Page 10 - Sanger Herald 1-10-19 E-edition

Lifestyles
SANGER HERALD • 2B • THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2019
The Dean & Jean Show premiered 70 years ago
Sanger
Editor’s note: This is part of a sporadic series of love stories about how couples met.
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
Jean and Dean Nicholson were perhaps one of the best known couples in Sanger for decades. His name has been attached to Sanger High’s main gym and he won five championships in basketball, seven in football and two in golf. But many say she was just as famous and no doubt just as influential.
Dean died in October 2016. The pair were married 68 years. “It would be 70 this June 13,” she said. That’s three days before her birthday, but apparently they never had a conflict worth mentioning.
Jean talked about how they met recently on a sunny winter day in her Sanger living room.
“He was the big man on campus,” she said.
Jean transferred the second semester of her third year in college from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln where she was a history/English major to get her teaching credential. Dean was enrolled at the Nebraska State Teachers College at Kearney, and she met him soon after she enrolled at the college.
“Dad was working for 10 cents an hour at the library, and she walked in,” said Tom Nicholson, their youngest child and one of the founders of the Sanger Athletic Hall of Fame. “And he said (to himself), ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’”
Jean said she didn’t notice him. At first.
“I was a bit younger,” she said going back to that moment in the Kearney college library. “I was new to the campus. It hit home. He wondered why I was there.”
He helped her with her books. They got to talking. And kept talking.
Dean didn’t ask her out right away. But she began to warm to him.
“It was slow moving,” Jean said of their courtship. “I think like it should be. We got to know each other. We enjoyed singing in the Kearney college choir.”
They went to a movie on their first real date. “I can’t remember it,” she said. She said since it was soon after World War II (Dean attended college on the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill) nobody had cars. So they walked. (Movies big about that time included “It Happened on Fifth Avenue,” Abbott and Costello’s “Buck Privates Come Home” and “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.”)
Dean had to pick her up for the date at her parents’
To get an item into the calendar, email details to nemethfeatures@gmail. com or call Mike or Sharon at 559-875-2511.
The Sanger Community Task Force meets at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 15 at Crosspointe Church, 2528 S. McCall Ave. Details, 559-250-6433.
Jean Nicholson photo
Jean and Dean Nicholson early in their early years not long after their first meeting in the college library.
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Jean Nicholson in her favorite chair talking to an old friend with Dean in the background.
They loaded all their worldly possessions into a one-axle trailer and headed west.
The rest of the story is one of raising kids, their own and many of Sanger’s. Tom said, “It was the Dean and Jean Show.”
And, to hear many speak of the era, it was.
The couple had three children. In addition to Tom, the youngest, there was Bob and Cindy, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2015. Jean’s parents moved out to California before Dean and Jean did to be closer to where Marion grew up in Valejo. They settled in St. Helena in Napa County but were known in Sanger. Popsi Taylor was heavily involved in Rotary and never missed a Sanger Rotary lunch when he was in town, Tom said.
Jean, who recently got hearing aids, said Dean would have appreciated them.
“He had a coach’s voice so, often, he would bellow,” Tom said.
Jean said she has had a wonderful life. “God has truly blessed me,” she said. “He blessed us as a couple, too. I grew up not knowing the all the horrors of war and all the good that came after. When I think about it, I’ve always been loved.
“Dean had to go through the war. I’m glad we made the journey over to England, France, Germany and Switzerland. Good for him. Good for me, too.”
Tom and his wife Di have moved from Down Under to spend time with Jean. “Who could be more blessed than having your family come back from Australia and take care of you, “ Jean said.
Tom, hearing this, said his dad often reminded his kids of his blessings and they often included his lovely wife.
“Dad felt he had married
mmendoza@girlscoutsccs. org.
Apache Football Boosters meets at 7 p.m. the first Tuesday of every month in the activity room in the administration building at Sanger High School. Details, Monica Gaucin 559-367-2175 or apachefbfundraising@ gmail.com.
Meetings by Friends of the Library take place every third Tuesday of the
the most beautiful girl in the world,” Tom said. “They were such a partnership.”
Jean stays in touch with a large array of people. On a recent afternoon, a friend called from Nebraska to catch up. Tom said his mom often sits in her favorite chair in the sunlight next to a big photo of Dean and talks to people from Sanger and across the globe.
She called Sanger one of the happiest places on earth. “Faces may change over the years, but there’s something about Sanger people,” she said. “That inspires you, cares for you. Cooperation helps us to grow. We’re in the breadbasket of the nation. We have everything. We have to love each other. We have our differences, but those could be ironed out.”
At one point, Jean and Dean thought to retire to their property in St. Helena. The two had spent nine summers operating a bed and breakfast, the Creekside Inn, starting in 1961. Dean retired from Sanger High in 1989 and continued teaching at Fresno City College until 2000.
But the lure of St. Helena couldn’t match Sanger. Jean said that’s where three generations of students had grown up and become friends of the family, the place their kids played and the place where passersby yell, “Hey Coach,” when they see Tom working in the yard of his parents home, thinking he’s his dad.
“We found our happy place,” Jean said.
The reporter can be contacted by email at nemethfeatures@gmail.com or by phone at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
month. They start at 6 p.m. at the Sanger Branch of the Fresno County Library, 1812 Seventh St. Details, Kent Sani 559-930-4306
Veterans of Foreign Wars Community Breakfast is from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Feb. 2 at the American Legion Hall, 1502 O St. Cost is $6. Cub Scout Pack 322 and Boy Scout Pack 322 will assist. The VFW breakfast is usually the first Saturday of the month.
house. “I told my mom I would wait upstairs,” she said of that fateful moment when the man she would ultimately marry met her parents for the first time. She described herself as “kind of nervous.”
But what was going through her head was not so much that they’d reject him. She worried about the practical. Dean at that time went by several names. In addition to his given name he was known as Skeet or Skeeter, a name his father, Howard, the postmaster in Superior, Neb., also had. But that also made him Little Skeet, or some derivative of the nickname.
The meeting with mom and dad, Lloyd “Popsi” Taylor and Marion went successfully.
“They were both happy,” Jean said of her parents’ reactions to Dean. “He was polite and thoughtful.”
He also began singing in her church choir. “He had a nice voice,” she said.
They married in 1948. In addition to being this nice guy who impressed his in-laws, Dean also had a deep love of sports. Basketball was his favorite,
The Blossom Bus, sponsored by the Sanger Chamber of Commerce, returns this year at 9 a.m. Feb. 23 and 24, starting at chamber offices, 1789 Jensen Ave. Suite B. Cost is $75 and includes mimosa breakfast, guided tour of the colorful Fresno County Blossom Trail, wine and
Tom said. But he also played tennis well enough to take home the state championship in doubles one year. And he played the tuba.
Dean played basketball during the war. He entered the Army in 1943, serving in France. He was discharged at the conflict’s end.
“In 90-something, we went to France and saw some of his foxholes,” Jean said. “We found a little hotel in a small village. People there had helped the Allies. And he actually saw the son of the owner (during the war). It was a good trip.”
Dean didn’t talk much about the war in the years following the conflict. But he did talk basketball. Tom said one regret he had was not taking up an offer to play professional ball. Tom brought out a framed letter from the Baltimore Bullets offering his father a spot on the team.
Dean and Jean graduated from Kearney in 1948 and worked in Aberdeen, S.D. for two years. Dean also worked in Superior, his Nebraska home town briefly. But in 1951, a
beer tasting and gourmet lunch. Details, 559-875-4575 or sangerchamber@gmail. com.
Youth Basketball registration is open. Practice started in December and games will be Friday night or Saturday morning. The program runs from Jan. 11 to Feb. 16 for kindergarten through eighth grade, boys and girls at the Sanger Community Center, 730 Recreation Ave.
fellow Kearney graduate alerted them to a couple of jobs in California. One was in Sanger, and the school officials wanted to meet Dean in person.
Jean said they had spent the past three summers in Greeley, Colo. getting his master’s degree.
“We made the trip out here,” she said of that late summer adventure. “It was 104 degrees. I made him put on a shirt, tie and coat.”
Dean met with superintendent Rex Tyner and Sanger High principal Wayne Booth. The couple had spent the first night in the old hotel catty corner from Barr Packing. The experience was such that the next night they set up cots in what is now the Washington Academic Middle School East Gym but was then the Sanger High main gym.
But a teacher at the high school, Nell Gist, offered to put them up at her place, a nice ranch nearby. And they spent three nights there. “That was our welcoming,” Jean said. “They were so kind.”
And more importantly, “He got the job,” she said.
Details, recinfo@ci.sanger. ca.us or 559-876-6300, ext. 1430.
Tiny Tot Basketball takes place at 5:30 p.m. Fridays from Jan. 11 to Feb. 15 at the Sanger Community Center, 730 Recreation Ave. Details, recinfo@ci.sanger. ca.us or 559-876-6300, ext. 1430.
Girl Scouts wanted.
To become a Girl Scout, contact Maribel Mendoza 800-490-8653 ext. 123 or
Sanger News & Community Calendar