SIDNEY (SID) WALTHALL LISMER October 4, 1911 - September 14, 2006 Passed away peacefully at 94 after a long and eventful life. Sidney was born in Modesto, CA to a pioneer family who came west in the early 1800s. Her father, John Madison Walthall, who was an attorney in Modesto, was born in the Stockton area in 1871. Her mother, Alice Norton Atwood, was born in Portland, Maine in 1883, and grew up in Oakland attending Holy Names College. Sidney, after graduating from the University of California in Berkeley in 1933, with a degree in Acting, traveled alone to China to visit family and friends. She put her degree to good use all of her life, as she never lost her command of an audience. While in Peking, China, she met the love of her life, a young English accountant, Lawrence Joseph Lismer, who was managing an accounting office there. They fell in love and were married, and son Peter was born in 1937. "It was a very exciting time in the International Settlement of Peking then," she said. "We had an American Marine Officers BOQ on one side of our home and a Japanese Officers BOQ on the other. Officers from both groups baby sat Peter and were our friends." Sid also said "we knew so many wonderful people, Russian, German, English, American. In fact, I even knew the 'last Emperor of China.'" In 1938, after the Japanese surrounded Peking and things got "somewhat interesting," she said, she left China and took Peter to her mother's home in Alameda, California. Because of the war she and Lawrence were divorced in 1942. During the war, she worked at the Naval Supply Center in Oakland. In 1953 she left the NSC to stay at home and to be with Peter while he attended Fremont High school. Later Sid worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, retiring when she was 70. Sidney lived in Oakland for forty years with her cats until she was unable to live alone any more. In 1999, she moved, with her rather large lap cat Monty, into a house with Peter and his wife Liz. When she required more hlep and assistance than they could provide, Sidney moved into waters Edge, a skilled nursing facility in Alameda, where she resided until she passed away. Sidney enjoyed a long life and was interested in many things. She read profusely, loved Opera, classical music, and jazz, and enjoyed expanding her mind way into her nineties. In her teens she was learning to fly a biplane, but the pilot crashed the plane before she finished her lessons, much to the relief of her mother. Sidney also loved to dance, and performed ballroom dancing for many years. She also was a very good bridge player and was known to play bridge for days on end, only stopping for food and and a little sleep. Even though she never visited Europe in person, she traveled there by books and movies and visited many places in the United States, sometimes to play bridge with her friends. Sid loved her family greatly and made many friends wherever she went. Sid leaves behind her loving son, Peter, and his wife, Liz, who live in San Leandro, CA. her granddaughter, Michelle, and her husband, Eric Jennings, and her son, David, age four, live in Pleasanton, CA. Her grandson, Michael Graves, lives in San Francisco, CA. other surviving relatives are her cousin Clayton Willms of Oakdale, CA, her sister-in-law, Jane Peck, of Carmichael, CA, and nephews Brad Peck of Santa Cruz, CA and Dale Peck of Lake Forest, CA. The family will hold a memorial service at the Oakland Yacht Club, her club, in Alameda, CA on October 29 at 2 p.m. According to her wishes, Sid will be laid to rest with her father in Modesto. For more information please call Peter at 510-357-0806, or write to 2443 Cheshire Court, San Leandro, CA 94577.

Alameda Times-Star 10/15/06.