Mary Ann Tasker, Connie D'Albert, Joyce Kroetch

I called my great-grandmother "Grandma Tasker" and I have strong memories of her even though she died when I was 6 years old. To give you a sense of her: When I watched a tv show about "the manners of Downton Abbey", everything they talked about - the "proper" way of doing things = reminded me of Grandma Tasker. She was a "proper lady" even though she wasn't of the upper class. Grandma Tasker was born in Mountain Ash Wales. Her mother had been married previously and had children from that marriage. When her husband died, she married a younger man - Grandma's father, Davy Jones. (Yes, that's such a common name in Wales! Not only that, but the descendants of his second marriage insist that he was called David. I bet because he was older when he married the 2nd time). When my sister and I visited Mountain Ash (the year before Covid), we visited the house she was born in. A row house that was most probably for coal miners - Grandma's mother's first husband was a coal miner, as was Davy. When Grandma's mother died, her father, Davy, married again and started a new family. As I understand it, Grandma Tasker didn't get along with her step-mother. So she first became a "domestic" but that didn't suit her. So she "went to London to live with the Sisters". I put that in quotes because that's what her daughter (my grandmother) told me. I always thought that meant that she lived in a convent with nuns. Nope. Remember, this is jolly old England (and Wales). It meant she moved to London to work with nurses. And somewhere along the line, she ran into my great-grandfather, William Tasker. (We think that they may have met through a cousin.) Scandal alert: They married around early 1906 when Grandma Tasker was several months pregnant with their first child, Uncle Bill. (I never met him because he died before I was born, as did Grandpa Tasker. The reason for their late marriage may have been that Grandpa Tasker was at sea until then.) They had 3 children in total (my grandmother was the middle child, born in 1908). When grandma was around 5, the family emigrated to the US. They first lived in South Dakota and then moved to Seattle WA (West Seattle), where they lived for decades and where both William (father) and Bill or Willie (son) both died in the early 1930s. The 2 girls, Connie and Ethel, lived long and full lives. When Connie lived in Bremerton, WA, Grandma Tasker lived with them and took the ferry to Seattle where she worked as a store clerk. Later in life, she lived in Piedmont, CA and we visited her there. When she became ill, she moved to Idaho where she lived with her youngest daughter, Ethel, and she died there.

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!

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.

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.

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