Haven't written for awhile. I've been working on the Find A Grave website...looking for family and making some memorials for family too. We took a trip to Greenwood in San Diego where several of my family members are. Val Dotolo was my Uncle Tiny. He was born on Valentine's Day and named Valentine. Uncle Tiny was my mother's half brother. When he was young he used to tear up his sisters stuff and they got mad at him. He joined the Merchant Marine when he was sixteen along with a school friend from Auburn. They were waiters and kitchen workers. They were on a ship in Dutch Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanize during WW2. On his last voyage he worked as a cook.
He was a lot of fun when we girls were young. There was six of us but usually only four or five were together. My sister and me and my cousins Joanne and Valerie lived in the same house the summer of 1949 with Uncle Tiny too. We were in Auburn Washington. Uncle Tiny used to let us girls tie him up on the lawn...he always got out of the ropes but finally we gave him a scare. It took him longer to get loose and after that he wouldn't let us tie him up anymore. He would walk us scruffy girls to the store and buy us soda pop. We had a pretty good summer there. At the end of summer our Mother brought us back to Lakeside California.
Years later when Uncle Tiny was married with three little boys he came down to our house. They stayed a while and then he got a job and they got their own place. It is funny how things work out. Uncle Tiny was a truck driver and he went to work for my Dad and Stepmom driving a dump truck. After awhile he went to work as a heavy equipment operator on a scraper. That is a big earth mover. When things got slow, Uncle Tiny went to work for another contractor. He was working on I-5 when he was bounced off his scraper and broke his jaw. The last time my mother and I saw him we were in the drug store in El Cajon and he was there telling us about what had happened and that he was going back to work in a week. My mother and Uncle Tiny had been on the outs for awhile and hadn't talked. They made up and talked for a hour or so. Soon after he went back to work he was again bounced off the scrapper and this time the rear wheel ran over him. He was 39 years old. His youngest son was born six months later.
My husband and I met when my husband came down to see his sister after Uncle Tiny was killed. She was Uncle Tiny's wife, Penny. It took over a year for Penny to loose everything and after we had our first child we took Uncle Tiny's youngest son to raise. Later we adopted him. The older boys went up to my Aunt Grace and her husband in Washington state.
Lots of years have gone by since then. It was nice to see his marker and to take the photo but sad too.
