A Dream Come True: My Very Good Life

by Eva Galambos

Overview

This account covers so many sites—a railway station in Berlin, Germany in 1933, a penthouse overlooking the mountains that surround Genoa, Italy, the World War II experience of picking cotton while an Athens, GA, high school student, to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Chicago and eventually to the newly formed city of Sandy Springs, GA, which she created and leads as Mayor.

The major issues of life in America for the past 60 years are addressed through the life of an unusual lady with humor as well as mature perception. The struggle between labor and management, the women’s movement (we’ve got to get out into the world), the racial conflicts that engulfed the nation and especially the South, and the conflict between central cities and their suburbs, and finally the sometimes ridiculous aspects of politics all come alive as Eva narrates the twists and turns of her unusual life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781456748814
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	03/21/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	659 KB

Read an Excerpt

A Dream COME TRUE

My Very Good Life

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By EVA GALAMBOS

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Eva Galambos
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-4883-8

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Chapter One

Berlin and Sunny Italy

1928-1933—Berlin, Germany

My maternal grandmother, Regina Sternberg Lewy (Oma), was a constant in my life from the beginning—she was jolly, loving, and my sister and I could do no wrong in her sight. She attracted people, she loved good food, and she was always able to see the bright side of life. She was quite attractive with grayish-green eyes and high cheekbones. She wore her straight hair pulled high on her head with combs to hold stragglers in place. She often wore dark dresses with white lace collars.

She was born in Ostrovo, in what was then Germany but reverted to being Poland after World War II. She grew up in a small town, but was well educated by tutors and local schools. When she was sixteen, she was sent to a girls' boarding school in Berlin. She writes in her memoirs that many young men followed the girls home from school, but the chaperones chased them away. There were large families of numerous aunts and uncles, however, which engendered lots of gatherings where eligible young partners could meet. She met her own future husband at one of those gatherings and noticed that he was pleasant and seemed to be well educated. Grandmother liked interesting people and always enjoyed jokes, so I imagine her husband must have been entertaining as well.

Max Lewy, her husband, was the son of Louis Lewy, Jr., the owner of the largest department store in Breslau. My grandparents went on a grand tour for their honeymoon. My grandmother was very close to her father, who cried when she departed on the trip. They began in Vienna, and then on to Venice. She was scared in Venice at first, because they arrived late on a winter evening, when it was already dark. That time of year there were no tourists, and she was alone with the gondolier while her husband looked to the luggage. They traveled in winter and summer, because fall and spring were the busy seasons in the store.

In Venice they stayed at the Hotel Danieli. I visited it when we were there as tourists in 1975. It was still a very ornate and swank place. We stayed next door, in what was a somewhat less expensive but also a highly decorated hotel, with lots of engravings and embroideries throughout the suite.

My grandmother writes of the glorious sun shining the next morning in St. Mark's Square. She fell in love with Venice then and maintained that feeling for the rest of her life. A guide showed them works of art and the sights of Venice. He also accompanied them to the stores to buy gifts and then to a fine restaurant for lunch. She writes that she realized, in retrospect, that he probably got a fine commission from every place they shopped. They attended the opera, and marveled at how loud and enthusiastic the Italian patrons were in comparison to the more sedate Germans.

The next stop was Nice, on the Riviera, with the blue Mediterranean on one side and the fields of blooming flowers, violets, carnations and roses for miles and miles in every direction, and the mountains in the background. Their afternoon entertainment was to parade along the Promenade Des Anglais, where their hotel was located, and to "people watch" from cafes. They proceeded to all the famous resorts: Sanremo, Bordighera, Menton, Cannes and Monte Carlo. The people in light clothes with bronzed complexions presented a sharp contrast to the people they had left in Germany. In Monte Carlo they gambled for a short time. Their Riviera stops included Cap-Martin and Cap-Ferrat where they indulged in drinking coffee or listening to music in the sun. Homeward bound, they stopped in Milan to see the famous cathedral and the Leonardo da Vinci mural there, The Last Supper. She remembered the opera at the Scala—Lucia Di Lammermoor. The final stop was Pavia, where they viewed an old cloister with works of art, and went shopping to buy presents for every member of the family at home.

They returned to Breslau from their month-long honeymoon to find a totally furnished apartment. Every piece of furniture and equipment was in place, including a grand piano, down to the "toothpicks and matches." Her in-laws had prepared it all.

Upon her husband's death at the end of World War I, my grandmother inherited considerable wealth, which enabled her to live well. During the horrendous inflation in Germany after the war, however, her memoirs describe the daily struggle for food, as inflation reduced the value of currency each day. By the end of this economic cataclysm, shoppers were wheeling the worthless currency around because it was too bulky to carry on one's body. One of the important stamps Dad would show us in his collection was a German one: "See," he would point out, "the original value has been stamped over with lots of zeroes for the millions to show the new price."

Even in the difficult post-war years, when my grandmother was trading rooms in her home for butter from a renter's farm, she traveled. From resort to resort, in Tuscany, Switzerland, or the Riviera, down to Naples and Sicily, repeatedly to her favorite Venice, and then on to Yugoslavia, vacations and traveling were part of the annual routine. Everywhere there were cafes and lovely restaurants with memorable wines. For fun, there was people watching and shopping for gifts to bring home. Wherever she went she recalled the operas she saw, the famous art she viewed, and the innumerable new acquaintances they met in the hotels along their itineraries.

The acquaintances and friendships she made while traveling turned into correspondences. Postcards later arrived from all over the world and became part of the stamp collection I kept in those days. Some of the stamps are from colonies, which are now independent countries. My father's beautiful stamps from countries all over the world, meanwhile, were an introduction to geography and to countries that were created after World War I. Recently I passed this collection on to the grandson who completed a BA in History at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon. He seemed quite interested in the collection, despite the fact that it was very incomplete.

My parents were both born in Breslau. My father, Sigmund A. Cohn, was invited to my uncle Walter's twenty-first birthday party, which is where he met my mother, Susan. He writes in his memoirs that it was a costume party. The guests were supposed to wear something to signify their future calling. He wore a judge's robe, since he was heading into the legal field, but apparently was mistaken for a future rabbi.

Shortly after that party he, Walter, and some other young people, including my mother, went on a three-day hike. He found her open, sweet, caring, and unaffected. They clicked, and courted for some time, mostly by going on hikes and to concerts or operas.

I was five when we left Germany for Italy, so I remember very little of life in Schmargendorf, a suburb of Berlin. My younger sister, Marianne, and I lived with our parents in a grey apartment building among many more just like it. I remember that we had a maid who helped Mother with such things as watching us and carrying coal from the basement up to the central stove to heat the apartment. There was a back garden cut into small plots for the various households. In the garden, I had a chance of meeting other children to play with. There was a gooseberry bush laden with fruit that I sampled when I somehow escaped the Nanny's supervision to join the other children in a fruit raid, which led to serious punishment.

We shopped almost every day. There were no big grocery stores, so Mother went out every day to fetch various items from separate stores nearby, and we went along for the outings, a chance to see the world.

I had a blue winter coat with a shoulder cape that Father decreed should be removed because it seemed too pretentious. Father was structured and strict, after all, while Mother indulged Marianne and me. Eventually Dad softened and later, when my sister got a coat like mine, she was allowed to wear it.

Until the end of our time in Germany, our grandparents lived in Breslau. As toddlers, Marianne and I went on visits to our maternal grandmother's house. Oma, our grandmother lived in a much larger establishment than our apartment, and she loved all kind of houseplants, including cacti. They would be brought indoors to survive the long winters in Germany and carried out again in the spring. Once I fell from the window and landed half a floor below in the outdoor cactus bed. While the circumstances of the fall are fuzzy, even to this day I can feel the prickles as I lay on my stomach with Mother and Grandmother tweezing cactus spines from my bottom.

I do not believe we had any religious life in Germany. Many German Jews were very secular, like my family. My grandmother's father was religious, but that was where it ended. My grandmother even had Christmas trees as her children were growing up.

1933—Berlin Railroad Station, Leaving Germany for Genoa, Italy

The excitement and thrill of a train ride for three-year old Marianne and me transcended the grown-ups' anxiety as they departed their mother country before the new regime would arrest and deport them. Father, as a Jewish judge, was one of the first fired from his job, which was a lucky early warning to get out.

The cavernous station had rows and rows of platforms with trains belching smoke. When would the big engine pull up? Which was the right platform and train carriage? How to get so many suitcases on board before the train would leave? Would some be lost? We had some twenty pieces of luggage with us at the Berlin station when we left for Italy. My father would later write in his memoir: "This gave little Eva no small trouble. She counted incessantly to see whether everything was still there." Then I was ensconced in the upper bunk of a train compartment, with a bird's eye view out the window. "Will the train start before Mamma gets on?" I worried. On the platform relatives were hugging and crying as they said their last good-byes.

Our maternal grandmother and her son were scheduled to join us soon in beautiful Italy, the romantic country of Grandmother's honeymoon and her many subsequent vacations. Our father, however, was leaving his elderly parents behind, for which he would suffer pangs of guilt for many years to come. The best memory of this grandfather, whom I almost did not know, were the paper animals that had moveable body parts. Giraffes and lions that sprang out of picture books came from his printing business. They were cherished gifts.

Later my father spoke often of relatives who disappeared as Germany exterminated the Jews, but he grieved silently for his parents. Although my father claimed that they died in some nursing home far from home where they received no care, a printed genealogical account of the family indicates they perished in a concentration camp—Theresienstadt in 1942, which would be three years after my family left Europe.

He never once again set foot on German soil, despite the fact that my parents vacationed in Europe for many years. He absolutely hated Germany, and that hatred seemed to extend to Germans in general. My father was left with two young children and a young wife and was shut out from his profession and his homeland. His feelings of insecurity throughout later life were no doubt a reflection of suddenly finding himself jobless, and then immigrating to another country where he also was officially excluded from his profession because he was a foreigner.

Genoa, Italy 1933-1939

The view from the penthouse apartment was of Mt. Righi to the east and the port of Genoa to the west. At night the mountains to the east twinkled as the lights came on at dusk. It looked magical to Marianne and me. During the day, meanwhile, we could watch the procession of freighters and steamers as they departed the port for the Mediterranean.

The apartment was large enough to accommodate Grandmother and our family plus visitors. Bachelor Uncle Walter soon joined us. We lived in the apartment with Grandmother and Uncle Walter until he was married in 1938, and my grandmother bore a good bit of the financial burden. Somehow she had managed to liberate much of her finances out of Germany, although how she did this remains mysterious to this day. Father and Walter were mostly gone during the day, although it would be inaccurate to say they went to work. At the beginning, they were looking for work. As lawyers, both my father and uncle studied to pass the Italian law requirements and sought work in law firms. Children have antennas, and I became aware that my father was frustrated in trying to earn a living for us in Italy. I am sure that living under the same roof with his mother-in-law, particularly when she was partially sustaining the family, grated on his nerves. My uncle was able to make some business connections eventually, which helped his own financial situation, and probably further increased my father's insecurity about finances. Work did come to the apartment in the end, but to my mother, not my father. Mario Podesta took German lessons from her, and the jokes reinforced the impression I got that this Italian gentleman had fallen in love with Mother.

My mother was endlessly the mediator, trying to keep everything pleasant between everyone. Neither my mother nor grandmother cooked, so every meal was dependent on the servant. My father joked that mother and grandmother stayed busy thinking up things for the maid to do.

Because the maid did the cooking, there were often Italian dishes new to our taste buds on the table. Pizza with an anchovy sauce was a highlight. A memory lingers of us in the corner of the kitchen as live lobsters were dunked into huge pots of boiling water. "Watch out, they're trying to get out," I screamed in delighted and horrified excitement.

The maids introduced us to the saints. As we took walks into the hills, there were often shrines to this or that beautiful saint, with flowers in a vase at the side. Maria collected elegant engraved cards picturing the various saints. Gradually Marianne and I started our own collections, which we compared and traded:

"I'll swap you Santa Margherita for Santa Stephania."

"No, that one has more gold trim than the one you want to swap."

Maria not only cooked but also did all the laundry and ironing by hand. The irons were heavy black-metal affairs that were heated on the stove. Maria would test the heat of the iron by tapping it on her forearm, and once she burned herself terribly. We were all aghast and worried as she continued to wear a big bandage for a long time.

When we were sick, the doctor only came to the apartment as a last resort. Usually, we were treated with our parents' home remedies first. Most of these remedies involved terrible smells. One consisted of wrapping our chests with a heated pack of towels that had been soaked in mustard. For sore throats, wet, hot towels were applied to our necks and then wrapped tightly with woolen socks. Some kind of chamomile tea was boiled, and we had to inhale the fumes with towels over our heads to form a kind of tent over the kettle. The worst was an occasional spoon of castor oil. For the most part, we were quite healthy, aside from the usual children's diseases.

Trams provided transportation everywhere, whether for shopping, hikes, or other excursions. We did not know about cars, except that we saw them occasionally on the streets. The greatest excitement, then, was when some visitors came with a car, and included Marianne and me on a ride along the Riviera coast. I remember it as a large shiny, black touring car, with a high back seat where we sat.

Uncle Walter meanwhile could always be trusted to provide special treats. He took us to a town eatery that served toasted sandwiches—a new sensation for us. At that time, Uncle Walter became engaged to Hilde from Frankfurt, whose wealthy family had also left Germany. The wedding took place in a large Genoa hotel with a lovely fishpond among the palms and oleanders. Marianne and I were the flower girls and wore pastel organdy dresses for the fancy proceedings. Favors included sugarcoated almonds wrapped in white netting. The day must have been hot, because somehow we both ended up in the pond, much to the chagrin of our grandmother.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Dream COME TRUE by EVA GALAMBOS Copyright © 2011 by Eva Galambos . Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Prologue....................xiii
Once Upon a Time....................1
Berlin and Sunny Italy....................3
Growing Up in Athens, Georgia....................18
High School in Wartime....................27
Venturing Beyond Athens....................34
Higher Education....................40
Putting John Through Medical School....................52
To the Midwest....................61
Neighbors, Houses, and Rabble-Rousing Ladies....................68
The History Class....................83
Balancing the Garish with Greenery....................86
Seeing the World....................97
Adventures of an Economist....................104
Cancer....................116
The Joy of Sailing....................122
The Next Generation....................127
One Long Day at a Time: Making the Dream Called The City of Sandy Springs Come True....................129
"Eva!" The First Campaign....................131
Saving Our Springs....................135
Sandy Springs—Yes!....................142
Forming a City Government....................150
Afterword for Part Two: A New City Underway....................155