Family Has Five Generations of Ernies

Inscribing Father’s Day cards is easy for the Carrasco family of Oxnard.

The tradition started 83 years ago with the first Ernest Carrasco, who named his firstborn son Ernest. The pattern continues four generations later, with his 8-month-old great-great-grandson, “Baby Ernie.”

Because of the age differences in the various Ernie Carrascos, telling them apart isn’t a problem, of course. It’s when someone says, “Hey, Ernie,” and five heads turn, when there’s trouble.

To avoid confusion, the family invented nicknames. “Grandpa Ernie,” the octogenarian, moved to Oxnard from Texas in 1947 with his wife, Margaret, whom he married in 1940. Having earlier started a trucking company in Texas, he began another upon arriving west, Carrasco Trucking in Oxnard, which he ran for 30 years before retiring.

Grandpa Ernie’s son, who is known as “Junior” or “Big Ernie,” is 58.

“My husband and his brother kept on with Carrasco Trucking, but we went into the furniture end of it,” said Dolores Carrasco, Big Ernie’s wife. “We called it Carrasco Freightlines, and we were in business until 1992. My husband got cancer, so he had to retire.”

Together they had five children--none of whom became involved in the trucking business.

“The whole business stopped because we went into education,” Big Ernie jokes. His son is 38 and goes by the name “Little Ernie,” “even though he’s 6-foot-3 and taller than both his grandpa and his dad,” Dolores Carrasco said.

Ernie No. 3 went off to the University of Utah on a football scholarship in 1979. His wife, Lily, also received a scholarship to Utah. Little Ernie soon swapped football for baseball and left Utah to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom he played for six years before his career was ended by an injured arm.

Fourteen years later, he returned to college, received his degree and now teaches at Channel Islands High School, which his oldest son Ern, or Ernesto, will soon complete.

The 17-year-old is set to graduate June 25 and plans to attend the University of San Diego, where he’ll play football.

“To top that off, he’s majoring in engineering,” said his grandfather, Big Ernie. “He’s got a lot of brains.”

As for Ernie No. 5, the infant, the Carrascos have already let him know he comes from an athletic family.

“You should see all the toys he has,” Dolores said. “A little ball, a little bat, a little club. We’re preparing him.”