|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
As America approaches its 250th anniversary milestone, one Pleasanton senior has dedicated himself to more than just reflecting on his own century of life — he has meticulously traced his lineage back to before the Revolution, documenting a bloodline that has been interwoven with the United States since its very inception.
Dan Ashton is a World War II Navy veteran and retired chemical engineer who spent his life traveling across the U.S. and the world working in the paper manufacturing industry, doing charity work and, now, spending his days mostly writing funny columns for his fellow Stoneridge Creek retirement community neighbors.
But, not too long ago, he and his daughter took on the task of tracing their family history as far back to the beginning of America’s history, building a family tree that he said goes as far back as the 1600s.
In an interview with the Pleasanton Weekly, 102-year-old Ashton said he wanted to do this not just to see the impact his family had on America’s history, but to also preserve his own family history so that “we don’t lose it”.
“So we can keep the family history alive,” Ashton said.
Ashton grew up in a small town in Oregon. After high school, he said he got accepted into Oregon State University, which happened to be the same year the U.S. entered WWII.
Left without much choice, Ashton enlisted in the Navy and joined the Navy’s V-12 Officer Training Program which, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command website, placed young service members like Ashton on active duty as apprentices while also allowing them to continue their college education.
As part of the program, he and some other V-12 students were transferred to the University of Oklahoma, marking Ashton’s first of many moves across the country.
After completing the program and school, Ashton spent six months aboard a ship before finishing up his service. He said one of his main jobs in the Navy was bringing people back to the U.S. once they were discharged.
“There were lots of them,” Ashton said.
After his service, Ashton finished his education and immediately went into the workforce.
From working in the paper manufacturing industry to doing some design and architecture work, Ashton’s life took him from places like Louisiana, where he still remembers seeing the hardships of segregation, to the state of Washington where he worked on research for the paper mills he was working for at the time.
But work wasn’t the only important thing in Ashton’s life. He was also heavily involved in charity work.
He spent some time working with Habitat for Humanity, a widely recognized nonprofit organization, down in Louisiana following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and he also did some work in Guatemala to distribute wheelchairs to those in need.
He said a lot of his desire to do charity work came from his values that he got from his family growing up.
After retiring, Ashton said he and his wife, who died nearly nine years ago, eventually settled in Pleasanton.
Ashton said he later moved to Stoneridge Creek when the community first opened in 2013. He was about 90 years old at the time, making him the oldest person there at the time — he said he is still the oldest person currently living at the retirement community.
From singing in his church choir and the Stoneridge Creek choir, to putting on lecture series at the retirement community, to sending out humorous columns to his fellow neighbors, Ashton said he tries to stay busy despite his physical limitations that come with his old age.
One thing he is most proud of recently was when he and his daughter were able to trace his genealogy far back to the beginning of America’s history.
He was able to find out how his family first settled in Salem, Mass., between 1648 and 1675, and later lived in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary era. While he wasn’t able to 100% confirm it, he said it was also likely that some of his relatives even fought in America’s Revolutionary War.
Through his research, Ashton was also able to find a connection to famous pilot Amelia Earhart — he said she was a third cousin to his father — and other connections to relatives who contributed many things to the U.S. like the water wheel.
Now, Ashton’s home is filled with folders upon folders of preserved family letters that date back to the 1920s, including firsthand accounts of farm life, the Great Depression, WWII and everyday life that defined what it meant to be an American.
“I’m the patriarch of the family,” Ashton said. “I have the family records … I try to take care of them, I try to share them.”
