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In January 1948, welcomed by family wearing sunglasses, my dad and grandma arrived at the Santa Fe train station in Pasadena, California.
Several months earlier, just before my dad graduated high school, his father died unexpectedly following surgery. Grandpa was hurt moving a large beam at their home, an old farmhouse fixer-upper on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The family moved to that home during the Great Depression when finances forced them out of their home in the city.
The property was remote, sprawling—it had a pond, woods, a gas well, and outbuildings where chickens were raised—and would’ve been hard to maintain without grandpa’s handiwork. That reality must have made the ambitious move west seem less daunting.
In March of 1948, after weeks of visiting and staying with relatives around Los Angeles, my dad and grandma moved into a small trailer at a mobile home lot in Santa Monica.
Dad served in the Navy Reserve, attended community college, and held a series of jobs that included a stint selling “funny fotos” to tourists on Muscle Beach just south of the Santa Monica Pier. He also served in the Army and later landed a long career in aerospace.
Financially astute, grandma made the most of the gig work of her era: babysitting. Those earnings helped her buy a duplex in Westwood and then a single-family home with a white picket fence a few miles away. The latter property, purchased with my dad in 1959 for about $18,500, became the home where I grew up.
I’m grateful for the trail grandma and dad blazed as well as for the anecdotes I’ve heard over the years and the lessons their experiences imparted. Among my takeaways:
1. Embrace change and persevere. In life, we may have to start over repeatedly as we weather storm after storm. Grandma and dad’s story spanned an adoption, the Great Depression, deaths, multiple moves, and other challenges. Our response to adversity can touch future generations via stories shared, habits inherited, and the financial legacies we leave.
2. Move, if it makes sense. Neither moving to a dilapidated chicken farm from Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood nor leaving their region of birth was easy. But sometimes the places we fondly call home no longer align with our needs. Finances, health, and other family circumstances can all change. A fresh start in a place with new opportunities or a lower cost of living can be worthwhile.
3. Stepping stones keep your toes dry. Moving from a small trailer to a duplex to a single-family home shows progress. It also reminds us that we don’t always attain everything we want right away, even after we’ve arrived at a new stage in life. Achieving financial goals can take hard work, frugality, savings, and a healthy respect for risk management.
The Golden State worked out well for grandma and dad. And even though I never got to skate on the farmhouse pond back in Pittsburgh, I never had to shovel snow, either.
This article reminds me how much family history is really a story of courage, movement, and starting over. In my own family, all six of my grandmother’s sisters migrated to California in the 1930s and 1940s, chasing opportunity during a time when nothing was easy or guaranteed. That generation did not talk about “reinventing themselves” the way we do today — they simply packed up, moved west, found work, raised families, and built a new life one step at a time. There is something powerful about that. They understood hardship, but they also understood motion. Sometimes staying put is not the answer. Sometimes the next chapter requires leaving what is familiar, taking a risk, and trusting that hard work, thrift, faith, and family will carry you through. Their lives are a reminder that progress often happens in stages — one job, one small house, one sacrifice, one decision at a time — and that the choices made by one generation can open doors for the next.
Well done.
Thanks, Jeff. Interesting coincidence that your grandmother and her six sisters all came to California as six of my grandma’s sisters came as well. Big families back in the day!
Jeff: Your family’s story is called survival.
I really enjoyed this post. Thank you. The reminder to appreciate any step in a positive direction is so healthy. I think we have lost that in our ‘immediate gratification’ culture.