft CA high school, an oil well community. I met one of his brothers, Kermit and visited his sister in Ventucopa, where I went rabbit shooting with Francis. He, armed with a pistol and me, with a 22 rifle. We startled a cottontail and in my confusion, Francis got it with one pistol shot.

"He had a boat with an outboard motor on a trailer and once we launched it in the surf to go fishing, starting the motor when we got the boat beyond the breakers. Unfortunately the motor was loosely clamped to the stern and the motor kicked itself overboard. Later, Francis worked several years with a Frito route extending from Simi Valley to Pismo Beach.

"Then he built, developed and sold an 8-cash-register supermarket in Goleta, after which he operated the food concession at the Santa Barbara Municipal Golf Course. Marian's son Richard was a Navy Sea Bee, serving in the Viet Nam War. Francis had a fenced acre where, to supplement income, he had 200 rabbit hutches, spending his spare time feeding, butchering and marketing them.

"At the same time, Marian raised 50 chickens and 5 hogs. One day after the hogs learned how to catch the chickens, our families had a chicken slaughtering session. Another day, Francis erected a 10 foot high timber tripod over a 3-foot deep pit in which he had built a fire, and rigged a 50 gallon steel drum full of water boiling to de-hair a hog. At the top of the tripod was a pulley and a rope. We shot the hog, hoisted it by the feet to the top of the tripod, and immersed it in the boiling water. 3 of us were pulling on the rope, I held on but the other two let go to pull the hog onto an adjacent wood pallet for scraping hair. And the weight of the hog pulled me to the top of the tripod, almost catching fingers in the pulley and I dropped with my feet into the steaming fire pit, instantly withdrawing them as I did a back somersault to get as far away from the scene as possible.

"Marian was known to her neighbors as the pig lady, to whom they phoned complaints when her pigs nosed their way under the wire fence and were feeding on the petunias. Whereupon she would come out and valiantly prod her pets back into the yard. Francis soon learned to crimp rings in those noses."