Athena Richmond Graves spent most of 2024 carrying on a legacy that dates back five generations.
And all she had to do was that thing babies do effortlessly: Lie around and sleep.
Athena is the 130th child to spend infancy in a white wicker bassinet that has embraced babies since 1934.
First purchased from a Los Angeles merchant by the family that founded Watson’s Drugs & Soda Fountain in Old Towne Orange, the bassinet has been passed around among relatives, neighbors, business acquaintances, employees and other folks, even traveling up north to San Francisco.
Kellar Watson Jr., whose father opened the landmark drug store on the Orange Plaza in 1899, bought the bassinet at wife Vi’s request just weeks before the birth of their first child, Kay.
Their second daughter, Jean, also had her turn in the bassinet.
Watson’s no longer exists, changing proprietors a few times before closing its doors in July 2022.
Kay Watson Smith died in 2015; Jean “Jeannie” Watson Olmstead died in 2023.
But babies are still being born and the bassinet continues to provide a safe and comforting place for a child to rest within reach of mama or papa.
Never changing
Some folks have dressed the bassinet up with bows and ribbons during its tenure in their homes. But it has stayed pretty much the same over nearly a century, aside from multiple coats of paint – always white – to freshen it.
The sturdy frame is set on casters, so it can be rolled about.
And, what Athena’s mom, Megan Richmond Graves, describes as “the big giant Moses wicker basket” can be detached for even more portability.
Athena was wheeled around the entire lower floor of her family’s San Diego County home in the bassinet – by the fireplace, next to the couch, into the kitchen, back to the living room.
When brother Wally Jr. had a playdate with other toddlers, Graves parked the rolling baby billet on the front porch so Athena could be part of the fun.
Everywhere the bassinet went with Athena, the presence of all the babies who spent time snuggled inside it also came along. Once a baby outgrew the bassinet, their name was handwritten on the bottom panel of the wicker basket.
When space ran out, newer names were added to a piece of plywood that fits inside the bassinet. That is where Athena’s name can now be found.
Athena turned 1 on Dec. 22 and has outgrown the bassinet. But her household now accounts for five of the baby names it holds.
Brother Wally, born in 2020 and now 4, was the last child added to the board before Athena arrived. (He happens to bear another family legacy – carrying on the formal moniker Wallace LeBaron Graves, which goes back five generations. More on that later.)
Athena and Wally’s older sisters, Savannah Garrison, 17, and Alexa Garrison, 13, are inscribed right above Wally on the board insert.
Their mom’s name – “Megan A. Richmond 1969” – is on the original bassinet bottom.
Scott Richmond, Athena’s maternal grandfather, is the direct connection to Kellar and Vi Watson because his parents had their first date at the soda fountain. So, when he was born, he had a turn in the bassinet.
At 85, Scott Richmond is two years behind Sally McIver as the oldest living of the babies who have slept in the bassinet. McIver, cousin to Kay and Jean Watson, stores the bassinet while it is not in use.
“It was at Aunt Vi’s house in Orange, the last house next to Hart Park on Glassell,” McIver said. “When the house sold, I kept it. That was right about 2000.”
Longtime connections
All the families represented through the bassinet have been friends for generations. If not related.
“For me there is something magical about it,” Megan Graves said. “It can’t be replicated.”
Her father’s twin brother, Dennis Richmond, is part of the bassinet’s legacy, as is her older sister, “Colleen S. Richmond 1966,” and two nieces, Madeleine and Adelaide Ergastolo.
When Jill Richmond, maternal grandmother to Athena and her siblings, gazes at the names, she is reminded of another connection.
“I realize many were my husband’s clients and his father’s clients,” she said of the Richmond family’s law practice.
Graves is a fifth-generation lawyer, the first woman in the family to join the legal profession. She spent some time as an estate planner in her dad’s firm, but now focuses on class-action work.
For Graves, 54, the bassinet embodies the small-town Americana that continued to personify the Orange of her childhood.
Her parents still have the ranch they moved to when Graves was around 7. The memories of a more close-knit time remain with Graves, who now lives in the Encinitas horse community of Olivenhain.
“I wanted to share that tradition with my kids.”
That starts with the bassinet.
A 1997 story in The Orange County Register about the 100th baby chronicled the roots of the bassinet and how its history reflected the life of the Watsons, their town, their neighbors, and the county at large.
Those roots continue to be nurtured.
Jill Richmond said that even as the county grew and people who were once neighbors moved further away from each other, they stayed connected.
“There’s just a lot of love, a great deal of love and support that we have for each other,” said Richmond, who keeps a copy of the newspaper with the original story tucked away in a safe.
“It isn’t just Orange. We have a lot of Santa Ana and Tustin friends,” she said. “We keep track of one another.”
The bond began with Vi Watson, who didn’t hesitate to share the bassinet, loaning it out to family and friends, to the town doctor and the family minister, to the gardener and the housekeeper, to babysitters who grew up and had children.
Vi and Kellar Watson were still alive in 1997 to tell the story of the bassinet, their town and the local folks who enriched their lives over the years.
Vi Watson said at the time about being asked to loan out the bassinet: “I’m always so thrilled when someone calls. It’s history. It’s family and friends that are all dear to me, every single one.”
Keepers of tradition
Now Graves and her mom, and McIver, daughter of Vi Watson’s identical twin sister Virginia, are the storytellers.
The 100th baby in the bassinet was McIver’s granddaughter Courtney Anne Howarth. McIver’s daughter, Camille Howarth, had contacted the Register for the original story.
The names of McIver, her two daughters – Howarth, now 63, and Jill McIver Kudla, 60 – are all preserved on the bassinet along with those of her five grandchildren.
“Neither Camille nor Jill have grandchildren,” McIver explained, “but hope to use the bassinet as soon as they become grandparents.”
McIver felt like a sister to Kay and Jeannie Watson. Jeannie was McIver’s closest friend up until her death last year.
McIver recalled how the bassinet served as the harbinger of baby news: “That’s how my family told each other that they were pregnant. They’d go, ‘Aunt Vi, is the bassinet being used next April?’”
Along came Wally
The borrowing of the bassinet had slowed down in the new century, waiting up in an attic above the garage at McIver’s Tustin home for quite a few years until Graves gave birth to Wally at the age of 50.
How Wally and Athena became the bassinet’s last two occupants is a story within a story of stories.
Graves’ second husband, Wallace, had three girls and she had her two girls when they formed a blended family some seven years ago. But there was that aforementioned name – Wallace LeBaron Graves – to carry on.
Her husband told Graves, “I want a boy, but you’re too old.”
Graves didn’t hesitate: “I said, ‘Well, fine. Let’s go talk to my fertility doctor.’”
Two of five donor eggs became embryos through in vitro fertilization. The first embryo Graves carried gave the family Wally in 2020. The second remained frozen until Graves began thinking about having another baby a few years later.
“I didn’t want to leave her in the freezer,” Graves said, but her husband worried even more that Graves was too old to give birth to another child.
They checked into getting a surrogate. That didn’t pan out.
“Then I said, ‘Let’s just try.’ He still said ‘No, absolutely not.’”
But one day last year while horseback riding, Graves got to chatting with a neighbor and discovered that his wife, in her 50s, was pregnant with their second IVF baby. Graves brought her husband over to talk to him.
“He said, ‘Hey, you gotta do it.’”
The next morning, they made the IVF appointments. At 54 and 62, Graves and her husband became parents to Athena. Graves also carried Athena, and breastfed both her youngest children as she did her older girls.
“It’s amazing. All four of my babies are miracle babies,” said Graves, who had gone through a fertility process using her own eggs for her two older girls.
“I’m super, super lucky.”
Graves thinks she might be the mom who has had the most babies to occupy the bassinet. She knows for sure Athena and Wally are the bassinet babies with the oldest parents at the time of their birth.
Who will be next?
McIver said the bassinet is ready again for a new baby.
“It’s now back in my attic with a bright new coat of paint thanks to Megan’s father, Scott Richmond.”
One other thing.
Graves said to write her name down to keep safe the bassinet once that tradition is handed over.
“I’ll do it,” Graves promised.
She figures her own grandchildren will sleep in the bassinet someday.
“Oh, they will. Are you kidding? They will.”
