Harry's Legacy

Autumn has always been a significant time within Harry's life. It was then he was born as the youngest son to David during the autumn of David's life as the forty eight year old father of six was facing declining health as a result of serving in the Army during the Civil War.

The family lived in a small town in Kansas, along the booming Santa Fe Trail, through which wagon trains and thousands upon thousands of people traveled, enroute to the American west. Harry's birth, as many births during that time, was not recorded in Kansas records and his mother had an extremely difficult time with her final pregnancy. It was considered a miracle both mother and child survived.

By the age of four, the family began moving west, desperately attempting to find cures for the scourges David had been exposed and was suffering, depleting their lifelong savings, enroute. Passing through town after town, they tried every cure that was offered. First to Las Vegas, New Mexico, then to the warm, dry Phoenix, Arizona. Finally by the year 1889, they landed in Southern California where they felt David would benefit from moist wet air and Harry would begin to feel some sort of stability.

As a child, Harry worked in order to assist in supporting his family. Each day, after school and sometimes skipping school, he would deliver messages for his Uncle, who worked for the newly developing telephone company in Los Angeles, California just as his older brothers had in Kansas, when he father had founded the first telephone company there.

His family was poor, by all standards, living off a paltry civil war pension. His memories of his father were mostly those of illness. California, the land of milk and honey, was a symbol of hope that he would recover. However hope was dashed in 1901, when he father finally succombed to the diseases he had contracted.

He lost his father at the young age of thirteen. With only an estate left of $50, he and his brother both worked to help support their ailing mother, while attending school. At the age of twenty-three his mother succombed to the same disease as his father after fighting it and spending years in and out of tuberculosis sanitariums.

it was during autumn in 1908 that Harry left Southern California and joined his brothers in Sonora, Mexico, where they developed the first telephone company in that region of Mexico. He loved the diverse culture it offered and riding a Harley Davidson across the arid desert, installing and maintaining the hundreds of miles of telephone lines. Harry returned home to California shortly before World War I and worked for Pacific Bell Telephone Company.

Concerned about war and in preparation for it, the War Department in 1916 had begun issuing commissions in the Signal Corps Officers' Reserve Corps to executives of leading commercial telephone and telegraph companies. John J. Carty, chief engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), figured prominently in this group. Commissioned as a major in the Signal Reserve, Carty undertook the recruitment of men from the Bell System and other communications companies. The Army needed a variety of specialists: telephone and telegraph operators, linemen, and cable splicers, to name a few. (As previously noted, the prewar Signal Corps had only four telegraph battalions.) The recruitment of men already possessing the requisite skills obviously lightened the Signal Corps' training load as these men served the military within what was known in California as the Resident Guard (now known as National Guard.)

Following President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war in 1917 because Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, over twenty-four million men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five came forward and registered for the draft during the following two year period.

Three draft lotteries were held, the first for the older men on June 5, 1917 whereupon all individuals born between the years of 1886 to 1896 were required to register. Ten million men registered on this date. Because of opposition from Congress, young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty were exempted from registration.

In 1917, Harry was thirty years old and single and on that date complied with the requirement from the Los Angeles draft board though he was already participating in the Residence Guard. As a communications specialist, he was exempted from serving due to his critical position in maintaining the communication lines in his position at Pacific Telephone Company and because he was a vital part of the Resident Guard. Through the autumn, he pondered and debated with his manager at work about enlisting. On December 5, 1917, he was finally granted a leave of absence to serve and enlisted for active duty.

He was assigned to the 39th Telegraph Unit of the Signal Corps at the Presidio of Monterey where, in the rank of Sergeant, trained troops in field communications under the direction of Major General James B. Allison. In 1917, at four locations within the United States, the Signal Corps established training camps for soldiers, specifically at Little Silver (Fort Monmouth) Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Leon Springs, Texas and the Presidio of Monterey, California.

Harrie deeply desired to go into the field, however was told he was far too valuable as a training officer especially with his bilingual skills in Spanish (which he learned in Mexico) and English. He traveled up and down the Pacific Coast area, teaching troops how to build and install communications lines, how to operate telegraphs and how to develop telephone installation sites. As well, he worked on the development of radio interception and communication intelligence techniques which he also taught to the troops.

During World War I, messages were sometimes transmitted by wire (telegraph of field field phone) but two way radio communications were not yet available. When it was difficult or impossible to string wire necessary for communications over a long area, often carrier pigeons were used. Those pigeons served many purposes during the war as messengers carrying messages and some were even fitted with cameras to take pictures of enemy positions.

World War I ended on a beautiful autumn day on November 11th, 1918. During that year, the brother with whom he was closest finally succombed to tuberculosis after fighting it for almost fifteen years.

Single, with only two sisters and a brother remaining alive, he determined to remain in the military for two additional years, assisting with developing the radio system and developing intelligence systems however, it was during the autumn of November, 1918, after the surrender of Germany he met someone who filled the void of loss of his family.

While serving in Monterey, he would often come home to visit his sister and brother in law, as well as an older brother and his wife and would join his friends at the USO dances. There, he met a woman named Helen. She was fun loving and quite social and offered a balance to his quiet, gentle, thoughtful personality. Lively and vivacious, she was balanced by his quiet and somewhat shy manner and his logic and sensible ways stabilized her occasional recklessness and impulsivity. Occasionally, she suffered from doubts and indecision which were quickly eliminated by his positive and upbeat manner, coupled with an ability to be firm, but loving. They were a lovely match and very much in love.

He and his friends socialized with the young women and in 1920, he and Helen married, after he was discharged from the military and went back to work for Pacific Bell Telephone. Often they would spend time at a small cabin that he and several friends had constructed at the Arroyo Seco.

They planned to buy a farm where they intended to raise their children, however could not afford the suitable land they desired with the amount they had to pay. They did manage, however, to be able to purchase five acres of land outside of Pasadena, California where an existing orange grove set. Unable to afford a large home, they purchased a "kit home" Craftsman house from Sears which was one bedroom, a living room with a stone fireplace, a bright yellow kitchen, a small bathroom and a screened porch.

During the next ten years, Harry watched as the remaining members of his family died of tuberculosis and lung ailments and experienced the pain and grief of the loss of their first born. His eldest brother died two years after Harry came home and his eldest sister died immediately after. Much of the the early days of their marriage was spent traveling to tuberculosis sanitariums to visit them or to hospitals to care for his wife who had fallen ill with their child.

Within the next ten years, the rest of his siblings would pass away, suffering from lung ailments and tuberculosis. By 1940, Harry was the only sibling within his family to survive, the rest dying young as a result of the remnants of the sacrifices of his father during the Civil War.

To complicate matters, when Harry returned home, he was asked to show proof of identification as a United States citizen or face deportation as government immigation officials suspected he was Hispanic. A handsome man, Harry had beautiful olive skin, black hair and hazel eyes. His speech was clipped and often he spoke in fluent Spanish to individuals in his town which they believe may have raised the concerns of the local postmaster who had heard Harry had come to the U.S., just prior to World War I, from Mexico and who was completing the census, being required in 1930 to list Mexicans as Mexican, rather than white.

In part, that was true...however no amount of explanation could convince the government he had a legal birth right, despite the fact he had served in the U.S. Army during World War I.

To proof his birthright as a citizen, he had to order his father's Civil War records. For months, the family feared he would be deported to Mexico. When the records did arrive and were accepted by the U.S. Government, the family was very relieved and were able to laugh about it years later.

The family remained in the little bungalow for the rest of Harry's life, though he had planned and dreamed of building a larger "hacienda" where the children would have their own bedrooms and wouldn't sleep on a porch. That dream would never become a reality.

In the early 1940s, Harry became ill with stomach cancer which dashed his dreams of building a larger home. He had beat tuberculosis which had taken his entire family however was vulnerable to the long termed exposure to high voltage wires which they believe caused the cancer. He prepared for his death, spending time with his children and making certain the family was provided for, as well as the education of his children.

Harry died in the spring of 1944. Like his father had left him at the age of thirteen, he had left his own son, aged thirteen, behind.

Harry had continued the legacy of his father and his father and his father and his father....of a love of his country and in instilling values to his children.