Alice Barlow(1910-1980)
- Additional Crew
Alice was the youngest child and only daughter of the Rev. Dr. T.W.B.
Demaree and Gania (Holland) Demaree. She and her four brothers were all
born and raised in Japan, as the Demarees were Methodist missionaries.
She lived in Japan until coming to the United States to attend the
University of Southern California, where she majored in English and
Psychology, earning bachelors and masters degrees. There she met Melvin
Lewis Barlow (son of Ralph Reuel and Hazel Garey Barlow of Oklahoma)
who was studying physics, among other things. They married in 1935,
with Rev. Demaree officiating. During WW2 Alice was hired by the movie
industry to help the Korean and Chinese actors learn to speak Japanese,
as the Japanese actors were all in the camps. In 1947, she and Mel had
their only son, Ralph Robert, who went on to become a musician and
minister. When Ralph was about ten, Alice returned to school to earn a
teaching and certificate, and became a teacher/counselor; first at
Reseda High School in the San Fernando Valley, and then at the new
Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades. She truly loved her work as
a counselor -- this is the career she believed was her real destiny. She
retired, most unwillingly, in 1975, and was able to do some world
traveling with Mel, before she contracted ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).
She passed away far too soon, on December 20, 1980, at the age of 70.