The KU J-school assignment - 40 years apart

     A couple of weeks ago, the boys and I traveled to Lawrence for some housekeeping chores. When we were finished with the chores, we walked to the KU campus to visit the Natural History Museum. As we walked up the steps to Dyche Hall, a young woman approached us and asked if she could photograph us visiting the museum. She said she had a photography assignment for a journalism class.

Lawrence Park winter 1970-71

     We said we had no problem with that and she was so unobtrusive the boys and I soon forgot that she was there. But it did take me more than 40 years ago when I took my one journalism photography course here at KU. The biggest difference, of course, would be the equipment we each used. The current J-School student could shoot in the low light of the museum without any problem. When I took the class, I used a light meter separate from the camera and did everything manually.

Sally throws a Frisbee through a car window at Nieman School 1970

Contact sheet of photos I took for class

The photos in this blog are from those assignments almost 45 years ago. I hadn't seen these for several decades, but I'm still happy with them. I'm probably still too proud of them mainly because I can't remember my grades.

Scott and his trombone

    I liked the class, the instructor not so much. It took a lot of time and unlike writing, it involved actual time of doing things, shooting the photos, developing them and finding out they weren't in focus and the perfect photo was probably a smidge over. In contrast writing was a lot of time, sitting and staring and then putting something down on paper. Writing seemed like the way I might have the most success.

Chris Jensen shoots the ball in the backyard at the Topeka house on Jewell.

I didn't share any of this with the young woman that day - thought it was probably more than she wanted. If I could do it again, with instant results from the photography, I'm not sure which I would choose. Probably would still be writing.

Edward Walker's Niece and the Blitz

     The Liverpool-Merseyside blitz is the forgotten blitz of World War II, or in my case, unknown. I hadn't realized that areas outside of London were systematically bombed by the Germans. I do remember Mary Grace saying that during World War II some of the Walker relatives might send their children to Kansas. I thought that meant they lived in London. But they did not, they lived inn Birkenhead now called  Merseyside. This is a link to the Merseyside area

Russia Hall - Edward's home for about 10 years, but it remained the Walker family home for more than a century.

Edward Walker, Edna's father, was the second son and fifth child of Thomas and Mary Walker. As the second son, Edward believed his prospects were better in America. Edna remembered her father saying he was the black sheep of the family - probably because he was the only one of his eight siblings to leave the British Isles.
   

    Edward's family may have been thousands of miles away, but he kept in touch. Edna thought he'd made at least three return trips to visit Russia Hall including one in 1898 when he took Betsy with him. A letter written in 1961 from Ada Walker Smith to Laura Leib mentions that Betsy enjoyed the Walker family when she visited them. She especially enjoyed Ann, Edward's younger sister by three years, and her daughters. Ann had five daughters and one son. The one letter from Ann that survives, written in 1917, mentions the possibility of one of the daughters coming to Kansas to attend Washburn.

Ann Walker, dark dress, front row at her daughter Etta's marriage to John Richard Leach in 1909.

     Edna at her marriage to EA in 1913 wore Etta's veil.

From left: Bill Smith, Delphia Burkhardt, EA, Edna, Ada, Grace, Eula and Fred.
Back row: Henry Thayer, Jenny Thayer Walker, Bud, Betsy, Frank Faust, George Bale
Front row: Dorothy Leib & ?

   Here is the letter from Ada to Laura in 1960 or 1961 in which I learned about the cousin being killed in a raid.

Laura, I am sending this letter that tells about the school in Chester which Dorothy wanted to read. The lady who wrote of it is my first cousin her mother was father’s sister. This girl is the one who painted the picture of our fathers’ home which you saw in our dining room. Her husband is dead but she lives near another cousin of mine named Mary and her husband is living. The Joyce who she speaks of is the only child of their sister who was killed in a raid during the war. She and her husband were both killed. There were three girls in this Croston family and mother liked them so well when she met them while in Europe. Return this letter when you have perused same.  

       The Germans began the bombing of Liverpool in August 1940. During the first week of May 1941 nearly 700 planes dropped 870 tons of high explosives and 112,000 firebombs were dropped on Liverpool and the surrounding area docks. More than 1500 people died. The last blitz was on January 10, 1942. The Liverpool area had the highest death toll of any area outside of London.

      As mentioned earlier, Ann Walker had five daughters: Sarah, Mary, Henrietta - Etta, Isabella and Lalla. According to records I've found Isabella Munro Hodgson died September 27, 1943 and her husband Edwin died in 1945. Those years are outside the dates of the bombings, but I assume they could have died from injuries suffered during the blitz.
   
The area around Lord Street and Castle Street was severely damaged. 3/4 May 1941

Ann Walker's children from left:
Charles Younger, Isabella Croston, ? Etta Croston, John Leach and Lalla Croston
pictured at Etta's wedding to John Leach in 1909. 

Some Truly Mod People Enjoy the Plaza Easter Sunday 1970

     I think this clip is self-explanatory, or perhaps, not explainable.  By the way Easter was on March 29th that year.

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 - -