Lee Harkless' Favorite Family Stories

My maternal Grandmother passed away before I could meet her. She looks very beautiful. I'm hoping one of my relatives might have a photo of my paternal Grandfather John Edgar Harkless.

The deJarnat (DeJarnette) Ancestry

My Mother, Dovie Marguerite DeJarnette, married my Dad, Harvey Harkless, on September 23, 1933. My Mother's lineage descended from the first DeJarnette ancestor to come to America, Jean deJarnat, a French Huguenot who left France among the great throngs that left after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The origin of the name DeJarnette is French, and though there are many spellings seen in the U.S., all descended from Jean deJarnat who settled in Virginia. Jean (John) met and married Mary Mumford in 1703 and they had four children.  Their third child, Daniel DeJarnatt, married Martha Ford.  Daniel's second child, also Daniel, married Judith Johnson.  Daniel and Judith's third child James married Elizabeth Sims.  James's fourth child John married Julia Clopton.  John's second child Jefferson married Susan Shobe.  Jefferson's sixth child, Andrew DeJarnette, my Grandfather, married Helen Wood, my Grandmother -- they had six children, and their fourth child was my mother Dovie Marguerite DeJarnette. My maternal Grandparents' photo is pictured here:


They helped raise me, as both my Mom and Dad had to work to make ends meet in the "Golden State."

The Dust Bowl Days

My Dad, Harvey Harkless, wrote about family history for a report my son Dan was doing in high school. He wrote: "The Harkless family migrated west to Missouri by wagon train. My grandfather, who was only six at the time, boasted that he helped drive the cattle and walked a great part of the way. My great grandfather built a large house out of hand-hewed lumber. The house had a hallway that extended all the way through the house. My great grandfather told how they would put food in this long hallway in the winter and could hear the Osage Indians pass through the hallway and pick up the food."

In the 1930s, my Dad and his two sisters had each inherited a third of my paternal Grandfather's farm in Greenridge, Missouri. This was a time of severe drought, the "Dust Bowl" days, that by the mid-1930s crippled so many farm families. The country was also in the midst of the Great Depression. Unable to make a living from their land, like the Joads in Grapes of Wrath, thousands of families left their farms, and made the long and arduous journey to California. (The photo below of my Mom and Dad in 1935 is one of our favorites!)


My Mom wrote about leaving Missouri: "Farming was not easy in those days. First it rained and no one could plant, then it would get dry and everything would die for want of rain. Harvey worked hard to plant when he could, but there was no harvest. Everyone was having the same problem. Many lost their livestock because of no feed. We borrowed money from the bank to take care of ours."

"My mother had been very ill with a lung infection and the doctor advised a warmer climate. My brother, Leonard, had been to California a few years before and had always wanted to go back. One evening as my brother Leonard and his wife Auline, and Harvey and I were coming home from a party, it was a lovely night and we parked and watched the moon and stars. We began to talk of our problems with the drought. Someone mentioned why don't we all go to California. We tossed it around awhile and it was decided Harvey and I were to take Auline and go. Leonard would clean things up on the farm, help Mom and Dad to sell out and then he would bring them and come later. So in 1935 we packed our Ford coupe and started for California."

On to California

"We were on the road to California about a week. We stopped at cabins on the way. We could cook our dinner and since money was scarce that was good. We got to Baldwin Park, California on August 19, 1935. Auline's brother lived there. The first question Harvey asked him was if he knew where he could get a job. His answer was 'If you can live a year, you can get on relief.' Of course, this wasn't the answer he wanted." (The photo below is of my Dad with their 1932 Ford Coupe.)


"The next day Harvey started out to look for work. He met a man on the road with a flat tire. He stopped and helped him fix it. He asked him the 'Big Question' -- where could he find work? The man had a job milking cows, and he encouraged Harvey to seek farm work there. He was hired and the man needed someone to care for his children since his wife was working too. We moved in with them and I worked for room and board -- $7.25 a week."

"We stayed there a short time, until the work was finished. We had heard Monrovia would be a good climate for my Mother, so we went there searching for work and a place to live. We both found work -- poor pay and hard work (photo below). I worked in a laundry and Harvey worked in a packing house. We lived in a small apartment. When Leonard arrived with Mom and Dad and my younger brother Jake, they found a small filling station on Las Tunas Drive in Monrovia. There was a small house there. My Dad ran the gas station, while we kids worked. Jake went to Monrovia High School. This was a very enjoyable time as Mother kept house and we were all together. It was a lot of fun. This was the story Lee was interested in and I'll write more later."

Born in California

My Mother wrote: "On January 3, 1937, our daughter Joyce was born. This was a big event. We had lost our first born daughters -- the twins -- in 1934. We had been given a puppy which contracted rabies. While caging him for the vet he managed to bite me. After testing he, of course, had rabies. I had to have a series of rabies shots. I was pregnant with the twins and they were born alive at seven months, but died soon after. We think today they could have saved them. When Joyce was born we thought no other baby born could have been as pretty and sweet as Joyce." (Joyce is pictured below with my Dad and Mom at their home in Hemet, California, in June 1988.)


"Our first son Lee was born November 10, 1938. We had moved into a house across from Mom and Dad. My Mother took care of Joyce while I was in hospital with Lee. Lee was never very well. He had asthma. I used to feel so bad watching him stand and look out the window and watch the other children play. He got better as he grew and started school. Our youngest, Rick, was born almost six years later on May 27, 1944."

"Lee was here this weekend and I read him some of this journal. He was so interested in it. I'll write more later. Lee's boys -- Dan, Steve and Patrick -- are grown up now and on their own now. Lee misses them so much as we all miss our children when they leave the nest."

WWII

My Dad, Harvey, found a job in Monrovia working for Day & Night Manufacturing Company -- now part of United Technologies Corporation. He started on a shift at 35 cents an hour. My Dad wrote: "When I found work at Day and Night, little did I know I would remain there my entire working career. I was working there when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Our factory, as well as others, stopped all production of civilian goods and started converting to war production. Because our company was production oriented, we soon had a Navy contract for the 4.2 mortar shell, gun decks, and cowl flap rings for Lockheed. We also made drop gasoline tanks and many other needed items. I worked two shifts for several months. I supervised on the second shift. The experience that I received in supervising helped me get promoted to Superintendent with a working force of 1500 men after the war ended. In later years, I went into Manufacturing Engineering and retired when I was 63 years old."

In the meantime, my Mom was pregnant with Joyce, and so resigned from Blue Seal Laundry. Following WWII there was a teacher shortage and since my Mom had two children who would attend college at the same time, she decided to return to work. She substituted for three years and at the same time began to take college classes in the evenings. She had two years at Warrensburg Teachers College in Missouri, but did not have a degree, so she worked on a provisional certificate. She applied for and was accepted for a teaching job with Duarte Unified Schools. She continued with her education and in 1959 she graduated from Pasadena Nazarene (now Point Loma) when she was 47 years old. With her B.A. and full credentials she received a considerable increase in salary. My Mother retired when she was 62 years old.

Growing Up in Southern California

While my future wife Pat was growing up in Arcadia, I was growing up across town in Monrovia. I found growing up in Southern California in the late 1930s-1940s a wonderful, hopeful, and generally happy experience. My teen years were pretty normal for a 1950s California teen. I was interested in hot rods, girls, rock, blues, girls, and the beach. I was jarred from my idyllic 1950s life in the Spring of 1959 when my Mom called me home from college to help her cope while teaching school all day, taking care of my little brother, and then driving thirty miles each evening to the hospital where my Dad was undergoing a series of extremely serious cancer surgeries. By a series of miracles my Dad survived and both he and my Mom lived to be 88 years old.

One day during my Dad's hospitalization, I was randomly searching the racks at our local library, looking for something to help me focus my turbulent mind. I was very concerned about my Dad's survival, and about helping my Mom keep up her strength. A book on concentration grabbed my attention -- a now out-of-print book written by Dymitr Sudowski that included structured exercises for improving mental focus. The exercises helped a lot during this period, and later when returning to college I gained some notoriety among my friends while completing my senior year in one semester using my improved ability to concentrate.

Ah Youth!

Dan asked me to write down some of the stories I'd told him about me -- so here we go.

In 1960, while at USC, my roommate Deane Hawley recorded a song from the soundtrack of a horror film called Circus of Horrors. The song was called "Look for a Star". The record started climbing up the charts in Los Angeles. Deane went on tour for several weeks, and also appeared on the Dick Clark Show in Philadelphia. When Deane got off the plane back in LA, it was a number one record. This certainly added excitement to our college life.  Deane often asked me go with him to the recording studio -- these were generally all-nighters and made it difficult to get to class the next day. Amazingly we both graduated from SC. At times I was a minor back-up singer in some of his concerts. We occasionally would do an Everly Brothers act, and sometimes he'd have me do my Elvis impersonation. Those were fun years.

Deane felt that he might be able to parlay his sudden celebrity into an acting career. He wanted me to audition with him for a role in a pilot in the works that would star his friend, Tommy Rettig, who had been the first child star on the Lassie TV show. The concept was that Tommy was the star of a rock band, and Deane and I were band members. It almost got off the ground. Tommy was later in the cast of the 1965-66 TV Series Never Too Young - a concept similar to That 70's Show. Tommy's manager, who also managed Deane and I, suggested we get some acting lessons. Deane and I decided to audition at Desilu Studios Actors Workshop.

Lucille Ball of Desilu Productions had started an acting workshop. Assisted from time to time by Vivian Vance, her longtime cohort in I Love Lucy, she sometimes taught classes herself. During this time she became the mentor to Carol Burnett and others. Among the many actors affiliated with the Actors Workshop at the time of our audition were Dennis Weaver (McCloud, Gunsmoke, Duel), Mariette Hartley (The Incredible Hulk, Ride the High Country, Marne), John Anderson (Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Smokey and the Bandit II), George Takei (Star Trek, Green Berets, Prisoners of the Sun), Kim Darby (True Grit, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Better off Dead), and Mary Jane Saunders (Sorrowful Jones, The Remarkable Mr Pennypacker, The Girl Next Door). We passed our audition and were both accepted into the Actors Workshop. Classes were held in the evening for the benefit of working actors and that worked out well for us. We remained in the Actors Workshop for several years while creating stable "day jobs" -- Deane entertained in clubs around L.A., and I was in aerospace at JPL.

Like my ancestor Charles Harkless before me (but after completing college and a year of post-graduate work in Psychology), I was also "contracted out." My first years were as a Human Factors Engineering contractor to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (JPL). I can still vividly recall my first experience driving my 1963 Triumph sports car up Oak Grove Drive, winding past Oak Grove Park, and up the mountain road, past the Flintridge Riding Academy, to the point where JPL suddenly loomed as out of nowhere. The Lab, as JPL is known, is spread up the mountain, a crazy quilt of some 150 research buildings -- an odd mixture of 1940s and modern architecture. I was hired that day as a member of the group designing the Human Interface for the to-be-built Space Flight Operations Facility, the control center for all U.S. Deep Space Missions. Those early years at the Lab were very exciting. I have since spent my entire career in Human Factors, working on a variety of challenging programs.

In the evenings, and on weekends, Deane and I acted in Showcase Presentations given on the Desilu lot for producers, directors, casting agents, and others in the industry. My favorite role was in the William Gibson two character play Two for the Seesaw. My co-star was Mary Jane Saunders. I was Jerry Ryan to her Gittle Mosca. Jerry Ryan is a simple, young lawyer from America's Midwest, who comes to New York and gets involved in a romance with a kookie, young dancer whose background, ideas and attitudes are completely different from his own. Sadly the relationship between Jerry and Gittel fails in the end. Mary Jane had been in acting since she played a 6-year-old girl left with Sorrowful Jones (Bob Hope) as a marker for a bet (a remake of Little Miss Marker). Mary Jane also had a continuing role in Tales of Wells Fargo, was in the Dean Martin movie Kiss Me Stupid, and most recently in an X-Files episode.

One fairly major showcase production was from Jules Feiffer's book Hold Me! -- which we called An Evening with Feiffer. We enacted the cartoons with three of the female students and Deane and I in the lead roles. Later Hold Me! became a Broadway production without us, and is still produced from time to time. It's a series of sketches, skits and vignettes of all-too-human characters made famous through Jules Feiffer's cartoons. The theme is the plight of today's city dweller, and the hang-ups, personality difficulties, identity crises and assorted mishaps which beset those trapped in what may begin as urban confusion but all too often ends as urban anguish. It is staged very simply, with each performer assuming a variety of roles. It was very well received at Desilu.
 
Our acting teacher was Mary Carver (Arachnophobia, The Guardian, Simon and Simon, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden), and her then-husband, director Joseph Sargent (The Karen Carpenter Story, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Jaws: The Revenge, Gunsmoke). Joseph Sargent spent his first professional decade in television. His first theatrical "feature" was One Spy Too Many (1966), an expansion of one of his Man From U.N.C.L.E. episodes. His work emphasized talented ensemble casts. Joseph Sargent's best features include The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and MacArthur (1977); his best TV films include Tribes (1970), Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971), and the multipart Lonesome Dove sequel Streets of Laredo (1995). Joe recently directed the Salem Witch Trials and Gregory Hines's Bojangles. Mary and Joe had been in NY Actors Studio with Marlon Brando and taught us Method Acting. They were terrific and caring teachers!

After one of my showcase performances of "Seesaw", I got a part in a stage play, The Emperor, which was eventually heading for Broadway. I worked all day at JPL and acted evenings and weekends. About this time, Deane and I were also contracted for a series of radio commercials. We had commercials on all the pop stations for several months. I had the speaking parts while Deane sang in the background. We wrote and produced them ourselves. When time came to go to NYC with the play, I decided to stay with my life in Southern California. For the next few years, Deane wrote and recorded in LA. Then the British invasion hit the US and by 1968 Deane's singing and writing were out of style. In recent years he returned to his song writing and wrote and produced It Ain't Over 'til it's Over, recorded by the legendary Frankie Laine.

In high school I had developed a strong interest in experiencing Europe, and it turned out that one of the major Space Flight Operations Deep Space Exploration Tracking Stations was in Madrid, Spain. Try as I might, I was unable to get an assignment to Madrid. So after 5 years at the Pasadena facility I took a trip to Spain to try a face-to-face approach to securing contract work at the Madrid Tracking Station. Though the interview did not work out, I "backpacked" around Europe for nearly a year. When I returned, I was at loose ends. Then I suddenly realized that I knew that I had met my soul mate in 1956 and started searching for my high school sweetheart, Pat McCreary. (The photo of Pat below was taken for the Evening Post in Wellington, New Zealand in 1967.)


Pat had attended the University of Redlands and Stanford, and then became a Pan Am Stewardess to see the world. She visited in over 100 countries! She left Pan Am to accept a position as assistant to a radio commentator in Washington D.C. and was living in McLean, Virginia when I located her. After a whirlwind romance, we got married in the National Presbyterian Church by the Senate Chaplain, Rev Edward L. R. Elson on July 28, 1969 -- exactly 13 years from the day we met! (The photo below was taken at our Wedding Day Reception at Evans Farm Inn in McLean, VA.)

As my wife, Pat (pictured above from 2002), says in Part 12 of the book Childbirth at its Best by Dr. Nial Ettinghausen and Hope Royal, 1980, titled "Personal Experiences with the Ettinghausen Method":

"The arrival of our second son was almost a 'summer rerun' of our first delivery. As the evening passed, I became more and more dependent upon my husband, Lee, to ease my discomfort by rubbing the small of my back."
 
Later in the chapter Pat writes:

"At about 2:20 a.m. Dr. Ettinghausen and his nurse arrived. When he examined me, he could see that I was ready to deliver, so he said that he wouldn't take the time to set up his delivery table, and that I could just stay where I was on our king-size bed. Lee was sitting behind me, and supported my back during the delivery. Steven was born at 2:38 a.m.

Lee got to cut the umbilical cord again, and also took a movie and photos of the happy event. After he was cleaned up, Steven nursed vigorously. He had worked up quite an appetite during his long journey into this world. He was very alert, and didn't take his first nap until about five hours after his arrival."

Patrick's Home Birth

This time the Dad, Lee, would like to describe the birth of his son, Patrick (above left in a photo from July 4, 1984 -- one of my favorites!). Patrick's arrival was again almost a "summer rerun" of Dan and Steve's. The big difference was in my duties. For Patrick, I did not have to be the camerman, and could concentrate completely on helping Pat. We had Pat's best friend Glory there to handle the camera duties.

As in the other two births we had a Midwife on duty for hours before the doctor arrived. In Patrick's case the Midwife asked should this labor move any faster would I be willing to help her deliver Patrick. I said I was ready and willing! Dan was born July 18 and Steve was born July 13. Here it was late on July 12 and Pat wanted Patrick to not have to share Steve's birthday. At about 11:00 p.m., Pat said, "We are going to have this baby now!"

Glory did a great job filming, and the Midwife and I were ready. The doctor was on his way. At 11:20 Dr. Ettinghausen arrived and Pat said "I need to have this baby before midnight!" When he examined her, he could see that she was ready to deliver, so he said "Well let's get busy!" Patrick was born at 11:39 p.m. -- 21 minutes before Steve's birthday. I got to cut the umbilical cord again, and was also allowed to help bathe my new son! After he was cleaned up, Patrick also nursed vigorously. Patrick was very alert, and a very happy baby!

Sons Grown Up

Dan

This is Dan in a company Christmas party photo from 2001:


Dan's dramatic self-portrait below, also from 2001, was taken from his "Dan Harkless' Personal Info" page.

Steve

Here's a photo of Steve which appeared in Travel & Leisure Magazine in 2001 in an article about Berkeley.


Below are two oil paintings of Steve. The funny thing about them is that a friend of Steve asked him about them after noticing them in a gallery, but their being there was news to Steve! "A Knight at Rest" (the first below) sold for $5500, while "Vision of Peace" sold for $2500.


These paintings came about when Steve posed in 2003 for a group of artists as a lark. The husband of the artist of the these two paintings, who is an anthropologist, told Steve the reason they titled the above painting "A Knight at Rest" was that he had researched the Harkless name and believed it to be an anglicized version of the German last name Herkules (also spelled Hercules) and then traced that back to Heraclius, then to the Heraclid dynasty in Lydia -- so he sees Steve as a knight of this royalty. He said that the family spread out from Greece, through Rome and arrived in Germany in 100 AD.


Steve loves to travel (like his Mother) and has seen a lot of the world. Steve graduated from the University of Redlands with a degree in Communication and a minor in Music. He spent a semester in Melbourne and went to the Outback for his project. He learned to play the didgeridoo from some helpful aboriginal folk and won first place in a "didge" contest in Alice Springs. They were kind of taken aback when he accepted and his accent gave away that he was from the states, but all went well. Steve's also traveled extensively in Europe, Mexico, Central America, India and Thailand. Steve is a writer, musician, DJ, and also works in Earthship Biotecture. Steve's writing has been published in Vibrancy magazine and on his own homepage.

Patrick

This photo of Patrick is of him hiking in Prescott, Arizona in September 2000. It shows the love of life, sense of humor, and sense of fun that Patrick brings to all he does.


Patrick worked as a waiter part-time during college. The photo below was just before his first night catering a wedding for Pascal, the top-rated Newport Beach French restaurant, at Sherman Gardens in Corona del Mar in the summer of 2000. I asked him how he did it with no experience, and he said he simply became "The Croupier". The movie Croupier is a psychological thriller that featured a star-making turn by Clive Owen -- we had seen it together. It was about a writer who feigns experience as a croupier to gather material for a book.


Patrick spent his first two years of college at the University of Redlands, in Redland, California. His last two years were at Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona, from which he graduated with a degree in Psychology. After graduating, his first professional position was with the Mental Health Association of Orange County, helping mentally ill homeless people get off the street and into proper care.

While still at Prescott, Patrick did an internship at the West Yavapai Guidance Clinic, where he helped facilitate group therapy sessions with adults who suffered from various psychological disorders and addictions. The clients for whom he has cared have certainly benefited from his nurturing and supportive presence in their lives. Patrick feels most fulfilled when he knows he's helping those who need him. Known for his comedic abilities, Patrick has also done a lot of improvisation and acting. He also writes beautiful philosophical poetry and songs.