Memorials of my family
Darrell Dwight Nunally Senior
1931-1992
Our father was born in Marked Tree Arkansas. His parents were Samual and Susie Nunally. They moved during the Dust Bowl to California in the late 1930's looking for a better life. Our father spoke of the hard life in Arkansas as a sharecropper son, and hard times in California. He was a kind and intelligent man, capable of repairing just about anything. He was dearly loved by his sisters, all seven of them, Ally, Connie, Lois, Billy, Wilma, Sylvia, Inez.
He was a fine guitar player and singer. He taught me and many others to play the guitar. He was pretty patient.
He retired when he was 55 from work as a mechanic, he only lived five more years.
Gloria Doris Ackerman-Nunally
1934-2025
Born to Elsie and William Ackerman.
Gloria was mother to Rob, Darrell Jr., Jack, me, and Craig. An absolutely wonderful mother who was often credited for having kind children. She raised five boys and a husband. One of the kindest people you would ever meet and didn't have negative things to say about anyone, even if they deserved it.
She was born in Middletown, Connecticut. Moved to California in the early 1940's with her family, her father was stationed on Treasure Island during WWII. When they first came to California they landed in San Francisco.
Her brothers were Bill, Walt, Ernie, Bob, Steve and Eddy. They had one sister, Dorothy.
She inspired my first and only, to this point, solo CD Gloria's Waltz.
She taught all her boys to be good people. How to cook, clean, sew, and other useful things boys don't typically get to learn. She worked one or two jobs sometimes to help make ends meet for her family.
She was super talented and was first chair violinist in high school. She also made wedding cakes, I can recall her teaching me how to make roses out of icing for those cakes. She was a real interior designer and ran the drapery department for New York Fabrics in Concord, California.
One of my favorite stories was how when I told her I was going to take classes in welding at the community college, she said "Jimmy, you know you're a good musician, you should think about going to music school." How many mothers would tell their kids to go to music school rather than learn a trade. I did go to welding school to earn a living, but never stopped playing music, which did end up driving me away from the welding business.
Darrell Dwight Nunally, Junior
1955 - 2022
Darrell was the father of Darrell IIIrd, Katrina, and Steven. He was born in Richmond, California, most of the rest of his life he spent in Pittsburg, California.
He was a master mechanic, a trade he inherited from our father. He was the shop foreman at European Motors in Oakland, California and a brilliant mechanic who was honored by Mercedes Benz of North America as being one of the top 10 mechanics in all of North America.
An avid fisherman, he would come home with a keeper nearly every time he went out fishing.
He was hell on wheels when it came to hard driving or offroading on motorcycles and cars. He could repair most anything and loved tinkering and anything mechanical.
I respected him enormously and learned so much from him in my life.
Jack Steven Nunally
1956 - 1977
Jack was born in Oakland, California, 3rd in line in the Nunally clan. He was a brilliant kid who tested out of high school early to get his diploma, he felt he wasn't getting what he wanted there. When they gave him his diploma he hit the road right away doing the professional rodeo cowboy circuit at the age of 17. He couldn't get enough of rodeo life. He placed 2nd in the "Sierra Circuit" in the Bull Dogging competitions.
He inspired me to dedicate my time to music when I was 14. I came in the door one evening and saw our dad teaching Jack the song Wildwood Flower, I couldn't have Jack doing something better than me, so I had Dad show me too. I practiced hard to keep up or get ahead.
When he was twenty he started to work on getting his pilots license and purchase a small Cessna airplane, this is how he planned to be able to get to more than one rodeo a day. He had already been working as a cowboy and heavy equipment operator.
He took his life at the young age of 21.
Carl Franklin Williford Jr.
1933 - 2018
Known as Dad, Buddy, Tool, he was a loving father to Wendy, Tisha, and Buddy Jr. He was a dedicated life partner to our mother Gloria, loved dearly by her kids.
Buddy was a wonderful guitar player and singer, he and I would play music together nearly every time we visited with each other.
He was born in Texas, but spent most of his life in California.
Buddy was our father Darrell's best friend. He and Darrell played music together in their childhood. He told the story of how they would sit on beds across from each other and play music for hours in our dad's bedroom.
After our father passed away, Buddy started going to visit our mom and they started dating. All of us felt Bud was such a great match for our mom. He truly loved her. He told me once, "I always loved your mom, I loved her since we were kids."
He was a truly wonderfully delightful person who absolutely cared for and loved his family and friends.
Dix Bruce
1952 - 2023
Dix was a loving husband to Kathi and father to Gennie.
I had the good fortune in my life to be a musical partner with Dix. We started playing gigs together in 1994. He and I traveled tens of thousands of miles together and logged hundreds of hours on stage as well. I can say with all honesty that you wouldn't find a better man than Dix.
I miss him dearly. He taught me so much in the time we spent together. You can learn a lot in life by being around good people, and he was a wonderfully good person.
As I took some other musical paths in my life, Dix always stayed in touch and would call and catch up from time to time. He would invite me to dinner with him and Kathi. He introduced me to great music and his wonderful music connection to Goose Island Ramblers, a band he grew up listening to.
We released 4 CDs together and had some great fun working on those and traveling and gigging all over the U.S. and Canada. The last CD we made we named it "Brothers At Heart".
Not long before Dix passed away we had started a trio with him, my partner Hilary (Nell), and myself. It was so nice to be practicing and working up new material with Dix. He was such a talented person.
He was an enormously active musician in the local San Francisco Bay Area scene. Aside from being such an amazing performer and music teacher, he was an accomplished writer. He wrote over 50 instructional books for Mel Bay Publishing company. He also wrote for many magazines and was referenced in many books. He was a prolific recording artist too, not only as a musician, but as a recording engineer as well.
One notable story was when Dix told me to say hi to David Grisman for him. So I said hello to David for Dix and David says hello back and says "tell Dix that the old Sony microphone he sold me is the only microphone Jerry Garcia would sing into when we recorded all those Garcia and Grisman recordings."
Click on the picture of Dix and it will take you to his website musixnow.com. You can see a few video links of the two of us there. Plus you can find a wealth of musical information throughout his site.