She came at 3:32 p.m. Marlana Denise was 20" long and weighed 9 pounds, 13-1/2 ounces. When Dr. Kelly came in, he said she was the prettiest baby he had ever delivered. Never mind that her face was as flat as a plate! Fathers didn't go into the delivery room back then--they waited upstairs in the hall. Basil waited--and waited. Always asking when I would be out. Finally, around six o’clock, a nurse said I was already in my room and asleep and he couldn't see me.

Marlana Denise Duncan.
May 8 1950

He was beside himself. His cousin, Nolan Crockett, was on leave from the Navy and was with Basil at the hospital. He said he held his breath in fear while Basil drove home, because Basil was so furious at the treatment he had received at the hospital.

Marlana and I spent three days in the hospital, and the bill for both of us was $88.00. All the neighbors gathered to see the new baby when we got home, and all I wanted to do was rest. We put Marlana in a basket beside our bed, but she slept through that night and all the rest of the nights. We never had to get up with her--what a difference between a full-term baby and premature twins!

Nolan stayed with us a couple of weeks to keep an eye on the boys (and on me). I took some diapers out to the washing machine and was putting them in when he came in and threw a fit. I told him using the washing machine wouldn't hurt me, but I was ordered not to do it again.

One day Helen Persons and Kay Basford, Legion Auxiliary members, came to bring the gift from our Unit, a Baby Tenda in which Marlana jumped so much later on that I feared she would turn it over. Helen's mother was State President of the Legion Auxiliary, and had given a year's membership to Marlana the day she was born--she happened to be visiting our Unit that day, and I was Unit President.

Nolan and the boys had worked all morning cleaning up the back yard. When Kay and Helen came, we were all talking in the living room. The boys settled in to listen, and Nolan told them to go in the back yard and play. As they went out the kitchen door, we heard Ronnie say, Let's go mess up that back yard, Donnie. We all got a good laugh out of that.
Marlana was precocious, and demanded a lot of attention (still does!). Basil was going to work very early and working long hours. When he came home, he usually napped on the sofa. Marlana was just pulling up. She pulled up to the sofa and said Da-da. Basil didn't even hear her, but she walloped him in the face with her doll. That got his attention.

During the summer, the boys came in one day and asked if they could take Marlana around the block in their red wagon. I told them they could (an absolute no-no today, but okay then). I went about my work until I realized how long they had been gone. I looked out the front door and here came Ronnie, Donnie, Roger, Paul, Gary, Pete and David with the wagon. We got our baby sister back! they all said in unison.
When they had taken her on the other side of the block, kids who lived there had taken her away from Ronnie and Donnie. They came back, rounded up our gang of 5- and 6-year-olds, and went back and got her.

In September, Ronnie, Donnie, Gary, Pete and David all started kindergarten. I never felt the twinges some mothers feel about their babies starting to school. It was the next necessary step in their lives. Basil and I enjoyed our three kids tremendously, but we didn't want them to stay babies around home forever. I felt sorry for their teacher--she had three sets of twins in her class: Identical girls, fraternal girls and identical boys.

Kindergarten in those days was just play, nap, eat graham crackers and drink milk. I remember how frustrated Nolan got when he tried to teach the boys to count to five. Some years later, when I was working for Cotton Construction Corporation, I recounted this story. Cliff Tabadisto, our General Superintendent, had a daughter in Catholic school kindergarten at the time. I said that all they did in kindergarten was play. He said his little girl said "All they do at St. Sophia's is pray." I suppose both activities were instrumental in the growing-up phase.

In order to make a little money--and get away from the house--I joined a baby-sitting organization. I only took jobs when Basil could be home with the kids. I always took material, needle and thread, and made several dresses (all with very full skirts) by hand for Marlana. I made a petticoat, and Basil made a hoop to go in it. She looked like a doll. I much prefer to sew on the machine, but I couldnÂ’t take it with me to baby-sit!

During the Christmas rush in 1950, I worked at the Lemon Grove Post Office. I left Marlana with my neighbor, LaVerne Martin. She would start crying as I went out the door, and LaVerne said she didn't stop after a while (as most kids do), but cried until I came home. She was a real Mama's baby--she wouldn't even go to Basil. That went over like a lead balloon!

In early 1951, Tommy Thomas, a friend at the Post Office, told Basil that I should apply for work at the Post Office. We needed money to keep our heads above water, so I did apply and was accepted (wonder of wonders!). I enjoyed the work and my co-workers, but the hours were sometimes horrendous--the worst was at Christmas, when 15 hours were not unusual and the worst day was 16 hours. There was no such thing as overtime pay for temporary subs like me-- just straight pay. Things have changed a great deal for postal workers since then.

Basil's mother came out from Texas to watch the kids. Marlana was a very good baby and didn't give Mother much trouble. The boys were also good--just needed direction occasionally. They stated kindergarten in September, 1950, so Mother and Marlana had the mornings to themselves. Entertainment? We went on picnics, to the mountains, camping and the beach (which I was not too fond of-- all that sand in the bathtub).

The middle fifties were, for the most part, uneventful. Evelyn Thomas, Tommy's wife, was a Unit Manager for Tupperware and wanted me to come in as a dealer. I didn't really want to--selling was not my thing. But I tried it and was pretty successful--enough so that I left the post office. Somehow or other, I wound up as bookkeeper for Del Rio Electric Company--I don't remember how. In between, I was an administrative assistant at Cotton Construction Corporation (I didn't realize how often I must have changed jobs those years, but if it paid more, I took it. Mr. & Mrs. Frame had a beautiful daughter the same age as Marlana. This sweet little girl was blind. I sometimes took her home with me to spend the night and play with Marlana. They had great fun at the Little League Field while the twins were playing.

Ronald Glenn Duncan.
June 4 1958

These next days are very difficult for me to write about--we lost our beautiful son, Ronnie. A Navy wife who had been to a cocktail party looked up to see six little boys crossing Imperial Avenue at Moumt Vernon Street in Lemon Grove. She panicked. Five of the kids ran for the other side of Imperial, but Ronnie tried to run back the way he had come.

He was thrown into her windshield and his skull was fractured. An investigation revealed the driver had only one break that worked and it was the right rear wheel. As a result when she jammed the brakes in a panic, the right wheel locked, throwing the car immediately to the right and off the pavement about 12 to 15 feet where Ronnie had run trying to avoid the vehicle. He was struck about 15 feet from the pavement in some tall grass.

A neighbor called me at work and a co-worker drove me to the accident scene. By the time we arrived, Ronnie had already been taken to Grossmont Hospital. I asked the highway patrolman to take me to the hospital but he refused, saying he had to take this woman home to meet her kids coming home from school.

I remember very well him telling me that I could drive and the speed limit was 65, anyway your son wasn,t hurt seriously and he will propbably be ready to go home when you get there.

I have always thought my child, who was injured and alone, should have come first, especially since she was the reason for his injury. My co-worker, who was unfamiliar with where Grossmont was, took me.

When we arrived at Grossmont Emergency, Ronnie was lying on a leatherette gurney--no sheet, no blanket and covered in chill bumps. Our pediatrician was not permitted to come to Grossmont, and I was in no condition to make any decisions, so Dr. Antos stayed on the line and advised me as to what I should do.

I demanded a sheet for the gurney and a blanket for Ronnie. All this time, Basil was at a doctor's office with Marlana, keeping an appointment for her. I don't remember when he got to the hospital--it seemed like forever.

Sometime during the night a group from the Lemon Grove Baptist Church came and started praying outside Ronnie's door. Church people should ask permission before doing things like that--it just made things that much harder for us. Dr. Antos suggested that we call Dr. David Freeman (undefeated world champion in badminton--Ronnie would have liked that), the best brain surgeon in San Diego at the time. and he and his partner came to the hospital and took over Ronnie's case.

Dr. Freeman said he believed he could have saved Ronnie, had he been called on the case earlier, but he didn't have much hope of saving him at the time he took over. Ronnie died at 4:00 a.m.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you will get over the death of your child. You won't. Time does not heal that kind of hurt--even after 47 years.Time dulls the pain somewhat, but it never heals. When I think of the pain Donnie has gone through from losing his twin, Marlana from losing her brother and Basil and me from losing our beloved son, I still cry. When I think of all the fun the twins would have had changing places with each other, I still cry. Donnie's life would have been so much easier with his brother beside him. Marlana's so much more fun passing by her drummer brother and having him hit her with his drumsticks as she walked by. Both boys had so much fun trading places when Basil or I got onto one of them about something. They did that to me just a couple of weeks before the accident (if one could call that an accident).

The rest of the fifties are just a blur to me. Basil and Donnie were having such a bad time that our family doctor, Dr. Leo Smollar, suggested that we move out of the neighborhood, which we did. We bought a house in Casa de Oro, in Spring Valley, and moved over Thanksgiving, 1958. I sat on the front steps and cried. As I stated earlier, it is difficult for me to write about the late Fifties. Ronnie’s death was so near and so dreadful. It will always be a terrible burden for me, but time does help—a little. All of our friends and neighbors were so kind to us—we will be forever grateful to them. Donnie wouldn’t sleep at home after Ronnie’s death. We didn’t feel it would help matters to force him to come home until he was ready. He slept at David Carpenter’s house. They were close friends and Gladys, David’s mother, was very good for Donnie. All of our neighbors and friends were as helpful as they could be in a situation such as we were going through. David and the twins had been friends since they were two. As I stated earlier, it is difficult for me to write about the late Fifties. Ronnie’s death was so near and so dreadful. It will always be a terrible burden for me, but time does help—a little. All of our friends and neighbors were so kind to us—we will be forever grateful to them.

Things didn’t seem to be getting any better for Donnie, so we decided it might be better for him if we moved into a different neighborhood. We started looking at houses and saw an ad for one in Spring Valley that we thought would be good for us. We drove out to the realtor’s office on a very Hot Sunday afternoon. She wasn’t there, so we waited over an hour (in a very hot car) for her to keep her appointment with us. When she still had not come, I looked at the ads on the boards outside of the office and saw one for a house at 10425 Loma Rancho Drive. We decided that must be the one we read about in the newspaper, so we drove up the hill to take a look. We got out of the car in order to take in the back yard and landscaping. While we were there, the next-door neighbor, Ken Caudill, came over and asked if we’d like to see the inside—the owners were out of town. We asked him if he had the key and he said “No—but I do have a pocket knife.” He took us in and showed us the house he had helped build. We had no doubts—it was the house for us. He got in touch with the owner, Roy Williams, in Sacramento and told him he had a buyer. Roy and Theo lived next door on the other side.

Theo was in the hospital in Sacramento with a miscarriage, but Roy came down to meet with us.
After hearing that the realtor had not kept her appointment, Roy said we would just split what would have been her fee. So that is what we did. We moved in during the Thanksgiving holiday, and it was a good move for all the family—except me. I would sit on the front steps and cry—for Ronnie and all our good neighbors left in Lemon Grove. Ken and Bobbye Caudill had a son a little older than Donnie, and they became friends. Roy and Theo had two little girls a little younger than Marlana, and they played together. Getting “over it” was a long process for me. You really never do get over the loss of a child. The day still does not pass, even after nearly forty-six years, that I do not think of Ronnie.

Ken is gone now, but Bobbye still lives in the house next door in Spring Valley. Both of them were , and Bobbye still is, very good friends. Roy and Theo built another house across the way, and still are very dear friends. They are reliable people and still check on us since I came down with cancer in late 2000.

We had been foster parents to babies the county would put up for adoption (or sometimes return to their parents) while living in Lemon Grove. We decided It might help Donnie if we took a boy about his age, They brought us Donald Eugene Young, two years younger than our Donnie. What confusion! Two Dons or Donnies. Don Young was one of the greatest gifts we could have asked for, given our history of losing Ronnie. The boys became like real brothers. They still are today. Don came down this year from his home in the Bay Area to visit for two weeks. He is such a pleasure to us. Both Dons are grandfathers now—Don Young is 58 and Don Duncan is 60. Don Young has two beautiful daughters—Lisa and Cyndy. Lisa has a daughter and two sons. Cyndy has not married yet. Don Duncan also has two lovely daughters—Desha and Maleea. Desha has not married yet, But Maleea has a son, Ryan (3) and another due in August.

Marlana has been married three times and has a son, Shea Martin(34) and Genee Martin(32). Genee has a son and a daughter, Frederick Maton Martin and Julia Martin.

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