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TI: So after, after the S-5, then what did your father do?

MH: Well, I'm, I just, really just know the positions that he held from then on in various places.

TI: Okay, so let's kind of, from there, just touch upon... during this time or around then, your father was married to his first wife.

MH: Yes.

TI: And can you just touch upon that in terms of that connection in terms of who his first wife was?

MH: His first wife was a very lovely, she was a lovely -- I've seen pictures of her -- lovely person. And she came from, I think, I believe a Baltimore family, but I'm not sure about that. Her name was Leslie, and I don't remember right now what her last name was.

TI: Okay. So she tragically died, and then...

MH: Yes. They had two daughters, and, but she died after the birth of the second daughter.

TI: Okay, good. And then, so let's now go back to your story -- or before we go there, so it was your father's second wife that was your mother. Can you, so tell me your mother's name and how the two of them met.

MH: My mother's name was Mary Louise, and her maiden name was Cooper, and then she married someone called McMillan. But by the time my -- and she had two children. But by the time my father met her, she was divorced from her first husband. She was living in Honolulu and working there on the newspapers, I think, the society notes or things like that. And Dad was posted out there, and he met her, she was dating quite a few military and naval officers, I think, and also was, was in the artistic community. There was a painter there at that time who did some very nice land-, seascapes and things like that, that was very interested in my mother. And also, I'm not sure that this was the painter who painted her feet, but her feet were, served... in the post office, they had a mural at the post office, and my mother's feet were the ones that were on it. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's fascinating. By any chance, do you have a print or a photograph of that?

MH: No, this is just a family story.

TI: Someone's going to have to do some research and find that, it must be in the postal archives someplace. That'd be good. Okay, so they, they met, they got married, this was in Hawaii.

MH: This was in Hawaii. My grandmother, in the meantime, had come out to join them. Oh, I might say that my mother's mother was, her parents were English, came from England to, to Canada, and she was born in Canada. And then I don't know how she ended up in Maryland where she met my grandfather, who was of a good Maryland family. And they were, they were married, and he had something to do with the directories, her father, my mother's father. But she, I think she was a rather strict English type, and I gathered that he was a rather jolly type. And so after two children, she divorced him and moved out here to California to, actually, to Oakland, and that's where my mother grew up, in Oakland.

TI: So that was your, your grandmother on your mother's side.

MH: Mother's side, yes.

TI: Boy, it's hard to keep track of all these, these relationships.

MH: Yes. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, so -- and you know what, I never actually asked you this, but what was your father's full name?

MH: Charles Maynard Cooke, Jr.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.