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In the few other little photos from this period we look like vagabonds, sitting at picnic tables in the park. I was to have my own drifting years to come and these images of my parents represent for me a link from my own history to theirs.
During these Second World War years, I am unsure why my father was not sent to fight. In my mind there is a story that at some time he had wanted to enter West Point My mother also contributed to the war effort. She was granted a War Emergency Certificate to teach nursery school in Vancouver, Washington, minutes across the Willamette River from where we lived, and she also organized Victory Gardens in our precinct of Portland. Back to Index Next page |
and had been disqualified for physical reasons, perhaps that he was too thin to float in water. It is a vague memory. What I do know is that after New Mexico we came to Portland, Oregon and here my father worked in the shipyards, learning the skill of drafting which would enable him to create complex buildings on the farm in later years. He was gifted at this, as he was at many things, and I think he wished in later life that he had turned to architecture rather than psychology in school.