Memories of a long life with a wonderful woman
Billye Louise Brose Deaver, my wife and best friend for 61 years, went to a better place on Jan. 14 following a year-long illness.
I first met Billye back in the early 1950s when I was working at the old Mecca Theater in Mojave, which is still standing and probably still smells like old popcorn and bad plumbing.
We met when I sold her cokes and candy, including Twizzlers, Milk Duds and Sugar Daddy bars, the latter for six and 12 cents, the price set by the management.
We arrived in Mojave separately in 1948, she with her sister Betty and Betty’s husband Tommy, who was assigned to the newly renamed Muroc Air Force Base, and me with my parents and brother.
Billye and her sister and their family lived in quonset huts along Highway 466, now Business 58, where the county buildings are today and which leaked dust from all the cracks between the corrugated metal sheets that covered the walls and ceiling which were shaped in a semi circle, like half of a giant hotdog with wrinkly gray skin.
The huts were built by the Navy during World War II to house troops serving all over the world.
Best decision
We got to know each other much better several years later when she was divorced from her first husband, Ray Given, and her niece Wanda, who was living with her, was dating a young sheriff ’s deputy who shall remain anonymous because he was married. I was a dispatcher at the county communications center sending him to arrest drunks in the local bars.
We decided to double-date which was the best thing that ever happened in my young life.
Our first date together was waching Jack Lemmon in “The Apartment,” not a good choice for young couples.
Wanda went on to marry someone else and Billye and I moved to San Jose where we were married and eventually moved back to Mojave.
When we began living together, California had an “interlocutory” divorce law that prevented remarriage for one year in the hope that folks would get back together.
In our case, that state-mandated 12 months convinced us to get married. We really got to know each other and to work out any kinks in our “relationship,” which was not a word used about men and women in those simpler times.
Over the years Billye worked in several restaurants in Mojave, including 20 years for the Riccomini family at Reno’s.
She was later employed at banks in Mojave, Bakersfield, and Alexandria, Virginia, when we lived in those cities.
In the 1980s we both worked for Members of Congress in Washington, and she retired from the House staff when we moved back to Mojave in 1994.
We loved to travel and got to do a lot of that while living and working in our Nation’s Capitol with trips to Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Billye grew up the youngest of six kids in Dust Bowl Oklahoma, where she learned how to be tough and not waste anything, including time. She was a master at packing for travel, which meant we carried one suitcase and two carry-ons, hers a large and heavy purse that would have been a great weapon if some dimwit tried to mug us.
From 1979 until we moved east in 1981 we published the Mojave Desert News working every day and having a ball.
I did the writing and she handled the business, aided by some interesting employees.
Our very favorite was Rheta Baldwin, who kept us laughing even on deadline.
The least favorite was the lying salesman we enjoyed firing.
Billye didn’t especially enjoy selling ads but was very good at it, which kept us in business and eating.
Tough and gentle lady
Billye had a wonderful personality honed by decades of working with people, but when her voice would slow and drop a few octaves and her Oklahoma accent came through, you had better watch out.
She was five years older than me, and in the later years of our marriage, when asked how we managed to stay together so long, I would always say it was because I married a grown-up.
Questioning the cure
When Billye discovered a tumor about a year ago, the doctors decided they should try to reduce its size so it could be removed. At age 88.
When that didn’t go as fast as they thought it should, they put her on some serious chemo, which just made things worse and led to us stopping the treatment and Billye entering home hospice care.
During all that time she never had any pain from the tumor, which raises the question, as another of our doctors noted, of why some doctors suggest surgery like that on people at that late stage of life.
That’s an excellent question that I pass onto anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.
The “cure” is often worse than just letting nature take its course.
Appreciation — Service
My sister Susan Wiggins and I want to thank our family doctor and the folks at Traditions Healthcare, the hospice folks, who were some of the nicest people we’ve ever met, sympathetic, respectful, understanding, with us until the end; and all our friends, especially our “super neighbor” Steve Rushford, for all their support.
That includes Traditions’ chaplain Paul, who visited every couple of weeks and always brought his guitar which he played at the end of his visits.
Billye had trouble hearing by then, but she could feel the music enough to sing along when Paul played the hymns she learned as a child and enjoyed all her life, a remarkable gift from those who taught her those inspiring songs so very long ago, and especially from her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
A graveside service will be held Friday, Jan. 31, at the Mojave Cemetery.