Cleo Aloma Thomas Mulford

Cleo Aloma Thomas Mulford died peacefully on Sunday, December 16. She was born in Dallas on August 5, 1929, the first child of Jesse James Thomas and Naomi Almeda Helgerson Thomas. Cleo was baptized in the Dallas First Christian Church in the mid-1940s, graduated from Dallas High School in 1947, and attended Northwest Christian College in Eugene for one year. She married her high school sweetheart Calvin Leroy Borland in 1948.

Cal got a job near San Francisco and the family moved there in 1952, then to Pacifica, CA, in 1962. Over the years Cleo held clerical jobs at a variety of businesses including a publishing house, a real estate office, and at Pacifica City Hall. She was also active in the League of Women Voters in Pacifica, taking a trip with them to Washington, D.C. She and Cal divorced in 1978.

Cleo married Harold Eugene “Hal” Mulford in 1982 and moved to Sacramento not long after. In 1988 they built a Lincoln Log house which was Cleo’s pride and joy. Cleo knit and crocheted all her life, and during her years in Sacramento also made a great number of beautiful quilts; making and giving baby quilts was a particular joy of hers. Hal died in 2008 and Cleo moved to Vancouver, WA, in 2009. After a stroke in 2013, she moved back to Dallas, where she resumed her membership in the First Christian Church.

Cleo will be buried at the Dallas Cemetery, with a memorial service at the First Christian Church to follow, on Saturday, December 22. She is survived by her brothers Steve and Tim Thomas of Dallas; sister Judy Sproul of Brush Prairie, WA; sons Tom Borland of Daly City, CA, Ken Vance-Borland of Corvallis, Jim Borland of Vancouver, WA, and Bruce Borland of Jennings, FL; 16 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-grandson. She was preceded in death by her son Jeffrey Borland and sister Diane Fawver.