Page 2 January 20, 2022 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
Obituaries
Travel
Irving Theodore Erlandson
10/9/29- 1/5/2022
Irving “Whitey” Erlandson
left this world peacefully, surrounded
by his loved ones on
January 5, 2022. He was born
in Los Angeles, CA to Axel Ted
Erlandson and Anna Sorrensen on
October 9, 1929 where he grew
up and attended local schools. At
age 9, when WW2 broke out, he
was stranded with his family in
Sweden while visiting relatives.
He had to attend school there
and learned to speak Swedish.
He had a passion for outdoors
at a young age and spent a lot of
time in the mountains with his
parents and friends, fishing or
riding motorcycles. They started
out camping and eventually he
helped build their family cabin
at Lake Arrowhead as a teenager.
Later he built his own family
cabin in Kernville, where so
many family memories were
made. Everyone was always welcome to come
and we often had aunts, uncles, cousins and
friends sleeping across the floor and spilling
out the door. There was always laughter, love
and lots of adventures. He passed on his love
for fishing, hunting and exploring the world
to all of his family.
Working in construction with his father at
a young age, Whitey received his apprentice
carpenter certificate at age 14. He built the
apartment buildings in El Segundo where his
family would live for over 60 years. He was
very involved in the local El Segundo Community,
volunteering to serve in many different
capacities and running for the City Council.
Whitey married Mary Alfano on September 1,
1950 and they celebrated their 71st anniversary
together in 2021. They eloped to
Las Vegas with another couple and
Whitey left the next week after
being called up for a “Truman
year” serving in the US Navy
on the USS Worcester during
the Korean War. He had many
adventures and traveled all over
the world. He was proud of his
time serving and was a member
of the American Legion and a
lifetime member of the NRA.
Starting to work in construction
for LA City, he worked up to
supervision. He then worked
many years as a Building and
Grounds Administrator for the
Los Angeles School and College
Districts and eventually returned
to LA City to finish his career.
Mary and Whitey are parents
of two daughters, Linda Shaul
(Bryan) and Ann Guy (Richard).
They have six grandchildren,
Joshua Majors, Jessica Shriner, Jacob Majors,
Jolie Anselmo, Jacob Guy and Lucas Guy,
along with 14 great-grandchildren. His priority
in life was always his family. He loved
fiercely and taught us many life lessons. He
shared his wisdom and helping hands with
friends and family members becoming a mentor
to many, especially nieces and nephews
in the Alfano clan.
A Celebration of Whitey’s Life will take
place in the spring.
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal,
love leaves a memory no one can steal.
There’s a place in me where your fingerprint
rests, your voice still lingers, and your
laughter softly echoes. It’s a place where a
part of you will forever be, a part of me. •
Dorothy Doukakis
Dorothy Doukakis left us this
past Thanksgiving and joined her
husband John in Heaven. She
passed away peacefully at her
home surrounded by family. The
same home her and Jack resided
in since 1964.
Life with Jack, her future husband,
started shortly after the War.
Her husband recalled, “A young
girl walked by and glanced my
way. The young girl was blonde,
well-built, and beautiful.” Her name was
Dorothy Alberts; she was 15 years old from
the Polish Hills District of Pittsburgh. Four
years later, they were married. This was the
beginning of a long and loving family that
would span generations.
A strong-willed woman who insisted her
husband buys their first house in a suburb of
Pittsburgh in 1950. Fourteen years later she
pushed her husband to take a chance on a
new future in California. This resulted in him
becoming Chief of Police in Hermosa Beach.
Dorothy worked as a Van de Kamp’s Lady
stocking shelves in the traditional Dutch outfit.
Later, she worked for Hughes security as a
secretary. During this time, she piled up her
own list of accomplishments. She was on
Recreation Parks Board of Trustees, Library
Board of Trustees for the E.S.
Public Libraries from July 2002
– 2006. She was a member of
Toastmasters and received an
award for Woman of the Year for
E.S. Business and Professional
Women in October 17, 1983.
Dorothy, a devout Catholic and
parishioner of St. Anthony’s
Church for 57 years was active
in Catholic charities and served
as Lecter for over a decade.
Dorothy and Jack loved to travel. They
cruised the Mississippi and toured the South.
They saw the Great Wall, the Berlin Wall,
Asia, and the Pyramids of Egypt along with
all of Europe.
She was an avid walker and could be seen in
her broad rim hat and shorts walking through
the neighborhood. Her active life was cut short
by a stroke 8 years ago. Her health declined
over the past years and gave out a year after her
beloved husband’s passing. She leaves behind
four sons; Bob, Rick, Chris, and Scott, nine
Grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Rest in peace Mom, you will be missed.
Service will be held at St. Anthony’s Church
in El Segundo on Saturday, January 29, 2022
at 12pm. A memorial will follow at the Moose
Lodge, 514 W. Imperial Avenue, El Segundo. •
Pasta, Amore e Fantasia
Article and photos
by Ben & Glinda Shipley
In 1969, a good friend named Robbie dropped
out of New York University and vanished from
the social scene. Nothing unusual about that
in those rootless, peripatetic days—except
for the shocker two years later, when we ran
into him sitting in a café in the Communist
quarter of Florence, Italy, reading a book and
sipping on a glass of Grappa. Such are the
vagaries of travel in the modern age—or so it
felt—that we all seem to end up where we’re
supposed to be.
As it happened, Robbie had just started the
first Montessori school in Italy north of Rome.
His Open House for parents and friends was
scheduled for that evening. Did we want to
come? Well, obviously. So we went and, as
usual at such parties, ended up in the kitchen,
where the real action always is. That night, the
action was a petite, attractive Florentine souschef,
graduated that year from Le Cordon Bleu
Paris, who offered to teach us how to make
an authentic Tuscan spaghetti sauce.
Decades later, we befriended a purchasing
agent at one of the major Hollywood studios.
Sam had frittered away his youth on the rougher
edges of society, losing himself to drugs and
violence with the Hells Angels. Yet no matter
how ugly his circumstances, on the first
Thursday of each month, Sam showed up for
a Neapolitan feast his father, a first-generation
Italian, cooked for the first eighteen relatives to
reserve a seat. When Papa passed on, a more
mature and settled Sam found a job and took
over the family and this responsibility.
The heart of Sam’s feast was a classic
Neapolitan spaghetti sauce based strictly on
tomatoes grown in the ashes of Mount Vesuvius,
the brooding volcano across the harbor
from downtown Naples. When we told Sam
about our own family connection to that ancient,
unstable neighborhood, he broke with
the firmest of traditions and handed over the
“secret” family recipe.
Some people eat to live, and some people
live to eat. Some people can’t stop wandering,
and some people never leave home. But it’s
impossible to separate food from travel. Think
of that every time you twirl a fork-load of
spaghetti—a food we associate with a distant
land like Italy, that actually arrived there from
a much farther China, in 1493, in the luggage
of Marco Polo. Even if you never leave your
kitchen, the foods you cook and eat have traveled
since the dawn of civilization.
The Tuscan Sauce:
If you order pasta Bolognese anywhere from
Siena north to Bologna, this is more or less
what you’ll be eating. Keep that in mind if your
twelve-year-old has grown up on American
A cherub, a washerwoman’s fountain, and a trattoria in a lost corner of Marco Polo’s Genoa.
See Travel, page 15