ROWENA EARNEST dead at 100 (Shutterstock).
Our world lost a gentle soul last month after over a 100-year run. She passed peacefully in hersleep at the assisted living home she had been in for three years.
Rowena and her husband Harold “Bud” moved into a new house in Garden Grove in 1955. They raised three sons and a daughter in their home on Daniel Avenue with a neighborhood teeming with playmates.
Rowena was an active member of the PTA, a scout leader and very involved in her church atSt. Callistus. After the kids were all in school, she started selling World Book Encyclopediasand Childcraft. Her earliest memories included reading Nancy Drew books up in a walnut tree.
She was always encouraging her kids to read; they were told to look it up on a regular basis. She loved to garden and always maintained a yard full of flowers. She was an excellent seamstress and made most of her and her daughter’s clothes. She was also fond of needlework. Her favorite activity was getting the family together.
After retiring from sales, she became a docent at the Bowers Museum. Learning and sharing fulfilled a lifelong dream to teach. She also volunteered for the Santa Ana Canyon Historical Society at the Peralta adobe and Yorba Cemetery in Yorba Linda. She was very proud of being a fifth generation Californian from a very large family.
Her husband Bud passed in 1997 after a 50-year marriage; she lost her youngest son Tom to cancer in 2012. She is survived by Joel, Jim and Mary Ann, her grandchildren Laura, Taylor, Matthew, Kyle, Logan, Kevin, Kelly, Keaton, Erik and Jonathan and great grandchildren Paige,Ambrose, Reese, Decker, Kohen and Ester. She will be missed by networks of friends, cousins, nieces and nephews.
Rowena’s service will be Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 10 a.m. Christ Cathedral’s Chapel in the Sky 13280 Chapman Ave. Garden Grove, CA 92840. Please enter at Gate 5 and park in lot 5. Look for the tall building with a cross at the top.