George Russell Wishart was born in Baker, Oregon on 30 December 1899. Sometimes known as ‘Russell’ he was the elder of two children of Ira Redfern Wishart, a drugs salesman from New York, and his wife, Maude Russell. By 1910 the family had moved to Toledo where young George attended High School. Tragedy struck the family in October when George’s mother died in a Portland hospital following an operation to remove a throat tumour.

George enlisted in the military on 17 July 1918 and joined the Marines; however, it is unlikely he saw any overseas service and was discharged from duty on 27 January 1919.

After the war, he went to work as an engineer at the State Lime Plant in Roseburg, Oregon but moved to California in 1920 to join his family in Crockett, which is in the San Francisco Bay Area. He held a number of jobs, including working in his father’s drugstore, before gaining employment as a radio manager with the Sherman Clay Company in Stockton during late-1924. The following year on 1 August he married a local girl and cashier in the Stockton Goods Company named Josephine Lanata.

George and Josephine lived for many years in Stockton, George always working with radios. He was a keen fisherman and died in San Francisco aged 85 on 1 October 1985. Josephine died just over six months later.

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