Emmy Lou Berryman was receiving a steady stream of well-wishers from her wheelchair at the church social hall. I joined them in line and took the seat next to her when it came open. Her son Steve had already pointed me out.
“Are you going to write this up?” Berryman asked impishly after taking my hand.
I allowed that it was possible.
Berryman had turned 100 on July 20. Four days later, on Saturday, about 75 friends and relations attended her birthday party at Ontario’s Westminster Presbyterian Church. A condition for entry was vaccination against coronavirus.
She’s been vaccinated herself. Does she recommend it? “Absolutely, I do,” she said. “I’m not afraid.” She added: “A friend can’t come over to the house because she’s in that group of people who don’t believe in it. We talk on the phone.”
Berryman didn’t make it to 100 by taking foolish chances.
I’m not in the habit of attending birthday parties for centenarians, and what with longer lifespans, making it to 100 isn’t really even news anymore. But this was in the nature of a social call.
Steve’s a friend, and I’d met both his parents. Ed, a retired Kaiser Steel metallurgist, was president of the alumni association of Chaffey High, where he’d graduated in 1940. We met when Chaffey was starting a drive to replace the auditorium seats and I was writing about it.
By the time of his death in 2014, at age 94, I considered him, among his other accomplishments, to be Ontario’s leading exponent of the string tie.
I wondered if Emmy Lou would remember me, since I’d run into her less often, but she’s still plenty sharp. She knew me from the newspaper but also volunteered that we’d met via John Harrelson.
True. I was at the Press restaurant and bar in Claremont for a performance one night by Harrelson, a growling blues musician, when I was bemused to see the elder Berrymans, both around 90, in the audience. Had they taken a wrong turn on their way to a Montovani concert?
Harrelson was a classmate and friend of Steve’s, and the Berrymans had always wanted to see Harrelson perform, with the Press being their best and most civilized chance.
As Emmy Lou recalled it, Harrelson had told her: “You wouldn’t want to go to most of the places I play.”
I’d shown up for Saturday’s party more to be polite than anything else, but I did stick a reporter notebook in my back pocket just in case. Once Berryman started talking — and she’s a champion talker and storyteller — I started taking notes.
She still lives in the house she and Ed built in 1951, cooks for herself, attends church when she can get a ride and visits her hairdresser every Friday. The former dishwater blonde has achieved her lifelong wish: “I always thought if I lived to be old, I’d want to have white hair.”
Her life hasn’t been remarkable, but anyone 100 years old has lived through some history. Her parents brought her to Fontana from Kansas as a toddler in 1923 — can you imagine?
“There’s a photo of my grandfather laying the cornerstone for Fontana Community Church, which since it was the only church was nondenominational,” Steve said. “They roasted a whole pig for the occasion.”
Her father went to work for the Fontana Farms Co. under A.B. Miller, who is credited with founding Fontana in 1913. The townsite was so small, a postcard addressed simply to “Emmy Lou, Fontana, Calif.” in the late 1920s was delivered promptly.
In 1938, Emmy Lou Williams, her maiden name, was named Queen of Fontana for the community’s silver anniversary (even if Fontana didn’t become a city until 1952).
“I didn’t want to be the queen. My mother said, ‘Be a good sport.’ Everyone was in the spirit,” Berryman recalled. “It was the 25th anniversary. Mr. Miller was there. In fact he crowned me.”
There can’t be a lot of people left who had personal contact with A.B. Miller, who died in 1941. The postscript is that in 2013, for the community’s 75th anniversary, Berryman rode in the parade again, as did rocker and native son Sammy Hagar.
1938 was a big year for her in another and more lasting way. She and Ed had their first date that spring and went all out, dining at the Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine. Pretty fancy for a couple of Chaffey High kids.
World War II intervened, as did other romantic complications, but they wed in 1947, had two boys, Dave and Steve, and were married 66 years.
They also had a large extended family of sorts: neighbor kids and other youngsters who gravitated to the Berryman house. “My parents made it safe for them,” Steve said. A plate of cookies was always out as a welcome.
Nancy La Nier, who was at Saturday’s event, was a classmate of Steve’s and a frequent visitor to the Berryman house who remains a close friend of Emmy Lou’s. “I’ve known her since I was a baby,” said La Nier, who’s now 72.
Betsy Totten came over to say hello, telling Berryman she was like a mother to her after her own mother died.
“That’s why I always put a $20 bill in your birthday card,” Berryman said.
“You once put a $20 bill in my husband’s card,” Totten replied. “He took it to Vegas and ran up $400-plus on it.”
I relinquished my seat and walked a few steps with Totten. She told me concerning Berryman’s 100th: “I put a $20 bill in her birthday card.”
brIEfly
According to an article in the Desert Oracle journal exploring lore about Native American supernatural entities in the Mojave Desert, one such creature haunted Mickey Thompson’s Fontana Dragway. Spectators believed the “Speedway Monster” was a “wild man” native to the nearby foothills. The Abominable Fontanan? Opened in 1955, the drag strip closed in 1972 following what Desert Oracle’s Ken Layne says were “a series of gruesome fatalities” — caused by drivers, though, not monsters.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, three gruesome futilities. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
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At 100, Ontario’s Emmy Lou Berryman remains lively, loquacious, loved - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
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