Here’s a document you don’t normally see unless you go through someone’s personal files. Anna E. (Jackson) Shellabarger is my grandmother. This is her performance evaluation when she worked as a Accounts Maintenance Clerk for the US Naval Air Station in Alameda, CA in 1967-68.
This job evaluation says a lot about her determination. She didn’t let her lack of a diploma, the Depression, or divorce drag her down.
But how did go from pregnant teenager who had to get married and a struggling divorcee raising a child alone to a widow with security of a civil service job?
Let’s follow her work trail to get a better idea of how she ended up with a better life than what she started with.
Rough beginnings in married life
Anna (Jackson) Smith (later Anna Shellabarger) had a somewhat easy childhood. But, things changed quickly when she had to leave school early because she was pregnant. She was 5 months pregnant when she married at the age of 17 in 1929.
The stock market crashed a day or two after she married and she found herself looking for work like many others. The Pacheco Smiths left for Salinas in 1930 for better work opportunities. Anna worked in a hospital at first.
Then because her 2 year old son became lonely with the sitter, she cleaned houses to keep him with her. She continued to work when my mom was born in 1936. She worked for awhile at Mae Renton’s Beauty Salon, continued to clean house, and babysat some, too.
Moving up in the workforce
Home life for the Pacheco Smith family was unsettled. The pressures of paying bills and a husband who gambled meant Anna had to work. When the family moved back to Oakland, California in 1937, she began to look for better work.
Although the 1940 US Census says that Anna didn’t work, from her own recollections as well as her daughter, Jo-Ann, they always needed two incomes. Anna continued to clean houses in Oakland until Jo-Ann went to school.
When Jo-Ann was about 8 Anna worked for Montgomery Ward. My mom would got to her Aunt Maria* (Pacheco) Souza’s house after school and wait until her mom picked her up. (*Maria would later be known as Mary Correia after her second marriage).
Struggling after divorce but slowly moving up
Anna and Joao’s marriage was falling apart by 1945. With her son setting off on his own soon after the divorce, Anna did the best she could to support herself and her daughter.
It was not easy. Joao never paid the child support that was ordered as part of the divorce agreement. So, it all fell on Anna.
Although they lived in poverty, Anna somehow managed to earn some office skills. First, she became an operator for magazine sales.
She learned how to operate an ediphone and became a credit clerk for the same company around 1948.
By 1950, she had a job with General Motors. There she worked as a general office clerk in the Finance Dept.
While doing these various jobs she also babysat the neighbor kids. She did whatever she could to keep them housed.
Life got better in widowhood
Anna and Jo-Ann moved from place to place not really having much financial security. But, once Jo-Ann married life got easier for Anna. She remarried to Frank Shellabarger in 1960, but was widowed by 1965. Once again she was on her own.
I do not know if she took her civil service test before or after she married Frank, but it was the best thing she ever did to improve her life. She worked for a time at the naval supply in Alameda, California.
She worked in Alameda until the mid 1960s, but she always had somewhat of a nomadic spirit. She took a transferred to Anaheim and later ended up in Chula Vista doing the same work she had done in Alameda.
Her life was much improved by this point. She no longer struggled to make ends meet. She was able to do special things for Jo-Ann’s family like buying Easter outfits and a swimming pool.
Twice she paid for the family of 7 to drive down to see her with visits to Sea World and Disneyland. Although she spent Christmas with us. she always sent her gifts beforehand and it was one of our biggest thrills. She always sent me these big rolls of coloring paper. I did love my crayons!
She and my mom did struggle often living in tiny apartments getting help from relatives and her boyfriends. But, Grandma did alright for herself in the end.
