A few years ago I was helping my mother go through her things before she moved into a retirement community. There were numerous quilt pieces, some blocks and a couple of quilt tops. The sewing wasn’t all that great and… read more
Our camp takes a different turn than most of the camps…. We say the first thing in preparing for a job is to build up your math and English, but instead of Italian, we teach welding and carpentry and painting… read more
From Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr., By the People, For the People, p. 135I’m 81 years old now, and I’ve seen a lot of changes. As a petroleum engineer, I’ve worked and traveled in more than fifty nations, and broken bread with the CEOs of major corporations and several heads of state. I’ve… read more
From Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr., By the People, For the People, p. 142I’m glad I grew up when I did and I’m glad I lived in San Clemente. My family moved there in 1935 when I was 15. That was during the Depression and times were tough. In the summers, I went… read more
From Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr., By the People, For the People, p. 121I’m very thankful for the [FAP] project. It was a fabulous occasion where everyone could work steadily on art without any interruption. That’s the only way I think a person can really move and really develop — if he has… read more
The WPA days were a fantastic period in my life. The contribution that I made was not so much as administrator and director of the project as a brash young guy that didn’t worry about his own hide too much…. read more
From City of San Francisco magazine, February 4, 1976, p. 20The Butte County hospital was built too late for my grandfather, Michael Tomasovich. He died from tuberculosis just before the hospital was built. If my mother’s family had lived 600′ to the south, in Sutter Co., he would have had… read more
I first met FDR, the acronym, probably in 1936 when I was 12. I remember a short conversation with my mom. She was a legal secretary and mother of four. Helluva gal, barely five feet tall. It seems I was… read more
I was born Sept. 24th, 1940 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My father was either working for the WPA at the time or soon thereafter. My mother never tired of telling the story of how the WPA made an error and gave… read more
I grew up in the 1930s in the Rockridge district in Oakland. Construction of the New Tunnel Road began sometime early in this period just over the hill from our house with WPA workers using wheel barrows and shovels. They… read more
