Mj Benning

Marian was born to Paul Los Kamp and Lois Los Kamp (see Benning Family Reunion 1925). She lived in Berkeley, Stockton and Colusa and Placer County California. It looks as though Marian was a dedicated teacher and spent most of her life in Northern California. According to the 1934-1944 California Voter Registrations Miss Marian I Los Kamp lived on Princeton Street in Colusa County California and was a Republican and worked as a teacher. She also had a PO Box 254 on P Street in Placer County California. A note from a younger cousin: When I knew Cousin Marian (she was a cousin of my mother's), I was a young adult in the 1970's. She was a lovely lady and was a dedicated Christian Scientist. I was rather horrified when she told me that as a tenet of her religion, she would have dental work without anesthesia. Ouch! When I married in 1972, she sent me an antique jam spoon (with documentation) purchased from Gumps - an upscale store in San Francisco. She lived in Alameda CA at that time. Reading the above is the first time that I found out that she lived anywhere else! My Aunt Lois (my mother's half-sister) was named after Marian's mother, Lois. Their father was a younger brother of Marian's mother and Lois was his "favorite sister." (Or so I'm told). My mother's first name was Marian - after cousin Marian?

Lois Jean (Benning) Ewen was born to George Lawrence Benning (1897 - 1946) and Mildred Dorothy Wilson (1899 - 1984). Her father was born in Iowa and her mother was born in Indiana. She had one half-sister, Marian Joyce Benning (1930 - 2017). Lois Benning married Douglas George Ewen Sr. 91917 - 1998) and they had one son, Douglas George "Sandy" Ewen, Jr. (1950 - 2013), and one daughter, Bonnie Ewen. Bonnie was the eldest child. During the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 1, 1941, Lois was working at the United States Army base in Pearl Harbor. For once, she had the day off (it was a Sunday) and she watched the attack from a nearby hillside.

Born in Spokane, Washington in 1934, Dennis Washington moved with his family back to his mother’s hometown of Missoula, Montana at an early age. Washington’s parents moved to Washington state to a booming World War 2 driven economy in Bremerton - a small town on the water across from Seattle. Like most Bremerton men during WW2, his father Roy worked at a defense shipyard. In 1942, Dennis contracted the very dangerous, and widely rampant at the time, Polio disease. It was so common in fact, that in 1944 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived where his father worked at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and pushed his polio-afflicted body onto braces where he addressed the crowd of shipyard workers (like Dennis' father). It was this now famous speech that helped to propel the United States towards victory in the two theaters of World War II. It was at this time that my Grandmother, Marian Joyce Benning, best friend of Dennis' sister Beverly Washington, visited Dennis frequently during his recovery in the larger town of Seattle, Washington. After the end of World War 2, Dennis & Beverly's parents divorced and he would spend time living between Washington State, California and Montana. He knew the value of money at an early age and began supporting himself by the time he was a young teenager. After high school, he headed to Alaska in search of work (as is still a very common case today!) where he was introduced to construction. This step proved to be a critical decision for Dennis and would help guide the direction for the rest of his life. A couple years later Dennis went back to Montana to work for his uncle's large construction company' By the time he was 26, he had reached the role of Vice President. After growing his uncle's business, he decided to take a risk and in 1964 at the age of 30 with a $30,000 loan, the same year he married his wife Phyllis, he formed his first construction company - the Washington Construction Company - which by 1969 would become the largest contractor in Montana, and in 1979 one of the largest civil construction companies in the nation. Ever seeking good deals, he took a calculated risk and purchased the 100 year old Anaconda Copper mine in Butte Montana in the 1970s. The timing was right as the demand for copper skyrocketed due to the hardware demands of the soon-to-become dominant technology industry. He continued to diversify into numerous sectors including industrial construction, environmental cleanup, railroads, marine shipping and more. In 1993 the Washington Construction company merged with the large-scale heavy-civil construction company Kasler Corporation. Dennis, being comfortable with calculated risk, took another leap forward when in 1996, the much smaller Washington Construction company merged with Morrison-Knudsen, a publicly traded construction and engineering giant that was undergoing financial difficulty (to put it mildly). From there, Washington directed the formation of Washington Group International—acquiring components of Westinghouse and Raytheon to mold one of the largest design/build companies in the United States. Then on November 15th, 2007, 43 years after starting the Washington Construction Company, the Washington Group International (WGI) was purchased for $3.1 billion. Ever diversified, Dennis' other private businesses, grouped under the name of the Washington Companies, is comprised of more than a dozen companies, including the largest privately owned railroad in the United States and the largest marine transportation company in Canada. These include: Aviation Partners, Dominion Diamond Mines, Envirocon, Modern Machinery, Montana Rail Link, Montana Resources, Seaspan, Seaspan Corporation and SRY Rail Link. Dennis married Phyllis Washington and they have two children together - Kyle & Kevin. An ardent philanthropist, he established the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation in 1988. Focused on education, health and human services, community service, and arts and culture, it has contributed to organizations in Montana and throughout the nation and has a particular ongoing commitment to Young Life, an interdenominational Christian ministry to youth. A gift to Young Life of the 64,000-acre Washington Family Ranch in Oregon provides a summer camp experience for hundreds of teenagers annually. Side note: This was the Rajneeshpuram commune - which the Netflix documentary "Wild Wild Country" is based on.

If I had to describe Pam I'd say she is funny, artistic, and loves all aspects of family history and genealogy. Wife to Neil Marks, mother to Layne Jacobs, she has lived most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area - particularly in Santa Cruz and Willow Glen. She has researched her family's genealogy (and many of her friends!) going back hundreds of years. Loves to travel to locations that have to do with her roots.

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!

Charles Henry Barrett Jr. was born on April 16, 1928 in Missoula, Missoula County, Montana United States to Charles Henry "Heine" Barrett and Ann Barrett. He was in a relationship with Maryalys Barrett, and had children Mark Barrett, Susan Barrett, Stacy Barrett, and Greg Barrett. Charles Barrett died at age 81 years old on April 29, 2009 in Campbell, Santa Clara County, CA, and was buried on May 6, 2009 at Oak Hill Funeral Home & Memorial Park in San Jose.

Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Jerry Wickland.

Kathy has lived in San Jose California for the majority of her life, having spent a few years in various places in Washington State. She was married once to Leo Pinna and they had one child Daniel Joseph Pinna. Kathy worked on and off at the Valley Medical Center, as did her sister Pam Marks and mother Marian Joyce Benning, but has spent the majority of her career as a spiritual counselor and adviser for over 40 years having assisted thousands of individuals in their quest for realization. Kathy is cofounder and Content & Community Manager of AncientFaces.