Our 2025 Christmas Letter

Dear Friends and Family: May we present our hopefully interesting and memorable 2025 Christmas Letter 

 Alice thinks it’s wonderful that I do the Christmas cards and letters each year. My secret is that I think that it’s wonderful too. Each year a great white space begs me to fill it with something interesting and memorable. That’s a big challenge because then I must change my focus from Alice and I to you, the cherished reader of innumerable Christmas letters. What would you think is not only interesting but memorable? 

I'm wearing the red cap

 How about the Gualala Art Center presenting its most memorable show ever, Fiddler on the Roof. I had two parts, the innkeeper and a rabbi. Best ever? A huge talented cast – almost 40 – plus a superbly crafted set with outstanding stage crew members doubling as Russian soldiers. The key was our director, Tony Salamone, supported by selfless musicians Don Krieger and Sue Bohlin who played at every moment we rehearsed. 

 Early May we spent ten days on San Pedro Island, Belize. We peddled bikes and snorkeled amongst big nurse sharks – non-man eating - that thankfully preferred the chopped fish our guide threw amongst us. Another highlight of our trip was a scenic flight over the mysterious Blue Hole located 78 miles from our resort. We chose the two-hour flight rather than a bone-shaking six-hour boat trip, which would have begun at 5:30am. We also visited the Altun Ha Mayan ruins and stopped at a roadside restaurant on our return for curry chicken, so good that we’re still trying (without success) to duplicate the recipe. Memorable ruins, memorable chicken.

Front, Alice and Hans. Behind, Josie, Debbie, Jeanette, Jack, Me, Daniel, and Kevin

On the 5th of April a very interesting and memorable person, Hans Stiller, died. Hans and Alice married in 1962 and have two daughters, Jeanette and Debbie. Hans was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1941 and survived Allied bombings. His father was killed on the Russian Front in 1944. His mother, Ilse, remarried and his family immigrated to Las Angeles in 1954. Hans became a SF Bay ferry captain and an accomplished cello player. Alice and I married in 1989 and I met Hans in the Dallas airport just before he took a photo of Alice and me sleeping together on a flight enroute to a 1991 vacation in Germany. 

In July I hosted a fifth Point Arena High reunion, this time in Santa Rosa – never the same place twice. This reunion was small - I underestimated the effect of schoolmates aging two years since the last one - but it was fun. I’m already working on the next. Alice and I had reunion leftovers – spaghetti, fettucine Alfredo, cake – for a month. 

Kevin Mone, Vulcan wire CEO Mike Graffio, and founder and former CEO Alice

Alice founded Vulcan Wire 50 years ago and its CEO Mike Graffio is mentoring his replacement, Alice’s oldest grandson, Kevin. 

Front, Theresa and husband Chuck

Vulcan’s annual Christmas party was attended by 15 of 17 employees plus six guests. Special honor and thanks went to Theresa Rodrigues, soon to retire after forty years of selling wire for Vulcan. 

Josie, Jack, Alice, and Debbie

After grandsons Jack Cosentino and Daniel Mone graduated from college this year, youngest granddaughter Josie Cosentino will be the last graduate next year. 

2nd Lieutenant Daniel Mone

Daniel was also just commissioned an Army 2nd Lieutenant and will start after Christmas at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, training in field artillery.

Savannah and Eric

Oldest granddaughter Savannah Mone and fiancé Eric Briltz announced their plans for a 2027 wedding at Keady, Northern Ireland, with her father, Kieran’s, family plus us Californians. 

My oldest son Bruce and his wife Lisa now live in Arizona, and my middle son Scott in Fortuna, Ca. My youngest son, Jeffrey, died over a year ago at age 55 in San Antonio following a stroke. I have five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren scattered in California, Arizona, and Nevada. 

Alice’s first husband, Hans, told her: “Alice, you plan too much.” As such, we have plans that already take us through 2026 – and beyond – many involving eliminating her right-leg pain caused by a back issue. Progress looks good, with injections to stabilize bone strength and density and arthroscopic surgery to relieve spinal cord pressure. That probably won’t allow us to answer Jamaica’s call this year, but if not, there’s a lot to like and enjoy closer to home. I wonder what is interesting and memorable around Corvallis, Oregon? We’ll probably go there twice, once to admire Josie’s Oregon State campus, and then for her graduation. Plans, plans, and more plans. Maybe Hans was right. 

Merry Christmas and a Happy (Memorable) New Year! Michael, Alice, and cute little Radar

Hans with grandchildren, 2005-2006

David and Oi-Lan motorcycle to visit from Idaho

Alice was a young mother in the early 1960"s. 

This is her perfect Christmas card photo.

Our 2024 Christmas Letter

Can a Christmas letter be a record of all the things we didn’t do? Would anyone want to read it?

 

Well, we didn’t go to Brazil. In fact we never have gone to Brazil, so why report that now after over 80 years of not doing it? Because we had planned to this year but Alice’s quests came first. Quest One was to attempt to change whatever was causing chronic pain in her right leg. After undergoing a variety of tests, her right hip was replaced, as previously the other hip and both knees had been. Still the leg pain persists. Undaunted, Alice accompanied by me and Radar, still walks four miles a day, much to all our benefit. Now her attention is focused on her back, so Brazil will have to wait.

 

Quest Two was a two-year project to facilitate the retirement of the CEO and majority owner of the company Alice founded nearly fifty years ago, Vulcan Wire, Incorporated, located in Hayward. The first option available was selling Vulcan to a competitor. Alice learned from exposure to business brokerage that such sales usually are financial disappointments plus cause loss of jobs and/or dissolving the purchased company, so she sought a 5/20-year plan to maintain Vulcan through engaging a future CEO, her oldest grandson, Kevin. It’s a win-win-win all around.

 

So far I’ve been a supportive husband by not getting in Alice’s way. Earlier this year our theater group gave six performances of The Greatest Show, a medley of twenty-nine Broadway show tunes with parts for me in eight. My personal highlight was a duet from Gigi, I Remember it Well. My musical performing “career” began ten years ago just after I turned 71, but this was the first time they let me sing outside a chorus. Now we’re in rehearsal for Fiddler on the Roof, and I’m back in the chorus facing challenges of not only singing with more precision than in previous shows, but also participating in demanding group routines where I struggle with hand movements. Being 82 unfortunately hasn’t improved my coordination.

 

It's easy to stay active in Gualala. We are in two book clubs and are always reading one book and listening to another. Then we have lunch with friends and two monthly Lions potluck dinner meetings and one Rotary breakfast or lunch. However, our daily routine centers on three walks with Radar. Radar gets to play ball and nibble seaweed on Cook’s Beach, then we walk through the woods behind us, and finish with a night walk in our neighborhood. We usually do five miles a day, although we shortened it a bit until Alice recovers. Radar understands that we have to take care of Grandma Lady Girl, his name for Alice.

Celebrating our 35^th anniversary at St Orres restaurant

Radar and I admire an old-growth redwood nearby

 

I pioneer the Gender-Neutral restroom in the Golden Gate Theater, San Francisco, for the Simon and Garfunkel Show (great impersonators). I was chatting with Alice and her oldest daughter Jeanette at intermission when I saw the gender-neutral sign and decided I might as well conform. However, I noticed that I was the only male who so decided.

 2023 Christmas in Walnut Creek

Top row: Kieran, Alice, Savannah, Kevin, me, Jeanette, Hans

Bottom: Josie, Debbie, Jack, Daniel

Radar playing ball on Cook’s Beach - over 3,500 times!

Thanksgiving 2024

Jeanette, Savannah, Kevin, Daniel, Kieran, Hans, Alice, Me

Vulcan Wire's 2023 Christmas party. 

Vulcan Wire is in good hands as it approaches its 50th Birthday in March, 2025

Grandson Kevin Mone, CEO Mike Graffio, Founder and former CEO Alice

Vulcan Wire's 2024 Christmas Party

Rotary party at Lauren Sinnott's Point Arena home

"There is Nothing Like a Dame" performed in "The Greatest Show" at Gualala Arts Center.

From left, Michael Thomas, Jon Handel, Eric Wilder, Kevin McCoy, and me.

Laura Leigh and I in "Yes I Remember it Well" from "Gigi"

"Cookie", the Cook's Beach Sea Monster

300 Christmas cards ready for mailing!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Radar says "Woof"

 

 

Our 2023 Christmas Letter

                                                

 

     This has been a family and friends year as evidenced by the numerous photos on our Christmas card. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it helps if some words are added to give more meaning. 

Alice and I visiting her oldest grandchild Kevin and his girlfriend Alex in Minnesota this summer. 

Celebrating my 81^st birthday with Alice and good friends John and Mary Alice Bastian.

 

Alice celebrates her Reseda High School 63^rd reunion with identical twin schoolmates Jeff and Greg Schaffer.

     

My younger brother Ron and wife Kathy at our Point Arena High School reunion, his 62^ndand my 63^rd. 

Celebrating our 34^th anniversary 

Alice admires a small portion of a mural that Point Arena artist Lauren Sinnott created on 

the side of a building in our Mendocino County seat, Ukiah. 

(On a photo not on our card, Alice and Radar admire the self-portrait

 of Point Arena muralist Lauren Sinnott)

     Last year’s Vulcan Wire Christmas party includes eight of its seventeen employees.

 

 

This year's Vulcan Christmas Party

Alice founded Vulcan almost 50 years ago and CEO Mike Graffio 

has been with Vulcan for over 26 years.

  We celebrate friend James Hopenfeld’s birthday.

Friends and family at our Point Arena High School reunion. 

 Our only foreign travel took us to Speightstown, Barbados in late February for ten days, our most relaxing vacation ever. Relaxing, that is, until our flight back to Miami from Barbados. Alice and I were in the third row from the front, left-hand side. We noticed that a fellow in the front row, right-hand side, was noisily laughing. After a while Alice went forward to the restroom, passing by the noisy fellow who  had moved into the flight attendants' serving area. Soon a female flight attendant came down the aisle from that area with a roll of duct tape in her hand, and stopped to talk to a large Polynesian fellow in the next row past me. She asked him to help with an unruly passenger and he said he would, but first recruited two other big guys sitting nearby to help. 

 I was worried about Alice so tagged along, then saw her exiting the restroom. A female flight attendant told Alice to go back into the restroom, and of course she complied. Alice did see me standing behind the big guys and said that she had never seen me look more worried. 

They then confronted the fellow and told him to get back in his seat. He profanely refused, then suddenly the Polynesian grabbed him, moving faster than I thought a big guy could, and threw him into his seat and advised him to shut up, which he wouldn't. However, he noticed red liquid on his seat and suddenly calmed. He was allowed to stand up when it was found that his wine glass broke under him when he landed in his seat. 

A flight attendant went to Alice's restroom and said it was OK for her to come out, although when Alice saw her holding a red-stained towel she wasn't sure that she wanted to. But the red was only wine, not blood. First the Miami police, then the FBI came on board after the boarding ramp was connected. Questions were asked. It appeared that some witnesses would miss connecting flights, but then arrangements were made to have smart-phone videos emailed to the police. 

A moral to this story: Do something dumb like this guy did and forget having your lawyer challenge the witnesses' memories, because there will be at least half-a-dozen video recordings available to be called for evidence.

     If Alice wasn’t still working so hard on Vulcan projects, each day here in Gualala would qualify as very relaxing since we take Radar to Cook’s Beach and walk five miles or more through the woods, up the hills, and across the sand every day. Alice also makes good use of her heated (90 degrees) indoor pool and I just completed listening to all 60 hours of War and Peace while plodding away in our barn on my elliptical trainer. 

     Remember the ant and the grasshopper? Alice works, I play. Coming in late February, early March I’ll perform in “The Greatest Show”, my fifth musical since I turned 71 ten years ago, a very late bloomer. Among my seven numbers, my favorite is the duet from “Gigi”, “Yes, I Remember it Well”.

Our PA reunion was so much fun that the next one will (tentatively) be on July 26, 2025, at Ellington Hall in Santa Rosa, since most Pirates live closer to Santa Rosa than Gualala or Point Arena. Our party is going to the people! Here is the link to our Reunion Page.

Alice’s memoir “The Lady With Balls” consumed her time for seven years, and now it’s Vulcan Wire, the industrial baling wire business she founded almost fifty years ago, that keeps her very busy. Earlier this month we attended Vulcan’s Christmas party in Alameda and all seventeen employees were there for the happiest company holiday party you could imagine.  

2023 Christmas Eve in Lafayette

Front - Josie, Debbie, Jack, Daniel

 Back - Kieran, Alice, Savanah, Kevin, Me, Jeanette, Hans

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

 

 

Our 2022 Christmas Letter

A long time ago when the World was young, two momentous events resulted in Alice and I both reaching eighty years of age this year. Alice, being more impatient, reached 80 first in March, provoking her beautiful daughters, Jeanette and Debbie, to fill our Gualala home with celebrants. 

 

Granddaughters Josie and Savannah, Me, Grandson Daniel, Alice, Grandson Kevin, Jeanette, First Husband Hans, Debbie, Grandson Jack, Son-in-law Kieran

 

If asked about this family birthday photo, Alice would say that it “tickles her tummy.” Hans and I are retired, Hans from captaining the Larkspur ferry, me from the Air Force and sundry other activities. Alice is semi-retired from the very successful corporation she founded, Vulcan Wire. Jeanette, Kieran, and Debbie are gainfully employed, as is eldest grandson Kevin in commodities and landlording in Minneapolis. Savannah, Daniel, Jack, and Josie are in a variety of college pursuits. We recently visited Savannah in Charleston, South Carolina, where she is in a graduate nursing program.

Birthday Girl

Each candle is doing the work of ten!

 

When my turn came in July, Alice pulled out all the stops, rented the Gualala Community Center, had Leslie Bates cater heavy hors d'oeuvres, and hosted a hundred of our friends and family. Almost all family from her birthday attended plus my younger brother Ron and wife Kathy. 

Andy Johnston telling tall tales about our Good Old Days

Also well represented were my Lions and Rotary friends, fellow musical performers, neighbors, and buddy Andy Johnston, who I first “met” in 1958 as we knocked each other around playing high school eight-man football, Laytonville vs. Point Arena. Andy and I faced each other twice, in 1958 and 1959, and my team lost both times. Andy makes sure I never forget.

Birthday Boy is undaunted by the huge candle 

and enormous (full sheet) carrot cake

 

Leading a Martinelli apple juice toast

With help from Chucky at Gualala Market, guests could also imbibe wine and beer

In January my eldest son Bruce and wife Lisa visited us in Gualala for the first time. Bruce hadn’t been in the area since we all visited my Pop and stepmother Ruth in Point Arena when we came back from Hawaii in 1982. My younger sons Scott and Jeffrey haven’t been here since then, but we hope Jeffrey can visit in January.

 

During the year we made frequent trips to our closest metropolis, Santa Rosa (75 miles away), for medical matters. Alice fortunately had minor cataracts that required cornea replacement surgery, as I had two years ago. Her eyesight is now that of a 26-year old. However, another problem, a pinched nerve in her back radiating pain to her right leg, is still in the process of repair.

May was a busy month with trips to Chico for Savannah's graduation from Chico State's nursing school and then to Walnut Creek for Josie's graduation from Las Lomas High School.

Savannah's boyfriend Eric, Hans, Jeanette, Jack, Josie, Me, Savannah, Debbie, Alice, Daniel, Kieran

    Good friend and neighbor Donna, Josie the Graduate, Debbie, and Alice

 

Alice, Jack, Daniel, Jeanette, Donna, Kieran, and Savannah

Ron and I. I was much bigger than Ron - his nicknames were "Peanuts" and later "Runt" - until about age 13, then he passed me and grew to 6' 5" as I stopped at 6' 2". Some much shorter friends still call him "Runt"

In June we visited my younger brother Ron and his wife Kathy at their home in Eureka for his 79th birthday. Every year we spend almost a month the same age because the doctor told Mom that she couldn't have any more children after I was born caesarean. Mom didn't want me to be a lonely, only child, and told that doctor, "Put a zipper in that incision, I'll be right back." Eleven months and four days later brother Ronald was born, the most wonderful gift Mom and Pop ever gave me.

We ended this short trip with a visit to my middle son, Scott, in nearby Fortuna.

A very good friend, Dick Soule, turned 100 the day after I did 80, and my Gualala Rotary Club honored him and his sweet wife Ellen at a luncheon meeting in the Gualala Community Center.

In August we went to Claremont for a Celebration of Life memorial for Alice's dear friend of almost sixty years, Miranda Chan, hosted by her daughters Yun-Lan and Oi-Lan. Then we went to Beverley Hills and the La Brea tar pits that have fascinated me ever since I read about them in grammar school over seventy years ago. Although Alice was an early Valley Girl, living in Tarzana and going to school and college until she married Hans in 1962, and I was born in nearby Torrance and lived a couple of years in Long Beach, we didn't recognize anything but agreed that Hollywood had seen better days. And we had fun regardless. We continued our Gualala routine of walking about three miles every day.

 

We went to Madame Tussaud’s and recognized almost all the celebrates depicted as long as they were famous over fifty years ago. 

 

As I was making moves on Marilyn – watched by Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart - Alice and John Travolta were steppin’ out.

            

The travel bug bit again – it’s actually been attacking us since we got the first of our five Covid shots in January 2021, so in September we went to Kiawah Island near Charleston, SC. Besides many miles of sandy beaches, the island is composed of golf courses garnished with tennis courts. Since we don’t indulge in golf and tennis, we had the most interesting parts of the island all to ourselves – especially when Hurricane Ian arrived, as a tropical storm, and all the restaurants and the premier hotel closed. What was left of Ian passed directly over us with some strong wind gusts that blew a few branches off trees and delivered 3.5 inches of rain. A stronger storm hit Gualala in mid-September and did not cause us to change any of our daily walks and playing ball with Radar on Cook’s Beach. 

 

With the empty prestigious Sanctuary Hotel behind Alice, we awaited what was left of Hurricane Ian on an otherwise totally deserted eight-mile sandy beach

The view from our villa. Alice loved the screened deck, but especially valued having two bath rooms, so that will be a requirement for future trips like our Barbados vacation this coming February.

 The view from our deck. The fawn didn’t molest the alligator.

 We spotted Albert sunning near a bike path as we peddled 

I assembled and mailed out over 225 Christmas cards and hope that none will be returned with the notation "No forwarding address on file."

Vulcan Wire, Inc., the company Alice founded in the 1970's, had its annual Christmas party at Paradiso Restaurant, San Leandro. hosted by CEO Mike Graffio. You can read all about it in Alice's memoir, The Lady With Balls.

From left, me, Alice, Jennifer Stafford and Edward Valenzuela (across from each other), Nicole Clark and her Mom, Mike Graffio, Chuck and Teresa Rodrigues, Steve and Cindy Brandt

From left, Deena Shine across from husband Nick, brothers Salvador and Gerardo Martinez, 

brothers Victor and Hector Hernandez

From left, Nate Rowland, Smita Patel and son, Kenji and Shauna Rodriguez, Pepe Balderrama

Of course I will be updating this Christmas letter as we celebrate Gualala Rotary and Lions holiday festivities, and wrapping up this Christmas with family cheer in Walnut Creek and Lafayette.

To my schoolmates from Point Arena High School, I plan our reunion July 22 at the Gualala Community Center and hope to hear from all who can make it - and from those who can't.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good year!

 

Radar says "Woof (Party!)"