Remembering Lujuana Rae Wolfe Treadwell, gramma, artist, and attorney who changed child care law

"Lujuana Rae was born to Lorene McDaniel in Oklahoma City in 1941 and raised in her early years with help from her maternal grandmother, Mamie Selcer McDaniel, and a close friend of her mother's, Rosie Marie Mayhew. After WWII ended, her mother married Francis T. Wolfe, and her brother Michael Clifford was born. The family then moved to Tucson where her sister Martha Elizabeth was later born."

"After graduating from Tucson High with her lifelong friend Carol Davies Brooks, Lujuana Rae enrolled at the University of Arizona, driving her Jeepster and earning her master's degree in English, for which she did original research, corresponding with a librarian in the UK while completing her thesis, "Thomas Hardy's Dark Ladies." She moved to Oakland in 1964 after finishing her degree, and spent most of the rest of her life here."

"She first moved to a midcentury apartment on Merritt Avenue overlooking the lake and later to a bungalow down the hill from the Mormon Temple. An independent nomad, Mom lived modestly yet well, always befriending her neighbors, supporting and enjoying local cafes, parks, libraries, bookstores, thrift stores (as did her mother before her), and fabric stores. She spent part of the 1970s in a rental house with raccoons and redwoods at the end of the yard in"

Lujuana Rae Wolfe Treadwell was born in Oklahoma City in 1941 and raised with help from her maternal grandmother Mamie Selcer McDaniel. Her mother later married Francis T. Wolfe; her siblings included Michael Clifford and Martha Elizabeth. The family moved to Tucson where her parents worked. After graduating from Tucson High, she earned a master's degree in English from the University of Arizona with a thesis titled "Thomas Hardy's Dark Ladies." She moved to Oakland in 1964 and lived there most of her life, enjoying local cafes, parks, libraries, bookstores, thrift and fabric stores, and befriending neighbors. She lived with heart disease for twenty-five years and died at age 83, spending her final days on Oakland's Pill Hill.

Read at The Oaklandside