Cleatus Gale Pace Autobiography http://www.ancientfaces.com/story/cleatus-gale-pace-autobiography-family-story/1284551

Excerpts taken from his Autobiography & More
Autobiography of Cleatus Gale Pace Abbreviated Version
(Taken from his own autobiography)

Cleatus was born 01 Jul 1923, in Horton, Brown Co., Kansas. He was the only child of Doshia Ethel Penley & James C. Pace. He was reared both in Horton, Kansas & Wickliffe, Ashtabula Co., Ohio. He and his father did not get along very well during his childhood as his father was always beating up on him and his mother. It got to the point that Cleatus told his father, “if you ever lay a hand on my mother again, I WILL kill you.” Later in life, after Cleatus and Irene had married and he was out on his own He and his dad reconsiled their differences and got along real well.

At six weeks of age his mother took him to Ohio to join his father there as he was working for the Baltimore & Ohio (B & O) Railroad. They lived there until the depression hit and his dad went back to Horton, Kansas in 1931, where he owned a house in Horton and a nearby farm. The farm was leased and had wheat in the field. As a result, they could not take possession of the farm until September. In the meanwhile they rented an 80 acre farm on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation west of Horton.

In November 1935, the family was in debt and had to borrow money to feed the stock. One evening when he returned from high school in Netawaka, Kansas his father told him that was going to go back to Ohio and work in the shops there and he would be in charge of taking care of the farm and the stock while he was gone he was only twelve years old at the time. They didn’t hear much from his father after they had left. He returned from Ohio in April 1937. During that time, Cleatus and his mother did all of the farm work. It was at this time that his father started his abusiveness towards him and his mother. He only stayed about a week on the farm then he went back to Ohio.

On the 5th of July, 1940 at the age of seventeen, Cleatus joined the C.C.C. (Civil Conservation Corps). He boarded a troop train headed for Burns, Oregon. He was trucked about 60 miles to Camp Gap Ranch, C.C.C., Company 503, Burns, Oregon. There he learned the Army way of life.

There he soon learned that some of them were going to get a ride in an aeroplane. Cleatus had already had over 40 hours in the air at Willoughby Airport on Euclid Ave. in Willoughby, Ohio. The lieutenant asked him to be the first to fly. He was told to go preflight the plane with a particular number. When he found the plane, it had several red flags attached. Knowing what this meant, he returned and informed the lieutenant of the red tags. The lieutenant gave him the number of another plane to preflight. This one checked out okay. Cleatus passed the the flying in glowing colors.

Not long after this, when in still Burns, Oregon, he joined the Army Air Force. When the recruiter saw his age, he was told that he would have to have his parents written permission before he could join as he was under age. He was given the necessary papers for his parents to sign. He took them back to camp that night and read them over and filled them out. He kept them in his foot locker until the following pay-day. They were all signed by the time he got into town. The C.C.C. Gave him an honorable discharge to join the Army. He was transferred to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training. Cleatus was always in charge of the detail party's. One day while on detail, a runner came up and said, “the Old Man wants to see you on the double.”

He reported to the C.O. Standing at attention. He noticed two letters on the desk in front of him. One was from Cleatus' mother the other from her doctor. Her doctor states, “your mother is terminally ill and he didn't hold much hope for her.” He pulled Cleatus' service record from a desk drawer, opened it to his enlistment papers and said, “who the hell signed this?” Cleatus responded, “I did.” C.O. Said, “Why the hell did you do that, don't you know that that's a fraud?” Cleatus, “I didn't think my parents would sign it.” Your lieutenant said, “you weren't a liar and now I believe him. Another thing, you sure made fools out of your lieutenant and me. We had been pampering you, putting you in charge of every detail so you could learn leadership qualities. You have an I.Q. of 128 or 130, the other guys out there are lucky as hell if they can write their own names for their pay.” “We were pushing you, we both figured in about six to eight months we would ship your ass out to Fort Benning, Georgia to Officers School.” “You conduct yourself in a manner becoming an officer.” “I have no recourse but to send your ass home since you are under age.” “You will be escorted by two military police to the front door of your mother's house.” “Those are the rules and we will abide by them, you are to go peacefully or otherwise.” He was given an Honorable discharge at the convenience of the government and escorted to his mothers home in Cleveland, Ohio.

When he arrived home, he found his mother standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. There wasn't a thing wrong with her but that he was an only child and she didn't want to lose him. He started dating his former girlfriend, Eleanor Dietrich. In the meanwhile, he saved enough money to pay cash for a 1938 Ford Coupe. He was still dating Eleanor and in September 1941, they eloped and drove to Fremont, Ohio and were married. At this time he was over eighteen years of age and of legal age.

On Sunday December 7, 1941, he heard on the Radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He had already signed up for the draft. He knew that he would be one of the first to be called. After talking it over with his wife, Ellie, he decided he would go down to Cleveland and enlist in the Army Air Force.

After enlistment, he was given a battery of tests to see what he was qualified to do. His tests showed that he was qualified to be a pilot, navigator or a bombardier. After more talking with Ellie, they decided she would spend her time with her mother as her father had already died. He was sent to Fort Hayes, Columbus, Ohio. Not long there, one day before the day wore on very long he was ordered to get into class A uniform and report to the C.O.'s office. Cleatus was promoted to sergeant and and put in charge of forty-nine men going to Fort Sheridan, Illinois

There Cleatus was again asked to apply to O.C.S (Officers Candidate School) in fort Benning, Georgia. This time he refused the offer as he didn't want to be an infantry officer whose life span was normally short but rather be in the Air Force where his chances of returning home were a little better. At this base, he was promoted to Tech Sergeant.

His birthday was coming up on the 1st of July, 1942 and he was granted a three day pass to go home to his wife, Ellie. He arrived in Cleveland in the early evening that night. Unable to contact his wife, he went to her mothers house in Cleveland. She said that Ellie didn't live with her anymore and that she had turned very wild and was running around and living with her aunt. He drove over to her aunts house and parked down the street from it. It wasn't very long before a man pulled up and she ran down to the car and hopped in and gave him a big kiss. They followed the car to the Metropole. At about 2a.m. They followed them from the Metropole towards her aunts house when they pulled off on a side street and into a vacant lot.

After waiting a few minutes, Cleatus and his friend, Al, walked up to the parked car where they found Ellie and her friend starting to have intercourse. Cleatus yanked him out of the car and hit him the face, knocking him down. Al picked him up and shoved him toward Cleatus where he proceeded to punish him severely. Ellie started to scream and Cleatus turned around and gave her one across the jaw. He learned later that the boyfriend spent three days in the hospital and Ellie had a broken jaw. After this happened, Cleatus never corresponded with or saw her again. He applied for divorce. As far as he was concerned, she was out of his life for good.

After returning to Fort Sheridan his promotion to Tech Sergeant became final. For the next three months he was the roving sergeant over all of the gun Crews. At firing practice one day in late September, they were firing live ammo over Lake Michigan when a jeep drove up and told him that the “Old Man” wanted to see him in his office. When he entered the C.O.'s office there were two gentlemen in civvies with him. He thought that he was going to be called on the carpet for punching his wife and her friend and that they had finally caught up to him. However, that wasn't the case. These were FBI men wanting to know why he had deserted for nine months. The Air Force had him listed as a deserter. It took them nine months to find out what he had been telling them along. Now that they determined that he wasn't a deserter it was up to the General of the base to make a final disposition on the matter and the FBI was done with it. Nothing in his bio states the general's decision but apparently nothing was done as he retained his Tech Sgt. Stripes.

Cleatus and his battery were on their way to Camp Adair, Corvallis, Oregon. After a week of traveling they arrived at Camp Adair. They were there for about a week maneuvering with the 102nd Infantry Division, the “Wolf Head Outfit.” On September 30, 1942, he observed a captain coming his way with papers in hand. He said, “Pace, you have been screwed again.” He sure was right, they were his transfer orders. His orders gave him a seventeen day delay route and was supposed to report to Buckley Field, Portland, Oregon on September 30, 1942. He was supposed to be in Denver, Colorado and Portland, Oregon on the same day.

The following morning, he reported for duty as ordered. Because the tests he had taken in Cleveland were over six months old, they all had to be taken over. As a result, he bettered his I.Q. From 128 to 132. He was ordered to go to Buckley Field, Denver, Colorado, where he would take more tests to see what he was best suited for. Cleatus again qualified for all three, pilot, navigator and bombardier. While getting off the train in Denver, While walking up the ramp, he heard this voice behind asking him to slow down, he said, "I'd like to walk with You." He turned around to see who it was and discovered it was the white haired Spencer Tracy. After talking and chitchatting they shortly separated and went on their seperate ways.

After a month went by he received his orders he was being sent to pre-flight school Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama. He was flown to Alabama. After landing, a medical officer boarded the plane and informed them that the base had an epidemic of spinal meningitis and arrangements had been made for them to fly on to Tyndall Field, Panama City, Florida. There they were to have air-to-air gunnery training and then return to Maxwell field. They camped in “Skunks Hollow” in tents, most of which leaked badly. It had rained for two days straight.

Because of this Cleatus was sent to the hospital with double pneumonia. He spent thirty days there recovering from it. When he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital he had the doctor check his medical records and remove his tonsils. He was scheduled to have them removed the following week. When he woke up, a nurse was holding him in a chair and an orderly was changing bloody sheets on his bed. Apparently he had been hemorrhaging. As a result he was in the hospital for a total of sixty-one days before he went back to duty. Because of this his original class had already graduated and returned to Maxwell Field before he was released from the hospital.

After his six weeks of preflight training in Florida his new class returned to Maxwell Field, in Alabama where he was designated “Squadron Leader.” On completion of his training there he went to Texas for further training. From Texas he went to Illinois for his final flight training. Everything went well there except for the radio portion. It was very difficult for him to distinguish those dits and dahs, they all sounded the same to him. After a few weeks of training there, the word came down that they were closing the school and everyone would be shipped to various places in the country. Another lieutenant tried to persuade him to go to O.C.S. again. And again he refused.

After a few days he got orders to go to Airframes and Engines (A&E) school in Biloxi, Mississippi.

After twenty-one weeks of flight training in Biloxi he was reassigned to McDill Field, Florida as a “Flight Engineer” on a B-17 bomber. He was flying with the different pilots who had met their requirement of twenty-five flights in enemy territory and then sent back to the states. He had been flying with these war pilots for a couple of months. One day he climbed on the plane and found the pilot drunk with a bottle on the floor between his feet. Cleatus refused to fly with him went to sick call claiming he fell and injured his shoulder. That pilot labelled him as a rat. The word got around and he put up with it for a month. After having his fill of it he asked the captain to put him on combat duty.

After hearing Cleatus' story, the captain hopped in his jeep and went out to the plane and found the pilot drunk only now the bottle was empty. Shortly after that the captain got pictures of them and their drunken ways and turned it all over to the Wing Commander. The Wing Commander told them all to either shape up or get the hell out of the service. They all except for a major opted out of the service. This major wrote him up for dereliction of duty and tried to get him court marshaled. After a string of 2nd lieutenants as witnesses who testified on his behalf the hearing officer stopped the proceedings and asked Cleatus what he wanted him to do. He told hem to send him to combat. The hearing officer then said, “if thats what you want, you are on standby right now.” A couple of weeks after he was told that the “Old Man” wanted to see him. He was told he had his orders and was being shipped out that afternoon to Westover Field, Springfield, Massachusetts.

He had been there for a couple of months and had not yet been assigned a crew. One morning at assembly the 1st Sgt told me to set up. All of the 1st pilots were on my left and the co-pilots were on my right. I looked them all over and walked up to this 2nd lieutenant a 1st pilot and asked him what his name was. He responded, “I am 2nd Lt. John F. Deucher, Sergeant.” “Why do you ask?” I told him that I was going to be his Flight Engineer. “I've always prided myself as being a good judge of character and I have the feeling you are a damn good pilot and I am choosing you to fly with.” “Any objections, Sir?” He responded, “No, and that he hoped I was as good a Flight Engineer as I thought I was.” I told him, “if he would drive that damn aircraft from point 'A” to point 'B' and then back to point 'A' and I'd keep that S.O.B. In the air. He asked Cleatus how many hours he had in a B-24 and cleatus I have had about 100 hours in them.

John F. Deucher (the crew called him Jack) would be his pilot and Paul E. Yanger his co-pilot. We three became very good friends. They hung around Westover another week or so until they had a complete crew. Thomas Patrick O'Connelly, Navigator; James Sondergerter, Bombardier; a couple of kids, one from Kansas, Bill Charles and James Artist from Maryland. The last to show up was a kid from Boston. He had a heavy New England accent.

From there we went to Charleston, South Carolina for our final phase of flying. Learning to fly as a crew and learning to work together. They were assigned a plane. Early the next morning Cleatus went down before the others to check it out. Jack came a little later and asked what kind of plane they had and Cleatus responded, “A piece of crap.” “The #1 engine smoked like a cigar store on fire and shook like a belly dancer, the #3 engine could only come up to 90%. There were oil leaks everywhere.” On takeoff, Cleatus informed Jack to give her a little more runway before taking her up. Jack kept her on the ground as long as he dared before pulling her up. The takeoff was smooth, they climbed to 300-400 feet a minute instead of the normal 500 feet per minute. After they got to their assigned altitude, Jack turned to Cleatus and said, “the old bastard was ready for the scrap yard.”

Upon the completion of their training they were shipped to Mitchell Field, Long Island, New York. They were slated to go to England with twenty-nine other crews. There were no furloughs allowed but even still several of the crew member's went AWOL. Jack's crew was no exception three of them were AWOL, the bombardier and two gunners. Within thirty days all of the missing personnel returned. They knew they had to or they would be labelled deserters and that was a very serious offense during war time. After doing their time in the guardhouse ten of the crews were loaded on a train headed for Hamilton Field, San Rafael, California.

After a few days at Hamilton Field a group of planes flew in and landed. All of them brand new B-24's. All crews were assigned an aircraft. Jack's plane was #913. Jack, Paul and Cletus named it “Sad Sack.” I turned out to be an appropriate name for the plane had an oil tank leak and you could smell aviation gas everywhere. The other nine crews headed for Hicham Field in Hawaii but #913 stayed behind for another month while factory reps repaired all of the problems before the Air Force would accept it. Another group of new B-24's came in and they were assigned one of those. Their bomb bays were loaded with fuel and they were in the air on a fourteen hour flight ahead of them to Hicham Field, Hawaii.

The crew remained at Hickam Airfield from November 1943 until January 1944. From there they boarded an Air Transport Command (ATC (The service men called it Allergic to Combat)) and flew to Lae Nadzab, Papua, New Guinea. They were met by a full bird colonel who proceeded to chew everyone out because no one would inform him of their whereabouts. After the chew-out, he asked for the Flight Engineer and wanted him to follow him.

When they arrived at his office, after a couple of ounces of bourbon the colonel began to interrogate Cleatus. He remarked, that he thought his 1st pilot looked like a very stable guy. And Cleatus responded, “Jack is a very stable guy and doesn't get rattled very easy and when something went wrong everyone worked well together.” He asked about the co-pilot and Cleatus said, “he is good but wanted to use the book for everything.” The Colonel then said that in a few days, he would take us for a check ride.

When the colonel came for the check ride we got an old “War Weary” bird. On takeoff, the right wing had clipped the top of a tall cocoanut tree. At about 600 feet, the right outboard engine it started to gush fuel. They shut down the engine, the generator and anything else connected to that engine. The Flight Engineer instructed the pilot to keep the right wing down as low as he could. Jack did and called a “Mayday.” When they got back to the air strip and landed everyone except Jack jumped out of a moving plane. Jack did a beautiful job of landing that plane. When Jack got the plane near a stop he shut down all the electrical switches and set the hand brake and jumped out himself while it was still moving.

From New Guinea they flew to the Dutch Island of Beak and from there they flew to Tac Laben Air Strip, Leyte in the Philippines. From there they hit Luzon, Manila and Allied Islands. They were called to do ground support for the infantry. They would come in low and slow and skip bomb a cave. They made two passes and dropped one bomb each time. After the second pass the Flight Engineer kept hearing a rattling noise. It sounded like marbles in a tin can. After landing he checked out the plane and counted 105 holes from small arms fire. The crew was fine and no one got a scratch.

Their next move was up to Clark Field in Luzon. During every take off they would fly over volcano Mt. Pinatubo. The volcano was smoking most of the time. From there, they started bombing Formosa and other islands in the area in addition to the China Coast. Intelligence said that the Japs had gotten a submarine into their harbor and we were given orders to take it and the harbor out. They took off over the ocean and went up the left side of the mountain then banked sharply right, a complete 180 degree turn. They came in directly over the mountain to bomb their submarine and harbor. I wasn't a submarine …it was a battleship. The lead aircraft took a direct hit in the bomb bay area and its wings folded straight up. Jack's plane was next and they took some small fire. After they finished dropping their bomb load they headed out to sea and back to Clark Field.

Cleatus had just come down from his upper turret when all HELL broke loose. Cleatus doesn't remember any of this but it was later told to him by his crew members. A delayed action shell had penetrated the fuselage approximately eighteen inches above the wing root. When the thing exploded Cleatus took a 50-caliber bullet through his left leg about 6 inches above the knee. Shrapnel demolished his left hand. He also had shrapnel on his chest and on his face. He had partial amputations of three fingers. It severed the tendons on my right ring finger. After about ten days in the hospital there he was transferred from the 118th General Hospital in Leyte to Tac Laben.

The shrapnel and concussion rendered him totally blind. After finding this out, Cleatus wanted to end his life and went on a hunger strike. He went from his normal weight of 160 pounds down to 109 pounds which included the weight of a full leg cast. At this point a nurse by the name of Lt. Crumb came to his bedside and said, “Listen you little son-of-a-bitch, you are going to eat, even if I have to stuff it down your damn throat!” After a week or so of that, he gave in and started to eat. It wasn't long after that he started to regain his vision.

The day for his departure back to the States had finally come. He was loaded on a C-54 aircraft and was placed in a lower bunk. There were three Pilots, a Navigator and Flight Engineer, all of whom he had gone to flight school with in Biloxi, Mississippi, along with two flight nurses. They were headed for Hickam Field, Hawaii. This flight took place at the end of June 1944. They stayed there in the hospital overnight and left for the states the next morning. They arrived at Fairfield/Susan, its now known as Vandenberg AFB Base, California. They stayed there until they could arrange for hospitals nearest their home. He had also contacted a fungus known as “Jungle Rot,” on his feet, crotch, hand and armpits. From California he was flown to Louisville, Kentucky to a hospital that specialized in dermatology. There he met a beautiful nurse by the name of Lt. Baker. At the end of July 1944, he was transported by train to Newton D. Baker General Hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia, their specialty was orthopedic's, nurse, Lt. Baker, escorted him there. Her and Cleatus had become very good friends. They both cried at their departure.

September 1944, in Martinsburg, stumps were removed from his fingers and grafted with tissue from his butt, as well as the 50-caliber wound on his left leg. After several days he felt well enough and thought he ought to go down and see if he had any mail. He needed help to do it. In a bunk near him was a seventeen year old German P.O.W. They had become good friends and tried to teach other their own language. After arriving at the mail call area a little late Cleatus asked the the pretty nurse if he had any mail. After giving her his name, she told him he had no mail. Every time he went down to pick up his mail (three times a day) she would ask him for his name, rank and serial number. She remembered everyone else's name but couldn't remember his, and it only had four letters in it. One day Cleatus wasn't feeling very well and he rudely responded to the beautiful nurse, “damn, if you can't remember my name, I'm going to tattoo it on your butt.” He didn't know it at the time but this lovely young lady would eventually become his wife. After that he got his mail at his bunk. He asked his young German friend, Fritz, if he was getting it for him and he said, no, that Lt. Fräulein Gibson was putting it there.

Cleatus had gone to Langley field in Virginia to see if he could re-inlist in the Army Air Force and they told him no because he was an amputee. A few days later the base commander, Colonel Cook, stopped by and wanted talk to Cleatus. It seems that a 2nd lieutenant in his office had his eye on Lt. Gibson and lodged a complaint on her that she had been fraternizing with an enlisted man. While he was talking with the colonel, Lt. Irene Gibson walked by and he motioned her over. Cleatus had been dating Irene for awhile and she asked him what Langley had said. He replied, “No Dice.” she turned and said, “there you are colonel, and told him there was his answer.” Her three year hitch was up next month and she was getting out. She said, she had something to show him, pulled the necklace out of her blouse with her engagement ring on it. She told him that he was the first to know about it. He grabbed her and kissed her on the cheek and said, “Love doesn't give a damn about rank, does it.” She replied, “No, colonel, we plan to be married next June.” Sarah “Irene” Gibson was discharged in October, 1945 and Cleatus was discharged November 1945. They were married March 5, 1946 in Parkton, Maryland at 10 a.m.

They lived in Ohio for a short time then moved to southern California. Cleatus started college in September, 1947 and got his certificate of completion in 1950 in Business Management. He got a job at a large business office complex. He hated the job and after six months he quit. A little later, he enrolled himself into a “Mortuary College” in Florida. He graduated Mortuary college in 1951.

In the meantime, Irene worked at Saint Joseph’s Hospital across from the Disney Studio's. One night when she came home from work, she was all smiles. She had only been working there about a month at the time. She asked Cleatus if he would come down an have lunch with her because she wanted him to meet someone. He is a new friend and we have coffee together every morning together. She called him Mr. Baggy Pants, but not to his face of course. He went down and had lunch with her and Mr. Baggy Pants was no other than Walt Disney himself. He was described as a very down to earth fellow and a very pleasant gentle man. They both met his daughter Mrs. Hall several years after that. She was like her father a very pleasant and lovely lady.

After apprenticing for a few years at a small mortuary he moved to a much larger one, the largest Jewish mortuary in California. After working there for several years Cleatus was itching to get a mortuary of his own. He put out feelers that he was anxious to buy a mortuary of his own. Soon after that, he got a phone call at home it was a renowned casket salesman saying that he had a lead on a mortuary for him. The guy was letting the place go to hell because his wife had left him and he was drinking heavily. He bought the inventory for $2,000 and made an agreement with the property owner based on the condition that he bought the mortuary.

After buying the mortuary in 1954, a lot of work was done remodeling the place. Business prospered and they were doing pretty well but they both were getting tired with no days off in in Years. The word got around that he was interested in selling if all of the conditions were met to his satisfaction. He was asking for $750,000 but would settle for $600.000. After selling the business and being off for a couple of months and getting all rested up they both decide to go back to work.

Irene went to work for the Burbank School System and was nurse for the preschoolers of seven schools. In 1958, Cleatus took a job as an Investigator for the Los Angeles Coroner's Office. It was at this time on the evening of August 5, 1962 his boss came to him at 11p.m. And told him he had to go out and pick up Marilyn Monroe's body. He protested saying, “wait for the next shift because I get off at midnight.” “No dice,” said his boss, “you go get her.” He and another gentleman had to go out at the end of their shift and pick her up.

At that time the Los Angeles County Coroner was Dr. Theodore Joscelyn Curphey. On March 19, 1957, Curphey was announced as the first Coroner of Los Angeles County. Curphey was the chief coroner during the investigation into the Death of Marilyn Monroe. On August 7, 1962, Two days after Monroe’s death, Curphey announced that a massive overdose of Barbiturates was the cause of death. He later said she had lethal doses of both Nembutal and Chloral hydrate and she could have been killed by either. Curphey also administered the autopsies of Jack Westrope, George Reeves, Davey Moore, and Dorothy Dandridge. Curphey retired on October 25, 1967 from the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. This was about the same time or shortly before Cleatus went over to the Warehouseman's job for the County of Los Angeles.

Upon return, Cleatus was getting ready to clock out and go home when his boss told him, “you're not going anywhere, you're going to help me with the autopsy.” At the beginning they started to pump her stomach and when a bunch pills started coming out they had to stop pumping so they wouldn't dissolve the pills. After proceeding further, they counted between sixty and seventy sleeping pills that had been ingested. After working an all-nighter he didn't get home until well until after sunrise.

Sunday, June 25, 1961
Anderson Herald
Anderson, Indiana
Page 27

'Dead' Baby Alive; Fight Lost For Life LOS ANGELES (UPD) - A spark of life was detected Saturday in a baby pronounced dead three hours earlier at birth, but doctors lost a near - impossible fight to keep her alive. The girl was born two months prematurely early Saturday to Mrs. Ann Pullian shortly after the mother fell down a flight of stairs. Mrs. Pullian's uncle, Willie L. McDonald, summoned Dr. J. J. Jones who pronounced the baby dead. Three hours later, deputy coroner Cleatus Pace noticed a slight- muscle movement in the baby's hip during an examination. He found the baby was breathing and summoned an ambulance. Rushed to General Hospital's pediatric ward, the Negro infant, at first incorrectly identified by the coroner's office as a boy, was placed immediately in an incubator. But the child, which weighed less than a pound, died 12 hours after birth despite the efforts of a team of doctors.

After ten years with the coroner's office in Los Angeles, in 1968, he got a job with the Los Angeles License Enforcement Department. He worked there for over ten years. They did away with all of the Enforcement Field Inspectors. He was offered a Senior's position and accepted it. In 1978 after working twenty years in various departments for the city of Los Angeles, he retired.

The year before his retirement, in 1977, he and Irene bought a piece of land in Boulder City, Nevada and when Irene retired at the end of the year they would move there. Cleatus along with their Wire Hair Fox terrier, Dukie, went ahead to get things ready so the three wide mobile home could be moved up from Burbank that they had bought from Monty Montana, the western movie star. Once things in Boulder City had settled down with Cleatus and Irene they took a few days off. After a couple of months of this, Irene decided to go back to work part time. Cleatus started a sharpening business in a small building behind the house. Anything that could be sharpened, was sharpened there. His business was called MowSharp.

In May of 1987, Irene was sweeping the patio area between the house and the sharpening shop, when all of a sudden she grabbed her right side and went down. Cleatus ran out of the shop and grabbed her. She was taken to the Henderson Hospital with an appendix attack. While there, it was discovered that she had cancer of the ovaries. On November 8, 1996, Irene passed away.

During all this time Cleatus was still taking care of his mother, Doshia Ethel (Penley) Pace. He was taking care of the both of them at the same. In December of 2002 Doshia fell and broke her hip. On January 10, 2003 she passed away at the age of 105 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Up to this time she had been taking care of herself except for Cleatus and Irene taking her to do the shopping.

A few years after his mother passed away Cleatus also passed away on, 27 Jul 2009, in Boulder City, Nevada at the age of 86 years. Cleatus and Irene are both buried in Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City, Nevada which is only a couple of miles from where they lived.

Obit: Cleatus Pace
Boulder City News Staff
Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009 | midnight Sun coverage
Cleatus Gail Pace, 86, died July 17 at his home in Boulder City. The 20-year resident was born July 1, 1923 in Horton, Kan., and was a retired mortician. He was an Army veteran of World War II.
He is survived by his cousin Richard Scherer of Topeka, Kan.
Graveside services will be held at 10:40 a.m. Aug. 6 at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
Palm Mortuary handled the arrangements

Cleatus G Pace