Rex’s father, Jesse Ashlock died, and his mother came for a visit. Renee found a way to a dinner party in a lovely home north of the campus, just a little way up the hill from the apartment house and met an independent and open minded woman recently widowed and with a small boy of her own. Renee cultivated the relationship and Isabel Lawson, who had been recently widowed by her famous geologist husband Andrews’s death, saw a playmate for her son Pat in Renee’s younger child. A year older than Pat but they were well suited for each other, neither being particularly aggressive and having somewhat similar dispositions.

Rex and Renee had looked at houses in more modest locations in North Berkeley, but though larger, they were not as high on the hill or in as prestigious an area.