Biography of My Great-Grandmother: Mary Lillian Kier
My oldest living relative is my maternal great-grandmother Mary Lillian Dean Kier. She was born on February 20th, 1912, making her almost 94 years old. She is the oldest of three girls, all of which were born in Ellensburg, Washington. Her father, Marshall Dean was an architect and builder, and her mother Ruby Price Dean, often ran a boarding house while Mary was growing up. On February 20th, 1917, Mary’s 5th birthday, her younger sister Dorothy was born. Their family moved to Oakland when Mary was 12, and stayed there for about four years, the longest of any house they had ever lived in. In her teens, her family moved from place to place, including Walnut Creek, Oakland, and Fruitvale. She had the opportunity to graduate early, but her parents refused to allow her to. After she graduated from high school in June with her class, Mary attended UC Berkeley and took business classes, but majored in foreign languages. Mary met and dated Clarence “Kierie” Kier, a steel salesman when he came to live in one of the apartments her dad had built in Berkeley. Their first date was to a Cal vs. Santa Clara football game. Shortly after Clarence’s father passed away, in the spring of 1931, he inherited some money and proposed to Mary. When it came time to buy the wedding ring, my great-grandmother remembers visiting the jeweler in San Francisco:
“I told him that I wanted my rings to be made of red gold. I had seen an old piece of jewelry someplace made of it and liked it better than yellow gold. He said ‘Oh, you can’t have that. Red gold is gold combined with copper, much too soft to hold a valuable diamond.’ ‘But that’s what I want,’ I insisted. ‘Well, the diamond itself will have to be set in platinum. I suppose the rest of the ring could be in red gold or Roman gold as it’s sometimes called. But I’m telling you, you’ll be back in a year’s time to have it changed to platinum.’ In a year’s time Roman gold was all the rage. I was so let down. My rings had been like no one else’s and now everyone had the same kind.”
The couple was married on May 10th, 1931 in St. Paul’s chapel. They decided to spend their honeymoon on a two week trip throughout Northern California and Nevada. As they started off on the road, Mary realized there was something wrong with the car door handle:
“It wouldn’t catch, so as we traveled, I had to hang on to the handle. By the time we got to Sacramento, my arm was numb and aching and I was ready to stop, but Clarence wasn’t. Thirty minutes later in Marysville I asked how much further and when he replied ‘Oh, not too far,’ I suggested that he leave me there and go on to Corning or anywhere else. My pioneer spirit had disintegrated and I was all for twentieth century comfort.”
The happy couple went on to have five children over a span of 18 years. Their oldest, my grandfather Samuel Martin Kier, was a student at Stanford University when their youngest, my great-aunt Mary Lou Kier, was born. The moved from Orangevale to the Monterey Peninsula in the mid-50’s into a home owned by her mother. It was on the ocean in Pacific Grove at Lover’s Point. My great-great-grandmother bought this home in 1944 for $6500 from the Breuner family, who owned furniture stores in Oakland and Sacramento. My great-grandmother still owns that house, and today it is worth about $2 million. She currently lives in a retirement home in Pacific Grove, and I visit with her about 3 times a year.