Isn’t he handsome in his little Christmas outfit! Its so fun to dress him up!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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.

Carrie, after the death of her husband, Fitch Powers, lived with Olive and John who were the Postmasters of the town of Otto, NY. Both Bee and Bim and I drove to Otto for her ninetieth birthday and to take home some of her furniture, rugs, lamps, etc., that she treasured and wanted me to have. She lived to the age of 92.

To return to my father’s tours of duty, after Letterman Hospital in 1910 we went by Army transport to the Philippine Islands where we lived in Iloilo, south of Manila. Mother had a Japanese “Amah” to take care of us three children. On the way back to Manila by interisland transport, the Japanese Amah took my brother and jumped overboard; they were presumed lost at sea. I dimly remember the stateroom and being so frightened at the turmoil. I remember crying so much from missing him, and my mother crying for so long after.

We returned to San Francisco about 1912-13. From there we went to Governor’s Island in NY harbor. In earlier days the island was a fortification for the protection of New York. It had a five-star shaped fortification, gun emplacements, a moat, drawbridge, and barracks on the inside. On the opposite side of the island there was a parapet where the Officer’s Club stood. I went to dancing school there, carrying my patent leather dancing shoes in a bag to be changed there. We lived in brick quarters at Ft. Jay. Elizabeth and I went to a small school there.

During that time on Governor’s Island, there were events that made a lasting impression. The worst for me as a seven-year old was being taken to a N.Y. hospital, where scary women in black robes and white caps took me away from Mother and Daddy. They made me lie on a cold, tile floor in a bathroom. There they gave me an enema, which, of course, scared me even more. I don’t remember anything until I woke up and realized I was in a crib and my neck hurt. So I screamed and cried for hours. Finally, Mother and Daddy appeared, so I cried some more! A little boy in a crib next to mine told them: “Him cry all the time!” Both Elizabeth and I had infected glands in our necks, the result of having measles. Back home again, Daddy had to change bandages for both of us, which was most painful.

Another event was the exciting trip to the Hippodrome Theater and its wondrous variety program. We had also had lunch in N.Y. City, which I gulped down in my hurry to go to the show. All that noise and excitement was too much. I had to leave the show before I threw up. It was awful!
We also saw in N.Y the Fire Department: a wagon pulled by six or eight horses. They came racing pell mell down the street with the bells clanging wildly. It was most thrilling and exciting!
Around 1915 Daddy was sent to Galveston, Texas to help with the devastation there caused by a fierce hurricane and tidal wave. While there he wrote cute little letters to my sister, Elizabeth, and me. They usually told a bedtime story of “Jocko and Mose”, a vivid picture of his life in a tent and how he missed us. He also did little drawings to illustrate. These are now in a protected album. They are priceless for the humor and the conditions with which he had to cope.

“After leaving Cuba he (Albert Truby) was stationed at Ft. Myer, VA.  From there he went to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay for duty on the Army post there.  While there he came to know and court Elizabeth Downing, who lived on hilly Green St. in San Francisco.  He told the story of spending one evening with Elizabeth, or “Bonnie” as she was often called, but thankfully missed the last cable car to the ferry which took him back to Alcatraz.  This cable car’s cable broke and went into “the drink of San Francisco Bay [on the steep descent from the hills to the Bay, injuring many people].

Elizabeth Downing lived with her parents Nellie Irene and Orien P. Downing on Green Street.  Downing was a graduate of Columbia University School of Music.  Nellie Irene was one of seven sisters, children of Socrates and Amelia Huff.  The other sisters were Nellie, Mamie, Callie, Dudie, Jennie, Ida and a seventh whose name I cannot recall.  Socrates and Amelia went West in 1849 in a covered wagon.  Along the way, Indians offered to buy Amelia (who had red hair, a novelty to them) for forty ponies!  Nellie took her three children – the girls, about sixteen or seventeen and Elliot in his early teens to Europe about 1898 or 1900 to give them the “grand tour” of Europe to further their education.  They even had an audience with the Pope who blessed them unto the seventh generation.  Elliot put his visit with the Pope to good use in WWI when he was with General Pershing’s engineers in the famous Rainbow Division.  He would be one of the first to enter a French Village, and because of his fluent French, he [persuaded] the village priest to find him a place to stay.  Because of his fluent French and having been blessed by the Pope, he always got the best.  The rest of the troops had to make do as best they could.

Pope Leo XIII

My Father’s parents, John and Minnie Acherman Truby, lived in Otto, NY in a fine, large home with many acres of land, including a creek in which we used to play.  We visited there for the summer when we were stationed at Governor’s Island.  Years later the story was that Minnie Truby, who has a short, thin, active elderly woman, fell from the back steps head-first into the hogshead barrel, kept there to catch rain water. She died as a result.  I remember the casket in the parlor and my dread of seeing ”Grossmutter” in it.”

I am going to start with the LaGarde side, and with some excerpts from my Grandma’s memoirs. I get my artistic “talents” from her and I admired her highly while she lived. She passed on several years ago.

So here goes, I hope you enjoy it. . .

Memoirs,
by Barbara Truby LaGarde

“I was born at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio at San Francisco on September 13, 1908. I was christened Barbara Truby at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. My sister Elizabeth, born February 26, 1907, was christened there also. My brother, Albert Elliot, was also born in San Francisco in 1910.

My father was Albert Ernest Truby. When he was a Lieutenant, he was stationed at The Presidio, San Francisco, CA. It was there that he became engaged to Elizabeth Downing, whose family lived not too far from The Presidio. They were married during the earthquake of 1906 and were fortunate enough to be able to cross the Bay to the estate of Socrates Huff, Elizabeth’s Grandfather, where the ceremony was performed. Only Socrates and Amelia, his wife, Nellie Irene Downing and her husband, Orien P. Downing, attended the ceremony. Nuns from a nearby convent made her gown.

The couple returned to The Presidio to my Father’s quarters where they proceeded to bury their valuables and silver in his back yard. While doing this, a sheet of music blew into the yard entitled, amazingly enough, “There’ll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight”. This sheet music is preserved and displayed a museum within The Presidio. My Father was put in command of setting up a camp in Golden Gate Park for the many refugees fleeing the fire and destruction in the city. He later was sent to Letterman Hospital for duty where we three children were born.

Daddy had gone to Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School before joining the Army in 1898. Prior to his duty in The Presidio, my father had been to Cuba in 1898 to help Walter Reed in his experiments with mosquitoes in relation to Yellow Fever. They successfully concluded a series of tests in Daddy’s camp on soldier volunteers. They were elated to find that those bitten in camp came down with Yellow Fever, proving that the mosquitoes were carriers of the sickness and thus providing the means to control it. After retiring to San Francisco in 1935, he wrote a book of his experiences with Walter Reed and their successes with Yellow Fever. Daddy was the only one of those who had been in Cuba who was still alive to write a book with detailed account of these exploits.”

Hospital Corps Detachment at Camp Columbia, Havana, September 1900. Most of the volunteers for the yellow fever experiments came from this unit. Lt. Albert E. Truby, unit commander, is seated in the front row, second from left.
To be continued. . .