Photo by Zen Page 20 Previous Page Next Page David [Spaulding] came back to Pasadena in January, 1918, enrolling at U.S.C. He met Isal Akey shortly after this and during his courting days he became healthy by walking the six miles to her home and back to his dorm room at P. C. (Pasadena College) in an evening. He also was scoutmaster of a Boy Scout Troop, which included Isal’s brother, Vernon, destined to die during a hike of Pasadena College students in 1920. . . . In 1918 Father [Albert Starr Spaulding] sold the Allen Avenue home and took his family to Navalencia, where he planned to build a town. In the spring of [1919], the flu epidemic was rampant. Mother Pearl nursed her family through this dread disease, finally becoming ill herself. David was in medical school at U.S.C. in the fall of 1918 and in the Army Reserve. He went north to visit the family. Mother clung to him---could hardly let him go. This was the last time he saw her alive. Mother passed away in March, 1919. The doctor had been summoned but arrived too late. I was not quite three years old---I do not  remember her. They tell me I cried and asked the doctor not to spank “my mama,” as he was trying to get her to breathe. Just before she expired, she said, “I’m dying.” Mother married at the age of twenty-one, lovingly caring for six step-children and having four of her own by the time she was thirty years of age. Father had everything planned, believing he would pass away first, being so much older than his Pearl . . . But God alone knows are appointed time to die. Louise and Eleanor . . . Pasadena