My Father

Paul Robert de Gaston

Born June 28, 1902, Pakhoi, Kwangsi-Chuang, China
Died December 12, 1956, Sunset Strip, Los Angeles County, California


My father was a very sensitive, intelligent, musical, and handsome man. He was strong, and as a young man engaged in boxing. He was an artist, musician (even played violin with the Glendale Symphony Orchestra), part-time movie actor, and a pioneer in performing abortions. He loved and knew classical music and could play the violin very well, the flute well, and the piano OK. Unfortunately he used his abilities often in a selfish way to the hurt of others, and very much of himself too. At times he was quite generous. He did want to make his family in his third marriage with my mother work. That was a difficult task as mother was very headstrong though she loved him, and no man was good enough after my Dad. But my Dad could not keep an even temper, losing his temper at times, and going too far in corporeal punishment. This finally resulted in my parents divorcing.

While interred duing World War II, denounced but never proven [not even a trial] as having pro-German sympathies, in various concentration camps including North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, and finally Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor. While my father was at Terminal Island mother took me and sometimes Cami to visit him. We used to ride the Red Car from the elevated terminal in downtown Los Angeles to San Pedro, and then take a ferry to Terminal Island. The Red Car was a real electric train, and went at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour down the right-of-way through south LA, Compton, and Watts which paralled and was next to Alameda Boulevard. While in concentration camp, my father met and became friends with a famous Austrian artist, Hovanetz. Hovanetz taught my father to paint. Some time later after the war, Hovanetz returned to Vienna because he was offered a commission to paint the dome (as I recall) of some important and/or historic building.

My father met my mother about 1931, being introduced by her friends, Ivan and Judy Jones.  The date year of my father's birth is 1902, as recorded in the genealogy, which a genealogist got for me.  My daughter Catherine has verified this. I thought that the story of my father being put on the roof with a pistol and told to shoot any Chinaman who climbed onto the roof must have been a mistake, as the Boxer Rebellion (July-August, 1900) would have occured before he was born.  But if he were at least 5 as the story goes, then it is more likely that he was born in 1895, or even 1892 with the genealogist having made an error of an even 10 years.  But apparently this "Boxer Rebellion" story was just a "story" that my father told my mother.

Though the data of the preceding paragraph now prevail, the material in the following paragraph does add to the description of who my father was.

Then, today (November 20, 2005) after writing the material in this table re my father's true age,  I found glued on the last page of my Baby Book, a statment by my mother wherein both my father's birthdate (June 28, 1892) and place of birth (Pakhoi, China) are with other information all done in her handwriting and signed.

My father had been married, divorced, and already married again with children by 1931 when he met my mother.  By his first wife, Violet, he had a son who was old enough to die on board a ship bombed by the Japanese in WWII.  My father remarried later to Grace and had two son's, Rollo, the younger, born in 1928 (though I have been told that may have been 1929) and the older one, Junior, was at least two years older, or born in about 1926.

It seems improbable that Father was only 4 years and 11 months older than my mother. He looked a lot older. He had served in the World War I serving in France, and that war was from 1914-18 (for America it was 1917-18). My father had to have been at least 18, and probably more...as we might gather from the picture included below showing him boxing while still in China.  My mother was 49 at the time of Father's death. She didn't have a grey hair. My grandmother, Anna de Gaston, at 90 years of age still had partly almost black hair mixed with her grey hair. I don't believe that there was any premature greying in the de Gaston line, but my father (whom I had not seen for years) had about 50 per cent grey hairs in the top of his scalp, and mustach, and the sideburns were predominantly grey.  I was rather taken aback. Father had always played games as exactly how old he was because he looked young for the age that he claimed, and liked to fool people.  Even mother was not sure, but estimated that he was 63-65 when he died, if I remember her words correctly. I don't believe that Mother would have been wrong by 10 years, and probably not 7 years either. And then there are the dates/ages on the back of the pictures which are below, written by me as I went through these pictures with Mother.  Also I took some pictures out of the album which have dates, verifying the times of the pictures below.


Where is my father buried?  Click here  to see where he is buried, including a map of the cemetery and a description of how to find his tomb, and how it is marked! : 

My Uncle John Raoul Gaston,  brother of my father, Paul Robert.




Father in China, boxing,
15 ± 1 years old.
 
 

 
Father is reaching into the rumble seat,
maybe a picnic outing near LA about 1931
after being introduced by Ivan & Judy.
 



Here my Dad is showing some spirt about 1933, while standing
on a rock in in either S. Cal, Yosemite, or Washington. (± 41 yr)


 
Father sitting on porch steps with his dog,
Los Angeles, California, in the 1930's.
 



My Dad's only brother, John Raoul, who was about 1 year older.
He founded an electric company building motors, which he ran during
WWII also, thus contributing to the war effort, unlike Dad.


 
Father standing in his medical office in Seattle, Washington,
about 1940. My Dad was an entrepreneur, and quite intelligent as he
did this without formal medical training, and specialized in abortions.
 



Paul Robert de Gaston, the painter, about 1943-44
while in concentration camp before the painting that was mine.


 
My parents, probably in the mid-1930's, and it looks as if
the picture were taken in the state of Washington.
 



My Dad skiing at Mt. Baker in Washington, probably the winter of
1939 when I was 1½, my first time on skis & verified in home movies.


 
My parents liked to hunt, and had shotguns and rifles. I inherited
mother's shotgun. Here my Dad is with a day's bag of pheasants.
 



My father & grandfather, Joseph Neal Heywood, Sr., & unknown
woman. This was probably Los Angeles in about 1932.


 
My father, probably in 1932, and it looks as if
the picture were taken in Cal as the other one.
 



Here we see my Dad with his good friend, Tony Italee in S. Cal.
We children said, "Uncle Tony", and loved his visits...and candy, etc.


 
Here you see Tony and my Dad digging...mining? From their girths,
you can see that they were friends long before we children arrived.
 



My father & mother, probably in Holbrook, Arizona becauseof the vacancy
sign, which is probably at the old motel of Uncle Chet and Aunt Mary.


 
This picture of Father appears to be taken near Long Beach,
California, probably about 1930 ± 1 year.
 

In this picture we surmise that Father is in the LA suburbs because
of the lay of the land, and the Signal Oil sign (as in Signal Hill, Long Beach).


 
Father and Mother on an outing with Faye
and probably with Faye's husband (taking the picture).
 



My father & mother sitting on a highway railing
in the mountains above the LA Basin.


 
This picture of Father & Mother probably was taken with them on,
the Santa Monica pierCalifornia, about the mid 1930's.
 



My father hiking where there are heavily snow-covered mountains above,
probably somewhere in Washington.


 
Here I am within a month of my birth with my mother,
father, and grandmother Anna Herman de Gaston.
 



Here is another pose of me with my father, mother, and grand-
mother, likely in June 1937 as I was born May 27.


 
Comparing with earlier pictures, we can date my father by the
weight gain, which shows in his neck, evidently starting in 1936-37.
 



As my weight-gaining, smoking, drinking father lies before the
Christmas tree, does he think that there will be only 18 more?


 
My father and my mother, hunters, with their dog (& Mother's
Chevy?) and the pheasants that they bagged in Washington.
 







"Hora Staccato", Dinicu, played by Heifetz