Deanna Jo Kindrick

Deanna Jo Kindrick, neé Comstock, was born October 28, 1939 in San Jose, CA, and died February 14, 2025 in Auburn, CA. She is survived by her husband Milton Earl Kindrick, her son Joel Comstock Kindrick and his wife Rozy Lee Kindrick. She and Milton married on August 12, 1962 in Oakland, CA. She was a resident of Auburn for 54 years and attended the Auburn Seventh-day Adventist church. She graduated from Golden Gate Academy in Oakland, CA, in 1957, and received her Associate’s degree in secretarial arts from Pacific Union College in Angwin, CA, in 1959. She worked as a secretary for both the United States Department of Agriculture in Berkeley, CA, for 10 years and for Adventist Health in Roseville, CA, for 30 years.

A Eulogy for My Mom, Deanna Jo Comstock Kindrick

By Joel Kindrick

My mom, Deanna Jo Comstock Kindrick was the kindest, most caring and most elegant person that I have ever known. My mom constantly thought of others. She was constantly sending her friends, co-workers, church members and relatives cards of encouragement. If she knew your birthday, you could expect a card from her. She taught me the meaning of a thank you card. She always put me, her extended family and her friends above herself. She was giving and thoughtful. Until just a few years ago, when her memory started failing, she never missed a birthday celebration for me or Rozy. And Christmas was always an event. In fact, every holiday was an event growing up. Whether it was Easter or 4th of July or Halloween or Thanksgiving or New Year’s or, especially, Christmas, the house was in festive array.

Although a self-understood introvert, her melancholy tendencies always gave her the will to decorate and entertain for church, school and work events. When a party was needed to be hosted and maintained, it was my mom who was called upon to decorate, and find performers and often rehearse with and star as entertainment. I can recall for years, once a month at the church, my mom would host an evening social that was attended by so many church members in our multi-purpose room.

And she had a love for God that made me know that it is a relationship that counts and not obedience out of fear for the creator of the universe. Psalms was her favorite book in the Bible. When I was going through trying times and fighting with depression, my mom sent me a small paperback that was just the book of Psalms and she told me to read one of the chapters every day. And she was right. She was always right.

My mom was my best friend. Being an only child, I guess I could’ve rebelled and missed out on a marvelous relationship, or I could’ve chosen what I did and that was to have her as my friend. When I was a pre-teen, she would often talk about us being friends, not just mother and son. Yes, I loved my mom. I never wanted to disappoint her. I told her everything. Well, almost everything. My biggest fear with my mom was that I’d do something to make her disappointed and that was a bigger incentive to do what I knew was right than to see her disappointed. Except when I was little and she’d have to pull the car over to sternly talk to me, I can’t recall her ever being angry with me. She loved me and I loved her.

And it is because of this special relationship with her that I had, and it is because of this special relationship that I know that she had with God, that I know that I will see her again in heaven. And, yes, if I ever had an incentive to yearn for Jesus’s coming back soon, it is now.

Deanna Jo Comstock was born in San Jose, CA, on October 28, 1939. She was the second child to her parents, Josephine Carter Comstock and Howard Freeman Comstock. Her elder brother Darryl had been born eight years before. Deanna Jo attended the Seventh-day Adventist church school in Richmond, CA. She then attended Golden Gate Academy in Oakland, CA, graduating as secretary of her class in 1957. Interestingly, 30 years later, I would also graduate as secretary of my class.

After graduation, she went to Pacific Union College and received a two-year secretarial certification (what we would now call an AA degree). Coming back to her home in Richmond, she found a job working for the United States Department of Agriculture in Berkeley, CA.

She often found herself frequenting the Regal gas station in Richmond where a handsome young man, three months her junior, pumped gas. She’d flirt with him until he finally asked her out. They went skating. A literal few weeks later, the man who would become my father, Milton Earl Kindrick, asked her to marry him. She declined, saying that she’d only marry somebody who was a Seventh-day Adventist. As my dad had already been on a quest to find some meaning to life, and as he had already narrowed his world religion search down to Roman Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism, he agreed to take Bible studies. Two years later, after my dad was baptized, my parents were married on August 12, 1962 in Oakland.

She continued to work for the USDA until 1968 when they had their first and only child, me. It was at this time, now that my dad had a full-time job as a teacher, that she decided it was best to stay home and raise me. She would be by my side for the next 16 years.

Yard saleing was a favorite of ours. Every Friday we’d get the Auburn Journal to see what yard sales were happening in the area. I couldn’t wait to get out of school and take our five dollars to see what trinkets we could buy. We also spent hours coloring-high-class coloring books. Not crayon colors, but fancy coloring books where colored pens were needed. She’d read to me. Between her and her mom, my grandma, who lived next door to us, they both instilled a love of the English language, providing me with a plethora of vocabulary and idiomatic phrases.

At the beginning of my junior year of high school my mom went back to work. She worked in the communications department at Adventist Health Systems/West, later just Adventist Health, in Roseville, CA. Many years later, she transferred to the Risk Management Department. Here she kept up with technology and made many friends.

After she retired, she did what she liked to do best—stay home, keep it maintained and continue to cheer up those she cared about by sending them special notes. She turned my old room into a museum of family heirlooms. She focused once again on her family, and even though I had moved 400 miles away, Rozy and I were always her top priority.

When her mental illness took over a few years ago, I was ashamed for her because I knew that my elegant, genteel, considerate mom would be so embarrassed with her new behavior, yet I knew it was a disease that she had no control over. She was in God’s hands and in the hands of her wonderful caretakers, Marv, Pat and Sean, of whom I so wish had known my real mom. But these three have been absolute saviors and were placed in our lives at the right time. And I have no doubt that it was all in God’s infinite timing.

My mom died on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2025.

I love you, Mom, and I can’t wait to see you again. I know you’d want me to carry on and live my life, and continue to be a positive influence to all I meet, just as you did during your many years among us.