Obituary for
Viola Gregory
Viola Gregory
Viola M. Gregory, 90, a longtime resident of Berkeley, Orinda and in recent years of Danville, passed away peacefully on August 30, 2017.
Viola was born the eldest of 8 children in a rural northern New Mexico village on November 29, 1926 to Juan and Rallitos Ortega. Her family came from a long line of Spanish-American farming families that traced their origins to back to 16th century Spain. She received her schooling at the Presbyterian school in the village of Dixon and at Menaul in Albuquerque, and her love of learning on the knee of her paternal grandfather, J. Urbano Ortega, a New Mexico state politician and attorney, who lived on the adjacent farm. She excelled at school and always said she drew strength from her spiritual education throughout her life.
During World War II, her family moved to Alameda, California, where her father sought work in the war effort. It was in Oakland that she met George G. Gregory at a dance and married him less than a year later. George, originally of Budapest, Hungary, and a holocaust survivor, made his career in the freight forwarding business and started his own company, requiring that he travel to Europe and Asia frequently. It was as George’s companion in his travels that Viola embarked on adventures far beyond her wildest dreams, accompanying her husband to both Europe and Asia one or two times every year for more than 20 years. She also became indispensable hosting dinners for clients in her home and taking their spouses on tours of San Francisco.
In addition to this work Viola volunteered as a docent at the Oakland Museum, serving in the California History division for 13 years. It was her idea to offer tours in both Spanish and English before this practice became standard, and she followed through with providing bilingual tours for hundreds of school children who visited the museum every year. She loved the scholarship required to research and write about California history and she became an avid California history buff, collecting a small library of books on the subject, sharing her research papers with her fellow docents and writing a book of verse entitled “Expressions of a History Docent.” She considered her association with the Oakland Museum one of the most rewarding experiences of her life.
Viola was a spirited, devoted mother to daughter Olympia and son, Ken, making it a priority to stay present with the details of their lives, and guiding them during their childhood and adolescent years. She dedicated herself to providing a healthy home for her family, yet made time in her life to pursue her varied interests; She was an accomplished ballroom dancer, loved tending her garden, and she never stopped writing about her life experiences. Her grandchildren, above all, were the light of her life and she always loved spending as much time with them as possible.
In all her endeavors, she believed that if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well, a practice she modeled throughout her life and that she said she learned from her mother.
Her husband George pre-deceased her. She is survived by her son Ken Gregory and daughter-in-law Erica of Moraga, grandchildren Nina, Sam and Erin Gregory, her daughter Olympia Ortega-Gregory and son-in-law Kent Goshorn of Richmond, and sisters Consuelo Ortega, Sadie Shepherd, Teofila Herrera, Frances Talley, husband James, Esther Coppelman and husband Robert, and many cousins, nieces and nephews.
Services will be held at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Avenue, Kensington, 94707, on Wednesday, September 6, 2017 at 2:00pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Oakland Museum or the Alzheimers Association.
