Neva Marie Farmer

Resident of Capitola

Neva was born in Richmond, California to immigrant parents from Northern Italy, Paolo Briano and Giuseppina Franco. They raised their three children by instilling the values of supporting family and community. Neva's siblings, Anita Briano Watts and John Briano, preceded Neva in death. Neva excelled in academics and attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in French and Italian and later earned a general secondary teaching credential. She met her future husband, Leonard C. Farmer, while he was on leave in Santa Cruz, California, just before he shipped out as a soldier in the U. S. Army, which later saw action in Northern Africa and Italy. At the end of World War II, Neva and Leonard married and had their family. Neva leaves four children: Paul [Jan], Anita Connor [Stroud], James [Melinda] and Robert.

Widowed at age 47, Neva raised her children while teaching English and French in the Fremont Union High School District. She also embarked upon four decades of international travel to Europe and Asia. Responsible, resilient, and positive, Neva was a wonderful traveling companion as well as a role model who inspired her children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She outlived all of her contemporaries and maintained friendships with a younger generation of teachers and members of the Sons of Italy organization Watsonville Lodge. In addition to serving as an officer in the Sons of Italy and raising scholarship money for that group, Neva was a member of the University of California, Berkeley's Alumni Association. For many years Neva helped to interview and assess outstanding students for various U.C. Berkeley academic scholarships.

Friends and family remember Neva for her positive spirit, sense of humor and hilarious tales. As a young bride of her soldier husband in charge of an Arizona prisoner of war camp, trilingual Neva became the favorite of the Italian prisoners and especially their chef, who baked her an anniversary cake, using a recipe that fed 400. She reminisced about being dressed for tea-gloves, hat and high heels, and chasing down a loose pig hightailing it for the High Sierras---right in the middle of the Yuma desert during the hottest time of the day.

Neva's friends crowned her Queen of the Retirees because of her numerous trips to foreign destinations, her even more frequent visits to assorted and sundry gambling institutions and her full social calendar during the 30 years she lived in Capitola.

She was especially proud of her family and her Italian ancestry.

And she won the game of life.

A funeral mass will be celebrated for Neva at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Capitola on Friday, January 14. After the mass, interment will be at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno.

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, family and friends will gather to celebrate Neva's life. Please contact family members for details.