Roz Lagomarsino, descendant of Sonoma County’s pioneer families, dies at 95

She didn’t go around bragging about it, but the indefatigable Rosamond “Roz” Lagomarsino sprang from four of Sonoma County’s most deeply rooted pioneer families, some of which put down stakes in California before it was a state.

She was born a Clary and descended also from the Keegans, Hoods and Temples. She left Sonoma County a few times, living variously in Alameda, San Francisco and Pacifica, but she always returned.

Growing up as a child of the Great Depression, losing part of a leg to a roadway accident and becoming a widow nearly ?50 years ago were among the obstacles and hardships Lagomarsino overcame with grit and tenacity. She worked for many years as a telephone operator, school secretary and graphic artist-printer, and she’d retired when she settled back in Santa Rosa in 1991. Lagomarsino died on Dec. 1 at Healdsburg’s hospital, shortly after she fell at home and suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 95.

“She lived her life her way,” said daughter Cate Lagomarsino of Santa Rosa. “We were blessed to have her as long as we did.”

Cate Lagomarsino said no doubt there were people who knew her mother and did not realize she walked with a prosthesis on her left leg. She’d lost the calf and foot when a car struck her as she was crossing a street in Pacifica in 1957.

“She was always a good soldier,” her daughter said. “She just did what she had to do.”

The former Rosamond Clary was born in 1921 in Ukiah to Thomas P. Clary and Rosamond Temple Clary. Her family moved later to the northern Napa Valley, where she graduated from Calistoga High School in 1940. She went to work as a telephone operator in Calistoga and after a short time moved to Alameda with her parents and transferred to the telephone office in San Francisco. She’d switched to a secretarial job with Fibreboard when, in mid-1946, she met and fell in love with a World War II combat veteran, Thomas Lagomarsino.

They married in August of ’46. They lived in San Francisco and then Pacifica. Roz Lagomarsino took work as a printer for the Emporium department store. For a time after her husband died in 1968, she was the office secretary of a school in Half Moon Bay.

Always busy, Lagomarsino also worked as a printer for Sonoma State College, now Sonoma State University, and for a variety of companies. When she wasn’t working or doing something with her children and grandchildren, said her daughter, “She played bingo, she was a crossword fanatic and she would read everything she could get her hands on.”

Lagomarsino also delved into both California history and family genealogy. She was involved for many years with the Native Daughters of the Golden West and she volunteered for the Diabetes Society.

In addition to her daughter in Santa Rosa, she is survived by her sons, Thomas Lagomarsino Jr. and James Lagomarsino, both of Santa Rosa; her brother, Dexter Clary, also of Santa Rosa; four grandchildren and two great-grandsons. Services will be private.