Classmates
Rosalie Kelly and Sharon Anderson

Volume 1 March 2010 Number 4 Rosalie Kelly: Quilts for Kids with Cancer
Her full name was Rosalie Ann Kelly, but we all knew her simply as Rosalie. She became Rosalie Kelly Gonzalez when she married her husband, Vic, in 1963.
As she puts it, “I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,” in Old Town National City. She was raised by her mom in the home of her aunt and grew up with her six cousins as her “family.” Rosie, as she prefers to be called, went to Kimball Elementary, then to NCJHS and on to Sweetwater. Because she was held back in the second grade she carried some educational baggage all the way through high school.
At Sweetwater her counselors put her in what were then politely known as “Special Ed” classes because they had decided she could not learn. She chuckles as she tells the story without anger or rancor of “test day” when she and her classmates would be put in a room and be given the test. “Here’s the test. Take it, and when you are done, go over there and check your answers.” Then the teacher would leave the room.
As a consequence, Rosie says, not much learning got done in those classes. But Rosie was lucky. She had two teachers, Mr. Doyle and Mr. Deddeh, who believed in her and consistently encouraged her by telling her, “Rosalie, you can do better than that.”
Rosie believed Doyle and Deddeh and not the counselors who told her she should become a telephone operator after high school because she had nimble fingers. A succession of early jobs led to employment by the City of San Diego as a clerk typist. Her supervisor told her flat out, “If you want to do this job you have to learn some things,” and learn she did. She learned enough that she became supervisor of seventeen employees in Code Compliance, and was in charge of the “water cops.”
After twenty years she decided to retire from the City and to try her hand at running her own business. She and her husband, Vic, opened a quilting supply shop in the garage of their home in La Mesa. It was open one day a week, Saturday, from 10 am to 3 pm.
In the first year, because of good pricing, strong customer service, and a real eye for business, Rosie sold $75,000 worth of fabric and other quilting supplies. The garage got smaller and smaller as the business grew.
After “fessing up” to the sales rep of a supplier that she didn’t have a storefront address, she showed him the garage. It was stuffed to the gills with row after row and shelf after shelf of fabric and supplies. The rep was astounded and went back to his home office in Arizona to tell the story of a little lady in San Diego who was doing a land office business out of her garage.
The home office called Rosie soon after and invited Rosie and her husband, Vic, to fly to Arizona to talk business. “They were going to pay me to fly to Arizona to meet with them! I really thought I had arrived,” says Rosie. The upshot of the meeting was the supplier telling Rosie, “If you pay your bills we don’t care where you do your business. We want you to succeed and we will help you.”
With that encouragement Rosie and her husband went looking for a real live storefront. They found one at 7151 El Cajon Boulevard. It was only 900 square feet, but that was a lot more than her garage, so Rosie was off and running.
Vic built all the shelves. He built the checkout counter to fit Rosie’s height, which Rosie says is challenged. Later he built a second counter so that Rosie’s taller employees didn’t go home with a back ache every night from bending over all day.
The 900 square feet soon became too small. Rosie added another, then another and another until she finally reached a total of nine storefronts linked together and 8100 square feet of quilting supplies.
She did it by focusing on customer service and prices for her goods that would make a profit but be affordable to her customers who made quilts for fun or for profit. She decided to open her store early in the day, and to open every day so that customers who worked would be able to buy their supplies any day of the week. And she did it with an unfailing smile and generous heart.
Here’s where the story takes a turn. One day Rosie went to an all day event at which she met a representative from the American Cancer Society, (ACS). The person from the ACS began talking about children with cancer. “Wait a minute,” Rosie said, “What do you mean kids with cancer?” Yes, indeed, she was told, there are many children diagnosed with and being treated for cancer. Rosie’s immediate response was, “Can we make quilts for those kids?” Her offer was gladly accepted and Rosie went into high gear.
She and her employees and friends made more than fifty quilts that first year. When they realized that the need was greater than their ability to do it on their own, Rosie put out the word and asked for volunteers.
Remember the 1989 movie, “The Field of Dreams?” Remember, “Build it and they will come?” Rosie asked for volunteers and they came. From across the nation they offered their help. That was more than twelve years ago.
Since then Rosie and her crew of volunteers have met every second Sunday of the month in the classroom at Rosie’s Calico Cupboard to work on quilts for children attending the ACS Camp Reach for the Sky. Each year they make and donate more than 350 quilts to children with cancer, and to the siblings of those children with cancer.
Camp Reach for the Sky is divided into sessions for very young children, older siblings of children with cancer, and teenagers with cancer. The session for the little kids is in Balboa Park, the other two sessions are at Camp Marston in Julian, California.
Click here to watch a six minute video on YouTube as Rosie describes her Camp Reach for the Sky volunteers and their selfless work making quilts for kids with cancer.
“Each year we take our quilts up to camp and we spread them out all over the table. Then the children pick out their own quilt.” The quilts are meant to give the children something to hold onto, to clutch close to themselves in hard times, and to cuddle up in better times.
More than one mother of a child who has succumbed to cancer has come to Rosie to tell her, “I wrap myself in that quilt and I can still smell my child.” A powerful message, and one that sustains Rosie and her volunteers.
Rosie was adamant about one thing, “I tell my volunteers to give from the heart. Do it without any expectation of recognition because you won’t get any. The real gift is one that comes from the heart with no expectation of anything more than knowing that you have given it.”
Will you ever see Rosie on Oprah? Probably not, but that doesn’t matter. As long as she can pay her bills, and as long as it continues to be something she sees is worthwhile, Rosie is going to keep making her quilts for children with cancer, and for women with cancer.
Most recently Rosie and her crew have begun to make “receiving blankets” for women who have their baby at the Birthing Center in San Diego. Some are so without resources that they have their baby at the Birthing Center, then leave with the infant wrapped in newspaper to keep it warm. Rosie and her volunteers want to do something to correct that even though they realize how bleak a future those mothers and their children have before them.
Where does Rosie get her volunteers? She laughes as she shrugs her shoulders and says, “From God.” They just come.
If you would like to join Rosie and her volunteers write to her at rozgonzalez@cox.net As she says, “Cuz I’m very rarely at the shop unless I’m teaching classes or doing Camp Reach for the Sky. ...You can list my home/office number if you wish – 619-698-1832. I don’t mind at all.”
Rosie will be glad to hear from you. Then look for Rosie at the reunion. She will be there, because there really is a Rosie!
Sharon Anderson: Canine
Agility Trainer
A hush fell over the audience as Sharon (formerly Anderson) Howard stepped into the arena, placed her dog Sheila on a “Sit, stay!” and backed away. At the nearly undetectable signal from Sharon, Sheila flew into action—jumping lithely over two jumps, crawling through a cloth tunnel, running half-way up a see-saw and waiting for it to tip down, then dashing off to the next obstacle. The crowd began cheering as Sheila neared the finish line. Jumping into Sharon’s arms, Sheila has turned in yet another great performance at the Agility Trials.
“I retired four years ago from San Diego Data Processing Corporation,” Sharon says, “where I worked in Administration. I worked at Rohr before that, when it still was Rohr.”
“The first year I retired, I did all the usual things—clean house, cook, and all that stuff. Then I said to myself I’m not going to spend the rest of my life doing this. So I went out to Rohr Park one Sunday, and they were holding an Agility Competition. As I watched it, I thought to myself my three little Yorkies could do that.”
“So I started with them, and they did pretty good. One in particular did very well and worked his way up to the “Excellent” class. But he’s very small, and so he couldn’t make the time.” So Sharon bought Sheila, a black and white Border Collie, as a puppy and started to train her. Now it’s a serious hobby. “It’s the only thing I do since I retired,” she says.
“She’s an extremely smart Border collie. A lot of them are wild, but everybody loves Sheila. I started her out at the age of seven months at Dog Quest in Escondido with Anne Platt (play the attached video), and then I transferred to Debby Wheeler at Martini Ranch.” Sheila is three years old now, and is in “Excellent B” class, which is the top class a dog in agility can achieve. We have ribbons all over the place here.”
It’s been so much fun for Sharon that now she has acquired another Border collie, Keela IV or “Kee.”
Her schedule is tight. They run at Ann’s once a week on Monday nights—Kee has a class at 6:00 and Sheila has a class at 7:00. Then on Tuesday nights, Kee has a class at 6:00 and Sheila has a class at 7:00. Wednesday mornings she goes to Dog Quest where Sheila has a 9:00 class. Then every-other Thursday both Kee and Sheila have a private lesson with Debby Wheeler at Martini Ranch.
“An observer might think coaching your dog through these obstacle courses is easy, but they would be very wrong,” Sharon says. “For example when working with Sheila, if you just twitch in the wrong direction with your shoulder, and you don’t even realize you do it, she’ll turn. You’ve got to know where to stand, when to tell her ‘left’ or ‘right’, you’ve got to keep your arms down at the right time, and your feet in the right place, or she might veer to the left or the right.
“And you have to watch which direction your feet are planted too, because if your feet are planted in one direction and your body is going the other, the dog might look at your feet and take the wrong obstacle. It’s a lot of fun, and you meet a lot of nice people.”
It’s also great exercise. Fit and trim in her blue jeans, Sharon has arterial disease her left leg. But, since she has been running with the dogs, she says it doesn’t hurt anymore. Her doctors told her to keep it up, and don’t ever stop.
She travels almost every weekend between San Diego and Los Angeles. If there’s not a trial at Rohr Park, then she runs the dogs in Los Angeles. She drives up on a Friday morning and return on Sunday.
“Little Kee is just starting out,” says Sharon. “On his first weekend of trials, he started out “Novice” and he titled in his first three runs, so he’s running in ‘Open’ class now. In his first trial, just went out there and blew it away and won first place each time. Here’s how it works—the dog has to have three clean runs in ‘Jumpers’ and/or ‘Standards’ before they can move to the next class. So going from Novice to Open is like going from First Grade to Twelfth Grade and skipping everything in between.”
When asked about her Yorkies, Sharon shared some humorous stories about them.
“My little Johnny is six years old, and has achieved “Excellent B.” But I haven’t been running him because he can’t complete the course in the prescribed amount of time.
“Angie was in Novice and is very fast, but she’s the kind of dog that wants to visit the judge, then visit the timekeeper, and she wants to sniff the grass, then she’ll come back and do three or four obstacles. Then she’s off again to say ‘Hi’ to everybody.
“Joey worked his way up to “Open” class and then decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. He would walk around the course as if to say, “I’m not going to do it anymore and you can’t make me!”
So she doesn’t run the little guys any more.
Reminiscing about the secretarial classes we took in high school, Sharon says she used those skills a lot when she first began working. Of all those secretarial courses we took, the most important one at the time was Shorthand, because if you knew shorthand you had a much better job.
Sharon has been married to Ron Howard from Imperial Beach all these years, and has raised two sons, who blessed her with four granddaughters, two great-grandsons, and one great-granddaughter .
During her working years (and before dogs), Sharon and Ron owned a nice motorhome. When her six-week vacations rolled around, they would take off and go to Washington around the peninsula, down the coast of Oregon, or to Nevada or Reno. They did that until she got her dogs. She says Ron wasn’t too keen to travel with five dogs.
“I’m looking forward to going to the reunion and seeing everybody I went to school with, and am hoping I get to see Melanie Jones. I think it will be fun.”
Story by Linda Henderson

Issue #4 of the Class of ’60 Reunion Newsletter is Ready for Download

Click here to download Issue #4 of the Reunion Newsletter.

Inside you’ll find stories about two more of our classmates, Rosalie Kelly Gonzalez and Sharon Anderson Howard.

Read about Rosalie’s quilt supply business, and how she uses it to help children with cancer. Watch a six minute movie as Rosie explains how volunteers make and give away 350 quilts a year to children with cancer.

Then read how Sharon agility trains her dogs for competition, and watch a short movie of her dog as it races around the course responding to hand signals, body language and spoken commands.

Move on to an important message from Girl Scout Audrey about Operation Thin Mint, and how you can help.

Check out the Reunion Committee’s list of No Host activities you can look forward to in San Diego during your Reunion visit.

Don’t forget to take a long, hard look at the list of our “missing” classmates. We’ve found a lot of them, but we need your help now, more than ever, to find the rest.

Then, after all is said and done, tell us what stories you would like to see in the newsletters remaining before the Reunion dinner on August 14, 2010!

Anthony Mournian, editor
Class.of.1960.NL@gmail.com

SuHi Class of 1960 Reunion Newsletter Issue #1