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Palmer Olaf Holm
Palmer Olaf Holm Grew up in Duluth, Minnesota where he attended schools through High School. Around the age of 18, he joined the US Navy and was sent to his first commission in Portland, OR.

Top Left To Bottom Right: Palmer Olaf, Barry, Knute, CO, Inez, Susan

Around 1943 he was riding horses with other enlisted men along the side of a road near the naval base in Portland in full Navy whites when a car drove by, spooking his horse and causing him to fall. His hat, perfectly white, fell down into the ditch by the side of the road. The girls in the car, seeing this, stopped while PO was getting his hat out of the ditch. After learning that the very beautiful girl in the passenger seat knew his brother Burt, and that she had in fact gone to the same high school as him back in Duluth, MN, struck up a conversation and subsequently decided that he would "marry her and be with her for the rest of his life" (and that he did).

Palmer Olaf Holm and Inez Nadine Henry are then married 4 months later, 16 Jan 1944.

Around 1945 WWII is over and he gets out of the service. He leaves Oregon and heads back to Duluth, MN, where his father is living. He tries various things to make a living, including selling shoes and then changing tires at Sears shortly.

Not having any luck with career searching, he re-enlists in the Navy and gets commission to go to Guam in May, 1948. Knute had been born a few months previous in August 1948, and Inez waits in Duluth with Barry and Knute and lives with Peder in a house he had built in Duluth for about 6 months or so and then heads to Guam when Palmer sends for them.

In 1951, PO gets orders to move to Memphis, TN.

Moves to Jacksonville Beach, FL near Mayport NS

Moves to NS at Norfolk, VA

His Father, Peder, dies in 1955.

Moves the family back to Sacramento, CA to live in an upstairs/downstairs duplex apartment that Peder had built and that Burt had been taking care of. Burt and his wife Thelma were living across the street in another house that Peder had built.
Peder had died recently in another nearby house (the 4th he had built in Sacramento).
He stayed in Sacramento until Knute was almost done with 3rd grade, and then moved back to Guam in 1955. Knute and Barry begged their mother not to enroll them in the remaining three weeks of school before the start of the summer of 57, which she agreed not to do. The spent the remainder of the spring and the entire summer "running wild" on the island.

In 1959 PO got orders to return to Chula Vista, CA. He moved the family there about the time Knute was finishing up 5th and 6th grade.

Next he got orders to move to Oxnard, CA at Point Magoo NS. This is where PO retires from the Navy for the second and final time, and where Knute finishes up his junior year of HS.

After retiring from the Navy, he moves to Huntington Beach, CA with the family. Knute graduates from High School here in 1966, and joins the Army a year later in 1967.

PO, now a civilian, works for Rock Point developing the telemetry used in the Apollo missions. He writes the telemetry that will control function aboard the capsule in space, records mission and flight data as well as voice data from the missions. While at rock point he got to know many of the Astonaught from the Apollo missions personally. They would stop by his shop routinely for coffee.

After the conclusion of the Apollo program, PO was laid off at Rock Point due to Affirmative Action. He took his life savings and, with a friend from Navy days, bought a bar. His partner began to steal from him eventually, so he mustered the remaining money he had and bought him out of the deal. After further disappointments with the bar, and further troubles with employees stealing from him, he became fed up, saying he was tired of working with people who had no honor, and sold the bar.
He eventually moved to Lancaster, CA to work on Army plane instrumentation. And lived there in a great house that he worked on constantly and had fixed up to be a desert retreat for him and Bonnie (Inez).

Palmer Olaf Holm

The property was divided up into three sections. The front third was where the house, the garage, the covered patio, the greenhouse, and the beer fridge always stocked with Natural Light were. The middle third was where he did most of his gardening and composting. There were old fruit trees and grape vines and the scattered remnants of creative traps and projects aimed at waging war on the ground squirrel and gofer population that was always after his hard grown crop. There were also shade gardens where he would grow berries and other vegetables, and a compost bed that produced the best soil you could find anywhere, and a chicken coop. The last third was mostly weeds and garbage landfill as I remember it, but they had once used it for horses, goats , and other livestock. No conversation about PO's dwelling would be complete without mentioning the things he collected; specifically everything. I think it would be safe to say that he did have one of everything. It might look like a disaster to anyone else (especially to Bonnie), but he knew where it all was and could usually find "it" when need be. I think I may have learned more history from the yellowed stack of newspapers near the chicken coop that spanned 50 years than I did anywhere else.
In later years he found it somewhat difficult to keep up with all of his projects as the desert slowly wore away at them, but he always had grandchildren around to pick tomato worms off the plants for 5 cents each, swat the white moths for a dime each, or mow the yard for a beer.

He lived at "Bonnie and PO's Desert Retreat" (as the sign over the patio entrance announced) for most of the remainder of his life; and then about two more years after Bonnie passed away. He then moved about 45 minutes away to North Edwards, into a house right behind his son Knute where he died a few years later, with his son, at home, at peace.
 

( Received from Jared Holm)

  

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