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(left, a Liberty Ship much like the ones dad "sailed" on before, during and after World War II)
First trip as a seaman in the merchant marine with the South Atlantic S.S. Company. Signed on as an Ordinary Seaman on December 18, 1942 for a coastwise trip from Wilmington North Carolina to Newport News Virginia. On the same vessel (S.S. Alexander Lillington) I signed on again for another coast wise trip but the Certificate of Discharge lists that voyage as "foreign." We called first in New York and after a few days we returned to the Chesepeake Bay and from there we joined a convoy to Casa Blanca Morrocco. That voyage ended in New York on April 19, 1943. I returned to Savannah Georgia and signed on as an Able Seaman with the same company. The ship was the S.S. Robert Toombs. She was a Liberty Ship like the Alexander Lillington and brand new. We took her from the Savannah shipyard to charleston, South Carolina and loaded five hundred pound bombs and torpedoes. The deck cargo was two air sea rescue boat much the same as torpedo boats.
(I love this photo booth shot of Dad)
(the letter below is from '75 or '76 when I was in New York and awaiting word on law schools)
Dear Peter and Vickie,
It is Friday, the last day before one week off to touch my boat. I am hearing a custody fight. 3 beautiful children K, 6 [and] 7th grade. Papa was a Baptist minister who brought a 21 year old into the house. Had neglected mama for years -- presto -- she found out [there was another] woman.
Out of 8 lawyers she tried to hire only one would . . . take the case because the husband was a minister and the Judge was Baptist. Up-State New York.
Two years later they are in the sunshine state and I have 3 kids who swallowed the Bible, blame mama, [but?] won't say a word against her.
Oh well the job pays well and I must like playing God or I would go into another line.
I never tried the stage. I act well in court. I love audience response. Upon retirement I will take up the guitar or try the nite club circuit with topical jokes and soft shoe. Just imagine the octogenarian groupies I would attract. . .
I am teaching again at LaVerne Law School (Children's Rights) and have a job teaching psychology and the law at Claremont Grad School. Lawyers must make lousy teacher -- we were never exposed to any classes on how to just about what was in Early England.
This letter is to say, Relax, you have love - I love you - the future is uncertain and exciting. What is past is part of a treasure of memories and only the shining pebbles on that beach need to be taken out and fondled.
Love Dad
p.s. 1-glass of wine for lunch; if the dour Baptists scowling at me from the audience knew --
After we moved to the suburbs, we became equipped to deal with the real world.
(dad at one year)
What can I say about this wonderful woman? She married my dad when he was already suffering the ill effects of Parkinson's disease. She was and is kind, loving, bright, fun, funny, warm, wise, and, indominable. She and she alone is responsible for my father's happiness in the last years of his life.
She truly loved him in the way all angels do -- actively; in word and deed. I do not know what my sister and I would have done without her. We would not have attended to Dad's last days in the ways daughters do for many reasons, not the least of which is the tenuous nature of our familial connection.
Did we and do we love him? Yes, we do. But life is so much more complex and relationships so unique that I cannot even begin to tell you anything truly meaningful about our father-daughter relationships. I'd have to write a book and I have so many other projects pending . . . .
We are grateful beyond measure that Dad found Juanita and we wish her great peace after Dad's passing.
Dear Vickie
Well here I am worried about you. Have you enough money? Did Peter return on time etc.? has his family situation changed his plans? If I had your phone number I would call you this evening.
In reading [his sister] Bessie's book [family history] I see that much of family history is kept in letters. With the advent of the phone our communications are lost [if only we had one another's telephone numbers!]I have considered writing my view of family history and happenings from the narcissitic view -- that is all as it relates to me. I would only do that by way of letters to you in the expectation you you would keep them for some future family historian. If not your children or [my sister] Sharon's then the grand nephews and nieces. What do you think of that?
I suppose Peter's loss and the loss last year of Leslie cause me to feel that some bridge needs to be left between yesterday and tomorrow.
Please drop a card or call you can't believe whaat a father imagines as possible disasters for a loved child.
Dad
Dad must have been unemployed when we lived in the compound [?] He bought a circular saw. It was powered by a model-T engine mounted on a 4x4 frame. The transmission was complete with a clutch. At the end of the drive shaft was mounted a circular saw blade about thirty inches in diameter. There was a tilting platform to rest the logs on. It seemed to me that he and Leslie went off into the woods to cut cordwood that was later sold in San Diego. I remember $12 a cord. I was very jealous of Leslie and his friendship with father.
We moved from there to Kentwood in the Pines. I think it was close to Cuyamaca as Dad went back to work at C.A. Gray's ranch. Lois [sister] had appendicitus while we were there and Russell [brother] was born. it was either for the appendicitis or to take mother to the hospital, that Mr. Gray lent father a new beaver tail (?) dodge to drive to the hospital. It had a velvet-like upholstery. It must have been a 1932. That was about the time of the first Roosevelt campaign which seems to have been tied up with prohibition. It could have been 1932 when we lived the the compound. I recall that Roosevelt and Repeal were spoken like expletives. I never again recall political discussions but I recall 1932.
Around the house in Kentwood were beautiful tall pine trees. On the walk to school was an orchard of delicious apples. I don't think there was a bus. The road went across a large meadow, fenced on both sides and went down the mountain to Banner mne. It was called Banner Grade.
In the spring, cattle were herded from the moutains to the fields below Banner at the edge of the desert where a rich cienega made waist-high grass. Once a year there was a rodeo in the fields ot the left between the road to Cuyamaca and the Banner Grade. A barnstorming pilot flying a World War I bi-plane, probably a "Jenny" arrived to raise a few dollars. One day on landing his landing gear caught in telephone wires and he crashed. My first airplane, I recall the fabric with laquer making it stiff and brittle.
Certain rules seem important to me in living a successful life. I don't remember every putting them on paper before and I do know that I don't consciously tell them as one tells rosary beads. They are a matrix upon which I daily embroider the patterns of my life. They are the rules I measure my conduct by.
- Have, and understand, your religious philosphy
- Be loyal to yourself and have in mind a priority of loyalties.
- Select role models -- heroes or heroines to emulate, both contemporary and
historical.- Continue your education.
- Be conscious of physical health.
- Have planned recreation.
- Spend less than you earn.
- To explain my rules a little:
You live in an area where more religions are practiced than anywhere on earth. To be a leader you must have a grasp of and appreciation for these values in the lives of others. You should have a position, a belief; and hopefully be comfortable with that belief so that you are not unsettled by other beliefs.
- You are who you are today -- and the person you will be tomorrow and into the future. Only you can protect the future of the person you will be at 30, 40, 50 and 100. If you smoke today, you hurt the 50-year old you will be.
- We all choose heroes or heroines. Who you choose identifies what your goals are and helps you make the hard decisions. My heroes have always been gentle and caring men. I have tried to read a lot about them to find out how they solved problems. General Robert E. Lee is an example of one of my heroes. He freed his slaves before the war and did not believe in secession. He was offered command of the Union Army but declined. He said his loyalty was to the State of Virginia and he must go with the people of his state. he fought for a cause he didn't believe in -- brilliantly, with courage and enthusiasm and without regret. His priority of loyalties was clearly defined.
- Education comes more after school than during it. School is just the foundation on which to build. I left school at the end of the 11th grade and did not return except to go to night law school. Between those years, I educated myself by using the library, attending lectures, reading good magazines and seeing good plays and movies. I took courses from public television and enrolled in employer education courses. had I finished school and college, my career would have been dramatically different. It was an error in judgment not to do so.
- If you wish to earn your living with your brain and not your strong back, physical condition is important. It is a measure of your good judgment visible to all. Good health sustains hours of alert concentration with fewer hours of rest. it allows an air of self-confidence and poise so important in leadership.
- Failure to plan recreation inerferes with creative thinking. Problem solving often requires the solver to leave th eproblem alone for a period or risk falling into tunnel vision. the same simple mistake is often repeated over and over. A withdrawal from the problem allows a fresh approach and imaginative solutions to be explored. A balance between family loyalties and work loyalties is inhibited by a failure to take recreation breaks. Support from the family is absolutely essential to a successful leader.
- Capitalism is the adult game. It is possible to earn more than you can spend. Many movie stars have proven that you can earn a fortune and reach old age in poverty. As a leader, your decisions should be based on your judgment as to the most practical solution to the immediate problem. If your judgment is warped because you owe more than you can earn, you soon fall into the trap of making decisions are good for your finances but bad for your future. Remember the old man or woman that you will be is depending on you.
In the 9th grade I ran a paper route and kept house for four college students. In the 10th and 11th grades I washed dishes in a college boarding house and delivered Western union telegrams at 25 cents per hour. In the 12th grade I dropped out of school and worked as a stock boy in a department store and lived in a room and board hotel. At 18 I went to sea as a merchant sailor, and at 20 went to Officer Candidate School and returned to sea as an officer in the Merchant marine. At 22 I was a 7-Up truck driver, and at 24 route supervisor; at 25 a milkman and at 27 route foreman of 45 milkmen. At 26 I graduated from high school. At 27 I was selling life insurance. At 29 I was an assistant manager hiring and training life insurance salesmen. At 35 I was manager of a real estate sales office and vice president in charge of sales for a builder-developer.
I have also managed a direct mailing buisness, clerked in a grocery store, sold light bulbs and Fuller brushes door-to-door, wamped beer in warehouses and on beer routes, delivered Dad's Root Beer, worked as a stoop laborer in lima bean fields, threshed wheat and barley, picked turkeys, and clerked for a trial lawyer.
At 43, after going to night law school, I began practicing law by myself in Beverly Hills and was elected to my present position by the Los Angeles County Superior Court Judges in 1973.
While doing all that, I have been a landlord since 1948; that is, owned rental property, and bought and sold common stock, vacant land and generally
have been successful in the game of capitalism.
Dad, far right. Once this man travelled the world as a young man, he was simply not going to happily settle down. Life was all about adventure. Something laying brick walkways in our suburban backyard could never deliver.
from left: Russell (lawyer); Dad; Dorothy (married to long-distance truck driver); Oscar (owned the first cash and carry grocery store in Ramona); Ken (the family's only LDS); Lucille (the eldest sister), Lois (the "card-carrying Communist" and social worker); and, Bessie (who took care of everyone)
Missing: Brother Leslie, who died too young.
Still living: Dorothy, Oscar, Ken and Lois
The graduate. I was 15. On the few occasions we saw one another, Dad told me all the law stories -- the case law he'd read and the ones he made up.
He took me along to a client meeting in San Diego when I was still in high school. He told an elaborate story to his client and cited the case name and date. I was SO impressed.
"How did you remember that case?" I asked in the car afterward.
"I didn't," he replied. "I made it up."
I should have known then that the practice of law was perfect for me as well.
One day at lunch, Dad told me that a Superior Court colleague (a Judge, not a Commissioner) had called him "a clever peasant."
And Dad took it as a compliment!
I said, "not true and not funny and no compliment." Fortunately I have a short memory and do not recall the offending Judge's name.
How do you learn when you're doing farm labor to help supplement the family income or moving from the Nebraska farm to the Portland logging camp and thence to Julian and then a Romona chicken farm? All before you are fourteen years old with your father weak and arthritic and your mother taking in laundry?
Had he been given the advantages I have had, or, that my Stanford- and Brown-educated step-children have had, he might have been President.Or not.
His burning ambition was lit by the flames of poverty and his compulsive self-education ignited by insecurity.
He told the Daily Journal columnist that he equated poverty with stupidity and assumed he was intellectually inadequate until he sought out a psychologist
and asked for an IQ test.Then he left (my) home to make his mark in the world.
From another of Dad's unfinished memoirs:
On Broadway in downtown San Diego was the Spreckles Theater. On the sidewalk was a poster of a clipper ship in full sail and an old salt with a sea bag over his shoulder.
The bold print read:
I'M GOING BACK TO SEA
and directed recruits to an office on an upper floor.
The recuiter showed me a book of Coast Guard regulations that had "three years" crossed out and eighteen months interlineated. That was the sea time required before you could take the examination to become a third mate. No schooling was required and the rank would be Ensign in the naval reserve.
I would like to think my decision to join was cool and responsible -- one that bore in mind my parents' financial problems. The truth is, I had the Bounty Trilogy and Two Years Before the Mast in mind.
Iron Bottom Bay was full of our cruisers and destroyers. The Navy continued to conceal the true status of the war in the Pacific. The war in the Atlantic was being lost.
It would be a great adventure if your tanker was not torched or you died of hypothermia or disintegrated in a torpedoed ammunition ship, for which duty you received a ten percent bonus.
Many old timers continued to go to sea. Some who had retired as long ago as the first World War.
My first ship was the S.S. Robert Toombs, built in the fashion of Henry Kaiser's assembly line construction. Articles were signed in the Cape Fear shipyard in Wilmington North Carolina.
There were no Able Seamen, only Ordinarys. None of the deck crew had ever been to sea before. Mates were sailing above their licensed station.
We sailed around Cape Hatteras and went into dry dock in Portsmouth navy Yard. The ship was fitted with an experimental device that was accompanied by a ranking naval officer who I assumed was the inventor.
A Bos'n and a carpenter of many years experience was prone to say "I have pissed more salt water than you kids will ever see." He put himself in the way of danger for $180/month for twenty four hours duty in the North Atlantic. The combination of the ranking naval officer's animosity and the deck officers' inexperience nearly led to the loss of the ship and her cargo.
(looks like L.A., date unknown, extreme pleasure in one another's company noted)
We are better people on paper than we are in person, me and my dad. I started writing my father long, soul-searching letters when I was in high school. Every time I saw him (usually twice a year) I prayed he would not mention them. He never did.
As a girlfriend, I was the needy one who you were happy to have dated only if you loved me immediately and unconditionally.
You know the type.
I'm lucky to finally have found Steve -- particularly since he loved me immediately and unconditionally. And because he is not an unemployed artist. Finally, I am the (un-)(semi-)employed artist. Who KNEW it would take so long to build a mediation practice (well, other than Peter Robinson and everyone else I spoke to).
BOMBS AWAY!!
But I was going to tell you the nicest thing my father ever wrote to me. We were incapable of expressing these things in person. Until he was dying. At his bedside I finally said everything, all of which was loving -- the anger at the early abandonment had long before burned away to be replaced only occasionally with a small slip of sadness at the loss of him so young. We made up for it in our adulthood. We really did.
Typically, the letter is undated but he is still writing me from the Pomona Superior Court and talking about my future after law school so I assume this was before that when I was living in New York '75-'77.
I don't know where you will be but I feel great enthusiasm to start interfering in your life by looking for summer spots or political positions. I have always been happy to have daughters. to have a liberal, sensitive, educated, intelligent, beautiful lawyer daughter, who loves me, my cup ran over long ago. it is now nectar of life that spills out. How proud and pleased I am.
Your Father
(dad, right; perhaps a night of drinking accounts for the hat strap's odd location)
This is Dad's troubled look. He always said,
"every man has a cup of worry in his heart. It doesn't matter what the worry is; it's always the same amount."
In dad's final days, I told him it was time to pour out his "cup of worry."
His eyes shone so brightly that day; like a delighted infant just waking up to the world.I'm "acting as if" he was and is awakening to another unimaginable reality. The scientific part of me has always balked at this even though my best friend continues to press upon me how afterlife and quantum physics are closer than my Newtonian reality and the absence of life after this one.
A Couple of Dad's letters -- classics on making money as his life's favorite game.Accumulation of wealth. I know that is an unpopular goal in your house [I think I'd just graduated from law school and my husband was working as a social worker at a local children's home]
I find it [accumulation of wealth] to be the only adult game aside from bridge or chess and I can't get serious about the former or win at the latter. Why haven't you looked at bigger newer more attractive housing? Owning a sports car -- You could be driving a 280ZX. You know it gives the the spirit a lift. There surely has to be some reward for beauty, talent, skill and hard work. A yachut. Learn to fly. Own your own airplane to fly to Auburn etc. You might be the first skirted lawyer to do so. Lucy told charlie Brown "life is a supermarket. Fill up your cart and push it up to the check out counter." He says, "I would be in the line '6 items or less!'"
AND THE NEXT ONE, written before I went to law school. '75?
"I am not sure why people accumulate capital. Lolly [my then step-mother, now deceased] and I do because we can't help it. We can't let a day go by without accomplishment. We can't go boating without catching fish so we feel
that need fulfilled. The great depression just won't leave us alone and I suppose we are hyperactive. I suspect in 13 years (age 65) I will be a millionaire [yes he was]. Inflation will take care of it and a million won't be the same as it was 20 years ago. I still won't be able to spend it.
"Should I feel guilty? I did it with Lolly's help by cleaning dirty houses, painting, plumbing, spending less than I earn and increasing my ability to earn.We have offered to send Lolly's oldest son back to school and the same to all of
you. It pleasures us to see our kids get good educations.
"I hope you will accept our offer and keep your money in the bank. Poor people need government subsidies, not you. I promise not to demand, pressure for or encourage conservatism, excellance, super success.
"I enclose a clipping about USC just because you might be interested [I was living in New York and he in Los Angeles at this time]. No pressure. I don't really care where you go. If you go to a less expensive school I can make your life easier. I would love to see you often if you were closer but I love you all the time anyway.
Love, Dad"
(photo: July 4, 1976: One of the Many Boats)
