Kim Duclo and Glenda Duclo

[00:05] KIM PETER DUCLO: My name is Kim Peter Duclo. I'm 65 years old. This is May 16, 2024. We're speaking in the downtown library in San Diego. My partner is Glinda Marie Duclo and she is my mother.

[00:29] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: My name is Glenda Marie Duclo formerly Carter. I'm 87 years old. Today's date is May 16, 2024. I'm in the downtown San Diego main library, and the name of my partner is Kim Peter Duclo, and he is my son.

[00:58] KIM PETER DUCLO: It's just so great to be here with the person that I have loved the longest in the entire world. How lucky am I? And you'd think after 65 years together, we'd know everything about each other. But I know there are certain things I don't know about you. So tell me a little bit about, like, where you were born in the early part of your life.

[01:20] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: I was born in the town of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and all I know about Fort Sumner is it's supposed to be the burial place of Billy the Kid. My parents were living in Portales, New Mexico, and it was during the height of the Depression. And their first child, my brother, was born in 1934. And my dad moved around a lot to any kind of job he could find. And he heard that they were having a dam built in Fort Sumner on the Pecos river. So he applied for the job. He operated several machines. He even became a powder monkey, laying the dynamite, which my mother wasn't thrilled about. And he rented in one room adobe house with a dirt floor.

[02:17] KIM PETER DUCLO: So you were actually born in a house with a dirt floor?

[02:21] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Yes, I was. And I was born a few months after they moved there, and we left when I was just a baby. So I don't know very much about it. And we moved around quite a bit until 1941. And my dad's youngest brother lived in Los Angeles. And he said, why don't you come out here? He says, you know, the war is going to start at any time. And he says, they're building all over the place. So we. My dad bought a used trailer house. Trailer. And we headed for California. And my uncle was right. There were bases all over the place being built, including the naval hospital in Balboa park. And that was the first time I'd ever been to San Diego. I was four years old. We moved around so much that it took me three different schools to get out of the first grade.

[03:27] KIM PETER DUCLO: So you were in many places?

[03:29] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Many places. We happened to be in Santa Maria, California, when Pearl harbor happened. And the earliest thing I remember about that is we went to the movies one night, and all of a sudden, everything went dark. All the streetlights were out, and we could hear what sounded like explosions. And it was offshore. The Japanese had dropped bombs near Santa Maria.

[04:00] KIM PETER DUCLO: Wow. I think I'd heard, because I know dad, who was in the San Luis Obispo area. There was actually a submarine launched, a torpedo that did not detonate, but that actually went up and came ashore there. So it was one of the few times that actually part of the continental United States was engaged in the actual war.

[04:22] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Yes. And we were there, and we moved around quite a bit, and then we finally settled in Los Angeles, California. And my dad did various odd jobs, but he wanted to be his own boss, so he got his contractor's license, and he and a partner opened a fence building business. This was just shortly before the war was over. And after the war was over, everybody needed a fence because they were building houses for all of the people that were coming back from the war. So my dad started up his fence business, became very successful. So we went from being lower class to pretty much middle class, and I went to schools in Los Angeles, graduated from Fremont High School in 1954. And then I met the love of my life when I was 19 years old.

[05:32] KIM PETER DUCLO: I hope that was my dad.

[05:33] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: That was your dad. And my dad was living in Lake Arrowhead at the time. But when we got engaged, he moved to the Los Angeles area and went to work at the Long beach airport with seaplanes that were flying to Catalina. But he didn't really like it in this area and always wanted to go back to San Diego, where he had worked at one time. And the best man at our wedding had moved to San Diego about two years before we did. And so we used to visit almost every weekend, visit them. And my husband would go to Lynburg Field and say, are you hiring? Are you hiring? So, finally, just one week before my daughter was born, we were able to move to San Diego, and he went to work for this company that was flying airplanes to Las Vegas. But every evening after work, he would go over to the airport and talk to the people at PSA, which was the homegrown airport, and see if they were hiring. And I think they finally just got tired of him, so they said, yep, we'll hire you. And he said, I'll work for you for a month for no pay, and if you don't like me, you can get rid of me. Well, he ended up working there for 25 years till he retired. PSA was later bought by US Airways and now american airline. And one of the perks of working for an airline, we could fly on our airline for free, and we got very, very good discounts on other airlines. So we were able to do a lot of travel all over the United States in foreign countries.

[07:38] KIM PETER DUCLO: As I recall, after retirement, you guys were world traveling for a number of years, which is really great. If it's okay, I'd love to ask you, because it seems to me, I'd heard recently that. Tell me what happened the day you actually first met my father. Where were you?

[07:57] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Weren't you when I first met your father, my girlfriend and I had gone to a wedding of a friend, and I caught the bouquet that was thrown.

[08:09] KIM PETER DUCLO: Usually signals you should be married.

[08:12] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: I'd be the next one to get married. And that night, that night, my parents were having a party, and a very old family friend of ours had come down. He was my husband, super soon to be husband's roommate in Lake Arrowhead. And they came to my parents party, and I saw, oh, this is this really cute guy. But I couldn't date him because I was already dating someone else.

[08:41] KIM PETER DUCLO: And that was a marine, right?

[08:42] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: A marine.

[08:43] KIM PETER DUCLO: A large, bulky marine.

[08:46] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: But after I broke up with the marine, my love came and asked me out on a date. And we came to wind and Sea.

[08:58] KIM PETER DUCLO: Beach, which is in San Diego.

[09:00] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: San Diego. We spent our honeymoon in San Diego. That's why my husband always wanted to.

[09:06] KIM PETER DUCLO: Live in San Diego. San Diego. Because it probably reminded him of the greatest days of his life. When he met you, he had eyes for you because once you were single.

[09:19] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: He got wind of, oh, yes, yes. We had one date, and he asked me to marry him.

[09:26] KIM PETER DUCLO: Yeah, that was a whirlwind romance, right? I mean, gosh, you guys didn't take too long to decide that was your forever person.

[09:35] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: And we had 64 years together. My husband died in 2021 in May, 1 month after his 95th birthday. Birthday.

[09:51] KIM PETER DUCLO: That was pretty wonderful. That was a pretty wonderful marriage you guys had. Do you remember anything about that first date? Because it seems like you guys were both sure.

[10:03] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Well, it was very interesting because we came to wind and sea beach, and guess who we ran into at the beach? My cousin, who was a marine, and the marine I had just broken up with.

[10:20] KIM PETER DUCLO: And this was people that were living in Los Angeles and came 120 miles south to go to, and you both went to the same beach. What are the odds of that?

[10:31] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: That was very awkward. Very awkward.

[10:34] KIM PETER DUCLO: Yeah. But somehow the better man prevailed. I'm going to say selfishly, but one.

[10:43] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Year after we were married, my son Kim was born. And five years later, one week after we had moved to San Diego, my daughter Lisa was born. She wasn't born in San Diego, though, because I still had an obstetrician near my parents house in Hawthorne, California. And I had an appointment with a doctor, and she wasn't due for another month, so I was going to have plenty of time to switch doctors and everything. So I went to my doctor's appointment, I drove my mother's car, and he says, oh, that baby's coming. Go to the hospital. So I went to the hospital, checked myself in, gave him a check, said, I'll be back in an hour. I have to take my mother's car back. So my mother drove me back to the hospital, and she was born the next morning at 05:00.

[11:52] KIM PETER DUCLO: And then when you started off with her in San Diego, that would have been probably in 1963, in September, the hottest day in the history of San Diego, I believe, to this day, when it topped out at 111 in downtown San Diego, was within a week of you moving to San Diego. And I'm guessing you and dad might have said, maybe we should have gone to Santa Barbara, or maybe this was a mistake, but it's never really been hotter than that since.

[12:22] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: That's true. That's true. And I got ill right after my daughter was born and had to go back into the hospital. So it was another month before we finally got to San Diego.

[12:39] KIM PETER DUCLO: So then we ended up moving to a small duplex in San Diego, but only for a little less than a.

[12:48] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Year, for about six months. And then we bought the very first house we ever owned, a Claremont. We lived in that house for eight years, and then we moved down the street to a larger house, and that was 16 years. And then we moved to Vista, and I've been there for 35 years.

[13:15] KIM PETER DUCLO: Now, the crazy thing, if I've got this right, is that you were able to start buying that first home in Claremont under the GI bill, because $1 for $1 down. But as I recall, even with $1 down, the payment, you and dad really had to think long and hard. And I think some of the conversation was, boy, I don't know, Jack, if this is the best idea. That's an awful lot of money. And what they were asking, besides the $1 down, was that this payment for a three bedroom house was going to be $14,999, which I've always thought if I could just get in a time machine and go back in time, I'd tell you both, whatever you do, just sell anything you can find and buy every house on this block, because now those same houses for. Are going for, like, $700,000 or something like that. But you ended up the first one for under what a car would cost nowadays.

[14:15] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: The second house we bought cost $30,000.

[14:19] KIM PETER DUCLO: And that was devastating to me because it was in my mind. Why are you moving? I love the place. We were living in Claremont. I mean, it was just this idyllic sort of childhood of running through canyons and staying out in the summertime, especially till all hours of the night, and being able to play. And now we're moving. Well, as it turns out, we were only moving about four blocks away. But to me, in my mind at the time, it's like, well, why, we might as well move to Schenectady or something. I mean, why are you doing this to me? And I remember being just distraught. And when the day finally came to move, we literally just drove up a couple of blocks. But we had a piano, and nobody was quite sure what to do with that. And I still have this vivid recollection of hoisting the piano on a piano dolly. And somehow dad got a. A way to sit on the bench, and he played the piano as we drove.

[15:14] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: A friend of ours. A friend of ours pulled it up to the house, and my husband played the piano all the way.

[15:20] KIM PETER DUCLO: And I ended up liking that place as well, and overcame my grief eventually.

[15:26] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: He didn't have to change schools or anything, though. And then when we bought the house we're living in now, that was $160,000. And now the houses in my neighborhood are selling for a million dollars.

[15:46] KIM PETER DUCLO: Wow. So you should. Now, okay, we might have done decently in the house area, but here's what happened. I kind of ruined everything you had. You guys, as I recall, had, like, a 55 or a 56 white Thunderbird.

[16:02] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Love that white Thunderbird. Love that car.

[16:04] KIM PETER DUCLO: Love this gorgeous car. But as I understand it, you couldn't fit me in this two seater Thunderbird. So it was like, sort of, well, we've got to trade this car in for him. I think you made the wrong decision. In some ways, I think I would have kept the car and said, figure it out. But. So once you. Once you sold the Thunderbird, we had just a series of awful cars. It seemed like all through my entire childhood and beyond, perhaps. And one of the cars I remember distinctly, and it's because it's the car that we ended up in San Diego with, was a Robin's egg blue Corvair station wagon, of all things. And somebody must have liked it, but it was just an awful car, really. I think, in hindsight, I think Ralph Nader wrote unsafe at any speed about that particular car. But one thing I loved about it was that we would go to the drive in movies a lot. And at that time, San Diego had no fewer than 18 in as many is two dozen drive in movie theaters. I believe the county now has one drive in theater, but we would go to drive ins a lot, and my sister and I would always lay in the back of this air cooled engine Corvair and watch the movie. And then we would drive home from the movies, and it was just like heaven. The best sleep I ever had was coming home. And when we'd get home, you'd say, come on, we have to go into bed. And it's like, no, just let us sleep here at so wonderful and dreamy and comfortable. Well, it turns out it's probably because the Corvair was leaking carbon monoxide the entire time. That's what they were notorious for. So we were probably so sleepy because we were slowly dying back there after we were at these movies. But we still continue to have that car. One other car thing. If the Corvair can be emblematic of an entire childhood, it had some weird things, and one was. And because we loved you, dad and I, so very much, we decided to get you, at Christmas time in the mid 1960s, a gift that you loved. You liked these kind of. They almost looked like crystal carafes, but to hold perfume, and you had a whole collection of those. And we thought that the best place to get them was the fairly newly created downtown shopping mall in Mission Valley. So one evening, right before Christmas, dad and I drove the Corvair down from Claremont, the 15, 10 miles down to Mission Valley. Went in at the last minute, found one of those perfect crystal holders. It was just. It was gorgeous. We were so proud. We came out. It was probably 930, right before stores were completely closed. Went out, got in the horrible corvair, and drove back to Claremont. And about halfway back, I told dad, or I asked dad, and I go, where's the PSA? Where's the airline sticker that you have on your car that you parked? It's normally up there. And he goes, this isn't our car. I'm like, what do you mean, this isn't our car? It's a Robbins, a blue Corvair station. He goes, this isn't our car. We've gotten in the wrong car. And I'm like, how could there be another car? And didn't you use the key? Apparently one of the other problems with Corvair's is that any key would open any Corvair, because indeed we had gotten in the wrong car. So I remember him panicking, making sort of getting off the freeway, coming back. And we drove back and sort of found an area near our car where this car had been parked, locked it back up and hoped nobody saw us, and then got in our own car and finally drove home. But there were two of these cars, apparently, at least.

[19:54] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Speaking of vehicles, we later bought a van, and I was room mother at my kids schools, and you could fit six or eight kids in the car. So I was always the one that had to take them on field trips, which was fun.

[20:18] KIM PETER DUCLO: And one of the places you took us most often was to Balboa Park. Balboa park, which, if the car plays an important role, Balboa park perhaps is an even more central theme in our family's life because it was a place that we went to and was sort of the hub of, as it remains, all activity in San Diego and ultimately through some circuitous events, was the place I ended up working for 25 years as a park ranger. But it was, I think, that was prompted by you making me fall in love with that place from such an early age.

[20:55] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: He didn't start out there as a park ranger, though. Both of my children and my daughter in law went to college in San Diego. My daughter and my daughter in law went to San Diego State. He went to UCSD, graduated summa cum laude, by the way, and they all worked in various museums in the park. My daughter worked for over 20 years at the Museum of Art. He met his wife working in one of the museums in San Diego. He worked at several of the museums in San Diego and started out at the photographic Arts Museum, as I recall.

[21:39] KIM PETER DUCLO: Yes, I had. Was getting. I. My biggest problem throughout school was that I sort of liked too many things. It wasn't like that. I couldn't find something to do. I kept finding things like, I want to do this. And it always felt like, but gosh, if I take this career path and I'm going to have to say goodbye to all these other things, and that was always distressing to me. So ultimately, at UCSD, I became a communications visual arts major after thinking I wanted to do umpteen other things. And for a brief period of time, I thought I wanted to be perhaps a movie director. That sort of faded away, but I still thought that might happen. And this newly created museum of photographic Arts was just about to open up. And one of the things they were going to have is film and video programs. Well, initially they didn't have any of that. They just had straight photography. But I was so impressed with going. Their first event they ever had was a night with Frank Capra, the director, like, it's a wonderful life and things like that. And I got to meet him and talk to him. And I was thinking, someday, I don't like to do what you do. Well, that never happened. But I got interested enough in photography that I started volunteering there for the very second show they ever had there in 1983. And I continued to work as a volunteer there for many, many years. So much so that I ultimately got a job as an assistant to the exhibits designer there. And that's when I began working in museums, as you mentioned, and ultimately met my wife at another museum, which was the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary art at that time. But at some point, this sort of gypsy life of moving from museum to museum just wasn't quite working out as I had hoped it was. And one day, someone driving a vehicle down the main part of the park, it said park ranger across the side. And I said, I didn't even know the city had any park rangers. Well, it turns out they had just started a new program hiring park rangers just a few years prior. And then I sort of set my sights on maybe, maybe ultimately I could do that. And as it turns out, in 1995, the very end of that, I got hired as the 13th ranger for the city of San Diego and had a wonderful 25 year career there with doing that. What was interesting to you? Did you not really even know what it was? Well, here's another odd thing. So briefly, going back in time to in 8th grade, everyone had to take these things. I think it was called an Iowa test or something. And all 8th graders practically in America took a test to try to determine what you are best suited for in life. And I remember very distinctly that it came back. The number one thing that it came back was park ranger. At the time, I had no particular interest in that. And I basically forgot about that for 20 years or something. I forgot about that. But then when this came up, it not only fit because I thought, hey, something once upon a time said I should be a park ranger, but it was, this wasn't your typical out in the forest park rangering job, which would have been delightful, but it actually had all these things that I liked. It had this eclectic mix of things in that it was amidst a whole bunch of museums, each of a different thing that interested me. There was botany, there was a little bit of law enforcement. There was a lot of interpretation and meeting with people and being a tour guide, all these different things. I mean, it was. I think as our society has gotten more and more specialized, this was one of the few remaining sort of generalist jobs still out there. And that just suited my particular skill set, or lack of skill sets really well because it allowed me to do a little bit of everything, and it just became truly an ideal job.

[25:45] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: And I just a little sidelined to that. He was known as Mister Balboa park. He was also given a tree at the organ pavilion by the friends of Balboa park. He met many, many celebrities, including president and Misses Clinton, who asked for him personally. And when he retired, they retired his badge. Only the second ranger in the city's history that had his badge retired.

[26:26] KIM PETER DUCLO: Boy, I feel like I brought along a publicist and my mother here, but that's really sweet of you to say, but no, it was a. It was a. Okay, if we have a little bit of time real fast, though, let's. Okay, well, let me. Let's stick with the ranger theme here, because now you've painted me out to be somehow this amazing ranger. Let me tell maybe the story I might be most famous for as a ranger, though, and that was early on in my career, and I stress that because it could have been the very quick end of the career I had. We gave tours a lot, but one of our other sort of side jobs was we had a famous botanical building, which is about to have a grand reopening, hopefully later on in this particular year, in 2024. But at that time, it was frequently closing at 04:00 each afternoon, even in the summertime, when we'd have sun up for another 4 hours. And people are always wondering, well, why are we closing? Frankly, we didn't have enough staffing to always do it. And one of the jobs of the park rangers were to come in at about 355 and shoo everyone out and tell them the building was closed. Well, it turned out in about my second or third year on the job. It was my task that evening to close the thing, so I went through making all the announcements. Okay, we're closing. Everybody needs to get out. That's. That's it. Thank you for being here, and I did my job. And as it turns out, it was time for me to go home, too. At that time, my wife and I, I lived in the small mountain town of Julian, which is about 60 miles as the crow flies outside of downtown San Diego. And it was about an hour and a half drive for me to commute to work each day. It was a lovely drive, but a long drive. Well, that night I went home, took the drive home. So it took me an hour and a half to get home, as it always did. It's about six, almost 06:00 when I finally lay back in a nice comfortable chair. And I, I don't even take, I just take my boots off, don't even take my uniform off. But I turn on the television set and, hey, there's a live, there's, they're having a live weather report, as they often did from Balboa park. And I get my wife in here, like, look, it's the park, and she's looking too. And there was a fairly famous weatherman at the time named Lauren Nancarrow. He was doing a live report right in the heart of Balboa park. And my wife noticed as she was watching that there were two ladies kind of waving their arms frantically over the shoulder of the weatherman. And it was two people in the botanical building that apparently I had locked in the building. And they looked like they were desperately trying to signal anyone to get them out of the building. And my wife didn't know anything about this. And she said, well, is there a special event going on tonight? And I go, yes, it's the early festivities for my firing, which is going to take place tomorrow. I locked them in the building, apparently, and she goes, is that going to be a problem? I go, yeah, it's going to be a real big problem. So she had a much faster car than I did. She had, like this Acura integra. And I said, I'm taking your car. I put my boots on, still had my uniform, and I drove just as fastly as I could down this hill. But with traffic and whatnot, it took me the better part of an hour and 45 minutes to get down the hill. So now I pull into the back area of the park. It's now just before 08:00 so they've been locked in this building for four solid hours. I have keys to all the buildings. So I unlock the back door and take this horrible long, shameful slow walk because I can still see them, but their arms aren't nearly as frantically waving. They're just kind of hanging through. And you should know the, the building is covered with wooden slats, 5 miles of wooden slats. So there's enough room to get out, but not to get out, but you can stick your arms through. Well, they're still there. And I came over just expecting every expletive in the book to be hurled my way as I finally got to them. And I finally got right within, about as close as we are, 5ft away from them. And they both turned around at me and said, are you closing? And I said, yeah, I thought I would. Yeah, we needed clothes now. And they said, and they were visitors from somewhere in the midwest. And they said, well, this has been one of the best days of our life. We feel like we've had this whole place. I don't know how long we've been here, but we feel like we've just had it to our. To ourselves. It's been so wonderful. In fact, we kept coming over here periodically and kept waving for people to come in because we thought, this is so beautiful. Other people ought to see. They had no idea that no one could come in because I had actually padlocked the doors. They didn't know they were locked in and they couldn't have gotten out. They just thought they'd been there and had a wonderful experience. And I felt really no reason to disabuse them of this. And I go, well, that's wonderful. We'd like all of our patrons to have this kind of. But I do have to close now. So I went over and very carefully behind my back, unlocked the padlock that I had the key to and then swung the door open. And they walked out and went on their way. And they, I guess, thought they'd had a really nice day. And I felt like I had one of the best days of my life because I actually was going to have a job the next day. Because I also felt no compelling need to share any of this information with any of my bosses or anyone else. And I didn't for years and years and years, but later on I did. Do you remember that conversation when you told them about what happened? Yeah. They were like, I guess it was kind of no harm, no foul. That's okay. And I think the statute of Lim. I probably waited seven years. I don't think there's a statute of limitations on locking someone in a botanical structure. But I was hedging my bets and didn't say anything before that.

[32:41] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: He wasn't always a goof. He was also a hero at times because the first, probably the first month he became a ranger, he saved someone from jumping off of the bridge, the large bridge that goes into the park. They were about to commit suicide and he saved them. And that wasn't the only time he saved someone. He saved several other people who were about to commit suicide, which that's a.

[33:13] KIM PETER DUCLO: Very unusual, obviously part of the job, but in some ways an incredibly satisfying part that you could have. And at one point, it's weird, in about a two year period, five different people were kind of attempting to jump from the bridge. And I somehow was involved in some of those situations. But I think after about the fourth time that it happened, they said, well, you're, you know, you're not really supposed to be. This isn't your thing. This is something that we have, like with the police department. There are hostage negotiators. There's even people from the FBI that we often can call out to this. So, you know, you kind of need to, you know, just pull back because you, whatever that we've got other people that can do this. And I totally, totally agreed with that thought. That was good advice. But the idea was I'm still a first responder, so sometimes you, and probably not five months after this conversation has taken place, there is yet another person that's attempting to jump. And I'm very cognizant of that, but I'm the first one there. There's no one there. I get on the dispatch line and through the radio communicate to the PD and they're like, if you're there, please do something. So I went out and I engaged this distraught middle aged woman in a conversation. And I luckily was able to get her attention enough that we started having a little bit of a conversation. But I kept looking over to like, okay, are the, you know, these experts that we've talked about? And they were on either end of the bridge and they were all sitting there. And I'm kind of like, like going to come out and assist me here. Take over for me. And then at some point, somebody basically slowly came up and said, they think you're doing a really good idea and we don't really want to disrupt this. So you just keep going. It's going to be you and only you. So now after telling me, we never want you to do this again, it's like, no, you're going to have to get this person in somehow. So it's like, okay. So again, I'm trying to, and I did find out through the little experience I had that most people that are out on a bridge, if they're going to go, and I've seen this happen, if they're going to go, they just go out and jump off the bridge. But if they're out there and they're sitting there and they're contemplating, and they're looking around. It's probably because they'd like someone to talk them. They don't really want to do that. They're just feeling desperate, or they just want to have a conversation. What you want to do is engage in that conversation. But I also know that what can happen is someone decides, I don't want to do this. But then they have, they slip, or something tragic happens, and they end up falling to their death. So it's a very fraught situation, but the best thing is to engage. And so this, in this instance, I started, I just. I've got to find a way in with this lady. And it was not really working. She was just telling me how terrible her life had been, and. And I was just like, I've got to think of some way to do it. And then at one point, she just sort of offhandedly said, oh, is that Steven? And Stephen was a person driving a city truck that I worked for. The park and recreation department had driven in the distance because no one was coming across the bridge, but they had driven past in her view. And I said, yeah, that's Steven. Do you know Stephen? And she's like, well, yeah, I used to work for the park and recreation department, the department I was working for currently, but she had left them many years ago. But she worked there for almost 20 years for the very department I was with. And I said, well, did you work for the. And she told me, yeah, I was a gardener here. And I go, and apparently, in hindsight, she'd come back to a place that she loved and found beauty in. And I guess thought, well, if I have to go, I want to go in a place that is close to me and that I love. And I just remember saying, well, gosh, Stephen would be really distraught if he knew you were up here, because I'm sure he's probably afraid you're going to slip or something. So I talked it out. Like, he even wanted to kill yourself to more like, hey, you're in a place you don't want to be, but it's kind of, we can get out of this situation. And I go, well, do you know, you know, do you know Emily and another person? Oh, yeah. Like, oh, well, gosh, I'm sure she. She wants you to be safe here. And, oh. And we just started having, like, a conversation, like, about, like, a work conversation, like we were over a coffee or something. And ultimately, I convinced her that, well, I mean, it was sort of like, it's a wonderful life, and it's like, well, all these people know about you and care about you and they want you to go on living. And so I think she decided that's a great idea. And so finally she decided, I'm going to come in. But then it was, again, very scary to make sure we could get her in on the right side of the bridge. And we did. And she ultimately, you know, they took her with a medical rig and everything. But about a year and a half later, I got a really wonderful letter from her. Said that she was doing fine now and that she got things turned around. And that was. That was a really satisfying moment. And just really, I felt really lucky to have been able to be there for that. Thank you for sharing. That must have been one of the career highlights, is receiving that letter and obviously seeing that person. Yeah. And that's just, I felt in my entire career there, so lucky to have been in a place that just allowed me, I always felt like Balboa park was sort of like a mirror and a window. It allowed you to, like, look out onto the world, but it also reflected part of who this community is, but who we are, people. And my whole life, I've had issues and problems and worries and anxieties, and I'm not even quite sure why, but I've been so lucky to have had that family in the park. And then the family that I had, my mother, my father, my sister, and now my wife and child are the most loving, supportive, amazing people you could ever hope for. So my life, with all the ups and downs, has just been something I'm so thankful for, and it's just been so wonderful. I hope everybody can have something close to that at some point. Wonderful. We have, like, one or two minutes left. Just curiously. Say anything to each other or any final questions.

[40:26] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: I want to say how proud I am of all my family. And I need to mention my daughter in law. She's not my daughter in law. She's my daughter. She's a wonderful, wonderful person. And after her career in Balboa park, at the museums, she went back to school and became a schoolteacher. And she taught in the Del Mar school district until she retired last year, I believe it was.

[41:03] KIM PETER DUCLO: Yeah, a year and a half ago.

[41:04] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Year and a half ago.

[41:05] KIM PETER DUCLO: Now we're back where you and dad were, and hopefully we're going to be able to explore.

[41:09] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: And they've been married for 26 years, and I hope they last as long as my husband and I did.

[41:22] KIM PETER DUCLO: That's one thing I will say, though, is that you've given me. You and dad gave so many gifts to my sister Lisa and I, but the greatest gift you gave us was your example for the love that you had for each other. Because if there was ever a target to aim for, that's something that my wife Sandra and I have now, because you guys were the perfect love affair, the perfect marriage, as far as I'm concerned, always. And I just hope we can somewhat replicate that. It doesn't seem fair that we'd be able to, but I think we're well.

[41:59] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: On our way, and we're lucky. We still have a lot of family. We've got a lot of family that live in the area. My youngest niece actually lives in San Diego with her family, and she works at UCSD in public health. And her son, her seven year old son is named Jack, after my husband, because she used to spend summers with us. And her uncle Jack was her hero. He would take her to the beach every day, and she just idolized him. So her firstborn son was named Jack.

[42:41] KIM PETER DUCLO: What's that like, having another Jack?

[42:45] GLENDA MARIE DUCLO: Actually, there's two other jacks I have. My cousin's daughter also adored Uncle Jack, and she called her son Jack.

[43:04] KIM PETER DUCLO: Wonderful. Anything else you all would like? Yes. One last thing, and that is, I think my mom, at a certain point, since I got started a little late, had given up the idea of ever having a grandchild. But she does. And my beautiful child, Morgan Taylor Duclo, is about to graduate from high school in about two and a half or three weeks from now. And we couldn't be more, more proud. And again, Morgan has been so lucky to have Glenda for a grandmother, that's for sure.