Gladia Alice Bell

A Celebration of Life

My name is Gladia Alice Williams-Bell and I was born on a Blackland farm in Terrell, Texas on November

29, 1921. I am the first of six children born to A.C. Williams Jr. and Isabel Williams. My siblings, Willie B,

Vivian, and Charles were all born during our time in Terrell. My sister Eva, was born in Lampasas, Texas

in 1930. In 1929, my father moved our family from Terrell to San Saba, Texas where my youngest sister,

Luecelestine was born. We moved for the last time in 1937 when my father took us to live in

Brownwood, Texas.

After my graduation from R.F. Hardin High School in May of 1939 father was able to get us passes to ride

the train to visit our grandparents in Terrell, Texas in July of the same year because he worked 30 years

in the round house for the Santa Fe Railroad. Willie B, Vivian, Charles, Eva and I spent four weeks with

them before returning home. These were the most memorable times of our lives. We helped our

grandparents by picking peaches and vegetables from their garden. There were five different kinds of

peas to choose from. We would also help shell the peas for dinner and were able to eat as many peaches

as we wanted.

It was during this visit that I met Calvin Jasper Bell. My Aunt Cora had called CJ and invited him to come

by and meet us. He arrived driving a 1936 Ford and took us to the zoo. We were all very excited because

we didn’t have a zoo in Brownwood. CJ drove to Terrell to visit with us every weekend we were there

that year. When it was time to return home it was CJ that picked us up and took us to the train in Dallas

for the trip back to Brownwood. Not long after arriving home CJ surprised me when he drove to

Brownwood to visit me. He was very handsome and at the time of our first meeting I did not know that

he would become my husband just three months later.

On October 22, 1939 when CJ was 29 years old and just before my eighteenth birthday we got married.

We spent the first three years of our marriage in Dallas, Texas where CJ worked for a clothing company

and I was a housewife and a mother. Our first child, Calvin William Bell, was born on August 5, 1940.

Alice Margarita Bell, our second child, was born on May 5, 1942. In November of that same year CJ

moved us from Dallas to Los Angeles, California.

Two plus years after our arrival in Los Angeles our third child, Kenneth Morgan Bell, was born on

September 21, 1944. CJ attended night school while working at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, California.

On October 31, 1944, he graduated from Moler Barber College. Our fourth child, Claudia Bell, was born

the following year on November 23, 1945. Our family increased in size again with the births of our fifth

and sixth child, Glenn Doyle Bell on January 17, 1948 and Regina Bell the following year on March 26,

1949.

At the age of 29 and now the mother of six children I attended Henrietta Beauty School. CJ and I later

opened Bell’s Barber & Beauty Shop. We kept our children busy taking music, participating in sports, the

Girl and Boy Scouts as well as taking many family vacations. CJ would often take his sons rabbit hunting

and fishing. On May 11, 1952 our seventh child, Jannice Renee Bell, was born. Two short years later our

eighth and final child, Charles Eldridge Bell, arrived on April 30, 1954.

I began attending Los Angeles City College in 1968 and received my AA degree in June 1972. While

working on my AA I worked as an Education Aide at the 52nd Street School as well as serve as the

President of the PTA from 1969 through 1970. I graduated in September 1974 with a BA in Liberal

Studies from Cal State of Los Angeles. I received my teaching credentials for K-12 the following

September in 1975. My first permanent teaching assignment was for Herrick Avenue School located in

Sylinar, CA in September 1978. I would teach there for three years before I transferred to Trinity St.

School in Los Angeles. I worked at Trinity from 1981 to June 1987 before retiring. I taught in the Los

Angeles County School District for 10 years from 1975 to 1985.

My husband and “the love of my life”, Calvin Jasper Bell passed away in Inglewood, California on

November 15, 1977. He will always be my one and only “true love” I never remarried.

In 1990 I sold my California home and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. During my fourteen years in Las

Vegas I worked every day as a substitute school teacher. In 2004 I returned to California and moved in

with my youngest daughter, Jannice, who lived in Pasadena.

In 2008 I was chosen for a national television commercial for the Wal-Mart chain of stores titled

“Grandma’s Hands.

In 2009, I moved to a senior housing facility in Duarte, California. On November 29, 2020 I will be 99

years old. I have been blessed to live a long and productive life and I have no plans for slowing down. I

have survived the deaths of four of my children, Alice Margarita on April 11, 1998, Glenn Doyle on

May 4, 2009, Calvin William on December 31, 2005 and Jannice Renee on November 20, 2010. The

strength of my legacy continues to flourish and live on through the lives of my remaining four children,

my twenty grandchildren and my thirty-one great grandchildren.

Gladia reached her goal of turning 100 years old on November 29, 2021.

Gladia Alice Williams – Bell also leaves to celebrate her life and cherish her memory, her loving sister

Luecelestine Williams-Hicks, nieces, nephews, extended family members, and friends.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

Proverbs 31:30, 31 KJV

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.tridentsociety.com/location/rancho-mirage-cremation for the Bell family.