Connie D'Albert, Daniel Pinna, Joyce Kroetch

I was born in San Jose, California and have lived in the Silicon Valley Bay Area my entire life. In fact, I'm 3rd generation San Jose which is a rarity these days. I was raised by my mother Kathleen Rae (Kroetch) Pinna with the help of my grandmother Marian Joyce (Benning) Kroetch. I spent my early years in the Cambrian area of San Jose, a few years in Palo Alto, and own homes in Cambrian and Willow Glen California. I attended St. Francis Cabrini k-8th grade, Bellarmine College Preparatory and Santa Clara University. My passion has always been building things since an early age. I worked at the Santa Clara Valley Contractors Association (SCVCA) for my mentor Larry Gates while attending high school and each weekend answered the phones (aka switchboard) for the Jesuit Priests on a work scholarship program. I continued to work at SCVCA while attending college where I began the Santa Clara Entrepreneur Organization (SCEO), was active in the Student Senate and Off Campus Student Association, and in my sophomore year began the first version of AncientFaces. Post graduation I went on to manage a sub-contracting kitchen & bath remodeling company for three years, then worked as VP of Business Development at an eDiscovery company in Palo Alto from 2006 until the end of 2010. In early 2011, I began working full time on AncientFaces and have been at it ever since. I am humbled that I get to help build the application and community that makes AncientFaces. I married Lisa Michelle Kinslow on June 14th, 2014 in Pebble Beach, and currently reside in Willow Glen California approximately 4 miles away from where both sets of my grandparents used to live around the 1950's.

Eileen Constance "Connie" (Tasker) Benning's father was William Tasker (1879 - 1933) and her mother was Mary Ann (Jones) Tasker (1882 - 1956). She had siblings Willie Tasker (1906 - 1932) and Ethel Allen (born 1909). My great-grandmother, or "GG" as I called her, was a strong proper Welsh woman. She outlived each of her 3 husbands and just could not take another spouse dying on her. She worked hard in her later years, moving to Seward Alaska as a nurse (she was in Seward during the great quake on March 27, 1964 and her family didn't know if she had survived for 3 days) and then returned to California's Bay Area, working at a hospital in Redwood City. GG was a proper Welsh woman until the day she died. From her granddaughter Kathy: Grandma was married 3 times - her first husband was our biological grandfather - and between 1946 and 1961, each of her 3 husbands died. Later in life, she told me that she had so much heartbreak during that time that she didn't want to marry again and have another husband die. But as she got older, she was lonely and wished that she had married again. Grandma was an active person and always up for an adventure. In her 50s, she moved to Seward Alaska (on her own, knowing no one) and was there for the big Alaska quake. She was working at Seward Hospital and had a funny story about the quake: When it begin, she stood in the doorway of a patient's room - an elderly man. After they both survived the quake, the elderly patient told everyone who would listen that she had "saved his life by holding up the room." After Seward, she moved to Valdez (also devastated by the quake) for a year. Grandma returned to the San Francisco Bay Area (where we were living) and worked at Sequoia Hospital. After she retired from Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, California, she went to work as a companion for an elderly woman in Arizona. The woman was very wealthy, so they split the year between her home in Scottsdale and her other home in Michigan. But the work was physically difficult, so Grandma retired and returned to the Bay Area where she bought a small mobile home in Aptos, near Santa Cruz California. It had been a life-long dream of hers to live in Australia, but that dream was never realized. While she lived in Aptos, however, she became an active member of AA, a daily walker, a devoted yoga practitioner, and took lessons in the Welsh language. Even in her 70s, she couldn't sit still!

Joyce Vandever (as she was known in her later years) was a loving mother of two daughters Kathleen Rae (Kroetch) Pinna & Pam (Kroetch) Marks who she had with Frank Kroetch, and grandma to two grandchildren Daniel J Pinna & Layne. Joyce had a half-sister, Lois (Benning) Ewen, the product of her father's first marriage. She also had a step-brother, Charles Henry Barrett Jr., from her mother's second marriage to Charles Henry "Heine" Barrett. She had many friends and relatives in California, Washington state, England and Wales. Her best childhood and lifelong closest friend was Beverly Clarice (Washington) Scoffone in Monte Sereno California. Joyce loved being a grandmother and spent countless weekends with her grandchildren. She lived in the California Hawaiian mobile home park at 3637 Snell Ave in San Jose for many years when it was an adult community. To hear Joyce describe herself see Joyce Vandever In Her Own Words