If anyone had a full life, it was the irrepressible Aline Kerr.
She survived the Great Depression, bombings in England during World War II, three husbands and a new life in Southern California.
Oh, and she also raised a son, Bruce Mulhearn, and helped him become a dominant figure in the Southern California real estate industry with her advice on how to negotiate and sell.
Kerr died at her home in Leisure World, in Seal Beach, a day after Christmas, exactly one year to the day of Mulhearn’s death. She was 99.
She had suffered a stroke two weeks earlier and was already in a struggle with pneumonia, according to Tim Rush, longtime Mulhearn family friend and senior vice president of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services California Properties, which Mulhearn had built into one of the top real estate brokerages in the nation.
“Aline, our dear Mum, as she was known to so many, was a fighter to the end,” Rush said. “She was strong and gave Bruce his discipline and iron will.”
All were welcome to enjoy her home and fireside with a warm hello and a cup of good English tea, Rush said.
“Not to mention just a wee dram of brandy once in a while,” he added.
Kerr was born Aline Allen on Aug. 8, 1920, in Liverpool but moved to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in northern England, before World War II.
When the Germans started bombing cities in England, she moved Bruce and his brother, Tim, to outlying areas for safety. After the war, she was by the side of her husband and sons, helping with their cottage business, “Gleamy Chemical.” The boys and their father sold bleach door-to-door to customers constantly having to wash their dirty clothing from working in the Newcastle coal mines. Mulhearn’s mother filled the bottles with bleach cleaners.
It was Bruce Mulhearn’s first taste of rejection, as some people would not buy the bleach. His father and mother told him it was not personal — an important lesson he valued all his life.
“My mother has been a tremendous negotiator all of her life,” Mulhearn said in his book, “What’s It All About? It’s About People!” “And in her relationships with people, she always appears to be in charge of the results, which normally end up in her favor.”
Mulhearn said his mother epitomized the four major qualities to success in the real estate business: conquering fear of rejection, high energy, self-discipline and a sense of urgency. His mother also was a determined woman.
“Bruce loved to say, ‘Mum may have lost her eyesight and much of her hearing but none of her opinions,’” Rush said.
When neighbors in England moved to California and sent word how wonderful the sunshine was, Aline decided to move to the United States as well. Her first home was in the Walnut Park area of South Gate.
In his book, Mulhearn said his mother bought a small Spanish stucco house in 1960 because it had a beautiful mural painted on the living room wall. She just had to have it and paid more than the appraised value.
“If I had asked my mother if she bought with her head or her heart, I believe she would have responded, ‘With my head,’ not willing to admit that her emotions got the better of her,” Mulhearn said in his book. “Like most of us, she bought with emotion, not logic.”
Another selling lesson Mulhearn learned from his mother.
Mulhearn also used to enjoy telling what he said was an “embellished story” about his mother’s love of cruising and how the ship’s captain on a trip to Mexico made “unseemly advances” toward her.
The story goes that she wrote in her diary that she was shocked and said no to the captain. But the next day, she wrote in her diary, “The captain threatened to sink the ship unless I complied with his wishes.”
The next day her diary read, “I saved 1,500 lives today.”
Mulhearn would always laugh heartily at that made-up story, with his mother egging him on.
Rush said Aline had a zest for living.
“She would tell you that the meaning of life is listening to Pavarotti, feeling the sun on your face, drinking a bottle of wine,” he said, “and then another, having a safe and healthy family, a loving husband, smelling the roses, a new car, ocean air and coming home with the fish and not a fish story.”
Kerris survived by her son, Tim Mulhearn; daughter-in-law Tomazina Mulhearn; five grandchildren; 13 great-grandchildren; and two great, great-grandchildren.
Services will be private. Her cremated remains will be scattered near the Queen Mary, a ship she loved.
