Erma O'Toole & friends 1932

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!

Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Erma "Frohlick" O'Toole.