Yolo County CA Obituary Project Obituaries.....TURPIN , Paul W.  August 26 2002
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Peggy B. Perazzo pbperazzo@comcast.net August 6, 2004, 12:20 am

"The Davis Enterprise," Saturday, September 28, 2002
Paul W. Turpin

Paul W. Turpin was interred in the Davis Cemetery on Sept.16, 2002, with his
wife, Laura Mitchell Turpin. He died in Davis on Aug. 26, 2002, at the age of 82.

Born on July 11, 1920, in Georgia and raised in Sweetwater, Tenn., he moved to
Davis this summer to be near his daughter Linda.

Turpin retired from the U.S. Navy after a 30-year career that included action in
two wars. He was an athlete from his high school years on and excelled in a
broad range of sports, including football and basketball. He was a Golden Glove
boxing champion and crewed on Navy yachts off the East Coast for a time.

Throughout his naval career, he was a champion doubles and singles tennis player
in military championships. In the late 1940s, he collapsed after winning a
grueling championship singles match in full equatorial sun, not from sun stroke,
doctors discovered, but from acute loss of blood from an undiagnosed bleeding
ulcer.

For 20 years after his retirement, he continued to be a sought-after doubles
partner in the San Diego and La Jolla tennis scene.

After his retirement from the Navy, he took his tireless imagination and
management skills to the creation and direction of recreation programs in the
San Diego-Coronado area. His trademark was the zany twinkle in his blue eyes
that meant to all who knew him and worked with him that he was getting another
idea for activities that typically proved successful.

He was an unstoppable independent thinker, an inventor, a man who just could not
let things be but was convinced that everything could be improved. He was a
prolific writer, and in his later years concentrated on accounts of his
Tennessee childhood and animal stories that were published in the Turpin Family
Journal that he published for his wife, Laura, and his children and
grandchildren. Paul was a charmer.

When actor John Wayne was making a goodwill tour of military installations, he
dropped in to talk to Turpin as part of a fast-paced tour of the ship. The actor
ended up spending an hour talking with Turpin, and gladly accepted his
invitation to lunch in the Chiefs' Galley, famous on board ship for its fine
dining.

Turpin always took as much time as was needed for whatever he did. He always
took time to talk to strangers and no transaction, not even paying for a cup of
coffee at a Starbucks, was brisk or impersonal.

People warmed to him and animals did, too. The stray cats that ran from everyone
else sought his company. Wild birds stayed put when he approached them for a chat.

He was preceded in death by his wife Laura, who died earlier this summer in San
Diego.

He is survived by two daughters, Linda Turpin and her husband Bob Johnson, and
Nancy and her husband Robert Gordon of Chicago; a son, Paul Bruce and his wife
Susan Jones of Las Vegas; three grandchildren, Alice, Ellen and Cord of Davis;
four brothers, Wayne, John and Frank of Sweetwater, Tenn., and Elmer of San
Antonio, Texas, and their families; as well as other nieces and nephews.

Members of his large family met in Davis for the interment.


Additional Comments:
Submitted with the permission of the "The Davis Enterprise," 315 G Street,
Davis, CA 95616.

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