| Notes |
- Elizabeth Bonham (Baskerville) Wirtz Baskerville
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Elizabeth Bonham Baskerville was born May 1, 1942, to Elizabeth (Trumbo) Baskerville and Harry H. Baskerville Jr. at the Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles.
She was a beautiful baby with big brown eyes and curly brown hair. Elizabeth was a precocious child who loved to learn. She announced at a young age that she wanted to be either a fireman or a doctor (doctor won out).
Elizabeth and her younger sister, Stephanie, grew up in Altadena, Calif. Elizabeth was a straight-A student with the exception of one B in junior high school (such an aberration). In 1960, she was valedictorian of a class of over 800 seniors at John Muir High School in Pasadena, Calif., (back in the days when there was only one valedictorian each year) and earned a scholarship to Stanford University.
Elizabeth loved everything about Stanford, but especially treasured the lifelong friends she made there. She liked to tell people she “did well enough at Stanford to be accepted at the University of Southern California School of Medicine” in 1964. Her graduation from medical school in 1968 was followed by a rotating internship in all services at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Ore.
Elizabeth married Erin Molloy Wirtz in 1969, and the couple volunteered at a medical mission stationed at Tshikage in Zaire (Congo). Upon returning from Africa, Elizabeth completed a three-year pediatric residency at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. She then opened a pediatric practice in Ontario, Ore., where she was the first female physician in Ontario and, for five years, she was the only pediatrician in a 60-mile radius.
Elizabeth and her husband divorced in 1973. The true blessing from the marriage came in the form of a wonderful son, Matthew Dalton Baskerville, born in 1973. While she labored with Matthew in the Ontario Hospital, the OB department continued to bring newborns to her to examine. Now that’s dedication.
In 1977, Elizabeth and her son moved to Santa Cruz, Calif., to be closer to friends and family. She established a private pediatric practice, which continued until her retirement in 2015. Santa Cruz was also where her second beloved son, David John Everett Baskerville, was born in 1982.
Elizabeth loved taking care of children and their parents. She practiced long enough to treat three generations of children in her community. More than once, she was voted Best Doctor in Santa Cruz as noted in the Santa Cruz Metro. In 1981, her book for parents, “Dr. Baskerville’s Baby Basics,” was published. In 1998, she published a children’s book entitled “David’s Kiss,” illustrated by her cousin, Perry Jamieson. In 2015, Elizabeth closed her practice and, the following spring, moved to Clarkston to be near her sister, Stephanie Leer.
In addition to her medical excellence, Elizabeth had a strong creative side and talent. Over the years she enjoyed clay modeling, stained glass, crewel and needlepoint. She became a master of heirloom sewing and Brazilian embroidery, and she made charming clothing for little girls and dolls. Two of her projects were published in Classic Sewing Magazine, with a third to be published posthumously.
Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer in May 2018 and courageously dealt with chemotherapy. She had a short remission, which allowed her to finish some needlework projects and take a river cruise with her sister and dear friends.
She died at home surrounded by her sons and other loved ones on Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2019.
urvivor snames omitted per findagrave policy.
It is impossible to describe what a bright light Elizabeth was in this world. Her sense of humor, her intelligence, her creative talents and loving, generous nature endeared her to all who knew her.
The family requests that donations in her memory be made to the Willow Center for Grieving Children, P.O. Box 1361, Lewiston, ID 83501, American Cancer Society, Lewis Clark Animal Center, 6 Shelter Road, Lewiston, ID 83501 or a charity of your choice.
Lewiston Tribune Dec. 31, 2019
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Interview with Elizabeth' sister, Stephanie about their father's car:
Driving Daddy's car again
Once upon a time, Harry Baskerville of Altadena, Calif., bought a new 1955 Morgan Plus Four drophead coupe, and his 11-year-old girl fell in love with it
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved a car.
The 1955 Morgan Plus Four drophead coupe from a turn-of-the-century factory in Malvern Link, Worcestershire, England, and Stephanie Baskerville, an 11-year-old living in Altadena, Calif., met when her father, Harry Baskerville brought the bright red classic sports car home.
It was brand new, one of 23 made by the Morgan Motor Co. that year, and one of a pair shipped to Los Angeles where the Baskervilles found it.
It was love at first sight, recalls Stephanie Leer, 62, now grown and living in Clarkston with her husband, Robert, 59.
It was a two-seater so when the whole family went on a drive, Harry and Elizabeth sat in the black leather seats and Stephanie and her sister folded themselves into the narrow well behind them.
"We had so much fun in it," Leer says. "But it's so cute, it just makes me smile when I look at it, and it always did. It rattles and rolls and it shakes and shimmies. It's the first car I ever drove, and it's a little tricky. It's not the easiest car to drive."
It took one pillow under her and one behind her for Leer to reach the pedals to drive the four-speed stick shift.
They were happy together for nine years, and her father, who daily drove the Morgan 45 minutes each way to work in Burbank, promised that someday it would be hers.
Then she left for college, and the unthinkable happened.
In the spring of 1964, Harry took the Morgan in for an oil change and the oil plug wasn't replaced properly. The oil dripped out; the engine seized.
In a fit of anger, Leer says, her father sold the Morgan to a hippie artist neighbor for $200.
"I was really heartbroken," she says.
Then the hippie artist moved away, leaving behind only a decorative mobile of his creation, and she went back to school at California State Polytechnic where she met Bob, who was on the rodeo team. After graduation they moved to his hometown, Clarkston, where he has a construction business and she retired recently from nursing.
But she never forgot her first love.
"I've heard about that car since I married my wife 35 years ago," Bob Leer says. "I bet I've heard that story 300 times."
In all those years, she never wanted another classic or antique car, he said. Just the Morgan.
Many people equate the name Morgan with the pirate or breed of horses. They've never heard of the family-owned company established in England in 1910 and in continuous production since with the exception of some war years.
Morgan first produced three-wheeled cars -- two in front, one in back, converting to four wheels about 1947. The classic design starts with a wooden frame onto which the steel chassis is bolted. It also has backward-opening suicide doors, a butterfly bonnet (a hood that opens on both sides from a center hinge), and sliding windows.
The term "drophead" refers to the convertible top that folds back like the bonnet on a baby carriage.
The 1955 model carries two spare tires in a double-curve bracket on the back and has a full wooden dash.
A friend in California, perhaps tired of hearing what Stephanie Leer calls her "whining," or perhaps just intrigued, asked for any information she had, including the unique number put on each Morgan at the factory.
Last February, he came for a visit and brought documentation that he had found the car.
""I really didn't believe it," Stephanie says. But she contacted Gerry Willburn in Cypress, Calif. It could be proven without a doubt it was one of the 17 Morgans in his collection.
Willburn, president of the Southern California Morgan Club, wasn't interested in selling, but she could visit. In April Stephanie saw it for the first time in 42 years.
"I was really so happy to know it was all right," she says.
Willburn was able to tell her the car had been sold by the hippie artist in 1969 to a man named Norm Masterson who saw an ad for $500 in the Penny Saver. The engine was in pieces. Masterson scoured the shop for every original piece and put them all back together. When he fell ill in 1997, he sold the car to his good friend, Gerry Willburn.
It is the rarest of the Morgans, Willburn told the Leers, because the fewest were made that year.
The Leers were on a trip celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary when Bob said they really should buy her Dad's car. How, Stephanie asked, without driving the Willburns crazy with phone calls?
They returned home to an e-mail offering to sell the car to them.
He offered them a good deal, Bob says, smiling slightly: $30,000, $5,000 less than Willburn figured he could get on the open market.
Stephanie believes her father paid about $1,500, but she's not sure, she says, because she was 11 and in love.
It arrived a few weeks later in a Hog Haulers truck, a Portland company that specializes in moving vehicles.
It leaks a little oil on the garage floor. The windshield wipers don't work quite right. The dent her father put in the passenger side rear fender is still visible beneath an inexpert patch.
"There's a heater, but, by golly, you wouldn't know it," Stephanie says.
But it starts with a low rumble and quickly settles into a deep purr.
She drove the car in the Clarkston Christmas Parade with the city's Junior Miss perched on the back. The thrill came when she heard someone on the sidelines say, "By golly, that's a Morgan."
For now, she plans to drive it any day the weather is fine, reserving her Toyota Avalon for the rest of the time, and eventually pass it on to their son, Christian. He will love it for itself and its history, his mother says.
Their daughter, Elizabeth, thinks of vehicles as a means to a destination, she says.
Her hand runs across the brilliant red paint, the black leather warm even on a cold December day. Her father died about eight years ago, she says, but he would be so proud.
"It's just amazing to me I have my father's car. He would be so happy."
Lewiston Tribune Jan 2, 2007
Sandra L. Lee
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1942 - 2019 (77 years)
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