Donald Caldwell Chadwick

Don was curious about everything from the age of two. His mother told of trying to keep up with him as he explored. Elementary school was very hard for Don—so much sitting—but he stuck it out and did his best.

At the age of ten, Don found out about “The Knothole Gang.” The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was sponsoring a way to get more kids to attend their games. Don joined the club, so he got to see major league games for free. First, he rode the trolley to St. Louis from the suburbs of Webster Groves. Thus, he became an avid baseball fan for the rest of has life, shifting his loyalty in 1958 to the Los Angeles Dodgers, shortly after the team moved to California.

Don’s other love was singing and listening to music. He was in the glee club in high school, performing for local schools and churches.

Another passion for Don was tennis, which he practiced by the hour, playing in tournaments during both high school and college.

Don graduated from a liberal arts college in Fulton, Missouri named Westminster College. It was small, but had a highly dedicated faculty. Don liked college very much and felt at home there. He again was in the men’s choral group, which performed at other schools all over southern Missouri and Kansas. He also played basketball, with his height (6’2”) as a great advantage.

After graduation in 1940, Don decided to use his math major by applying to Curtiss Wright in St. Louis, which was an airplane fabricator. When he got this job, he felt he had a very rosy future.

Don and Mary Frances DeFlorin met in 1941 and were married in 1942. Then along came the WWII draft, so Don enlisted in the navy to help his country.

In 1943, Don became a devoted father of a baby girl named Judith—but from the first day she was always Judy. Don left for basic training at Fort Scuyler in New York,

The Navy decided to make a radar engineer of Don, so he went to Princeton next for intensive training for four to five months. He decided Mary and Judy should come and stay in Princeton because he didn’t like missing out on his baby’s milestones. Don hunted up historic locales they could visit in his time off from school.

Next, the Navy sent Don to MIT for further training. He and his young family loved Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Charles River that ran through it. Then, Don was sent to San Diego, California in 1944, stationed on North Island. Radar training began in flights, which made for exciting days for Don, as that was his area of expertise.

Four months later, Whidbey Island (in Washington state) was the next stopover, from which Don was sent to the Aleutians and had some flights over Japan.

Don chose to stay in the Naval Reserves after the war, so he attended classes and other training for another twenty years.

There was very little work in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri, so Don did sales, and then he took a job at Emerson Electric, where his math skills came in handy. At this time, a second girl was born, named Donna.

Don decided to apply to Convair in San Diego, to get away from the hard winters in St. Louis, securing a good job. He moved the family to La Jolla, which then was a beautiful village and artists’ colony. Don worked for Convair (which later became General Dynamics) until 1953, when he was transferred to the company’s Pomona division.

In Pomona, which was then a nice city, Don and Mary got involved in the girls’ school, the PTA, and their church, as well as Girl Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. Then they found out they were going to have baby number three, who turned out to be another girl named Janet (1957). Two years later, baby number four arrived, named Diane.

The big aerospace layoff struck in 1970 for Don, as his chosen livelihood in Southern California was on the wane. Don rebounded by shifting his career path to insurance. He loved not having a boss and enjoyed meeting new people—making many friends among clients and agents. He and Mary went on many trips as sales awards. He stayed in the insurance business until he was over eighty years old.

After a nine-year semi-retirement in bucolic Rancho Bernardo, Don and Mary moved back north to Ontario, California, where part of their family already resided. All who knew his gentle spirit and quiet kindness will miss Don.