Les Eastburg at 100 years will lead the 57th Almond Blossom Festival Parade Saturday as the grand marshal.

The parade will begin on Stockton Avenue at 1 p.m. and head in a westerly direction down Main Street through the historic downtown to Vera Avenue where it will turn left and continue to Fourth Street where it will turn left again and end at the Ripon Community Center.

Born in his parent’s farmhouse on Walnut Avenue, name changed later to Mohler Road, in 1919.  He attended Ripon schools and graduated from Ripon High in 1937 being later turned down for military duty in World War II because of high blood pressure.

Les and his wife Margaret will be chauffeured in a four-door 1934 Ford with “suicide doors” in Saturday’s 57th Annual Almond Blossom Parade driven by Randy Heuvel who remembers racing go-carts as a teen with his son Art behind the Eastburg’s barn. 

Heuvel also recalls asking Eastburg, at the age of 95, to show him how to do some metal work on his lathe in the elder’s workshop.  Heuvel said Les couldn’t help but to do the job himself – being out of the house standing at the lathe for two hours – said he liked being outside, Heuvel said.

The Eastburgs had three children Elizabeth, Daniel and Art.  They all followed their own dreams with Elizabeth Cilker teaching second to fourth grades in Milpitas.  Daniel became an architectural engineer, and Art an electrical engineer – all graduates of Ripon High School.  Daniel lives in Hemet in Southern California and Art in Las Vegas.

Being a farmer’s kid, he has often been lauded for being “generous and kind and never involved in politics or any civic organizations.”  He was the Ways and Means chairman as well as the treasurer of the Bethany Covenant Church on West Main Street at Acadia Avenue for 20 years, located across the street from Ripon Elementary School. 

Daughter Elizabeth recalled this week that her dad was the consummate farmer every day before they had left for college: “up at 6:15 every morning, went out to the barn and onto his farm and came back into the house for dinner, back to work at 6 and came for the night from his barn at 9.”

She added that he loved his dogs and had several over his lifetime.  His special dog in his growing up years was “Spot” with a big brown spot on his lower back.

“We grew up amidst fruit trees and almonds, peaches, apricots, plums along with a number of horses,” she said.

Les and his first wife Margaret Larsen were together for 39 years until she passed away in 1982.  She was a legal secretary and they had met at Forkner College of Business in Stockton and married in 1942.  Currently, he is married to Margaret Weststeyn, wed in 1984.  She is an ICU and emergency room nurse. They met playing miniature golf with a seniors’ singles group. His total married life has spanned 73 years.

Les had shared a story of having his leg run over by his dad when he was 5-years-old in 1924.  As the story goes, he wanted to ride into town with his dad from their farm that faced onto West Ripon Road.  His dad said, no, but he added that he could jump on the running board, hold onto the door and ride up the dirt road where his dad would be making a right turn toward downtown Ripon and Les was expected to jump off.

Luckily the car had somewhat bald tires and the ground was soft and sandy as he jumped and fell under its wheels with his leg being run over.  His dad, hearing his son’s screams, backed up and in doing so ran over his leg a second time.  With limited medical care available in Ripon in 1929, he recovered at home under his mother’s tender, loving care.

“They didn’t go to the hospital for anything in those days,” daughter Liz noted.

He has continually taken care of his own 20 acres of almonds and those for other farmers in the area along with running the Eastburg Almond Huller for some 35 years, she added.  He also worked at Sharpe General Depot as a civilian employee before becoming an employee for Bank of America in Brentwood, a bookkeeper for Stockton Iron Works, a time keeper for a Japanese Relocation Center at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds in the World War II era and he became a journeyman welder after taking night classes realizing welders made more money than time keepers.

He then signed on as a welder with the Pollock Shipyards in Stockton having also having welding in a shop class at Ripon High School and working at Spreckels Sugar from 1937 to 1941 the year his dad Victor passed away.    

All his jobs were instrumental in educating him for his own farming business as a welder and bookkeeper. His daughter added, “He created and repaired all his own equipment.”

“I can remember him as a child sitting at the table at home with his big bookkeeping book for both business and family incomes and expenditures. Dad was not one who wanted praise or his name in the paper,” she said.

Les is a well-known customer at Schemper’s ACE Hardware Store in Ripon where he shops for parts and tools several times a week with everyone one working in the store recognizing his joyful demeanor on one of his many projects.

Retired Ripon High Math and English teacher Jim Tornell knew Eastburg for many years and said he was close to being considered a genius as he was able to think out the necessary elements to creating new tools for his farm production.  Tornell said Eastburg was not only a farmer but an electrician, welder and devoted member of the Covenant Church in downtown Ripon, adding that he knew his first wife, Margaret.

“He helped me remodel my house 25 years ago.  He was my electrician.  My Dad had recruited a couple more men from the church to help along with Les who has always has had his heart in the right place.  You see genius in everything he has created in his barn, Tornell said, who first had an old farm house on River Road where he wanted to set up an office in a dark canning basement.  Eastburg had to crawl under the house and through small holes to place the wiring despite a number of rats he ran into in the process – and there was light.”   

Les and Margaret have recently moved to a cottage at Bethany Home on West Main Street in Ripon. His family honored him with a birthday party on his actual birthday, January 6.

To contact Glenn Kahl, email gkahl@mantecabulletin.com.  

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