Part Two of Answering Wendy's Questions

Part Two of Answering Wendy's Questions 

    

                                            July 10, 2020            3122 Dean Court, Minneapolis, MN  55416

                 Wendy's Question Number Two.   --     What years were you at Stanford?  And your degree?

I entered Stanford University in the fall of 1956 and graduated at the end of spring quarter in 1960 

with a degree in chemistry.  My favorite part of the undergraduate curriculum was organic chemistry and a bit of biochemistry which courses we took on the campus of the newly developing Stanford School of Medicine which was adjacent to the main campus in the west part of Palo Alto.  

Just as a segue in my life between June 1960 and my connecting with Trent in 1963,  after graduating 

that summer I left California and went across the country to the New York City area where I took

a job for Merck & Co at their major research lab in Rahway, New Jersey, and, having nothing to do with

chemistry, to pursue a passion developed during the college years, in Austrian (non-Keynesian, that is, free market economics).  The great proponent of the Austrian school of economics was then giving lectures one night a week at NYU Downtown and the job in New Jersey let me go to these lectures.  It was a great experience.  I did it for two years. 

Came back home to La Canada, California in the summer of 1962.  Later that fall, I got a job in the food lab of the Carnation Evaporated Milk Co which was in Van Nuys out in the San Fernando Valley.  I was living at home in La Canada the time.  

Oops, time to start answering:

                Wendy's Question Number Three   --   Where did you and Trent meet?

This is a goofy story!  Are you ready??

Living back at home in my parents home after being out on my own for several years just wasn't going

anywhere for me.  Sometime in the winter of 62-63 one of my co-workers Pauline at Carnation was getting married to an Italian heart surgeon who was working at the big Catholic hospital (can't remember the name) in downtown Los Angeles on a Fulbright scholarship.  Turns out she was moving out of an apartment on Park Avenue in South Pasadena.  Small world--this apartment was about 4 blocks from where your father and I had lived from 1946 to 1952 at 706 Garfield Ave.  We have plenty of pictures of that place!  Anyway, this apartment was shared with a couple of other working girls and they needed another roommate.  Great!  I am all for that, so I took Pauline's place when she and Beppi got married.  

Turns out my roommate Beth was an art assistant for an art director in a small advertising firm in Pasadena Woohoo! woohoo!  

In April 63 Pauline was still working at Carnation and her new husband Beppi had sponsored a young Italian girl to come to LA for heart surgery.  They needed blood donations to support this endeavor, and so the call went out among our friends and associates for donors.  And sweet Beth my new roommate invited all the donors to come over for a spaghetti dinner.  Among the donors was her boss the art director from that advertising agency Bottomly and WILSON!!!  So over a spaghetti dinner in that funky South Pasadena apartment after a blood donation was where, when and how Carol met Trent. The date approximately April 25, 1963.  Inauspicious beginning to a generally wonderful life, though!!!  

                 Wendy's Question Number Four   --  Any Important Sites to your courtship---if you can  

                                                                                                                                       remember!

Compared to the relationships I had had before,  this one really moved fast!  Of course, by then I was nearly 25 and Trent was 32.  Let's just say we were ready to get married!!  Trent had graduated from UCLA in 1952 10 years ago and I had graduated 5 years ago.  Trent was currently living in a two-room house up on Mt Washington in northeast LA/Highland Park area.  The address was 382 W Ave 43, 

LA 90031.  I looked up this place on Google this morning.  I think they have redone the whole area.   The little house is no longer there, and it looks like they have even renamed the street.  But look for the street between W Ave 42 and W Ave 44  up the hill on Mt Washington.  I will say that after we got married we even lived there for three months.

A couple of things I remember about our courtship.  This one takes a bit of a story also.  When Trent was at UCLA a woman in some of his art classes was married to a German Count who apparently had made quite a bit of money in the oil business.  He had a castle somewhere in Germany, but in deciding to move to the US he had to have a castle in this country, so they had built a beautiful castle in Benedict Canyon in 

Beverly Hills, were he and hs family had lived for some time.  Count von Bibra and his wife Edith had raised a family I think of 3 children there.  Of course, the castle had a servant quarters' wing, and Edith would have young art students live in those rooms, of which Trent was one.  Edith was very fond of Trent and I think he lived up there in the castle for his junior and senior year.  Anyway, he took me up there to meet her.  We have some pictures of this beautiful place, and I may have the address, which is up  Benedict Canyon Rd.  

One other event comes to mind and involves your father!  We had an engagement party in September at Lillian and Glen Hamilton's house which was right across the street from Trent's little house up on Ave 43.       The Hamiltons had a swimming pool, but I think it wasn't very deep.  I believe Graham was in medical, at USC, and he and Ann came to this party.  Graham took a dive into the Hamilton's pool and hit his head on the bottom!  Fortunately, he did not seem to be hurt, but we took him to the ER anyway to get checked out.  He was ok, and the rest is history, but scary! 

Trent was not very happy during this time with his business arrangements with his partner.  I encouraged his to close Bottomly and Wilson and look for another job.  Which he did, and landed a job with Bryan Hardwick and Associates in Palos Verdes Estates.  Bryan's main clients during this time were real estate developers mostly  in Orange County.  Here began the main client base that Trent was involved with through the rest of his working life.  Orange County was on the cusp of its post war development, and we presided over our little corner of it from then on out until he retired in 1996.  Of course, we did not move to Orange County until 1966.  

Big Sur

Wendy Smith	9:41 AM (2 hours ago)
to me, Daddy

Hi Dad and Carol,

I received this regarding a gorgeous print this morning and have always longed to go to Big Sur. It's unforgivable I never got there during my 12 years in San Francisco. Do we have any lore / roots / connection there?

Thank  you for everything you've sent thus  far. I'm relishing the journey you are allowing me to take via your knowledge and memories. 

xoxoxooox.w

Graham Smith	10:52 AM (1 hour ago)
to Wendy, me

A quick search of my archives did not recover any information about Smith-Davis in Big Sur. We drove up Ca Highway 1 several times, once with Carol and Trent, but just stopped to sightsee. Lots of contacts in Santa Barbara and the Rebstocks in Cayucos, 

-- 

to Graham, Wendy

I remember the trip up the coast with your parents, Wendy.  As Graham said, we were traveling up Hwy 1 in our vw van.  I think we picked up your parents in Santa Barbara where they were for a medical meeting.  Drove up, visited Gail and Mel in Cayucos, and kept on driving up Hwy 1 through Big Sur and ending in Carmel. 

But let me think, we did take other trips up there when the kids were younger.  We had one overnight trip up there where we stayed in a nice resort/camp style cabin in Big Sur.  There was a favorite restaurant there too, which I think had a gorgeous view of the coast. But I can't remember the name of it. I bet it is still there.  And maybe it was on this same trip we found ourselves coming back from Monterey/Carmel to Big Sur on that freaky, scary Hwy 1 at night in the FOG!!  Had to go back because we were spending the night there!

Those stretches of Hwy 1 are spectacular but scary.  Very narrow and winding with massively steep drop-offs hundreds of feet into the Pacific Ocean.  It's fabulous, but don't wait until you are too old.  You will be too frightened.  I remember one of the last times we visited Gail in Cayucos, she told us she absolutely would not drive up that road any more.  And I remember times driving up there with Trent, we would run into big slides of earth down on the roadway--cliffs above and below.  

Oh, one other thing--you have to go to Clint Eastwood's restaurant in Carmel for Sunday brunch!

So that's my story for now, my dears.      Carol

Part One of Answering Wendy's Questions

                                                                                             May 13, 2020

Wendy Smith, Graham's youngest daughter, has taken an interest in family history.  She is now living and working in Austin, Texas.  Specifically, she is looking for information relating to geographical locations in California where her father Graham and I grew up.  She plans to compile the information that Graham and I give her and connect it to sites on a map that she is going to construct, so when she goes out to California she can visit these special places and read about her family past that occurred at each of those locations.

It was decided during our hour-long Zoom session this morning, which included myself, Graham,
Ann and Wendy that for my contributions, she would send me questions concerning her subjects of interest and I would send her my answers.  Hence this new blog that I thought would be the best format for me to give her my info.  And as well, the information can become part of our other family history records.

I decided this would also be a good opportunity for me to record some of the family stories that I have been told over the years by elder family members (after all I took care of my mother through the end years of her nearly 90 year-long life) as well as some of my own experiences.

So here it is for all to read--my new blog Family Reminicsings.

Here is Wendy's first set of questions to me, her aunt!!

Hi Carol,

So wonderful  to  see and hear from you  this morning! I am so excited about  this  project and can't  wait to capture the many special sites relative  to  our   families and link them to  all the existing  photos—and  stories!

For now, please see the questions here:

1. What was the name of your high school? What year did you graduate?
2. What  years were you  at Stanford? And your degree? 
3. Where did you and Trent meet?
4. Any important sites to your courtship—if  you can remember!
5. Where did  you and Trent get married?
6. Where was your  first home / apartment together?
7. When did  you move  to  Anaheim?
8. What  was  the address of the house there that I remember?

Let's just start with those. And take your  time!

xoxoxo.w

And so here beginneth my answers.  Wendy's first question: What was the name of your high school?           1.  The name of my                       The name of  my high school was Anoakia School for Girls. It was located at the corner of
Foothill Blvd. and Baldwin Ave. in Arcadia which is a suburb east of Pasadena.  I graduated in 1956.
Wendy, I say the name of this school WAS Anoakia, because if you go the corner of Foothill Blvd.
and Baldwin today, you will see a walled community of homes!

The story about the location and name and physical make-up of school is interesting.  A man by the
name of Lucky Baldwin was a large landowner in that area of Arcadia/Monrovia around the turn of the
twentieth century. He was probably a rancher.  He had a daughter named Anita to whom he gave this
good-sized piece of land on which they built her quite an elegant estate which they named Anoakia to
signify her first name Anita and that the property was covered with oaks.  Our school was actually in the
buildings of that estate.  The offices and a small population of boarding girls occupied the main house.
Our classrooms and a gym and a lovely swimming pool and pool house comprised the outbuildings on
the property. The grounds were spacious and lovely and it really made a very nice setting for a small
girls school.

But push came to shove, and the ownership of the property fell into the hands of people who did not,
IMO, know how to run a girls' school very well, and besides, maybe Mr. McCaslin just wanted his
money out of it,  so I am going to say that some 3 or 4 years after I graduated, he sold to developers,
and BOOM, now it is a housing development.