Browbeaten by Brian into Biographical Blogging, I will
attempt to present an update on my life, without it coming across too much like
an auto-obituary!
PROLOGUE
For reasons that will become apparent, I need to mention
that I was born in San Francisco in early 1947, the product of a single mother
and an unknown penis. I was adopted
fairly promptly by two loving folks, who became my true parents, Hans and Peggy Lineweaver, who had the
good taste to remove me to Berkeley, where I joined my only (or so I then
thought) sister Mary. Schooled at The Madeleine for 8 years
(luckily I never flunked), I was enrolled at St. Mary’s, where I went largely-unnoticed for full term,
and was flushed out with the rest of the pack in June 1964.
AND NOW, THE REST OF
THE STORY
Somehow, I was accepted into UC Davis for the fall of 1965,
where I mindlessly enrolled in 6 useless courses, the most beneficial of which
was billiards. I aced none, and managed
to be permitted to advance to sophomoric status, but only if I attended summer school
at UC Berkeley, where I took 3 more semi-useless classes, accidentally including
a 2 unit upper division course in British History. Duh!
Rather than returning to Davis, I chose to transfer to
Merritt College in Oakland, where I took a courses in Real Estate, Accounting, Economics,
Phycology and Art History. Do you think
I may have been searching for something? The following semester, I transferred
to St. Mary’s College in Moraga, and the safety of the Christian Brothers
(right!). Carpooling daily from Berkeley
with lifelong friends Jim Burns and Bob San Souci—and the worst known
drivers in the Western Hemisphere— we all managed to survive the stimulating
courses in Ethics and Philosophy, while pursuing our majors, mine being
Economics and Business Administration. Extracurricularly,
Burns conned me into working with Inner-City kids with him (he was a Democrat,
then) in West Oakland, where I put my non-existent athletic skills to use in
coaching basketball and track at a small grammar school. Also, given the ever-intensifying Vietnam
War, and my low draft number, I attempted to enlist in the Army Reserves, but I
failed the physical, due to bad knees. Knowing
the Army, however, I was convinced that my knees would, indeed, pass a DRAFT
physical, so I obtained another physical from a private physician, and
convinced my local Army Reserve Unit Commander to accept my application. I got IN!
In June 1968, I barely
graduated from the Gaelic splendor of St. Mary’s College (thanks to the 2 unit
upper division course I had mistakenly taken at Cal in the summer of 1966) and
received exactly zero job offers, so I enrolled at Cal in their MBA Program,
with a major in…….REAL ESTATE! I had
really loved the subject when I took it at Merritt JC! Three weeks later, however, I was called up
for Basic Training in the Reserves, and shipped off to Fort Ord in
Monterey. I survived the 16 weeks of
training, side-by-side with 17-18 year old kids, the majority of whom were
actually going off to Vietnam, and life altering—or ending-- experiences. Very sobering, even for a wisened 21
year-old. After Training, I returned to Cal, and completed my Masters, and went
to work in the only REAL job I have ever had, with Central Valley National
Bank. My job title was Loan Officer, but
in my two years there, I never made a single loan. My real duties were to appraise properties
AFTER some senior officer had already made the loans and advanced about 125% of
the value of the security, falsifying loan documents, and scamming loan
examiners while covering up bank frauds. Fabulous experience, if I had wanted
to be a lawyer!
It was during this time that I convinced my Dad to invest
with me in the purchase of my first property, a 6 unit building near Lake
Merritt in Oakland. He invested the
cash, and I invested my untried and well-hidden carpentry skills, so I promptly
moved into the unfinished building basement, and built a 7th
apartment unit. Amazingly, it passed
building inspection after only three attempts! We sold the building within 9
months, and traded up to a 12 unit building nearby. SHOOTING FISH! I loved
this real estate thing, but hated my day job, and couldn’t wait to have enough
dough to start my own business. However, the day job did allow me to continue my hobby of
coaching kids, which by then had expanded to include BASEBALL—another sport at
which I sucked. Meanwhile, the nuns at
the school where I coached kept trying to introduce me to various available
ladies—often single mothers—but I was able to duck their attempts for quite a
while. Those devilish nuns did, however,
convince me to become a licensed Foster Parent, the result of which was my
adopting my first child, Peter, who
was the personification of Dennis the Menace, an 8 year-old towheaded, innocent
looking monster.
I quit my day job in 1972, and started a real estate
brokerage company with an older woman (85+-), who had been in the business for
several score of decades, and knew everything and everyone (when she could
remember). I didn’t want to work weekends, so we decided we would focus on
apartment and commercial properties. She
located the potential properties, I lined up the financing (from my former,
crooked bank sources), and then I pounced on the owners, got the listings, and
sold the properties. MORE SHOOTING OF
FISH! We did extraordinarily well, at a
time when one couldn’t help but do so, but unfortunately, my partner croaked. I
decided that, after 9 long months, I had had enough of traditional real estate
brokerage, and it was time to expand my experiences as an OWNER of real
estate.
I next entered into a partnership with a couple of sharp
Jewish (sorry for the redundancy) boys, and we began real estate investing on a
scale that Oakland hadn’t seen in decades.
This went on for about 8 years, culminating in what is STILL the largest
tax-deferred real estate exchange in California history, in terms of the number
of properties included. It was absolutely
impossible to lose money in commercial or apartment property during this
period. We could pick up an apartment
building, re-paint, re-carpet and re-landscape, and flip it for 25-50%++ profit
within 4 months, routinely. Irony of
ironies, the Jewish boys even got the Emir of Kuwait to become an investor in
one of our last projects! I left that partnership to focus on my own
properties---and my own sanity---in 1979.
It was about this time that I made two major life
changes. I bought my first house in the
Oakland Hills, and I succumbed to the scheming of the nuns, and started dating
the lovely Rose Elia Martinez,
mother of 10. More precisely, she had
given birth to 5 children, and had adopted 5 of her nephews who had been
orphaned when their parents were killed in an automobile accident in Mexico
City. I had enrolled Peter at St. Anthony’s School in Oakland, where I was also
coaching 2 of Rose’s kids, Eileen
(the ONLY girl)and Andy, who was
Peter’s age. It was at a Parent’s Club
meeting that I met Rose, and, truth-be-told, I made the mistake of asking the 5th
grade nun about the cute young lady in the red dress, sitting in the front row.
Rose had recently divorced, and we dated for about 2 years, while she attempted
to get an annulment of her first marriage.
How the hell she expected to get an annulment with 5 kids, I don’t know,
but it was important to her, so I bought it for her. We dated, and dated, and
dated, until she finally told me that we would probably have to break up,
because she couldn’t afford to keep buying new panty hose. The panty hose excuse worked like a charm,
so I proposed to her---though if you heard her tell it, the version might have
been slightly different.
We were married on February 21, 1981, in the dead of winter,
on the sunniest day of the year---I at the advanced age of 34! The kids were deliriously happy, Rose’s
mother was standing and applauding in the front row of the church, my parents
would have been happy even if I was marrying Lucretia Borgia, the reception was
filled with 450 people, Jim Burns’ father was dancing with the nuns, and Rose
and I flew off to Hawaii, almost without need of an airplane. We moved into my Alameda Victorian, which I
had been renovating back to its original 5-story magnificence, but it soon
became apparent that a 5-story, 100 year old house, replete with glass
chandeliers, lace curtains, and delicate porcelain tiles, was NOT the house in
which to raise 11 kids. It would soon
have been reduced to 1 story of rubble, so in mid-1981, we moved to Alamo (near
Walnut Creek), where I found a house that was under foreclosure. It was
originally built as an entertainment showcase, consisting of 9 bedrooms, 10
bathrooms, and nearly 10,000 sq.ft., on about 2 acres of land, on what was
formerly a 52 acre horse ranch, but which had been sub-divided and being offered
as lots for build-to-suit buyers, save for the fact that interest rates had
reached the 21% level, and NO ONE was buying anything. Perfect house for us, at a perfectly CHEAP
price!
Life as a simple country boy was great for a while. Rose surprised me with the news of the
pending arrival of our first child together in the spring of 1982, and indeed,
it was a surprise, because Rose had undergone the surgical reversal of a tubal
ligation after we were married, and the results of such procedures were iffy. Danny Lineweaver was born on August 1,
1982, nearly 9 pounds of perfection. He
was adored by his 11 siblings, pampered by his grandparents and parents, but he
would have NONE of the pampering. He was
INDEPENDENT, walked at 10 months, refused to talk at all, and had all the indications
of becoming thoroughbred. Danny scooted, crawled and walked about, until one
tragic day in July, 1984, after being put down for his afternoon nap, he
attempted to climb out of his crib, apparently caught his tank top strap on the
extended corner post of his crib, and accidentally hanged himself. When going to answer a doorbell, Rose checked
on him, saw the situation, and extricated him.
He was revived, but unfortunately, his little brain had been denied
oxygen for too long, and he suffered severe brain damage. We decided to care for him at home, rather
than in a care facility, and the entire family was involved in his nurturing
for the next 9 years. Danny passed away
from pneumonia in 1993 at the age of 11, but his life was not without great
meaning. Rose and I brought a
product-liability lawsuit against the Crib Manufacturer and the Retailer, which
we successfully settled in 1985, providing funds for Danny’s lifetime care, and
also providing us with funds to form THE
DANNY FOUNDATION.
Among the most important accomplishments during the 20 year
tenure of The Danny Foundation was:
1)
establishment of
Crib manufacturing standards, whereas only one existed previously
2)
requiring industry adherence to the new safety
standards
3)
banning extended crib corner posts and all
catch-points on cribs
4)
strengthening the structural integrity of cribs
5)
banning the re-sale of unsafe cribs
6)
strengthening the Government Recall and Recall
Notification Process
While Rose and I were awarded The Jefferson Award in 2008
and many other national and regional honors for our work with crib safety and The
Danny Foundation, our true reward was in giving some meaning to Danny’s
sacrifice, and in honoring his memory.
More on the Foundation can be found at www.dannyfoundation.com.
For the 20 years following Danny’s 1984 accident, life was
hectic, purposed and full. Rose and I
were particularly careful to pay attention to ALL of the children—not only
Danny—during this time, and we even wanted to have another child. We DID, in fact, but we did so by adopting James John Lineweaver—Jimmy John—in
1987. He was born in Mexico City, of Mayan
Indian descent, and we smuggled him into the US, and legalized his status
later. Much easier that way, or at
least, it was then, and the statute of limitations is no-doubt long
passed.
As of this writing, I have 12 surviving children—Javier, Alfredo, Eileen, Carlos, Willie,
Peter, Andy, Luis, Eddie, Rick, Michael and Jimmy-- 27 grandchildren and 14
½ great-grandchildren. Many of our
children have gone on to college, a few have had successful college sports
careers—clearly not my genes—and most have married and had children---and some
have grandchildren—my great-grandchildren.
Our daughter, Eileen --our only daughter--was the first to marry, and
the first to have children. Our second
youngest, Michael, is the latest to marry, and the latest to have
children. Only three have not married,
including young Jimmy John, age 27, and still a student in Amsterdam. All but 2
live with 30 minutes of “home”.
My Mom passed away in 1993 at the age of 80, one month after
Danny. My Dad remarried in 1996 at the
age of 90, outlived his “bride”, and passed away in 2009 at the age of
102. TOO BAD I was their adopted child,
with THEIR long-lived genes! My Dad and
I became incredibly close in his later years, and I am thankful he was quite
mobile and lucid until the end of his life.
An amazing man! A few of you may
remember that my Dad was a scientist, and the scientist in him encouraged me to
seek out my birth parents, so that I could learn something about my own
genetics, and potentially, some medical background. He even gave me a notarized letter, giving
his “blessing” to conduct a birth parent search. However, I did not choose to go forward with
that search until 2008. I don’t know if I delayed because I was distracted by
other life events and duties, if I felt some disloyalty to my parents in
conducting such a search (albeit I had Dad’s permission and blessing), or if I
had a fear of what I might find. But after a chance meeting with a friend and
neighbor, I changed my mind, when he told me his story of hiring of a private
detective who conducted a simple records search, leading to his discovery of
his birth mother. His result was less-than-uplifting, but it sparked something in me. GOD KNOWS, I didn’t need MORE family!
I hired that same private detective, and armed with a 1947
court adoption record, the detective found records of my birth mother within
days. She had passed away many years
before at the age of only 50, BUT she had had 5 children after giving birth to
me. I had 5 other siblings---or at
least, half-siblings! They were all born
and still all lived in the Boston area.
I struggled about how I would go about contacting them, or whether or
not I should contact them at all. I
didn’t want to intrude on their lives. I
didn’t want to shatter their image of their (our) mother. I didn’t know if
their father was MY father, also, though I did determine that he had also
passed away a couple of years before. I got lucky. I found out that their father had remarried,
and I was able to contact the second wife directly, without contacting my
siblings. The message I received from
her in return was very cryptic, in which she offered to meet me in San Diego,
and she would “tell me things in person”, but only in person! Rose and I met
with her at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego in 2008. She proceeded to tell
the story of her husband, Bernard, a Boston native, and how HE had told her
that he had been “involved” with my mother in San Francisco before I was born,
and that he and my mother had “arranged” for me to be relinquished for
adoption. She said that he did NOT specifically
admit to being my father, but that SHE thought that he was, based on physical
resemblance (poor guy) and other characteristics and mannerisms. She said he was UBER-Catholic, a Knight of
Pythias (that’s worse than being a Knight of Columbus!), and would have been dis-owned
by his family had he shown up in Boston with a knocked-up bride. She gave me
several of his personal items, which I could have tested for DNA. She also shared a lot of information about my
siblings, and encouraged me to contact them, and suggested that they would be
up to the shocking news. She also shared
that they were from a very wealthy, Boston Brahmin family, and were the owners
of a 100 year old family business, so I should be cautious about my approach.
When I got home, I sent the items off for DNA testing, but unlike the TV myth,
the results were slow to come, and completely inconclusive.
I finally wrote my siblings a very sensitive and
non-threatening letter introducing myself as the son of their mother, and their
half-sibling, and potentially their full sibling. I included evidence of my birth to their
(our) mother, and evidence that I had no interest in their wealth---just
interest in genetic information and any family history they might wish to share. I sent the letter to all five of them
simultaneously by Federal Express. Two days later, I got a phone call from my
younger brother, Brian, whose last
name is Rothwell. He could not have been more gracious, caring
and encouraging. By the end of the call,
we were both in tears, and we agreed that Rose and I would come to Boston the
following week, to meet the family. The
meetings were magical—particularly because Rose had the ability to make anyone
feel comfortable instantly upon meeting.
The first meeting involved Brother Brian and the 3 sisters, Bonnie,
Brenda and Barbara
I was blown away by
finally meeting someone into whose eyes I could look, and see myself looking
back! That was my youngest sister, Barbara—the poor girl. She does have a
full head of hair, but otherwise…..The following day I met Brother Bernard,
whose picture you would have to see to believe the physical resemblance to
me. The
B’s—Bernard, Brian, Barbara, Brenda and Bonnie. That evening, we had dinner
with them and ALL their spouses and children, and the physical resemblances
with the second generation are even more striking. However, somehow, the females look good with
my face! We spent the next couple of days touring with one or the other new
relative, seeing the sights of Boston, and more particularly, “historical”
Rothwell family sites. EVERYONE was
convinced that Bernard Senior was my father.
Only when we were leaving for the airport did I ask if Brian and Bonnie
would be interested and willing to submit to a DNA test did the question come
up. They readily agreed, and I whipped out some DNA swabs, took samples, and
sent them off for testing when I got home.
Three weeks later, the DNA samples came back. Bernard was NOT my birth father. That mystery remains, and I have exhausted
every possible line of research to determine who he might have been. I see one
or more of The B’s every few months, and our visits grow in quality each time.
I am Uncle John to 15 more!
I have had a tremendous amount of fun in researching my
birth family history. I have discovered
my birth family roots back to the 1400’sa in Britain, their emigration to
Boston, their wagon-train trek to California in 1857, and their settlement in
San Jose shortly thereafter. I have
discovered that my Great-great- grandfather was the first elected sheriff of
Santa Clara County, and many other fascinating facts about the family, and I
continue to do so. Most enjoyably, I
have shared ALL these discoveries with my siblings, and they ALL are astonished
at learning of the side of our family which they have known little about,
probably due to the early passing of their (our) mother in 1976. Happily, I
have also shared these discoveries and my “additional” family with my original
sibling, Mary (now Mara Mikalis of Ashland, OR), and she shares in my excitement.
It has also spurred my research into the Lineweaver Family history, which is
interesting, but not nearly so adventurous.
Sadly, Rose passed away quite suddenly in September
2011. I miss her and my life is altered greatly,
but I have chosen to not dishonor our lives together by slowing down or
retreating into disabling grief. My original and new families have rallied
around me, and I have gained great strength from them. I am strangely comforted by the fact that I
no longer receive daily calls from them—which I take as testimony to the fact
that they believe that I am doing well. I am!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please add your comments and upload images as well....