Biographical Note

Henry Blocher was born March 8, 1920 on a farm in San Patricio County, Texas, where he was the youngest in a family with three siblings. When he was a year old the family moved to La Verne, California so that his siblings could be educated at La Verne Academy and La Verne College. His family ran a dry-goods store in La Verne and farmed cotton in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1928 his parents divorced and Henry, his mother, and one sister moved to Pomona, California. Henry graduated from Pomona High School in 1938 and from Pomona Junior College in 1940. In 1942, he was drafted while attending La Verne College.

After receiving conscientious objector status Henry was sent to the Civilian Public Service Camp 21 at Cascade Locks, Oregon in 1942. Within the year he was transferred to Western State Hospital for the mentally ill at Fort Steilacoom, Washington (CPS 51), where his assignment was to take identification pictures of patients and to assist in the x-ray department.

Western State Hospital was a training site for student nurses to get their psychiatric nursing education. This improved the social life for the men in the CPS unit. Mary Fleming was in one of the groups of nursing students who were assigned to WSH. One night in 1945 while ice-skating in Lakewood she met Henry, and the two were married on September 7, 1945, in Seattle. Very shortly afterward CPS 51 was closed and Henry went back to Cascade Locks, while Mary went for her pediatric training at the Tacoma Indian Hospital.

In January 1946 Mary joined Henry at the Locks. The camp at Waldport, Oregon (CPS 56) had closed and many of the men from Waldport were assigned to the Locks, making it a diverse community. Photography had been Henry’s hobby for many years. He always had a darkroom at home, even as a teenager, and he had further developed his skills at CPS 51. There was a darkroom at the Locks used by several of the men, including Henry who took pictures of some of the men to send to their families. He also took pictures, which were used for publicity purposes. In the spring of 1946 the Blochers left the Locks and went to live in Seattle. In September of 1946 they moved to Indio, California, where Henry's brother and brother-in-law had a date garden. They worked there until moving to Pomona to help Henry's mother who had broken her arm in the spring of 1947. In 1951 the Blochers bought a house from the right-of-way of the 10 freeway and had the house moved to a lot in La Verne. At that time Henry was working for American Cyanamid at a plant in Azusa, where he worked until about 1956 when he went to work for the Leffingwell Chemical Company in Whittier. Their product was agricultural chemicals, and it was there that Henry became interested in bonsais. In about 1963 Henry went to work for the Metropolitan Water District as a chemist. He retired in 1985.

Mary was born in Seattle, Washington, on March 4, 1925, the oldest in a family with two brothers. She attended Seattle schools, and graduated from Queen Anne High School in 1942. She attended the U. of Washington while taking courses necessary for the Swedish Hospital School of Nursing. She never finished her nurses' training before marrying and having four children: Joan Greta Blocher was born on June 12, 1947; Anne Marie Blocher was born on March 6, 1949; Daniel Kenneth Blocher was born January 21, 1951; and Janine Ruth Blocher was born August 17, 1953.

After the children were in school Mary went back to school and graduated from Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. She also took courses at the University of La Verne, and worked for seventeen years doing social work (with a consultant) at Woods Memorial Convalescent Hospital in La Verne, retiring in 1990.