Olive Sanborn Rowley

In Olive's youth, her family moved from San Francisco to Templeton, CA, where she met Cecelia Bierer, who became her lifelong best friend. Olive returned to Templeton for long visits throughout her lifetime, and it became a place of significance to both her children and grandchildren. 

She met and married Warren Rowley in Los Angeles. The couple settled in South Pasadena to raise their two girls, who were born eight years apart. She was an original member of the Calvary Presbyterian Church founded in 1925 on Fremont Avenue. There were strains in her marriage, one of which was Warren's strict money management. He gave Olive a set allowance each week for household and child expenses, which did not vary regardless of circumstances. The girls were each allotted just two school uniforms. 

After Warren's death in 1937, Olive managed his rental properties and the finances. Eventually, she moved in with her sister, Caroline, but the two did not get along. Her daughters then invited her to split time between their two homes -- Edith's in San Marino and Margaret's on the Westside. Kingdon Kerr enclosed the patio on Troon Avenue to create a makeshift bedroom for Olive, who shared the bathroom in grandson Bob's room. The awkwardness of this arrangement prompted the Kerr family's move to Cliffwood in 1955, where Olive had her own room and bathroom.  In the early years, Olive would spend two weeks at Edith's and two at Margaret's, traveling between them on the Red Car public transport system that connected much of Los Angeles. In later years, she spent winters with Edith in the San Gabriel Valley, and summers on the cooler Westside with the Kerrs.  

... remembers hearing stories about Olive. Her grandmother, Margaret, used to say,  "I think my mother was a coke addict." Margaret and Olive used to take the Red Car to Downtown LA to go shopping and Olive stopped at every corner drugstore for a Coca-Cola. "You know, there was real cocaine in it back in those days," Margaret would hoot. Marcelle's father, Tom Greene, used to entertain his children with an imitation of Olive, whom he had observed first-hand during his many visits to the Kerrs on Cliffwood. He would stoop like an old lady and open the refrigerator door and just stare into it, then say in an old lady voice, "Nope, nothing there," and close the door and walk away.