William Blaine Mason

William Blaine Mason (Bill), 90, passed away peacefully in his home on August 28, 2021. A proud resident of Gilroy for sixty years, he reveled in the many unique opportunities this area has to offer from shooting archery in Mt. Madonna Park to trout fishing in Coyote Creek.

Bill was born into poverty in Steamboat Springs, Colorado on 5-3-1931 during the time of the Great Depression. In 1943 his single working mother, Florence (Sunny), moved Bill and his sister Jarnelle to San Francisco in search of the employment available in the booming WWII economy of that seaport city. The trajectory of his life changed when his mother met and married a sailor named "Smitty". Claude Robert (Smitty) Smith was a former navy boxer and merchant seaman who had sailed the world and brought his love of foreign culture as well as a measure of security and stability to the struggling family. For the good of his new stepchildren, he moved the family to a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. Now in the first true home Bill had ever known he began to flourish. He attended Puyallap High School where he played football, ran track and worked on the school newspaper. After high school he worked in a copper smelter and served as a master sergeant in an anti-aircraft battery in the Washington National Guard before graduating from the University of Puget Sound. During that time, he met and married the love of his life, Doris Louise Abbott, whom he continued to love, honor and treasure even after her death from ovarian cancer on 9-4-2004. His son Brian was born while he was finishing his teaching degree and because of Doris' higher earning potential as a registered nurse, his flexible schedule allowed him to be a primary care provider for his infant son-a rarity in 1959. This coupled with his strong desire to be the father he had lacked created a close bond between the two which remained throughout his life. In 1962 he moved the family to Gilroy where he had taken a job teaching English and Spanish at Gilroy High School. His second child, Pamela, was born that fall. During his 30 year teaching career he earned two master's degrees, one in educational media and another in librarianship.

During the late 1960's, Bill attended several language institutes in Mexico which gave him a deep and abiding respect for the country, language, culture and people which he instilled in his children. An avid athlete and outdoorsman, he was a state-ranked long-distance runner who shared his love of the sport by coaching track and cross country at Gilroy High. He spent his well-deserved retirement fishing, skiing, hiking, sailing, running, travelling, and doing building projects around the house. He climbed the tallest peak in the continental United States, Mt. Whitney, at the age of 61. He was also a man of culture and was widely read. A strong interest in genealogy, sparked by the desire to find information on his father, inspired him to trace his ancestry back to the Roman Empire. He took his last big trip at the age of 88. He travelled to Northern Ireland with his son Brian and granddaughter Cristin to meet extended family living there.

Of all of his achievements, Bill considered his greatest to be having a home and a family in a community he loved. He was predeceased by his wife, Doris, and his daughter, Pamela. He is survived by his sister, Jarnelle, his son, Brian (Joan), three grandchildren, Patricia, Brendan and Cristin, and three great-grandchildren, Catherine, Mason, and Genevieve. His final wishes were not to have a ceremony, burial and flower donations, but rather for everyone to be kind to those we meet, understanding that they too are fighting hard battles.

Published in Gilroy Dispatch · September 29, 2021