Imogene Emelia Thistle

Imogene Emelia Thistle, third of the three daughters of Marguerite Ellen Branson and LeBaron Guy Thistle, was born 24 January 1915 in Mariposa County, CA, in or near the town of Hornitos. At this point in their lives her parents were struggling financially. The economy of the Mother Lode had collapsed, reaching its last gasp not long after the government instituted firm regulations against hydraulic mining and other extraction methods that harmed the environment -- methods that had been the only thing keeping the harvesting of ore viable in the immediate region. Guy Thistle had to snag jobs where he could find them. Some of those he is known to have resorted to were real estate broker and notary, neither of which provided a consistent income. Marguerite may have been obliged to return to work as a school teacher. Often it was difficult for either parent to be at home with their girls -- Alice, Emily, and Imogene -- and so the kids stayed with their maternal grandparents Joseph and Ella Branson on their sprawling cattle ranch north of Hornitos. The ranch was as much home to the girls as anywhere, and throughout their lives they maintained an affection for the place. They held on to their mother’s twenty percent legacy share of the acreage throughout their lives, and their heirs still collectively own the asset as of this writing.

In 1918, belatedly yielding to the exodus that had siphoned off most of the population of Mariposa County, Guy and Marguerite chose to relocate to Fresno. To this day, Fresno County and nearby parts of the San Joaquin Valley are the stomping ground of the Thistle/Branson clan. For Guy and Marguerite themselves the Fresno phase of their lives was relatively short. Marguerite’s health deteriorated and after years of symptoms, she succumbed in May, 1933, just before Imogene graduated from Fresno High School. Guy only lived another ten months. A few months after that, Joseph Branson passed away. Therefore Imogene had independence thrust upon her barely after reaching adulthood.

Imogene attended and graduated Fresno State College and became an elementary school teacher about twenty miles west in the town Kerman, following in the footsteps of her aunt Alice Thistle Branson by doing so. She lodged in a home owned by two Swedish immigrants, minister Olaf Nelson Glim and his wife Ingebord, whose struggles to make it through the Great Depression as raisin farmers had required them to look for supplemental means of income. Ingeborg taught piano lessons. Boarding local schoolteachers was another measure taken. While part of the Glim household Imogene met and became romantically linked with the son of the family, Robert John Glim. She and Robert wed 23 November 1939 in Fresno. She was the last of the Thistle girls to marry. When Bob -- also a teacher, educated at FSC and UC Davis -- was hired by Woodlake High School in Woodlake, Tulare County, CA to launch a vocational agriculture department, Imogene gave up her own position, having taught four years at Kerman. This freed her for motherhood, and in less than a year the first of the couple’s five children was born. They remained in Woodlake until 1948, when Bob was hired to join the faculty of the newly expanded agriculture program at Fresno State College. He would remain at this institution for the rest of his career, a professor for thirty years, and then an assistant dean of the school of agriculture. Fresno became the family’s place of residence.

Imogene was active in Fresno art circles for many years. She was a member of the Fresno Community Hospital Women’s Service Alliance and the Calvary Presbyterian Church. At one point she served as president of the women’s society of the church.

In 1961 Imogene and Robert went to Africa as part of the Fresno State College Sudan Project. She taught in an American school in the Sudan. This went on for three years, a span that may have been cut short somewhat on account of Imogene’s health. The couple returned to California, where Imogene fought and lost a battle with Hodgkin’s Disease. In the end, her lifespan was almost precisely as short as her mother’s had been. She entered a Los Angeles hospital for treatment and spent an extended period there, dying at the facility 2 September 1966. Her remains were brought back to Fresno and were interred in Belmont Memorial Park Cemetery. Robert Glim survives her. He eventually remarried.

Children of Imogene Emelia Thistle with Robert John Glim

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