SUSANN BOSSHARD-KÄLIN

WESTWARD

Encounters with Swiss American Women

POSTSCRIPT

Leo Schelbert

They Went Before: Four Historical Portraits

Essay: Women in 20^th Century America

This book is Swiss American Historical Society Publication No. 29.

Fotos: Annina Bosshard (except of L. Geiser by Christoph Müller)

Selection of Historical Pictures: Leo Schelbert

Translations:

Marianne Burkhard (E. Bollier, M. Burkhard, E. Carney, L. Geiser, L. Lee, M.-S. Pavlovich, M. Schlapfer, N. Schleicher, R. Schupbach) Leo Schelbert (all other texts, except own translations provided by M. Ammann Durrer and M. Bernet)

Copy Editors:

Rita Emch, New York and Wendy Everham, Wilmette, Illinois

All Rights Reserved

©2010 Susann Bosshard-Kälin, Egg, Switzerland

©2014 Limmat Verlag, Zürich

eISBN: 978-3-857-91992-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010928492

To My Parents with Deepest Gratitude

Foreword

The cultural chain is a chain of women that connects the past with the future (Mohawk)

People – Women, Men, and Children – Migrate.

They have always gone out into the world – from Switzerland as well. And almost as many from abroad have settled in Switzerland, be it for a short or a long period of time. It has always been a country of emigration as well as immigration. Reasons for migrating are manifold; they may be personal or may be rooted in economic, social, political, or ideological circumstances.

In the 20^th century when Switzerland itself became increasingly a country of immigration, Swiss women and men went abroad nevertheless and, following a long tradition, also to the United States of America.

A few women representing many have been given a voice in this book: Did they leave forever? Alone? Was it for their one true love? In search of adventure or seeking an escape? Some felt they were foreigners throughout their lives in the New World, others felt at home. Many were successful, others submitted to an unexpected fate; some found their happiness while others are still looking. They stayed in old age in the new homeland or returned to the Swiss one.

It was the historian Leo Schelbert who gave me the idea for this book. He has been living in metropolitan Chicago for nearly forty years and, after studying at Columbia University in New York, taught American history for 32 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago, especially the history of American immigration. He has also featured the global history of Swiss emigration in books and articles. In his view, the Swiss abroad – in 2009 some 676,000 people – represent Switzerland’s 27^th canton. “As written history in general, also the history of migrations has remained largely men’s history,” he asserts. “Documentary sources of women emigrants are little known, although women achieved just as much as men either by themselves or as mothers and partners.” Precisely for that reason Swiss American women were to be given a voice.

Leo Schelbert was taken by the book spruchreif – Zeitzeuginnen aus dem Kanton Schwyz erzählen (ready to be told – Witnesses of Their Times from Canton Schwyz Tell Their Story) that I had initiated and attended to in 2004. He inspired me four years ago to undertake a similar project of encounters with women who had moved to the United States in the 20^th century.

Each of my fifteen encounters from east to west was unique. In the selection of the time-witnesses I consciously eschewed typologies and was guided by neither geographical nor sociological concerns. During the three years of work, the contacts with these women intensified and wonderful friendships evolved. The time-witnesses portrayed here come from different Swiss cantons, have different familial and occupational backgrounds, and live in different regions. They tell of their diverse experience in Switzerland as well as in the United States.

What emerged is a series of impressions, of fascinating individual experiences as portrayed from a woman’s perspective. The life stories feature memories, experiences, and desires, shaped by every day life, homesickness, joy, and crisis. As told and written, they will be shielded from becoming forgotten. In encounters lasting several hours women told me of their experience with great candor in most diverse Swiss German dialects or in English. The fifteen stories show women standing between two worlds, two cultures, and two languages, – but above all people who have shaped their lives and world with a zest for life, with humor, courage, equanimity, and wisdom. I am deeply touched by them and their stories. I thank them for their trust, openness, and kindness.

In the second part of the book four portraits feature the unique world of women from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Surviving letters and pictures that Leo Schelbert and others had gathered made these encounters possible. His concluding essay sketches the status of American women in the 20^th century and the world in which the women portrayed have shaped their lives.

From the start my project met with genuine interest and much support. My acknowledgements list all the wonderful people and generous institutions without whose help this book could never have been done.

I want to thank cordially above all Leo Schelbert, my wonderful and kind friend and mentor. During the whole project he has laid out the red carpet. During all of its phases he accompanied me on the journey despite the spatial distance. He or his wife Virginia accompanied me on the interview trips across America, and in their house in Evanston they extended their generous hospitality.

Heartfelt thanks also to my husband Jürg who stood by me throughout all the storms of this ambitious project and remained tolerant and truly patient, wise, and supportive. I thank my daughters Annina and Catherina for their joyful accompaniment on my trips, and to Annina especially, for the pictures she took of the women portrayed in the book. As my first reader, Mirjam Weiss always encouraged me and critically reviewed my texts. In the midst of the project Walti Graf Chiriboga passed away whose friendly suggestions were most useful to me. A special thank you also goes to the American-Swiss graphic artist Anna Taylor, who created the book’s masterful design, to Rita Emch and Wendy Everham who served as copy editors of the English edition, and to the dedicated translators Sr. Marianne Burkhard OSB and Leo Schelbert who, as the book editor of the Swiss American Historical Society, also monitored the preparation of the English edition.

Thanks also to Doris Stump of the eFeF-Verlag, the publisher of the German edition, to the Swiss American Historical Society, especially its president Dr. Heinz B. Bachmann and to Gerhard Kälin and Katja Schönbächler of Franz Kälin Druckerei AG of Einsiedeln. They were all most helpful in guiding the project to what it is now.

My Swiss American friends, it has been a great honor to share in telling your stories!

Susann Bosshard-Kälin

March, 2010, Egg near Einsiedeln

“Our family is like mixed greens of different ethnic groups, says my German friend. My husband David is from Sierra Leone, I am from Switzerland, and my son is married to a Chinese woman. When David and I take our grandchildren with their almond eyes for a walk in Sag Harbor, the whole world meets.” Ellen Carney laughs and uses a clasp to put up her long white hair. She wears a light airy summer dress, which she made herself as she has done with her entire wardrobe for decades.

For over twenty years the family therapist Ellen Carney-Ernst has been living with her second husband David, a former UN official, in Sag Harbor, at the eastern end of Long Island. In the 19^th century whalers lived on this island near Manhattan, later painters discovered the region, and today stars and starlets from movies and TV – such as Steven Spielberg or Renée Zellweger – have their summer residences here.

Ellen and David live in a secluded modest house that David had built in the 1950s. The glamour that surrounds the regions of the Hamptons – an area of wonderful sandy beaches – does not affect them. “In Sag Harbor, where everyone has everything, we live behind the times. We don’t need luxury. We drive a 1983 Chevy, and my Mazda is 16 years old. We came to Sag Harbor long before it became the Saint-Tropez of New York.” The Carney’s house is like a museum. It is filled to the rafters with mementoes and treasures of its widely travelled owners. Each piece has its history and tells stories from different continents – Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. Mixed among them are many textile creations of the lady of the house. “Yet at times I would like to see only white walls,” Ellen says.

The one-story house has a basement that is as long as the house and contains a huge library. “This is David’s world. He is a researcher, philosopher, and mathematician. Only he can find his way among these thousands of books about art, philosophy, medicine, politics and literature.” The Carney’s house has no microwave oven, no answering machine, no swimming pool or manicured lawn. “Status symbols mean nothing to me. Do you know how much we have gotten from the village dump? That’s where the rich people discard their good stuff. Lots of books are from there, many of our chairs and our table. Once we saw a grand piano for the taking. And a few years ago I found a Bible from which flew twelve 100-dollar bills. Isn’t this decadent? Of course, I took the money together with the Bible.”

Ellen Ernst was born on April 10, 1926, in Zurich in the car on the way to the Bethanien Hospital. “The doctors gave me little chance to survive. I was blue by the time my parents reached the hospital. I was transported to the Children’s Hospital. My heart was weak as well as my lungs. But I survived, and my parents handled me with kid gloves. I was never allowed to do gymnastics or to swim. I was always ‘wrapped in cotton’. Later in life I made up for it. Perhaps my adventurous life was my revenge; that is certainly possible. I always knew – since I was a child – that I was different; I just didn’t know how I was different.” Ellen was always sickly. “Often I would have a fever and bronchitis for weeks, bronchiectasis. Because of heart and lung problems my parents sent me several times to health resorts, to Adelboden and Ägeri. These days it is again bad with my cough at times.”

“I always knew that I was different; I just didn’t know how I was different.” (1928)

Ellen’s parents were never really settled. “Mother was a secretary, and my father came from a family of butchers. Father hated butchering, but mother thought she would always have enough to eat, blood and liver sausage. Father preferred to take pictures of guests in Swiss resorts. He developed the pictures over night, and mother had to deliver them the next day. One of my first childhood memories is from Engelberg where on ice people pushed around what looked like water bottles – playing curling. Perhaps I was about two years old. And I will never forget the woman in Wengen who had her leg in a cast on a chair and ate her lettuce with her hands. Besides living in resorts we also lived in Wollishofen, part of Zurich and in Winterthur where we had a movie theater.”

It was only in 1930, when their second child Fritz was born in Altstetten, that the family more or less settled in Zurich. (1932)

It was only in 1930, when their second child Fritz was born in Altstetten, that the family more or less settled in Zurich. But even then, the family kept on moving around town, to the Weststrasse, the Gertrudstrasse, the Grüngasse and eventually to the Badenerstrasse. “My father moved us and his business to various locations. My memories from that time have faded. My parents did not talk about it much. We did not discuss the past. And we rarely had spontaneous guests and there was never much food on the table. My mother always cooked precise amounts. She did not want leftovers. But we always went on vacations, at a time when this wasn’t fashionable yet. We drove to Alassio, to Cattolica, and to the Appenzell during the war. Simply going away: this was different from the families of the children with whom we grew up.”

For health reasons Ellen was not able to attend kindergarten. “I remained in my world of thoughts and phantasies. Our parents had little time for us children. Just the other day Fritz said to me on the phone: ‘You know, our parents simply left us to ourselves.’ But therefore we became independent. This was unusual; it was an adventure. As a child I learned to look around. I observed and drew my own conclusions. As a child I was an introvert.”

Going to school turned out liberating for Ellen. “I devoured books as soon as I was able to read. Emil und die Detektive by Erich Kästner was my first book. Soon I also read newspapers and the Pestalozzi Calendar, which contained pictures and also some cultural items. I was an outsider, hardly had any girlfriends. I had to stay home all the time. My brother says even today that I was too good as a child. I embarrassed him. He always got the spankings that – actually – I deserved.” Becoming a doctor was Ellen’s only dream. “Probably, because I was always sick. My doctor impressed me, and especially our neighbor, Dr. Schnabel, an unmarried woman, who had founded the hospital in Lambarene together with Albert Schweitzer. I had a crush on Albert Schweitzer.”

Ellen’s teacher in primary school realized that this intelligent girl was cut out for the Gymnasium, the college prep school. “He tutored me privately, thus I passed the entrance exam for the Töchterschule, the Gymnasium for girls, on the Hohe Promenade in Zurich. Before the war this was unusual for girls from my social milieu. At the beginning we were about 40 students; at the end it was about a dozen that went all the way to the Matura [the final exam which guarantees entrance to any university]. One became an architect, another a gynecologist. For the last half year before the final exam I had no report card; I was always sick. Out of the six and a half years of the curriculum I probably have report cards for about four years. My classmates knew what would be expected at the final exams; I had not the faintest idea. I simply took the exams without any extra tutorials. But I did pass the finals with Latin, English and Italian.”

During WWII their English teacher encouraged her students to go to the Red Cross Club in the Hotel Eden on the Bahnhofstrasse. “There American GIs on furlough in Switzerland would speak English with us, dance with us. I didn’t need to hear this twice. These evenings were fascinating. I met a lot of interesting people. To meet people who would freely discuss topics we were not allowed to broach at home, that was an incredible experience. At the end of my Gymnasium years the war had ended; it was also the end of those evenings – but my fondness for Americans remained.”

Ellen’s parents did not want to hear about her going to university. “And I had no idea what I could do after graduation. My father took me into his photo shop, which he had opened at the Badenerstrasse in Zurich’s 3^rd district and in which he had set up a portrait studio. But taking portraits was not my cup of tea. Nevertheless, one day he sent me on a picture hunt with an empty roll of Kodak film. I was to take pictures of people in the Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum).”

There she met two GIs, a black man from New York and a white one from Philadelphia, they were super models for her. “And once again I was able to speak English. I offered the two a guided tour through the museum. Howard from Philadelphia – who had seen action in Northern Africa and Italy – insisted on getting my address. And soon we wrote letters back and forth and talked about Chinese philosophy. I found this very adventurous.”

One day in 1947, a few months after his discharge, Howard appeared on the doorsteps of her family’s apartment in the Badenerstrasse. “Self-confident, he announced that we should get married.” Howard was an American Quaker who, enraged about Hitler, had volunteered for the Army; he stayed in Switzerland for three months to get to know Ellen. “And he persisted in wanting to marry me. I saw things differently. I felt too young and too inexperienced as I was just 21 and Howard Gillespie was 19 years older. ‘You came here to see how you would like it. Now I will first go and see how I would like America’, was my answer.”

With an immigration visa Ellen Ernst travelled on her own to America in April 1948. “I had asked a saddler to make two large oversea bags – duffle bags – with stable zippers and handles. My father took me by car to Basel. In the train to Amsterdam I met a nice lady who invited me to spend the night with her and her husband, the town-physician of Amsterdam, before continuing my journey toward the Atlantic the next day. In a hotel in Rotterdam, before embarking, I was served something that looked like grubs – shrimp. How would I have known what they were? Still I felt very grown up. I had no fear. And I knew that I would make it, that somehow I would be able to overcome any obstacles.”

Where did she find such courage? “Inside. I was firm and secure in myself; I knew what I was able to do. And quite frankly, my savings of 800 dollars in my pocket also helped!” The crossing on the New Amsterdam was stormy. “But I was never seasick. The doctor who treated me all my life in Switzerland and who subscribed to anthroposophy had advised me: ‘Breathe in when the ship goes up, and breathe out when she goes down.’ It worked.” Ellen shared the cabin with three women. “One came directly from a concentration camp. She did not say much about it, but told me that a priest on the ship made a pass at her and wanted to sleep with her! “When I saw the statue of Liberty in New York, I felt as if I were growing some more inside. I felt liberated. But when we docked in Hoboken, I would have preferred to turn around right away. Everything was so dirty and chaotic in this harbor.”

Howard met his Swiss girlfriend, but he did not come – as she had expected – with a car. They traveled by train to Philadelphia where Howard lived with his parents – in an old part of the city where African Americans who had come up from the South during the war had settled.

“Everything was suddenly so different. Howard’s mother came from one of the first Quaker families of America. Now I was with people who were religious, but not in the way I had experienced in the Swiss Reformed Church. They were not religious in a church going sense. Yet the ways of the Quakers were somehow familiar to me. I understood them in their ‘meetings for worship’ in which they assembled for silent prayer and experienced these assemblies devoid of ceremonies as divine worship. All this impressed me, and especially the fact that many Quakers think and feel very differently – for me this was deeply religious, a religion without complicated dogmas. Yet I never became a Quaker myself.” About herself she says, “Never in my life did I pursue obstinately any firm goal. Everything always moved, flowed. I only had to say yes or no.

“In Chester County, a hilly rural area thirty miles west of Philadelphia, Howard planned to establish a ‘utopian community’ together with conscientious objectors and their families, a community that did not exclude persons of any racial background. We were a large, extended family and created our own rules in the settlement of Tanguy Homesteads. We simply wanted to ‘drop out of the rat race.’“

It was a totally new and fascinating world with professors, librarians, teachers, and nurses and their families. “Interesting people such as Martha Jaeger, the psychologist of the writer Anaïs Nin, lived with us. Exciting. I felt very much at ease. When a five year old girl came to me during my pregnancy and told me how I had made this child and how it would later come out of my belly, I thought that these were truly unusual people!”

The first members of the community lived in an old farmhouse. “Howard and I moved from the beginning into a house of our own; but we had many meals together. Few members of the community owned a car, the women shopped together, and we used vegetables and fruit from our large garden. The men built the houses. I felt at home there. Yet today I know: in reality I do not belong anywhere. I feel at home in the entire world. Wherever I live at the moment, I feel at home, and so also in our settlement.

“Howard and I did get married. And when I became pregnant, they told me: either an abortion or heart surgery. Already at the age of 13 I had heard that I could die because of my heart or my lungs. Therefore I thought that I could die in either case, by giving birth or by having the surgery. I chose what was good for me. I had nothing to lose. Imagine this! And now an old woman is sitting across from you. It is really strange how things happen in life.”

Ellen Carney was told that she was the first pregnant woman in America who underwent heart surgery. “I was seen as a special case in the University Hospital in Philadelphia and I became a media star overnight.” The surgery was successful, but asthma and coughing have been her steady companions until today. “My lungs could not recover; they were too heavily damaged.”

In their utopian community of intellectual leftists Ellen blossomed. “We were different from the average Americans, and I appreciated it. We were looking for a different path, an interior rather than an exterior one, watched each others’ children and functioned as nurses for each other. We were almost self-sufficient, created our own little world.

“In 1949 I gave birth to our son Fred, in 1953 to our daughter Hester. For 30 years I lived in this community, until 1978. These were years that deeply shaped me. Howard worked as an engineer in the large harbor of the US Navy in Philadelphia. We participated in political protest marches to Washington in support of black Americans and protested against the War in Viet Nam.” Ellen did not have a profession “until there was a need for a kindergarten teacher for all the children in our settlement. I thought, I would try it and opened a kindergarten for our community that was also open to children from outside. It was great fun. With the children I did everything that as a child I had not been allowed to do myself. We even burned the Böög of the Zurich Sechseläuten near our creek.” [Following an old custom, old man winter is burned publicly one day in early spring when all the church bells toll the summer hour of 6 p.m.]

“I was one of the first hospital teachers in the United States, and in our team I had equal status with psychologists and psychiatrists.”

Then Ellen started feeling a great thirst for knowledge. She went back to school and became an American citizen “so that later I would be able to work as a teacher.” As an American with a bachelor’s degree, which she had earned at a black college, she obtained a position at a hospital for children with mental illnesses. “I worked especially with autistic children; I was one of the first hospital teachers in the United States, and in our team I had equal status with psychologists and psychiatrists – this was totally new at that time.” She continued to take courses and earned a Masters degree in special education in 1962.

Yet she continued to be involved in her community. “At Christmas we used to invite foreign students from various universities, mostly blacks. That’s how I met David, an economist, who had grown up in Sierra Leone, taught math in America and subsequently worked at the UN Planning Institute in Senegal as well as in posts in the Caribbean and in East Africa. While in the US he used to spend Christmas holidays with us.”

When Ellen became ever more independent and earned more money than her husband, he had had enough. “I was too lively for him because I wanted to experience more of life. As visionary as Howard basically was – in his relationship with me he was not open-minded. He did not like the ways in which I had developed and that I paid for our children’s college education and our vacations.”

They decided to divorce. Howard stayed in the community. And Ellen opened a private practice as family therapist in Paoli near Philadelphia. “I was successful. Once almost half of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra came to my practice. I made good money.” And: “America gave me a second life, and my heart lived again – both in the literal and figurative sense.”

David Carney’s wife died, and Ellen visited the widower in 1977 in Dakar where he worked for the UN. “In 1978, the year of my divorce, I married David. My mother got along well with him but said ‘if only he were not all that black…’ One of the first things my husband taught me was not to be so nosy. ‘White people are nosy. Don’t ask so many questions!’”

Years with David in Africa followed – an adventurous and fascinating period in several UN missions. “We were in Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Chad before the civil war. Everywhere I felt at home. Often I came to places where people had never seen a white person. I had to learn that their uneasiness in my presence was not directed at me personally but was simply a result of this unusual experience. Already at age 16 my hair had turned white, though not as white as it is today. This had to do with my illness.”

For many years Africa was Ellen’s home. “After some time in Maroua, in northern Cameroon, I realized that tourists did not find anything to take back to their children. Thus I began to make toys from shreds of cloth that were not sold on the market. Together with tailors – all men – I created animals, giraffes, elephants, Kasperli puppets as well as greetings cards decorated with cloth. As time went by, we were able to hire five to six tailors who sewed the toys. A Dutch organization handled the sales. I was simply spontaneously creative.”

In 1984 David retired. “We didn’t know where we should live. In his house in Sag Harbor certainly just for a time – but then we stayed forever!” Ellen resumed her creative crafts: “I began with patchwork and quilts, sewed pillows and vests. A neighbor provided me with cloth samples and covers, which she fished out of the containers of various interior decorators in Manhattan. My creations were sold in a store in Sag Harbor and even in some art galleries – until patchwork became very fashionable. Then I stopped. Later I described the memories of my Swiss childhood in a book that I also illustrated.”

Today Ellen no longer likes to cook. “Often we eat at the Senior Center where one can get a lunch for $2.50. You have to be at least 55 to go there. At the beginning people there didn’t like me, I probably used too many foreign words. But in time they accepted us. Recently I edited a book about the people who frequent the center. They come from Poland, Germany, Ireland – it is a multi-cultural project about mostly simple, but interesting people who have so much to tell if you take the time to listen to them. Everyone has his or her own story to tell. There are so many people here who experienced a lot. Americans are often more profound than we think. They are easygoing. As a nation they think that they are powerful – but as individuals they are sensitive, more sensitive than the Swiss, I think.”

Then once more, Ellen looks back farther in her past. “When I arrived in America, the women here seemed different from those in Switzerland. They did what they wanted, were more independent. But they did not have much power. And it seemed they had only little political interest. In America political topics were not publicly discussed. That was somehow taboo at any rate among the people with whom we lived. This only changed in the 1960s.”

Ellen is tired. “My lava flows more slowly – though I really was a volcano. I never felt fear. My life probably was somewhat more colorful than the lives of others. Life is a spider’s web. Events surface which I had not considered for a long time. Thus there is sufficient material for me to digest. I have no regrets. Of course, there are things that I could have done better. But at the time I did the best I could, I did what I felt was right and necessary.”

Does she feel her age? “Yes. David and I are old. We only travel in our minds nowadays. Many of our friends are living in senior’s residences. For David, that would not be good. He wants to stay where his books are, he would not be able to part with them. He writes much, philosophical books and political letters to the editor of the local newspapers. The corruption in his home country worries him, yet from a distance he sees the difficulties there a bit less. Africans have a dense social network, here and throughout the world, this is good. David is highly educated and wise. And I like living with him.

“I don’t have any great dreams anymore. All is well as it is. Strange, isn’t it? Many people say ‘If only I had… but I couldn’t.’ The last time I was in Switzerland five years ago I thought that I would have become a mediocre woman, a Bünzli woman if I had spent my life there. Perhaps my life would have revolved around food and vacations. And perhaps I would have died of my illness much sooner. I feel that in Switzerland I would not have had all the opportunities I had here in America.

“Would I have married with my heart problems? I am sure I would not have dared to have children. And I would never have gotten into the circles I did if I had not studied. Thanks to my emigration I experienced a second birth.

“Here in America people deal with life in simpler, more easy going ways. For me Switzerland was traditional and predictable way back then. Today it may be different. But in my time – everything had its fixed routine.

“When I talk about Switzerland I always say ‘at home.’ Even today I like to make Rösti [sort of hash browns] and Birchermüesli. My daughter Hester says that I am still very much connected to Switzerland even though I have lived in foreign countries for 60 years.

“I have little contact with Swiss people here. But every day I am reading the Tages Anzeiger and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung online. Both Fred and Hester are proud of their Swiss heritage. Both are American citizens but speak Swiss dialect. Fred studied at the University in Basel and is active in Swiss-American events; and he is good at Jass, a Swiss card game that my father taught them. Probably it is the first years of life and one’s mother tongue that shape our sense of ‘home’. Everything else is just sauce for the roast.”

Ellen says that she still can delve into each layer of her life; “I have only given you excerpts. I took life as it presented itself; I lived according to the Greek expression panta rhei – to let one self be carried along. This requires no courage. The process, the development, was always more interesting and more satisfying to me than the end result.

“I was mother, wife, teacher, therapist and handicraft artist. And with this versatility I was probably little suited for a professional career. Even today I take each day as it comes. This is wonderful. And actually it is even more interesting today than in earlier times. Looking back I see how everything fits together. Is this wisdom? I have no idea! This is the time for me to look back, time too, to check out the apples in the basket and to throw out the rotten ones.”

“The first time I ever watched television was at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. For me it was a marvel. General Motors had a great hit with this new wonder of the world. Another popular place at the Fair for the Swiss was the Swiss Pavilion. In the foreshadowing of the Second World War it offered a bit of the homeland. Everyone was very patriotic and one heard Swiss dialect spoken all around. Almost once a week our family drove to the Fair from New Jersey – as a teenager I could join the official events to which my father was invited, or simply went with friends for a raclette or fondue.”

Margot Ammann Durrer is the daughter of the Swiss structural engineer and bridge builder, Othmar H. Ammann. She speaks an American brand of her Swiss dialect. The longer the conversation lasts the more extended and colorful her vocabulary becomes. “In my heart I am both American and Swiss; rather than a conflict, this is an asset. Although I was born in America, my Swiss background has made its mark throughout my life.”

From her apartment on the 20^th floor of a high rise building in Manhattan she has a view beyond the roofs and water towers of the Upper East Side. Summer flowers are in bloom in pots on her small terrace. From somewhere a gentle bell is chiming in the wind and finches are pecking at sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder.

She leans over the railing where a small American flag is fluttering: “I have no fear of heights. I probably inherited that from my father.” Back inside at the card table, she lays out a book of the Ammann family of Schaffhausen as well as a scrapbook of her father. The Seth Thomas clock is chiming every fifteen minutes.

“My father built long span suspension bridges here in America. In a symbolic sense I have built a bridge for myself between America and my Swiss heritage through frequent visits to Switzerland, as well as working there for a year – and my association here with Swiss activities and organizations such as the Swiss American Historical Society.”

It was only in recent years that Margot got to know details about the private life of her parents. “Mostly I learned these from the 485 letters that my father had sent from New York to Switzerland at the beginning of the last century to his parents and to my mother. My grandmother had saved these letters, often six to eight pages long, carefully bound in red ribbons in bundles according to year. After her death, these precious bundles traveled back over the ocean, returning to my father. His letters to my mother before they were married were saved in a lovely painted wooden box.” Margot adds: “It gave me great comfort to read the private thoughts and hopes of my father and also the expressions of love for his parents and my mother. From these valuable writings I also learned of the happiness he and my mother found in their lifetime in America. Letters are like valuable footprints of a person.”

While the official papers of Othmar Ammann are kept in an archive at the library of the ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Margot has kept his personal papers. “These are always helpful for researchers and reporters to consult for details of his private life. I translated his letters into English as well as the Archive records of the Ammann family of Schaffhausen, going back to 1450. In my eighties, I finally learned, through the patient direction of a friend, the use of the computer’s word processor, which enabled me to bring these translations up to the state of the art.”

Margot noticeably enjoyed the review of her life. “I have not reminisced on my childhood and adolescent years for a long time. I thought I had forgotten everything! It is wonderful to review my life, scene for scene – as if on stage in a theatre.”

But first she turned the pages in her father’s album to the description of his first years in America. “In 1904, at the age of 21, father came here to gain experience from the vast engineering opportunities before marrying his childhood sweetheart, Lilly Wehrli and settling down to raise a family and practice his profession in Switzerland. He wrote romantic letters back to Switzerland, and soon he was writing, ‘I would like to stay longer in America. But we do not want to spend our youth separated. My dearest, I would like you to come to America.’ She answered, ‘I will follow you anywhere in the world, but I would like to marry here.’ The boat trips to Switzerland and return left only 4 days of his vacation to marry and bring his bride back to America. In the course of the years, new and challenging engineering opportunities kept on presenting themselves, and his planned one-year stay in the United States became a lifetime.”

In 1924, after 20 years of diligent service as assistant to several of America’s outstanding bridge engineers, he was appointed Engineer of Bridges for the Port Authority of New York, in charge of the construction of his own proposed bridge over the Hudson River in New York. The building of this bridge, today known as the George Washington Bridge, brought him professional recognition and the start of a long career as specialist in long span bridges. Margot remembers walking with him on Sunday mornings to a high point near their home in Boonton, New Jersey, from where he could observe through binoculars the progress of the construction of the New Jersey tower of the bridge. She also vividly recalls him coming home from the office in the evening, going first into the garden and walking around a bit, still wearing his hat and business clothes and street shoes, pulling a few weeds or pruning a few straggly branches from a pine tree. This was how he shed the pressures of the office.

“We like our little sister. She smiles at us in the morning.”

“The several years preceding this appointment were hard times for my parents, living on their savings and hopes for acceptance of father’s plans. On May 31, 1922, with my brothers Werner and George, 10 and 12 years old, I arrived as the last addition to the family. ‘Our little one does not give us any problem for the moment. She is alert and has a strong personality. She will find her way,’ father wrote in a letter to his mother in Switzerland. My brothers added, ‘We like our little sister. She smiles at us in the morning.’ They were very good to me. I often heard about how they taught me to swim, throwing me into the water even before I was able to walk. Everyone spoiled ‘Little Margot’. My childhood was happy and without care. We lived in a house with a large garden, surrounded on two sides with woods and a river. One early memory I have is of sitting with my mother on the terrace while she was sewing. I was her little helper by threading needles for her. I also remember staying with father while he worked in the garden or accompanying him for long walks, with him pointing out certain plants or birds or other beauties of nature. I had a special attachment to my father. He was certainly my first sweetheart. Father gave my brothers and me a lasting example of modesty and honesty. He never pushed us to excel nor ever praised us. He only asked of us that we become responsible, honorable and independent citizens.”

“I had a special attachment to my father. He was certainly my first sweetheart.” (1933)

Margot then added: “For a long time it was very hard to be the daughter of a famous father. I felt uncomfortable when people praised him to me, or on the other hand, when more was expected from me because of his achievements. In seventh grade at school, in front of the whole class, the instructor corrected an error on my exam paper, saying ‘your father has designed the George Washington Bridge. And you cannot even add correctly.’ I wanted to fall through the floor. It took time and maturity to overcome this shyness and to find my own personality, my own life. We lived as Swiss, at least that’s how I thought of it then. The American children had more toys and fancier clothing, and their parents were less strict than ours. Our meals were simpler and more geared for health, with fresh vegetables and fruit from the garden and eggs and chicken from our own henhouse. In contrast, I had more books, had more vacation trips, more exposure to theatre, museums and later, opportunities of advanced education. I played with the neighbors, taking preference for the boy’s sports over the girl’s dolls and dresses. Often Swiss friends of my parents visited us. We led a simple life in a small rural town, as was commonplace in America in the 1920’s.”

At eleven years of age, from one day to the next, Margot had to learn to be independent. “In 1930, my mother was operated for breast cancer. However the cancer had already spread. Mother never complained. I somehow sensed the seriousness of her condition and remember praying for her recovery. After many weeks in the hospital, shortly before Christmas of 1933, she died. I reproached God, ‘When I prayed to You to let my mother get better, I did not mean for You to take her away from me.’ Her death was very hard for me to accept. Father was busy with his work at the Port Authority and often was in San Francisco as a consultant for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. A governess was engaged to manage the household, but she did not understand me, and my brothers were already independent and hardly had any time for me. During this sad time, in which I was very often alone, I lived in my own dreams and fantasies. I learned to think and discover my own interests. I collected stones and stamps. Dolls did not play any role in my life; the games of the neighborhood boys were more interesting.

“My first years of education were spent in a private school. I did not like it there at all. Every Wednesday morning we had to hear a formal lecture about God – and on holy matters such as fire and brimstone. As a child, this was very distressing. My strong protests were heard, and from the fourth grade onward to graduation from high school I could attend public school. Such a change! This opportunity of studying with children of different religions, colors and nationalities made a great difference in my life. To be one of the few of my classmates that could go on to further education left me with a sense of obligation and gratitude.” Margot was in the 8^th grade when her father remarried. “My stepmother, whom I called ‘mother’, as indeed she was a second mother to me, was very concerned about my education. She even bought a Latin dictionary to help me with my homework. I had assumed that after high school I would be a secretary in father’s office, but my stepmother inspired and encouraged me go on to college.”

In her last year of high school, Margot was elected class president. “Today it is big news for a female to have that post,” she states, “but in those times both students and teachers were less conscious of role differences. I was used to studying in a mixed classroom. On the other hand it was unusual for a young woman to plan for any professional career other than that of teacher, nurse or secretary. Those who did continue their education were not really taken seriously.” Margot failed the College entrance exams in her last year of high school, but passed the following year and was admitted to Vassar College. That year interval was to have been spent in a Haushaltungsschule, a domestic management school, in Switzerland, but the outbreak of the Second World War cancelled this plan.

Vassar College, founded in 1861 in Poughkeepsie, NY, was the first all women’s college in America. In those days young women usually attended a finishing school, in preparation for marriage. However, Vassar was established with the dedicated goal of preparing women for independence and careers of their own beyond housewife and motherhood. Margot was eighteen years old and living in a women’s dormitory on college campus. It was her first time away from home. She dreamed of becoming a medical researcher, “to discover the cure for cancer. Our housemother advised me to get a medical degree before going into research work. I had no idea that this field would be open to women. When I presented this plan of four more years of tuition, father quietly said ‘Well, if that is what you want.’”

December 1941: In her second year at Vassar, Japan bombed American ships in Pearl Harbor. “This took away our innocence.” Several of her classmates quit their studies and married boyfriends leaving for military service. The rest of the class shortened the four years of study by skipping vacations, many then enlisting in jobs replacing the men that had left for military service. “Life for us suddenly became very serious, politically also. It was a shock. All of us had been born in the time between the wars. We suddenly felt very patriotic. Communication with friends and relatives in Switzerland was blocked. Our only contact with Europe was through the radio. Every evening at six o’clock we gathered around the radio to hear the news from England. Often in the background one could hear the explosion of bombs. On the morning we learned that Hitler had marched into Poland, mother and I went out to the garden to work off our distress. Thinking that father was already in the office, we were very surprised to find him also in the garden, weeding. He had heard the news on the way to the office and was too upset to go to work.”

“…, but I also had the feeling of truly being Swiss.” With her parents at Dübendorf airport… (1952)

After graduation from Vassar College, Margot began her medical studies in New York Medical College. “A whole new world opened up for me, and soon my goal turned from research to practicing medicine. I had observed that internists were prone to long discussions about medications and electrocardiograms and as I preferred to see some action, I aimed to become a surgeon.” After graduation in 1949, she continued her training in the specialty of Obstetrics and Gynecology. This was the ideal field for females to practice. It was less popular for the men, who often were uncomfortable in dealing with women’s problems and emotions. Her parents were considering retirement in Switzerland. So after her required training as intern and resident she worked in the Woman’s Hospital in St.Gallen, Switzerland. “With this I not only acquired further experience, but I also had the feeling of truly being Swiss. On weekends I was able to enjoy visiting various parts of Switzerland. Then my parents’ plans to retire to Switzerland were changed once again when father received an offer for one more irresistible project, the construction of the Verrazano Bridge in NY. With a newly established love for the homeland of my parents, I returned to New York.”

… and in Montreux. (1955)

But stop! “I almost forgot to mention a very important episode in my life: In 1958 I passed my summer vacation with my parents in Riffelalp in Wallis. There I climbed the Matterhorn. This was not such a great physical accomplishment, as the weather was ideal, I had a good guide, and had no fear of heights. But to stand on top of the world, on a narrow pathway of snow looking down to Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other was a thrilling experience that I shall never forget.”

“I will never forget July 28, 1958. Together with a guide I climbed the Matterhorn.”

And then Margot adds, “on my gravestone, I should like to have three things written: First, ‘she once viewed the world from the top of the Matterhorn; secondly, at the age of eighty, she learned to use the computer; and thirdly, she overcame her shyness and learned to share the personality of her father with the public.’” And then she changes her mind and says, “but I am not going to have a gravestone. When I die, I shall go back to my Alma mater, New York Medical College. In dissecting my shell, some medical students will be able to spend a year learning their anatomy. I have specified this in my will and I find comfort in thinking that the full course of my life will come to a close in this final way.”

In 1960 Margot opened her private practice in Obstetrics and Gynecology. It was a time of many changes in medicine such as antibiotics, birth control pills, and air conditioning in the operating room. Her first patient was a nurse that knew Margot from her hospital internship. Other nurses and female hospital attendants, as well as their female friends and family members, became the base of her fledgling practice. The new wave of feminism at that time also brought women to her door, saying “we feel more comfortable with a woman physician, she understands us better than a man.” Young women who previously never went for physical examinations before becoming pregnant were now coming for prescription of birth control pills. Also, abortions became legal to perform in New York so gynecologists were able to help their own patients rather than send them to Geneva or Puerto Rico and one saw less infections resulting from improperly performed illegal abortions. “I averaged about two deliveries a week and one or two major operations. I enjoyed my profession and my patients. Besides the physical examination I felt it equally important to talk with the patient and to give her a chance to ask questions.”