I was born in Needles, California in 1941. My father worked for the Santa Fe Railroad which had a large station, yard, and junction point there. After the war, my parents returned to Los Angeles, where I began my schooling. In 1949, my father was transferred to the San Francisco office of the railroad, and he bought a house in Oakland, across the bay, near the Oak Knoll US Naval Hospital. There I finished my elementary education and graduated from Frick Junior High School in 1955. That same year we moved back to the Los Angeles area and bought a home in the suburb of Alhambra.
I graduated from Alhambra High School in 1958 and attended East Los Angeles Junior College. In 1960 I began a career in law enforcement as a Police Cadet for the city of Pasadena, Ca. In 1962, I transferred to the police department of the neighboring city of Arcadia, the home of the Santa Anita Race Track. In 1970, I was forced by on-duty related injuries to retire from my chosen career. That same year I started a wholesale snack foods distribution business from which I am now retired.
I began researching my roots in 1989 with a desire to prove or disprove that my maternal grandmother, Bessye Temple (Boone) Davis, was a descendant of the famed pioneer frontiersman, Daniel Boone. After six years of almost daily trips to the LDS Family History Center in Santa Monica and various other Los Angeles area libraries, I determined that "Daniel" was not in our family tree, but that we were descended from a Nicholas Boone who arrived in Isle of Wight County, Virginia (across the river from James Towne) nearly 100 years before the "other" Boones settled in Pennsylvania.
My wife, Linda Louise (Luther) and I have two sons, Jon Luther (b. 1966) and Richard Robert, Jr. (b. 1967). Donovan Carpenter Dietz, first child of Richard, Jr., and his wife, Kelly Jean, was born November 26, 1999. Delaney Linda Dietz, second child of Richard, Jr. & Kelly was born May 23, 2003. Morgan Kaylene Dietz, child of Jon and his wife, Kathlene, was born February 7, 2004. Michael Rolon is Kathlene's son by a 1st marriage, and our "adopted" grandson.
From left: Donovan, Kelly, Rich, Delaney, Michael, Morgan, Jon, Kathlene.
![]()
Questions or comments?
Return to GoldenWest Marketing homepage
© 2008 Richard R. Dietz, all rights reserved