This is part 2 (see Aug. 17 column for part 1) of a tribute to
Doris Kallas, an unconventional woman and one of Gilroy’s longest
residents (78 years), who died Aug. 8 at the age of 91.
This is part 2 (see Aug. 17 column for part 1) of a tribute to Doris Kallas, an unconventional woman and one of Gilroy’s longest residents (78 years), who died Aug. 8 at the age of 91. Doris Kallas called me a year before she died and asked me to write her obituary when the time came. As I interviewed her for this “obituary,” there were stories on two topics…
As I interviewed her for this “obituary,” there were stories on two topics that Doris spoke of being “strictly off the record:” anything to do with sex, and tales of her father being a bootlegger. She would say, “Now this is off the record. I’ll tell you what to say. I don’t want to embarrass my kids.”
Doris’ widowed father brought his five children here to find work in the prune orchards that once filled our valley. Doris described the countryside in the 1930’s, saying, “The weather was nicer then. There was more rain. There were more trees and they held the moisture in their leaves and roots. The land was more moist and the air wasn’t as dry as it is now. It was beautiful. There weren’t more than 2,500 souls here, counting horses and dogs and cats.”
Doris’ grandparents came from Genoa, Italy, and Barcelona, Spain; her father was from Colombia and her mother was born in Panama. “My father was an atheist and didn’t believe in churches,” Doris said. “When a Catholic priest came to visit and told him that he had to go to church, my father turned around and chased him out of the yard, yelling, ‘I don’t have to do anything but die.’
“The next door neighbor came over and shook her finger at my father and told him, ‘I am not going to sit here and watch these children become heathens. You will dress them up clean, and I will take them to church with me.’ So that’s how we became Presbyterians.”
When she was 20 years old, she fell in love with a gentle and kind young man who was half Mexican and half Greek by the name of John Milton Kallas. Orphaned by the flu epidemic of 1918, he was raised by his grandmother until she died when John was around 15 years old.
When he asked for Doris’ hand in marriage, her father said to John, “I don’t know why you want to marry her. She doesn’t know how to cook, how to clean house … she doesn’t know how to do anything but work.” John Kallas answered, “Well, I’ll teach her,” so Judge Thomas married them in the big picture window of the Old City Hall building on Monterey Street.
They were together for 68 years.
When Doris was about to give birth to the first of their three daughters, John was rushing her to the Santa Clara County Hospital, quite a drive back then in a Ford Model T Coupe. On the way, they had a flat tire, and they weren’t carrying a jack. Hearing his panicked wife moaning from the car, John literally tore a post from a fence, jacked up the car, and changed the tire on the spot. They made it to the hospital in time.
John and Doris lived in the same house on Eigleberry Street for their entire marriage, and Doris lived there for 71 years all together, on a lot her husband’s family purchased for $250 back when they built their own house on it.
“In 1943, all the neighbors got together and they put the sidewalks in themselves,” she remembered with pride.
Doris was a working woman and a local volunteer all her life. She remained active in the community, even past 90. “I used to walk all over town, but now I shuffle around like a duck that’s been shot in the hiney,” Doris laughed. “I still feel great. I volunteer every Thursday to help with the brown bag program at the Senior Center. I can still do everything I always did, as long as I’m sitting down.”
“It’s been a very interesting life. God’s been good to me. I have three very beautiful girls. They were very nice, very good. I’ve been very happy. I can’t complain: I’ve enjoyed every minute of my life.”
