Norma Lee Branson

Norma Lee Branson, daughter of Robert Lee Branson and Nellie Margaret Reed, was born 12 September 1926 in Red Mountain, San Bernardino County, CA. This means she probably came into the world at Rand District Hospital (it has been documented that her sister Gloria was born at this facility). The family actually resided a few miles away in Kern County on rural land in the vicinity of the small communities of Cantil and Randsburg. Norma’s father had come to Indian Wells Valley at the turn of the century just as he reached adulthood. Her mother had been raised born and raised there in Randsburg. Norma was part of Robert’s second family. She encountered her half-brother Donald Huntington Branson only on rare occasions, and her half-sister Marjorie died of leukemia when Norma was only five years old. Her full sister and full brother Gloria and Dan were those with whom she was raised and whom she knew best. Together those three spent their childhood on the family ranch in this upper Mojave Desert milieu.

Norma attended Red Rock Elementary School, where she was president of the social club, the Sidewinders, dedicated to preserving the history of the area, and the history of mining in the West. She helped form a school newspaper and was a guiding force of the publication.

Once World War II heated up, construction of the China Lake Basin installation transformed the culture of the area, taking it from rustic mining and cattle-ranching perspective into a military-infrastructure mode. With the growth came a flood of varied job opportunities. Both Robert and Nellie began working at the site, and the family home was reestablished in Ridgecrest. Ridgecrest remains to this day the geographic heart of Robert and Nellie’s clan. Norma was a resident of Ridgecrest throughout her life with the exception of her early adulthood. The first part of that seeing-something-of-the-world phase occurred when she attended nursing school -- which as it turned out to be was not entirely without the company of family members inasmuch as her cousin Iris Irene Branson was one of her classmates.

Not long after her nursing-student days, Norma married Edward John Turnbow, son of Walter Benjamin Turnbow and Lillian Belle Qualls born 13 May 1926 in Shafter, Kern County, CA. The wedding took place 13 November 1948. The pair were together less than a decade. During that time they lived in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA and in Lancaster, Los Angeles County, CA. Over the course of the marriage they became parents of three children. By the mid-1950s, Norma and her little ones moved in with her parents back in Ridgecrest, where they remained for an extended period. Edward went back to San Jose and married Angela C. Tarantino, to whom he remained married for fifty-four years until her death in late 2010. He had a son with Angela and was a stepfather to a son she had given birth to earlier in her life. Edward died 24 Sep 2011 in Reno, Washoe County, NV.

With the continuing presence and support of her parents, Norma chose to stick it out as a single mom and finished raising her three girls on her own. However, being a Ridgecrest school mom -- as well as participating in other social activities -- put her into on-going contact with Bernard William Ford and his wife Theresa Marie Bourcier, a couple who had moved to Ridgecrest in 1952 from Springfield, Hampden County, MA. Bernard was employed as an engineer at Michelson Lab at the Naval Weapons Center (known today as the Naval Air Warfare Center) at China Lake. The Fords had seven kids whose ages completely overlapped those of Norma’s kids, so inevitably the Turnbow girls got to know them, and Norma got to know the parents, for example at P.T.A. functions at Burroughs High School. In the early autumn of 1973, Theresa Bourcier Ford passed away. Norma may not have found previous suitors up to her standards, but the new widower/old friend was another story. Norma and Bernard were married 15 June 1974. She was suddenly the mother of ten instead of three, but as mentioned, her own girls were already adults, and the same was true of Bernard’s brood for the most part. The second-youngest son was still in high school. The youngest-of-all had not yet reached his eleventh birthday when Norma became his stepmother, so as she proceeded into her early fifties, she still had one more opportunity to be a day-to-day, in-the-trenches mom.

Bernard, born 20 August 1924 in Springfield, was a son of Francis J. Ford and Aurore Champagne. He had served in World War II and the Korean War. Between those conflicts, he had been a tool and die maker at the Springfield Armory. His stint at China Lake was his main career. It lasted until 1979, and then at fifty-five he retired early and devoted his active-labor-hours to his hobby of woodworking. It was a long retirement -- nearly thirty years for him. Norma got to share most of the first two decades of that period. She perished 28 September 1998 in Ridgecrest. She was in her seventies but by the standards of her immediate family, it was an early demise. Her father had reached ninety-eight. Her half-brother Donald would go on to reach ninety-eight (and his wife Ruby 102), her sister Gloria would reach ninety, and her brother Daniel would almost make it to eighty-four.

Bernard Ford kept the family home as a widower for only a couple of years before moving to an assisted-living facility in Ridgecrest. The final five months of his life were spent at St. Joseph’s Health and Retirement Center in Ojai, Ventura County, CA, a place chosen in part because it was not far from the home of his eldest son. He passed away at St. Joseph’s 21 February 2008.

Norma’s grave is at Desert Memorial Park in Ridgecrest.

Descendants of Norma Lee Branson with Edward John Turnbow

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