Marshall &Kay Family  Histories

THE BEACH PROPERTY

                                          this page is included in the history pages of both

                                              Yvonne KAY Marshall & Mary INGHAM Kay

 

To begin with let me tell you who the beach property belonged to. This was on my mother’s side of the family. Here’s how it goes -

 

The second oldest daughter in my mother's family was named Helen INGHAM Beukers , she's the one who had studied to be a teacher, and went to California. She had a good offer there for teaching, and also met her husband there. Gerard Arnald John Beukers, who was a widower , and had one daughter(Barbara Jane Beukers). He wasn't a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, yet he was well to do at the time. He's the one who owned the landscaping yard and had been buying property. They had three children, Gerard, Helen Jean, and the last one was called Don.  Helen Jean was about a year younger than I was(Yvonne Kay Marshall). I had lived with that family for a while also, so I was well acquainted with all of those cousins, and fairly close to all of them. 
 

They had a home in Berkeley, and also a home in Rio Del Mar, which was fairly close to Monterey.  At first it was what they called a “cabin”, which was rather an elaborate cabin. It had two stories and was very, very nice. But it was right on the cliff above the beach of Rio Del Mar.  Gerard A.J. Beukers had bought quite a bit of property down in that area, all along the beach and up on the cliff side. This was a man that I had described, as being in those days, quite tall. He was six foot seven, and just a great big guy. In those days even the basketball players weren't that tall. And he loved the beach, and just loved being down there so they felt they could afford to move their business headquarters there at some point in time. He built another house that wasn't very far away from the cabin. This was quite a lovely home also for those days. It was kind of a Spanish type of home, it was up on the cliff still, it wasn't down on the beach. That was the home that they lived and raised their kids in, and Helen Jean and Gerard finished school down in that area. 
 

From what I was told there got to be a point where he felt like Gerard A.J. Beukers felt he had to keep making more money. He would build things in a hurry and rent them out, he wasn't happy until everything was rented out. So he rented out the cabin and that meant they had rentals that were fairly close to their main home. 

Then he decided he wanted to get close to the beach, so it wouldn't take so long to get down to the beach. They had steps that went down the cliff, to the beach, from the cliff house, but he wanted to get even closer to the beach. So that's when they built the house there on the beach. They built it right into the cliff. It was a very sandy cliff of course, but they managed to build a good part of the foundation right into the cliff. So I guess he felt like the cliff wasn't going to come down on them. Still I always worried about that cliff because we knew how sandy it was. We used to start at the top and slide all the way to the bottom. Not straight down, we had kind of a snake trail , but it was a long ways and pretty sandy. 

This "beach house" was a rather large house. It had three stories, the main story, which was really, quite large, a big front room, a big kitchen, a lot of bedrooms. And under that they had built just some more rooms for the kids and such. And on the top deck was a swimming pool .Well that was fine for a while because it was a beautiful home. But then he kind of figured they didn't need all that space so they started renting the bottom part of the house. Then people wanted it, the "high class" I guess want stuff on the beach. So there wasn't a problem renting anything. But I remember at that point my Aunt got a little bit unhappy and discouraged because she really didn't want all those rentals all around. However he did, and continued to rent and he even went so far as to divide some of the upper parts of the house when the kids stared leaving and started renting that. Just about that time my Aunt had a heart attack and she died. That was my Aunt Dawn (Helen Ingham Beukers). Then he was alone there in the home. His son Gerard at that time, was established in Redwood City with his business and family. So he invited his daughter Helen Jean and her husband and family to come and run the business. So she did. 

That particular beach house kind of became a place for the Ingham family to get together once a year. We used to try to do that at New Year's. We'd go down and have family reunions there. That's when Maureen's family(The Perona's) used to go down, and Helen Jean Beukers (Kestner) and Gerard's family(The Beukers) and all of those cousins. I don't know whether my cousin Kathleen (aunt Dot's daughter)- (aka Ardell Imgham) showed up very much, one of the cousins I lived with.. By that time I think her older sister Jo Ann had died. I don't remember ever seeing Jo Ann there.