Hermine Weiss-hartmann

Hermine Weiss (1895-1991)

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Contents

PRELUDE TO EARLY MEMORIES My eighth birthday CHAPTER I Early Memories CHAPTER II My Life in a New Country CHAPTER III My Time in Spain CHAPTER IV Beginning Of my Life With Sim Sim’s Page As He Told It To Me CHAPTER V A Brief History of the Scott Family CHAPTER VI Our Move to Beaumont CHAPTER VII Our Move To Yucaipa CHAPTER VIII That Such A Splendid Life Should End So Soon CHAPTER IX Marie And I Return To Holland CHAPTER X My Moves To Cayucos And Santa Cruz CHAPTER XI My Move To Santa Cruz Came About As Follows

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PRELUDE TO EARLY MEMORIES My eighth birthday It was the day of my eighth birthday, July l6th. The school was quite a distance from our home and my younger sister was in my care. The school year in Holland starts July lst. After school was out, I had to stay for punishment. My friends were waiting for me on the school grounds... the school was adjacent to a meadow, and in Holland, a low country, there are narrow canals for drainage. One such canal bordered the road. While waiting for me, my friends had amused themselves by swinging each other from the road, across the canal. to the meadow. When the teacher released me, instead of going straight home, I thought, "Why not join them for a while?" One of them took me by the hand and swung me right in the middle of the canal instead ot across...I could not swim then and was splashing around. My friends were now scared and frantically looking for help. Luckily a passer-by saw the troubles jumped in and got me on dry ground. Now what to do? my best friend, Hilda, said "We better go to my house and ask my Mother to give you some dry clothes". She was taller and much bigger than I and her clothes were much too large for me. But her mother did give me some underclothes and one of her dresses - a red velvet dress (in midsummer) which reached to my toes. I was glad to have the dry clothes, thanked the lady, and my small sister and I went home. When we reached home, in order not to scare Mother, Marietje went up the stairs and said "Mother, little Hermine fell in the water". The river Amstel being only a half a block from the house, Mother naturally thought I had fallen in the river and was still there. In her haste she almost fell down the stairway, and when she saw me standing there, forlornly, in the front hallway in my funny clothes, my long hair still dripping wet, she burst out laughing in her relief. My eighth birthday is one of my early memories and has never been forgotten.

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CHAPTER I Early Memories Ours was a modest home. We lived in a lower middle class neighborhood, the third house from the corner and just a half block away from the wide road running along the Amstel river. Amsterdam, the capitol of the country, is named for the river and is about a thousand years old. It has long been an important city because of its harbor and its accessibility to the European continent. We lived on the second floor in a large comfortable flat consisting of a large living-dining room with kitchen, a so-called parlor, two bedrooms and an inside toilet. Our youth, in looking back on it, was quite full. We were, and always remained, a close knit family. Our parents taught us many things - they were strict in some important ways, and in other ways allowed us a lot of freedom. We felt very free. From a very young age, reading was one of my main interests. I look back to many days when the weather was too bad to play outside, of sitting behind the heating stove immersed in my book. Mother’s nickname for me was the 'bookworm'. One time my middle brother, Loo, brought home a little dog which had followed him. He loved it and Mother let him keep it in a kind of dog house. We all enjoyed it but the dog had a skin disease which we all caught, so the dog had to go. My youngest brother, Gus, had a terrarium. His animals sometimes escaped...Mother might find a lizard in the drapes while cleaning… In the winter we looked forward to skating on the ice. The frost was not strong enough every year to make it safe enough to hold people, but when it was, there were many who took advantage. This was a joyful scene. Somewhere on the ice a fairly small refreshment tent was set up selling hot chocolate, and one could see accomplished skaters doing figure skating, children trying to learn and many others just skating. In the middle of the river there was always an opening kept clear for barge traffic, for business had to go on. The way we children learned to skate was to get an old kitchen chair, and, with one of the brothers or sisters, carry it across the boulevard to the river and let it down the embankment to the ice. Then we would take turns, putting the skates on first and carefully pushing the chair before us and trying to skate...of course, there were many spills, but determination did get results. Those are pleasant memories, never forgotten. We were Lutherans, but were not a churchgoing family except perhaps on a very special occasion, such as a christening. Mother and Dad had married young. They met at a yearly party, a Ball, for brewers. In Holland at that time the skilled brewers were always German, since it was thought they made the best beer. My father was a brewmaster and came from the very far east of Germany, which is now included in Poland. The names of the towns where I once visited my father's family (sisters and their children) are now changed to Polish names. However, when I was there it was still Germany. Father's family owned a brewery with adjoining hotel and Lustgarten, and there was a village, Hartmann's Dorf, meaning the village of the Hartmanns. As an aside, many years later when I was living in Cayucos, and my brother Paul and I were having dinner with a friend, it 50 happened that my friend had two more guests who were Germans. During the dinner conversation, we became acquainted and started to exchange experiences, etc. It came out that the man of the party said suddenly, "Hartmann's Dorf? I know where that is...I originally came from there..." Of course, that set off an interesting

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conversation, especially for my brother Paul, who had been visiting our family in East Germany too, had spent quite some time with them, really got to know them much better than I ever did, and did feel the family ties more. The friend finally came to the U.S. after the second World War. He had been a prisoner of war in Russia, and, at the end of the war, when the prisoners were released, they reached a point where they could say where they wanted to go...to the East of Germany or to the West. He had been thinking about this and chose to go to the West, then eventually emigrated to the U.S., settled here and married. At the end of the visit, we went home first and said our goodbyes, whereupon the gentleman said to Paul in the typical old fashioned German manner (as he straightened up, clicked his heels and shook hands with Paul) "Ich wuensche dich eine schoene ferien, Herr Hartmann", meaning: I wish you a nice vacation, Mr. Hartmann. It was a rather nice little remembrance of the past of the family. Coming back to Dad and Mother and their story, they took an instant liking to each other and fell in love soon enough. Mother's parents at first looked askance at the connection because my Dad was a foreigner who did not speak Dutch very well. It was difficult for him to pronounce certain words. But they didn't give up, and after a period of what was then called betrothal, Mother and Dad were married with parental consent. That was at that time very important. At that time in Holland a pair had to have parental consent until they were 3l years old. Of course, this law no longer is on the books, but marriages are still always performed in the City Hall first. Then, if the people so desire, they can have a church wedding. Dad, especially in the first years, stood out as a foreigner. He dressed differently from the Dutch and walked differently due to the fact that he came from a very mountainous part of the country. However, after some time Mother's family all became quite fond of Dad. On the maternal side of the family, my greatgreatgrandfather was a French Huguenot, who, in the early l8th century had to flee France because he was a Protestant; in France at the time, this was illegal and punished by death. One had to be converted to Catholicism. He preferred exile in Holland, eventually settled in Amsterdam and flourished there. My greatgrandfather, son of the Huguenot, and my greatgrandmother, however did not want to give my grandfather consent to marry my grandmother. My greatgrandmother felt her not good enough. However, marry they did, but grandfather lost his inheritance. Their marriage lasted for over 50 years and produced 6 children...5 girls and, at last, one boy, my uncle Pieter. My grandmother's maiden name was Hermine Lund. She came from the Dutch province of Groningen and I do not really know anything about her family. So Dad and Mother married and about a year later I was born. Being the first one and a wanted baby, I think I was spoiled and had a will of my own. Then, a little less than 2 years later my sister Marie was born, and 2 years after her, my brother Paul, and Riek a year after Paul. That almost made them twins. As children, they were always together. The babies coming fast, I soon had to help mother, sometimes doing errands as well as other things. This made me proud and also, perhaps, independent at an early age. One of the early, very nice, memories were our sunday breakfasts. Then the whole family gathered around the table, and we always had what was called currantsrolls, not only filled with currants, but other fruits, ham, etc., and the leisure to linger and visit. Weekdays, Dad always left quite early for work and made his own breakfast, so Mother could have that extra hour’s rest. The weekday breakfast was often oats cooked in milk. Oranges were a special treat.

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During Dad's youth my grandmother had to run the business, since grandfather just wasn't a businessman. He was an artist...loved music, played the grand piano and wrote songs. But the business was running down and grandmother took over the management of the holdings. When she died my Dad was 2l and had learned the skill of being a brewer as he grew up. He left home, working as a master brewer in different cities, but always going west until he came to Amsterdam where he met Mother and settled. When my grandfather died the property had to be sold, since there was no one who could take over the management. Dad had one younger brother, but he had drowned a few years before. When I was 5 years old, Dad went back to his birthplace as the eldest son. There was some inheritance and we were to get the grand piano; however, we never got it because of the distance and the impossibility at that time of shipping it to Amsterdam. Later we got an upright piano. In my youth, education for boys was considered more important than for girls. The girls were not neglected but more emphasis was placed on homemaking subjects. On Wednesdays the boys were free from school. Girls had school and were taught such subjects as sewing, knitting and fine needlework. Girls usually got married and homemaking was very important. We were not neglected, though, and after grade school I went to high school, since my choice was to become a secretary. In Holland that meant having knowledge of at least English, German and some French. Because the country was so small, business was done with many neighboring countries and in their own language. In high school the subjects I learned were English, simple bookkeeping, typing and shorthand. Later German (which came easy to me because it was Dad's native language) and some French were added. On my l6th birthday my mother had a dress made for me of yellow crepe de Chine with handpainted violets on it, a dress so lovely it made me feel like a queen. Wearing this dress proudly, I went with my father to my very first opera, Mignon. On my eighteenth birthday Dad took me to a play about the weavers and the conditions under which they worked in Germany and Holland. After that, I went to plays and concerts and operas sometimes as often as once a month, with my friend Katrina. As the first World War was going on and the duration stretched into four years, I decided to leave office work behind and become a nurse. Dad and Mother weren't in favor of this, especially Dad, who felt that the work of a nurse would be much too heavy, and anyhow, after having all that business education, why give it up? I persisted, though, and was accepted as a young student nurse when I was 20. In Holland it is not thought advisable to have girls start at a younger age. Of course, Mother and Dad were right. The work was much harder than office work, also much more serious. When I saw a lumbar puncture done for the first time, I almost fainted...yet I never regretted making the change, although in those days, being young, I often had to forego good tims, parties, concerts, etc. In general, that type of work proved much more satisfying to me. It took three years of work and study to becom a graduate nurse. After that, I took an extra year of gynecology and obstetrics and also the care of premature babies. In all, I had four years of study and two certificates before I came to the United States. This came about as follows: my sister Marie had married my American brother-in-law (a Columbia University graduate and a teacher in New York City), when the lust to travel seized him and he came to

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Europe. He first settled in Hamburg, Germany, but when the first World War broke out, he moved to Amsterdam, where he became a private teacher of the Berlitz method of language instruction. As I mentioned before, we were a lively bunch and many friends came to our house, only I wasn’t often there because I lived in the hospital, large University hospital in Amsterdam. after about four years, the young family wanted to return to my brother-inlaw's native New York. As I was always dreaming of seeing the world, they said, "Why don't you join us and go, too?" That appealed to me and I did go along. I hadn't really planned to stay, but wanted to travel and learn how other people lived in the world. In the days when my brother-in-law was studying at Columbia University, Jewish boys were not allowed to join any fraternity. My brother-in-law, Louis B. Scott, was a Jew, and to get around this silly discrimination, he and his fellows, also being Jewish, formed their own fraternity, naming it the "Alpha Phi". That group stayed friends throughout the years and on December 7th, the date of their forming the fraternity, as many as could do so would gather for the anniversary. Many of them became members of the professions, some lawyers, a New York judge, a medical doctor, two dentists. Others went into business and other pursuits. There are two photographs of the group as it was formed years and years ago in possession of our family. On our arrival in Hoboken, New Jersey, by passenger ship, we first settled in an apartment in Brooklyn. I remember, only a few days after our arrival, going out on my own. My sister and brother-in-law, being American citizens, I had no trouble going through Customs, as I was considered a visitor. I went out and was told which subway to take to Times Square. There at the Square I got off and went window shopping and time went by very tast. Everything was so new and exciting. One thing which drew my attention was the scarcity of bookshops. Time fleeted very fast and I had no idea of the traffic jam I was to get into on my way back to Brooklyn. The subway was so crowded at that time of day that a conductor stood outside the door and pushed with his knee as many passengers as he could into the compartment before the doors automatically closed. Anyhow, I got safely home and was quite proud to have accomplished this... My family, though, weren’t so pleased...too dangerous. In many ways I was fortunate in that from the very start of my arrival I came into many different homes and got an idea of the lifestyle in New York…. end of early memories….

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Genealogy of Hermine Weiss Jacobus Johannes Ludeker (1785-?) x Johanna Mulder (1787-?) Pieter Ludeker (1811-1896) x Christina Johanna Neuteboom (1814-1877) Leonard Theodorus Ludeker (1850-1927) x Hermina Cornelia Lund (1849-1930)

Pieter 1885-1961

Hermine Cornelia Pauline 1895-1991

Petronella Theodora 1883-1899

Christine Petronella 1880-1966

Hermina Cornelia 1976-1970

Nardina

Marie Louise

Louis B. Scott

Paul Hendrik

Hendrika Cornelia

1888-1971

1899-1979

1900-1983

1874-1952

Hendrika Cornelia 1872-1968

x 1897-1973

Gustav Heinrich Hartmann x Ernestine Marie Ida Conrad

Paul x Hermann 1867-1940

Gustav

Luise

Wilma

Selma

Abe van der Hoek

Leonhard

Sylvia

Gustav

1899-?

1902-1984

?-1980

1906-1935

x

Alpha

x

Folkert

Jacqueline x

1919-1945 Philome

x (1)

Hariette Green

Hendrika

1930-

1934-

Dick Kolijn x

x Hope Watty (2) 1922-

x Richard Dortch

Christoffer 1951Gwendolyne 1953-

Sandra

Karin

1926-

1914-

Malcolm 1957-

Rhoda

Sydney Niederhauser

Scott 1952-

1920-

Alan 1953-

Dick

x 1926-

Edgar x Rosenblum

1930-

1923-

Verna

Cornelia

Sandra 1956-

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Jessica

Father, Riek, Marie, Paul, Loo, Mother and Hermine

Gustav Heinrich at 23, named after Grandfather Hartmann. He was born 4 years after Leonhard (Loo), who was named after Grandfather Ludeker. In this house all the six Hartmann children were born and raised. My parents lived there for some 30 years.

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Great Grandfather Ludeker [Leonard Theodorus Ludeker]

Great Great Grandfather Ludeker [Pieter Ludeker] French Huguenot, went into exile in Holland rather than become Catholic

Great Grandmother Ludeker [Hermina Cornelia Lund]

Great Grandmother Hartmann

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Studying for finals

Father at 21 when he left home [Paul Hermann Hartmann]

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Mother at 22 [Hendrika Cornelia Ludeker]

Father at 27

This card was sent to Dad when he was 40 by my aunt Wilma. The name of the place was changed

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↑Hermine as a young student Nurse Shortly before going to U.S.A.→

↑Abe, Father, a friend, Gus, Sim and Loo

Gus as a student →

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CHAPTER II My Life in a New Country We arrived in September and it was hot in New York. What struck me at first was the way people dressed, or rather undressed, in the heat of the city. The next thing that amazed me was the abundance of large advertising signs, which promoted everything from laxatives to wearing apparel. The family of my brother-in-law Lou had moved to Chicago during the years that he had spent in Europe, but he still had an Aunt, Auntie Rosie, living in New York. He also had many friends in New York in the Alpha Phi. After visiting around for a few weeks, I felt that I should try to go to work. A position in Philadelphia had been offered to me before I left Europe, but I didn't accept that right away. My first job in New York was in a very small hospital, working twelve hours a day. In Holland the nurses had, at that time, an eight hour day. That was plenty long enough, but I still took the job. After four days of working twelve hours, I quit and told the person in charge to please give me my salary and that I would not be back the next day. After that experience, I decided to take the position in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. The hospital that I was to work in was very large, with eight hundred beds. It had a huge dining room and large wards of patients. The work I was told to do was not strange to me, but there was one thing that was difficult for me to get used to. In hospitals in the United States, the graduate nurses were usually put in charge of medication. In Europe we used the metric system of measurement, while in the United States the English system was used. This made it difficult for me to transpose the terms accurately, something which is quite important. It was all very new and confusing at times, especially with the American slang which sometimes caused me to be embarrassed. However, I got along and I liked the work. After a while, I befriended a nurse from Knoxville, Tennessee, Katherine Davis. We became quite good friends. One of the reasons she had left Knoxville was that she also wanted to see the world, so we had something in common. After working in Philadelphia for about seven months, I heard about a new hospital which was opening in Brooklyn, New York, and I decided to resign my job in Philadelphia. Loneliness was one of the reasons. I left with the understanding that if ever I wished to return to duty at the hospital, I would be very welcome. I was accepted as a Graduate Nurse in the new Brooklyn hospital and put in charge of a large medical ward. It was pleasant to work in a brand new hospital and the work was familiar. Also, my family, consisting of my sister, Marie, and her family and two of my brothers, had come over from Holland to the U.S. My brother, Leonard (Loo to us to this day), was an engineer, but also a sculptor. He got a job as an engineer and rented a very large l0ft on Union Square in New York at 28 E. l4th St. Downstairs was a Chinese restaurant, and the l0ft had formerly been used by the clothing industry - hence the large space. My bicycle, which had been crated in Holland, and my large trunk are probably there to this day. My brother, Paul, moved right in with Loo and anyone was always welcome, so it was a real gathering place for friends, mostly struggling artists. It was always a nice place to come to; I met many interesting people there, some of whom later became very good friends. A few of those painters, years later, became famous, such as Willie De Koning and Hondius. I hadn't forgotten my plans for travelling, but I needed my New York State Registration first, since in the U.S. there is a law that requires State Registration for nurses, in addition to diplomas. Before planning any travels, I inquired from the State Health authorities, and found out 14

that if an R.N. is registered in New York State (at that time, anyway) almost all other states recognized the New York registration. To travel you need money, so I decided after some time to resign and do private nursing for a period. It was much better paid. One of my brother-in-law's friends was a practicing M.D. (Eddy Gersh) in New York City and was willing to recommend me to private agencies. So I resigned and moved to the Bronx because this was where the doctor was located. In good time I took the state exam, which took four days, and was given in the old Bronx Opera House. I got my registration and was offered a year's scholarship at Teachers' College, Columbia University. The understanding was that I would complete the course and then return to Holland to teach nursing, but this would have interfered with my plans to travel, so I said "Thank you, but no thank you, because I have other plans". Instead I did private nursing for some time. Meanwhile, I had kept up my correspondence with Katherine Davis, and, about two years after my arrival in the U.S., I decided to go to Tennessee at her invitation. Katherine had a large family of brothers; I cannot remember any sisters. But she had many aunts and uncles and in time took me to visit most of them. The Southern style of life is quite hospitable and I sampled many delicious Southern dishes. Also, since my friend had become the Directress of Nurses, I became the guest of the hospital, lived in the nurses quarters and made friends there. There was a large Eastern Tennessee Fair in progress and I was asked to take charge, at the fairgrounds, of a large tent, medically equipped for all kinds of first aid cases, along with two doctors who rotated their services each day (they were serving their internships). There were a great many different kinds of people who came to see the Fair, including hillbillies from the surrounding hills. These people lived in isolation, a completely different lifestyle to any I knew. It was quite interesting to me. After the fair I was for a while parttime chaperone for the nurses (student-nurses) who received their boy friends in the evenings at ll p.m. I became assistant to the night superintendent. But then after a while, a nurse in charge of the newly set up Public Health program (a representative from the U.S. Public Health Service) asked for me. She had not long before set up a Public Health program in the Virgin Islands. She was setting up Public Health service in Knoxville which included the city schools and liked my work. She asked Katherine to put me to work in the Public Health program. That was what I really wanted, so I could go into many humble homes also. The thing I could not take in the long run was the so-called Jim Crow Law...the negro people were really treated as second or third class citizens and I wasn't brought up that way. Also I hadn't learned when to keep my mouth shut. So after some time I became known as the woman who was too smart. One of the supervising nurses (I had noticed she always read the very liberal magazine "The Nation") took me aside one day and said, "Hermine, I would advise you not to stay here too long...it would lead in the long run to a disagreeable situation for you and perhaps also for Katherine Davis"...Katherine was quite loyal to me. So I took the advice, and after suitable preparations, graciously took off for other parts. It was January when I left in the year l926. My brother Paul was, at that time, living in Miami, Florida, because he was trying to get back his health. He had tried to do heavy labor, because it was difficult for him to get work in his field as a translator for the coffee trade. This proved to be too much for him and he became quite ill. After he recovered sufficiently, he and a painter friend, Shoar, went to Miami and tried to make a living there. When he heard that I was planning to leave Tennessee he invited me to come to Miami. Paul and his friend were trying to make a living by selling coconut shells as souvenirs which had been decorated by Shoar. Miami, at that time, was a much

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different place from what it is today, the town very much smaller. The scenery was nice, the beach was lovely and it was very pleasant to stay there...but the most lively activity there was a real estate boom with small real estate offices springing up everywhere. People were hoping to make a fortune, and, of course, many of them did. I planned to remain in Miami for a while and work there, so I sent to Jacksonville to get my Nursing Registration. Of course, the Real Estate agents wanted to make a killing on any land that they could sell. Much of the property for sale was way out in the country marshes, and even in the Everglades, and many people bought real estate 'sight unseen'. To me, this atmosphere was very uncomfortable, and, as a result, I decided to make my stay in Miami just a long visit. I lasted about two or three months with my brother, who gradually regained his strength. Eventually Paul and his friend, Shoar, decided that they would not make their fortune selling decorated coconuts, and returned to New York Ci ty. I accepted the invitation of my aunt, Tante Christine, and Uncle George, who had lived in Northern California for many years, and who had asked me to come there and see how I liked it. At that time travel was by boat and by train; there were no transcontinental airplanes as yet. I went by boat from Key West, Florida to Houston, Texas, which was a two day trip across the Gulf of Mexico. I was miserably seasick all the time the boat was on the water. After we landed, I had to take a train from Houston to California. I stopped in Los Angeles for a few days to meet the brother of my l best friend in Holland (Katherine). My first impression of Los Angeles was that it reminded me of a circus town, especially the downtown area. Of course, in l926 Los AngeIes was a much smaller place than it is today by far. However, I stayed with my friend's brother, and after a few days went to Northern California. My aunt was my Mother's sister. My uncle had gone first to Canada and later to California. After Uncle George became established in Colusa (he was a carpenter and cabinet maker), he and my aunt wanted to get married. He made his wishes known to Tante's parents. At that time, it was necessary to have parental consent until one was 3l years old. Since they had already been betrothed before Uncle left to go to Canada, my grandparents consented to a marriage between them. It was to be a marriage by proxy in Amsterdam. In Holland it was called 'getting married with a glove'. Later, when Tante arrived in San Francisco, she and Uncle got married there. When I arrived in Colusa they had two children, George, who was l3 at that time, and Leonard, who was 7. They had no relatives there, but lots of friends, as they had lived there for many years. They were quite happy to have a member of the family come to visit. As it happened, it became my second home since I was lonely. By that time I was in my late twenties, and, as relatives often do, my Aunt and Uncle decided that I should be thinking of getting married, so they began a little matchmaking. There were two brothers from Canada who lived nearby, and one of them, who was tall and blond, was named Mike and seemed to take a liking to me. We went together for a while, but I was not thinking of marriage at the time. I stayed with my Aunt and Uncle for about two months, then decided to go to work but not in Colusa. I went south to San Francisco to make myself known to the person in charge of the Public Health Department in California. I showed my credentials and asked whether there were any openings in Public Health. San Francisco fascinated me and it has remained my favorite city; later it was my husband's favorite city, also. There was no opening in San Francisco at the time, but there was an opening in Sacramento and they offered that to me. It was with the Sacramento TB Association. There had been a flu epidemic that year and the tuberculosis rate had shot up. They offered me the position of Public Health nurse in Sacramento and I

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accepted, although I had to drive a car for the job. The person in charge of the TB Association gave me two weeks to prepare to come to work by learning to drive. My Uncle gave me driving lessons and I learned the bare rudiments. But when I started the job, it became apparent that I really wasn't able to drive a car by myself very well, so for a month I had a chauffeur who taught me more about driving. Sacramento, Capitol of the State of California, was a new city for me and much smaller than it is today. It was pleasant, except that during the summer it got very, very hot. I met a nice young man, a Catholic, named Joe O'Shaunessy. He was an accountant, a pleasant person and we went around together. On weekends, I often went to see my Aunt and Uncle, and, as my work was interesting, generally speaking, my life was satisfying. I had to cover quite a bit of ground, not only in the city, but in the surrounding county not the whole county, but quite a bit of it. There were a number of Japanese families living there and I remember particularly one family, with several children, who all had tuberculosis. As I said, I found the work very interesting. Apparently, my boss, Mrs. Edson, liked my work. Meanwhile my sister, Marie, and her family had moved from New York to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Lou was the person in charge of fund raising for a national Jewish organization. At that time, the Jews in Poland were in very bad condition, and he was raising funds to help them. I had not seen Marie for two years. She had given birth to twin girls, one of whom was born with what they called a 'birth injury'. The medical name for it is Cerebral Palsy, and she was completely disabled. Marie was not too strong and here she was with four small children. Lou made good money at the time, and they had help in the household; however, Marie became very ill, and, after I had been working in Sacramento for about nine months, one day I got a telegram. I had heard that Marie was ill, but I was at the other end of the United States. The telegram said, "Couldn't you come over and help us?" That was a big decision for me to make. There was my boy friend and he presented a problem: he drank quite a bit. All the Hartmanns had become teetotalers, so I couldn't see myself tied to a drinker. One day he called me on the phone (the same Joe O'Shaunessy) and said that he had made a vow on the Virgin Mary never to take another drink. My answer to him was, "Couldn't you have made that decision by yourself?" It was kind of coldhearted of me, I think; anyhow, it was rather hard for me to leave the boy friend. To return to the decision I had to make: I had always felt somewhat guilty to my parents, since in one year four of the family left home for America and my younger sister Riek had gotten married and moved to the Hague, which is some distance from Amsterdam. My youngest brother, Gustav, was just a young boy and he was studying to become an architect; suddenly he had no brothers and sisters at home. I felt an obligation to my parents and my brother, and this was a way I could show it; I went to Pittsburgh to help my sister and her family. Now my boss, Mrs. Edson, was quite upset. She said, "You've just gotten really into the job. I don’t like it at all"...but I felt I had to do it, and I went, Joe bringing me to the train in San Francisco after we had dinner together there. When I got to Pittsburgh, Marie was very ill. She had to have surgery first for a tonsillectomy, then a thyroidectomy. A large part of her thyroid gland had to be removed; she had to convalesce and I was faced with running a household with four small children, one of whom was severely handicapped. By that time it was winter, and winter in Pittsburgh was quite different from winter in California. In about six months Marie recovered, and I wanted to go back to California. Lou and Marie were also not satisfied with Pittsburgh. It was rather an interesting city to me, very much industrialized, but with too much smoke. I didn’t think it was very healthy for my sister to remain there. Lou was working for a national Jewish

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organization and the family decided, that, if possible, they would join me and go back to California. He asked for a transfer to California and the family and I rnoved to Oakland. Louis territory would be in Northern California as a fund raiser. Afterwe were settled, I decided to go back to work. First I went to Sacramento to see my old boss, Mrs. Edson, but my old job had been taken by someone else. Mrs. Edson had always liked my work and she said that the person in charge of the Preventorium had become ill and needed at least three to four months to recover, so she offered me the post of full-charge Nurse in charge of the Preventorium. A Preventorium was, at that time, a new way to treat children who were threatening to come down with TB, and also those who were suffering from Asthma. This was done by taking them out of their homes and putting them in surroundings where they could live a life of routine supervision. This was based on the way native American Indians lived. The Indians wore no clothes, only a blanket when they were cold, generally speaking. Scientific basis was to make a protective garrnent of the skin and wear as little clothing as possible. We had a group of girls, from ages five to fourteen, who wore only panties and in winter a sweater instead of the Indian blanket. They wore shoes because it was important to keep the feet dry. The Sacramento Preventorium was located in the Sierra Foothills, near the small town of Colfax. I was pleased to take the job and liked it; also it was kind of fun. After about four rnonths, the regular supervisor recovered, I was then relieved of my duties and returned to Oakland. I worked for a while at the new Children's Hospital in Oakland, but not long afterward I was stricken with pneumonia, so I had to give up that job. Lou was still working for the same organization, but was transferred just then to the Los Angeles area and I went with them. In the Los Angeles area the Jewish community also ran a Preventorium, and I was asked to take charge of this Preventorium which was in Culver City, almost across the street from MGM, where movies were and are still being made. This was a children's facility. There was a small hospital on the grounds, and there was a Preventorium, new and just to be opened. It was a new way of treating TB and there were not many people at that time who were capable of using the philosophy of treating the disease with this methode I was one of the initiates, so I was around to work with the children. The way I got the job was that Lou was working for the national Jewish organization and met the director of the Vista Del Mar organization. He told the director that I had had experience in running a Preventorium; Vista Del Mar was just newly opened so Mr. Bonaparte asked me to come in for an interview. After the interview, he offered me the job and I accepted. From the beginning I was successful with the work. The medical attention that these children received was always excellent. The Jewish doctors rendered their services to these children in that institution without charge. The medical profession then was not quite so mercenary as it appears to be today. I stayed there for about seven years, and, of course, I made friends in Los Angeles and through my work. I lived right with the children, and, again, it was like a sort of isolation because my working day was not a heavy job but I had to be there and felt kind of shut in. Of course, I got time off and rented a little apartment on the outside where I could go have time to myself. During those seven years I had a few boy friends who didn't turn out to be the right ones. I remember one of the girls saying to me at that time about one of the young men courting me, "Miss Hartmann, he’s not for you". When I came to this country, I had no plans to remain here and become a citizen. After I had been in the United States for about five years, my grandfather died and I wanted to go home. I went to Mr. Bonaparte and asked for a leave of absence for three months, which was granted. The trip to Holland from California, in those years, was long. Three days on the train 18

to New York and ten days on a ship from New York to Amsterdam. When I arrived in Holland it was, of course, wonderful to see the Old Country and my family. My Mother in particular was very happy, and my Fathert too. But Holland is a very small country and quite over-populated; coming from the open spaces of California, I couldn't see myself staying in Holland, particularly as California in those days had a much smaller population. I decided to go back and apply for citizenship. I never took the citizenship course, but learned what I had to from books. My Uncle stood witness for me in the Court of San Fransisco, and on October 4,l929 I was naturalized a United States citizin.

Vista del Mar in Culver City

Preventorium at Sun Mount, Colfax 1927

Vista del Mar Residents

19

Tennessee, 1927

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CHAPTER III My Time in Spain It was now l936. During the Depression I was working in the Preventorium and had a very well-paying job. But my family, rny brothers, and lots of our friends suffered greatly. In Europe the Depression was also bad, particularly in Germany. The Versailles Treaty, made after World War One, stated that since Germany had lost the war it had to pay for reparations - all the destruction caused by the war. That, with the Depression, hit the German people so badly that they were actually starving. Then the Hitler period took hold. He started the soup kitchens, and formed the Brown Shirts, and from then on it is History, which, of course, led to the Second World War. The Spain of l936 had stayed behind in the industrialization of Western Europe. They still had a King, and the old nobles, the Grandees, were very powerful. In the beginning of l936 the Spanish Parliament voted the King out. The people wanted a Republic; so this was a legally elected Republic, but it divided the Country, because the Grandees and the rich were opposed to the new changes. A Civil War broke out. Because of the Depression in Europe, and all over the world, the Union Movement had become very important, and many people, especially the young, were in favor of a Republic. Most of the free world, in Europe and in America too, was in favor of a Spanish Republic. Many young people from all over the world volunteered to fight in Spain for the Republic. In New York City, the American Medical Bureau was formed for doctors and nurses to go to Spain and thousands of young men went as volunteers. It was around the end of l936 and I was in New York to spend the holidays with my brothers and friends. I did not volunteer as a nurse at first when I visited the American Medical Bureau. In about March, when the city of Guernica was bombed, and so many people were killed, Pablo Picasso decided to portray this scene of holocaust on canvas. It was so stark, so real and so horrible, that anyone who saw it could then realize the magnitude of this Civil War. It was now early l937, and it was the first time an Open City had been bombed from the air. It was then that I decided to join the nurses and doctors who were going to Spain to help the Republic. I felt I had something to offer because of my experience with groups of children. At that time the government gave legal permission to enter Spain to doctors, nurses, ministers and entertainers, but all the men who came as volunteers came in illegally from many countries. The bombing, incidentally, had been done by both Germany and Italy, that were then Fascist Governments. The Spanish Civil War was a very sympathetic cause at that time, and even the American government was in sympathy. (Somewhat later for political reasons England, America and France changed their policy.) I quit my job at Vista Del Mar, and before I started on my journey for the battlefront, the doctors and officials at VDM gave a big banquet in my honor. I received much praise and was said to be very brave and courageous in my venture to help a foreign country to survive, etc. Shortly before I left, a group of 20 nurses and doctors had left the West Coast, but when I went, I travelled as the only nurse accompanied by a pathologist to New York. We were to join another group there of 20 nurses and doctors for the trip to Spain. On our arrival in New York, I was met by my brothers and family and friends. The next day, we had to report to the Headquarters of the American Medical Bureau for instructions and measurements of uniforms and a large nurse's cape. We had three days to do some shopping,

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and part of the time was spent at the Medical Bureau for further instructions. In those few days I had some time for myself, and was entertained by my family and friends. We sailed on the Normandie, then a new ship; my brothers (with Sylvia and Cornelia - then a toddler) saw me off and were able to visit me on the ship. We sailed to Le Havre in France. There were 20 nurses and 4 doctors, and during the five days it took to cross the ocean, we received instructions as to the political situation in Spain, and we were also instructed in the Spanish language. We arrived safely at Le Havre, a lovely city, stayed overnight, and I then took the train to Paris. We were to stay in Paris three days and the nurses were quartered in a very nice hotel, with about three nurses to a room. During the three day period, we were shown many sights of importance, such as the grave of Henri Barbusse, the famous author, along with the other well known pl.aces of Paris. During a tour of the City, one evening a large meeting was held by the sympathizers to the Republic of Spain, and the next evening there was a meeting to raise money for the Basque people, who had just been bombed by the Nazis. Quite a lot of money was collected in small amounts, and the Spanish flag was used as the receptacle for these contributions. For me it was quite emotional. Malreaux was the principal speaker at the meeting. It was deemed to be quite successful. The European Headquarters for the International Groups to aid Spain was in Paris, and so we all reported there for our instructions. After we completed our three days of preparation in Paris, we boarded the train for the Spanish border, and arrived at the town of Cerbere, France. We had to cross an International bridge to Spain at Port Bou, and soon after crossing, we arrived at the town of Figueras where we spent the night. About four a.m. the next morning, the warning sirens went off, and we were rushed to tunnels (bomb shelters). However, nothing serious happened, and pretty soon the sirens stopped, and we went back to our beds, and the people who had also sought shelter went home. To us it was a taste of life in a country at war. The next morning we all boarded a bus and were driven through many small towns where the streets were so narrow that it was almost impossible for the bus to go through; but the drivers were amazing, and we made it, somehow. Our goal was Valencia, where we were to stay overnight. In Valencia we had the Bishop's palace for our quarters. Needless to say, it was very opulent and grand. We felt very important and comfortable, until we discovered that there is a "Catch 22" in the simplest situations. The beds were lice-ridden, and we had to get the management to clean this up before we could settle down. We were bound for Albacete by train - sometimes we went backward instead of forward. The Medical group was stationed in Albacete. This distance from Valencia is not very great, but what with the stopping for sanitary necessities and nature calls, etc., the trip took a good 24 hours. At that time in Spain, especially on a military train, conditions were filthy and very overcrowded, to say the least. Upon our arrival in Albacete, we reported to the Director of Nurses of the Medical Bureau. Our group was broken up into smaller groups. Four other nurses and I, plus two doctors, were assigned to a post at Murcia, which is near the southern coast, above Cartagena. In Murcia we reported to representatives of the International Brigades, and were assigned to our living quarters. We were quartered on the top floor of a building which was to be a new Hotel. It was used by the Republic as a Hospital, with the name of Socorro Roja. We settled down, and Dr. Sydney Vogel was the M.D. in charge; he gave us the assignments of duty from here on. My first job was to be head of the Operating Room, with Hilda Bell, one of the other Nurses. I was assigned to be the anesthetist, but I had not had any experience as an anesthetist, and I

22

did not like this duty, especially because I was afraid; something could go wrong, and it could be very dangerous. Of course, I would be under the close supervision of Dr. Vogel, so I learned quickly and became more adept and whenever there was a need for an anesthetist, the other four hospitals in Murcia would send for Hermine and her bag. I did this work for some months. Murcia had a University. Some of the buildings were suitable to be changed over to a Hospital, and soon it became known as Hospital de Universidad. I was asked to become the Dietician, instead of my present job, and I did have that experience from working at the Preventorium. Of course, the job of Dietician at that time and that place, could not be compared to a Dietician in America. First, we had to find the cooking and the eating utensils, then there had to be a routine, and finally, we had to arrange for the time for eating. This was not easy, because time of eating was different for many of them, and we had to set up a new schedule, which would be convenient for all concerned: the cooks, dieticians, servers and the diners. The food had to be bought early in the morning at about 5 a.m. at the produce market. That was my job, and with two volunteers, I would go down each day and see what there was to be had. We had to shop at several places to obtain enough food. The meat was horse or donkey, and was delivered. There wasn't much choice, so we had to make the best of a "tough" situation. The cooks were a lways French, and they are known for thei r good sauces. This helped to make the meals more palatable. The cooks were also very temperamental, and this was not very palatable, as sometimes the meals were late. Even when the food was ready on time, it was sometimes difficult to get the convalescent patients to the dining room on time. We decided to get a bell which we could ring whenever the meal was ready. As time went on, great food shortages developed and it was very difficult for the city, whose population had grown to many times its normal size, due to refugees and International sympathizers. Fresh bread was delivered straight from the bakery every day, and it was delicious. Often when the bread wagon came to deliver our bread to the Hospital, the needy women of the town would be waiting there with outstretched hands and saying, "We need bread. Give us bread". We finally got the food situation under control. In the hospital there were many patients who were recovering from Hepatitis, which is a disease caused by very unsanitary conditions. As the patients became ambulatory, they would be looking for something as a farm of amusement and distraction. Of course, the more talented of them could entertain the others with music and singing, also helping with different types of work. There were movies shown at the hospital, which helped a lot. There often were flamenco performances in the evenings. Same of the Brigaders who were convalescing arranged a Glee Club, or the Spanish equivalent thereof, and this did much to help everyone forget his and her illnesses for the time being. At such times people really learn about helping each other, especially as they had a common Cause. The day was divided, so that stores were closed from I - 4 p.m. for Siestas because of intense heat. At 4 p.m. everything opened up - stores, etc., open from 4 - 7 p.m., after that, dinner. Theater started around 8:30 to 9 p.m., so it was usually midnight before the day was done. In Italy and Spain this is so to this day. Murcia was a fairly large city. As is known already, it had a University. The building style often still shows Moorish influence, with their doors often colored blue. It had however, lagged behind in industrial development, and people still led kind of primitive lives. Manual labor on the land was used much more than mechanical labor. Small farmers eked a living from the often barren land. Refugees streamed into the city when the bombing over the

23

country started, and there was a great housing shortage. Empty buildings could be used for shelter. Families were assigned to very small quarters, because there wasn’t enough space. Many, many hundreds of children who had to go to school had no room. It was decided to start a day camp for the children, which was done. I believe it was in August that it was done. At that time there were about 50 children who got some kind of shelter in the camp. The camp was located in the Botanical Gardens. The city of Murcia was in a valley, and was built around the river which is called Rio Segura. Alongside the Botanical Gardens was a kind of boulevard by the name of Paseo del Malencon. People gathered there and paraded; it was like a Fifth Avenue. Those in charge of the Brigades pleaded with city officials to make space in those Gardens. There was a lot of room and it was thought that it would be a good place to start the day camp for the children. It was decided to take children from age 6 on up, those of school age, and very soon we had about 50 children, with more coming every day. It was called El Campo de General Lucasz. It was named after a famous Spanish general by that name. The children came shortly before twelve o'clock and at noontime they were fed a meal. The camp was run entirely by volunteer contributions, made by the Brigades and the doctors and the nurses. Every day before the opening the flag was raised, and there was a little ceremony and a song was sung. When I was offered charge of the camp I was very pleased, because of my previous work with groups of children, particularly those who needed health care. There were also, among the volunteers, some student teachers and they came to be teachers at the camp, on a volunteer basis. Dr. Rosa B. organized an eye-clinic, and the eye specialist found among 260 children examined, 47 suffering from eye disease. Benches and tables were made in the Gardens; materials had to be bought, but all labor was donated. There were about 50 children attending when I started at the beginning of September; when I left the following April there were about 300. It was very satisfying work. I worked with a Hungarian woman doctor, whose last name I don't remember, but we worked well together. Anka is the only name that I can remember about her. The children also got the voluntary services of same of the doctors in town. There were many eye difficulties, and also of course, many malnutrition cases. This was really quite a big job because these children came from many places, same as far away as Madrid. Murcia was considered a safe place, since it was not in a fighting zone. As time went on, the children needed not only food, but clothing and shoes; also they had to be kept busy. They were put into grades according to their ages, and the student teachers took charge of them from there on. Of course I was accustomed to working in the Preventorium, where there was no privation and no shortages of these kinds, America being a rich country by these standards. In Spain, when something was needed, we had to go and ask and almost beg for contributions from people who already were in need. Pretty soon the boys were in need of pants - but how to get some? Well, an arrangement was made whereby the Army, which had little by little been organized by the Republican side, gave us cloth which was olive drab color, and I was to find volunteer ladies who were willing to make pants for the boys. First I had to find the sewing machines, which I finally got by going to different organizations. I got two of them, and also found a place for the sewing ladies to do the work. I was promised that the pants would be delivered in two weeks, in different sizes. When the two weeks were up, I expected some deliveries of pants, but when I went to the workshop, I found that they had not even started on them. From then on, I went there every day, to make sure that they got started on the clothes. Finally, they had finished them, but it took about three weeks. At the end of our working day, that is after the camp was closed, and we were ready to leave, my co-workers and I would go to a Square which was not very far off. A lot of the International Brigaders went there, to have what they called their aperitifs before dinner-

24

usually a glass of Vermouth. With the Vermouth, they always served a bowl of snails. In some countries, people always eat snails, but I had never eaten any before. In Holland we do not eat snails; but they were served in Belgium, France and Spain. They finally talked me into trying them. "Try it," they said "it just tastes like a little shrimp." Finally I did try one, and they're not bad. So I sometimes ate snails while I was in Spain. However, when I left, I found that I could never eat another snail again. Where I live now we're always fighting the snails because they eat the plants, but in Spain and other countries they are eaten like small shrimp. I could speak German, Dutch and a little French, and among the International Brigaders were all these Nationalities, so I got to know quite a few people. It wasn’t always sad or very hard work; it was also very interesting. A lot of political talk went on, from extreme left to democratic to anarchistic. And the local fighters, the Republicanst fought during the day, stopped at 5 o'clock, went home for the night and returned the next morning to resume the war. The Spanish Republicans wanted to fight against the existing conditions but they weren’t united, so the army had to be developed and trained. Generally speaking, with the Nazis and the Italian Fascists throwing bombs around, and with all their facilities and equipment Spain could not, in the long run, win the battle. It became quite sad, because, while we were fighting along, the end was drawing near. Sometime in the winter, during January or February, there was going to be a big battle, and the doctors needed to reexamine a lot of the people in the Hospital to determine whether they were able to go back to duty, and I had to be of assistance at that time. Of course, we had our high spots, too, when we won a battle; for instance, at the battle of Teruel, when we won that one first and the news came throught the whole town - the town on our side - turned out and paraded and sang songs, and it was a very fascinating scene and also a very touching one. As time went on, I was sick with a very high fever. I also had lost a lot of weight, so as the first part of April came around, the doctors said to me, "You're not eating any more and you're loosing too much weight." Amongst the sympathetic Spanish doctors, I was called "la Sympatica". So, Dr. Vogel advised me to resign and go back to the United States. I had to write to Headquarters for the Salvo Conducto; it was a document which gave one safe passage out of Spain. In other words, I was legally in Spain, but now I wanted to get out, so I had to have a document to get out, and that took some time. It was about the middle of April that I started my trek home. I wanted to go to Amsterdam first, as I was in no condition to make the long trip to the U.S., and my parents were alive, so I thought I’d go home. Then came the news that Barcelona had been bombed very severely. My journey out of Spain was to go over Barcelona to the International Bridge. I went to Barcelona, and meantime my luggage was lost. When I got there I had to wait for transportation. The station had been bombed, but the rubble had been cleared and trains were running, but it took about ten days before I got on a train. Hundreds of refugees were camped on the platform with their bundles and whenever they thought they heard a train, the cry went up "el Tiene el tren" - often in vain. There was no trouble on the trip, such as a bombing and at last we reached the International Bridge at Port Bou to Cerbere, and very soon we arrived at Perpignan. We stayed there overnight, three International Brigaders and I; they also had become too ill to stay in Spain. It was here that late the first full meal that I had had for some time. The next day we boarded the train for Paris, which must have been a very slow train, because it took us overnight to get there. When we arrived in Paris we had to go to the Headquarters as there all the formalities could be taken care of. I separated from my partners, who had been in Spain illegally, and different arrangements had to be made for them. Many of them had no passports, and those who did have passports, had had them revoked when they came back to the U.S. We were the International Medical Bureau and were there legally, so I obtained my 25

passage back to New York. I stayed on in Paris for three days to get myself together. I looked like a ghost, I was so thin, and I couldn't go to Amsterdam looking like that. I had my hair done over, and slowly got myself into some kind of share. One evening in Paris, just for fun, I went to a very fancy restaurant in the Champs Elysees to see how that was. It was quite expensive but it was really quite an experience. On the other evenings I went to an ordinary restaurant which was patronized by the working class. Wine was always served with the meals because of the sanitary laws; this meant that the water was not quite fit to drink - a safety precaution. I continued on to Holland, and when the train stopped at the Hague, my brother-in-law, Abe, came aboard and we visited for awhile and then I continued on to Amsterdam. My parents were very glad to see me because it was known that Barcelona had been bombed and I had written them that I would be coming home as soon as I could. My Mother thought that I had been at the station when it had been bombed. She told me that she had been going to the Spanish consulate for ten days to find out who was killed there. It took me about six weeks to recover my strength. I was treated by Dr. Sajet, a medical doctor in Holland, who was president of the Aid for Spain organization, and also a member of the Board of Supervisors for Amsterdam. That same doctor is now 89 years old and is still active in public life. He is trying to get the Old West India house restored. This is where the laws were made for the Old West India Colonies years ago, and I know exactly where it stands in Amsterdam. He wants that building put back into shape and made into a home for the aged, or something like that. A friend of mine sent me an article with this story in it not so long ago. This time at home I had the opportunity of having many pleasant talks with my Father, and learned many things about him which I had never known before. In the course of one of our conversations, I asked him what had been his favorite time of life. He said that it was during the period when the children were growing up. This really told the story to me. I have always cherished that. Around six weeks later, I returned to Paris, and then to Le Havre for the trip to the U.S. I think this time I sailed on the Ile de France, back to New York. Thus ended the episode of my services to the Republic of Spain. It was a very difficult time, but I have always cherished it. It is a time I will never forget. It was late summer or early fall. I was ready to return to L.A. after my return from Spain. At that time a few people with whom I had worked there, one a nurse, Esther Silverstein, whose home was in Nebraska, and Mildred Hackley, who wanted to go to Taos, New Mexico, I decided to travel together. My brothers, Paul and Loo, advised me and I bought a good used Ford -- which, by the way, went through a long and useful life. We started our trip West, which turned out pleasant, with no troubles on the way. The road to Taos, a town where many Indians and artists lived, is reached by going over the Raton Pass, a rather difficult drive. Mildred had reached her destination and we parted company with her there. Esther and I continued our journey, but Esther, who had studied at the University of Colorado, which I believe is located in Boulder, was anxious to visit her Alma Mater and so we stopped there and were very well received and invited to stay over a day because many students and teachers were interested in what was happening in Spain. After I left Esther in Lincoln, Nebraska, where her parents lived, I went straight on to California, alone. Somewhere along the line I, of course, phoned the family, the Scotts and the children, that I was on the way back.

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In about three or four days I arrived in L.A. We were so glad to see each other - what a fuss they made. Gatherings were arranged and meetings had to be held. Since I was the only one that had gone with the American Medical Bureau to Spain from L.A., I was considered quite a celebrity, and had to be shown off to various people. The whole Spanish war had attracted a lot of attention at that time, especially amongst the younger people. I stayed with Marie for a time, but Betty Selden, a long time friend, had a roomy apartment. She said, "Why don't you move in with me for the time being?". I was glad for the offer and pretty soon I started to look for a suitable job, preferably one that would hold some interest for me. Applying for different positions, I found that anyone who had worked for the Republic of Spain was marked as a Red. At that time there was a kind of Red hunt on. Nevertheless, I applied to lots of places and another friend, who worked as a social worker for the probation department in Riverside County, told me there might be an opening in the Public Health Department. When I went to Riverside, it turned out there was no opening, but I filled out an application and left it there for the record.

On the boat to Spain

Dr. Anka and Hermine

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Waiting on Spanish border to pass bridge to Port Bou

Hospital Passionaria

Hilda in the operation room. Beginning of work in Murcia

Spanish Countryside

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Waiting

Teachers in Camp

Teachers Helpers Teachers in Camp

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Opening time at Camp

Buying shoes in smal town outside Murcia

Cod liver oil everyday Classes at the Camp

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A day in the country

Strictly no spiked drink

Going home after leaving Esther in Nebraska

Esther and Hermine in Colorado

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CHAPTER IV Beginning Of my Life With Sim On my second return to N.Y. in l938, I decided to rent a small apartment as the living space at Loo’s apartment was limited -- especially with little Corniel around, who was then about three years old. On Washington Square at the foot of 5th Avenue, I found just what suited me. There was even an electric plate so I was all set and now only needed some luck to find what was needed, the kind of work to make a living and also hold some interest for me. However, here as well as in the west, public work was pretty well closed to me because as soon as it came out that I had been working in Spain, the boycott was applied. In the meantime the holiday season was approaching and of course the family spent them all together and with friends too. One of the first days after I rnoved in, Sim surprised me with a visit and we had a long talk about all sorts of things. Soon after, he came again, this time just about noon as I was about to make myself a rye bread sandwich with herring, one of my favorites at that time; suddenly he took me in his arms and started kissing me. Unthinkingly, I responded wholeheartedly. Afterwards both of us were shaken. (Once before, years ago, when Sim’s son, Donald, was a baby, and their family and I were guests at the Lou Scott’s home on Staten Island, something like this happened. I was sleeping on a cot in the living room and Sim was walking the baby, who could not sleep. As I was sleeping, Sim suddenly kissed me tenderly on the mouth and wake me but I was instantly aware and didn’t respond; he thought that I had not awakened. At that time I was shaken. It was known amongst family and friends that Sim's marriage wasn’t a happy one and hadn’t been for a long time. It was difficult for me, for even then I cared for him, but felt that his children, being babies, needed a father. Sim was really a family man and cared very much for his children. After much thought, I went to Tennessee soon after to make the break. After thinking this over since so many years have passed, perhaps I did wrong after all. Anyhow, at that time, I didn’t respond.) Then, after my Spanish episode and my return to New York, Sim came often and, of course, something developed between us. At my invitation, we had our sandwiches together and had long talks about all kinds of things. He sometims took me along to visit a friend for whom he had done some of his beautiful designing in order to show me his work. Other times our minds just met or we spent time together talking; sometimes we went and had a drink together. Meanwhile, in looking for work in New York, I wasn't finding any. I got in touch with the State Health Department and talked with the same person who had years before offered me the scholarship at Teacher's College, but when she looked over my credentials, she said right away: "I would advise you to return to California. After all, here in this very large city you would be just a cog in a wheel. There you know the State and the work is quite different". So that was that. One afternoon while Sim and I sat over a martini in Charlie's bar in the Village, it came over me: "This is no good and gets us nowhere...I should go back to California where I belong". I thought long about it, and, while it was very difficult to do so, I made that decision. I told Sim of my decision. I also told my brothers that I had decided to return to California, not telling them of my relationship with Sim.

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Of course, preparations took several weeks. I went to the weather bureau. Socono had an office near Times Square, and I was told that if I took the northwestern route, I should not have too much trouble driving. lt was by then mid-winter, and, at the end of January or the beginning of February, l939, I left. The evening before I went to the Weiss' to say goodbye. Suddenly Donald said, "Daddy, why don't you go along with Mien?" Nobody said anything. Sim looked so pale. We had come to no conclusion. The next morning (a Monday) my brother, Paul, stayed with me until I left at about eleven o'clock instead of nine, which had been my plan. Weather was fair, but I felt very depressed. I guess I had secretly been wishing for a phone call, but at about eleven I did leave. Weather cold but fair. Paul had said nothing; he came to his own conclusions -- after all Sim was a married man. Later, much later, Paul told me that a little while after I left Sim had started phoning... He and Ann had come to a conclusion. I made it that day way into Pennsylvania and stayed the night in a motel. Had no hopes, dared not. Next morning on my way again... In Pittsburgh it started to snow and then, I don't know how, the car turned over. I wasn't going fast, in fact slow, which saved my life. I guess, I got out of the car and started to look for help and a garage nearby. Didn't seem to be hurt only a bump on my head and shock. The garageman was very helpful and there was a motel nearby and not much damage to the car. I had to have a new tire and a new wheel. I went to bed early with aspirin and luckily I slept exhausted... exhausted. Next morning I felt better...weather cold but clear, and I felt driven on. Keep going, don't think... Thursday morning I found my engine frozen. I knew I couldn't drive, so sought help at nearby garage. The man looked me over and asked "Are you alone?" "Yes," I said, "I am on my way home to California." He looked me over but said nothing and fixed the car so I could drive it. That took a few hours. In those days there were not many turnpikes and freeways and people were much more helpful. So it went. The trip took nine days during which I was lost in a snowstorm just out of Cheyenne; I parked the car off the road and got out to look for help; I was properly bawled out by two men on their way to a mine in the mountains. "Don't you know any better," they said "than to get out of the car in a snowstorm?..A sure way to loose your life." But they helped me out and one drove me to the next town while the other followed. Next I was propositioned to go to bed with the owner of the hotel, whose wife was just then not at home. But after I said "No," I beat it out of there but fast. The last two days I had help driving. It was deep winter and I spent the Sunday in a small family hotel in a side street, it looked homey to me and it said on the door "Dining Room Open". I was frozen and cold and went in, asked for a room. The lady said "Well , it is in the heart of winter and we really don't expect guests, but if you will take your luck with the family dinner, you're welcome." Was I glad. I have even forgotten the name of the town but the hotel was run by a widow with a few teenagers as children, one of whom was about 20 years old and looking for a job. When they heard I had to go to Northern California, the boy, Frank, said that he had worked in Sacramento before knew the roads. was a good driver, and would like to go back there. Maybe he could get a job there. The family had made a good irnpression on me and by that time I was very tired...so I agreed. He was to do the driving and was quite satisfied. Before we started Frank looked over the car, checked the oil, etc. We drove straight through, resting

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only for about 4-6 hours in Salt Lake City, during which I slept most of the time. He, being young, wasn’t tired and played the slot machine and made some money at that. When we got to Sacramento we parted and I thanked him and he was glad to be in California. I phoned my Aunt and Uncle and they were glad to hear that I was safe in Sacramento. From there it was about 80 miles to Colusa and they were waiting for me. On the way I felt myself falling asleep, pulled off the road and must have slept about an hour...very little traffic in the dead of winter. When I arrived there was a pile of letters waiting for me from Sim, telling me that he and Ann had come to a decision and were going to divorce. Ann had no ill will toward me, my Aunt was furious... I do not think she ever quite forgave me, although in later years when she got to know my husband she grew quite fond of him. I was thoroughly tired out and slept the clock around. Then my Aunt, Uncle and I talked things over. I stayed there a while and got some work. For a few weeks I had a feeling that I survived the trip by sheer luck. I got some private work in Colusa, but mostly cases in the hos pital. In the long run, Colusa was not the place for me, so I went back to Los Angeles, where I took up the search again for work. There seemed to be a shortage of private cases there in Los Angeles, and the agencies were not taking on any new nurses that were free. A voluminous correspondence had developed between Sim and me, and after Sim and Ann had made their decision to divorce, I became quite worried about their children. I didn’t want them to think that I was taking their father from them. I knew how close Sim was with his children. He always adored them. Well, finally Sim said, "Why don’t you write a letter to the whole family?", so I did that: I wrote the letter but I did not talk about any divorce. Or anythlng like that, and they answered. But no letter from Ann. Sim had gotten a job in Chicago. They had a Furniture Mart in Chicago every year, where the designers and manufacturers of furni ture showed the new styles in furniture. Sim, as a master designer and artist, did very well at that work. He got that job in March. At this time, I was doing private work. When Sim wrote to me, he would say, "Why don't you come over here?", but I had just come from the East, and I was not quite certain of what I wanted to do, because I had not consciously sought this. While I loved Sim dearly, and wanted him very much, I was also thinking of Ann. She had always been a very good friend. Sim suggested that I write to her, and I did. She answered me, and explained her feelings to me. What came out of it was that, on both sides, there was no malice aforethought. It had just come about that way. She knew that their marriage was dead and had been for a long time, and she had seen how much of a change had come over Sim. He was more energetic and his work had improved. Also he had gotten a job, which he hadn't had for some time. So Ann wrote me back and made it clear to me that she understood that I had not gone after her husband. It was something that just happened, and perhaps it had to be that way; that's how she looked at it and always did. Ann and I always remained good friends until the day she died, and their children know this.

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Letter From Ann (in Dutch): Brooklyn, 24 maart ’39 Dear Mien, ’t Was niet opzettelijk dat ik je beide brieven, die je aan de fam. stuurde niet beantwoodde. Ik gaf er n.l. de voorkeur aan te wachten tot ik persoonlijk een paar woorden van je zou ontvangen. Wel om dan maar meteen over de situation te beginnen, ik ben er volkomen van overtuigd dat je niet opzettelijk dit hebt gezocht. Dat het gekomen is, is een natuurlijk geval en je zult het misschien niet gelooven, maar ik heb altijd een gevoel gehad dat het er was, zoowel bij jou als bij Sim. En nu het er is, wel wat anders kan ik doen dan hem op te geven, waar ik hem niet gelukkig kan maken. Als het was, was verkeerd, als het nu zal worden is recht, want ik ben zo goed als zeker dat jij hem zal kunnen geven waar ik in tekort gekomen ben. Wat het mij kost, zal ik niet over uitwijden, dat zal je misschien wel kunnen begrijpen, maar ik zal en moet er overheen komen, omdat het zo logisch en natuurlijk is. Mijn gevoelens voor jou, als Sim je al schreef, zijn absoluut niet veranderd, je moet ook niet het gevoel hebben dat je iets gedaan hebt dat verkeerd was, want het was niet verkeerd, het moest zo zijn. En als jullie later samen zullen zijn en gelukkig, wel dat zal voor mij dan -hoop ik- een zekere tevredenheid zijn, dat ik niet heb tegengewerkt maar heb geholpen het te bewerken. Zoo je ziet, Mien, ben ik niet een brieven schrijver, met een paar woorden ben ik uitgepraat en waarom ook langer te wroeten in iets dat pijnlijk is, waarom uit te wijden in detail, de hoofdzaak is, dat ik hoop duidelijk gemaakt te hebben, hoe ik over jou en het heele geval denk. ’t Beste bewijs is wel hoe Sim is veranderd in een korte tijd, hoe veel meer energie hij heeft, hoe meer hij create in his drawings, hetgeen ik hem nooit heb kunnen geven; inspiratie voor zijn werk. Zoo laat ons hopen dat het allen ten goede komt, het begin is er al, n.l. de job in Chicago. Wel ik zal nu eindigen, en hoor later wel weer wat van je, hè. Love Annie

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Letter From Ann (translation by Hermine Weiss): 3/24/39. Dear Mien, It was not with malice that I did not write to you when you wrote the two letters to the family. But I decided that I’d rather wait untill you wrote to me personally. Well, let’s then talk over the situation. I understand fully that you did not seek this situation. The fact that is to has happened is quite natural and you may not believe me, but I have always had the feeling that this has developed. I cannot do anything else than to let him go since I cannot give him what he needs. The way it was, was wrong, and if things develop now, it will be right. For I am sure that you can give him something I did not have in me. I will not go into detail, but you will understand, but it will be o.k. for me too, because the whole thing is natural & logical. My feelings for you, as Sim has already written you, have not changed at all, don’t have the feeling that it is your fault, for it was not wrong, it had to be. If later things go right between you, it will be for me a feeling of satisfaction that I didn’t fight it, so let us not further go into details. Main thing is that I have explained how I think about you and the whole affair… It is amazing how a change has come over Sim in so short a time. More energetic and his drawings are more creative. I never could give it to him, Inspiration. So let’s hope that it will be for the best for us all. The beginning has already happenend. Sim has gotten a job, designing in Chicago. Let me hear from you later. Love, Ann

The Furniture Mart in Chicago was to be held about the middle of May, so Sim was sure of his job at the Mart until it opened; what happened after that remained to be seen. Sim and I decided that I would join him in Chicago about the middle of May, if nothing developed for me in Los Angeles. Of course, I kept on trying, and picked up some work here and there, but nothing permanent really developed. Betty and I talked things over, too, and I decided to join Sim. Of course, my savings didn't last forever and when I talked it over with Sim, I decided to try to get someone to help me drive to Chicago. I wouldn't have to do all the driving, and it wouldn't cost so much money. By the middle of May I had found a woman whose husband had been killed in the Civil War in Spain, and also a mechanic who could not get work in Los Angeles, and wanted to return to Chicago. He said he would give me $l0.00 and also help with the driving. At that time gas was cheap, and motels could be gotten for a couple of dollars a night. So we started out for Chicago, arriving around the l8th of May, where I joined Sim.

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It so happened that Alpha Scott had written to Sim that he was coming to Chicago, and, sure enough, he arrived the day after I did. He was then 2l years of age, and wanted to see the country; also he I wanted to get acquainted with his grandfather, who was still alive, - and with his aunts and uncles, and then go on to New York, to visit his father's Alpha Phi friends. I don’t know if Alpha knew anything about Sim and me, but anyway, we had a good time. Alpha often talked over his problems with me; we got along very well. He was a lot like his father at that same age. At about this time, Jazz had become very popular, and there were a lot of Jam sessions. His brother, Philo, who was about l8 years old then, was also very interested in Jazz. Just before the Furniture Mart opened, Sim lost his job. During the exhibition of the new models, Sim would go to the Mart every day with his portfolio of designs. He met a man, Mr. Salz, who had come from the West Coast to see the new models. He and Sim talked together, and he told Sim that he was a manufacturer of furniture in Los Angeles. Sim showed him his drawings, and Mr. Salz thought he would have a chance on the Coast. After a few weeks, when no jobs were to be had in Chicago, we made the decision to go to California. This time we didn't want any other drivers along because we were very happy that we finally were together. We purchased an electric coffeepot and a large cast iron frying pan so we could make a simple meal to cut expenses. All our belongings were stored in the trunk of the Ford, quite a wonderful little car, also a safe place for Sim’s drawings and materials. ln the back of the car we stored a five gallon can of oil, for after several trips across country the car drank oil like water. I said to Sim. "Watch for a rattle and then tell me, for then the car badly needs oil. Leisurely we made our way back West. It was June, and I remember we went by way of the Raton Pass. Through New Mexico, rather than going through Colorado. At Albuquerque, N.M., there was an exhibit of hand-made furniture. It was beastly hot, as usual, in the desert; Sim had no thin clothing of any kind, so he asked me to do the following: "Could you take a pair of my pajama pants, and remodel them, or disguise them, so that I could wear them as trousers?" Well, I wasn’t sure just how to go about this, but I obviously did a good job, for when we went to the exhibit, no one, including the doorman and attendants, noticed anything. Of course, Sim spoke in such a casual manner, and very businesslike, that he took attention away from the trousers. Needless to say, we both laughed long about this many times. Little by little we made our way back to California. We went through Arizona, and then through Blythe and Indio. It was very hot, and we said to each other, "Who would want to live here?", not knowing that within half a year we would be living there. We went through Riverside, and finally arrived in Los Angeles, where we bought a flask of wine and brought it along to the Scott’s house. We celebrated, that night, at the Scottls house, and Betty again came to the rescue and offered us her quarters until we could get our bearings. Of course, I had taken a lot of Civil Service exams in the past year; one of the places was San Diego, in a hospital for children who had early signs of tuberculosis, and I knew how to handle that. I hadn't had any offers yet, but Sim started to make connections; he first had to learn to find his way around Los Angeles and Hollywood, and also he had to learn to drive. Now and then I would get short-term private cases, and things were going all right. The car we had was not in too good a condition; it especially needed new pistons. We were very happy, even though we were not yet permanently settled. Then we had a stroke of luck. I got an offer, as the result of the exam I took, to work in the hospital in San Diego. Sim was doing very well. His designs of furniture were very beautiful and also very expensive, mosly for the people of money in the Beverly Hills and Hollywood area; however, he had to look for a manufacturer who could make a more practical and less costly type of furniture. Well, anyway, we decided to go to San Diego, and I took the job in the hospital, as

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a day nurse. We took an apartment in San Diego. It was a beautiful town, always a Navy town, and the air and scenery were pretty before the aircraft manufacturers located there. In the meantime, we did not forget the family and the children in New York. Sim and his children really adored each other, and so they kept in close touch. While we were in San Diegot just a little before the New Year, I received a telegram from the Health Commissisioner of Riverside County, asking me to meet him in Indio at the Health Center for an interview. As it happened, we started to drive at five o'clock in the morning so that we could make time without traffic, and it was pouring rain. As we were going over the mounTains, there suddenly was a very bad stench from the road. Of course we had hit a skunk. We kept on going. It was about seven o'clock in the morning and we both felt like having a cup of coffee. We were going through a small mountain town, Julian, and the coffee shop was just opening up. Then we went on, but the weather was getting worse. We got over the mountain and as soon as we were in the valley, the weather was really nice, with blue skies and sunshine. When we got to Indio we met Dr. Kaufman, the Health Commissioner, and he offered me the job of Public Health Nurse in the Desert District, which was a very large district. I took the job. but first we went back to San Diego so I could give notice that I was leaving for the other, better job. When we moved to Indio, and I started working, Sim found that it made no difference to his work where he lived. His designs were very good and were accepted by many manufacturers in L.A. On the first day of my work in Indio, I was handed the keys to the Indio Health Center, shown the records and where and how things were arranged; then Dr. Kaufman and a Health Inspector left me to start so to say from the bottom up. I had not been told, but found out in the course of my work, that my predecessor had been asked to resign. Of course, she also had her friends in the district and in some cases people weren’t too friendly toward me. I, however, went about my work. One day Dr. Kaufman was called to the phone in Riverside and someone in India asked him "Did you have to appoint that German refugee as the Public Health Nurse in the desert district?" Dr. Kaufman pulled out my record and answered: "I want you to know that Mrs. Weiss, according to the record, has been a registered nurse in the State of California since l927!" In winter and spring the desert was really beautiful and in several places a resort area. In other places it was agricultural, the real date and grapefruit country. There were several small towns such as Coachella and Thermal towards the southeast and the Salton Sea (which was formed during a large flood in l905 by the Colorado River). Now it is quite a winter resort, I understand; even in our days, this was already developing. And then one should not target the town of Mecca, lying 206 feet under sea level. Beyond that lay the desert, and some small mining was practiced there. One day I received an official request from State Health Quarters in San Francisco to find the contacts of a person with a Mecca address who had died of lung T.B., so I set out to Mecca to the given address. It turned out to be a man who lived way out in the desert. The lady who lived there had property and a little goldmine thereabouts and knew the man. But she said: "You cannot go there alone. There are no roads, only trails in the desert; besides you may get

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stuck in the sand and you have to go prepared with food, water and tools to dig you out of the sand in case you get stuck." However, she said she would take me there. She came formerly from San Diego and loved this desert, would never return to San Diego but had to live in Mecca for the time being for the children needed to go to school. So we set out properly prepared with food, tools, etc., and did find the place, a 'trailer' where the man had lived, and listed any possible contacts. It took all day for the trip, but the desert at that time (it was spring) was beautiful. The foothills of the Sierras are called there "the chocolate mountains." It is marvelous painting scenery. She invited Sim and me to come and camp on her property anytime we wanted to... It was during our stay in Indio that the government took up the task of wiping out venereal diseases and set up weekly free clinics. Dr. Davies was the chief who came down from San Francisco every week for some time to set up the clinics with the help of assistant health officer and investigator. All Health Centers in the County got such clinics. This was interesting, but evening work and Sim always went along to drive me to the Center and became quite interested in that himself. The doctors brought their microscopes with them and Dr. Davies quite liked the way I handled these clinics, he also liked Sim’s interest, so when the doctors found something interesting under the microscope they always called him to see it and explain. Of course, this was before the time that penicillin was available and the treatment, particularly for syphilis, was long and tedious and took l8 months of weekly treatments. Toward the north of Indio there were two more small towns, La Quinta and Indian Wells, and then the desert beyond and on up the mountain. It was a large district and interesting work but very not... Meanwhile the Second World War was coming on and the part of the desert going to Blythe became the training ground for desert warfare. In the long run Sim and I decided to ask for a transfer when an opening would occur, and after living in Indio for 2 l/2 years, the chance came to move to Beaumont which lies 3,000 feet high and therefore was not so hot except in midsummer. We had had a very good and interesting life in the desert. Donald came to visit and stay sometimes. One of the farmworkers' camps was also in Indio and was very well equipped. As a result of the book "Factories in the Field" by Cary McWilliams, the Government finally granted money to build several of those camps and equipped them lavishly with clinic, showers, washhouses, etc., and quite roomy kinds of tenthouses. It was known that the famous book "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, was written partly in Indio. But when the time came to move to Beaumont we were quite ready to move. In Beaumont we rented a small house and got settled, but then not long afterward the Second World War broke out and everything had to be used for the effort against Hitler. So Sim lost his clientele... The second year of our life in the desert there was no nurse for the Blythe district and the immunization period as always was in the beginning of the year. The immunization had to be done and I had to take the nurse's part. That district bordered on Arizona and was particularly

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important because the Public Health Department in the State of Arizona at that time was not very well developed -- perhaps because of lack of funds. Headquarters and we solved it as follows: Sim could find the time, since he was working independently, to do the driving from Indio to Blythe. The Health Commissioner and the Milk and General Inspectors and I would all go to Blythe and Trona, a company town, to the school and Health Department and do the immunizations, which would take 3 days in all. The county would pay all driving, hotel and eating expenses and Sim would get a chance to have 2 days of fishing in the Colorado River. This was done so that I would not have to make the long drive and Sim got a little vacation. The distance between Indio and Blythe is l00 miles. This was an amicable arrangement and we four got along all right.

The Migratory Camp in Indio. In l935 I attended the yearly convention of social workers at the Mission Inn in Riverside. At that meeting Cary McWilliams spoke about the deplorable condition that existed in California for the housing of the migratory farm laborers in the fields. Many of these workers squatted under the trees in the open, especially in the desert, at that time. When we came to live in the desert in l940, finally, through Government grants, several pilot camps had been built. The grant was to last for 4 years at the end of which time the State was to take over financing the camps. The Indio Camp was somewhat a model and very well equipped with facilities such as a small clinic building with a nurse, washhouse, showers, toilet building and very roomy tenthouses. A great improvement and nominal rent of $3.00 a week. The clinic nurse at this camp and I worked closely together on health and social problems of the families.

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1939 – With passenger on way to Chicago

Taken in Elsimore April ’39 – just before I joined Sim

Indio – Health center - 1940

1939 – Going to California but still looking over Furniture Mart

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Taken in David’s home yard in Burbank Sim playing when we all visited David’s parents in Burbank

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Sim’s Page As He Told It To Me Sim’s father, David Weiss, was born and raised in Hungary. As a young man he emigrated first to the Argentine, but since this land was under a strict dictatorship which he did not like, he left there and came to live in Amsterdam, Holland. There in time he met Rose Kok. They were married and settled in Amsterdam, where Sim was born. Sim's father dealt in diamonds and in the early years they lived close to the diamond stock market. In later years -they moved to a newer part of Amsterdam in a neighborhood across the river Amstel from where the Hartmanns were born and raised. We never met, however, until we were young adults. Sim spent his school years in Amsterdam and also later attended a school where he was taught how good furniture was made and the designing of furniture. Sometime after Sim graduated from this school the family moved to Antwerp, Belgium. In Europe both Amsterdam and Antwerp are the main centers where rough diamonds are made into jewels. In Antwerp Sim attended the famous Institute for the Arts. As a young designer, Sim later worked and lived in Paris and in London; then the family came back to Amsterdam to live. Sim had two sisters. The oldest was Betty, later married to Newman. Then came Sim and then a younger sister named Suzy. I never met Betty. I understand she lived in Brussels. She had two sons, one named Lucien Newman; I do not know the other sons name. When Sim's father died in l930, Sim's mother went to live with her daughter Betty. During the Holocaust and World War II we never heard again from Sim’s mother and his two sisters, but Betty’s two sons survived the Holocaust. The eldest son escaped by going into military service in Indonesia, which at that time was still a colony of the Netherlands. The younger son of Betty, Lucien, wrote to us some time after the war asking us whether we could help him to emigrate to the U.S.A. We tried and tried. On the advice of a lawyer, Sim wrote the following letter to the Immigration Service of the U.S.A.:

To whom it may concern: Simon Weiss and Hermine Weiss, residing at Route 1, Box 301, in the city of Beaumont, California, U.S.A., hereby declare: That they are citizins of the United States; that they own real property at the above adress, free of any and all liens and encumbrances; that they are well able and willing to furnish financial support to their nephew Lucien Nieweg, intending immigrant to the U.S., at present residing in the Netherlands; that it is their intention to furnish such support for an indefinite time untill Lucien Nieweg becomes self supporting, In conformity with the requirements of the U.S. Immigration Laws they hereby enclose as proof of their financial status:

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Photostatic copies in duplicate of property tax receipts; duplicate statements of employment and income of Simon Weiss.

However, our request was denied by the government to the disappointment of Lucien. He later went to Switzerland and did well there. We did not hear from him again.

Genealogy of Simon Weiss David Weis x Roosje Kok

Newman

Betty

Suzy

Anna Elizabeth Hopman 1891-1969

x

Lucien

(Son) name unknown

David Schack

Nora

Simon

x Weiss (1)

Pauline

1889-1957

1895-1991

Donald

Dale Pollock

x 1921-

Hermine

x Cornelia (2)

x 1921-

Steven

1924-1970 Jonathan 1951

1949 Barbara

Timothy 1953

1951 Doreen

Todd 1965

1955

Wendy 1960

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Monument to Jewish Community after the Holocaust by the people of Amsterdam. Stands in front of the Diamond Stock Market. Sim was born in the neighborhood behind this building.

Sim’s mother at age 82. Sent to us in San Diego

Suzy, Riek, Abe and Loo on picnic in the heather country in Holland. Abe became Riek’s husband

Riek, Suzy and Loo rowing on Amstel

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CHAPTER V A Brief History of the Scott Family My brother-in-law was Louis B. Scott. The B was for Berkowitz, which was his mother's maiden name. We always called him Lou. His father came from Russia, and his mother came from Poland, when they didn't want any Jews there. Lou was born in l888, and died in l97l at the age of 83. Out of his mother’s and father's marriage came 6 children, including Lou three girls and two boys. Louis mother died in l932, also at the age of 83. His parents stayed in New York City, where a lot of immigrants live, and all the children were born there. They had quite a struggle in the early years, but somehow Lou went to Columbia University, and all of the children grew up in New York. Lou's father was very religious, and spent a great deal of time at the Synagogue, where he had some function or other. Their home was strictly Kosher. They remained in New York until after Lou went to Europe, and later moved to Chicago, where they prospered more than they did in N.Y. Lily, Louis oldest sister, married George Leibowitz. Lily was a severe asthmatic and could not live in the city all year, so she would always live in Arizona for part of the time. The Scotts were also a very close-knit family and whenever I passed through Chicago we always visited, because, although Lou, with his family, moved to California, during the Depression people didn’t travel around too much, but stayed put. Lou married my sister, Marie, in Amsterdam, during World War I. They had four children; Alpha, Philome and twin girls, Rhoda and Verna. Alpha, the eldest son, was born in Amsterdam the day that the 1st World War ended. Lou and Marie lived on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, one of the main canals, in a very narrow house, but four stories high. The family did well. Lou teaching languages by the Berlitz method. He had a knack for languages and later could speak something like eight languages. After the war ended there were restless periods in all the countries that had been in the war, and several West European countries had kinds of revolutions. We know what happened to Germany. There, through faulty diplomacy of the winning countries, the ground was laid for the later Hitler period (The League of Nations that had been formed with enthusiasm and hope to forestall further wars fell apart... that was during President Wilson's second term). Only in Russia the revolution held and it became a Communist country. But the conditions were frightful and the U.S.A. sent Herbert Hoover, then an engineer, over with a relief group. During that time the desire gripped the young Scotts, especially Lou, to go to Russia and they did. Alpha was then about eighteen months old. When they got there of course it was interesting but the country was suffering from famine and disease, and hunger took its toll. My sister told me later that every morning the streets were littered with a number of people who had died during the night of hunger or disease. Anyhow, Alpha caught typhoid fever, which was epidemic, and only the fact that my sister was allowed to nurse him day and night in the hospital and that I, because I could appeal to the doctors in the Hospital in Amsterdam (since I was a nurse) to prescribe and provide the necessary medication not available in Russia and necessary for Alphals treatment, did he survive. In the long run I guess because of the great strain, Marie also became ill, and the family returned to Amsterdam. There my sister had to have an operation for she had developed a goiter and a part of her thyroid gland was removed.

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Lou went back to the U.S. first and Sim went with him in January or February, since times were bad in Europe. Marie was pregnant at the time, so arrangements were made that the rest of both families would come when Marie’s baby was born. Philome was born May 25, l923 in Belgium, in a small town named Mortsel, a suburb of Antwerp, and when he was due to be born I went there to act as nurse for my sister. Babies at that time and to this day are very often born at home in Holland. The hospital is still used in many cases only when the birth is not going to be normal or in special cases, by choice. The infant mortality rate is to this day very small; in facto Holland stands number one on the list of lowest in infant mortality, while the U.S.A. infant mortality rate stands at number l5. Tells a story. When Marie’s time was drawing near I went to Mortsel to be there and, as it happened, when Marie was in labour the doctor was called and came, but did not bring his instrument bag with him. While he was away to get the necessities, the baby began coming (Marie’s labour being quite short with her second child) and I had to deliver Philome. The second membrane enclosing the baby in the mother’s womb, in Holland called a cowl, did not burst and had to be cut, otherwise he would have suffocated. Luckily I knew what to do and the baby was born before the doctor arrived; he delivered the placenta. I’d had training in those subjects. Perhaps, here at this point I should explain how it came about that the Weisses and the Scotts became such close friends. Marie and Ann were long time friends as girls, although Ann was 6 years older than Marie. They joined a small club of girls and in time (this was while we were all living in Amsterdam) some young men joined the club too, Lou, Sim and Mike Lesser were the only ones I ever knew. This small club sometimes went on outings and generally had a good time; the close friendship between Sim and Lou developed and was to last a lifetime. In fact Lou was the only one who was with me at Sim's untimely death of cancer, many, many years later. In Amsterdam Marie and Lou were the first ones to get married. Mike Lesser’s wife came over from the U.S.A. Mike was one of the Alpha Phi, and they soon went back to the U.S. Then Sim and Ann got married, too, and eventually lived for some time in Belgium. Times were bad allover after the war. The reason that I do not know more about the particulars is that in those years I just was not living at home but was a student nurse and living in the hospital; I, however, knew them all well and I was also a friend when available. A close friend. In September of l923 we three women, Marie, with Alpha and Philome, then 4 months old, Ann with Nora then I think about 2 years old, and I boarded ship to sail to the U.S.A. Of course, Marie and Ann were going to join their husbands. I was going to a new country by myself. Quite an adventure and at that moment a little frightening. For years I often felt guilty about five of the six children in my family leaving home so suddenly -- leaving my parents as well as my youngest brother without the closeness they had known for so long. The Scotts lived for some time in Brooklyn. Sim and Ann also got settled and when Sim started to work in New York City he was quite successful until the l929 crash. Rhoda and Verna were born in l926, Rhoda completely disabled. This changed the whole family because she needed so much more attention than any other baby. However, my sister and brother-in- law always wanted her to remain at home, and they would try to bring her up, which they did. Of course, at that time, the doctors did not know much about birth injuries

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resulting in cerebral palsy. Later on, they found out more about it, but when Rhoda was a baby, they were generally considered mentally deficient. There were no schools for that type of child at that time. When Rhoda became five or six years old, the situation became very serious because she needed so much attention that the other children were neglected. The Scotts were living in Los Angeles by that time and Lou and Marie were finally persuaded to have Rhoda committed to an institution in Pomona, an excellent institution, where she stayed and was taught many things -- such as taking care of herself, making her own bed, going to school, doing needlework; and, in general, she learned a great many things. Although disabled physically, she had an excellent mind, and was not really mentally deficient. When she was about sixteen, she rebelled so much against being in the institution that Marie and Lou consented to place her in a private school for the disabled in Santa Barbara. This cost them a fortune, of course. Marie went to work so that the fee could be paid. Rhoda stayed at the private school for one year, and then she wanted to go home. After she came home, she became very uncooperative, as far as seeing doctors, and from that time on, her parents were very much opposed to placing her in an institution ever again; in fact they over-protected her. Rhoda's parents always carried the burden with them -"What will happen to Rhoda when we are no langer here?" Lou died first, of cancer, and Marie then kept up the business, which was a laundrette. Marie was at that time in poor health, and she died l8 months later. When Marie died, Rhoda went to live with her twin, Verna, in Seattle against her will. At her sister's she again learned a lot. Rhoda had met a man who was also afflicted with cerebral palsy when she was living at home; his name was Sydney Niederhauser. At that time they decided that they wanted to marry. However, circumstances made that impossible. He is a nephew of Anna Louise Strong, the author. They never quite lost contact, however, and when Sydney heard that both of Rhoda's parents were no langer alive, the correspondence became much more frequent. In short, Sydney and Rhoda were married five years ago and lived for four years in Santa Cruz. At present they are living in Watsonville in a lavish complex of apartments that have been built there for the disabled. They are very happily married. Rhoda has a little job at the skill center in Santa Cruz where she is a supervisor to see that the articles that are made there are put together right. This is the center for the mentally retarded, and she is doing very well; in fact she has just been promoted.

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Alpha’s Birthplace The narrow 5 story house, each floor with only one room, was yet a pleasant house on one of the main canals in Amsterdam [Keizersgracht 663, bij Reguliersgracht]

In Russia

A Dacha where Alpha recuperated Rhoda at about a year old

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X is the narrow house where Alpha was born on the Keizers Canal - Amsterdam

Alpha on his visit to us in Chicago

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CHAPTER VI Our Move to Beaumont We got a transfer of districts in the early spring of l942, out of the desert to Beaumont, which was situated at the top of the pass and therefore a lot cooler. We were very pleased indeed. The day I was to take charge of the Beaumont Center, a prenatal clinic had been scheduled. However my predecessor had left a few days before, set everythlng up for me to take over and left the keys to the Health center with the local police chief. We weren’t able to get to Beaumont before the set date, so we left Indio early in the morning, having all our belongings with us in the car. Of course we were anxious not to be late and did get there before the center was to be opened. Sim meanwhile was to look around for quarters for us to move into... I found everything in order, as we had agreed, and the clinic ran smoothly. After that I went again to the chief of police and took time to become acquainted and introduce rny husband and then we both followed up some leads for living quarters, however temporary they might be. Later in the day the Health Commissioner came out and received us more formally, and introduced me to some of the important people in town… The town itself wasn’t large but the district around the town was quite large. There were some small towns on the road that leads to Palm Springs, and my district went to Banning. South on the road to Riverside lay Sunnymead, from where the Pony Express turned east. On the way to Hemet and San Jacinto there was what was called the Jack Rabbit Trail, and between San Jacinto and Beaumont the district was cut in half, and in my half there were ranches. Then on the other side of Beaumont the main road led to Banning, which was another district. On the main road going to Redlands, there was Calimesa, and then a little ways from Calimesa was the San Bernardino County line, which of course was the end of my district. In this district, I also had two schools, the Beaumont 8 grades and high schools. In the district of Beaumont they did not have a school nurse, as the U.S. Public Health service at that time thought that, particularly in the smaller towns, it was better to have the Public Health Nurse also serve the schools. In this way, there would be only one person known to the family, instead of two different people coming into the homes. It was a very pleasant town, and we were there for about 14 years. All in all, I worked for the Health Department for about l6 l/2 years. Sim and I rented a small furnished house for the time being and settled down... The records were in good order in Beaumont, so it wasn't as difficult there to take over the work as it had been in Indio. I do not remember the exact date we came to Beaumont, but it was early spring during the beginning of World War II and Sim was losing his clientele as during the war most furniture rnaking came to a standstill as well as the manufacture of cars, all for the war effort. Many things were rationed, such as gasoline, sugar, tires and telephone installation. Sim was worried and we talked at length about our future. At that time a book had been published titled "Five Acres and Independence". We acquired the book and the gist of it was that if one owned a variegated orchard of 5 acres, one became independent. Since we both liked the outdoors we became quite interested. The town was not

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large but was surrounded by many small and some large orchards. After looking at lots for a month or two, we found just what we wanted... and we bought the orchard. It was just what we wanted, but we were really babes in the woods as far as being orchardists was concerned and we really did not know what we were letting ourselves in for. We did not really have the funds to buy an orchard so we bought it as was called 'on contract'. There was a large open space in the orchard, for at that time, there was a disease in the peach trees called mosaic disease because it showed up in the leaves of the trees as a rnosaic. Every spring two inspectors of the Agricultural Department came and inspected every orchard that grew peaches in the area and if they found an infected tree it had to be destroyed...therefore, the large open space. This disease was contagious amongst trees and the first spring we were in Beaurnont we lost two beautiful peach trees. They were dug out by a crew of the Agricultural Department to make sure that they were burned and destroyed. There was also an unfinished house on the grounds, set quite a ways back from the road. We liked it, although it didn't look like much. We decided to have it finished because it had a rather large full basement, which was unusual for that area. Most houses were set on a cement foundation or else just on a cement slab, perhaps because of the mild climate. There was a large amount of work to be done on the house, a lot of which had to be subcontracted, such as the wiring and plumbing. The siding had to be put on and a bathroom put in. Meanwhile we kept the house in town. Verna and Lou came out one weekend and, with Sim, hauled in a load of wood for siding, etc. Verna, at l5, drove the truck much of the way from Los Angeles. A few days later her appendix ruptured and she spent several weeks in the hospital. In the meantime a man approached Sim and asked whether he could rent the open space in the orchard so he could grow tomatoes, as he had no land. Sim made an arrangement with him and the man set out tomato plants. Then Sim heard that a large Air Force Base was being built just outside San Bernardino and that perhaps there was a job available in his llne of work. He applied and was appointed there as a draftsman, but had to change over from designing furniture to architectural work. The work was located 26 miles from where we lived, but people during the war carpooled since gasoline was strictly rationed. Sim did well there and in time became a head draftsman and very popular amongst his colleagues. Meanwhile, work in the orchard also needed attention...every three weeks the orchard had to be irrigated. For this we had a so-called share of water. Of course, that was a full day’s work and we hired that done. Then the man growing the tomatoes felt, just as the tomatoes were going to give fruit, that he wanted to go see his father who had become ill in Oklahoma and he left and we never saw him again. Result was we were left with that whole trap of tomatoes that had to be disposed of. We picked, bartered, canned, sold, made tomato juice in bottles, etc., etc...and finally sold the balance of them to the cannery. And the peach crop was coming on. And what peaches they were... beautiful. But first came the cherries and the local cherry festival was usually at the end of June or early July. That was a yearly affair and a sort of carnival. People used to come out weekends with their families and pick cherries themselves which were weighed and sold by the pound. It was a lot of work and we were new at it, but Sim, especially, liked it, and I did too. Same of our friends

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thought we were a little crazy, since we both were really city people. But generally when they visited, they, too, enjoyed themselves. After a few months the house was so far finished that we could move in. Of course lots still had to be done but it was easier to move to the orchard as the crops were ripening and work had to be coned --picking, packing, selling, etc. This was for us a very busy and happy time -- not that we never quarrelled, but differences are better gotten out of one's system than held in by not talking. Sim's special sense of humor helped. Sim's family, meanwhile, lived in L.A. Don had finished High School and was a few years younger than the Scott boys. Of course, at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they had to go into the service, but Don had still a little time and he came out now and then. Then his Dad and he would talk, talk about his future. Soon, however, he, too, went into the Navy. Nora had gone to U. of C. at Berkeley for a year but then she graduated from U.C.L.A. and became a laboratory technician. She had become engaged to David Schack, I think before the war. He also went into service and was stationed with the Navy in the Aleutians. As the war went on Nora went for a time to Bremerton, and there, during one of David's leaves, got married to him. After the war they all of course came back to L.A. and that has been the family's abode. During the war Ann too had a job. She made things out of Lucite,...some things quite lovely. During the war Alpha Scott lost his life. It was never clear just how, but after many searches, it was thought that while in transit to another base, the plane hit a severe storm and went down. It was a terrible blow to Marie and Lou...for that matter, to all the family. When the war broke out the Scotts were doing not too well in Los Angeles: they had a small cleaning business, and were struggling very hard. However, in Vallejo, the shipyards opened, and many new ships were being built. There was a lot of labor needed, and so Lou first went to Vallejo and looked the situation over, and then the family decided to move to Berkeley in the Bay area. For some time Lou and Marie worked in the shipyards and that paid very well. My sister was never very strong and before long became ill. She i was better off staying home and keeping house. Verna had grown up too and was perhaps about twenty years of age. She was a very lively and bright girl, and she soon got acquainted with a young man and they were married. He of course was in the service, and soon, they had to move to the area where he was stationed. It was a marriage, as so many at that time, with very little foundation. As all the boys were in the Service, and with Verna living away from home, that left only Rhoda at home. They weren't near where we lived any more, but we did visit back and forth now and then, especially on vacations. As the war progressed, Lou was offered the job of Building Inspector in Berkeley. This was because the then inspector went into the service; it was understood that at the war's end Lou's job would end and the job would go back to the person who was doing war duty. But the work was more in Lou’s area of knowledge and also paid well, so he changed over and seemed to be better adjusted there. Both Lou and Sim, while as time went on they grew into

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rather different personalities than they had been in their youthful years, remained close friends. And many years later, during Sim's last lingering illness, Lou showed himself as Sim's wonderful friend to the end. For us a lot of projects were going on at the same time. Sim had a job at the base, and he left early every morning. He also had the management of the orchard. The district was new, with a new and different program for me. In Beaumont there were many activities that I hadn't had in the desert. The schools had different programs. Sometimes children needed glasses, and the health program did not provide for that. So, the Men's Clubs would take care of the expense. Then a chapter of the Soroptimist Club was formed in the town, which is a group of professional women and businesswomen, but only one representative of each profession was chosen. I, being a professional nurse, was made a member. I never liked it, but I couldn’t say no. Then there was the PTA. This was an important organization, because it brought the mothers and children of the schools closer together. I became a member of the board, because there were needs that the Health Department sometimes didn't cover, but through the P.T.A. or some other service organization the problems could be solved. We had a free Dental Clinic for the children, and I had to cover that. Our vacation always came after the crops were in, that is, the peaches, apricots and cherries. The plums came later. It was always our favorite month, because August was the hottest month. I usually had three weeks, but took an extra week on my own. Sim got six weeks at the Base. At the end of the war Lou lost his job, when the building inspector came back from the service and wanted his job back. Lou and Marie wanted to take a little vacation first and came to visit us down south. They spent a few days with us at the house, which in the meantime had become a nice livable home -- we were proud of it. After their visit, we decided to take a vacation, so we all drove north to Berkeley where we spent a few days. Then we went on our own vacation, which Sim always called our second honeymoon. He said it was still the same between us as when we first came together. Our first vacation was spent in King's Canyon National Forest, which is a little bit south of Sequoia National Park; we camped there. In those days you could go away for a few days and leave your tent up and nobody would bother it or touch anything. When we came back we were able to get a cabin there. It was a really nice time -- a very lovely vacation. One of our vacations was spent at Tom's Place in the wilderness camp at Murray's Meadows. There he was able to ride horseback, which he had done very seldom since he learned to ride in New York. Tom’s Place was a small grocery store/lodge, a gathering place for the campers. There was also a nickel slot machine and Sim decided to try his luck when he saw all the other people trying theirs. He put in some nickels, when all of a sudden a torrent of nickels started rolling from the machine -- 750 of them! People were allover the floor on their hands and knees picking up the nickels and from then on Sim was known as "the man who won the jackpot". The boys came home from their war duties and life became normal again for everybody. Nora and David settled down and she kept her job as a lab technician; David's father had a dealership of Studebaker cars, and he had been trained by his father to be a mechanic. Don came home from the service. He had been chosen to study for Officer’s training but he never liked that. He never thought he would stay in the Navy. There was an education bill for

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the servicemen, so he decided to study to be a teacher. Sim worked at the base. He had been there maybe five or six years. He was never accustomed to punching a time clock or carrying an identification card on his shirt. That always bothered him. So after five or six years on the job he decided to resign for the time being, and go again into private designing. He got a job in Palm Springs with a designing firm. He was working there one day and someone was looking over his drawings. This man said to him that he would like Sim to do some work for him. It was a race track for the training of horses. It was to be in Beaumont. This man was a Marine Engineer, a millionaire from New York visiting in Palm Springs. He persuaded Sim to take on the job of designing the track. It was to be not only a track, but also to have stalls for horses who were thoroughbreds. Some would be boarded there. Sim knew that he would be working independently, so he was happy to do the job. He worked on this project for almost a year. Quite often the engineer would call Sim from New York, as that was his base; then sometimes he came down too. All in all Sim's private practice lasted about 2 l/2 years; then his work really diminished, for our area was quite well settled with not much new building going on at the time; Sim decided to go back to the Base, where he was welcomed back. The orchard and house had been built up, the house quite well finished and it suited us well...The orchard didn't bring in enough tor us to call it an independent living...but we liked to live there, each having our jobs and quite satisfied with them, with enough free time for our leisure and enjoyments. During the war years while all had to go for war effort, no educational conferences were held. As soon as the war was over there was a large conference for the Western region of the U.S. for school administrators and health personnel in Public Health. The conference was to be held at U. of C. at Berkeley and I was chosen as the representative for Riverside County. It was for me a sort of appreciation of my work and I liked that. What I did not like was that I had to leave Sim for three weeks; but of course he also saw the value of it and urged me to go. My salary and expenses were being paid by the Department, so I went. Another nice thing was that I could stay with my sister Marie and her family and Berkeley was not as hot as Beaumont in midsummer. It turned out to be a very interesting and rewarding three weeks and Sim was waiting for me when I returned. We were glad to be together again. In l948 my Mother came from Holland for what she thought at first would be a 6 months visit to the U.S. Of course, Dad had died just before the German invasion and she had had to go through the invasion of Hitler alone, but Mother, having the determination she always had, came through it, until, at the very end of the war, she broke her wrist and was helpless. The country then was in an awful shape and we in America had not been able to make contact with our families overseas during that dreadful period. When Mother broke her wrist, all trains and busses had stopped and the country was almost starving. However, Mother made it to the Hague, where my sister, Riek, still lives in the same house, by getting a place on a barge going through one of the canals. She recovered, and she and my sister's family decided that Mother should come and live with them, since she now was alone. She made her home with my sister and family for many years, until, at the age of 95, Mother contracted pneumonia and, when she was recovered enough so that she no langer needed hospitalization, went from the hospital to a rest home with hospital facilities. But when she spent what was destined to become a year in the U.S., she was 76 and very active for her age. When she was with us in Beaumont for 6 weeks, I sometimes would take

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her along on my calls and she became acquainted with the Health Department staff in Riverside. At that time most people were amazed at how active and alive she was -- they liked to visit with her. When Sim and I were both out working, she often sat and tried to learn a little English with the help of the dictionary and then tried to read the newspaper. She, of course, stayed for a period with all her children. She also visited with her sister, my aunt and uncle in Colusa, who gave quite a party when she arrived. She always cherished the memories of her stay in the U.S.A. Mother died at the age of 95 and was at that time still in full possession of her mental powers. In fact, on the day before her death, when my sister visited her, they had made plans for Mother to have a new spring dress. She always liked nice clothes. She died a peaceful death, without long suffering. When Mother was with us, Nora and David were expecting their first child -- long wished for. Steven was born and will now be 3l years old in September. How time passes. Donald became acquainted in time with Dale and after same time they were married at the home of Dale’s parents. A very elaborate affair...I had to stand in for Ann at the wedding. Ann was visiting her sisters and brother in Holland at that time and later Ann and my Mother travelled together to the U.S. by Holland-America Steamship Line. All the family met them at the station in L.A. So little by little the family grew, and while Sim and I never lived in the same area as the rest of the family, who always lived in L.A., our family, including Ann, always remained close.

Verna and Hermine - 1942

Beautiful Hale peaches - 1943

Tired but content - 1944

Sim happily at work in the orchard

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Sim

Philo (on a visit) and Sim when the house was finished

Sim - 1947

Sim and I - 1950

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Tom’s place Wilderness Camp Murray’s Meadows

Fishing in the swirling Truckee River – 1948

Sim and I under the walnut tree near back entrance to house - 1944

Sim and I on a Labor Day holiday with the family in Oceanside, 1950

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Hermine, Mother and Marie in Beaumont

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Our attempt at raising a pure-bred dog We got the idea that it would be nice to have a dog. Then this developed into the idea to raise some pure-bred dogs. Sim knew a man who also worked at the Base, whose neighbor, a lady from New York, raised pure-bred Dalmations; since we both thought that we would like to have one, we went out, by appointment, to see these dogs. The lady lived in Sunnymead, which also belonged to my district at the time and is located on the road to Riverside. She lived in a rather large building that was located on the old Pony Express Route and had been a hotel during that time. The lady wrote a weekly column in the Riverside paper under the name "Dear Dog Lady." She showed us some very nice dogs with very long pedigrees but the dogs were always outside. We did not know too much about dog raising and could not right away decide; the lady invited us back. She always wore very large glasses so that one could really not see her whole face, especially not her eyes, for the glasses looked like a mirror when one faced her. She told us that she and her fiance had been in an airplane accident in which he had been killed and she injured, especially around her eyes -- therefore the glasses. She was born and raised in N.Y., on Park Avenue, and was quite independent financially. She invited us to supper, very nice and friendly. Well, we especially liked one rather large pup. It came out that she was l0 months old, but seemed friendly enough to both of us so we decided to buy her...And then the fun started. When we came home with her she did not want to come into the house. We at first thought, well it is all strange to her and she will come around. Although in Sunnymead she had seemed friendly to me, she refused to be fed by me. We had quite an awful time getting her into the house, so Sim built a large pen for her. She wanted to be fed only by Sim; I couldn't quite understand it and thought it peculiar. We named her Kanga, and when she came in heat for the first time we put her into a kennel for the period. During the course of events, the lady -- I have forgotten her name -- had become quite friendly with us. Sim could be quite charming especially when he put on his European manners with the ladies. Boy, how they liked that... Through the pediatrician who came out to Beaumont once a month for a Child Health Conference (a good friend), we found out that the "Dear Dog Lady" was quite well known in Riverside, had a following amongst a certain group, newspapermen and others, and gave frequent parties. She invited us, too, so we went a few times -- quite some parties! Usually, when the pediatrician came to Beaumont and there was a write up about the Dog Lady's escapades in the paper, she brought it to us. The second time Kanga came in heat, Sim had built a very large pen for her, very substantially built, so she could run around. We put Kanga in the pen and thought that would be all right. But we hadn't thought of "nature." It so happened that Lou and Rhoda were visiting with us for a few days. Sim and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking, when Lou came down the stairs, rather agitated and said: "Can’t you do something about it?" We didn't know what he was talking about and he said: "Well, look out the window.." We did and we saw that all the dogs of the neighborhood were lined up in front of the pen, and Kanga was having a good time with one of them. Of course the first one had dug a hole under the fence and so gained entrance. The reason Lou was agitated was that Rhoda was still asleep and should not see this. Lou was essentially quite puritanical and Rhoda a perpetual baby. We laughed about it, Sim went outside and scattered the courting dogs. Kanga had an affair with a beautiful long haired dog and of course a litter (9 of them) of the most awful mongrels

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imaginable, all black. Certainly not the offspring of the dog that stayed with Kanga as long as her heat period lasted. Of course we could not keep them, and giving them away proved quite difficult. They were not attractive puppies, but we finally got rid of them. Since Kanga had turned out to be a kennel -- instead of a house -- dog and continued to refuse to have anything to do with me, we decided to ask the Dog Lady to take the dog back, to which she agreed. She sent the dog as a mascot to "Boys Town", I think in Arizona, for it turned out that the dog didn't behave at her place any longer either. The last of our acquaintance with the Dog Lady was as follows: One evening Sim got a telephone call from his colleague at the Base who told him that he had married the Dog Lady who, at that event, had declared herself a Buddhist. After the wedding the pair went to the Buddhist Temple in San Francisco where his bride took a vow of chastity; they were then remarried in the Buddhist way...He said "I think she is slightly out of her mind". Sim asked him whether it didn't bother him. Well, he said "I have had surgery for the removal of my prostate gland a short time ago and have not had any desire yet”. But apparently he had felt the necessity to talk about his troubles with someone who knew the lady, and called Sim, who obviously could only be sympathetic, but couldn't help him. We had fun over the Dog Lady's escapades! Thereafter we gave up the idea of raising prize dogs.

“Enough said”

A nice bitch but slightly neurotic Kanga

Sim designed the "Monumental Main Gate to the Base" and was written up in the newspaper and highly praised for his work. I showed up 5 years in succession at the yearly summer courses at U. of C. at Berkeley, to the great amazement of Rena, as she was called all over the State. Miss Haig was the Head P.H.N. of the State Health Department...and never forgot any nurse who had turned down a position she had offered her. I had been guilty of that years ago, when she offered me a job in charge of home deliveries in Anaheim, then a small town. I was young and located in the L.A. area, had a good job and a good time and wasn't about to make that change. When she met me years later as P.H.N. in Indio we very distantly greeted each other. She visited the different Health centers in the State routinely about once each year. When she saw me showing up each year in Berkeley, 62

which was indeed unusual, I think the fourth time she came up to me, shook me by the hand and inquired after my well being, etc. It was an unusual thing for her to do. But when the following year I showed up again, she really didn't know what to think about it and became very friendly. I had several times said to my supervisor that I thought that one of the other nurses should have the chance to go, but I think they sent me because my districts were outlying and by keeping me up to date with new developments, Headquarters felt they could depend on me to work independently.

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CHAPTER VII Our Move To Yucaipa In l948, when Mother was scheduled to go East for the rest of her visit in the U.S., I was again in Berkeley for another refresher course. During the war all money had to go toward winning the war with Hitler. After the war, under President Truman, monies became available for refresher courses in rnany fields, including the medical field in order to spread new knowledge, so that the programs could be carried out in the field with more success. My friend, who had the Palm Springs district, and I went for a three week course on heart disease, etc., all expenses paid. After the course, which was always given at U. of C. at Berkeley, Sim and I were to have our vacation. He met me in Berkeley. Mother was scheduled to leave for the East where she was to spend time with rny brother Paul. He had set up a sign shop in New York City at 23rd Street, which he kept until he retired. She was also to stay with Loo and his family, who usually spent the summer in Woodstock, N.Y. Loo lived and worked in New York City and moved to Woodstock when he retired, years later. Marie travelled with Mother to N.Y. Marie, on her journey back to Berkeley, stopped at the Maya Clinic and some other place to find out whether any new knowledge had become available for the treatment of Cerebral Palsy. Sim and I, that year, travelled all the way through Oregon and Washington, where we visited with Verna and Dick, who were living in Seattle. This was when Scott was a baby. We then went to Vancouver, Canada, and Victoria, which we especially liked. Sim wanted to fish for salmon and so we stayed for a week in Nanaimo. From there to the Olympic Peninsula, which we reached by ferry. At that time that was virtually virgin territory and very beautiful country. We stayed at Lapoel for about a week; the lake there is very, very deep. And a lot of lumbering was going on then. From there we leisurely drove home along the coast, fished at Hum-Bug Lake for trout and stayed a day or two at Cayucos, which we especially liked and came back to again and again. Home from there and it was good to see our own homestead again. Things were going well with us and also with Sim's family. Little by little the grandchildren were born and pictures from both families were streaming in. Babies are always so adorable... After we had lived in the orchard for about ten years, we decided that it became too much for Sim to take the long drive each morning and back again at night. We decided to sell the orchard, and find another place to live, which would be closer to the base. We put the orchard up for sale and it took some time before we sold it. Of course, both the orchard and the house were very attractive. As it stood back from the road, it was a very peaceful place to live -private, with a little patio. After some time the place was sold, and we got a cash payment on it. The person who bought the house had inherited money from her Grandfather and the money was in trust at the Bank of America. Anyhow, we got paid for the orchard and the house in cash, which was rather nice. We didn't have to move out on the spot. We had at least a month. In the meantime, we looked around for a place closer to the base, and yet not too far from where I worked. Of course, strictly speaking, I should have lived in the county, but we found a house that was being built in Yucaipa, which was a few miles outside the county, over the line. It was a modest two-bedroom house and it appealed to us. Not that we were going to start another orchard, but it did look good to us, and it was at least ten miles closer to where Sim had to go. We thought it would be much better for him and we moved in.

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The lot on which the house was built stood in a side street of the then main highway from Redlands to Beaumont. The lot was one-quarter of an acre, which was quite large. We decided to cut the lot in half and leave the back of the lot -- just do nothing with it. In the middle of our property we planted a sort of floral rose-type hedge, so that we had plenty of backyard, and quite a nice front yard. Sim and I both worked in the garden to develop it. There were some brick planter boxes built in the front of the house; Sim finished the front yard by placing some hollow pillars in front and on the side for decoration and then we planted. In the front box I put wing begonias, flowering every year. And we got settled. This was the first time that we were able to buy some really good furniture -- and did Sim and I enjoy it! We really splurged on our living room, and it was beautiful. I myself made the draperies, and we felt quite rich. As I mentioned before, Nora and Dave had their first baby, a boy, named Steven. Two years later, they had a little girl, whom they named Barbara; Doreen was born 4 years later. Dale and Don also married and in time had a baby boy named Jonathan. They were quite happy. In the meantime, Dale had her first degree in Anthropology, but she wasn’t doing anything with it. She sometimes gave swimming lessons, because she was very good at it. After the babies came, that was different. She had three boys; Jonathan, Timothy and Todd. They came fairly close together. Jonathan and Timothy were two years apart, and a year and a half later, Todd was born. They lived in Los Angeles for the first few years of their marriage. When Don became a teacher of remedial classes in East Los Angeles, they bought a very nice "palace" of a house in Whittier and were very happy with it. Life was quite satisfactory, and Ann was included in everything and well taken care of. The whole family felt that we were all quite happy. Some 3 or 4 years after Todd, Wendy was born to Dale and Don; that made their family complete.

Front of Yucaipa house

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CHAPTER VIII That Such A Splendid Life Should End So Soon The years were rolling along, and time seemed to go by fast. We were not getting any younger, and Sim didn't seem to be as strong as he used to be. At the Base, the employees always had a yearly physical, and Sim had some problems, but the doctors always said he was all right when they examined him. That turned out to be not so "all right". We had both had a bad case of the flu, but Sim was quite ill one time. He recovered and carried on, but during our vacations, we didn't take such long trips any more. We had kind of fallen in love with Cayucos, and we spent most of our vacations there. Don and Dale also took to Cayucos, and they sometimes joined in with our vacations. When we had lived in Yucaipa for about five years, Sim, still being busy at the Base, always did some private work at home. His mind was always busy. Sim, with his sense of humor, did a series of drawings to show to the Walt Disney people. One weekend we went to Burbank where Disney had his studios. Sim had made an appointment first, and we came to the studios. They were rather impressed by his drawings, but no decision was made at that particular interview. We came home, and that weekend Sim became very ill. One of Sim's legs was giving him a lot of trouble, and the leg began to swell. He was in great pain, and I said that we should forget about the other doctors and go to Dr. Klingbeil -- he knew us and we knew him. At that time, the doctor was working at the Los Angeles Sanitorium of the Seventh Day Adventists and that was a very well-known hospital. We made an appointment with Dr. Klingbeil and we both took time out to go there. They examined him the way he should have been examined four years before. Then he would have been checked in the beginning. Right away when they gave him a complete examination, Dr. Klingbeil looked at it kind of seriously; he wanted Sim to stay in the hospital for a day or two so that tests could be taken. So that's what we did. I called the Base and reported Sim sick; I then went home, because I had a clinic coming up the next day. At night I went back to L.A. and then we were given the bad news. He had cancer. That was after we had been married about sixteen years. They advised immediate surgery. Of course, all this was a terrible blow to both of us. Sim was very stoic; he did not give in to pain very easily, so he never thought it was that serious. But he survived even though he was very, very ill. When Lou heard what had happened to Sim he came right over and stayed with him. Well, Sim did recover, but he was never the same. It took about four or five months for him to recover enough so that he could go back to the Base, and he did. Of course they all liked Sim at the Base; it was good for him to go back there. When Sim was stricken, all Sim's colleagues of the drafting department went to the bloodbank to give blood including the boss. We tried to live our lives as normally as possible. When summer came, we rented a place in Cayucos where we could have guests, and we spent our vacation there. But after about a year, Sim decided to retire. I then also decided to retire. It was too early for me, but we decided to move to Cayucos and build a house there. That was our plan, anyway. We rented a house in February, and we had a good summer. We had many visitors, and also made some friends there; but when fall came, our friends, the Wilby’s, who had a summer house in Cayucos, said to us -- "Why don't you move into our place? It's pleasant, and you know the place." And so we moved into the Wilby's house. Of course, when everybody was working we didn’thave many visitors. At that time we had two likely locations to build and the plans for a house all done by Sim. 67

Toward the end of the summer, we decided to take a little trip to San Francisco. While we were staying at a motel, I noticed that Sim's leg was very swollen. When I mentioned it he said -- "Oh, I didn't want you to see that." Of course we went to the doctor right away, and he said that Sim should be hospitalized. He was hospitalized for three weeks at the Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles. The cancer had been spreading, and that was why the leg was swollen. At the time, the cobalt treatment was new, but Sim had never made his peace with the illness; he refused the treatments and we went home. One evening when we were at home, Lou came over and he persuaded us to come up to Berkeley. He had known a Doctor Koster for many years, a specialist in cancer, who had written papers on the disease and given lectures on it. He really knew a lot about it. Lou knew this and had told him about Sim's case. The doctor had advised Lou to have Sim come and see him. So we took Lou’s advice and moved up to Berkeley, rented an apartment, and I took three days to go to Redlands to arrange for our furniture to be rnoved to Berkeley. (When we moved to Cayucos, we had sold our house in Yucaipa, and had put our furniture in storage in Redlands.) We rented a roomy flat very close to the campus in Berkeley on Fulton Street. It was centrally located in quite a nice neighborhood and not too far away from the Scotts. Whenever Lou could get away from his business, he came over to keep Sim's spirits up and take him out for rides. The doctor recommended by Lou was indeed a man who had studied cancer for many years and written on the disease. The doctor and Sim became quite friendly; they were the same age. After the medical visit, Sim and I often stayed for a while and exchanged experiences with the doctor. He prescribed a different regime and in the beginning it seemed as if Sim improved under his treatment, which also consisted of a radical change of diet. We made our lives as much as possible. Sim was never bed-ridden but still gradually losing strength. He never gave up his drafting table and in the beginning worked at it often. At the end of the year Don and Dale and Nora and David came over for a few days, and I remember that we all went to the Scotts and sand old Dutch songs. However, it became a losing battle, the pain often unbearable. I remember that about a month before his death, the family again came over a weekend from L.A. and we all went to San Francisco for dinner at Fisherman's Wharf. A few days before he gave up, he was reading, always his great interest, as it was mine, and said: "If I could, now I would like to get back to college." The evening before his death the doctor came to relieve his pain and stayed for a lengthy political discussion with Sim and Lou, who was visiting. The weekend before Sim died, Don was with us for which I was always thankful. We made the weekend as nice as possible but Don saw how it was. Sim could not eat his dinner. David planned to come the following week, but sadly, that proved to be too late.

Special Page after CHAPTER VIII May 28, l957, just l0 days after our l8th anniversary. Sim got up more or less as usual. After the doctor left that last night, Lou went home and Sim and I sat for a time quietly and talked together and after some time we two went to bed. The next morning he got up and dressed. He could not eat any breakfast but otherwise seemed as usual, made some notes... Soon, however, the pain kind of overtook him and he took some of his painkiller. I helped him go to bed and tried to make him comfortable, but when Lou came around noon, it was unbearable pain, and I asked him to call the doctor, who came and saw and gave Sim a shot and then talked to Lou. I was holding Sim. Lou stayed with us.

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Instead of better, things became worse. I was holding Sim up in my arms and when I could no longer hold him, laid him gently on his propped up pillows. Sim died that afternoon early and before I could feel any grief a feeling of immense waste came over me... Lou made the necessary business calls for me as a matter of course, and when all was done, took me to his and Marie's house. There I called the family in L.A., Nora, Dave and Don and Dale. That evening, Henry and Dorothy came. Henry especially had spent a lot of time with Sim and their minds had met. Two days later the service was held, with a eulogy by Lou. Of course the children came. Don was grief stricken, but came to me, thanked me, and said, "You were good for the old man." Ann stayed with me for a week, which was a help to me. After Ann and everyone else left, I fell apart. We had gone to other doctors and done what we possibly could. But as time went on, I, with my background as a nurse, saw what was coming. I had talked the doctor but he didn't give me any hope. The cancer had spread to his lungs and the suffering was very bad. For years I could not shake the feeling of bitterness that it took the doctors four years to make the right diagnosis because they didn’t make the right tests. If Chapter VIII seems too short, or has not enough feeling, it is because it still upsets me to talk or write about it. Sim's going was so untimely. It took many years for me to regain some kind of peace.

Last picture of Sim at the Base, 1955

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CHAPTER IX Marie And I Return To Holland After Ann left and I was alone, Uncle George, who had been staying with the Scotts after the service, took me out of the house several times and to dinner. For me there was a lot to do: letters to be answered, certain business to be attended to, since we had property held in common, etc., which kept me busy, but I lost kind of my equilibrium. The Health Department of Riverside wanted me to come back there, and go to work again. I did go down there but wasn't able to take the offer. The Health officer understood and said, "Perhaps later?" I was staying on in Berkeley. That summer I spent some time in Cayucos at Helmi 's, and Dorothy was there too. When back in Berkeley, Marie and I thought of going to Holland. Marie had never been back and I only in l930, I think, except for when I came back from Spain. So we went to get our passports. For Marie that was easy, but I, since I had been in Spain during the civil war, was under suspicion. The McCarthy era was then upon us and Lou advised me to get the advice of a well-known labor lawyer in Berkeley. I was asked all kinds of questions and then a special request was sent to Washington. In the end I was granted an American passport again. In September, Marie and I went on the long journey, sailing from N.Y. Marie planned to stay for a six week visit, I for an indefinite period. I sublet my aparment in Berkeley to a university couple first for four rnonths. The journey was good for both of us and we arrived in Rotterdam early in October. We spotted Riek and my very old friend, Katherine, waiting for us on the dock. Of course, it was a tearful, yet joyous reunion. Marie, on her first visit since l923, was naturally very emotional, and she was so glad to see all of the old places again, where we had grown up. Mother and Riek were living in the Hague then, but soon enough Marie and I were able to make a pilgrimage to Amsterdam and visited with all the cousins and old friends and really investigated Amsterdam. Of course, we saw the beauty of the city much, much more than we had as children, when we lived there. Both of us, especially Marie, had trouble speaking Dutch, at first. In America we always spoke English. But in a few weeks Dutch became easier, although at that time people said we spoke Dutch with an accent. When there was a telephone call, the party would say, "Oh, your friend with the American accent called." Mother was not in the best of health, and was nearing her 85th birthday. People in Holland seemed to live longer than most, but still, 85 was an advanced age at that time. Mother's birthday was November 23, the same day as Sim's. A family picture taken that day shows Mother looking straight at Marie and me. Cousins came from Amsterdam and it was a festive day. Marie, Riek and I had made plans to tour Paris, but m'other became ill with the flu and the trip was postponed until she recovered. She needed nursing and I was glad to be able to do that. When she was well again, we made our trip to Paris on a conducted tour. We had quite a bit of free time, in which we roamed the streets of Paris. Riek was the one who spoke the best French. Marie couldn't speak it at all. I could get by doing shopping, etc., but I couldn't really carry on a conversation in French. Riek had used French more than we had over the years since she went back to work after her children were grown as a secretary. In Holland a secretary has to be able to take shorthand in English, German and some French.

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Our tour leader knew the city very well and took us to the usual sights, such as The Louvre, Montmartre, the Artist's neighborhood, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, Place des Invalides, where Napoleon lies burried in his five coffins, the Isle de Paris, the center and beginning point of Paris, and, of course, the Left Bank with its bookstalls and pictures as well as Notre Dame so near the University de Sorbonne. One evening we went to a ballet and another evening we went to the famous Moulin Rouge. How Sim would have enjoyed all this, but of course he had known and seen all these sights. In his youth, he had lived, worked, and studied in Paris. Often I walked around as in a dream, not really quite conscious of what had happened. But the sense of history I got anyway. The tour was soon at an end and we three sisters went back by train from the Gare du Nord. We came back to the Hague and Marie's six weeks were coming to an end. Riek, my friend Katrina, and I brought Marie to the boat and saw her off. She went by train from New York, after first visiting with Paul and Loo and family. I stayed behind, had no plans, but wasn’t ready to go home. AfterMarie got home, the couple who had rented my apartment had contacted her and asked whether they could stay on another four months, to which I agreed. I wanted to do some more travelling and joined the Dutch travelling club; but I had not made any definite plans. Riek at that time was still working as a secretary in a large office. Mother and I had the opportunity to get to know each other all over again, but now more as persons rather than in a Motherchild relationship. It always amazed me how she had developed after we children were gone, the serious reading she did. She was a remarkable woman with an excellent mind which she kept until the day she died at age 95. As a member of the Netherlands Travel Club, I was entitled to get information on how to set up an interesting travel route, with different hotels, in different countries. I was interested in going to Switzerland, Austria and Italy. My Spanish was still good, and Italian and Spanish are not that different. I was always interested in seeing the sights, such as the museums, and the cathedrals, and all of the beautiful buildings filled with history, but I was also interested in seeing how the people lived, and so I walked allover the cities wherever I went. First I went by special fast train to Lucerne from Utrecht, the main point for international train travel in Holland. It was rather a long journey all through Germany and I had an opportunity to talk with a few fellow passengers (Germans) to talk about the war and what their reactions were. (It must be understood that not all Germans were Nazis) The labor movement in Germany was very strong and one of the things Hitler did, aside from the Holocaust against the Jews and Gypsies, was to arrest all the Labor Leadership and throw them into jails. Anyone suspected in the least to be against the Nazis was jailed. In all, it is known that 2 million other Germans aside from the 5 million Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust. When I was in Spain, I met and worked with people who came straight out of the jails and to Spain to fight for the Republic. Arriving that day, or rather early evening, in Lucerne, Switzerland, I had a reservation in a nice hotel, so went there first and then went out into the street as it was still daylight. I did not feel at all uneasy. In fact it was quite nice. I had to change some money, did that, then went to eat somewhere close to the hotel. After dinner, I saw some typical Swiss entertainment with the jodeling and the lederhosen and all.

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My room was comforfable, but it being early spring, at night it was quite cold. However, they use those wonderful goosedown sort of tops together with blankets -- light as a feather and really warm. Those covers are used quite commonly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Next morning I went out and walked around the town. My train would not leave for Rome until around noon, so I had some time. It was a lovely area, situated on Lake Lucerne. I tried to make my days as full as possible. Sim and I had always dreamed we would go travelling together when we retired. Then I grieved. That day I went over Rome to the old and beautiful city of Naples built against the hills on the shares of the Tyrrhenian Sea. There I went by taxi cab to my pension, run by a retired professor of history and his wife. The houses are built quite differently from what we are used to and the pension was situated on a boulevard along the coast of the Bay of Naples. My room had a balcony from where I could see the volcano that had destroyed the city of Pompei in the year 69 A.D., which ruins are still being unearthed. The next day I, with a few other guests, took a tour to the ruins of Pompei. The work of digging was going on, but how interesting it was to see the streets and houses as they were when destruction overtook them. The houses were very lavish, the wine presses right in the open on the street, but this society was based on slavelabor and the slave quarters were quite horrible. As there was a storm over the Bay we could not go to the famous isle of Capri, but went along the Appian Way to Sorrento where we had tea, then to Amalfi and then back in Naples. All in all I spent 3 - 4 days in the area, walking and looking. The poverty in Italy at that time was great, but I was never accosted or robbed of anything. From Naples back to Rome. Interestingly, the roads were being repaired by hand. Workmen dug, carried baskets of dirt, etc., and laboriously repaired roads. In the train to Rome, travelling 2nd class with 3 American servicemen and a few Italians, we somehow had a very interesting discussion and when we got to Rome one of the Italian gentlemen brought me to my hotel. I wanted to take a cab, but he wouldn't hear of it. He said, "No, no, the distance is too short. Let me carry your bag." While I felt a little scared, he was the perfect gentleman; he was not too young a man and walked me the few blocks to the hotel, St. Mary Majore. Named after the Basilica. At the entrance he graciously said goodbye and I thanked him graciously. The hotel turned out to be quite sufficient, with some English speaking personnel, and I stayed in Rome perhaps 5 or 6 days. It was too short to see everything, but I saw the important and historical buildings, museums, the great Fountain, the Coliseum, the Vatican with it's Hall of Mirrors, St. Peter's Cathedral with its Dome designed by Michelangelo. The Pope was being carried into the pulpit and I was shocked by the tremendous noise in such a so-called holy place. And I walked and walked in the side streets. I enjoyed seeing how they display the poultry and the fish in the shops, helped a very old lady across the street who stretched her hand out to me, ate in a good restaurant one evening especially recornrnended by the desk clerk of the hotel and generally got a glimpse of life in Rome, all by myself. And trying consciously not to think of how futile and lonely this all was. From Rome to Siena. An old, famous, walled city, built upon a hill. It was early in the year, rainy and often cold, but at least with no great crowds of people milling around. The streets are narrow, except for the main boulevard. The entrances even to the good hotels and buildings do not look inviting, but one goes in and climbs marble stairs and comes into a hall and rooms beautifully decorated with bas-relief sculpture. Quite deceiving and worthwhile seeing... so new to me. The houses keep going up the hill, it sometimes looks as if the houses are built as a staircase.

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After a few days I went on by train to Florence and there, for the first time, found the quarters not to my liking nor up to par. So I checked out the next rnorning and went to a pensione which had been recomrnended by a former supervisor of the Health Department, and it turned out very, very nice. The room, food, and everything was just to my liking. The location was right in the heart of town, close to one of the main squares. The city is not very large but was in times gone by a very important city, the center of the Italian Rennaisaunce, with many churches and beautifully built. There is a staircase near Il Duomo, a cathedral with amazingly intricate facade, where people went up on their knees in penitence. On the doors, most beautifully carved is the passion story. Then there is the bridge over one of the canals, the Ponte Vecchio, where shops stand on both sides of the bridge. In Florence is the large thriving leather industry. In those days many articles were made by hand. I went through one of those workshops and bought a few mementoes. And then on to Venice, consisting entirely of small islands made together into the main city on the Adriatic Sea. The Main Square has the Palace of the Doge, important business houses, the building with the Tower which has a great clock which gongs out the time every half hour. The corner of the street where my hotel stood was right next to the Tower, which is at the end of the square and there the great Cathedral with the statue with the 4 horses of the Apocalypse stands. Napoleon, when he conquered Venice in his time, took that platform with the four horses back to France as war booty. Later, as Napoleon fell, Venice demanded that very important Statue back and today it is again in its rightful place high up on the Cathedral. I had a small, very comfortable room with a balcony; it was 4 stories up and at the same level as the horses. It was bitter cold when I was there, the Statue covered with snow. The room itself was comfortably heated. It was wonderful to stand on my balcony, thousands of miles from home and take pictures of the horses. I roamed around Venice for several days. Travel was on the canals by gondola or walking. There are no cars allowed in Venice. There is a university in Venice, and a friend of Philome was studying there on a fellowship. I had his address but never found him. There is a bridge over one of the canals, called, I think, "The Rialto". On both sides all kinds of merchandise are for sale. Nice places to shop, and I was even able to bargain in my broken Italian over my lovely blue and gold vase. From Venice my route was to Milano, a large city, the city of Leonardo da Vinci. The city had been very badly gutted during the war, but the square with the La Scala Opera House and adjoining theater had not been damaged. Also the square itself with the Statue of Leonardo in the middle was standing, the Covered Gallery was intact, but the Cathedral was badly damaged and was still being repaired. This was the industrial city and many people came from the south of Italy seeking work. I went on the public streetcar and did not feel strange in this city. But I was now becoming eager to get back to Holland. I spent two days roaming the city, visiting the so-called city of the dead, where the famous and important lie buried with elaborate structures over the graves. Interesting, but quaint. From Milano to Basel, in Switzerland -- a most pleasant city in a recommended hotel. Here I felt almost at home. Made arrangement from there to take the train back to the Hague. I took the night train, a sleeper. When I arrived in the Hague in the morning, Riek was at the station to meet me. Now, I had been away from home for more than 6 months and wanted to get back, so I started to make plans. The last few weeks I enjoyed being with Mother and Riek, took Mother one day to the famous "Keukenhof", the large estate where tulips of all kinds are on display -- all in full bloom. Mother really enjoyed that. And so I went back to Berkeley and home, where I stayed for a few weeks with Marie and Lou as my renters' time was not quite

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up. The couple had enjoyed the apartment and taken good care of it, and we kept up a kind of friendship for some years. I came home from all my roaming with a tremendous sense of history, as in Europe in many places history is right under one’s feet. In Rome, where the statue of Moses is displayed, done by Mlchaelangelo, I think in the Church of St. Paul, repair work was going on and one could see on the floor 2 layers of building under the ground floor. The main waterworks which were built when the Romans were in power, some 2,000 years ago, are still being used. AfterI got settled and my life had to take some shape again, I decided to get back to college. I took a course in ancient European History from the then known beginning up to the present, and, to go with it, a course in Anthropology. After all, it was interesting and I was living very close to the campus. It wasn’t easy to get back to studying after so long a time, but it turned out to be very interesting and kept me busy. Then too, I became interested in mosaics, and a little later taught Rhoda the rudiments, too. She took to it. We started with some simple bookends with just small square tiles, and little by little she also took it up with cut glass and tiles. The whole Scott family became involved and what Rhoda could not do, Lou and Marie took part in. It became a very successful project for them..

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CHAPTER X My Moves To Cayucos And Santa Cruz When I came home from my wanderings, a very large amount of mail had accumulated. It took me a few weeks to go through all of it. Amongst all this was a mailing from Cayucos, telling that a Highway 1 was being built and that the homes would become State property; that is, the State takes over the property, or rather, sells these houses at auction. We had been planning to build a house on the lots that we owned in Cayucos, so the idea came up in my mind that perhaps it would be possible to buy one of those houses. I asked Uncle George whether this idea could be worked out. He was a builder, and he was willing to inspect the houses with me on the day of the inspection. My idea was to have a small house in Cayucos, so that the families and the children could come to visit and also spend vacations with me. The notices in the mail said that there would be certain days that the people who were interested could come and inspect these houses. My Uncle and I went to Cayucos and inspected whatever was supposed to be removed. One of the properties was a small motel, in which we were not interested, and as we went around these properties, my Uncle, being very particular, right away eliminated most of the houses which were to be auctioned off, for various reasons, such as faulty light or construction. But there were several houses that came close to what we were looking for. On the appointed date of the auction, my Uncle was ill and could not come, but instead of my Uncle, Lou Scott went with me and he looked over the houses on which my Uncle and I had made notes. There was one house that I knew, and I was really interested in it. I knew who had built it and the material that had gone into it, and I had my eye on it and would be making a bid on it. Lou, being the man he was, really enjoyed it and when we came to that particular house. I made a bid on it. He too made a bid. There were, of course. several other people who were interested in the house too, and the bidding ended between us and another man. We did get the last bid. It was quite interesting, as I had never seen a thing like that. What happens is, as soon as the auctioneer says "Sold", the inspector goes into the house; of course, we followed, and he started to inspect this house inside and out. It turned out that the house was in pretty good shape except for the plumbing which wasn’t quite to his liking; but that didn't bother us too much, because the house had to be removed from the foundation anyway, and, of course, moved. We couldn't move it to any of the lots that we had as we had learned that the lots we owned were not suitable for houses of the kind that were for sale. The locations were not right and the cost would be prohibitive. However, we had a certain base period to make arrangements. A certain date was set, at which date the houses had to be removed. Also, right away, a deposit had to be made on the property, which we did. Since the property which Sim and I had owned wasn’t suitable, we had to look around for a lot on which to place this house. It was quite interesting and also exciting, as I had never done this sort of thing before, and Lou had never done it before, either. So that same day we started to look for a suitable lot. We chose a lot which was slightly up a hill, so that we had a good outlook. Because it was a parcel of four lots, and we could not buy all four of the lots, we were interested in only the highest lot of the four. It was right across the existing road, overlooking the ocean and from our windows we would see Morro Rock. It took some investigating. We went to the real estate people and got some information as to the owners. The owners lived somewhere in Oregon, but the lots were for sale. We asked the price and it was quite high. Just at that time, California coastal property was starting to shoot up in price. Lou and the real estate people had a good idea -- they said, "Why don't you make a bid and see what happens?" So that’s what we did and the owners accepted it. Since it was quite hilly, the lot had first to be prepared and flattened out, and then, of course, a foundation had to be built. There was quite a lot of work to be done. 76

Cayucos was about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and part of the family lived in L.A., and the other part in Berkeley. I had made a bid on the lot and it had been accepted and now we had a conversation with the real estate people; they advised us as to which contractor we should go to. Also we needed another person to do the ground work on that lot. To me, particularly, it was quite exciting, and to Lou also. But it was more so to me, because it kept my mind off myself. In the meantime, these history courses had finished, and since I was now involved with this house business, I couldn't go any further in the study of history. I had found it very interesting to take these two courses. They were really standard courses that are taught mostly to people who are working for a grade. I loaned my study books to a friend of mine, Anna Wilby, who took that same course later. When Uncle George had recovered from his illness, which was a kind of flu, he came with Tante Christine, and we went again to Cayucos and looked that house over; he said it was a strongly-built house, even though all sorts of things had to be put together on it, and a foundation had to be made as well as an entrance. A lot of work had to be done. I had dreams of being able to keep the house in Cayucos as a summer house, but both Sim and I had retired at too young an age, and my income was too small to afford that. I did keep up the apartment in Berkeley for about two years, and then I decided to move to Cayucos. In the meantime, I had become involved with mosaics, and later with pottery-making. The courses were being given in Berkeley and later in Cayucos. I had already been taking courses in this while Sim was still alive, during that last year; but later on, through friends, I got into painting and took lessons privately with a very small group, taught by an established painter. When I started to live in Cayucos, I took courses in painting, twice a week. Then I took two other courses each week in painting which were given by the education department. I felt at a disadvantage in starting because when Sim was alive, I felt inferior to him as far as being an artist was concerned. As far as ordinary painting was concerned, I couldn't live with the colors that the former owner had used in the two bedrooms of the Cayucos house. So I color painted it to my own taste. And I became a pretty good paper hanger. My main interest became painting and I did some nice things, which I have since given away -- the best ones, of course. After living in Cayucos for about ten years, both Louis and Mariels health started to fail, and my sister had a few bad accidents. When something like that happened, the first thing they always did was to call me, and I always felt that I should help them. So I had to go from Cayucos to Berkeley, which is 250 miles. At the end, I had to go to Berkeley about every month or so, and this tired me out; I just couldn't keep up driving back and forth that often. It was very difficult for me to make a decision, but then it turned out that Lou was suffering from cancer of the esophagus, which is a very bad spot for that. He had to have surgery but they could not remove the cancer because it was out of reach. I decided, against my better judgement, to give up the house and move to Santa Cruz, where I bought a mobile home. (I have always been sorry I sold the house.) It was only 85 miles from where the Scotts lived and that made me decide to settle here. That has been about l0 years ago and I have always liked this area. Also, I could not make myself live in Berkeley again, since then I would have too much involved with Marie, Lou and Rhoda.

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Painting scene on location in Morr Bay, 1969

On the coast in Santa Cruz, 1977

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Pier in Cayucos

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CHAPTER XI My Move To Santa Cruz Came About As Follows: I was on one of my treks to Berkeley again and a friend in Cayucos had given me a box with plant clippings, which I was to deliver to Eva Torris who had been my "across the street" neighbor in Cayucos but who had moved to a mobile home in Santa Cruz. When I got there it turned out to be a new park. It made quite a friendly impression, so much so that I had the manager take me around to show me what there was for sale, prices, etc. One of the homes attracted me for it was just my size, and at the end of the row, so that I would only have one neighbor. And at that time, now ten years ago, that area was still quite rural and had a nice outlook. Of course my friend would like me to come and live there. So, I did some reading on mobile homes and again asked Uncle George to come out with me and look the place over. Santa Cruz was well known to him, for when his children were growing up the family always went to Santa Cruz for six weeks to get out of the great heat in the Sacramento valley. When we arrived in Santa Cruz, Uncle George did not even recognize the place, it had grown so much larger. But he did inspect the one I had in mind and put his OK on it. That weekend the Scott family and also Verna (who happened to be on a visit) and I all went to see the place. The end of all this was that I decided to make the move. Meanwhile, while I was away, several people had been showing interest in buying the Cayucos house and so all this went very fast, unexpectedly so... Before I actually decided I went that weekend to L.A. and told the famlly there that I was moving from Cayucos to Santa Cruz. So just about l0 years ago, I came to live here…. At first it was again a difficult move. The mobile home park was new and all around it was undeveloped ground. A garden had to be put in, front and side steps built, etc., which kept me quite busy. My painting suffered and little by little was abandoned. And of course, I had to make some new friends and also get to know the community. It turned out to be quite an active community, due to the universities in the area and therefore quite popular with the young. Generally, I’ve liked it here, made some good friends and become again a member of the International League for Peace and Freedom -- here quite an active chapter and I still do what I can. I also like the Unitarian Fellowship. Now I am coming to the end of my unusual life story. I have had a successful working career, which gave me satisfaction, have known great, great happiness and deep grief...joy and sorrow...and isn’t this what life is all about? Too alone, since Sim was no longer with me to share the enjoyment, I have travelled extensively in Europe. Sometimes I went with friends but mostly I went alone and only very rarely did I go on tours. Since I can speak several languages and am interested in people, I liked this better...Sim and I had planned to do this together, but it was not to be. I hope my family will know me a little better after reading this.

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