Bonnie Lou Kuckenbaker

1922 - 2010

Bonnie Lou Kuckenbaker passed away Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010.

Bonnie was born March 22, 1922 in Troy Texas the second youngest of six children. Her father was a tenant farmer and fireman and her mother worked in a laundry. Because Bonnie had three older sisters she got out of most of the chores. Her older sister Ruby said, "She didn't do chores, she rode the cotton sack!" In her later years Bonnie recounted her many childhood adventures with her youngest brother Winston; they would climb high into the barn rafters looking for baby pigeons and also liked to sneak coffee out of the kitchen to pretend they were chewing tobacco. For Christmas the kids would put a sock out and find apples, oranges, walnut and candies in the morning.

She graduated from Troy High School in 1940, which she remembered as the time she got her first store-bought dress. Three years later she met her husband Clifford Kuckenbaker at the PX on Fort Hood where she worked selling sundry items and he was an Army GI. Six months after their wedding they moved back to Laton where Cliff worked for the Sunmaid Raisin Company temporarily. Soon after he began working at Better Buy Wholesale where he stayed for 33 years. Bonnie and Cliff bought their home outside Laton for $1,200.00, which included the house and twenty acres. Clifford worked nights at Better Buy Wholesale and farmed during the day.

Cliff was cultivating cotton the morning Bonnie went into labor with their first child George. Their neighbor Bessy Alman ran across the field to let him know the baby was on the way. Their second child Kay was born five years later.

With her young family she particularly cherished trips to Cambria where the Kuckenbaker family shared a small seaside cabin called The Rock House. Her daughter Kay remembers her excitement when they prepared for these vacations, "We'd always leave the grocery store with huge boxes of groceries like we were going to move there. It was a tradition for us to have a bag of marshmallows."

Bonnie worked at Superior Dairy in Hanford from 1952 to 1962 where she loved the customers but didn't like making milk shakes because the aluminum cup froze her already sore hands. She transferred to Superior Dairy in Lemoore in 1953 and one year later changed jobs again to work at The Koop in Hanford where she stayed the next 23 years. Bonnie liked driving fast; on a frosty morning on the way to work at The Koop her car hit ice and slid down the bank under the Kings River bridge on Excelsior Ave. Luckily the river was dry, lest she said she may have drowned.

In the early 1960s she was a dedicated fan of the TV program The Beverly Hillbillies and didn't miss the program for social or school functions. She also loved arts and crafts; she attended ceramics and oil painting classes after hours at Laton High and in the early 1970s she started decorating cakes for friends and family. She took several small commissions for her paintings and also hung her work at The Koop.

For over twenty years she played a weekly game of Skipbo with her close friends but was otherwise retiring and preferred to stay home most of the time where she liked to watch television and the humming birds outside the living room window. Among close friends and family her most notable quality was the intense love and affection she showered on her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who all called her Grandma Kookie.

She is survived by her son, George Kuckenbaker and his wife Diane of Presque Isle, Michigan, her daughter, Kay Kuckenbaker-Smith and her husband Wade who live in Laton, her older brother, Albert Hartgrove of Baltimore, Maryland, eleven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.
Among her last words were, "I love my kids, I love all my kids so much."

Visitation will be from 9 to 11 a.m., Monday, Nov. 29 at the Church of the Brethren, 3090 E. Mt. Whitney in Laton. Graveside Services will be at the Oakgrove Cemetery in Laton.