The Votaws Move to California

In 1944, the Votaws moved across the country to Whittier, California, and Dick finished high school and college there.

By Dave

Jan 27, 2021

In this clip Mildred tells why the family moved to California, how she and Dick reacted to the move, and about the house they moved into.

Here is the house they moved into in Whittier. Note the angle of the car; central Whittier has hills on the north and east side and this house is on the north slope. The address was 637 N. Bright. Most of the streets in the original part of town (which was called “Uptown Whittier”) were named after Quaker people or places, so I’m sure that Bright was a Quaker name. “Whittier” was the name of a famous Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier. The car in front of the house is a Buick, of course. We always had Buicks.

The same house, in 2014. The address is now 5811 N. Bright; Whittier’s house numbering system has shifted to conformity with the rest of L.A. County.

This is the car that Dick drove when he was in high school and college.

Dick worked for the post office in Whittier while he was in high school. Here he is shown with a mail delivery bag. He did so well at this job that his supervisor sent a commendation to his parents.

Harold Votaw developed a practice of writing long, loving letters to his family, and we are blessed to have several of them in the archives. This one was written and sent to Dick on the occasion of his moving away from home and off to college at Claremont. Their close relationship is evident throughout the letter.

As he grew older, Harold’s health required him to choose a new career. He had a permanent heart condition which was the result of rheumatic fever in childhood, and the strain of standing up all day (as a pharmacist) became too much for him. His brothers (Clayton and Vernon) had started Pomona Box Company in California, and it was quite successful. They needed more help, and invited Harold to join them there. So the family moved to Whittier in 1944. Dick was 16 years old, ready to start his junior year in high school. Whittier was a Quaker town, and the family joined First Friends Church which was just a few blocks away from their home.

Tues. Eve
Dear Aunt & Unc
I miss you more and more the farther away I get. We are right now 991 miles from Plainfield at McLean, Texas, about 80 miles east of Amarillo. We have had no trouble at all except this morning the car started coughing some so we stopped at a garage at 6:00 a.m. and they adjusted the distributor joints and it works all right now.

We drove 526 mi. today. Swell roads but lots of traffic. Only averaged 36 mi. p. h. including all stops. We started at 5:00 a.m. from this woman’s house in Springfield and are now in Texas at 7:30 this evening. We’re not tired though. It was awfully hot today coming across Okla. and your thermos certainly comes in handy. It was well over a 100 today. The best time to drive is from 5 am to 9 or 10 and from 6:30 pm on. We think we will stop a little while in the heat of the day tomorrow and then drive part of the desert tomorrow night.

I’ll be anxious to get your letter at Santa Rosa. Wish I were there now. And I also wish this was June 10th.

The corn in this country sure is peculiar. On one side of the road you see it 11 ft. High and you look to the other side and it’s just coming up. In lots of fields the weeds are taller than the corn. In other places it grew about 2 ft. tall, then died. They’re is also a lot of freshly broken ground too. This is a queer country. There are a lot of tomatoes too.

Well I guess I’ll take a shower now and go to bed. We’re starting about 4:30 in the morning. Thanks again for everything. I don’t see how a person deserves to have such a swell Aunt and Unc as you are. Good-by for now.
All my love,
Dick
P.S. I’ve spent only $12.03 for everything so far.

The move to California was necessary, but difficult in many ways. In the video clip on this page, Mildred tells how hard it was for her and Dick to adjust to the changes. One of the hardest things, I’m sure, was leaving Tirzah and Frank in Plainfield. They were not able to leave the farm. Dick wrote the above letter to them on the way west.

This photo is not labeled, but it’s reasonable to believe that this is Dick’s high school graduation photo. The portrait at the top of this page was probably taken at the time of his graduation from Fullerton Junior College.

Dick graduated from Whittier High School in 1946, and enrolled at Whittier College for the fall term of that year. He did not have a good experience at Whittier; he tells about this in the section of his autobiography which is printed below. Next, Dick enrolled at Fullerton Junior College while continuing to live with his parents in Whittier. After two years at Fullerton, he graduated with an Associate of Arts degree in 1948.

In fall term 1948 Dick started in the first class of a brand-new college called Claremont Men’s College. This required him to move away from home and live with some of his friends in Claremont. He tells about this part of his life in the section of his autobiography that is reproduced below.

This is the program in which Dick’s name appeared on the event of his graduation from Fullerton J.C. with an A.A. degree. Note the name of the college director: W.T. Boyce was Dick’s Uncle Will.

His pastor, Herschel Folger, sent a congratulatory letter upon Dick’s graduation from Fullerton J.C. Based on the letter, it appears that Dick intended to go to UCLA at that time – but we know that he went to Claremont Men’s College instead.

This photo (taken in front of his home in Whittier) was taken on June 13, 1948, the day that Dick graduated from Fullerton Jr. College with an AA degree. On the back of the photo it says “Happy exams are over!!”

In this section of his life story, Dick tells about the move to California, his time at Whittier High School, and his activities at the YMCA and the YMCA camp.

The Learning Years, by Dick Votaw (part 2) (part 1)

After the close of school at the end of my sophomore year my parents and I moved to California. I hated to leave Indianapolis and all my friends and I had to give up a good job that I was really enjoying. My Dad’s doctors said it was a necessity that he change jobs to be able to get off his feet. As a pharmacist he was standing almost all of the time. Dad was 41 years old at the time of the move and with his heart condition (the result of rheumatic fever) he was told he had a life expectancy of 40 years.

This was really a very difficult time for all of us, as I know  Mom & Dad did not want to leave and for Aunt & Unc it was unthinkable. Dad’s brothers in California had offered him a job at their company in Pomona (Pomona Box Company) and he would have a desk job there. We made the move in June, 1944 and finally left for our westward trek from the farm. It was a sad day, one in which I will never forget, for there were many tears shed that day. As for our house on Illinois St. I do not remember how we disposed of it or how we came out financially. I remember that on the drive to Chicago from the farm that no one said a word as we had no idea when we would see Aunt & Unc again. I kept a daily diary of our trip, not too informative, but mainly to record the number of miles that I was allowed to drive each day. I am not sure how Dad arranged for enough gas rationing coupons to make the trip or how he managed to get extra tires (as tires did not last too many miles) in case we needed them.

After living with family for a while when arriving in California, we bought the white colonial house at 637 N. Bright Ave. in Whittier. Mom and Dad knew right away they wanted this house because it reminded them so much of the one we had just sold in Indianapolis. They wanted to settle in Whittier because of the church and it was their desire that I grow up in a Friends Church. They did this knowing that Dad would have to commute to Pomona everyday for work. I have always been so grateful for this decision.

I started to Whittier High School in September as a Junior, only knowing my cousin Don, who was a year behind me in school. He was bused in from La Habra everyday and then right back home after school so I didn’t see him too often. I cannot remember exactly the turn of events at this point, but soon I got interested in the Y.M.C.A. in town and going out for the tennis team. I was very fortunate to make some good friends right away as our interests in both the Y and tennis coincided. Unfortunately, my friends had been playing tennis for at least two years prior to my arrival in Whittier and therefore were more skilled than me. They were on the varsity team and I made the J.V.’s. We usually traveled together for out of town matches. Everyone had the opportunity to move up the tennis ladder and I kept trying to get up to varsity, but could not quite make it by the end of my senior year.

The Y.M.C.A. was a big part of my life for those last two years in high school. This is where I learned to play pool, basketball, and joined a club sponsored by the Y. During my senior year I led a club of my own of Jr. High boys and found this most enjoyable and stimulating. We had a basketball team and played other Jr. High teams and on one occasion that I recall we made an overnight to Hollywood High School for a tournament and I remember sleeping on the floor. If I were those boys’ parents I don’t know if I would have let my son go on an overnight with a high school senior as the leader. I do not recall any bad incidents or recollect how we made out in the tournament. We also had club meetings each week and had projects we did for the Y or for the community. The Y.M.C.A. camp, Arbolado, is located in the San Bernardino mountains. One camp period I took my boys to camp and on one particular day we all had food poisoning. I remember being very sick and had to leave them for a couple of days and stay in the leader’s tent. When I got back to the cabin I could not believe the mess. There was vomit on the floor and clothes and dirt everywhere. Those guys knew they were in trouble right away. The good times far out shadowed the bad and it was a great learning experience for me.

The food was great most of the time and I probably ate too much. It was at one of these camp experiences that I got sick on apple pie and have never liked it since. After all, what can you expect when you eat a whole pie by yourself! We went on many hikes, did crafts that I was never very skilled at, and had great competition between cabins at various skills. The camp fires at night were the highlight with much singing and laughter. One particular hike I remember the most was an overnighter to Dollar Lake (shaped like a silver dollar) and up hill all the way. We carried our back packs with sleeping bags and food and whatever else we needed and slept that night around the lake that virtually had no bottom, or so they say, and it was cold! I woke up the next morning unable to stand without help as I had injured my left thigh that I later learned was a herniated muscle that I still have today. I had to have considerable help returning to camp. Even today it gives me some trouble in cold weather, but is not debilitating.

One benefit of the move was that Dick got to spend more time with his cousin Don Votaw, and the two became good friends. Both of them appear in this yearbook photo of the Whittier High School tennis team. They’re both shown as “D. Votaw” but it’s not difficult to tell who is who.

Dick (wearing glasses) and Don (in the middle) share a rowboat with two friends during their high school years.

Here’s a paper that Dick wrote in high school, with the title “My Opinion of Girls.” He received a grade of ‘B’. I’m pretty sure that he never knew that this paper was placed in our archives!

The pastor of First Friends Church, Herschel Folger, sent the above letter to Dick upon his graduation from high school.

This is the letter announcing Dick’s acceptance as a student at Claremont Men’s College. There, he studied business and accounting.

This photo was taken when Dick was leaving home to study at Claremont Men’s College. His mother wrote on the back of the photo: “I was sad he was leaving but glad he had the opportunity.”

In this section of his autobiography Dick tells about working in the Whittier post office, his first car, and his experiences at Whittier College, Fullerton Junior College, and Claremont Men’s College.

The Learning Years, by Dick Votaw
(part 2, continued) (part 1)

My last two years of high school seemed to progress quite rapidly and I learned to adapt to my new surroundings and I was happy. I was also making new friends at church in the Christian Endeavor program. The war came to an end in 1945 and I turned 18 in March 1946, graduating in June. The draft was still in effect, but I was deferred due to the fact I was enrolled for college. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945 during my Junior year. I had learned to think of him as an institution and indestructible as he had been president since I was four years old.

In late fall, 1944, my Uncle Merritt Votaw got me a job at the post office serving as a war service substitute clerk-carrier. Uncle Merritt just happened to be a good friend of the Postmaster. He was my great-uncle, being my grandfather Votaw’s brother and the youngest of my grandfather’s siblings. He and Aunt Anna were wonderful people and unfortunately they both died before I could really get to know them. Uncle Merritt would have been the person I should have asked about my grandfather Votaw. I know very little about him except that he was a farmer most of his life, but he was a plunger too. I have heard it said that he made and lost three fortunes in his life. The last being an oil well venture in Mexico that he lost to the Mexican government in a take-over. He contracted a form of malaria there and died young. In fact, he died the same year as his father, which was 1924.

I kept the part-time job at the post office for four years and really made good money compared to other jobs in Whittier. I was also able to get jobs for several of my friends. I started out at $1.05 per hour and was able to save quite a bit of it, enough so that I was able to take a cruise to Alaska in 1948. I didn’t have very many dates my Junior and Senior years so I imagine this aided in my savings plan. After school and after tennis practice I would head for the post office to assist one of the carriers for his afternoon delivery. There were two deliveries per day and one on Saturday for each walking route. The rural routes just had the one delivery each day. One rural route was in East Whittier, one in South Whittier and one in Pico. There were sixteen walking routes and by my fourth year, the city had expanded to twenty-three. I usually carried route 8 or 6 and was pleased when assigned to #6 as we lived on this one, and I would get to go in the house for food while delivering mail. The carriers were always cautioning me to slow down  and not be in a hurry, as their supervisor would spot check the routes to see how long each one took. They sure did not want me showing them up on time of delivery.

I finally got the opportunity to work inside the post office as well if I would learn the city distribution system of sorting. By really jumping at this chance, and learning to sort mail for the carriers, made me more valuable to the supervisor. Mr. Mills was a tyrant in many ways, but I was able to please him most of the time and got favors because of it. When there was a choice of job assignments I was given the inside job of sorting because I was good at it. I even got compliments from the carriers for having very few mistakes. I always did city distribution on Saturday mornings and this meant going to work at 3:30 am. If I had a date the night before I sometimes met myself going to work, or so it seemed. After the mail was sorted I usually delivered one of the routes for a carrier that had to take Saturday off because he had accumulated too much overtime. I would work full days in the summer and this is where I really saved the money.

By sometime in 1947 I had my first car, a 1934 Ford sedan that I got for $200.00. Only one of my friends had a car at this time and that was because his father was a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer and he had lots of money according to my standards. I really loved that old car and found it very reliable; it was up to me to pay the expenses and that I was glad to do just to have a car. My friends would all pile in and off we would go. It didn’t matter how many were in the car and there were no seat belts or regulations or laws concerning this. You can’t compare the driving conditions then with how they are now as there were fewer cars and fewer roads and no freeways. The summer of ‘46, right after graduation, I got the opportunity to drive a car for a woman back to Indiana. I took some time off from the Post Office and accompanied this person to Indianapolis. I have no recollection of how the contact was made for this opportunity or even her identity. The trip went well and I arrived in Indianapolis in time to attend my class graduation and to see some of my old friends. I remember this being a big disappointment as they had their friends and I was an outsider then. I stayed on the farm for about a week and then helped one of Aunt & Unc’s friends drive a car to California.

September 1946 rolled around and I entered Whittier College as a Freshman. As I look back on this experience now I surely would not have done this, but being only 18 it was something I could not foresee. I would have been much better off going to a Junior College as I was not ready for a major learning institution. I started my Accounting education as a Freshman with a professor that had no eye contact with the class and spoke in a monotone. I had taken a bookkeeping class as a Senior in high school and found out I wanted to pursue this as a possible vocation. I had one or two other classes that gave me no clue as to what I was supposed to learn. Besides all this, the service men were returning to school as Freshmen, only they were 4 or 5 years older and those who were only 17 or 18 surely felt out of place. However, we had no trouble beating the Sophomores during the hazing activities. My grades and my experiences during this first year left me to believe I had better make a change, either change schools or go back to the post office full time. My uncle, William D. Boyce, was president of Fullerton J.C. at this time and after consultation between families it was decided I should attend his school for my Sophomore year. This turned out to be a wise decision. I received my AA in June, 1948 and learned from my uncle of this new school in Claremont named Claremont Men’s College. I applied there and entered as a second semester Sophomore in the fall of 1948. They would not accept all of the credits I had earned my first two years so I could not be classified as a Junior.

September came and off I went to Claremont. The experience of gaining new friends here virtually ended my relationships with high school buddies. For the first time in my life I was more or less on my own. By this time I had acquired my second car, a green 1939 Ford, 2 door coupe with skirts. I took real pride in that car and I had it until 1950. Dad was working in Pomona so I did talk to him on the phone periodically. Occasionally I needed my clothes washed so I would go home long enough to get that task done for me.

At Claremont I met friends that I have kept the rest of my life. My first friend was Norm Anderson, recently out of the navy, and starting as a Freshman. We were housed in steel barracks, left over from war surplus. There was absolutely no insulation in these buildings, therefore one would freeze in the winter and roast in the summer. Each unit housed 8 students with two per room, however, Norm and I were lucky and we each had a room for ourselves. I had two seniors in the room next to mine and they helped me over some of the hurdles. One of them had his dog living with us. It was a very nice beagle and I didn’t mind having it around at all. The only part of this arrangement I didn’t care for was the night these two guys went over to Occidental College and stole their mascot tiger before the big game and decided to store it on my spare bed. I was scared out of my wits that some guys from Oxy would find it and beat up on me to get it back. I guess this never happened as I do not even remember as to the disposition of the tiger.

I immediately started taking classes towards a business major, such as Accounting, Money & Banking, Business Law, Business Cycles, International Relations, and I went out for the Pomona-Claremont basketball team. The two schools had their sports together at that time as CMC was only a school of 250 students. I lasted on the team for a couple of months before being cut. I didn’t mind because I was not really enjoying it anyway. I then switched to basketball for P.E. I wish now I had tried out for the tennis team because after high school I didn’t play tennis again until I was 50 years old.

By the close of the first semester at CMC, Norm and I had become very good friends and we did everything together. We had a chance to move into one of the new dorms recently built on campus and room together for the second semester. By the end of the semester we decided to part company and get new roommates. This was a wise decision as we found we had different interests and we wanted to continue being friends. In early February 1949, we had a snowfall in Claremont, a sight no one could believe was happening. Needless to say classes were forgotten and snow ball fights broke out all over campus. I think by the next day the snow was all gone, but it was sure fun while it lasted. Our meals were all served in Story House, cafeteria style, and pity the poor cooks. We gave them a terrible time for their institutional style cooking as we were all spoiled with home cooking and then we had to eat this stuff. Actually, I really do not know if it was that bad, or were we just being too critical? There are still a couple of items today I shy away from because I didn’t care for them at school.

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