Doreene Phyllis Bosco

Doreene Phyllis Bosco September 05, 1931 – May 03, 2019 Services: St. Brigid Catholic Church on June 25, 2019 at 11:00 AM. 4735 Cass St., San Diego, CA 92109. Reception to follow. Burial at Miramar National Cemetery the same day at 2:30 PM. 5795 Nobel Dr., San Diego, CA 92122 Doreene Phyllis Bosco: A Celebration of Life In celebration of my mother, Doreene Bosco’s life, I wrote a little bit about what makes her special. My mother was a good role model for her four children. She taught us many lessons on how to live a happy, successful, faith-filled life. She showed us how to live out our passions. My mother valued hospitality, life-long learning, positivity, family, and faith. My mother provided hospitality to her family, her neighbors, and travelers from other countries. Our home was the gathering point for all the neighborhood children. Mother was the neighborhood Mom. All the kids felt comfortable sharing their troubles and joys with her. She was always a good listener and encourager. Everyone was made welcome and there was always room for one more. Our friends were made welcome and, even now, they reminisce about the “good old days on Chiloquin Court”. My mother made her grandchild, Sara, from age 2-4, welcome when we came to live with my family, and again she made her great-grandchild, Bert, welcome when he came to live with her and my father from age 2 – 4 years old despite the fact that they were retired. Mom was a pro at “potty training” and “bedtime story hour”. She even recorded her voice reading some of my daughter’s favorite stories on cassette tapes so she could listen to them at night when she was falling asleep. My mother especially loved to wrap up a “little one” and show them “The Night Sky” and to tell them, in a whisper, about all the wonders of all the stars. When some of my father’s Japanese work collaborators visited his work site in Sunnyvale, they were made welcome at our home for a day of “ping-pong diplomacy” and a wonderful dinner of my mother’s Beef Broccoli. I thought this was funny as this is a Chinese Food dish! They commented on how much they appreciated Mom’s hospitality. One of the gentlemen, Kenji Ogimoto, became a life-long family friend. My mother had a love of learning in all forms. She helped her children with their homework and was a whiz at helping create a school report complete with a tri-fold display board! She helped her children learn how to keep a tidy home. She shared with us her love of gardening and we all participated in nurturing the family vegetable garden and mini orchard. We all had “sun-kissed faces”. Then it was off to the kitchen for canning! We made home-made jams, jellies, and syrups from the produce of our gardens. I am still not sure if it was more fun growing the fruit, canning the jam, or eating the jam spread on fresh San Francisco Sour Dough bread! Yummy! We especially loved apricots and enjoyed them fresh, canned, as jam, jelly, and dried. Mother supported me through Girl Scouts from first-day Brownies “Looking into the Magic Mirror” to participating in my dream of Senior Scouting in a Horsebackriding Troup. We camped, both through scouting and as a family. We camped in locations both high and low, hot and cold. Some favorites included New Brighton Beach, Big Basin, and Yosemite. When camping, the baby would get a bath, in a rubber dishpan, on the picnic table, in the morning sunlight. After breakfast, we would leash up the dog, either Poochie or later Bear Cub and take a nice long walk to look at nature. We were taught to love nature and to respect all God’s creation. My mother loved to travel with her family and with her beloved husband, Jerry. She loved to meet new people. She traveled across the United States, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Japan. She loved to say, she never met a stranger. She taught her children to respect and value other people and their cultures. Now her children have caught “the travel bug” and enjoy traveling! My mother went back to work once her children were in grammar school. She worked as a School Librarian at a school in Sunnyvale. She loved to read to “her children” and always made the stories “come alive”! She was even able to reach out to the tough kids and help them learn a love of books and reading. Mother encouraged her children in a love of music and encouraged and supported us in learning to play the clarinet, guitar, trumpet, French horn, violin, cello, flute, and piano. Mother also loved art and our parents took us to many museums and art galleries. We, her kids, even attended an art class she taught during summer school and I especially enjoyed the work with clay and paper mache. That summer I made a piece that looked like a dragon and was painted green with flowers which was dubbed, “The Flower Dragon”. We still love art and music today thanks to the ground-work laid by mother. My mother taught her children how to live a happy, positive life. She liked to say she was, “happy, happy, happy!” She disliked discord and was a natural “peace maker” at heart. She didn’t believe in dwelling on people’s differences, but instead believed in moving on past the point of contention. My mother like to say, “Can’t we just put a band-aid on it?”! She went through life with a smile on her face that wasn’t phony, but genuine. My mother loved life! She even went for a thrilling ride on her grandson, Joey’s Ducati motorcycle at age 75! My mother went to school in San Francisco to become a dental hygienist and then married Jerry, “the love of her life”. My dad’s pet name for Mom was “Sweetie”. She showed Dad how much she loved him by making sure he wore clean, pressed clothes to his job at Lockheed, she made him breakfast each morning at 6:30 AM, and sent him off for his day with a kiss. She was ready to greet him when he arrived home each day at 4:30 PM with the newspaper and a salad prepared for him to enjoy. Mom and Dad dearly wanted a family. With time they had their “four much loved children”. I am the oldest, John is the son, Carolyn is the middle-artistic one, and Marilyn is the baby of the family. We each had a special niche in the family and Mother made us each feel special. She spent one-on-one time with each of us. Growing up in Sunnyvale, we were treated to a happy, healthy life-style. Mom went to a Gloria Marshall’s women’s exercise studio and always worked hard to maintain a healthy figure. My mother was a wonderful cook and she always had a delicious, family dinner on the table at five-o’clock each evening. Her specialties included fried round steak with milk gravy and pot roast with roasted vegetables. As I got older I was often working as a home care nurse or a high tech I.V. nurse on-call. I would call Mother when I was driving to or from a patient’s home or skilled nursing facility late at night. We would share our day and she would help me to stay alert as I drove. She always acted happy that I had thought to call her, despite the late hour. I really treasured those times! Most of all, Mother treasured her Catholic Faith. My mother loved to tell me that I was born in Mercy Hospital in front of a class of nursing students. She told of the hushed gasp as I was born. She told me that, since I was premature, she and my father insisted that Sister baptize me. Of course I later had a big family baptism to celebrate my entrance into the Catholic Faith, but we knew the special one that made me a child of God. One of my earliest memories was sitting on a kneeler at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in a frilly dress with a bonnet, lacy white bobby socks, and white patent leather shoes listening to the mass in Latin. She would tell me that Father was consecrating the bread and wine to be Jesus, just for us. Each child in our family has been baptized Catholic and taught their prayers by my mother. She would whisper and make it a special time, just her and the child. As we got to be school age, Saturday night was time to go to mass, with dinner at Andy’s Chinese food in Sunnyvale to follow. It was a special family time. Mother also had a life-long love of Holy Mary and sometimes, late at night, we would listen to the rosary on the radio and pray along… with each of the children having their own rosary. She encouraged her children to participate in the life of the church with me in the Folk Group and Carolyn in the Youth Group. All of us had no doubt that God loves us and Holy Mary watches over us. And now it is time for Mom to reap her well-deserved reward and to be re-united with her savior, Jesus. I am only sad as I will miss her and her gentle love and encouragement. Doreene Bosco, age 87, passed away on May 3, 2019 after a struggle with dementia and a short time after suffering a massive stroke.