Person:Theodore Wallington (1)

From the Database of Karen Lazzo--Death place: Laguna Beach, South Coast Hosp, -not proven Notes of Karen: Notes of Karen's: +SEVENTH CHILD OF CYRUS BENSON WALLINGTON AND ELLA LAMBERTSON WAS A BANKER BY PROFESSION AND EXTREMELY WELL LIKED BY EVERYONE When Theo was born, he weighed under two pounds. There were no incubators back then. The was kept warm by wrapping him in blankets and placed in front of a wood stove. His mother died when he was about two and a half years old. She was pregnant with another child and fell down the stairs and developed blood posioning. His father remarried and he had some very mean stepmothers. His sister took him under her wing and he eventually went to live with her when she married. He started his banking career by working his way up from a janitor in the bank as a young man to the vice president of several banks.

When I was a about two, I developed chronic bronchitis and was given only a few years to live. We took long winter vacations to Arizona and in 1953 my dad was offered a position with the Bank of Douglas in Tucson, AZ. From their another west coast bank offered him a position to start a new branch bank and we moved to Indio, CA and then to Palm Springs. Once he got those banks established he was decided to retire to Coolidge, AZ with a childhood friend who had a Buick dealership. We were there about a year, when the banking bug bit him again, and he was offered a position as Vice President of the Mariners Bank in Newport Beach, CA with the understanding he was to open a branch in San Clemente. He had just completed establishing this branch, when the bank merged with the United California Bank. Shortly after the merger, he had a heart attack and died a week later of complications with pneumonia. I was only 16 at the time. Customers at the bank for years to come would make the comment of what a friendly banker he was. He didn't have his desk back in a secluded room, but chose to be out front and would great everyone with a smile, a wave, and a friendly greeting. Needless to say, he was a very important and influencial person in my life. Many people would classify him as a 'self-made' man. He always said, 'No, I'm not that, everything I've become, I owe to my Lord, Jesus Christ.'

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} Compiler: Sally Lamberson Ungeheier. Lambertson Research of Sally Ungeheier. (c 2006).