 |
| 1945 |
They came into
the Glendale West ward when Reed Callister was the bishop; a time when Apostle LeGrand
Richards often came to the ward to visit his daughter Norine, wife of bishop
Callister.
John and Gloria are parents to 4 children:
· Marcia,
mother to 5 children (three boys and two girls). Her youngest was 5 years old
when she succumbed to a brain tumor and cancer on July 31, 1996 at the age of
49.
· David,
father of 4 children (one boy and three girls), passed away on January 28, 1999
at the age of 50 from melanoma and lymphatic cancer.
· Claudia,
mother to 2 adopted boys, passed away on June 21, 1998 at the age of 42 due to organ
failure after the successful transplant of a heart and both lungs just a couple
of years earlier. (She was born with a heart defect and had a heart operation
at the age of 5 to surgically close a hole in the wall of her heart.)
· Albert,
father of 6 children (two boys and 4 girls) is married and lives in Riverton,
UT and works in SLC for Silicon Valley Bank.
Gloria’s Callings and
Service in the Glendale West Ward:
- She was a primary teacher to many young kids that grew up on Glendale.
- She taught Guide patrol (including Tad Callister and Lance Wickman among many others)
- She was the Den Mother when the Church and the ward first started cub scouts.
- She helped with writing music and working on stake and ward “roadshow” plays for many years with the Hales and the Dietleins.
- During one year’s Penny Parade contest to raise money for Primary Children’s Hospital, Gloria told her Guide Patrol boys that she would make fudge for them that they could sell for a dollar a pound to raise money for the Penny Parade contest. She anticipated that they would each probably sell about a pound of fudge. They took orders and sold it as she made it. They ended up selling 100 pounds of her famous fudge.
John’s Callings and
Service in the Glendale West Ward:
- First Cub Master in the ward when the Church adopted the cub scouting program
- Many Elders quorum and High Priest callings
- Member of the famous Glendale West Ward choir under the direction of Wendell Noble and later, Cliff Barnes.
Some of their favorite and most treasured experiences in the
Glendale West ward were plays under the direction of Gordon Jump in the productions
of The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie, as well as in the Glendale Stake
production of Oklahoma!
John and Gloria left Glendale and moved to Grants Pass,
Oregon in 1979, joining the Dastrups and the Hamricks where Gloria, at the age
of 91, still resides with her Great Dane and a cat. John passed away on January
1, 2009 at the age of 83.
Eagle Point
Jackson County
Oregon, USA
Plot: Section 28, site 161
Gloria is on the fourth row back, left with a child in her arms.
[This was the
eulogy spoken at his funeral in Grants Pass, OR. He died January 1, 2009.]
John Clarence
Fretz was born on Sunday April 26, 1925 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
When his
father and sister had returned from an automobile ride they had gone on, they
were surprised to find he had been born. The doctor and nurse had delivered a
bright red-haired, eight pound boy.
At about six
years of age, the family moved to Abington, PA, about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia
in what would today be called “out in the country”.
John’s father
was a very successful piano and organ salesman and was musically talented as
well.
John (or Jack
as he is most often known) attended high school in Abington, PA and was called
to war two months before he finished graduating from high school. He later
finished his schooling after returning from his Naval service during World War
II. He graduated from the Naval Training Station in Sampson, NY in June of
1943, serving from then until 1946.
John married
Gloria Blakey (my mother) on March 5, 1945. In 1950 he was recalled to the
Korean War for about 18 months.
Most of his
World War II Navy service was as a quartermaster on the USS Cowie, performing
convoy duty, making some 14 trips across the Atlantic Ocean. He also served in
the Pacific on the USS Juneau, a ship converted for minesweeping in the China
Sea.
In 1951, John
and Gloria and their two children, Marcia and David, moved to San Pedro,
California into Naval housing.
He was
honorably released from Naval service in 1952, after which they moved to
Glendale, California where two more children, Albert and Claudia, were
eventually born and raised. After leaving the Navy, he worked in Research and
Development for several years for a number of companies. At one company he
helped design and develop the contoured dental chair, a radical new design for
its day. At another company, he helped develop the Playtex nursing baby bottle.
And at another company he worked on manned space rocket design.
Jack and
Gloria raised their four children mainly in La Crescenta and Glendale,
California where they were members of the Glendale West Ward for over three
decades.
In 1961 he
was persuaded to work for the Prudential Insurance Company, at which he worked
until he retired in about 1989, a total of nearly 30 years in the insurance
business.
As a result
of his success in the insurance field, he qualified for and was able to attend
out-of-town conferences and conventions each year. Because of his devotion to his
family, rather than going alone, we got to go along with him each time.
Although the convention portion of the trip would only last a few days, he
would extend the time into a family vacation, usually a couple of weeks. The
natural result of these business trips/vacations was that we got to see the
greater portion of the United States and Canada: some 35 of the 50 states,
including Alaska and Hawaii, and at least five provinces of Canada. We traveled
in what my mom termed our BMW (Big Mormon Wagon) at a time when station wagons
were to then what SUVs are to our day, the preferred method of travel on road
trips.
After
retiring from Prudential, the “ham” came out in John Fretz here in Grants Pass.
His first stage production was The Music Man, and then came My Fair Lady, South
Pacific, Noel Coward’s “Cowardy Custard”, and finally Oklahoma. He also
belonged to the Opera Guild, performing in the Merry Widow.
After his
show business career, he turned to gardening, producing, what he called, the
world’s finest cantelopes and tomatoes.
During these
times he also loved to work on his family genealogy. He never had what you’d
call hobbies, just a lot of things he liked to do. You might say his family,
and people in general, were his hobbies.
He had a
strong and abiding love of his Father in heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ, of
which he often spoke, and never hesitated to share and speak kindly of, often
with tears of deep emotion.
He loved
people and he loved his cats. And they all loved him; at least all the cats
anyway. He was known to write a sarcastic or scathing letter to the editor a
time or two and often received scathing letters in return from some who didn’t
appreciate his brand of conservative opinion. One such person wrote an 8-page
letter condemning him to Hades when he dies. (I can assure you he isn’t there.)
At one point
he had a disagreement with the editor and canceled his newspaper subscription.
After a while, someone at the paper must have missed his letters because he was
offered three months free subscription if he would start subscribing to the
newspaper again. Numerous people would sometime stop him on the street to ask
him when he was going to write another letter to the editor.
Dad always
added spice to life. Sometimes he was like a bull in a china ship but it never
bothered him and most people didn’t seem to mind either.
Jack was
always ready with a funny joke or political story or email, unafraid to share
his political leanings.
He was never
one to sit still either. Even in his last days he didn’t want to lie still.
One more of
“The Greatest Generation” and World War II veterans has stepped through this
mortal veil to the other side. For one reason or another, for those who knew
him, life in Grants Pass won’t be the same without Jack Fretz.
Burial:
Eagle Point National Cemetery
Eagle Point
Jackson County
Oregon, USA
Plot: Section 28, site 161
