Ring, ring. “This is Kat. I heard you called.”
“Yes, Kat, can I ask you a really personal question.”
“Of course.”
“It’s really, really personal.”
“That’s okay. Go ahead.”
“Kat … I want you to write something for me.”
“Okay, sure.”
“I want you to write … what’s that thing called … that thing that people write, you know … that thing they write when you’ve passed away … is that what you call it, ‘passed away?’ ”
“You mean when you die, yeah, you can call it ‘passed away.’
“No, you know, when you pass away … that thing …”
“Oh, you mean your obituary?”
“Yes, Kat, I want you to write my obituary.”
“You know, we could write something about your life while you’re still alive,” I laughed. “You don’t have to die for me to write something about you.”
Some of you may remember this conversation from last year when I wrote about Doris Kallas (6/23/05). At the time, Doris was celebrating her 90th birthday with a big celebration and thinking back over her life.
I wouldn’t have anticipated it, but interviewing Doris for her obituary was one of the most delightful conversations I’ve ever had, and for several weeks afterwards, I was still smiling every time I thought of our time together.
So now, as I keep my promise to Doris, who passed away at age 91 Aug. 8, it only seems fitting that such an unconventional woman deserves an unconventional obituary. I hope that you will enjoy (yes, enjoy!) my attempt to fulfill my promise to Doris, the first-ever such request I have received.
Doris came with her family from Idaho to live in Gilroy after her mother died when Doris was just 13 years old. Times were hard, and Doris’ father fell ill with pneumonia. In 1930, at age 14 (almost 15), she lied about her age to get a job in a Gilroy cannery, saying that she was 19 years old.
She was paid $6 a week to stand on a box and sort spinach tops. She was so short that she had to stand on a box to reach up and cut off the roots and separate them from the leaves. She learned to cut apricots, peaches, and pears, separating out the parts that weren’t edible.
“I had only finished the fifth grade, but during the Depression, I worked side by side with college graduates,” Doris said. “We all needed jobs.” She also found that she really enjoyed working. She said, “It was fun working for Mr. Filice at the cannery. We called him ‘Chi Chi,’ she said, laughing.
One day after working at the cannery for more than four years, she was called into the office by the bookkeeper, who said to her, “You’ve been 19 for almost five years now. How old are you really?”
“Well, now I really am 19!” Doris said, laughing.
In spite of never completing elementary school, Doris liked working outside the home at a time when women were expected to be housewives. “I always did what I really wanted to do,” she said, which included acquiring quite a bit of medical know-how while filling in for nurses at the local hospital while they were away during World War II.
“But when they came home, they relegated us to menial chores,” she said. “I didn’t like that.”
“I went to work for the Dispatch. I was what they called ‘the Devil’s Printer.’ I worked with all the machines. It was really interesting; I really enjoyed it. The office was next to Lawton’s Jewelry Store. The printing machines were on one side, and then there was Mr. White. He was the last of the printers you know, back in the days when you had to print everything by hand.
“I can’t complain,” she told me. “There’s nothing I wanted to do that I haven’t done. In my life, the good superseded the bad.”
Next week: memories of Gilroy’s past, chasing a priest away, and falling in love.
