On this day, May 20, 1946, singer Cher, the great-granddaughter of Placerita homesteader Frank Walker, was born in El Centro, California.

Born Cheryl Sarkisian, the world-famous superstar reminisced about her Santa Clarita Valley connections in her autobiography.

“My Grandma Lynda; she was only thirty-two in this picture. She’s beautiful, isn’t she, like a Gypsy. I’m on my way to a Porky Pig lookalike contest.”

Baby Cher (Sarkisian/Bono) with her mother’s mother, Lynda Walker of Placerita Canyon, in 1946 or 1947. (SCV History)

Cher’s maternal grandfather, Charles Walker, was one of the 12 children raised in the Placerita Canyon land owned by local pioneer Frank Walker. Charles was known to have left home at around age 16, later returning at an unknown date with his family.

In her memoirs, Cher noted that she knew Charles as “Grandpa Charlie” and Frank as “Papa Walker,” landowners in the Placerita Canyon area.

Grandfather’s name..Charles Walker. Family lived in log cabin(I used 2 visit,&Leave 🍪🍪4🎅🏼)in Placerita Cyn.Calif. Gov.took Much Of His Land

— Cher (@cher) June 26, 2017

Cher and her mother, Georgia Pelham (aka Georgia Holt, aka Jackie Jean Crouch), waitress, model and part-time actress, lived in the San Fernando Valley for much of the star’s early childhood. Cher’s father, John Sarkisian, an Armenian truck driver, became divorced from her mother when she was just a toddler.

In her biography, “The First Time: Cher as told to Jeff Coplon, related that she stayed with one of her two grandmothers whenever her mother was working.

“Grandma Lynda, my mother’s mother, would sometimes get embarrassed by my Grandpa Charlie [Walker], who was a sweet man but absolutely unsophisticated. Grandpa Charlie had grown up with twelve brothers and sisters in a log cabin in Placerita Canyon, eighty miles or so outside of Los Angeles [it’s more like 35 miles], where all the Westerns were filmed. He developed recipes for the Johnson Pie Company, and sometimes he’d bring his work home. ‘If you can eat it all, it’s all yours,’ he once told me, setting down a chocolate cream pie. I ate the whole thing in one sitting and have never tasted anything like it since.

“Grandpa Charlie’s father, who I called Papa Walker [Frank Walker], still lived by himself in the cabin he’d built. He’d bought an expensive trailer, but he didn’t like staying there, so he stored feed in it. Papa was a burly, red-cheeked outdoorsman who wore flannel shirts and one-piece long johns underneath. He’d feed the local deer, and when I came to visit I would watch them through the window of the cabin, just a few feet away. My grandmother told me that the cabin was Santa’s house, and that these were his reindeer.

“One day I went out to Grandpa Charlie’s backyard and saw one of my reindeer hung on a hook off a tree. My grandfather had grown up hunting for venison, and he’d gotten a yen for some. I was just completely and utterly appalled. Grandma Lynda tried to explain it to me, but I wasn’t going for any of that ‘Now, Cher, all deer aren’t Bambi’ crap.”

As an adult, Cher would take the world by storm first as a musician in the 1960s, and then as a television star in the 1970s, especially the “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” with her then-husband Sonny Bono.

Sonny and Cher in 1973. He was 5-foot-5. She was 5-foot-9. Thus the uncomfortable pose. (SCV History)

The superstar would later take ownership of an 86-acre parcel of land in Placerita Canyon. Today, the property is bordered on the north by the city of Santa Clarita’s Golden Valley Open Space.

A Walker great-grandchild, Cher is one of the best-selling music artists in history, with estimated global sales of over 100 million records.

To read yesterday’s today in history, click here.

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