Gladys was born 11-27-1903 in a yellow house in Minneola.

Gladys describes herself as a rather “mean”, defiant child. She remembers an incident when she was in school in Branson, Colorado. She was caught eating candy in class and when confronted by the teacher, denied that she had done this. The teacher had one of the other children go fetch a rubber whip made from a buggy wheel and ordered Gladys to stay after school. As the other children left the school, they were taunting and teasing Gladys about the whipping that she was going to get. Gladys sat in the classroom for about an hour while the teacher graded papers, finally, the teacher told her to go home. Perhaps she felt that the anticipation of the whipping had been punishment enough.

In 1915, Gladys was twelve or thirteen years old, her maternal aunt, Nettie Owings Voss and other members of the Owings family came to the Bloxsom ranch near Branson, Colorado, picked up the five children of Hank and Birdie (deceased) Bloxsom and took them to California for the summer.

At the end of the summer, Hank Bloxsom sent the children money to come back to Colorado. Gladys decided to stay in California. When they were at the train station departing for Colorado, Fee Bloxsom, her brother, said “Gladys you had better come on back or Papa is going to be mad”. Gladys said, “You can tell Papa to go to hell”. Richard Henry “Hank” Bloxsom was a angry, volatile man who was notorious for beating his children. Gladys had to go back to the beatings and the back-breaking work on the Colorado ranch.

Gladys did not stay long with her relatives, but stayed with other families and worked for them, cooking, cleaning and watching their children. She worked for Mr. & Mrs. Church in Montbello, California and Mr. and Mrs. Hodgekins. Gladys worked to put herself the rest of the way through grammar school, then through high school and one year of business college.

Gladys stayed in California for the rest of her childhood and for the rest of her life. She acquired more polish than her siblings growing up on a ranch in the dust bowl of Colorado. To her nieces and nephews in the mid-west, she was the evening star, that bright, shiny light off in the distance. Gladys sent her sister, Juanita, silk and satin scraps from the clothes that she made for the movie stars in California. Gladys worked for Fox studios for twenty years as a seamstress.

Gladys also sent the Robbs family countless boxes of clothing. When those boxes of clothes arrived it was an incredibly exciting time for the children, especially the girls; Marie, Viola and Toots. The girls would grab the pieces of clothing, saying “Dubs!”, on this one or that one, then later they would trade back and forth. It seemed that Marie always got more of the clothing because more of them would fit her. Everything she wore in high school had been sent by her Aunt Gladys.