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SRL: An older sister, and a younger brother. The parents passed
away ... his father first; he had a brain tumor. And then
his mother had cancer.

SL: Were they in New York?

SRL: In New York. And so World War I came along, and Dad, along
with quite a few of his classmates from Harvard (he was only
seventeen) ...

SL: He was in Harvard at seventeen?

SRL: He joined the American Field Service, which had just been
organized.

SL: So he had just started at Harvard when the American Field
Service called him?

SRL: Right, because it had never been organized, it was the first
I
time. Of course, it was before the United States went into
the war, and so they went over and were attached. They had
to be requested by a country, France, they were attached to
the French army for some time before the United States came
in, and drove an ambulance.

SL: So he was doing-service, rather than part of the army.

SRL: Oh yeah, this is a volunteer.ambulance service; that's the
whole thing it's about. And he was badly gassed. His unit
was one of the few that didn't have any fatalities, any of
the men killed ....

CT:· Did he lose his teeth, from the gas? My grandfather lost
his teeth, he told me, from the gas in France.

SRL: No, I've never heard that, but as a result of that when he
came back he finished Harvard, met my mother, married, and
the doctors told him that he 'shouldn't have a career in an
office, he should be outdoors, and in those days it was "go
west young man" kind of thing, so they did. Neither of them
had ever been off the east coast before.

SL: Before we go into what happened here in Ventura County,
let's talk about your mother. You said her name was McIsaac
when I talked to you the other day, but Wallace Smith, in
his book, called her "Mary Colgate." He was very ... snippy.
He had a hasty attitude toward them.

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