Tom Schweich  

1930s

Compare the stairs on the back of the house with those seen in the Christmas 1929 photo.

“Stop at Grand Canyon on the way to California.”

Petition for Citizenship, by Anna Pawluk.

“Summer 1930
at Catalina
the steamer Avalon.”

I think my dad is sitting in the middle seat.

Naturalization of Anna Pawluk.

1932

1933

1934

I assumed that Sloyd must be a town in the San Joaquin Valley.

Sloyd (Slöjd), also known as Educational Sloyd, was a system of handicraft-based education started by Uno Cygnaeus in Finland in 1865. The system was further refined and promoted worldwide, including adoption in the United States, until the early 20th Century.

1935

The woman on the left looks to me like Dick Allen's mother, but my dad doesn't think so.

From left to right, the people in the photograph are: Harriet Oliver, David Lauib, Blanche Gore, Charles Saudes, Mildred Laist, Jeanne Laist, George Gore, Virginia Laist Gore, Dorothy Laist, Geraldine Klepetko, Paul Schweich, Helen Halloran, Emmett Keinett, and Rosalba Gore.

Born in Chile as the son of a mining engineer, George Gore grew up in South Dakota. I assume he attended Montana School of Mines at Butte, Montana, which is where my father would have met him. He later went to law school at Harvard and became a lawyer. Virginia Laist Gore, grew up in Anaconda. Her dad was an engineer and manager at the mine. Her mother wrote a travel column in the Anaconda Standard. As an attorney, George Gore first worked with the Los Angeles law firm of O'Melveny & Myers. In 1939, Mr. Gore helped establish Northrop, which grew into a giant military and aerospace firm in southern California. He worked with the company for decades, retiring to Carmel, California, in 1975 as chief counsel and vice president. During his tenure, Gore helped develop laws to deal with the new era of nuclear energy. “It is a wonderful time to be a lawyer,” he told the American Bar Assn. in 1958. “Perhaps never before in the history of the law has so much study and research preceded the establishment of the law itself, and I am sure that the law of atomic hazards will be created in such a way that progress will be encouraged ...” George Gore died of cancer in 1993 at age 81. At the time, Gore was survived by his wife of 55 years, Virginia Laist Gore, a sister, three children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren (Ariel, personal communication, September 8, 2018, and Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1993).

1936

1937

1938

1939