Like her husband, Dorothy “Dolly” Sarah Colbert Burkhard (1899–1981) spent her entire working life as a teacher in the Berkeley public schools. She grew up in Oakland, the child of a broken home. Her mother filed suit for divorce in both 1902 and 1903, first on charge of cruelty, the second time because her husband beat her. Both parents remarried after the divorce. When Dolly’s mother died in 1907, the child went to live with her widowed grandfather. In her will, the mother, thought to have been penniless, left Dolly an estate valued at $30,000. An ugly court fight ensued over the guardianship of the child and her inheritance. Dolly’s father, the newspaperman John F. Colbert, was awarded the guardianship two weeks after the grandfather’s death.

During the trial, testimony was heard to the effect that Dolly disliked her father. Living with him, a step-mother, and a step-sister may not have been entirely to her liking. The facts involving the relationships in the Colbert household are unknown, but Dolly’s marrying at the age of 18 may have had something to do with the desire for escape.

Dorothy and her first husband, Leslie Van Vranken, settled in the house that used to be her maternal grandparents’ home, a turreted Victorian that is still standing at 648 Chetwood Street, Oakland. A daughter, whom the Van Vrankens named Shirley, was born in 1920.

The official report of the Berkeley Schools for the year 1922–1923 listed Dorothy Van Vranken as a commercial teacher at Berkeley High School. By the time her husband died in 1934, she will have known and worked with George Burkhard for six years. The couple married not long thereafter. In 1938, they were listed in the Oakland directory as residing at 648 Chetwood Street, but they didn’t stay there long. The 1940 U.S. Census enumerator found them at 1321 Bay View Place.

At some unknown date, the Burkhards acquired the former Northrup property at 1333 Bay View Place, which consisted of a double lot and included an orchard. The house was occupied in 1944 and may have suffered a fire. In 1946, George Burkhard applied for a permit to demolish the house.

Real estate records in the BAHA archive show that in July 1947, the Burkhards came close to selling 1321 Bay View Place, but it was only in September 1972, five years after George’s death, that Dorothy C. Burkhard sold the house to Frank H. and Barbara H. Trinkl.

Frank H. & Barbara H. Trinkl

Frank Herman Trinkl (1928-2007) and Barbara Henry Trinkl (1929-2017), from Wisconsin and Michigan, grew up within hard working, struggling immigrant households during the Great Depression. They met at the University of Michigan where he studied economics and statistics on the GI Bill, and she studied design. At 22, they married and a year later moved with their infant son to student accommodations in Palo Alto, where Frank continued his post-graduate studies at Stanford University.

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In the following years, Frank’s career as an economist  first took them to Los Angeles, where he worked for the Rand Corporation (1957 to 1961), and later to Washington, D.C., where he initially served as Special Assistant, Assistant Secretary of Defence (Systems Analysis, 1961 to 1965). During the nine years they lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Barbara actively pursued her passion for making ceramics in a small basement room while continuing to raise their three children. By 1970, after being awarded a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan, Frank’s career took them back to California, this time to Berkeley, where he initially took up a post as senior lecturer at the new U.C. Graduate School of Public Policy, then president and director for planning and economic analysis at the Center for Policy Studies, Inc. Later, he served as principal consultant to the California Legislature in Sacramento before joining U.C. Hastings College of Law, where he served as a co-director the Public Law Research Institute and professor (1986 to 1993). After his retirement due to health issues, he spent several years auditing courses at CAL, immersing himself in many subjects, including history, philosophy and, towards the end of his life, his ultimate passion - quantum physics.