August 2, 1920 – March 20, 2019Ann Spikula Calistro was born in Oakland, the youngest of the three children of Ane and Nick Spikula of Dubrovnik (then Dalmatia, now Croatia). She died in Los Angeles. During the Depression she left school to work in her family's restaurant at 1768 7th Street in Oakland. In 1940, Ann was a divorced working mother with a baby boy, Ronald, when she met the love of her life, big-rig driver George Calistro. They were inseparable-road trips delivering steel were their dates. But then the U.S. entered World War II. George, who had been proposing marriage for a while, finally convinced Ann to say "Yes." He joined the U.S. Army and soon was part of an engineering battalion in Germany. Back home, Pacific Greyhound had contracted to transport military personnel between San Francisco Bay Area installations and was desperate for bus drivers. George had taught her to drive an eighteen-wheeler, so Ann figured she was more than qualified to drive a mere bus. She passed her driving test wearing high heels and became one of Greyhound's first female bus operators. After the war ended and George returned home, so did the surviving male Greyhound drivers, who got their jobs back; Ann and the other women were laid off. Back to restaurant work. She owned and operated Ann's Cafe and then Key Lunch, named for Oakland's Key System trolley line. After their daughter Patricia (Paddy) was born, Ann sold the restaurant and hired on at Key System as a bus driver in 1953. Key System became Alameda-Contra Costa Transit in 1960; Ann kept on driving. On weekends and vacations, Ann and George would drive for fun, to visit relatives or to nowhere in particular. Even after her beloved George was stricken by cancer and died in 1976, Ann thought nothing of driving for A-C Transit all week, then zipping down the 5 to L.A. to visit Ronnie and Paddy for the weekend. It helped mend her broken heart. One day in July 1980, Ann learned she had a brain tumor; the next day she learned she was to be a grandmother. In short order, she retired. She recovered from surgery faster than UCLA's chief of neurosurgery had ever witnessed. The following spring, she became Nanny to grandson David George Calistro McAuley, and to us all. Ann was at once the matriarch and muse of a three-generation household-raising, conspiring with, and consoling all comers. After David's birth she moved to Santa Monica and made the Calistro-McAuleys a family of four. In early 1987, she danced with daughter Paddy at news that Genevieve Grace Calistro McAuley would increase the family to five. Beloved to all who graced the family home and "Nanny" to a new generation of friends, Ann faced her greatest sorrow when her son Ronald Haver died in 1993, and when her "other daughter" Patricia Fox died in 2010. Over the past decade, Alzheimer's disease robbed her of all her memories, both tragic and joyful, but brought her to yet another family at Ayres Residential Care Home in Los Angeles, where she loved and was loved by gentle caregivers and residents who honored her life and protected it for six special years. In addition to her daughter Paddy Calistro McAuley, she is survived by her son-in-law Scott McAuley; grandson David, his wife Amber Alves McAuley, and their children Arlo and Ezra; granddaughter Genny and her husband Jon Stich; and the many friends who formed her self-chosen extended family.