Charles Alfred Warner

Charles Alfred Warner, third of the three children of Walter Clare Warner and Margaret Jane Bell, was born 27 January 1916 in Fresno County, CA. He was named in honor of Walter’s older brother Charles Elias Warner. Perhaps to avoid being confused with his uncle, he was usually referred to by his middle name. This grew to be so much the case that in the 1930 census, he is listed as Alfred Warner. After he was grown and married he may even have legally changed his name to Alfred Charles Warner at the urging of his wife. Said urging did not sit well with Alfred’s family members, because Charles Elias Warner was a beloved figure within the family and did not have offspring of his own -- and therefore never would have descendants named for him. One way of avoiding the argument was by using his nickname, which was Buster.

Alfred was born in Sanger, Fresno County, CA, where his father worked as a carpenter, but some of his infancy and toddlerhood was spent up in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Fresno and Clovis in or near the sawmill community of Tollhouse. However, in 1919 the household was reestablished in Sanger. The family home was just around the corner from the residence of his father’s sister Belle Spece and her family, and near homes of other Warner-clan relatives. Alfred began school in Sanger and it is that town that he could be said to be “from,” even though he spent no more than ten years of his life there.

In the 1920s his family moved to Santa Cruz, CA. In early 1930 his sister Willa married Leslie Chase and Alfred was the lone child left at home. Inasmuch as his older brother Clare had passed away as a child, it was up to him to assume the family trade, and he did indeed become a carpenter. Taking jobs where he could in the Great Depression, he spent time in Fresno County, and it was there he married Doyne Lori Vincenz. The wedding took place in the city of Fresno at the First Methodist Episcopal Church on Saturday evening, 16 October 1937. Doyne, eldest of three daughters of Jean Lacey Vincenz and Zola Lucille Fellers, had been born 4 April 1919 in Oakland, Alameda County, CA. Her father (who despite the name was from Illinois rather than France) was a Stanford University-educated highway civil engineer. Within the first four years of the marriage Alfred and Doyne produced two daughters.

Alfred and Doyne remained in the city of Fresno until the early 1940s, then moved to Capitola in Santa Cruz County. This was to be only a temporary stay, however. Alfred developed tuberculosis. This was a huge blow to his father, who had lost his other son to the disease at a heart-breakingly young age and had personally witnessed his brother Cullen Warner die a slow, agonizing death from it. The prospect of Alfred meeting a similar fate is credited with throwing Walter into a depression that ultimately resulted in suicide.

When Alfred’s doctor suggested he move to an arid climate to slow down the progress of the disease, he and Doyne responded by uprooting themselves and their kids and creating a new home in San Bernardino, CA. The air of this region was not only hot and dry, but at that point in wartime southern California had not yet become filled with smog -- something San Bernardino would be infamous for in later decades.

The move did buy Alfred more time, but he continued to decline. By 1947 he was bedridden, to the degree that even walking to the bathroom was an ordeal -- his brother-in-law Leslie Chase came down from Santa Cruz in order to build an extra bathroom right in the master bedroom. To not be able to do his own carpentry when it was his profession was no doubt hard for Alfred to cope with, but it was necessary. Given further decline, when Les returned home to Santa Cruz, he took his Alfred and Doyne’s girls with him. They remained in the care of Willa and Les until some months after Alfred had died.

Alfred passed away 20 July 1947. Doyne had his remains cremated and the ashes were spread on the cemetery lawn. There is no headstone. The death record lists him as Alfred Charles Warner -- this may be due to Doyne’s role as informant.

Sadly, Doyne chose to deal with the tragedy of losing a husband by ceasing to mention him if possible, and avoiding contact with her former in-laws, though this was hardly what her daughters wanted. The San Bernardino locale made it easier to engage in this tactic. Doyne married Harry E. Keyser (1917-1968) 27 August 1949 and made a point of forging a new identify as Mrs. Keyser, for example embracing his American Legion membership so heartily she became, in the 1960s, the president of the auxiliary for the whole state of California, and continued to be involved with the organization even after his death. Once again she was widowed early, Harry dying at only fifty-one years of age. She did not marry a third time, perhaps in part because Harry’s passing did not leave her with minor children still at home as had been the case in the 1940s. Her daughters were grown and she had not had any children with Harry. She ended up being single for a long stretch. She made it into her seventies, dying 26 July 1992 in Tucson, Pima County, AZ.

Warner family members at the farm of Belle and Alie Spece in 1932 or 1933. This property between the communities of Fowler and Del Rey in southern Fresno County, CA, home to Belle and Alie in the late 1920s and early 1930s, may have been the same parcel that was home to Alfred’s parents from the spring of 1909 to the latter part of 1910. The adults in this view are, left to right, Charles Elias Warner, Cora Belle Warner Spece, Alfonso James Spece, Walter Clare Warner, Willa Warner Chase, and Charles Alfred “Buster” Warner (age seventeen). The baby in Willa’s arms is her daughter. The toddler petting the dog is Belle and Alie’s granddaughter Joyce Carter.

Descendants of Charles Alfred Warner with Doyne Lori Vincenz

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here.