This post is a continuation of stories shared in these previous posts:
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After Ralph and Ella were married in Mesa, Arizona, on March 5, 1953, they returned to Wilmington, CA, where Ralph had been living with his parents during their engagement.
Their first apartment was located at 1305 ¼ N Marine Ave, Wilmington, where they lived for about the first year of their marriage. It was the second unit from the end in a row of apartments in a small complex. And their unit was tiny - smaller even than a studio apartment. There was a living room, a dining room, and a little kitchenette, a bathroom, and a pull-down bed in the hallway that rotated out on a hinge and pulled out into the living room. They paid $47.50/month.
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| 1305 1/4 N Marine Ave, Wilmington, CA, which is the unit the second one in from the street, in the center of the frame. This is whereRalph and Ella lived their first year of marriage and to which they brought their baby twins home. Photo taken by KF, September 2018. |
Soon after they were married, Ella became pregnant, due that coming December.
Six months before the due date, Ralph and Ella put a baby crib and rocking chair on layaway at a local furniture store. They put the crib in the corner of the little dining room.
About six months into the pregnancy, Ralph joked with the doctor that Ella was going to have twins, and the doctor simply shrugged his shoulders. (This was before the early ultrasounds of today). But Ralph kept telling him and kept telling him. Toward the end of her pregnancy, Ella started to have complications from swelling ankles, so the doctor sent them to a specialist. This was on a Monday. The specialist then proceeded to take an x-ray (again, this was before ultrasounds) and then came the report: He saw two babies on the x-ray, and possibly the rib-cage of a third baby! They didn’t know until they were born whether there were going to be twins or triplets!
They were sent to the hospital that night, and the babies - twins! - were born on Thursday. Baby Boy came first at 6 pounds 1 ounce, and Baby Girl came second, at 4 pounds 11 ounces. The babies were full-term, healthy, and didn’t need incubators or the ICU. And at this time, the husbands weren’t present in the delivery room, so Ralph waited in the husband’s waiting room until after the babies were born.
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| Congratulations! It's twins! Here are BE and BF while at the hospital. |
When they were trying to think of baby names when Ella was pregnant, they considered naming a boy SN. But when the twins came, they looked at their little boy and said, hmmm...that’s not SN, but we have SN coming. So back to square one. But they decided to take Ella’s middle name of B, and Ralph’s middle name of E, and name their son BE - over the protest of one of the nurses who wanted to name the babies Kenneth and Kathy. Hah! . They wanted a girl’s name that would match their son’s name, so they chose B as a first name (a very Scottish name), and Ralph came up with F as a middle name (Ralph said: “And Ella didn’t complain too much. She said, ‘That’s a cute name. Where’d you get it?’” It’s from the Disney movie Bambi, the name of his girlfriend.) So that was it: BE and BF.
Ralph and Ella brought their babies home to their little apartment after a week in the hospital, and they shared the crib in the corner of the living room - BF in one end and BE in the other.
While the twins were little, Ralph and Ella transported them around in a little wicker “Moses” bassinet. Similar to how they slept in the crib, the babies were small enough that one could be on each end.
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| A wicker Moses basket, similar to what Ralph and Ella used for their twins. Image Source |
A funny experience with that: Soon after the twins were born, Ralph and Ella took their babies to visit Mary Johnson, the wife of Ralph’s step-brother Earl. Some of Mary’s friends were there as well, and Mary said, “Here’s Ralph and Ella and their new babies.” One friend apparently didn’t catch that Mary said “babies,” plural, and the friend said, “Awww...that’s cute.” Then she turned and looked and saw a head at the other end of the basket, and Ralph thought she might faint at the sight of a two-headed baby!
This was also a time before car seats for infants were standard (or if they were even available), so when they needed to drive somewhere, they would either have the twins in their wicker basket on the floor of the backseat of their 1939 Pontiac Coupe (the jump seats would fold up) or hold them on their lap while riding in the car.
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| A 1939 Pontiac Coupe, in blue, similar to what Ralph and Ella owned. Image Source |
This was also close to Christmas, and with finances and space being tight, Ralph and Ella found a small, live Christmas tree, 2-feet tall, for 50 cents, that they decorated with paper ornaments and tinsel.
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| Ralph with the infant twins. December 1953 |
[Also the story of how Ralph went flying when the babies were tiny, and didn’t tell Ella where he had gone. Yikes! He's still paying for that one!]
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| Ella with one of the babes. December 1953 |
When their family was young, Ralph and Ella would often hop in the car and head to the beach after Ralph got home from work, if even for a half hour before dinner, for a relaxing time to walk barefoot and play in the sand. Some favorite beaches were Redondo Beach and Sunset Beach.
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Ralph with the twins at the beach.
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Reflecting on these experiences, Ralph confesses: “We’ve had a great life. We’ve been blessed with a wonderful, wonderful family.”
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From phone conversations with Ralph and Ella:
9 February 2014
13 January 2015
22 March 2015
7 November 2020
