After a long full life, Clare Dunn, Moran, aged 106, passed away peacefully at her family ranch near Milton on October 5, 2025. Clare was born in Ash Grove, Nebraska and grew up on her family’s farm near Bloomington. She graduated from Bloomington High School, and in the depths of the Great Depression moved West with her family, first to Oregon, where she attended secretarial school, then to the Milton-Copperopolis area where she met her husband to be, Archie Moran. While on Army furlough he proposed to her under the full harvest moon, and then two months later, after Pearl Harbor, Archie was off to war in the Pacific, and Clare went to Washington DC where she was employed by the Adjutant and Inspector’s Office Headquarters of the Navy Department doing radio, and secret and confidential work for the government. When Archie returned from the Pacific with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star in 1944, they were married and raised their two daughters at Moran Ranch.
In addition to raising her family, her many fields of endeavor included cook, waitress, 4-H Leader, International Toastmistress, International Platform Association Member, Certified Parliamentarian, movie extra, Eastern Star and Rebeka lodge member, cruise ship tour guide, and historian. She volunteered for many years at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum at Micke Grove in Lodi and earned the Golden Acorn honor from the San Joaquin Historical Society, and in recent years was inducted into the society’s Hall of Fame. When the long drive from the ranch to Lodi became difficult, she volunteered at the Oakdale Cowboy Museum, and was their “Girl Friday” from 1997 to 2015. In 2011, she published a book “Ghost Towns of the Mother Lode Hills”, recalling the history of North Eastern Stanislaus County and Western Calaveras County.
Memorable moments in Clare’s life included: Seeing the Queen in London, kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland, attending a l960’s California Governor’s Inaugural Ball, and watching the first moon landing in 1969 as table companion to Wernher von Braun, “father of the Apollo space program” at a bar-b-que hosted by newspaperman Drew Pearson at his D.C. home.
In addition to her daughters, Anita Barbour Slicton and Mary Ann Moran, Clare is survived by son-in-law Raleigh Patterson, and several nieces and nephews. Her family kindly requests, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to Tunnel to Towers or Paralyzed Veterans of America.
A private celebration of life will be held at a later date.
The Oakdale (Calif.) Leader
The Riverbank (Calif.) News
Oct. 22, 2025
