1933 – 2019

Former Crescenta Valley resident Ona Lee Snyder died peacefully on Feb. 23 at an assisted living center in Weldon, California. She was 85.

Born in the grim Depression year of 1933 in the farming community of Orrville, Ohio, Ona Lee – “the best little girl” in the words of her mother – accompanied her parents Hubert and Charlotte Killion as they trekked from town to town in search of work. Years later, she recalled the clapboard houses, dusty roads and buckeye trees of the Midwestern state.

“I stayed often with my cousin Roy,” she wrote. “We’d walk well over a mile in our bare feet for a popsicle at the Smithville railroad station.”

In 1947, Ona Lee, her mother Charlotte, now married to Marion Courtney, and 8-year-old brother Quentin hitched up the car and trailer for the trek to California. After a stay in Eagle Rock, the family moved to Glendale. Ona Lee, who had blossomed into a blue-eyed, vivacious girl of 14, enrolled at Glendale High School. Shortly after graduation in 1951, her mother married decorated Navy veteran Paul Pizzini, owner of Paul’s Wood Shop in Glendale.

Whatever Ona Lee lacked in formal education, she made up for with a lively curiosity and intelligence. She loved literary classics (a trait inherited by her eldest son) by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Margaret Mitchell, Boris Pasternak, Erich Maria Remarque and, in particular, John Steinbeck (who, to her surprise, lived in Montrose during the early 1930s).

“I always wanted to write children’s stories,” she wrote. “But money was the ultimate obstacle – for me anyway.”

Undaunted, Ona Lee found a literary outlet in engaging letters to friends and relatives, genealogical research and writing for the Blaisdell Family Association and notably a simple, heartfelt poem “To Anne,” dedicated to the Puritan poetess Anne Bradstreet, whose art and life mirrored her own dreams and struggles.

Ona Lee’s first marriage to the late Rod Hammer produced three children. After their divorce, she made the best of her difficult situation, working as a bookkeeper. In spite of the demands of family and work, she found time for other hobbies and interests, including travel. In the 1970s and ‘80s, she accompanied her mother on a genealogical quest for their ancestors in Minnesota, joined her second husband Donald Snyder on a tour of Navajo sites in New Mexico and fulfilled a life-long dream with a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

  Ona Lee lived in Glendale and La Crescenta until 1987, when she moved to Bodfish, near Lake Isabella. During the last years of her life, she resided in the nearby town of Weldon until God called her home.

Ona Lee, who was preceded in death by her daughter Kristie, leaves her mother Charlotte Menefee, former co-owner with late husband Jerry Menefee of Bow-Tie Cleaners in La Cañada, of San Pedro; son Les Hammer of Pasadena; son Bret Hammer, wife Leslie and daughter Cassandra of Lacey, Washington; grandson Stephen Hammer of Canyon Country; brother Quentin Pizzini and wife Helene of San Pedro; sister Eileen Hershberger of San Pedro; sister-in-law Sylvia Pizzini of Oakland; nephew Ken Pizzini, wife Holly and great-niece Emily of Citrus Heights; niece Judy Mickelsen, husband Michael and great-nephew David of Waltham, Massachusetts; niece Vickie Hershberger of San Pedro, and niece Cathy Scheitlin, husband Mark and great-nephew Nathan of Louisville, Colorado.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Glendale Humane Society at 717 Ivy Street in Glendale 91204. Telephone (818) 242-1128.