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By Lookout Staff

March 17 -- A memorial mass for Lola Holbrook, Council member Bob Holbrook’s stepmother, will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Monica’s Catholic Church. She died Tuesday at age 90.

Born in Iowa in 1918, Holbrook moved to California in 1940 and worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, posing for a "Rosie the Riveter" photo used to promote women coming to work in the war defense plant industry.

She married Council member Holbrook’s father after WWII and worked as a beautician until she retired in 1968. She was a longtime volunteer at St. Monica’s and the Kennedy Child Care Center.

“She was a special person, with wonderful smile who was loved by her family & friends and will be deeply missed but always remembered,” said Council member Holbrook, who had been taking care of his stepmother since his father died in 1994.

Avid travelers, Lola and her husband visited all but two countries in the world and most of the islands, Holbrook said.

“I remember that they once drove from Katmandu to London and took a train from London to Bejing,” said Holbrook, himself an avid traveler. “I think their most arduous journey was driving from Marrakesh in North Africa to Capetown at the southern point of Africa.

An avid golfer, Lola Holbrook was also a music lover who for years spent every summer Saturday night at the POPs concerts at the Hollywood bowl, he recalled.

Lola Holbrook is survived by youngest sister Joan Schroeder, stepchildren Cherie Hanley and Robert T. Holbrook, Jr. (Jean Ann), grandchildren, Tammy Sweet-Hernandez (Tony), Suzanne Winters (Bill), Verne Bauman (Nga), Robert Holbrook III (Rebecca), Cynthia Holbrook, & Craig Holbrook, great-grandchildren Christina Sweet, A.J. Hernandez, Rory & Roman Winters, Victoria & Verne Bauman, great-great grandchildren Gabriel & Samuel Pichinson.