Well Isn't That Something

At the end of December Great Papa Dean passed away. He suffered a heart attack at the beginning of the month and was never able to recover. Seeing him in the hospital and then in the assisted living facility was hard, and sad, and although you are never ready to say goodbye to someone I can find comfort in knowing that part is over for him. Sadly this is not the first loss the boys have experienced in a short period of time and although they were better prepared this time and were able to visit him and understand a bit more, they still keep asking why everyone dies at the same time. It's a hard question and one Jon and I have also asked ourselves over the last year.  Great Papa Dean was 90 years old, his death was not tragic, he had a good life, and I think we've all been able to find a lot of comfort in that.

Dean Gillette grew up in La Verne, California with his parents Earl and Florence and his sister Dorris. As a child he did the Boy Scouts, 4-H, and worked on his father's farm from the time he could walk. He was a high school football and baseball star, going on to play as a halfback at Oregon State for a year, playing both football and baseball at Mt. Sac and La Verne College, and was drafted by the Red Sox. Instead of playing professional ball he joined the Marines and rose to the rank of First Lieutenant.  After leaving the Marines he and his wife Norma (Blingy) moved back to La Verne, had four children, and Dean continued in the family business farming citrus. Grandpa and his siblings remember fondly fishing, camping, horse back riding, and hunting trips with their father growing up. In the 1960s he and Norma began purchasing land in the Orange Cove area, they ultimately divorced, but in the 1970's he married Great Grandma Didi and they built their home on a hilltop overlooking his beloved orange groves in the Central Valley. In the early 1980s Earl, Dean, and Grandpa started Gillette Citrus with Uncle Mark joining the family business shortly after. Some of my earliest memories are of going to the packing house, testing fruit, and playing with the boxes. Farming was the central part of Great Papa Dean's life and he definitely instilled the same love in his two oldest sons, that passion has continued on to me, and maybe one day his great-grandchildren will continue in the agriculture industry as well.

Papa Dean was not an inside kind of guy, if you were staying at his house you were usually told to put your shoes on and go out and play. He did, however, always make sure to warn you to watch out for rattlesnakes in their garden and not to fall over the edge of the hill their house sits on. If you were really good you might get to go down to feed the cows or, on rare occasions, to the shop with him. All I remember of the shop was it was filthy dirty and full of tons of parts and tools that were in disorderly piles and buckets.  It would drive this Type A, little kid crazy and I would sit and try to sort and organize things while he worked on a project.  I'm thinking this may have been the reason I was allowed in the shop in the first place!

If you were inside with Papa Dean it was probably a Sunday which meant pancakes for breakfast and a good shave with his electric razor. If he had bills to approve he would sit undisturbed at the secretary desk in his office. I don’t know if we were ever explicitly told not to bother him or maybe we just drew our own conclusion - not wanting to mess with him when he was in a room with a huge cabinet full of guns. Papa Dean was always working and if you wanted his attention you better be working hard too. Good grades, recitals, and awards as a kid and long hours at work, a promotion, having a baby, or hosting a party always got a “what a hard worker” seal of approval from him.  The only thing Papa Dean liked less than laziness was spending money and you never heard the end of it if your name was mentioned in the local paper and he was fined at his weekly Lions Club meeting.  I guess if he had to spend money at least the reward was everyone knowing about his kid's or grandkid's achievements!

There was never a social event Papa Dean missed and he usually had to be dragged out by poor Grandma Didi who’d been ready to go for the last hour. If you wanted to feel good about yourself you just needed to invite him over for dinner - he would rave about the gourmet meal you cooked and how delicious everything was. He always loved getting together as a family and once everyone had gathered he would take it all in and say “well isn’t this something.” In all honesty he said this so often Reed and I have made a game out of it in recent years to see who heard him say the phrase the most at get-togethers. I’m sure if he was able to look back on his life and all that he and his family have accomplished he'd say the same thing - Well Isn't That Something!