My great-great grandfather Cesar Maurice Lombardi came Switzerland to the United States. He first lived in New Orleans, and then went to Texas, where he worked in several business, before moving to Portland, Oregon to work for the Gordon Grain company. From 1913 to 1916, at the request of my grandmother, he wrote a series of letters to his grandchildren (my grandfather Cesar Lombardi Barber among them) telling his life story. These letters were then printed in 1948 with enough copies for all the children, grandchildren, and great children alive at the time. Last year, the Lombardi's family gathered in Houston for a reunion and my dad lent his copy to the Woodson Research Center and Special Collections at Rice University. Ceasar M. Lombardi met the man who gave Rice University his name in New York City and was was instrumental in getting located it located in Houston, Texas. The Archives only had an old old xerox of it, so the opportunity to scan a clean copy for its own records was highly attractive. Some vicissitudes happened, but he got it back both as the printed volume and a scan for the rest of use just this week.
There is much wonderful material in it, including much about life in Portland, Oregon from 1898-1906, but I'm just going to give you background on the title of this entry. It came from a man that Mr. Lombardi worked with as editor of the Galveston Daily News. Mr. Briggs wrote it in 1948 to my great grandfather Alvin B. Barber reflecting on his memories of Mr. Lombardi. Briggs wrote that Lombardi was always interested in the young men with whom he worked on the paper. In addition, he was sympathectic to the pressures of putting out an interesting and accurate newspaper. Mr Briggs, by 1948, a senior officer of the First National Bank in Dallas, Texas, wrote of him:
It was Mr. Lombardi's courtliness of manner toward everyone and his kindly consideration of, and ingenuous interest in, young men of his staff, that attracted me to him first. In diffusing the spirit of these rare virtues, I never knew him to fail or to tire, regardless of provocation or disappointment. He met every situation, however difficult, with the equanimity of a philosopher, displayed so vividly in his familiar little phrase, "Well, gentlemen, life is just one blessed thing after another!"
{[Need to get formal citation to this volume]}
I love the double-entrendres in the phrase. Is blessed, a blessing, or a reverse use of blessed for damned. His letter show that he experienced hardship, success, true love, and exhaustion. He moved a lot and knew that he lost friends as a result. And though he was a Texan for most of his adult life, he never much like the place, it was too hot for him who was raised in the Swiss Alps, so he always considered his home in Berkeley California, his homestead.
And in one of those odd coincidences common in my family, my paternal grandfather was born in Berkeley, my mother graduated from high school from Berkeley High, and my brother lived there for a while.
The overlapping paths of people in Portland, Oregon are even more complicated, so I'll just show you a nice picture from around the time this clan of my family lived there:
Anyone want to guess the name of the song that might be connected to this car?
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One of the interesting things about the letters is the hints they contain about Cesar Lombardi's interest in spiritualism (mediums, seances, etc.). See the letter for 12 December 1915 (p80) for one example. We learned in Houston that Cornelius and Adele Lombardi, his son and duaghter-in-law, omitted and in fact destroyed several letters which engaged with the subject more deeply when they compiled the printed version of the letters that Lucy Grace describes in this post. His interests were wide and deep, and his accomplishments many. The remaining books from his library that we have in a bookshelf in Seattle are one additional indication.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who would like to have a copy of the .pdf of his autobiographical letters (or for that matter a list of the books) need only write to me at putnam.barber@gmail.com and I'll send either or both as attachments in a reply.
It's great that the letters are now in PDF form, for easy circulation among Cesar's growing list of descendants. I remember being struck, too, by that particular quote -- it expresses such a pleasing combination of wonder at the world and resolve to deal with whatever challenges (and blessings) may come your way.
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