(Excerpt from memoirs written by Barbara LaGarde)

In 1915-17 we were in the Panama Canal Zone where Daddy was in command of Gorgas Hospital at Ancon. We lived there in the Delesseps house. Its approach was lined with Royal palms. The third floor was completely eaten up by White Ants. While there we had an opportunity to go by Navy Ship through the Canal with friends of the family, a most exciting and memorable day. We went to a nearby school in Panama.

On our return on an Army transport after a two-year duty, we had to be aware of U-boats. This was 1918 and I remember m mother being so frightened until we had safely passed Cape Hatteras. When we arrived in Washington, DC, we found an apartment in Northwest DC on Belmont Road. Daddy was assigned to the Surgeon General’s office to try to establish ambulance airplanes. They tried out some four seater German planes. We were all given a chance to have a flight around DC., even my Grandmother, Nana. Daddy declared we all looked “green around the gills”.

Elizabeth and I were sent to Cathedral School, a day school, and were picked up by a car sent for several of us. That winter was the big snowstorm. We lived a block from the movie house, the Knickerbocker Theater. The roof collapsed from too much snow and Daddy was one of the first to arrive to help in rescue and treatment of the injured. At Cathedral School we used to go to services at Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral, being built close by on the grounds of the School.

After being in DC for two or three years, we returned to San Francisco and Letterman Hospital where Daddy was in command. Elizabeth and I went to Miss Burke’s School on Jackson Street, not too far from The Presidio. We arrived there in a WWI ambulance pulled by two Army mules. This was quite a contrast to those girls arriving in chauffeured limousines! It was very embarrassing to me!

Our house was big and comfortable and made more so by glassed-in porch with all sorts of plants Mother and Nana took pleasure in growing. We also received a daily bouquet of flowers from the Hospital greenhouse. There was a golf course nearby where we took lessons. We also rode horses from The Presidio stables on wonderful scenic and sandy trails. Elizabeth stayed with Uncle Elliot and his wife so she could finish high school at Miss Burke’s School, and then joined us in Manila.

We left San Francisco for the Philippines in 1924. Mother was pregnant with my brother, Jack, and I’m sure the long trip by Transport Thomas was not always easy. After a stopover in Honolulu, we arrived in Manila twenty-eight days in all after we started out. We had a big airy house in Military Plaza with a cook, houseboy, lavendara and chauffeur.

Jack was born in 1924 at Sternberg Hospital in Manila. I went to the American School where most of the white children went. There were about 75 of us in all. I was the only one in my class in high school. The Manila Hotel was nearby and we went there for dances- a glamorous setting! I played hooky from school with a naval officer’s daughter who lived there. We hired a “calesa”, a native pony and carriage, to take us to the Polo Club to swim at the beach there. We had a fun day!

There was a vacation spot in the mountains called Bagino where we had quarters and ate at the club served by the native Igorotes in their “G” strings and white jackets. There was a nine-hole golf course, native pony-back trips to Santo Thomas and mummy caves and going to the local market of the Igorotes. The Brent School for Boys was also located in Baguio with four or five young guys as teachers. They helped a lot to make it a fun time there.

We left Manila for China in 1926, going first to Hong Kong where we stayed a couple of days and bought fur coats for the trip home. It was lucky we did, because when we arrived in Shanghai it was bitterly cold. Jack came down with acidosis so he and Mother went to some Chinese nursing home until we had to leave for Nagasaki to catch the Transport Thomas for San Francisco. We were unable to go to Peking because the warlords were fighting and made it dangerous. An Englishman friend of Elizabeth’s was killed while traveling there. As we left Shanghai harbor our Japanese ship sank a Chinese junk. No effort was made to save their lives as the Chinese believed that, if you saved a life, it was your responsibility to look after him.

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