Wisecracking Sunshine Gals Keep Things Jumping at Garden Grove Seniors Center

“She’s pretty old,” Edythe Hogg wisecracked about her band partner as she pounded away at the piano. “So she has to count to three before she can stand up.”

But Marretta Martin, who plays a 65-year-old saxophone as well as other instruments, had one for Hogg.

“She never stops talking,” said Martin, 84, of Garden Grove.

Answered Hogg, 81: “She always talks about my wrinkles, but everyone has them.”

The Sunshine Gals, as they call themselves, have played together for nine years. They are really good buddies who keep things moving with their peppy and sometimes nostalgic music Thursday mornings at the Garden Grove senior citizen center.

“Playing piano is my only interest in life,” said Hogg, of Garden Grove, who once played in a band with her late husband, Jack (Curly) Hogg, a well-known ukulele player in Hawaii.

It wasn’t always that way.

“I sang opera,” said Hogg, who claims she can play 300 songs without sheet music. “And I studied in Europe for three years, but I really didn’t like it.”

What she does like is her “honky-tonk Texas-style” piano playing and sometimes getting up with the microphone and belting out a song.

“The real fun is to see the old people get up and dance. It does them good,” she said.

Hogg said she won’t marry again. “Guys who get married old just want a foot warmer, cook and housekeeper. I don’t like to cook. To me a TV dinner is real special.”

Like her partner, Martin played in a band with her late husband, Ray Martin, a drummer.

“But he didn’t care for my style,” said Martin, who has two sons, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. “I wanted to play old tunes the way I wanted to play them, and he wanted everything right in time for dancing.”

Now, Martin just wants to play her saxophone, clarinet, banjo and ukulele for old folks.

“They seem so happy when they sing and dance,” said Martin, who said she’ll be 85 in April “if I live that long.”

Hogg is the real singer of the group, although Martin said she will sing--”if everyone else is singing and no one can hear me. My voice is squeaky.”

Besides the senior citizen center, the Sunshine Gals also volunteer to play old-time tunes in convalescent hospitals.

“They’re all old folks, and they like to hear those old songs,” Martin said.

Think what you want of the coming Friday the 13th, it’s going to be good day for Loleta Held of Costa Mesa, who will be celebrating her 100th birthday then. (In 1887, Nov. 13 fell on a Sunday.)

“It certainly isn’t going to be an unlucky day,” said her daughter, Doris V. Brown, 78. who lives with her mom. “We’re going to hold an open house party for her the following day.” They plan to recount her mother’s life, “especially her record as a pioneer educator.”

After graduating from high school but before earning her teaching credentials in college, Held got her first teaching job at age 17. Times were different then.

The theme was “It Was a Very Good Year,” and it certainly was for Diane Davidson of Costa Mesa, Steve Stanton of Huntington Beach and Susan Jones of Santa Ana, who modeled at a fashion show attended by 1,000 people at the Anaheim Marriott.

The charity event was presented by Weight Watchers, and each of three models had slimmed down significantly.

Davidson had lost 93 pounds, Stanton 95 and Jones 105.

Shirley J. Caron found work as a waitress at Disneyland after leaving Massachusetts in 1958 with her husband, Alphee Caron. It was her first step to a career as a librarian.

Through the years, she became a mother, a high school graduate at age 34, a library clerk, attended college and after a series of advancements, became branch manager of the Sunkist Library in Anaheim.

She is the first person to become a branch manager in Anaheim without holding a master’s degree in library science.

A retirement party will be held for her Thursday at Sunkist Library, seemingly to signal the end of her working career.

Not for the 53-year-old Caron, though.

She’s opening Caron’s Classic Catering in the city of Orange and has named herself president.

Acknowledgments--Carole Ann Wall of Huntington Beach, already named Citizen of the Year in that community, was selected California Woman of the Year in Chambers of Commerce. She’s immediate past president of the local chamber’s Women’s Division.