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Note: From a letter to me by my father, John Rush Hann (b. 1917) on 17 March 1983:
My father Clarence was the only one of the tribe ever to go to college (most didn�t finish High School!). He had two years at Berkeley as a Civil Engineer before money problems caught him. He worked for the US Reclamation Service in Nevada for a year or so and then the Los Angeles Water System while they started the Owens Valley Aqueduct. He loved the life but in 1913 his father told him to come home and replace Frank in the store. He met Mom through Aunt Grace and they were married 3 May 1915. Dad was Mayor of Compton 1917-18. In 1918 they bought a shoe store in Exeter where they lived until 1923. Dad was president of the Chamber of Commerce there and was apparently quite successful in business. In 1923 his father again sent for him. So they move back to Compton much to my mother�s chagrin. This time Dad bought out his father and brother and did quite well as a shoe man until he suffered a �nervous breakdown� about 1928. On doctor�s orders he sold the store so as to do �outside work� with fewer worries. He became a carpenter and then a building contractor. Those were lean years for anyone in the building business. Mom worked as a seamstress in LA factories and even I helped some. The firm that Dad sold the shoe store to went broke and when Dad could not find a tenant for his building he lost that downtown property. Actually the earthquake on March 10, 1933 gave Dad so much work that I consider that the time that his fortunes turned around. Dad was always civically active on such as the Park Commissions or the Planning Commission, etc. "
(I continue the story from here) Due to his experiences during the Depression, my grandfather Clarence Hann was deeply concerned that his sons should have a profession not affected by the economy. He settled on having them start a Mortuary.
Son John was sent to emblaming school just before WW2 and Harvey just after. During the war, grandad, built the mortuary building. They were initially successful, but by 1948 it was clear that Compton was becoming a ghetto and they were no longer being patronized by their new neighbors. So they sold out to a national chain and spent several months looking throughout California for another Mortuary business to buy. They found one in Merced, known as the Gateway to Yosemite. Grandad and his sons all moved to Merced in 1948. Grandad sold the Hann Construction Company in Compton at the same time and essentially retired. He spent as much time as he could in the Sierras camping. It was on a camping trip above Yosemite that he died of a stroke in 1953.
I remember my grandfather as a quiet person with a very erect posture. He had a large carpetry shop behind his house that was meticulously laid out and he loved to make toys for his grandchildren. Every chance he got he took us on camping trips. He was patient with his grandchildren and seemed to genuinely enjoy showing them new skills. I remember being drilled on how to identify various varieties of pine trees by their bark, how to do several kinds of braiding with leather laces, and how to play canasta.
For two months in the summer of 1949 he and my grandmother took my brother and I to stay in a one room cabin in the mountains above Mariposa with no running water or electricity. He was up by dawn every day, chopping the firewood for the day and then he would hike a mile down the road to a ranch to bring back fresh milk for the day. He built an outhouse and then he built a"bedroom" by building a platform behind the cabin and pitching a tent over the frame. He built a literal icebox to store the milk in (we had to go down the hill once a week to get ice). He made a clever fly trap box that the flies could easily get into but not out of. He drilled us on which snakes were dangerous and which were safe, how to safely spring a mousetrap, and showed us where the best sliding rocks were in the nearby stream. He and his grandchildren had a GREAT summer, but I'm afraid my grandmother did not as she was stuck in the cabin most of the day, cooking, cleaning and washing. She told me later that she really appreicated modern conveniences.
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