Alma Hartman; Lifelong County Resident

Lifelong Ventura County resident Alma Hartman of Ventura died Monday at a local care center after a lengthy illness. She was 90.

Hartman was born Jan. 9, 1907, in Santa Paula, where she attended school. She worked at a local meatpacking plant and for the municipal water company in Ventura.

In 1946, Hartman received a commendation from President Truman for spotting and reporting to authorities a Japanese Zero flying the north end of Ventura Avenue, family members said.

Many ranchers in the Canada Larga area of Ventura were enlisted as volunteer lookouts during World War II and the Hartman ranch was one of the lookout posts, said Hartman’s grandson, Albert Orr of Ojai.

“They were afraid the Japanese were going to attack the California coast. She was a spotter and there was a ridge top where she sat,” Orr said.

The plane Hartman saw was not on the attack. Rather, it was a captured Zero flown by an American pilot on a mission to keep the spotters alert, Orr said.

But her sighting was enough to prompt a letter from the president.

Hartman was a member of Casa de la Rosa women’s club, a group of ranch women who met at a house near Canada Larga Road.

The daughter of a blacksmith, Hartman was a proficient hunter, always able to get her limit of quail and dove, and she knew how to cook them, Orr said.

Hartman was preceded in death by her husband of 58 years, rancher Ralph Hartman, in January 1985. Their only child, Carolyn Louise, died in May of that year.

Hartman is survived by four grandchildren and twin great-granddaughters.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Friday at the Joseph P. Reardon Funeral Chapel, Ventura. A private interment is scheduled.