_An Unusual Heritage_
“Getting it made” was very important to me, and always will be. The
quest for perfection is a compulsion with me, and has been since
boyhood. One reason may be my unusual heritage. Another, without
doubt, was my father. Then, as always, it would seem, there were
those twinges of adversity, and stern compressions of circumstance,
in early life, which Winston Churchill writes “are needed to evoke
that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit” which drive
men to unusual endeavor. There was, too, an element of denial, an
important factor in a man’s motivation, I believe.
My family tree has always intrigued me. One reason may be that
while I was growing up I was very conscious of it. There was a
strong sense of “family” in our house, no matter how the luck ran.
There was a Crossfield mold which we children--my two sisters and
I--were expected to fit. We were constantly reminded that we were
entrusted with a tradition that spanned almost the entire history
of the New World. And because of the unusual mixture of our blood
we were acutely aware of matters of race and prejudice. I know it
is popular today to scoff, as decadent, at Southern traditions, and
mock the proper Bostonians who cling to family ties, and to trumpet
the dope-crazed sputterings of beatnik derelicts who, given complete
head, would destroy all concept of God and family. Perhaps here, in
this increasingly mobile society, this is one place we have failed. I
cannot be held responsible for my family, but I am proud of it.
My mother, for example, fiercely proud and uncompromising, was
half Mexican. The other half was pure Irish, and a more fearsome
combination one is not often likely to encounter. She was a direct
descendant of a Spaniard named Holguin, a Conquistadore who served
under Cortés during the Conquest of Mexico. Every inch a lady in the
most severe Spanish tradition, my mother demanded extreme standards
of conduct and discipline in our home. These were seldom relaxed, no
matter how low our material circumstances, which at their nadir were
very low indeed. I inherited a great deal from my mother: jet-black
hair, dark eyes, a swarthy complexion, an insatiable curiosity, a
touch of the romantic, an appreciation of music, and a flair for
drawing and working with my hands. I profited even more by her
example.
My mother’s side of the family is a little complicated. What I
know of it comes not from books and historical documents, but by
word of mouth from my relatives. For this reason it is not precise
but may be close. To describe it best I should begin with my
maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Aloysius Dwyer, who from all
accounts was an amazing character. Born in Ireland, he was one of
the youthful cadets who figured in the great Irish insurrection of
1848. He married a Lady Crocker who was, so the family story goes,
a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. Just how this politically
incongruous match came about is lost in the mists of love and
history, but no doubt it accounts, at least in part, for the somewhat
adventurous, peripatetic aftermath. Thomas and Anne Dwyer immigrated
to Boston. Soon thereafter they moved on to Corpus Christi and San
Antonio, Texas, where Thomas Aloysius Dwyer, an educated man, became
a judge and sired six children, including Thomas Aloysius, Junior.
Judge Dwyer, remembered as a distinguished-looking man with a
carefully manicured beard and pince-nez, was evidently not totally
dedicated to the law. He developed a good many side business
interests, including the shipment of various goods and supplies by
railroad from El Paso to small towns in Mexico. He sent his son,
Thomas Junior, my maternal grandfather, then sixteen years old,
to Mexico to oversee these shipments. Tom Junior was a curious
blend of hard-headed businessman and romantic. He reported to his
father in beautifully scripted letters (some of which I have seen),
and sometimes enclosed drawings and sketches stroked with skill
and talent. In Jimenez, Mexico, the youthful, talented Tom Junior
branched out. He became, successively, a Wells Fargo agent, the
proprietor of a general store, a streetcar magnate (the cars were
pulled by mules), a lumberman, and a distributor for the ubiquitous
Singer sewing machines.
In Mexico Tom Junior met, admired, and married a seventeen-year-old
senorita named Paula Holguin, my maternal grandmother. Paula, both
an artist and a musician, was truly gifted, stubborn, and proud. I
enjoyed her piano-playing in later years, but communications between
us were difficult: as a matter of personal pride she refused to speak
any language except Spanish. In her ladylike way she was also quite
fearless.
The marriage between Tom Dwyer and Paula Holguin produced fifteen
offspring, ten of whom survived childhood. One of these was my
mother, Lucia. For a while the large family lived in happiness on a
great, prosperous ranch. My grandfather’s businesses expanded. As new
mines were developed in Parrall and Terron, Mexico, he sent men to
open general stores and to establish wagon-train routes.
Then in about 1910, the Mexican bandit Madero, who preceded Pancho
Villa, rose up to strike down the prosperous. Americans especially
suffered in this period of anarchy, and for a long while it was
touch-and-go for my grandparents. As a child I listened in awe to
the tales of how my mother stood off groups of marauding Mexican
_banditos_ with a bull-whip. When the United States President
declared he could no longer guarantee the safety of Americans in
Mexico, Tom and Paula Dwyer sent the ten children by train to El
Paso. My mother, Lucia, then 19, was one of the first to go. She
was followed in time by the others, now virtually destitute, having
lost everything in the retreat. Lucia, who was educated by nuns in
a convent in Mexico, inherited much of her mother’s talent for music
and art. She dabbled briefly at writing and then took a job teaching
elementary Spanish in an American school in El Paso. A year or so
later, in 1914, she went to the University of California at Berkeley
to study for the summer. There she met my father.
* * * * *
The Crossfields came from England; I have never been able to
determine just when, but it was probably seven or eight generations
ago. They settled in New England. There is a court record noting the
marriage of a Crossfield before the Revolution. One branch of the
family moved to Kentucky. The Scott in the name comes from the same
family as does General Winfield Scott, who was, I’m told, a distant
relative. Scott has been a middle name on the Crossfield side of the
family for generations.
My paternal grandfather, Amasa Scott Crossfield, was a lawyer from
New England who married Louise Brown, a direct descendant of Governor
William Bradford. I am certain of the latter point, because some
of the Governor’s furniture was passed along in the family. It was
traced to us and later asked for by a museum. We still have a highboy
which I believe is authentic Governor Bradford.
About 1885 someone conceived a plan to build a canal in Minnesota
connecting Big Stone and Traverse Lakes to provide a direct water
route between the Hudson Bay and the headwaters of the Mississippi.
Somehow my grandfather Crossfield became interested in that project
and moved from Boston to Browns Valley, Minnesota. (The Brown was
no kin to my grandmother.) When the canal project fell through, my
grandfather entered local politics. He was an Indian Reservation
Agent and later he ran for and won a seat in the state legislature.
I’m told that he won his first election when he bested his political
opponent at knuckle-bending before a large crowd of voters. My
father, Albert Scott Crossfield, one of three children, was born in
Browns Valley.
From all the family stories I’ve heard, I surmise that my grandfather
Crossfield was a rugged, pioneering type, a two-fisted drinker
with a restless soul, seeking new frontiers to conquer. In any
case, he didn’t stay in Browns Valley long. Soon he turned up in
the Philippine Islands as Chief of the Customs Department under
the colonial administration of Governor William Howard Taft. My
father, his brother, who later died, and a sister were raised in the
Philippines. My father’s sister, Ruth, married Peter A. Drakeford, a
brother of Sir Arthur Drakeford, Australia’s Air Minister in World
War II.
The move to the Philippines brought prosperity and success to my
grandfather. He built up a coconut and hemp plantation, the Kumassie
Plantation Company, on the Bay of Davao on Mindanao, which still
exists, I believe. In time he became a pillar of the Philippines.
He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in the Philippines.
Contemporary with him was a woman journalist, Bessie Dwyer, an editor
of the Manila newspaper, a daughter of Judge Dwyer of San Antonio,
Texas, and my great-aunt on my mother’s side. Judge Crossfield and
Bessie Dwyer were close friends in the Philippines.
My father was a conscientious young man who took his schooling
seriously. He was a scientist by nature, especially interested
in chemistry. He took most of his secondary education in the
Philippines, then graduated from high school in Berkeley, California,
where he lived with his mother, who had temporarily returned to the
States to give the children a U. S. education. Later he studied
chemistry at the University of California and was a graduate Fellow
at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh.
Bessie Dwyer wrote to her niece, Lucia, then studying at the
University of California, suggesting that she get in touch with
the family of her good friend Judge Crossfield, then residing in
Berkeley. By then my father was a graduate student taking advanced
work in chemistry. When the two met, love bloomed and they were
married in 1916. One chemical result of this union was me, Albert
Scott Crossfield, Junior, one-quarter Mexican, with a sprinkling of
pure English, Irish, Boston Brown, and the good Lord only knows what
else.
My father was slow and deliberate, a man who patiently looked at all
sides of an issue and was forgiving, yet in his quiet, detached way
quite demanding. As I think about it, he was a very unusual person.
I have a lasting and profound respect for him.
He was basically a chemist, a scientist, if you please, one
whose natural bent leaned to theory but whose life led him into
the practical application of science, or as we call it today,
development, as opposed to pure research. When World War I broke out,
he took a commission in the army and worked for the Chemical Warfare
Department trying to perfect bizarre new weapons. After the war he
turned to the petroleum industry. He was a pioneer in the then new
field of extracting oil deposits from shale. This work ultimately led
to an executive position with the Union Oil Refinery in Wilmington,
at that time a small waterfront and refinery town in Southern
California.
Outwardly my father was the coolest man I have ever known. He used to
tell me: “A gentleman never laughs, but he may chuckle. Nor does he
cry.” When he punished me, he never displayed anger or emotion. He
was completely detached about it, as though analyzing some chemical
compound. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice. He was not
altogether without personal fear, but I never saw any signs of it
and, believe me, I searched diligently.
He took great pains to disguise his courage. During the first World
War, he was a leader of a small group of chemists who developed a
new and effective gas mask, an urgently needed item in those days.
My father was one of those who entered gas chambers to test the
mask. The tests apparently were not always successful; the repeated
exposures to gas in the chamber robbed him of much of his hair--my
earliest recollection is that he was bald--and left a grim reminder
on his body--white splotches where the gas had discolored his skin. I
was quite old before I was able to worm out of him the fact that he
had taken part in this hazardous experimental work.
My father routinely worked seven days a week and eventually he rose
to be superintendent of the Union Oil Company in Wilmington. On
Sundays, when there was no school, he sometimes took me to the plant
with him. In those days, as in these, the men kept a careful watch
for fires; a refinery fire is a vicious and terrible catastrophe.
One Sunday while we were walking through the “cracking plant” a fire
broke out. My father ordered everyone to keep back. As I looked on,
he draped a blanket over his head and asked the firemen who had
answered the alarm to douse him thoroughly with water. Then, quietly
and calmly he walked into that roaring inferno and closed off some
valves in order to keep the fire from spreading. His burns were
severe and he was confined to a hospital for days. Not a word about
the fire ever was mentioned in our house.
Dad was infinitely polite and proper. He was neither aloof nor
snobbish, yet I think it is a fact that he was little understood by
his friends and co-workers, perhaps because of his studied emotional
detachment. Perhaps it was because of his granite-like principles
about right and wrong. He was unyielding in this respect. On one
occasion he clung to his principles so tenaciously that it cost him
his position at the refinery and changed the whole course of his life
and ours as well.
The oil refinery in those days, around 1930, imported many Mexican
laborers for the dirty work. They were paid, I believe, fifty cents a
day, and they lived in shacks around Wilmington; the area soon became
pretty much of a Mexican community. My parents had a natural sympathy
and pity for these people and my father was outspoken at the refinery
about this “exploitation” of alien labor. With time these feelings
grew deeper and more pointed.
When the depression struck Southern California, these imported
workers were the first to lose their jobs at the plant. It was my
father’s duty to fire them. A number were shipped back to Mexico, but
a good many remained, out of work and penniless and, because they
were aliens, not entitled to the usual governmental or community
relief. Feeling responsible to some degree for the distress of these
people, my father set aside a good deal of his own money for their
support. My mother spent the money for food, scouring the markets for
day-old bread and rejected vegetables which she cooked and passed out
to the Mexicans. She was running a soup kitchen, really, and at times
it seemed as though we fed half the population of Wilmington.
As the depression worsened, the firing went on at a more rapid and
ruthless pace. One day one of my father’s bosses pointed out to him
that there were still people on the roster with Spanish and Italian
names. That was true, my father replied, but those people were not
aliens: they were Americans, born on the soil of the United States,
and many of them excellent workers. Never mind that, they must be
fired before the ones with Anglo-Saxon names, was the order from the
boss. This my father refused to do, and he was thus forced to resign.
He left the oil industry entirely. I do not believe there are very
many men who would have given up a top position at the height of the
depression for the sake of a principle.
Our family was not destitute--far from it. Dad was not frugal, but he
was not a spendthrift either, and during his years at the refinery
he had managed to lay aside a healthy nest egg. He used most of this
money to buy a small creamery. Like many chemists he was fascinated
by the challenge of producing some unusual substance--a plastic, for
example--from the waste-products of milk. I think his plan was to
operate the milk company as a livelihood and spend his evening hours
experimenting with the casein waste-products in a laboratory.
He never realized this goal. Not long after he bought the creamery,
a vicious price war erupted in Southern California, and in time it
wiped us out completely. The trucks were overturned and the men were
beaten up. When Dad began in the business, he bought the raw milk for
six cents a quart and after it was processed sold it for about eleven
cents a quart delivered to the home. At the peak of the milk war the
raw-milk cost remained fixed by the NRA but the price on delivery
fell as low as one and a half cents a quart. Caught in the squeeze,
Dad trimmed the business to the bare bones, but his capital dwindled
rapidly.
The final days were grim. The whole family rushed to the rescue.
My mother collected money on the milk routes, then being served by
several trucks which were driven by my father and a man named Harold
Babb. I often rode the trucks and ran up to the houses with the milk
bottles. Later in the day I ran the bottle-washing machine, which
cleaned about 7,500 bottles a day, all of which had then to be put
into crates and stacked. I was not in the best of health. Often, in
the midst of the grueling work, I was so tired that I hid behind
the crates--where my father, who never seemed to tire, couldn’t see
me--and bawled. Typically, my father refused to give up on that
milk business until he ran through his last dime. When the business
finally collapsed, he must have been hurt deeply, but he showed no
outward signs of his feelings.
There was one noteworthy facet of Dad’s character, which in
retrospect seems important, and perhaps contradictory. Although he
certainly held a tight rein on us children, at the same time he
allowed us great individual responsibility. We were given complete
freedom, for example, in our choice of courses in school. “What
you make of your schooling is your own business,” he said. On the
question of learning, he was not didactic, but had what was probably
a shrewdly calculated way of spurring us on. At the dinner table,
where we had the closest contact with him, he would never say, “Well,
why don’t you know that?” about some subject. Instead he would say,
“That’s strange. I thought you _knew_ that.” This, of course, made
us feel like idiots and soon after dinner we were all flying to the
encyclopedia.
My father’s unusually severe and unyielding spirit dominated our
home, where I can remember no emotional scenes. Every family problem
was discussed with judicial calm, and the solution arrived at was not
an expeditious one, but a just one as my father saw it. Mother was a
full and enthusiastic partner in these discussions. She was treated
by my father, and by us children as well, with regal respect. This
atmosphere might have seemed to some outsiders as oppressively dull.
I am certain it had a profound impact on me, a pint-sized kid who
might otherwise have grown up to fear his own shadow.