Column: Mom, at 94, continues to give straight answers to life’s questions

My mother, Betty Jean (Thomlinson) Carnett, turned 94 a couple of weeks ago.

She’s had a wonderful life.

“I never thought I’d live this long,” she confessed at her birthday party.

She’s outlived all of her relatives and her high school chums.

“I’m not sure why I’m still here,” she added. “I guess the Lord has something for me to do.”

He does indeed. She’s been matriarch of our family for decades.

Mom was born in Coffeyville, Kan., on March 31, 1924, but has long considered Costa Mesa her home. She was a Costa Mesan for nearly 60 years before moving to Huntington Beach after my father’s death in 2008.

I’m now the Carnett with the longest tenure in the City of the Arts: 66 years.

“Costa Mesa will always remain my home,” Mom says.

Situated on the Verdigris River in southeastern Kansas, Coffeyville was established as a trading post in 1869. It’s a half-mile from the Oklahoma border, and 75 miles north of Tulsa.

My great-grandfather, William B. Ragsdale, worked for the railroad for 40 years and put on public display his ringing Irish tenor every Sunday morning at Coffeyville’s First Christian Church.

But my grandfather, William M. Thomlinson, who was from Arkansas and never developed an affection for Coffeyville, dreamed of leaving the Jayhawk State for California. He finally convinced my grandmother in 1935 to do just that. They never regretted it.

Mom joined them in Santa Monica the following year, at the age of 12. When she left Coffeyville, it had a population of 17,000. Today it’s barely half that.

During the six years before she finished high school, Mom returned to Kansas a couple of times for extended stays. But, when she graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1942, she’d become fully Californian.

My grandfather, an executive chef, worked for a time at Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café, a well-known roadhouse in Pacific Palisades. He then became assistant chef at Earl Carroll’s Hollywood Nightclub at Sunset and Vine.

In 1942, he was recruited to Orange County to the newly established Santa Ana Army Air Base. The base trained 150,000 aviation cadets — including my father — during the war.

My grandfather was executive chef of the base’s 11 mess halls. He purchased a Balboa Island home in 1943. The home, consisting of a two-bedroom house and a second-story apartment over the garage, set him back $7,500.

My mom worked as secretary to a cadet mess officer, Maj. Philip Caldwell. My father, Bill Carnett, met my mom at the base in 1943; they were married in 1944; and I was born just before the war ended in 1945.

Mom has always been my champion. I recall in the fifth grade at Lindbergh Elementary School my teacher harshly berating me in front of the class for some insignificant infraction. I told Mom. She was so upset that she had a tête-à-tête with the teacher the next day. If I were to receive a tongue-lashing, Mom made very clear, she’d administer it (and, boy, did she over the years). No classroom histrionics.

A decade later, when I was a soldier stationed in Korea, I was at best a sporadic letter-writer home. One morning at formation my company commander bellowed to the 300 GIs assembled in front of our barracks: “Carnett, write your mother. Now!”

I was mortified.

It seems Mom sent the CO a “Memo From Betty.” It got his attention, mine and everyone else’s in Headquarters Company.

I retired from Orange Coast College in 2008 after 37 years as director of community relations. The college hosted a farewell reception in my honor.

Mom, who was 84 at the time, was there.

Margaret Gratton, the college’s president from 1996 to 2002, was on hand and I introduced her to Mom.

“I’m so glad that you met your future husband at the air base on this very property,” Margaret said graciously. “Because of your existential tie to the land, Jim became our ‘Mr. OCC.’

“There is even conjecture that he may have been conceived on this property. Thank you so much.”

“It was my pleasure,” Mom deadpanned.

Expect always a straight answer from Mom.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.