I first met Carloynn Pinsler in 1944. I was 17, and Carolynn was 14. She was tall, thin, wore a pretty cream color dress, and she had a very nice appearance.  I think it was love at first sight, although I didn’t realize it until many years later.

That meeting was at the home of Mary and Albert Asher, who were friends of each of our parents. They had a teen age son, Jerry, and wanted the children of their friends to meet. It worked for us.

I graduated Washington High School in December, 1944 and in January, 1945 I started at Cal Berkeley, to take pre-Optometry courses.

I joined Pi Lamba Phi at Cal, which was then a Jewish Fraternity. They had a lot of parties, often with a theme and costumes, ie Hawaiian, Mexican.  I asked Carolynn to be my date and she accepted.

Carolynn belonged to a sorority in High School, Kappa Chi, they had parties, Carolynn asked me to be her date, and I accepted. One party was at the Ariel Rowing Club in the Marina.  I went with her to her High School Senior Prom at the St. Francis Hotel, gave her an orchid corsage. 

We had dates in San Francisco. We often went to movies at night. Afterwards we went to Jeanette’s coffee shop on Geary Street, noted for its hamburger, milk shakes, French fried potatoes and onion rings.  We went to Mel’s Drive-in, located south of Van Ness Avenue, where we ate in the car. It was the first drive-in in S.F., drive-ins having first started in Los Angeles. The waitresses wore uniforms and  skated to and from the cars.

We had some dates at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley for dinner and dancing to a swing band, i.e. Jack Fina, and Carmen Cavallaro.

We went to Coffee Dan’s, at 430 Mason St. in downtown S.F.. What made this place different, was each client was given a small mallet, and they would hit in on the table to the rhythm of the music. It was fun, and noisy.

We went to Hambone Kelly’s in El Cerrito. The music was traditional Jazz, which we called Dixieland, by an 8 piece band led by Lu Waters, called the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. We danced there.

We went dancing, on a dance floor open to the stars, located on a hill in Larkspur.

We had some favorite places outdoors, for swimming and sunbathing in the day, a picnic dinner, and dancing at night.

Pastores was near Fairfax. It was started as a place for employees of the Emporium, and then was opened to the public.

Adobe Creek Lodge was in Los Alto Hills. It started as a summer home for the Haas family. Then Henry Waxman of Waxman’s bakery on Mc Allister St., enlarged the land area, improved it, and opened it to the public. 

We went to Coffee Dan’s, Hambone Kelly’s, Larkspur, Pastores, Adobe Creek Lodge, many times.

We went to the 2nd home of the family of my fraternity brother Tom Ostwald, called Call of the Wild. There was long narrow road to get there in the hills near Santa Cruz.  It had a swimming pool, and a living room with a pool table. My friend Herm Popiul remembered seeing Diane Feinstein there at a party, when she was a student.

Stan Wiener and I were friends at George Washington High School, and were two of the four men in the first post-war pledge class of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. I asked Stan if he wanted a date with my sister Carolyn to go to a dance, and he did, and that is how they first met.  Carolyn and Stan often double dated with Carolynn and me, often to fraternity events, and I first drove my father’s sedan and later my small grey Chevrolet coupe.

When I first took a physical for the Draft, I was 4F, exempt because of my myopic eyes.

I took a series of eye exercises, because I wanted to go into the Navy, instead of later being drafted into the Army. It was called the Bates Program, from an optometrist in the Phelan building in S.F. It didn’t help me much. After I had completed it, I realized that it was practice looking at blurred Snellen charts, learning to read the blurred letters, to try to do better than expected for my myopia. There was also “palming” with palms against the eyes. At the last visit there was news that FDR died, and I remember I walked on Market St., and it was much quieter than usual, as people reacted to the loss, which was April 12, 1945.

I studied electricity by myself, to prepare for the Eddy Test, which would qualify for the Navy’s Radio Technician Program.  I passed the test, but was not accepted to the program because of my myopic eyes.

As the War progressed the physical standards of the Draft were reduced. In May 1945 I took another physical and Selective Service wrote to me that I was “physically fit for military service”. That meant the Army, not the Navy.

 I got a student deferment, having talked to Mr Bonsoni who was Manager of the Bank America branch on Mission St whom my father know well, and who was president of my draft board. I finished two years of pre-Optometry at Cal.

February 20, 1946 I received a letter in the mail, from the President of the United States, “Order to Report For Preinduction Physical Examination”, at the S. F. Armed Forces Induction Station, 428 Market Street, 7:30 A.M., March 11, 1946. It meant I was drafted. I was unhappy, because most of my many fraternity brothers had not been drafted. My  mother consoled me that many different events happen to people in life, nothing equal. By the time I left for the Service I was ready.

I was discharged February 1947, suddenly after six months because the Army started to demobilize.  First I  joined the ”52-20 Club”, which was unemployment payment of $20. per week for up to 52 weeks. I also was eligible for  veterans benefits of the GI Bill, which included payment of college tuition, then $35. per semester at Cal. While waiting for the next semester at Cal, I went to work for Proctor and Gamble in their office at 360 Pine Street near Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The wholesale price of soaps changed every day, and my job was to prepare and mimeograph notices about the prices. The office manager asked me how much I wanted to be paid, and I told him, and it was probably not enough for a job in the Financial District. I only worked there a few months.

I had one semester at Cal, in the summer, before Optometry School started in the Fall 1947. I took the courses: Commercial Law, Geology, and Music Appreciation. The Music lecturer was so bad, that I didn’t listen to classical music for many years, but eventually we went to the S F Symphony, and we know they are excellent.

In 1947 I bought a 1948 grey Chevrolet coupe. I had saved money at the Bank of America, recorded in a little blue book, I paid half, and my parents paid half, the cost was about $1,000..  I lived at home, and drove to and from Berkeley.  Often I had an 8:00 AM class, but there was not much traffic at that time.

Carolynn started at Washington High School in Fall 1945, graduated in June 1948, and started at Cal in Fall 1948.

 Pi Lamda Phi fraternity held a dance at our home at 320 Colon Avenue in San Francisco. The theme was It was just a neighborhood dance, a popular song of the time. I remember I had placed a stack of records on a bench at the back of the room, someone sat on them, and damaged my only record of our graduation concert at Army Band Training.  It was fun anyway.

In 1949 Pappy Waldorf was football coach and Cal went to the Rose Bowl.  Carolynn and I went to L.A. and we stayed up all night at the Pi Lamda Phi house at UCLA. The next morning we went to the Rose Ball Parade and afterwards at the game we had difficulty staying awake and dozed off.  My sister Carolyn and Stan went with us, and I drove.

The fraternity brothers got along well, except when there was to be a more dressy party, and those who owned a  tuxedo wanted to mandate that, and those who didn’t own a tuxedo were against it. I was in the latter group.

When we were at fraternity parties, friends asked Don Schrager and me to play our piano duet. We had copied it from somebody else. Don played the base. I played the treble with two fingers. The melody went up a scale, then about two bars of a popular song, i.e. Yankee Doodle, and then down the scale.  Then repeated, with bits of different popular songs.

There were romantic songs when Carolynn and I were dating. Once we were walking down a dirt road at a resort area in the East Bay, and over the loudspeaker was playing Someone to Watch Over Me.  Once we were dancing to the live orchestra of Frankie Carl at the Beach in S.F., and we thought of the song Rumors are flying as our song, and heard it together often after that.

Carolynn attended Cal from Fall 1948 for one year. I was in my second year in Optometry School.  She lived in a boarding house on Dwight Way, which was a few blocks away from my Pi Lambda Phi house at 2727 Channing Way, so we easily met. Two of our favorite restaurants in Berkeley were Larry Blakes, and Spengers.             

In 1949 she went to work for Lachman Brothers Furniture Store at 16th and Mission Streets. She got the job on her own, although my father knew the Lachmans. My father was 2 blocks away at Starlight Furniture Store. Carolynn worked in the office. She used to go to lunch with fellow employees, often close by at a Chinese restaurant, her favorite was Egg Fu Yung, which was her introduction to Chinese food.

Many of my 44 classmates in Optometry School were married, many were older than I, they had been in the Service for years during the War. We all attended every class together, and we became good friends. There were a large percentage of Jews in the class, because at that time there were quotas that limited their admission to medical school. There was only one woman in our class, whose father was a practicing optometrist.

In June 1951 at the time of my graduation, Carolyn and the other wives received a certificate. Her’s said the Husbands of the U.C. School of Optometry have conferred upon Carolynn Licht the degree of Ph.T. With Greatest Honors for conspicuous service in Putting her Husband Through school.

I had a job selling at a book store near Telegraph Ave. when in pre-optometry. My job during Optometry School was a car attendant in the parking lot of Cowell Hospital. Most of the doctors parked their own cars, so I stood there watching the cars, often studying a book at the same time.  

I gave my fraternity pin to Carolynn, which meant we were “going steady”. It is a nice pin, blue and gold, with small pearls, which she still has.

We were married September 3, 1950, which was 6 years after we first met.

It was a beautiful wedding in the Gold Room of the Fairmont Hotel. As I was driving to the hotel, I thought it was a little warm in my car, no air conditioning at that time. It was conducted by Rabbi Elliot Berstien and Rabbi Saul White. The temperature was 96 degrees, which was a record heat for that date.

We lived in an apartment at 1170 Guerrero St., where my aunt Elsie and Fred had lived before. It had a small kitchen, and a living room with a wall bed. I had had a wall bed in my room at Colon Ave., but it was new to Carolynn. That is where she learned to cook, and do housekeeping, at the same time that she had a job.

After I passed the State Board exam I practiced optometry at Green’s Eye Hospital, for about six months until I left for the USAF. My friend Len Osias was practicing there at the same time, having become an optometrist 2 years before me.  At that time it was rare for Ophthalmologists to employ optometrists. It was located at Bush and Octavia in San Francisco. It was started by Drs. Aaron S. and Lewis D. Green, the building of classic design was built in 1928. These doctors developed with Bausch and Lomb company the Green’s phoropter introduced in 1934, and used by optometrists and ophthalmologists for examinations for many decades

During the Korean War you needed one year prior service to avoid the Draft, I had only 6 months in the Army, so I enlisted as an Optometry Officer in the U S Air Force.

January 1952 I was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, Optometry officer, for 3 years of active duty. The U. S.  Air Force was newly created, formerly a branch of the US Army. In World War II optometrists served, but were not officers.

I was stationed in Sacramento, at Mather AFB. First I was sent to Montgomery, Alabama, to attend the School of Aviation Medicine. Carolynn and I crossed the country by train. We had a small apartment off the base, and there we met two other offices and their wives. One drove me to and from the Base. We three couples spent many evenings together, drinking Brandy Alexanders, and playing penny-anti poker. They were from the South, and were different than we were used to. When we were enroute and they saw somebody who looked unusual they said “look at that honyonker”.

Montgomery is the capitol of Alabama. Carolynn was surprised to see for the first time the Segregation, with separation for “Colored People”:  bathrooms, drinking fountains, sit in the back of the bus, and  no sitting at lunch counters.

We went from Montgomery to Sacramento by train. On the way back we stopped for an interesting visit to Chicago, including breakfast at Palmer House, saw a play The Moon is Blue, and made a disturbing visit to the Stock Yards where we saw animals slaughtered. The train was the Zephyr, with glass domed windows, which had to stop for an hour midway in the Rocky Mountains because of a snow storm.

In Sacramento we lived in a small cinder block 4 room house, up a hill on the base, called Wherry Housing.  Dr Bob Weed, his wife Marcella, and their two sons lived next to our house. He was the Flight Surgeon in charge of the office where I had my one room Optometry office.

There was a lot of evenings and week-ends when we were at the Officer’s Club with friends, with low cost drinks, and we learned to drink more than we had done before the Air Force.  Also lots of good food.

It was very hot in the summer in Sacramento, and no air conditioning in our car or our rented home. I did have a small window air conditioner in my office. To keep cool Carolynn and I would often go the the small movie house on the Base.

Sacramento was a small town at that time.  There were no freeways. The land around Mather AFB was fields of tall grassy weeds. The main road through Sacramento was Capitol Ave, near the Capitol, with stop signs. Leaving Sacramento, there was a two lane road, that later became the highway 50 freeway.    The main entertainment in town was a Theatre In The Round, with live performances of Musicals and Plays which we attended.   

We often saw a couple, Bobbie and Norman Cooper.  She was from San Francisco, and he was an optometrist practicing in Sacramento. Through them we met the Feinbergs and others. We met Shirley Marcus and her husband, whose parents were friends of my parents. All these new friends were very hospitable, they invited us to many events at their homes.

Ron was born on June 1, 1953 in the small one floor, wooden hospital on the base, delivered by Dr. Paul Rosen. His birth certificate says Mills, CA, which was small post office just outside of the Base. We became good friends with a flight officer Al Dau and his wife Lee , and Paul Rosen and his wife Shirley, who lived close to us.  Later the Rosen’s moved to Los Gatos, and the Daus to Atherton, and we continued our friendship.

One time a neighbor flight officer, Don Lehman, described to me his sudden onset loss of vision. I told him it was an emergency, he was taken by ambulance to Travis AFB, where his retinal detachment was treated successfully. In appreciation when he was transferred he gave me his foot-locker, which I have used for storage since then.

I had asked the Air Force to be stationed in California, because I wanted to look for a location where to practice after the Service. We looked at a great many places. We took Ron with us. When he was about one year we went to dinner his first dinner out at a corner restaurant at Town and Country Shopping Center in Palo Alto, and he was very good. We looked at practices for sale in Tracy, Salinas, and Daly City.

I hadn’t considered the Peninsula, but when a friend opened a practice in Redwood City, I started to consider San Mateo County. My father told me he liked the idea of our living nearby.

I had worked for a few days several times in the office of Dr. Crosswhite in Lodi. I drove to and from there, through the grape orchards, when I was at Mather AFB in Sacramento.  About one month after I leased the office in San Mateo his wife called me that he had died, and would I want to buy the practice. It was much harder to build a practice in San Mateo than Lodi, but our life style was better near San Francisco than in a very small town, I declined to purchase the Lodi practice.

I started my practice at 68 Third  Avenue in downtown San Mateo in 1955.

We rented a duplex on B Street, one of a row of duplexes. I could walk to the office from there. After we moved in we felt the house shake. It wasn’t an earthquake. The backyard fence was next to the train track.  After awhile we got used to the shaking every time a train would pass by. Ron loved the train, and would stand at the back window and wave at the engineer, who would wave back at him.  Carolynn’s father gave us a cigar box for Ron to stand on so he could get a better view of the train.

At B Street Ron liked to wear hats, his favorites were cowboy and fireman, which he wore in the house. He had a black and white Panda stuffed toy, which at the time he got it was larger than he was. He was a willing subject for my 8mm color movie photography.

Robert and Len Cohn were at the Big Game in Palo Alto, and after the game they took care of Ron, while Carolynn and I went to Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame for Diane’s birth on November 19, 1955.

We bought our first house at Fiesta Gardens, in San Mateo in 1957. We became friends of many of the residents there. Many of the residents on our block had young children about the same age as Ron and Diane, so they played together, going from from house to house. Mr. Miller, who owned the house behind ours with a shared fence, pitched to Ron on his driveway, and gave Ron his first batting instruction, before Little League.  There was a large swimming pool run by the Home Owners Association, where Ron and Diane with Carolynn did a lot of swimming.

We did car pooling to go to and from Sunday School at Beth Jacob. One morning we awoke to snow on the ground, which happens about every 20 years. Ron and Diane wanted to play in the snow, but I said they had to go to Sunday School that day as usual, so they did.

When construction started on the elevated freeway intersection of Highways 92 and 101 next to the entrance to Fiesta Gardens, I thought that would reduce the value of the homes, and we decided to move. Our house sold for $27,000, and in 2000 homes in Fiesta Gardens sold for more than one million dollars.

One day I was driving north on the Alameda, after I dropped the children off at Temple Beth Jacob, and I saw a sign New Homes for Sale. I went up Melendy Drive to Hewitt Drive in San Carlos and saw a home that looked good. It seemed far away from San Mateo and was the last row of houses in San Carlos. Nothing had been developed in the hills above Hewitt. Then Carolynn went there with me, and we bought the house in 1962. The builder was Alfred Hanson, and my father had known his father in San Francisco. We are still in that house as of this writing in June of 2020.

I liked gardening, so we bought on the side of the street which had a large lot. On the other side of the street there was a good view looking East. As I got older, I realized the view would have been a lot easier than the gardening. The ground under the top soil was rock. One time I had someone with a Jack Hammer dig holes to plant trees. Every time I wanted to plant I had to dig up small rocks. We bought little plants and trees in paper cups from El Rancho Nursery. In time they grew to be very tall and mature.

We liked the location of San Carlos.  It was half way between my office in San Mateo, and Beth Jacob in Redwood City. It is half way between San Francisco and San Jose. When we moved to  San Carlos there were few restaurants. Hillsdale Shopping Center had recently been built after World War II. The citizens of San Mateo County had opposed extending BART to the Peninsula. I remember a meeting at the Lions Club, where they showed a movie against BART which said it would take up too much land for parking space for cars in downtown San Mateo. In time San Carlos had a great amount of developments as did the entire Peninsula.

We had been going to lots of Optometry meetings, by the California  Optometric Association,  American Optometric Association, and the Am. Academy of Optometry. These meeting were in a great variety of cities in the US, and once in Hawaii.

I had a good friend Herm Popiul. I knew him in High School, he was a fraternity brother, and he was an Optometrist in Redwood City.  He called me, said he and his wife Jackie and were planning a trip to Europe, and would we want to go with them. Carolynn and I had not thought about traveling out of the country, but we said yes. It was a tour of the capital cities of countries: London, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. It was like the movie If Its Tuesday It Must Be Belgium.  We had a wonderful time.

The next trip with the Popiuls was to Greece.  There Carolynn and Jackie bought full length mink coats, at a bargain price because it was in the heat of summer.

Then we went to Turkey, where we had the four of us in a small car and tour guide. We parked among many big buses at the sightseeing places.

Much later, after Ron and Diane had graduated Cal, Carolynn and I did wonderful traveling. We took land tours to Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Turkey, Ukraine,  Croatia, and Slovenia. We took cruises to South America, Panama Canal, Mexico, and Caribbean.  Our favorite destination is Israel. We visited Israel in 1975 with Bnai Brith,  1992 with our Havurah, 1997 after Turkey, 2008 with Beth Jacob and JNF, 2013 after Croatia-Slovenia. 

My life was devoted to Optometry, and our family.

Ron had an electric train, which we mounted on a large board where we painted scenery etc., and he also had small autos which ran a track mounted on a board. Another favorite game of Ron and his friends was miniature golf. Diane liked to play with Ron and his friends, and they often let her do so.

Carolynn and I attended the activities of Ron and Diane. Diane took dancing lessons, and piano lessons. Ron took piano lessons, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Little League Baseball, AZA Basketball, and was on the high school swimming team.

Diane won a contest for the design of a mascot for her Heather elementary school, located up the hill behind our house. She had drawn the head of a horse. She gave a speech at her Jr.High School graduation.  Ron needed a science project for school. I helped him do a board display of optics, and he won first prize. Or maybe we won first prize.

We had family vacations, including Lake Tahoe, Yosemite. We took some long driving trips: to Seattle, to many of the National Parks in the south west, to San Diego and Tijuana, to Las Vegas and Hoover Dam . We also went to Fresno several years, where I attended the COA Contact Lens Seminar. One year we went to a COA Congress in Sacramento, and Ron and Diane were in a picture of a group on the steps of the Capitol, which was printed on the front page of the COA Journal. These vacations were more subjects for my 8 mm movie photography.

I joined the Lions Club in downtown San Mateo early during my practice.  I went to most of the weekly lunches at the Ben Franklin Hotel on Third Ave., which had interesting speakers. Many of the Lions became my patients. There were many parties at members homes and other places. I was Chairman of the Sight Conservation Committee, which donated to  Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, donated for large print books in the library, and helped some people get eyecare. I helped with their fund raising, sold fireworks, sold Christmas trees. One year our club sponsored a parade in downtown San Mateo for the army returning from Viet Nam, which was one of the few welcoming events in the United States at that time.

When I started my Optometry practice we didn’t use any pharmaceuticals. Later Optometry was legislated the use of diagnostic pharmaceuticals.  Still later it was legislated to use therapeutic pharmaceuticals .This required extensive additional education and qualification, and I didn’t want to do this at my age 69. Also I needed to have some surgery at that time. So I retired from Optometry at the beginning of 1996, at 44 years of practice.

I had many professional accomplishments. When I retired I received awards, including B’nai B’rith 50 years, JNF 50 years, Lions Clubs Life Member, AOA and COA Life Member. After I retired I received 3 years of a national award of Honorable Mention by CAMERA for “outstanding letter writing” in support of Israel.  Everything that I did was a partnership with Carolynn, who always advised and edited. She deserves equal credit.

When I had been retired for one year I needed some more activity. I studied for the CA Real Estate examination, passed it, and became a Realtor, at the Prudential Real Estate office on El Camno in San Mateo. It was very well managed, and the agents all got along well. I had some transactions. Some people who had gone to me for eye care, did not use me when they sold their home. The office manager recalled similarly, he had been a butcher and friends took a long time to recognize his real estate skills. What I learned as a Realtor was a great advantage for the real estate investments by Carolynn and me. Previously for our investments we always had to consult an attorney, with long delays and expenses. 

When I retired our lives changed.   We went to a lot of baseball games, and concerts, to see our grandsons Daniel and Andrew in action.  We actively participated at Congregation Beth Jacob.

Carolynn played Mahjong, went to an exercise class, and tutored math and English for elementary school students at Heather School for 10 years.

I walked weekly with 3 friends. I had lunch with close friends once a week for more than 20 years. First with Bernie Arfin, Jack Lee, and Bernie Scheier. Later with Bernie and the men of of our Havurah.  We developed a circle of close friends, in two groups: Reim Havurah, and Movie Mavens. We went out to dinner a lot, often went to movies which we carefully selected.

For many years I did my genealogy research, wrote an extended family history, made videos, and posted videos and photos on the internet. In 2020 Ron created a family web site, and posted all this information there.

In 2020 I have been retired 24 years. After all our many activities,  the irony is that now in April, 2020, because of the coronavirus, we have been at home all the time, have had groceries delivered, have had no visitors. We do have meetings on Zoom, and we are in close communication with Ron by email and telephone. While at home, we have looked at the videos of our trips, and the pictures of our extended family get togethers, with fond memories.