For those of you who enjoy history, I came across this newspaper article from Oct. 1955 regarding the winning fruit at that year´s Persimmon Festival – the ¨Lena¨ aka ¨Mitchellena¨, the seed parent to Claypool´s I-94 (later named ¨Valeene Beauty¨ by Don Compton).
The fruit was entered by Delbert Slaughter (1899-1970) and named in honor of his wife, Lena Stevens Slaughter (1901-1996). An article later that December reports that he was considering changing the name from Lena to Mitchellena to honor both the local and his wife together.
