The Harris Newmark Family 1913-1993

EIGHTY MORE YEARS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

From Left to Right: Elizabeth Levi Lissner, Fannie

Emily Nordlinger Abrams, Harris Newmark, Jr.

In 1993 a book was written to chronicle the eighty years after the publication of Harris Newmark's "My Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913."Oral histories were taken of three members of the Newmark family who were living in 1913, Elizabeth Levi Lissner (my aunt), Harris Newmark, Jr., and Fannie Emily Nordlinger Abrams.  All are now diseased. The following are the oral histories, which were in the book.

ELIZABETH LEVI LISSNER 1902-2002

Elizabeth Levi Lissner, born in 1902, is the senior member of the Newmark clan, and seen by many as a shining example of what it means to "age gracefully:' Liz, as she is known by most, is the daughter of Rose Loeb Levi and Herman Levi, and the granddaughter of Estelle Newmark Loeb and Leon Loeb, Liz's vivid memories not only of past information about the family, but also current facts, is a wonderful contribution to the family history.

Elizabeth, let's talk about your

earliest memories.

I remember when I was around 4 or 5, we lived

on Lake Street, near MacArthur Park, and the whole

family lived all around there. My grandparents,

Estelle and Leon Loeb, lived on Westlake and the

Loews lived on Alvarado. I remember when my

mother's cousin, Rose Loew Nordlinger, got married.

They had a big old house that belonged to the senior

Nordlingers on 9th Street across from where the

offices for the Catholic Church are now. We all used

to walk around and see each other. There were a lot

of children in the family, most of whom were

younger than I. I was the oldest great-grandchild,

since I was born in 1902. The next one was my

brother, John, who was born in 1905. Then came my

brother, Leon, who was born in 1907, and so was my

mother's first cousin. Nick Newmark. My last

brother, Richard, wasn't born until 1917.We had a nurse who came when I was five weeks old and left when I was 23. She raised all four of us. Her name was Marie Sturtevant. She was an American, from

New England. She was with my parents until she got sick and practically died. I was 23 and married when she left.

What else do you remember about your life then?

It was a nice two-story house. I went to Hoover Street School, which was at 9th and Hoover, and I loved school. John and Leon went there, too. Richard is 15 years younger than I am, so he was practically like my own child. I married for the first time when he was about four, but I've always been close to him. He lives in La Quinta and I talk to him every week. He's the only one left. My other two brothers are gone. I was closer to John than to Leon.

Did your mother or grandmother cook?

No, neither could boil water. I'm the cook in

the family. I liked it. I taught myself. We always had help in our house. We had Marie, the nurse, and we always had a cook who I guess did housework. I guess Marie did the upstairs and took care of all our stuff. And the cook cooked and did downstairs.

They used to wait on table. My mother always had

two in help in her house and they both lived in our large, two-story home.

What do you remember about your brothers when they were young?

John was a nice kid, but I don't remember

much about him until he went to college. He went to

Stanford. He used to bring kids home and we had

lots of fun. I was married by then because I married

when I was 18. I didn't have any sense. I was like all the rest of the kids. John was a good golfer and so was I. I never played with him, although we both belonged to Hillcrest.(* John Levi’s handicap was an 8, and Liz played to a 13)

John was very active at Cedars. He was the financial secretary on their board. He used to be at the hospital practically every day. That's when it was on Fountain. I don't know if he was still living when they moved to the new building. I think he may have given it up. He got sick. He had cancer and he was sick for a few years. I don't remember when he quit.He was very active in Cedars and 1 guess that's why  John, Jr. is so involved with charities. John, Jr. is very interested in the Jewish Home for the Aging, as you know.

Leon had bright red hair, the only one in our

family. They called him Red and he was a lawyer.

He married Dorothy Bachman and she died at 32,

when Pat was 10. The little boy, Doug, was only

four. Leon remarried when Pat was about 11 or 12.

The stepmother is still alive. Leon died about three

or four years ago. He was a big smoker and he died

of emphysema. They lived in Palm Springs. The

second wife was also Dorothy. We called the first

one Dottie and the second one Dee. I didn't see

much of Leon. He went to college when I was

young. They used to bring boys home for holidays

and weekends.

I remember when Leon went to work for Loeb

and Loeb as a lawyer and they used to represent   

Max Factor. The Max Factors were crazy about   

Leon. They hired him to leave Loeb and Loeb and

become one of their executives. He was there for 20

years. I never saw much of him during the time he

was at Factor's                                

During World War II, by the way, my husband,

Louis, who had his own practice, was a partner

of Lester Roth, who's a California justice.

During the Depression things were tough and

Louis helped get Lester Roth a judgeship. His

father was in politics and so he was able to help him. During the war Loeb and Loeb were short of lawyers, and they represented all the movie studies in those days. They asked Louis to come there. He gave up his own practice and became a partner. He was there for many years.

What else do you recall about your brothers?

I think we mostly fought as children. I used to

do a lot of fighting with my brothers. I remember in

1912 my parents took us to Europe with another

couple of friends of theirs, who also had two boys.

There were five little kids all around the same age,

except Leon was a little younger. But the other

three boys were all about my age. Their name was

Meyer. We were in Europe for six months and they

teased me unmercifully. I remember lots about the

trip but what I mostly remember is how the three of

them would gang up on me. Of course, the Meyer

boys were my good friends for life, but they died.

Their parents and mine were best friends.

Leon was an amateur ham radio guy with a number, and he had a radio station in my mother's attic on St. Andrew’s. The maids' rooms were up there, too. He used to do Morse code. He kept that for many years.

I notice that some of the cousins in your great grandparent’s generation married each other.

Yes, that happened in the older generations.

That was because they didn't have anybody else in

those days. This was a very small town. And San

Francisco wasn't much bigger. Harris Newmark

married his first cousin, Sarah, who had come

around the Horn to get to San Francisco with her

family. I think there were either three or four girls in their family. Two or three of them married cousins. That’s why they lost so many children, I think. They used to die of diphtheria. My grandmother, Estelle Loeb, lost two children from it. She had five.

What were the names of her children?

George, who was born in 1880 died early. My

mother Rose was the next. She was born in 1881.

Then came Joe, in 1883, then Edwin, in 1886.

Harold, who was born in 1893, was the baby. Edwin

used to tease my grandmother about Harold, and I

remember she didn't like it very much. We'd be at

the dinner table and he'd say something about my

little brother Harold, and I remember she'd say, "Oh

Edwin!"

As I said, everybody lived near everybody.

When I was a child we used to walk to Aunt Emily

Loew's house, which was a block away from us, on Alvarado. We even walked to Rose Nordlinger's, on West 9th. That was the furthest. Rose Loew married a man named Louis Nordlinger. He owned a jewelry store that subsequently became the second best jewelry store in Los Angeles. Then he retired. I remember going to their store when I was a little kid. It was on Broadway near 6th. In fact, whenever we went downtown we'd meet my mother or my mother would meet her relatives or friends at Nordlinger's.  Their children were Fannie Emily and Louis, Jr. Fannie Emily hated her name so she changed it to Fen (the initials of her first, middle and last name) when she was a teenager. I was her big cousin and I guess she looked up to me and I always loved her a lot. And we all were devoted to her grandmother, Emily, who was very different than my grandmother.

What was Los Angeles like then?

It didn't go much beyond Vermont Avenue;

Hoover Street school was on 9th and Hoover, and

there was a streetcar that ran out 9th street and

when it got to Vermont it turned around and came

back. Later on, when I was a teenager, I guess, it

went further to Western Avenue. There were farms

and small homes out there, I guess. My father got a car when I was about six or seven, one of the first automobiles, a Duro. We use to go on rides on Sundays. We'd ride to Santa Monica and Venice, but you had to go out Washington Boulevard to get there. Wilshire and the other streets weren't open. Once we got stuck there. There'd been rain, and Washington is very low. The roads were all dirt, and out around where the Marina is now it flooded a bit. There were hardly any cars in those days. We got stuck in the   

mud and someone had to come and pull us out.

My great-grandparents, Harris and Sarah Newmark, had a house on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica on the corner of Arizona and Ocean Avenue. They used to go down there every summer, and it was a trip to go down there. The Red Car did go, but you had to go downtown to get the Red Car. It went out Venice Boulevard to Venice and then back to Santa Monica. My great-grandfather had an automobile and I remember going down there for a drive with him. We drove to Brentwood and back

What do you remember about

your great-grandparents?

I don't remember much about my great-

grandmother Sarah. My only recollection is seeing

her sitting and knitting. She used to knit and so do I. She died when I was about eight, in 1910.I remember going to their house often. And I vaguely remember their golden wedding celebration, probably because I've seen pictures of the flowers and the gifts they got. My great grandfather lived until I was 13, so I remember him. He seemed to be a nice man. The last few years he was sick and he had a male nurse who lived with him. Everyone in the family kowtowed to Harris. The folks used to go there one night a week to keep him company. He liked to play cards. It was sort of a command performance. He was an old man. In those days if you were 60 you  were antiquated, and he was only 70-something when he died. At that point he lived with the senior Loew's on Alvarado Street.

Most of what I know about my great- grandparents is what's in the book, “Sixty Years in Southern California.” I do know they took my mother to Europe in 1899, before she was married. She had a wonderful time. My mother had French relatives because my grandfather, Leon Loeb, was French. I never knew my French great-grandparents, whose names were Jacob and Rosalie Levy Loeb. I know they lived in Strasbourg. There was a nephew of my father's who was a soldier in World War I and my mother and father sort of kept up with him.

Lets talk about your grandparents, Estelle and Leon Loeb.

I don't think my grandmother Estelle was very bright because she wasn't well-educated and she married at 16. My mother was a very bright woman, and Joe and Edwin Loeb were very bright men-college graduates. In those days not everybody went to college. But my grandmother, she was crotchety.I only remember that she didn't get along with everybody in our family. She used to come to dinner all the time at my mother's and half the time she'd gc home mad about something. And it wasn't really anything that any of us did. The only one that teased her was my Uncle Edwin. I remember she interfered with my mother and it used to bother her. She use to tell her what to do and if I remember right, she used to try to remind her of what her duty was to other family members. She used to come to our house after I was married to Louis in 1932. I didn't have much trouble with her, but she criticized everything. I remember that she was difficult. She lived until 1937.

What about *Leon, your grandfather?

He was darling, but he died when I was a little

girl. He was a very sweet, quiet man. I don't remember too much more about him.

*Leon Loeb had been born in the French city of Strassburg, and came to Los Angeles in 1866. In 1879 he married Estelle Newmark,daughter of the Harris Newmarks.Leon Loeb worked in Solomon Lazard's dry goods store for a time, and later was a partner

in the same firm which was then called the City of Paris store. He was very active in Jewish and fraternal life. Loeb succeeded his relative, Eugene Meyer, as the French consular agent of Los Angeles in 1883, serving until 1898, when he resigned because of the attitude of the French government in the Dreyfus case (The American Israelite, Cincinnati, October 13, 1898, p. 3).

Do you know what kind of work he did?

I think he might have worked for Harris

Newmark, who had a lot of property, downtown and

in Montebello-all of which has been sold. He was in

what they used to call the mercantile business. I

guess it was retail stuff. And then there was MA.

Newmark Company, a wholesale grocer. He was a

cousin. He has a bunch of relatives who are friends

of mine that lived here, but they're not closely

related to us. They were close relatives of my great-grandparents and they were in businesses together.My grandfather Leon also was French consul in L.A.at one time.

What can you tell me about your great-uncle, Marco?

He was a darling man. He got very hard of

hearing towards the end of his life, but he had a

wonderful sense of humor and Nick is just like him.

Everybody loves Nick. He's very funny about

himself. He thinks he's old and decrepit, and he's

younger than I am. He's my mother's first cousin. I

kid him about being the older generation all the

time. I see him a lot because we go to lunch together about once a month.

What can you remember about Ella Newmark Seligman?

She married Carl Seligman. I liked him. I can

remember being a little kid and going to see him

when he was dying. He had cancer, but it wasn't

mentioned in the family. Ella had three daughters

There was a Lottie, who died in a menta institution,

and Ruth, who married a fellow named Hirschfeld

and had two daughters,and Rosalie Jacoby, who had

several children. But I've lost track of all of them.

Maurice Newmark, who was called M.H.,was the oldest son, and also worked at M.A.Newmark & Company. He was a stamp collector; he had a fabulous stamp collection. I never knew much about it, except that he had it, but I know it sold for a large sum of money after he died. He had a daughter,Florence Kauffman and she had two sons, Steven and Richard. I think Richard is still around. He lives in San Francisco. Maurice was married to Aunt Rosie, and she was a cousin-also a Newmark. She lived to be an old lady. She was a fragile little old lady and very sweet. She used to invite us for dinner. I always liked her. We used to make fun of her, because she was kind of prissy, but she was cute. She had a sister, Emma, whose daughter was one of my best friends. Emma married a man named Goldschmidt. They had two daughters and I was raised with them. One of them lived up at the corner and died about 8-10 years ago. We were very close friends.I’ve lived here 37 years. And she lived here before I did.

Is there anything else you recall

about Emily and Jacob Loew?

We loved them. They were our favorites.Uncle Jake died when he was not too old.Aunt Emily lived on for a while and she lived with her daughter, Rose Nordlinger, and we lived on Irving and they lived on Lorraine, a block over. We used to go over there all the time. We were very close to them. She was darling and I loved her. She was the one that got my mother into Christian Science.

What was Santa Monica like when you went to visit your great-grandparents?

It was beautiful, just houses along Ocean Avenue, and the streetcar ran across the street, along Ocean Avenue. You could pick up the streetcar and it went all the way to Venice and came to town on Venice Boulevard.

Do you remember how long that trip would take?

About an hour, I guess. You ended up downtown and then to get to where we lived, you had to transfer to a yellow car. Those were electric trolleys. They had a thing that went up over to the wires. There was a conductor and a motorman. The conductor took the money and the motorman ran the car.

Do you remember many horses drawing carts or wagons?

We had a Chinese vegetable man who had a horse pulling his vegetable wagon. I remember getting fruit off his wagon. He'd come up and down the streets. And also the iceman used to come with a horse. He used some tongs to pick up a huge cube

of ice and he used to sling it over his shoulder to

carry the ice in and put it in the icebox on the

back porch.

What else do you remember about your home?

I always had my own room. I think the boys slept in the same room, but I don't remember. When we got to St. Andrew's it was a bigger house. When I was 15, Richard was born, and John was 12 and Leon,10.

Did you graduate from high school?

Yes, I went to Berendo Junior High and then Girl's Collegiate, a private school, on the corner of Adams and Hoover Avenue. At the start of World War I, we had a car and driver, but the driver went into the Army during the war.My mother used to drive the car, but she would let me take it to school sometimes, so I didn't have to take the streetcar because it was far. When the war was over she got a driver again. In the meantime she and I both drove.  I was 13 when my father taught me to drive. I vaguely remember being in Santa Monica and learning to drive.

Was it the kind of car you had to crank?

No. I never cranked a car. It had a self-starter. It was a five-passenger touring car. When it rained they had glass windows that came down the sides and screwed in. Then around 1915, we got a sedan.

What do you remember about Steve Loew, Senior?

He was darling. He was the last one to die of that group. He was the youngest. He was loads of fun. When I was a kid he lived on Alvarado and I lived on Lake. He was quite a bit older than I. He was a wild kid. I remember seeing him on the roof of their house. He used to drive a fast car and he was kind of a frisky young man, but then he got married at 21 and settled down. He had three sons, Steve, Jack and Robert. He always was fun, up to the day he died. He had a good sense of humor. He kept my father young, because they were in business together.

Where did your father come from?

From Stuttgart, Germany. When we went there in

1912 he had a mother living, my grandmother, and a sister. His sister was married to a man named Eiseman, and they had two sons. The younger one  (Max) came over after the war and lived with my parents for quite a long while, until he was on his

feet.  Then he moved to San Francisco and he died there, but he wasn't so terribly old.

How did your parents meet?

It was all through family. My father was working for his uncle, Mr. Loew, who was married to my mother's aunt. My father always knew my mother, even when she was a little girl. He came here when he was 15, and they didn't get married until he was 30. He must have known her for a long time. But it was a big romance; they loved each other a lot. As far as I knew it was a very good marriage. But in those days everybody stayed married.

Was your family religious?

When I was a child my grandmother and I guess my great-grandmother used to go to what used to be called B'nai B'rith, but is now Wilshire Boulevard Temple. It was the only Reform temple in Los Angeles. It was on 9th and Hope in those days. I remember sitting near the front. Everybody had their own seats. They'd buy seats and have their name on them. I went to Sunday school. I used to go on Saturday mornings with my grandmother.

I don't remember that my mother always went,

but she was active at the temple. They had a sewing

group that used to sew for the orphanages and

Kaspare Cohn Hospital, which became Cedars-Sinai.

Then, it was just a little hospital in Boyle Heights.

The sewing group used to make shirts and shorts and pajamas for the children at the Jewish Orphan's Home of Los Angeles. When they moved to Motor Avenue, they called it Vista Del Mar. I always volunteered there. I worked in the office there for about 20 years, two or three days a week. That's my interest, not so much anymore, because I don't do anything any more. I remember my mother sewed at the temple every Tuesday. Finally, during World War II, they became a Red Cross unit and they did whatever the Red Cross gave them to do. After that they sort of disbanded. The hospital didn't want stuff anymore and Vista Del Mar had gotten too big.

Who was the rabbi at the temple?

It was Rabbi Hecht. I was confirmed there. My brothers didn't want to go to Sunday school, so

they didn't. When I was about 16 Rabbi Magnin came to be Rabbi Hecht's assistant, and his first cousin was my best friend. Her name was Siegel. They owned a store named Meyer Siegel. She just died about a year ago. We were best friends all our lives. They lived next door to us. Her mother was Rabbi Magnin's aunt, a daughter of I. Magnin from the department store family. Rabbi Magnin came from San Francisco and was a grandson of I. Magnin. Everyone loved him; he was an earthy man, lots of fun.

In later years my husband and I became very close to the Magnins. We used to have lunch together every Saturday at Hillcrest Country Club, along with about 5-6 other people, until he died. We joined the group when some of the people got old and got out or died. Edgar Magnin liked my husband, and we knew him from the club, and he asked if we'd like to come for Saturday lunch. My husband was a lawyer in Loeb and Loeb, the law firm owned by my uncles, Joe and Edwin, and one of the other partners, Walter Hillborn, used to go to lunch. He was an Easterner from Boston, and a Harvard graduate.

When you lived at home, did you celebrate Jewish holidays?

Not really. We knew when they were and when I was a little kid we used to go to temple on the Jewish holidays, but I celebrate them much more now than I did then. My husband was very un-Jewish. We didn't belong to the temple until he got very friendly with Rabbi Magnin, and it was a friendship. Magnin got him to join the temple.

As far as religion, my mother was a Christian Scientist. She was a diabetic late in her life, like her mother was, and she never went to a doctor. But when she got sick and they couldn't control her blood sugar, we made her go to the doctor. They had no history of her illness so they couldn't get it straightened out. She had to have some surgery and  she died.

How did she become a Christian Scientist?

Aunt Emily Loew was a Christian Scientist, and someway or other she got my mother into it. I didn't know about it-I was just a kid. I think she was having a nervous breakdown after Richard was born and the doctor wanted her to go away from home and she didn't want to go so she took up Christian Science. And she didn't go away from home. And she never went to a doctor. She was healthy until she had the diabetes problem. There was no conversion to Christian Science-she just went to church. No one thought anything of it in those days

Did the rest of the family go to doctors?

Yes, we all did.

Did she want you not to go?

Of course, but we did anyway. We didn't have any problem over it; we just went. I was married and had kids of my own. I was 15 when she went into Science. I used to go to church with her sometimes to keep her company.

What was the appeal of Christian Science to Reform Jews?

It was a good religion. The medical part I

don't think was so great, but the people who

believed in it believed in it. My niece, Pat Isaacs, is a Christian Scientist. She's done well with it and she's married to a doctor, which is peculiar, but she's raised all five of her kids in Science.

If I didn't know as much as I know about the

Science religion, I probably wouldn't be religious at all. That's the only thing that makes me Jewish. The Science that I got from my mother, that I know. They teach you to think positively and not to let evil into your thinking, a lot of good stuff. If I didn't know that I wouldn't be a very good Jew. I consider myself being a good Jewess because I go to temple and I do what I'm supposed to do, but I don't think the way the service is at temple.

So your grandmother was more involved in temple?

Not really later in her life, but the family's life

sort of revolved around the temple, because everyone in the temple knew each other.

When would your extended family get together?

We never could all get together. There's one

picture of some sort of gathering at the Loew's

house, after my great-grandmother died. It might

have been my great-grandfather's 70th or 75th

birthday. I remember that occasion. I must have been about 12, so it was around 1914. Otherwise there were too many of us to all get together. We used to get together with the Loew's and Nordlinger's a lot, because those were my mother's closest relatives, and my dad being at the mill, he was close to Steve Loew, and Rose Nordlinger was my mother's first cousin, so they were very close.

What did you do for recreation?

We used to play in the street and in the yard, and we went to the park with Marie, our housekeeper. The street used to get muddy when it rained and then we couldn't go out unless we had rubbers on. I remember the Banning boy and the Taylor boy and our kids playing baseball and football in the street They were a little older than my brothers, but they used to come over there, they were good friends, and they'd throw a football around. I remember we had stuff in our backyard to play with. We had a cement place in front of the garage. We had a picnic out there one day. A bunch of us were going on a picnic and it rained, so we had the picnic in the backyards.

Was it a big deal when they started paving the streets?

I don't remember. The freeways were a big deal, but that wasn't long ago. The Santa Monica Freeway was built since we lived here. The San Diego too.

Would you go to the San Fernando Valley?

We used to go to Encino, Laurel Canyon and other places in the Valley on picnics, because the Jansses had a big ranch out there and I think our mill used to buy wheat from them or something. They started Westwood. We thought Encino was way away from here and it took all day to go to Santa Barbara. Now you can go up for lunch and come home.

How would you get to Santa Barbara?

We went to Hollywood and through Cahuenga

Pass and out through the valley. It was a two-lane

highway, the same as the freeway is now, except we

used to have to go on Ventura Boulevard until we

got to the highway. Ventura was just a little narrow

street.

Did many people live in the Valley?

The first person I knew who lived in the Valley was after Universal City was built, in the 1930s. We had a nanny, a Scotswoman who took care of my husband's sister and brother when they were children. When they were grown, Nursie was still around and so was her sister, both retired, and they owned a little house in the valley, near Universal. The freeway went in right behind their house. By that time they were in their 80s and both of them had to be taken out and put in homes. Nursie used to stay with our kids so we could get away once in a while.

When I was a teenager and my brothers were

in college we used to drive to San Francisco for

football games and we used to make it in two days.

We stayed overnight in Santa Maria or Paso Robles.

There was a hotel there.

It was just rural scenery like it is now where it's not built up. Today it's practically built all the way. My husband's father used to say, before we ever dreamed of it being like it is now, that someday it's going to be one big city all the way up and down the coast. We thought he was crazy, but it is. I drive to La Costa a lot because that's where my grandson lives, and it's off the San Diego freeway.

What would the family do in the summer?

We used to rent a house in Venice for a

month or two in the summer. My dad would take

the streetcar to work every day. It took about an

hour or so.

What was Venice like then?

Very much like it is today on those little streets

that go up from the ocean front, except there

weren't the mobs of people, except on Sundays.

Kaspare Cohn and his daughter and son-in-law had a

big house on the corner of Ocean Front and Sunset

Avenue. We used to spend a lot of time there on

Sundays and holidays looking out the window and

watching the people walk by. Where we lived was up

the street and there was no street in front of our

house-just a sidewalk. It was above the Speedway,

between there and the streetcar tracks.

Do you remember the canals in Venice?

They were in the area that's now the Marina.

remember them. There are still some there. There

were a few gondola rides but I don't remember

anyone we knew going around the canals. There was

a roller coaster at the top of Windward Avenue,

called Race Through the Clouds. We went there

when we were young kids. There was also an Ocean

Park pier and Venice pier with amusements and a

dance hall.

Did you spend most of your time in Venice Beach?

Yes, right on the beach. Then we used to go

to the Venice pier and ride on the merry-go-round a

lot. They had games there, too. The Japanese used

to have ball games where you threw the ball and got

prizes. My mother had all kinds of china stuff that

she won on the piers at Venice in the summer.

You'd pay a dime and roll your ball and add your

score, and when you had your score there'd be a big

platter up there, it would be like 500 points, and

she'd save her points and get these platters. I had a bunch of them but they're all gone. It was good Oriental pottery-Imari and stuff like that that  today is priceless.

Did the rest of your family go to the beach,too?

Everybody went to the beach. They used to

take houses. After my great-grandfather died the

house on Ocean Avenue belonged to his five

children. They'd take it each summer in turn. One

year it would be my grandmother's turn. My mother

took it one time. Aunt Emily used to take the Loew

family. It was a big house with room for the kids.

There were steps down to the beach across the

street. It was great for kids.

I remember begging the family not to sell that