I was born in Pasadena, California the same year Norma Jean Mortenson changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Elvis entered the US charts for the first time with his recording of Heartbreak Hotel that year, and Cecil B. DeMille’s released his epic film The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston. I don’t really feel old, until I stop to think about how different the world was when I first arrived in comparison to what it has become of it in the decades since.
My father was a Kansas farm boy who was part of the 300,000 Dust Bowl refugees who fled to California in the 1930s in search of a better life. He found it in the form of a lovely girl from Oklahoma, the only daughter in a family of a dozen boys. Gene and Nina married young, and started a family, and built a home in El Monte, California. Like so many of his generation, he joined the Army and was sent to the Philippines to fight the Japanese in WWII. He did not talk much about his experiences overseas, but enough slipped out over the years to make it clear that it was a harrowing experience, complete with many close brushes with death. It wasn’t any easier for mom, who listened nightly to Gabriel Heater’s broadcast outlining the war efforts. Heater started his broadcasts with “Good evening, everyone—there is good news tonight” and mom held her young daughter close and prayed for a happy ending.