Esther Louise Hodge

Esther Louise Hodge, eldest of the four children of Arthur Judson Hodge and Jennie Esther Atwood, was born 13 May 1903 in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA. Her birth was soon followed by that of her brother Arthur. The two kids were a tandem during childhood. Esther’s twin sisters Alice and Marian would not join the family until Esther was ten years old, so she knew them less well than her brother. Throughout her childhood her maternal grandmother Mary Ann Hall Atwood lived with the family. (Technially it was the other way around. Mary Ann was the homeowner of record, opening her dwelling to her daughter, son-in-law, and their youngsters.)

In 1915, when Esther was twelve, the Hodges left Pasadena. This was a watershed moment. Both the Hodge and Atwood sides of the family had come to Pasadena in 1887 and had gone on to be an integral part of that city’s social, academic, and economic scene for nearly thirty years. But A.J. Hodge wanted to do new things careerwise, and both he and Jennie liked the idea of living nearer to the coast. Over the next two years, they and their kids were in transition. While A.J. worked for a kelp processor, the family lived on a boat in San Pedro Harbor/Long Beach. Soon A.J. began working for Union Tool (later to become National Supply Company), whose plant was located in Torrance. The family spent a short interval living in Torrance, then in 1917, A.J. and Jennie purchased a three-acre parcel in Lomita along Pacific Coast Highway. The property already possessed a good house, which was to be A.J. and Jennie’s home for the rest of their days. The family quickly began developing their holdings into a personal paradise. Much of the parcel was turned into a mini-farm, with orchards, vegetable patches, corn fields, banana trees, and animal pens for turkeys, chickens, and pigs. In addition to the main house there were a number of other structures, including a tractor shed and a windmill, as well as “urban” amenities such as a tennis court. Eventually a botanical garden and ornamental pool would be added, and ultimately a pottery workshop and retail shop selling pottery and garden sculpture. The Hodge estate became a popular place for friends and neighbors to drop by on evenings and weekends, to lounge in the wading pool, play tennis, and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. And of course, the fact that the beach was so near was also a big attraction.

For Esther the transition was undoubtedly a bit of an ordeal in spite of the fun aspects because she was removed from her Pasadena friends at just the point in a girl’s life when being part of a peer group is most treasured. As a saving grace, she was able to enter San Pedro High School as a freshman at the same time that all the other students her age were arriving there for the first time. By the time she was a junior and senior her ability to invite friends over for a swim or gathering at the beach must have been a social asset.

A.J. Hodge was very well educated and intellectually brilliant, and his father had been a co-founder of Throop University, which became Cal Tech. It’s not surprising that Esther chose to get a degree and broaden her mind rather than settling down right away and becoming a housewife. She attended the University of California, Southern Campus (now better known as UCLA), graduating in 1927 with an Art B.E. For some of her time there, her brother Artie was a classmate. Even as a graduate she remained single for another year, living with her parents as she had while going to the university. (She may have lived part of those years at a sorority house. She was active in multiple sororities.) Her bachelorette phase ended with her marriage to Charles Elsworth Cook, Jr. 21 March 1928 in Lomita. She was not quite twenty-five years old. Charles, son of Charles Elsworth Cook, Sr. and Mary J. Suytar, had been born 22 July 1905 in Ventura County, CA, making him a couple of years younger than Esther. A farmer’s son, Charles came from a more modest background than Esther, but he had ambitions. By the time of the wedding he was well on his way to becoming an attorney. He spent the early portion of the marriage as a student of University of Southern California Law School, then passed the bar in 1930.

Esther and Charles sensibly waited until his career was underway before they became parents. First son Charles III (who unlike his father was sometimes called Chuck) was born in 1931. By then, Charles had found a suitable work arrangement in Van Nuys, Los Angeles County, CA in association with Alonzo Hitchcock. The latter individual, twenty years Charles’s senior, is sometimes known today as the first attorney of Van Nuys. Esther and Charles made their home in Van Nuys. They would remain residents of that community for over twenty years. As the 1930s progressed, the family expanded to three kids. By the standards of Esther’s generation, this was a big family. Her siblings ended up with two kids each. Perhaps the impetus to have a slightly larger brood was due to Charles’s background. He had been an only child.

(At left, Esther as she appeared in the 1927 UCLA yearbook.) In Van Nuys, Charles and Esther were prominent and socially involved. Charles was a member of the Van Nuys Kiwanis Club, the Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce, the Elks, the American Legion, and the San Fernando Valley Bar Association. Naturally his position as an attorney brought him into contact with the public on a regular basis. He went on from Hitchcock’s law firm to that of Victor Obegi before launching his own partnership with Mervin Johnson.

Charles was not the sort to simply be a lawyer, though. He pursued quite a few other interests. He operated Valley Motors, the Los Angeles Police Dept. garage. In the spring of 1943, he joined the military, serving in the Quartermaster Corps. In the post-war era he resumed his law career, but did so for less than a decade. In the early 1950s, he and Esther acquired a ranch near the town of Tehachapi in Kern County, CA. It was a substantial holding and was a source of income. However, the core part of the household wealth came from the trucking company Charles oversaw. In addition, Charles he served as the agent for a number of real-estate transactions, including one in 1967 on behalf of the parents-in-law of his son Arthur, who had decided to put their large Tehachapi-area spread on the market.

By the time of the move, son Chuck was grown. He stayed behind in Van Nuys while the other two kids finished growing up in Tehachapi.

Esther was the sort of person that had she been born in a later generation probably would have had a career of her own, but she was instead a homemaker and assistant to her husband. She embraced her domestic side. A surviving niece recalls how accomplished Esther was at knitting and crochetting. Esther would often make clothing for family members. In this she took after her mother. That said, she did take an interest in business affairs and as a widow she was an officer on the board of the Tehachapi Mountain Land & Orchard Company, the development company her son Art operated.

Charles wore out somewhat young. He passed away 7 March 1971 in Tehachapi. He was only sixty-five years of age. As a consequence of his somewhat early demise, Esther spent many years as a widow. She moved to Riverside County, CA and for the rest of her life her place of residence would always be somewhere within its boundaries. For much of the 1980s she lived in La Quinta. In about 1989, she moved to Desert Hot Springs. She was in declining health by that point and needed oversight; her divorced son Art lived with her and filled that caregiver role. Finally her dementia became so advanced that Art had to move her to a convalescent home in Hemet, where she finally died of cancer 30 January 1997. She was buried at Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, Los Angeles County, CA alongside many of her Hodge relatives.

Descendants of Esther Louise Hodge with Charles Elsworth Cook, Jr.

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