California 1941

In the summer of 1941, EA and Edna were awaiting the births of their first two grandchildren. Both Allan and Helen who had married in 1938 were expecting their first in October and Ethel and Harold who married in 1939 their first in July. Ethel and Harold had lived in San Diego a short time when Gussie traveled to California for Leon's birth. Helen remembers that Gussie went out early to help Ethel with the birth and the others drove out after Leon was born. Below is a clip of that trip before they made it to California.

I'll leave it to Lee or Steve to identify the make of the car.

     Mary Grace had just graduated from high school and Helen was starting her senior year in college that fall.

Mary Grace, age 17, Balboa Park, San Diego.

      While visiting Ethel and Harold and the very young Leon, the Burkhardts spent time at the beach. First at Mission Beach near San Diego and then up the coast to Newport Beach near Los Angeles.

EA and Helen Mission Beach

This is a clip from the Mission Beach outing. The Winters' home at 3643 37th St is about 10 miles from the beach. Ethel and Harold's home in San Diego



After spending time in San Diego, the Burkhardts traveled north to Jimmie Fraser's beach house at Newport Beach. Jimmie Fraser was one of four children of Betsy Sharpe's sister, Roseanna. After Roseanna's husband died in 1900 she and her children moved to the Oakland area. By 1941 Ada Fraser Sumner and Miller Fraser lived in the Los Angeles area, too. On this visit to Newport Beach, the Burkhardts and their cousins took in the various water activities - boating, swimming, etc. Joining them was Ada's daughter, Kay, who was the tall, illustrator for Disney.

Jimmy Frazier and Mary Grace Newport Beach 1941

Kay Sumner Newport Beach 1941

Miller Frazier and his boat Newport Beach 1941

First clip shows some of the Newport Beach activities before they took a ride in the Fraser boat. Right as the clip ends, it looks like someone is almost run over by a boat, but apparently everyone was all right.

Helen said Jimmy took them all out in his boat on the ocean and to quote her, "It was exciting."



This clip has some good views of Balboa Pavilion on Balboa Peninsula, an early 20th century landmark.

Mary and Gisela

   

      From Mary Grace's My Life:

Mary Grace and Gisela Kamm - 1937

    When I was 12 we got new neighbors north of us. A German Psychiatrist and his wife and stepdaughter, Gisela moved in.

Lawrence J. Friedman writes in his book, Menninger: The Family and the Clinic, of Bernard Kamm, Gisela's stepfather, that Dr. Kamm realized his well-known antipathy towards the Nazi's antisemitism made it necessary for him to leave Europe. The Menningers wanted to bring Sigmund Freud to the U.S., although that didn't happen. But they did recruit other German psychiatrists to their clinic in Topeka and Dr. Kamm was one of them. Mary Grace also said that Gisela's father was Jewish and the Kamms felt that it was unsafe for her to remain there also.The Kamms spent 3 years in Topeka before moving to San Francisco. Mary Grace wrote in My Life that she always liked Dr. Kamm because he told her she would never be crazy.



After Gisela moved to San Francisco they exchanged more than 15 letters that survive. Mary Grace must have enjoyed the first letter dated July 16, 1939, in which Gisela wrote: Thanks for the letter, you are as funny on paper, as in reality.

But to tie this post to last week's, we'll jump to a letter in 1941.

Letter postmarked June 17, 1941:

Listen Dear Toots!
How are you? That accident still has me worried. You make more mistakes in a letter. Were your parents nice about it?

School ends June 14th. What do you plan to do now? Tell me everything you do.

I went to the Lowell Graduation Ball the other night with a cute red, white formals (with a long, too, of course, Lawrence. I've been going with him a year (it was our anniversary night, but now we've broken up. Or rather I told him that I didn't like him any more. He still likes me, the sissy.

I wish I weren't so particular about boys. There is one that likes me and really spends money on me, but I won’t see him anymore. I’m at last going to take piano lessons again.

I saw Citizen Kane and it was so wonderful. My parents saw it 3 times.

Sometimes I wish that I could drop in on you. I’m sort of homesick.

Mary Grace & Tarbaby 1935

Do you know who Wiedemann is? I bet you don’t. Well, he is the German consul here, handsome. His son goes to Lowell and he is on my bus every morning. Boy is he cute. To think that he is a Nazi is a pity. 
The Kamms had lived in the U.S. for more than five years, but still hadn't become citizens. Mary Grace received a letter from Gisela written a week after Pearl Harbor.

Dear Mary!

You should see the calm excitement here. Last Sunday we all had our ears glued to the radio. I spoke to as many of my friends as I could and we all felt very different. Of course, it is sort of hard to understand because you are not quite in the midst of it, but we felt that our whole life had been changed. Some things were of less importance. Last Monday I was practicing, the sirens blew and we had a blackout at 6:30. At first I was awfully nervous and then mother and I walked around and saw how people reacted. We explored for 2 hours and it was fun. The blackout was not such a success. You ought to see our house now, though. Dad takes everything very seriously. He has bathtubs full of water, both upstairs and downstairs. Blue lamps everywhere and black cloth over many windows. He is doing a good job of it. I wish we would have some more practice blackouts. Advice as to how to behave in case of an air raid, is instantly announced over the radio. First aid classes are being organized. We bought a portable radio and I’m going to have only one piano lesson a month. In . . . we are preparing for war. We have been here over 5 years and had our second papers in, but now no alien can become American. That’s tough because we hoped for it.
By February 1942 the Kamms were being relocated to Chicago.

Listen to this. We are going to Chicago. I don’t know whether you have followed the enemy alien situation in California or not, but here are the many reasons. We are not quite citizens yet because it takes so long before we are called. We handed in our second papers last year but . . . there are other things to do. Dad left yesterday and we will follow when we have packed and when I can get out of school. I think they will let out early because I have all the requirements for graduation and the entrance into the Northwestern University. We are trying to sell our lovely new furniture because it is too expensive to transport but in these times who wants to buy things on the unsafe West Coast. I am rather excited over the idea although we had thought this would be our home now. It is very beautiful as you well know and we had very many friends here. And what about Lawrence? We have gone steady now and we have gone together for two years and we wanted to marry later when he was through with college. I am sending this picture to give you again an idea as to the view from our 8-room flat. There are the times when the fog rolls in and envelops everything, or the time when it is so sunny and peaceful. It is that way now and I am going to sun myself to get a deeper tan. The view at night is especially breathtaking when it is dark and all the little towns around the black bay are lighted up and twinkle and the red lights of the Golden Gate Bridge are lighted. Boy, my typing can certainly stand improvements. 

**************

Do you know all the rules we aliens have to follow? I can’t go out any more, nor my mother, after 9 o’clock. You know what that means to a growing girl. We have to carry an identification with us. We may not be in certain zones like the embarcadero and the Marina Boulevard. We can’t go outside the 5-mile limit and we are leaving for Chicago ask for permission 7 days before we leave.


Gisela and her mother came through Topeka on their way to Chicago and Mary Grace and Gisela got together. But after she got to Chicago she never heard from her again.

"Me and the Cavalry" - February 1, 1942

Mary Grace thus titled a page in her scrapbook. She was 18 and a freshman at Washburn in February of 1942.A friend of her mother recruited both Mary and Helen for the U.S.O. that met at the YMCA. She wrote the following in My Life:

Mary in the back yard at home February 1, 1942

You had to attend so many things in order to go to the formal dances held in the Municipal Auditorium once a month with a real band.  I played a lot of pool at the week day meetings.  My parents had a pool table in our basement.  I wasn’t very good on the other hand I wasn’t very bad.  The soldiers from Ft. Riley were in the cavalry and wore boots that were not great to be stepped on during the dances.

Andy, Dante Fabrizzo & Tony, Feb 1, 1942

     Sixty years after Pearl Harbor Mary Grace described the aftermath of Pearl Harbor to Chris when he interviewed her for a class in college:

Andy, Mary & Tony - Feb 1 1942

    After a while the male students at Washburn began to leave school and men started joining the ROTC.  Also many soldiers began using the on campus facilities during the war.  The Air Force and Navy both took classes and lived on Washburn’s campus.  Mary Grace’s sorority, like all other sororities at Washburn, gave up their house for the Air Force’s soldiers to live in. The dormitories were also filled with servicemen, which were mainly from the Navy

She and Ray had met in October 1941, but didn't marry until July 1946. She told Chris that she didn't think the war had affected her life plans all that much, but it did make her love life interesting. In Ray's letters to her while he was briefly serving in the army, it's clear that he asked her to marry him during that time. Less than a year after he joined the Army, he was medically discharged. Mary Grace wrote in My Life that Ray had a hard time adjusting to the rut of going to college, etc.

So she wrote in My Life about those years:

During this time period I was still attending the USO festivities and dating service men that spent time in Topeka.  I had to write lots of letters and received a lot.  They gave me pictures of themselves and I kept track of them.  I almost got engaged to one as Ray and I were always breaking up.

(Your parents not actually getting together is always disconcerting because if they don't happen, you don't happen.)

Mary and her new bicycle

 E.A. operated two service stations in Topeka and did great business repairing cars and trucks during the war because there were no new cars for civilians. She told Chris:

   My father always said that he put us through college with batteries and antifreeze.

    During her college years which happened to be the war years, Mary Grace spent many afternoons working at her dad's downtown shop. She was in charge of gluing into the books the stamps that people used to purchase gas. She also helped her dad deliver repaired cars to their owners. After getting tired of using the bus to go downtown to work, she applied for permission to buy a bicycle. Eventually she was able to buy one at Sears. Then she could ride her bike to work, then put it in the back of her dad's pickup for the trip home. Sometimes on the way home, she'd deliver the cars and her dad would pick her up then and drive her home.

She told Chris that she felt things obviously changed with Pearl Harbor that happened when she was only a couple of months past her 18th birthday.

You had to grow up. Life became serious. I didn’t want to grow up - -