Kathleen Hilda Paddon

Kathleen Hilda Hill Bone Paddon was born January 8, 1932, in Aptos, California, the fourth of seven children born to Otto and Hilda Hill.

Kathleen wished to be remembered for her faith and hope in Christ, a legacy she inherited from her parents. She made her choice to serve God as a young teenager, and her faith remained a source of strength throughout her life.

Kathleen grew up on her family's apple orchard in Aptos, with the Pacific Ocean as its backdrop. Life there required hard work and resourcefulness. Horses provided much of the farm power, rainwater was collected in cisterns for drinking, bread was baked in a wood-burning oven, and a generator eventually brought a few electric lights to the home. Kathleen regularly took apples to San Jose to sell at the market. The Bone boys came to help Otto with the harvest, and one in particular gave Kathleen a twinkle in her eye.

In 1948, at sixteen, Kathleen moved with her family to Northport, Washington. Two years later, on September 14, 1950, she married David Ernest Bone. They made their first home in Buttonwillow, California, and together had nine children: Deonne Wright, Stanley Bone, Clinton Bone, Jacquelyn (Steve) Tanner, Neal Bone, Bryan (Linda) Bone, Susan (John) O'Brien, William Bone, and Joann (Mike) Miller.

David was tragically killed in an airplane accident in February 1964. The following year, Kathleen moved her family from Shafter to Paso Robles, returning to an area with deep roots reaching back to the 1800s for the Waite, Wiebe, Hill, and Bone families.

On November 16, 1965, Kathleen married Reginald Francis “Rex” Paddon. At 43, Rex had been a lifelong bachelor, but with a generous heart—and no small amount of courage—he married Kathleen and embraced life with her eight children. Together they had four more children: Thomas Paddon, Rhonda (Curt) Nichols, Celia (Bryan) Hansen, and Stephen (Aimee) Paddon.

The self-sufficient way of life Kathleen learned as a child remained with her throughout her life. She grew plentiful gardens and tended orchards, berries, chickens, other animals, and a milk cow. She baked bread, made butter, canned what she grew, and seemed able to figure out how to do whatever needed doing. If she needed a chicken coop, she simply built one.

That capable spirit never left her. At 89, one of her daughters arrived for a visit to find Kathleen butchering three chickens by herself. She remarked that they were a little heavier than anticipated—they weighed more than ten pounds each—but nevertheless insisted on dressing them out herself. It was a skill she had made sure to pass along: each of her daughters was required to successfully dress out a chicken before leaving home.

In her later years, Kathleen kept her hands busy making quilts and afghans for each of her grandchildren and knitting sweater sets to welcome each new great-grandchild. She also faithfully remembered birthdays, sending a card each year to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—no small undertaking in a family of her size. During the last days of her life, she had the joy of meeting Jack, her first great-great-grandchild, and giving him a sweater set she had recently knitted especially for him—a final handmade gift for the newest generation of her family.

Kathleen was the mother of thirteen children and is survived by twelve of them; her son Neal was stillborn at full term. Her family grew to include 36 grandchildren, 76 great-grandchildren, and her great-great-grandson, Jack.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Otto and Hilda; all of her siblings; her husbands, David and Reginald; her son Neal; her granddaughter Melissa Miller; and her great-great-granddaughter Mallory Ann Rose Gonce.

The girl who grew up on an apple orchard overlooking the Pacific carried that same resourceful spirit throughout her life. From the things she grew and made with her own hands to the confidence and skills she instilled in her children, Kathleen passed something of herself from one generation to the next—a legacy that lives on in the family she leaves behind.