Post #567453 by lohphat on Fri, Dec 3, 2010 1:11 PM

Here you go:

My grandfather was personal friends with Jack LaLanne (yes, the fitness guru), and former CA Governor George Dukmejian who I think were at the service.

The funeral was aloha attire -- I was a pallbearer. It was a difficult time for me as I was headed overseas to live in Paris the week after he died. I said goodbye to him on his deathbed a day or two before he passed only to return in a few days to lay him to rest. I was already living in San Francisco and my life was upended already. I still really miss him. We used to have a ritual of having Sunday brunch with my dad at Johnny Rebs @ 4663 Long Beach Boulevard before I moved north to SF for work in late 1994 we were an expected party every week.

He was larger than life. He could recognize people he hadn't seen in 40 years by the back of their head.

BTW, the floating Christmas Trees lights around Belmont Shore and Naples were his idea and project to attract people to the area and brighten up the place. There's an archive piece from the LB Press Telegram documenting all this but it's in a family album someplace; I can't locate it online.

He lived on Claremont and later Santa Ana, his parents lived on Covina in a duplex before they moved in with our family when I was really young in Cypress. His brother Bud who lived down the street on Santa Ana St. just celebrated his 99th birthday last Sunday (Nov 28, 2010) and lives in Anaheim and is still pretty lucid. Bud was also a bartender at the Leilani.

[ Edited by: lohphat 2010-12-03 15:14 ]