October Fun in California
Willards gathered October 1 & 2 at Yuba City for an evening and a day of fellowship and information sharing. Louella Kennedy was the organizer (her husband Neal is in the Henry-2 line).
It all began Friday night at Mr. Steaks, which had set aside a good portion of its dining room for us. Over good food we renewed friendships and made new friends. Headquarters on Saturday were at the nearby United Methodist church. A pre-luncheon meeting detailed for the attendees what Rod & Karen have been up to with the WFA website. Karen brought the computer so all could see the actual material.
Luncheon was a picnic, which we could eat in the air-conditioned meeting room, or take outdoors onto the grass. After lunch Karen Willard gave her report. Two years prior, the reunion had instructed her to find a non-Henry-2-lineage Willard connected with California in general and the Yuba City/Marysville area in particular, to feature for the 1999 meeting. In 1997 this seemed a reasonable objective; in 1999 Karen revealed all of the initially promising candidates she'd eventually come to reject, told of the Willard family from Maine who, although they passed through Marysville, eventually settled in Neal & Louella Kennedy's stamping grounds of Willows, California, and showed how this family was related to the featured Willards, who were discussed on Saturday evening by Anne Stone Willard McNabb and her daughter, Marilyn Willard Avrit.
Anne is a distinguished local historian of Tehama county and has pursued genealogy for many years. It is her husband's family which was a twig of the Maine Willards that Karen had encountered in searching for a family to fulfill the objectives prescribed for this year's reunion. In recent years, a dysphonia has made it very difficult for Anne to talk and so her daughter presented the stories and history that Anne had prepared for us. Displayed on three tables were Tehama county Willard memorabilia, photographs, and an impressively lengthy family tree. Marilyn did a magnificent job and the time flew by so quickly we were all amazed to discover that 9 pm had arrived and it was time to go.
This report cannot be concluded without giving well-earned praise and kudos to Louella Kennedy and her army of descendants who staffed the kitchen all day, and served us at the formal Saturday evening dinner. All registered attendees were given a sack full of Sacramento Valley foods: rice, honey, almonds, and prunes. The meal was home-cooked and one menu item in particular was a big hit: the rice salad. The recipe follows.
We met business session and voted to meet in October 2001 in southern California, in the greater Los Angeles area, to feature the Willard who was an early aviator.
See you all then!
revised 03 Jan 2000