From Monessen to Sunny Oaks Drive

Monessen sits on the Monongahela River, a town built around the steel mill. Bernie's grandfather Berardino Chiaravalle came from Paganica, near L'Aquila in Abruzzo, and died in Monessen in 1912. His son Anthony "Tony" was born there in 1910 and married Frances Mauro, one of twelve children of Giuseppe and Vincenza Mauro from Paterno Calabro in Calabria.

Bernie joined the Navy at 17. In 1953 he was stationed at Port Hueneme, where Bernie Jr. was born at the Navy dispensary. Which ships and other stations he served at, and where he and Doris met, still aren't known; his Navy service record would tell.

Doris and the Wades

Doris Jean was the daughter of William D. Wade, a Missourian and World War I Army veteran who, his obituary says, retired as a postal inspector after 15 years in San Francisco, and Willa E. Wade of Monroe City and Hannibal, Missouri. Doris had a sister, Lucille Jakab, in Seattle. In 1963 the Wades came to live with Bernie and Doris at Sunny Oaks; Willa died that July, and William in October 1970.

Santa Venetia was born as a dream. In 1914 promoter Mabry McMahan drew up a "Venice" of canals on the Gallinas Creek marsh, with Vendola Drive as its waterfront boulevard. The canals were never dug, and after World War II the land filled with modest houses. 134 Vendola went up in the Venetia Harbor tract around 1950.

Drag the slider to watch 134 Vendola Drive from the air.

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The street sat right at the water and flooded in big storms, in 1958, January 1959, 1962 and 1969, but no flood was reported there while the Chiaravalles lived on it.

Bernie's Flying A

The Flying A was the brand of the Tidewater Oil Company. Charles Spadini ran the station at the Santa Venetia corner through the 1950s, and in 1959 Tidewater was advertising its Marin stations to new operators: "No experience necessary." Bernie bought the business in October 1961 and sold it two years later. His brother Tony briefly ran another Flying A on Irwin Street in 1962.

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Drag the slider to watch the lot from oak-covered hillside to family home.

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1. May 1961Permit A-10477: a one-story house of 1,313 square feet with a two-car garage and septic tank, built by Top Construction Co. for investor Burton L. McCormick.
2. Aug-Nov 1961Advertised as one of "4 new homes ... Only $24,950." It sells new in October.
3. April 1962The phone book lists the Chiaravalles at 3 Sunny Oaks, with the same number they had on Vendola. Brad is born that month.
4. Nov 1962Bernard V. and Doris J. Chiaravalle sign a neighborhood petition as owners of record.
5. 1963Willa Wade moves in and dies that July.
6. 1976-1998Home loans in their names in 1976, 1986, 1993 and 1998, the first a second loan or refinance.
7. 1983, 1995An electrical repair and a new roof.
8. Sept 12, 2000After 39 years, sold to its next owner for about $510,000.

Life on the street

Sunny Oaks Drive was also the Army's road up to the radar site of Nike Battery SF-93 on the ridge (1956-1971). Across the street at No. 6 lived the Knotts family, whose son Don gave young Bernie his first piano lessons. In 1962 a neighbor's dog flushed five escaped San Quentin convicts out of the hill above the houses.

In 1965 Bernie went to work for Pacific Telephone as a cable splicer. Within four years he was president of Local 9404 of the Communications Workers of America, the Marin local, a post he held for 32 years.

1. 1968Vice-president of Local 9404.
2. 1969President. He wins back the job of a fired telephone operator.
3. 1971Spokesman for the CWA Bay Area Council as 14,000 Bay Area telephone workers weigh a strike.
4. 1972"Bernard Chiaravalle of Santa Venetia has been reelected president."
5. 1976Testifies at the state Public Utilities Commission against charging for directory assistance: "It really costs each subscriber only five cents a month."
6. 1976-77Member of the Marin County Grand Jury.
7. 1977Delegate to the union's national convention in Kansas City.
8. 1978-2000Labor liaison to the Marin United Way.
9. 1980Runs for the Marin General Hospital board.
10. 1985-88President of the Marin County Labor Council. At its 50th-anniversary dinner, the meal was cooked by "newly elected president and Italian chef Bernie Chiaravalle."
11. 1986-89Chairman of the Marin County Personnel Commission.
12. 1991-94Secretary-treasurer of the Labor Council; writes against NAFTA and for universal health coverage.

Apart from work, Bernie was also passionate about his Italian heritage and family, growing a beautiful vegetable and fruit garden, the music of Mario Lanza and Louie Prima, his many companion canines throughout the years, teaching his grandchildren the art of making ravioli and gnocchi, and forever advocating for the rights of the underdog.Bernie Chiaravalle Sr.'s obituary, 2011

Bernie Jr. took piano from Don Knotts across the street, then saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, and wanted a band. He learned his first bar chord in the middle of Sunny Oaks Drive from neighbor Stacy Accomazzo, and started a garage band with Dennis Spadini and Mitch Hinard.

With singer John Lovrien the band became Logos, which won a teen talent contest in 1970, played Marin's dances and clubs, and in 1978 played the first Haight Street Fair. Bernie graduated from Terra Linda High in 1971. Logos became Allies, and in 1981-84 he played in Page One.

On July 3, 1988, at the Ventura Music Festival, a few miles from where he was born, Bernie played his first show as Michael McDonald's guitarist. He has played with McDonald ever since, toured with the Doobie Brothers in 1995, co-wrote songs such as "No Love to Be Found" and "Obsession Blues," and has released more than fifteen albums of his own from his home in Tennessee.

1. July 15, 2000Bernie's mother, Frances (Mauro) Chiaravalle, dies at 87 in Westmoreland County.
2. Sept 12, 2000Sunny Oaks is sold.
3. Oct 4, 2000Bernie and Doris buy 108 Cedar Drive in the Cedar Hills plan of Rostraver Township, Pennsylvania, for $199,900.
4. Sept 4, 2003They buy 19940 Antler Point Drive in Quail Pine Estates, Bend, Oregon, for $205,000.
5. Sept 12, 2003They sell the Pennsylvania house to Kenneth and Barbara Vogel for $230,000.
6. April 11, 2011Bernie dies at Clare Bridge of Bend, at 77. A private memorial is held April 16.
7. Aug 9, 2011The Bend house is transferred out of the couple's joint names, with no sale.
8. Oct 23, 2014The Bend house is sold.

• The 1961 deed to 3 Sunny Oaks, which would name the first buyers outright. The county's online index starts in the mid-1970s; the paper books are at the Marin County Recorder.
• Whether the family owned or rented 134 Vendola Drive. It was for sale, vacant, before they arrived and after they left. The same paper books would answer it.
• The "1959" in the sidewalk at 134 Vendola. A photo of the sidewalk, driveway apron and front walk would settle it.
• Bernie's Navy ships and stations other than Port Hueneme, and where he and Doris met. His service record at the National Personnel Records Center can be requested by his sons.
• Why Pennsylvania in 2000, and Bend in 2003. His mother's death, and Bill living near Bend, are the likely reasons, but no record says so.
• Whether Dennis Spadini was the son of Dan Spadini, the next-door neighbor on Vendola.
• Anthony Chiaravalle's 1966 obituary, which isn't in any newspaper archive online.