Bea Turner, Mendocino native and Marine wife, dies at 89

Bea Turner grew up in the village of Mendocino with a silver spoon in her mouth, until the Great Depression plucked it out.

Her hardworking family had recovered financially when she happened to meet a Marine who’d been wounded in the Korean War and was treated to a restorative visit to the Mendocino coast. They married in 1952 and fell more in love through the following 64 years.

Just over a year ago, Stanley Turner perished when a raging fire broke out at the couple’s Santa Rosa home. Bea Turner’s broken heart hadn’t healed when she died June 17 at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. She was 89.

“She was just brutally dedicated to my father,” said son Alan Turner of Santa Rosa. “And vice-versa, by the way.”

For decades, Bea and Stan Turner were stalwarts of local military veterans organizations and endeavors. Especially important to Bea Turner were the regular flea markets that the honor society Forty & Eight produce to raise scholarship dollars for nursing students at Santa Rosa Junior College, and the American Legion Auxiliary initiative that sends teens to the summer leadership program, Girls State.

The former Beatrice Lucile Freathy was born in Mendocino in 1928. Her father, Clarence Freathy, was successful in the logging trade and as an investor. One of Bea Freathy’s grandmothers, Kate Anderson, was the village’s midwife.

Young Bea and her parents occupied a fine house in town. “Then the crash came and they lost everything,” said Alan Turner. “She went from beautiful hardwood floors and everything to the dirt floors of a logging camp.”

As with many children of the Great Depression, the Freathys’ daughter learned from hard times to be resourceful, self-sufficient and frugal. Alan Turner said his mom saved every little thing, “just in case she would ever need it.”

Despite the hardships she endured as a child, the future Bea Turner spoke of the marvels of growing up and moving freely through the natural wonders of western Mendocino County. She would tell that throughout the 1930s, kids like herself could go anywhere at any time of day without an ounce of fear.

Then came Imperial Japan’s 1941 attack on U.S. forces in and near Pearl Harbor, and America’s entry into World War II. Life on the coast was militarized; residents watched constantly for signs of invasion.

Alan Turner recalls his mother telling him that with the start of the war, the sense of safety she and the other Mendocino kids knew went away, “and it never returned.”

Beatrice Freathy graduated from Mendocino High School shortly before the war ended in 1945. She went to work for a lumber company.

The Korean War began in mid-1950, and not long afterward, a young Marine who’d grown up in Denver, Stanley Ashur Turner Jr., was badly injured by a grenade blast. He was recovering in Oakland when he signed up for a bus trip up to Mendocino.

Alan Turner said he’s never been sure which happened first: “He fell in love with the redwoods, or he fell in love with my mom.”

Stan Turner had healed sufficiently to return to Colorado when he wrote to Bea Freathy in Mendocino to ask if she’d marry him. Ever practical, said told him to get a job, then get back to her. Stan Turner went to work for the phone company in Denver.

In 1952, there was grand church wedding in Mendocino. Stan and Bea Turner then settled in Denver and began a family.

A longing for California produced a move to Sonoma County in 1963. The couple lived for a time in Rohnert Park before they bought a house in Santa Rosa, off Sonoma Avenue and Summerfield Road.

Their three children brought them five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Bea Turner, the former country girl and child of the Depression, canned fruits and vegetables, supported her children and others through her work with the PTA and the Scouts, and became a go-to person in community service programs of the American Legion and other veterans organizations.

“She had a mother streak in her that you don’t see too often,” Alan Turner said.

The couple were at home when a fire started in their garage on June 22, 2016. It was raging when Stan Turner opened a door to the garage and was quickly overcome by smoke.

Bea Turner managed to escape the house through a back door. After losing her husband and much of their home she moved into a Santa Rosa board-and-care home. Her death on June 17 came five days short of a year after that of the Marine she loved enough to leave Mendocino.

In addition to her son in Santa Rosa and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Bea Turner is survived by her daughter, Melissa Turner of Seattle, and her son, Stanley Turner III of Houston. A memorial service is at 1 p.m. Saturday at Santa Rosa Bible Church on Badger Road.

Memorial donations are suggested to Shriners Children’s Hospitals, 2900 N. Rocky Point Drive, Tampa, FL 33607, or to the SRJC Nursing Program, c/o SRJC Foundation, 1501 Mendocino Ave. Santa Rosa 95401-4395.