Grace Leverne Aldridge

Grace passed away in Roseville, Saturday February 21, 2026 at 101 ½ years old. She was a long time Auburn resident and lived the last 14 years in Rocklin and Roseville. Grace is survived by daughters Mary, Cyndi and son Steve, grandchildren Blake, Brittany and Michelle and great grandchildren Bailey and Remi.

Grace was born in Texas in 1924. She grew up in East Texas with her mother, two brothers and two sisters. After graduating high school, Grace joined her sister Mary in Fort Worth Texas. There she worked in an auto parts store where she met her future husband, Virgil Aldridge.

Virgil and Grace moved to Auburn in 1970. When Virgil retired in 1980 he bought and restored several antique cars and trucks. Virgil and Grace were very active members of the Auburn A’s and Auburn Model T Clubs. They especially enjoyed driving their antique automobiles in holiday parades and on outings with club members.

Grace was primarily a homemaker. She loved working in her flower garden and spending time with her children, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. Even though Grace lived 101 ½ years, she remained very engaged in life up to her final days. We are so fortunate to have had her with us for such a long time. She will be very greatly missed.

Mama's Memories (Mom's Eulogy)

In 2007, Grace, began writing her life story that she called “Mama’s Memories”. This is an abbreviated version of her story.

SOMERVILLE

I was born in Somerville, TX in 1924. My parents were Norman and Alice Edwards. I had an older brother named Leon, two older sisters, Virginia and Mary, and a younger brother named Jack. I was the third daughter born in a row, and Daddy said he named me “Grace” because he was hoping that goodness, gracious I would be the last One!

When I was about a year old, we moved to Eagle Lake, TX. Daddy worked for a railroad company as the station agent. In 1927, Daddy bought a Model T touring car. One day, my sister Mary and I were playing in the car and somehow Mary started it, and it went around in circles. Daddy had to come from the railroad station and stop it.

In 1929, we moved back to Somerville. A year later, I began school when I was 6 years old.

My teacher thought I was just visiting school. Apparently I was so small she thought I was only 4 years old. At home, we caught fireflies and put them in jars to watch them blink on and off, then we let them go before we went inside to go to bed.

In 1929 the stock market crashed. The amount of freight hauled by the railroads was reduced by 50%, and people could not afford trips on trains. The railroads began to lay off employees. Daddy lost his job in the winter of 1930 and could not find work anywhere.

BEN WHEELER

By summer of 1931, money problems became worse. Mother took Mary, Jack, and I to Ben Wheeler, Texas where Mom grew up. Leon and Virginia stayed with Dad in Somerville. We lived with grandmother Wilson, and Aunt Teenie. The house was on the original homestead of 60 acres. We had a garden and fruit trees. They canned vegetables, fruit, and grew potatoes. We also had milk cows, egg laying chickens, and pork from pigs.

Six months later, Daddy and Virginia moved to Ben Wheeler. My oldest brother Leon stayed in Somerville with Grandmother Edwards. We then moved to Pine Bluff which was about three miles from Grandmother Wilson’s home. Dad rented a portion of Mr. Ed Davidson’s farm for ½ shares. Mr. Davidson grew vegetables, especially tomatoes. The vegetables were hauled by truck to Dallas and sold to markets and canneries. Virginia, Mary and I went to school at Pine Bluff.

Daddy tried to farm. His first crop of vegetables went well, especially the tomatoes, and we had money to live through the fall and winter. The recession deepened, and in 1933, Daddy and Mr. Davidson loaded a truck with tomatoes, and took them to the market in Dallas. The canneries and merchants were not buying so Daddy and Mr. Davidson drove to a neighborhood and just gave the tomatoes away. Since Daddy could not make money farming, he went back to Grandma Edward’s home in Somerville, and mom and us kids moved back to Grandma Wilson’s home in Ben Wheeler.

Grandmother Wilson had heat stroke, and died in 1936. Mother’s three sisters let us live in Grandma’s house rent free for many years. We continued to garden, raise pigs, milk cows, and sell the milk as Grandmother Wilson had done. While living there, we went to school in Ben Wheeler, but we had to go into nearby Van, Texas for high school. My sister Mary graduated from Van High School in 1939 and went to business school in Fort Worth. I graduated from Van High School in 1942.

FORT WORTH

After graduation I also went to Fort Worth and lived with Mary. I found a job in a Western Auto Parts store where I met Virgil Aldridge from St. Paul, Minnesota. He was a mechanic who was working for his uncle’s trucking company, Virgil’s uncle’s company was a subcontractor working on a defense job, building a Glider Base near Lake Worth, TX. That is why he went to the auto parts store in Fort Worth where we met. I was 19 years old when Virgil and I were married in Fort Worth on July 1, 1944.

CLARKSBURG

We moved the next day after our wedding to Clarksburg, West Virginia. In Clarksburg, Virgil and his brother Stan both worked for their uncle. Virgil repaired the trucks and Stan did the administrative work. In 1945, Virgil’s uncle got an offer from someone to buy his fleet of dump trucks. Virgil and Stan felt it would be best to sell and that is what their uncle did.

ST. PAUL

After the sale, Virgil and I move to St. Paul, Minnesota. Stan moved to St. Paul later. Virgil got a job in a can factory and we rented a small apartment near Como Park. Then, in 1946, Virgil and Stan started a small Squirt bottling company in Waconia, Minnesota. They also had a full line of flavored soda pops. In the meantime, I became pregnant. My doctor was in St. Paul, so as my due date arrived, I went to St. Paul and stayed with friends. Mary was born in 1946 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

WACONIA

We lived in Waconia for four years. We got a Pekingese puppy that we called Susie Q. Susie Q was very protective of Mary. She would get mad at me if I scolded Mary and she would sit next to her and give me dirty looks. Unfortunately, we could not make enough money from the bottling plant to pay our bills. Virgil’s uncle bought out our share and Virgil went back to construction work. We bought a 27 foot long Masonite, one bedroom trailer (no bathroom) and he worked that summer in Minnesota.

DENVER

In July 1951, we went to Denver where Virgil got a defense plant job constructing the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Mary started first grade there and would have had to walk to school with older boys and girls, so I learned to drive so I could take her to school. The job finished in a couple of years.

ORACLE

In 1953, we moved to Oracle, Arizona where Virgil worked at San Manuel, building a copper mine and smelter. We bought a better mobile home there. It was a Prairie Schooner, it was larger (32 feet long) and it had a bathroom!

PALISADES

In 1955, we moved to Star Valley, Idaho and Virgil worked as a mechanic at the Palisades Dam project. Virgil worked there until Fall when it got too cold to compact the dirt in the earthen dam, so Virgil was laid off.

SIERRA VISTA

We packed up the trailer and moved to Tucson AZ but Virgil could not find work so we moved to Sierra Vista, AZ where he got a job at a U.S. Airbase. When the weather warmed up we went back to the Palisades Dam job and Mary finished 5th grade at the school where she started 5th grade.

AMBOY

In 1957, Virgil worked building a dam on the Lewis River, in Amboy, Washington. Mary went to 6th grade there. Virgil did not like the weather, his boss, or his coworkers, so in the spring of 1958, we traded our 32ft, 1-bedroom trailer for a 42ft, 2-bedroom trailer, and after the job shut down because of a labor problem, we moved to Utah.

OREM

We went to Promontory Point on the Great Salt Lake, to lay a new railroad across the lake. Shortly after we arrived there was a problem with the fill dirt so we moved to Orem, Utah. Virgil didn’t get a job in Orem, but he soon got a call from the Operating Engineers Union, asking him to go to the Flaming Gorge Dam project in Dutch John, Utah.

FLAMING GORGE

We moved our trailer there in the fall of 1958. Mary had to take a bus 25 miles to the nearest town to go to Jr. high school. I was pregnant again, and the nearest doctor was in Rock Springs, Wyoming. He was concerned that it had been 12 years since Mary was born. He suggested that I move into town about three weeks before my due date. We rented a tourist cabin for me, and Mary stayed with Virgil in Dutch John to go to school. They came to see me on weekends. Cyndi was born in Rock Springs in 1959, then we all stayed at Dutch John until Cyndi was 14 months old.

LANDER

In 1960, a job opened up near Lander, Wyoming. We would live in a city for a change! An iron ore mine and smelter were being built. It could probably be a permanent job. Virgil went to work on the construction of the mine and smelter, and we moved the mobile home to a rented lot in Lander. Soon, I found a lot for sale with a building on it. It was near the high school and Mary was ready for high school then. So, we bought the lot, added our mobile home to the building, and Mary started high school. She soon began to make friends. She liked it there. I was thrilled to be in town. Cyndi loved the sidewalks.

When the smelter was built and was to go into operation, Virgil applied for a job, but the new job would pay only about ¾ as much as he could make in construction, so instead, he went to work in the Gas Hills open pit uranium mines. The drive was 70 miles one way over gravel road, and he had to stay all week and only come home on weekends. He tried it for several months but got so unhappy that one weekend when he was home, I said why don’t you call Bill Giroux (his ex-master mechanic) and talk to him about how things were going back in Dutch John, Utah.

DUTCH JOHN

Bill wanted Virgil to come back to Dutch John, which was about 150 miles from Lander, WY. Virgil did go back and worked for the contractor who installed equipment on the top of the dam to open and close the spillway. Mary, Cyndi and I stayed in Lander until Mary graduated in June 1964. That’s when Virgil came back from Dutch John and we sold the property along with the trailer, and packed everything in Virgil’s truck. From Lander, we moved to Los Banos, CA but we took a trip first to visit friends and family in Waconia and St. Paul, MN, then on to Kansas City to see my sister Virginia and on to Ben Wheeler, TX to see my mother and brothers and sisters. We then went down to Palacios, TX on the coast to see my father. I had not seen him in many years. He was really good with his hands, and learned how to make macramé. That made him very good at mending fishing nets which is how he made his living.

LOS BANOS

When we got to Los Banos, CA we rented a 3-bedroom house for $75.00 a month. Virgil went to work on the San Luis Dam for Evan White his master mechanic friend from Dutch John. Virgil worked there for two years. He liked the job but it was wrapping up. Virgil heard that Bill Giroux was in Richmond, CA and was a superintendent on the job of laying the BART (Bay Area Regional Transit) underwater tube from Oakland to San Francisco. We went to see him. Bill asked Virgil to come and work for him, Virgil said he would have to ask his boss Evan. Evan told Virgil it would be ok if he could also get a job on the BART tube site, when the San Luis Dam was done. So that is what happened.

EL SOBRANTE

In 1966, we rented a house in El Sobrante, CA. Mary was away San Jose State College. Steve was born in 1967 in the Bay Area at San Pablo, CA. The next big job was to be the Auburn Dam on the American River near Auburn, California. We made trips to the Auburn area. It was pretty and we started looking for a house or lot.

We purchased a ¾ acre lot on Joerger Road. We paid $1,500 cash for the lot. Then we looked for a house. We found one that needed to be moved because of the construction of Garfield Avenue in Sacramento County. The contractor had to cut the house into three pieces and moved it, and the small one car garage, to the lot we bought north of Auburn CA. In the summer of 1970, the house had been put back together enough for me, Cyndi, and Steve, to move to Auburn. Cyndi was in 6th grade at Rock Creek School. Mary was going to San Jose State College.

The cutting of the Auburn Dam keyways began, and the coffer dam and diversion tunnels were being built. But Virgil did not have a job on the Dam yet. He worked on the Highway 49 widening in Auburn for two years, then got laid off when it was complete. Virgil’s friend and former boss Evan White told him about a job in the Bay Area, so Virgil rented an apartment in Belmont, CA. We would go down to Belmont and stay one weekend, then Virgil would come up to Auburn for the following weekend.

Steve started kindergarten at Rock Creek School in 1972. Cyndi was in 7th grade at E.V. Cain School in Auburn. Mary graduated from San Jose State College in 1970. In 1975, a 5.7 earthquake near Oroville, CA caused concerns about a possible earthquake in Auburn that could damage the Auburn Dam and cause it to fail. The dam was redesigned from a thin arch to thick arch which would increase the cost from $400 million to $2.2 billion. Since it was a federally funded project, Congress stopped funding it and that is why it was never built. After Virgil finished work in the Bay Area he moved back to Auburn and got local mechanic jobs. Virgil retired in 1980, never having worked on the Auburn Dam.

In his 20 years of retirement, Virgil restored several antique cars and we enjoyed driving them in parades and on local tours. We joined the Auburn A’s and Auburn Model T clubs. I became historian of the Model A ford Club for many years.

This is the end of Mama’s Memories

In 2001 Virgil died at age 85. Grace stayed in her home until 2012 when she fell and broke her hip. After surgery and rehab she moved to a board and care home in Roseville, and the family rented out her home in Auburn. She was very happy at the board and care home and lived there for seven years until the owners retired and a new owner took over.

At that point the family moved her to a board and care in Rocklin, where she was also very happy, but the owner sold the house. In 2020, she moved again to a board and care in Roseville. She was very happy there and enjoyed having her own room and her own things. She loved to read, watch Hallmark movies, listen to music, play a tile game called Rummikub, and visit with her family. Her life was very full.