| Notes |
- BIRTH: California Birth Index, 1905-1995
Name: Virginia M Knott
Birth Date: 26 Jan 1913
Gender: Female
Mother's Maiden Name: Hornady
Birth County: Los Angeles
Source: Ancestry.com - 24 May 2012
DEATH: Social Security Death Index
Name: Virginia M. Knott
Last Residence: 92660 Newport Beach, Orange, California, USA
Born: 26 Jan 1913
Died: 13 Jun 2003
State (Year) SSN issued: California (Before 1951)
Source: Ancestry.com - 24 May 2012
OBIT: San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, June 14, 2003
Virginia Knott Bender, the eldest of four children of the couple that turned a small berry patch in Buena Park into one of Southern California's earliest and most successful visitor attractions, died Friday. She was 90.
Mrs. Bender died at her home in Newport Beach after a long illness, according to her sister, Marion Knott Montapert.
From the time she was a child, Mrs. Bender worked at the farm that Walter Knott first rented in 1920 and later bought and turned into a family attraction he called Knott's Berry Place.
Mrs. Bender began by working with her parents and siblings in a roadside fruit stand and later, like her sisters, was a waitress at the farm's chicken restaurant.
In 1939, she became proprietor of Virginia's Gift Shop; actually, when it started it was "nothing but some gifts on a card table," Montapert said.
By the mid-1950s, Walter and Cordelia Knott had made the farm into a homespun attraction that grew as the Knotts devised new ways to keep their customers happy while they waited in long lines for chicken dinners.
Eventually, Knott's Berry Farm included a "Ghost Town" with live music and dancing, a saloon, animal shows, burro rides and the Calico Railroad, a steam- powered train that made a short trek on narrow-gauge tracks.
Knott's Berry Farm also made famous the "Boysen berry" -- named after Rudolph Boysen, a parks superintendent who had crossed blackberry, red raspberry and loganberry plants. No one, it seemed, could leave the farm without eating a piece of boysenberry pie or buying a jar of boysenberry jam at Virginia's Gift Shop.
When Disneyland opened in 1955 in nearby Anaheim, Walter Knott openly worried about what effect it would have on the farm, which until then had little competition. But business continued at a brisk pace, although the family did add amusement rides and other attractions to keep pace.
Mrs. Bender ran Virginia's Gift Shop until the siblings sold the farm in 1997 for what industry analysts estimated at $200 million.
"The four of us are growing older. We aren't going to be here forever," Mrs. Bender told the Orange County Register at the time of the sale.
Mrs. Bender's brother, Russell, died in May 2002. Her sister, Toni Knott Oliphant, died last January.
When the elder Knotts died -- Cordelia in 1974 and Walter in 1981 -- they left each of the children an equal share. The four children formed an unusually close business and family partnership that, along with their offspring, operated Knott's Berry Farm until it was sold.
Montapert, the last remaining of the Knott children, said Friday that she supposed that while at first they worked together "because it was a matter of survival," as they grew older, "none of us wanted to leave the farm to do anything else."
Virginia Knott was born Jan. 26, 1913. She graduated from Whittier College in 1934, where she was a classmate of Richard Nixon's.
"It's kind of my claim to fame," she told the Register in 1990 about knowing Nixon, who once invited her and her college classmates to the White House for tea and a tour of Air Force One.
In 2001, Mrs. Bender donated $1 million to help open the Cordelia Knott Wellness Foundation, which provides education and support for breast cancer victims. Both she and her mother had suffered from breast cancer.
She is survived by her second husband, Paul Bender; daughters Sherry Sherridon of Bend, Ore., and Maureen Reafsnyder of Newport Beach; son Michael Reafsnyder of Tustin; and eight grandchildren.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/14/BA254182.DTL - 24 May 2012
BURIAL: Fairhaven Memorial Park, Santa Ana, Orange County, California, USA
Plot: Section J
"Virginia Knott Bender: 1913-2003."
(headstone image onsite)
Source: Graving Queen of the OC @findagrave - 24 May 2012
Memorial# 19028660
CENSUS: 1920 US Federal Census - California, San Luis Obispo, Cholame, ED 41, Page 7A. *[17 Jan 1920]*
#54/57
Living with parents
Virginia Knott (daughter) age 6 born California.
CENSUS: 1930 US Federal Census - California, Orange, Anaheim, ED 12, Page 6B. *[2 May 1930]*
#154/154
Living with parents
Virginia Knott (daughter) age 16 born California.
OTHER: Honolulu, Hawaii, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1900-1959
Ship: SS Lurline
Port of Departure: San Francisco, California
Departure Date: 4 May 1951
Port of Arrival: Honolulu, Hawaii
Arrival Date: 9 May 1951
~
Name: Kenneth Reafsnyder
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Birth Year: abt 1914
Birthplace: Garden Grove, California
~
Name: Virginia Reafsnyder
Age: 37
Gender: Female
Birth Year: abt 1914
Birthplace: Pomona, California
~
Source: Ancestry.com - 24 May 2012
|
1913 - 2003 (90 years)