Gilbert P. Best

Gilbert P. Best, was born to Mildred Bernice Best and Howard Gilbert Best in San Diego, California on July 27, 1931. He died on March 23, 2025 at Canyonview Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, in Santa Clarita, California where he spent the last three years of his life. He was 93 years old. Gilbert graduated from Hoover High School in San Diego, and after attending Grossmont College for one year, he joined the Army, which deployed him to Korea and to Japan.

As a child of the Great Depression, Gilbert’s earliest memory was going with his dad door to door selling oranges to help his family survive the economic austerity. Then when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted the WPA (Works Project Administration), his father, Howard Gilbert Best, found work as a steam pipe fitter. His father’s long work hours, left young Gilbert at home where he annoyed his grandmother, mother, and two older sisters. When he was old enough, they would send him to the grocery store to buy peace and quiet and a few necessities. He would always return with ice cream.

While not teasing his elder sisters and pranking their boyfriends on dates, Gibby, as he was called at home, spent weekends and summers at the beach with friends. Gib and buddies would ride the San Diego City trolley down to La Jolla Cove where they’d swim in the surf and look for his grandfather’s name, Perl Acton, in the sidewalk where the architectural feats of one of San Diego’s notable pioneering builders were memorialized. After graduating high school, Gilbert worked odd jobs at a gas station and did seasonal work at Yosemite National Park. During the Korean war years, rather than waiting to be drafted, he voluntarily joined the Army and was selected to serve in the Military Police Force.

Gilbert’s military service shaped who he would later become. In 1951, Gilbert was set to Boot Camp at Camp Roberts in San Luis Obispo County, CA where he remembered feeling bone-chilling cold for the first time. As a guardsman of the 289th Military Police Company, Gil was initially sent to Korea and was assigned to a base 5 kilometers from the front lines and was tasked with guarding the main road that led to the fighting zone. It was so cold on the night watches, that he and the other MPs would warm themselves by burning worn tires, oil, gas, refuse and any other combustible substances that could be used as fuel. After attending leadership school and being promoted to Corporal, he was dispatched to Japan where he was charged with leading one of the Army’s first integrated units. One of his closest comrades during that assignment was a black serviceman named Barthalomew. His service concluded with his being stationed at the US Army Deseret Chemical Depot in Toole County Utah.

In February1954, Gilbert was honorably discharged after three years of service and returned to California as an eligible bachelor. He lived out his bachelor days in Manhattan Beach where he and his friends shared a house on the strand. His expanded horizons after serving abroad made him a firm believer in DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) especially when it came to dating women. He had Korean and Japanese girlfriends, and dated an aristocratic Mexican citizen of Spanish decent, as well as a Mormon woman from Utah (but not at the same time).

However, he ultimately chose an Oklahoma farm girl and school teacher with whom to settle down. He met my mother at Hollywood Presbyterian Church at a Single Adult Retreat despite

my mother’s reluctance towards going and another woman vying for his attention. My parents were married in 1965. In April 2025, they would have been married 60 years.

Gilbert and Nelva bought their first house in Garden Grove, CA where their first child, Julie, was born. Shortly thereafter, Gil, a Sales Manager for the Pacific Bell Telephone Company, was transferred to the San Francisco headquarters where his early childhood experience of being the only boy among his grandmother, mother, and two sisters prepared him for his new dispatch of supervising an all-woman workforce. Mom recalls that Gil, while returning home on public transit, would often stop to buy her flowers—whether a spontaneous expression of love, or reassurances of fidelity amidst his throng of women subordinates, or sympathy for a street vendor eking out a living, we can only wonder. They resided in Walnut Creek where their son, Brian, was born, and where they shared their young parenthood and play dates with several other couples with young children.

Gilbert was transferred to Los Angeles in 1970 and despite mom’s protests of moving to that “God forsaken place,” they bought a home near Newhall in a newly developed Valencia neighborhood, just months ahead of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. Although my parents survived two major geological earthquakes in their home—the Sylmar earthquake and the Northridge earthquake in 1995, it was an “earthquake” of another kind that rattled our lives as a family. In 1976, Gilbert was forced to retired on medical disability, complications of “chemical sensitivities” and mental health challenges, now understood as complications of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder resulting from toxic exposure along with the hypervigilance required of him during his military guard duty.

Not all took too kindly to Gilbert’s penchant for order and being told to stay in line. During the height of the 1970’s recession, Gilbert came home with a black eye after he got into an altercation with a man at a gas station who had tried to cut the line of cars queuing up to refuel, effects from the OPEC Energy crisis. He held the line—and his sense of humor despite the shiner—remarking, “You should have seen the other guy!” The hardest job by far, for Gilbert however, was keeping his family in order, especially as Mom earned the lion’s share of the family income while working as a Jr. High School teacher and counselor for the William S. Hart School District, and as Julie and Brian developed their independence when they were less appreciative of his unsolicited advice.

As a family man, Gilbert was entertainment director to his children and tour guide to out of state family and friends on top of his primary role of managing the household while mom was at work. After Brian was born, Mom stayed home while Dad took his mother-in-law, and young, frilly-dressed toddler to a petting zoo, where a goat peed on her patten leather shoes. Dad seamlessly stepped in for mom who calmed her two-year-old fury. For Brian’s birthday one year, he took son and his friends to the Spaghetti “Magic” Castle. Gilbert was the real magician on that trip—purposely making the car backfire or “fart” all the way to the restaurant to the glee of the adolescent boys. Gil cheered Brian at his basketball and soccer games, and supported Julie at her band and jazz competitions—even volunteering for Fruitcake Chairman for the Hart High Regiment fundraiser, of which she relished reminding him--especially when she was mad at him. He’d accompany the family to church on occasion, especially if his kids were participating in the services. Yet these more memorable roles were extracurricular to his regular household duties as designated grocery shopper, dedicated dish washer, and active shuttle driver for the family.

Gil was known for his intellectual curiosity, for being an avid reader and skilled conversationalist on many topics—especially politics—and for relishing a debate on most subjects. Throughout his mid-years he had many ventures—antique dealing, real estate aspirations, and a start-up vitamin and supplement business, but most of all he was regular on the dog-walking circuit as a loyal and committed dog owner to Sadie and Sheba, mother’s only real competition for his affections. He tolerated the cats too for the most part, especially Caesar who was granted an exception to his canine loyalties.

His own early experience of selling oranges to get by and later struggles of finding purpose after a forced early retirement made him particularly empathetic to beleaguered hustlers or to other struggling humans who were trying to make it in this world. He befriended drifters and would offer handyman jobs to those working side-hustles to make ends meet just as he had with his own father. One Christmas, when mom was visiting her family in Texas, a foreign student enrolled at Cal Arts came to the door hawking his paintings to earn enough money to stay in hotels during Winter break. Dad was so worried about him having a place to stay for the night, that despite his frugality, he bought two! He told me to pick out a painting for my mother, and then one for me as our Christmas presents from him that year, which to be clear, had more to do with his concern for the struggling artist than it did for our Christmas revelry.

Dad has now left us. His lasting anniversary present to mom is a rose garden that he planted for her so he’d never have to buy flowers again. In his absence, we have roses, paintings, and memories of a man who stood firm and held his ground in spite of the rough terrain he had to navigate. Gil was a true beach boy, a proud Californian, a firm guardsman, a faithful husband, a protective father, and a compassionate human. Gibby, Gib, Gilbert, Gil, Dad, or Pops, as he was called, will be missed by those who knew him and by those who loved him.

Gilbert is preceded in death by his parents, two elder sisters and brothers-in law, Jack and Connie Wolford, and Ralph and Beverly Kulk. He is survived by his wife, Nelva Hebard Best, and two adult children, Julie Christine Best, and Brian Howard Best, along with many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to any of the following charities in his honor: To Headstrong, an organization that serves former military vets and their families dealing with PTSD; to Best Friends Animal Society, a no-kill rescue organization that rehomes and fosters animals in crisis; and to the Los Angeles Mission which is dedicated to providing food and shelter to the destitute and homeless.