Charlotte Menefee
1912 – 2020
The family of Charlotte Menefee held a private memorial service via Zoom on the eve of what would have been the 108th birthday of their beloved “Granny.”
The spunky centenarian — believed to have been the oldest resident of San Pedro — died of natural causes on July 20, 2020 at a local hospice. Alert, sharp and strongwilled to the end, she left the world the same way that she came into it — on her terms.
“We remember Granny for giving us life and love and security,” said her grandson Les Hammer. “What more could we ask for?”
Born in Waseca, Minnesota on November 17, 1912 — seven months after the sinking of Titanic — six-year-old Charlotte survived the pandemic of 1918 that sickened all but one member of her family and killed 675,000 Americans. She recovered and resumed daily lessons in a one-room schoolhouse, followed by routine chores on the family farm — feeding the chickens, fetching water from the well or milking the cow.
“You didn’t milk the cow when you felt like it,” she recalled. “You milked it when it was time.”
In 1930, Charlotte — who had blossomed into a beautiful, blue-eyed and willful young woman of 18 — ran away from home in the middle of the Depression to marry Hubert Killion. Like downtrodden characters out of “The Grapes of Wrath,” the couple trekked from town to town in search of work. With characteristic determination and grit, Charlotte cleaned houses, waited tables or worked as a cook in boarding houses. In 1933, the ragged pair wound up in the farming community of Orrville, Ohio, where their daughter Ona Lee was born.
Hard times cost Charlotte her marriage. But her fortunes improved when she married Marion Courtney, the father of her stepchildren Bernard and Eileen and son Quentin (born in 1939). During World War II, the family lived in Massilon, where Charlotte worked in a department store. After the war, the couple decided to leave Ohio, now that their older children were married, and take their younger children with them to California.
In 1947, the family settled in Glendale, only to break up. Charlotte divorced Marion, unaware that Fortune’s wheel was about to turn. While working as a waitress at a popular diner, she met decorated Navy veteran and master carpenter Paul Pizzini. Shortly after their marriage in 1951, Paul adopted 12-year-old Quentin — the first member of a large, extended family that within a decade included grandchildren by Ona Lee and her husband Rod Hammer and Quentin and his wife Sylvia.
In 1976, Charlotte and Paul celebrated their 25th anniversary — three weeks before Paul lost a valiant battle with cancer. In spite of her grief, Charlotte continued to work in cosmetics at a La Cañada Flintridge pharmacy. At 65, she found love again when she married Jerry “Shorty” Menefee, owner of a local dry cleaning shop, in 1978. Their marriage proved to be an enduring and happy one until his death in 1997.
“I was privileged to have been married to Paul and Jerry,” she recalled. “They were both great, selfmade men.”
After the sale of the shop, Charlotte bought a home in San Pedro. She lived alone until she was nearly 100, when she moved to the assisted living center Harbor Terrace. But family and friends showed up every year for a birthday party at the Pizzini palazzo, followed by a movable feast at the 22nd Street Landing. 101 102 103... right up to 107 when Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragán presented the guest of honor with a Certificate of Congressional Recognition.
In a final, supreme act of charity, Charlotte Menefee willed her body to the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Her generous, life-affirming gift summed up a Christian life, inspired by her favorite hymn “Others” by Charles Meigs and Elizabeth Shields:
“So when my work on earth is done,
And my new work in Heaven’s begun,
May I forget the crown I’ve won,
While thinking still of Others.”
The beloved matriarch, who was preceded in death by her stepson Bernard Courtney, daughter Ona Lee Snyder, sister-in-law Virginia Pizzini Wright, granddaughter Kristie Lee Hammer, and recently reunited with her stepdaughter Eileen Hershberger, leaves her son Quentin Pizzini and wife Helene of San Pedro; son-in-law Duke Snyder and wife Jan of Springville; daughter-in-law Sylvia Pizzini and husband Marty of Citrus Heights; grandson Les Hammer of Pasadena; grandson Bret Hammer, wife Leslie and daughter Cassandra of Lacey, Washington; grandson Ken Pizzini, wife Holly and daughter Emily of Citrus Heights; granddaughter Judy Mikelsen, husband Michael and son David of Waltham, Massachusetts; granddaughter Vickie Hershberger of Redondo Beach; granddaughter Cathy Scheitlin, husband Mark and son Nathan of Louisville, Colorado; greatgrandson Stephen Hammer of Canyon Country and a host of friends.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to Harbor Animal Service Center at 957 N. Gaffey Street, San Pedro CA 90731. Telephone 1-888452-7381.