Beatrice Vegas Cranston

Nov. 24, 1916 - Oct. 10, 2015

Our very beloved mother, grandmother and dear friend, Beatrice Vegas Cranston, joined her much revered siblings, mother and father, Oct. 10, with God.

Beatrice's remarkable life included: being born at her family home Nov. 24, 1916 on 21st Street and growing up in Bakersfield, traveling around the World several times, having car - will travel, her father Frank Vega was the last of the stagecoach drivers in the State of California in the Greenhorn Mountains and the day he retired they announced it on the radio up and down the State, her family originally settled into Bakersfield with Colonel Baker. While working for the State Capitol she was sent to Susanville to set up an unemployment office where she actually had to issue herself her own social security card and number (Social Security numbers had just started). She met her first husband, Grant Magnuson living in his mother's boarding house in Susanville. She then moved to Redding, where she resided while Grant Magnuson was employed building the Shasta Dam and gave birth to their daughter, Mernice Magnuson (Lanier). When she moved back to Bakersfield during the War she opened her own mimiograph company next to Bakersfield City Hall. She belonged to Legal Secretaries Association, became a Superior Court Reporter using Gregg Shorthand for 17 years in Yolo and Kern Counties, became a hearing reporter for the Bureau of Reclamation for the State of California and a secretary for five Kern County judges. She was a secretary for the Bakersfield Community Theater, a member of the American Philatelic Society and received her 50 year pin approximately 10 years ago, held dual memberships of the Bakersfield #125 and Yolo #60 Chapters of Order of Eastern Star where she also received her 50 year pin and was very proud to be a member, and received social courtesies of the Ben Ali Temple Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Beatrice owned Cranston International Harvester Company on Kentucky Ave., Woodland, with her second husband, Joe E. Cranston. Later Beatrice lived various times in Tahoe City, CA, Incline, NV, Cave Rock, NV and South Lake Tahoe, CA, always finding her way back to her beautiful Lake Tahoe and also the casinos. She also lived in Kona, HI, and had a coffee farm with her son, Gerry Magnuson in Wood Valley, Pahala, HI. She played classical and honky tonk music on the piano by ear, collected doll houses and miniatures, was an avid ice cream eater (going all the way back to sitting at Dewar's Ice Cream on Eye Street in Bakersfield), loved to dance and told us "my dance card was always full" when she was young - going to Catalina Island to dance to the Big Bands with her cousin Dan Sepulveda (the Sepulvedas of Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles). She loved Yorkshire Terriers because of her husband, Joe, finches, politics, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and being a Republican, was a lady in the truest sense, impeccably dressed, wonderful cook, had a sparkle in her eye, and lived life by letting worries go. She knew how to enjoy life appreciating even the most simplest of beauties that life affords. Once introduced to her, you never forgot her, and many of us aspire to be like her - a true original.

Beatrice is survived by her family, daughter, Mernice Lanier; son, Gerry Magnuson; step-daughter, Mary Stanley (Norman); step-son, Richard Cranston; grandson, Deryk Lanier (Melissa); granddaughter, Keri Lanier Smith (Steve); great grandchildren, Janelle, Matthew and Zane Smith, Chase, Mary Margaret and Simon Lanier and cousin, Ernest "Babe" Brewster, 94 years of age. We are grateful, God, for our time with our wonderful Mother and Grandmother.