Column: Melting over an image of the ice sculpture Grandpa made of Bob Hope

I was recently deeply moved by an occurrence.

It happened as I attended a meeting at Orange Coast College. I served as the college’s community relations director for 37 years and retired in 2008.

As the meeting got underway, I noticed a large black-and-white photo on the wall. It featured my grandfather and was taken, I believe, in 1943. Grandpa was an executive chef and civilian employee at the Santa Ana Army Air Base.

Today, OCC sits astride 164 acres of former air base property.

My grandfather, William M. Thomlinson, was head chef of the base’s 11 mess halls from 1942 to 1945. He and I worked on the same plot of land – separated by three decades.

The picture, in an OCC conference room, is of my grandfather and several guests attending a SAAAB banquet. Granddad is standing near comedian Bob Hope and other Hollywood notables. The focus of the photo is a huge ice carving of Hope and his famous “ski-slope” nose. The carving was executed by Gramps.

My maternal grandparents, Bill and Effie Thomlinson, moved to Southern California from Oklahoma in 1936. My mother, who was 12 at the time, accompanied them.

For five years, my grandparents owned a Tulsa restaurant. They hitched their 17-foot trailer to the car and headed for Santa Monica, moving into a palm-fringed trailer park near the pier.

They loved California.

For a year, Bill was executive chef at Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café, a roadhouse on Pacific Coast Highway. Then, Granddad went to work as assistant chef at Earl Carroll’s Hollywood nightclub at Sunset and Vine.

In 1942, he was recruited to sleepy Orange County to work as a civilian at the newly established pre-flight training facility, Santa Ana Army Air Base. The base trained 150,000 aviation cadets, including my father, during the war.

Bill was hired as executive chef of the base’s 11 mess halls. He arrived in Orange County alone and rented a room in Santa Ana. In June of ’42, my mother graduated from Santa Monica High. That summer, she and Grandma joined him at a trailer park on Newport Boulevard near the base’s main gate.

They purchased a home on Balboa Island in 1943. The home – consisting of a two-bedroom house and a second-story apartment over the garage – set them back $7,500!

My mom went to work as secretary to cadet mess officer, Maj. Philip Caldwell. My grandfather gave her a glowing recommendation but she didn’t need it. She was a pip!

My father, Bill Carnett, who didn’t yet know my mom, completed cadet training at SAAAB but washed out of flight school because of an inner-ear problem. He returned to the base and ran a mess hall, working indirectly for my grandfather.

Mom’s office was located adjacent to the parade ground near the Baker Street entrance. My wife, Hedy, and I have lived a stone’s throw from that spot for 42 years.

“One day, a steward stopped by my office and asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend,” my mom, now 93, recalls. “He said, ‘There’s this good-looking sergeant in Mess 11. Mind if I tell him about you?’ ”

Bill Carnett stopped to see her the next day. Soon they were dating.

“There was a war on,” my mom recalls. “No time to waste!”

To be honest, my grandfather didn’t much like my father.

“He regularly saw him in the mess hall and thought he was cocky,” Mom said. “I thought he was cute.”

They were married in March 1944, and remained that way for 62 years until Dad’s death in 2006.

They were married at Chapel by the Sea in Corona del Mar. A reception was held at my grandparents’ home. The cake, made by my grandfather, was served with champagne. The couple honeymooned at the Coast Inn in Laguna Beach.

Grandpa worked at the base until the end of the war. I was born in January 1945. Grandpa died of a heart attack the following October. He was 41.

Sadly, I never knew him.

But, seeing that picture on the wall at OCC … well, it did my heart good!

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.