<Begin Segment 29>

TI: And so what year did you return to the States? This was about how many years after you were married?

MH: '61. 1961.

TI: Because then shortly after, you have a child, in 1962.

MH: In 1962.

TI: And this is a son?

MH: A son, yes.

TI: And so tell me what it's like raising a son. And I guess what I'm looking for is, did you consciously think about how you wanted to raise your son based on how you were raised? I mean, because you had this experience, thinking about your interview, of this very transitory kind of living, of two years here, three years here. And by being the admiral's daughter, kind of a lonely experience, not really being able to play. And so I'm curious, as you became a mother and raised your son, how this all came into play.

MH: Well, you know, you realize that at that time, when we got married, I was thirty-three, and I had not really been around children at all for a long, long time. And I never was really all that good with children, to tell you the truth, although I loved them and so forth. But I wasn't around children to, to bring them up or anything like that. So it was a big experience for me. I didn't quite know how to face the whole thing. But the main thing that I knew was that I wanted to read to the baby and to sing to the baby, and to take the best possible care I could of the baby. And so that's what I tried to do after we had the child. But the main, the important thing that happened, I had learned in, when I was in China, that a distant relative of mine had died. The daughter of Admiral Luce, who I had, we had visited when I was young, visited her in Newport, actually. And she had left a sum of money. She was quite wealthy because her father had sugar interests in Cuba. She'd left a sum of money through her, I think it's her son, to four female members of my family including me, that were single, to help them on our way. And I heard this in China, and I thought, "That's interesting," and I didn't know anything about it. And so Lucius and I came back to the States and we were living in this apartment, and we had the baby. And I was taking the baby to the park one day, and here was this piece of mail in the mailbox there. I took it up to the park and opened it, and it turned out I had inherited, the relation who had the money had died, and I had inherited a substantial sum of money from this bequest. And I looked at it, and I said, "Now we can buy a house." [Laughs] And so went back and told Lucius about it, and he said, "Oh, I'll buy you a car right away." Well, I wasn't -- he had a car, and was going to buy me a car. And so this was all very nice, but I had started looking at the classified section about the houses, where they were and all that, and there was, and I said, "I'd like to buy a house." So we started looking around through this agent, house agent, at houses. And she was very careful -- oh, I'd forgotten this part of the story. Gracious heavens, I have to go back. When we got married, Lucius is the one who told me that there were certain states in which we were not legally married, and we had a list of those states.

TI: Because of the miscegenation laws?

MH: Yes, the miscegenation law. And one of those states was Virginia. So when we came back to Washington...

LH: And Maryland.

MH: No, Maryland wasn't on the list, Darling. Yeah, well, I guess it was in a way. Yes it was, excuse me, and Maryland. And we came back to Washington, but we stayed in a motel in Virginia, and I said, "We're living in sin here," you know. [Laughs] The other... but, you know, it wasn't too long after that that they, the only one that held on to it, I think, was Alabama, still had it on the books all these many years later. But, so we didn't know how this limited our looking for a house was concerned. And as it happened, a friend of ours was a friend with this man who was the State of Maryland, and he looked up the miscegenation law in Maryland, but it was only for, against people of South Asian ancestry.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. South Asian meaning, like...

MH: Filipinos and so forth.

TI: Oh, Filipinos.

MH: Because the Naval Academy was in Annapolis, Maryland, and the Navy had a great number of Filipinos employed as stewards and things. And that's the only key into why that law was there.

TI: How interesting. I never thought that.

MH: Yes. So we knew we could look in Maryland, and we were looking in Maryland. But this house agent told us that there were several places that she wouldn't show us because we wouldn't be accepted there in Maryland.

TI: That you would be accepted, but Lucius wouldn't be accepted.

MH: Yes. And so, but during the course of all of this, I was looking through the papers, and there was this new subdivision that was, was opening outside River Road, on River Road, I mean, called Carderock Springs, and I wanted to go there to see that, because it was modern design. And so we went there and fell in love with this house, and that's the house we bought. But my son Brian, last year or so, got this thing off the internet that Carderock Springs had been voted a historical site. [Laughs] Yes.

TI: So something that was new, that you thought was new...

MH: This was a modern design historically interesting to the national historical record, yes.

TI: Oh, that's funny. I guess it will happen to all of us.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.