Magic Johnson

Christina Paugh was born in Bear Valley on September 29, 1912 and lived through the Great Depression in a dirt-floored shack with 39 siblings. She quit school when she was 10 because the other kids made fun of her for not wearing dresses. Chris, as she is known, was a master pinochle player and was diligent in her duty of winning at least 50 cents a week at the Senior Center. Every Friday, she and her best friend Barbara Wilkinson (with whom she lived for the last fifteen years) would get their hair set at the beauty school. Chris was a lover of animals, and the most loved of her Great Granddaughters, Sarah Johnson, remembers the school of ducks that believed Chris was their mother. Sarah also remembers her Great Grandmother’s smile, cupboards full of brightly-colored Tupperware, a freezer of carefully-folded squares of used tin foil, ecstatic houseplants that took up every corner of every room and every inch of every table (save for the dining table, which doubled as a card table on Wednesdays). She loved vacuuming and traveling and spent years with her deceased second husband Maynard touring around in a motor home with the Good Sam’s Club, whose mascot is the Pelican. From this, Chris acquired one thousand hats, patches, stickers, and figurines that bear the likeness of said bird. Her daughter and son-in-law, Hattie and Bob (respectively), devoted the last ten years to caring for Chris, and their Favorite Granddaughter (the Great Granddaughter previously heralded) is unsure of what her Grandparents will do with their new schedule. She (said Grand/Great Granddaughter) hopes they will travel to Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, or the Bahamas. Anyway, Christina Paugh was an emphatically warm and loving person, a mother to everyone, and, above all, not a racist.

She is survived by her brother Virgil, daughters Hattie and Colleen, her son Gay, a smattering of stepchildren, and three hundred beloved Grandchildren, Great Grandchildren, and Great-Great Grandchildren.
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Passed June 7 2009