1915 South Broadway, Santa Ana, CA, 1952-1954

                                                                                 

                                                                                  

When Dad, Mom, Ann and I moved into the house on South Broadway, the Korean War was entering its final year (June 1950 to July 1953).  Dad had been a P.O.W. in WWII after his B-24 Liberator bomber was so crippled on a Ploesti Raid in 1944 that they could not make it back to their Italian base.  The crewmembers bailed out, likely over Yugoslavia, and Dad was soon captured and interred in a camp in Southern Germany until liberated by Patton's troops.  Dad would later tell me his only camp story, likely to a son who might have been a picky eater at some point.  He told me the Germans would dump a pile of  potatoes in the camp, and the prisoners had to wipe off the mud and eat, to ward off starvation.  He never explained whether they bothered to cook the potatoes first or ate them raw.

While he--and we--were stationed at George AFB, Dad must have been ordered to fly to Japan, probably to become directly involved in Korea as a bombardier.  With a wife and two children back home, and the prospect of being shot down once again and becoming a P.O.W. of the North Korean communists, he decided to resign his commission and become a civilian for the first time since he attended Bombardier training school in 1943.  In later years, he would tell Ann that he regretted resigning from the Air Force, but at the time he must have felt quite differently.

With his resignation, we would have had to leave George AFB for the house on Broadway in 1952, which was originally built in 1947, in the first waves of homes constructed for returning WWII veterans.  Why Santa Ana? 

I have no idea what job Dad did while we lived in Santa Ana, but he was probably an employee for Fuller Paint, perhaps working in a store located there.  And Santa Ana was up the road from Newport Beach, where Grandma and Grandpa Sanchez owned a house on the water off of W Bay Avenue.  Grandpa had somehow learned to sail and owned a sailboat that he loved.  Here is the boat with Grandpa standing on their dock.  I have no idea who was piloting the sailboat.
                                                                         

Below, Ann is in the arms of Grandma Sanchez while I am wearing what looks to be a very primitive type of life vest.  I do remember being in the interior of Grandpa's sailboat as we cruised the harbor.                                                                            

Grandpa Sanchez is looking at the two of us on the sailboat.
                                                                              

Here is a different photo of Grandpa and me sailing aboard his boat.
                                                                             

Here are a few photos of Mom with one or both of us kids on the sailboat.
                                                                                 

                                                                                 

                                                                                                   

The Grandparents' home on the water along W Bay Avenue was only three doors down from a small, sandy beach where, I believe, the following photos were taken.
                                                                             

                                                                            

                                                                               

Here are photos of the front yard of the Grandparents' house, between the house itself and the dock.  The house was built in 1952.
                                                                                  

                                                                                  

                                                                               

                                                                                  

When I was born, Dad sent the telegram announcing my birth to an address on the water, but on the other side of the bay from Lido Isle and further toward the open sea along Newport harbor.  In between their living at that former waterfront address and Via Lido Nord, they had moved to Yucaipa, CA.  They owned a two-story house with some land around it where they grew apricot trees.  Below are the only two photos I have of a visit Ann and I made, likely with just Mom.  I do have a distinct and lasting memory of showing up there late one night by car with a full moon above and being carried up the stairs to the top floor where the Grandparents lived.  I slept on the floor that night with the moon peering in at me through open Venetian blinds.   

Mom would tell me a story of Grandpa Sanchez giving her eggs and other food items to take back with her, likely to George AFB while Dad was in Japan.  She said she would stop along the highway on the return home, to sell whatever Grandpa had given her while I played in and around the car.  Perhaps as a cash-strapped service wife with an absent husband away at war, she needed additional money to get by.
                                                                             

                                                                                    

Those couple of years of our living in Santa Ana before we would move to Whittier, CA, feature far more photos than I have memories.  Besides the death of the little playmate on the next block of Broadway, dying of diabetes and us kids climbing up a wooden step to view her tiny body, seemingly at peace, under a pink gauze fabric that covered her entire coffin, in addition to my venturing to Main Street of Santa Ana, two blocks over from Broadway, where an older man gave me a stick of gum, I remember little else of that time before Whittier.  (Mom would chide me when I got home after I told the tale of the elderly fellow giving me gum.  She would warn that I ought never to accept candy or gum from a stranger.  My response today would be, "Why the heck did you let a 4-year-old child hike alone two blocks over, to a busy street where the sidewalks had several strangers walking to and fro?")

Given the photographic evidence, I don't know whether it was a single visit by everyone, or there were a couple of separate visits by relatives, mostly on mom's side.  One of those visits involved both sets of grandparents, as well as Aunt Jean, Mom's one sister, and her son, our cousin, Doug Green.  I am not entirely certain, but this may have been the only time that both sets of grandparents ever met one another.  Below is a photo of Grandma and Grandpa Breeze and us three cousins.  Ann is on Grandma Breeze's lap, Cousin Doug is standing.  I am on Grandpa Breeze's lap.  Grandpa Breeze would die in 1956, two years hence, back in White Cloud, KS, at the early age of 55. 

He was not feeling well at the town gas station where he worked that hot July day.  He would attempt to hike back to their house to rest but would succumb to a massive heart attack while lying on a wooden picnic table off of main street.   Aunt Jean would later remark that it was such a hot day when they attended the services at a local church before they buried their father in the cemetery above the town.  Grandma Breeze would outlive him by more than thirty years, dying herself of a heart attack in her home in White Cloud in 1989 while Uncle Robert was in the adjoining living room to her bedroom, watching TV.  (Aunt Doris, Mom's youngest sister, and Uncle Robert would also die of heart attacks, while Mom would die of congestive heart failure in 2002.)

This photo is the only one that exists showing us three cousins with the Breeze Grandparents, the last time when Grandpa Breeze would see us and we would see him.  I simply have no memories of him or this final visit.                                                                                      

Below are the three of us cousins, posed together to the left.  The two girls to the right of us in the photo are Betty Jo and Nancy, second cousins to we three, daughters of Mom's cousin, Grace.  Nancy would die of cancer, as would her mother.  Ann and I would be saddened to see, when we visited the Hiawatha Cemetery not far from White Cloud after Mom died in 2002, that Nancy had not even been given a proper headstone on her grave.  She still only had the temporary metal one they place on the grave when someone is first buried.  
                                                                     

This photo is the only one I am aware of featuring the two Grandmothers together with Ann and me.  I assume that Grandpa Sanchez was also present, but we have no photographs.
                                                                              

The following photos are of Betty Jo and Nancy's parents, as well as Mom and Dad and Ann and me.  Again, was this during the same visit photographed above, or a different visit?   The reason I believe this was a separate visit is the appearance of a Christmas tree at the edge of the photo of their family and the holiday cards on the fireplace.
                                                                               

Here are additional photos of that visit with combinations of the kids and the parents.
                                                                                 

Uncle Robert joins us on the far right, standing, below.  I am not sure who is the couple on the left, standing.                                                                              

Here is the tree and living room unobstructed.
                                                                                  

Here are the women and girls but no grandparents.  Mom with Ann (?).  I am not sure who the woman with the frizzy hair and the nan sitting on the floor are.
                                                                               

Easter was yet another time to get out the camera and takes photos.  Here Ann and I are with our Easter baskets in the driveway with the garage in back.
                                                                                

                                                                                  

Not sure why we two were all dressed up and photographed, but here we are.
                                                                                   

                                                                             

                                                                               

                                                                         

Again, no idea the reason why we were photographed below, except that Ann has a new baby carriage.  I have no idea what I am holding (getting out the magnifying glass, I see they are some kind of old style cars.  I am wearing a rather spiffy jacket.)
                                                                              

                                                                                 

                                                                                 

   

These were photos obviously taken of the backyard in Santa Ana when we were younger than we had been in the later photos above, possibly just after we moved in.  Old WWII life rafts were good substitutes for wading pools.
                                                                              

                                                                               

                                                                                

                                                                                  

                                                                                

Here are some photos, mostly of Ann when she was younger and often dolled up.  The fire engine she is pushing has a story.  Apparently, Grandma Sanchez bought that for us kids but was appalled to learn that it had, at one point, been left out in the rain.  Mom used to tell that story years later.
                                                                              

                                                                                

                                                                                     

Mom could often take a glamourous photograph.  Here she is with Ann.  My sister appears almost to be in the way of Mom's studied pose.
                                                                                  

Here are the two of us, dressed up once again.  Rare, though faded, color photographs.
                                                                               

                                                                               

More backyard photographs:
                                                                                  

                                                                                   

                                                                                  

Not sure why Ann is dressed up and I am not.
                                                                                  

The following is a very rare, vintage photograph.  Clearly this is the two of us with Mom and Grandma Breeze.  We are at Knotts Berry Farm.  I have not found other photographs of that visit to the park.
                                                                                  

Here are we with some neighbor kids, including the Rousseau's in a wagon.  I am in the backrow and to the left.  Ann is in the bottom row in the center.  I had a later Christmas postcard that Mom kept of the Rousseau kids when their family had moved to Spokane, Washington, likely after their father had retired from the service.  Mom had kept up a continuous correspondence with their mother, Charlotte.  When we lived in Whittier in that first year, I believe, we journeyed up the California coast to visit them in Monterey.  Hwy 1 in those days was extremely twisty, and we two kids in the backseat often got car sick.  If Dad stopped to get us a coke to settle our delicate stomachs, we would have to keep the cups in case we puked again.

The three Rousseau kids had lived around the corner in a two-story clapboard house, likely built years before.  I see no evidence of their house in current satellite photos of Santa Ana.  Perhaps the front faced Main Street and their house was later torn down to make way for a business.  I am certain their Dad was in the Marine Corps.  (I later found Curly on Facebook; but while he confirmed the photo was of him, his older brother Tom, and his sister, he seemed entirely unconcerned about providing any further information about the family we had all been close to so many years before.  I heard nothing further from him and let the renewed contact drop.)    

Mom did tell the embarrassing story of Ann and me in the tub in the sole bathroom in our house.  She says the phone rang and she went to answer it.  For some unknown reason, Ann and I got out of the tub and hiked over to the Rousseau's house, to play in the dirt in their backyard.  Inexplicably, we two siblings decided to head over there sans clothing of any kind.  After Mom got off the phone, she got an immediate call from Charlotte, to say that we were playing in their backyard with her kids entirely naked.  Mercifully, I have no memory of that adventure.
                                                                            

I have one other distinct memory of living on S. Broadway in Santa Ana.  On Main Street to the north, on the other side of the street, was a Beany & Cecil's hamburger joint (named for the cartoon TV series) from 1949 to 1955.   After we must have gotten some burgers, Dad pulled around to the dirt parking in back where they featured a puppet show we could watch from the car.  

Apparently, Dad had gotten a job at a Fuller Paint Store in Whittier, CA.  We probably moved there, likely in June of 1954, leaving Santa Ana behind, to cut down his driving time to his job.  Many years later, we stopped by a house around the corner from ours on Broadway that faced W St Andrew Place.  An older, childless couple lived there.  The widow told us the story of how Ann would visit their house in the afternoons during the week and waited at the window for her husband to come home.  Ann delighted in seeing him and he in seeing her as he opened the front door. 

Mom did enter Ann in child beauty contests in those early days.  I remember a photograph or two of her holding a small trophy and wearing a tiny crown.  I don't have those photos, but I do have these two professional photos of me that can be seen on the mantle of the living room in those Christmas photographs.  (I don't know why the photographer or Mom did not straighten that turned under collar.)                                                                    

                                                                                  

And, of course, there was this one of Mom with us two kids.
                                                                                 

                                                                            
I do remember being taken by car to the new house in Whittier and being tucked in to a twin bed in our new bedroom, with Dad and Mom leaving the hall door ajar and the hall light on so we could find our way to the new hall bathroom.  We had not been old enough in Santa Ana to attend kindergarten, but that Fall I would be, and the idyllic life that we had known in Santa Ana--of life raft pools in the backyard and holiday photographs with our nuclear family--would eventually come to an end before the decade concluded.