International House Berkeley

38 going. And the soldiers helped with the children. They were wonderful. Because this was an Army boat... We had one two-year-old; he was very ill. Whoever says that children don't get sick at sea, that's not true. He was very ill. He was Latvian; he spoke good Latvian. He only knew one sentence in German, "Ich bin schon Tot," "I am already dead." He kept saying over and over again, "Ich bin schon Tot." He just kept vomiting all the time, so he was so scared. And I said to him: "As long as you can say 'Ich bin schon Tot,' as long as you say that, you are okay, and we will still feed you." I also had an eight-year-old girl from Latvia, Valentina. Her father was Russian and her mother, Latvian. When she was two, her father didn't come home. When she was three, her mother didn't come home. That's what she thinks, that she was three years old in 1944 when the communists came, and people were fleeing. So she went with the refugees – anybody who fed her. And she was in one of the orphanages. We became good friends; she helped me with the younger children on the boat. And we are still friends today. She spoke Latvian; not all the children spoke Latvian – they spoke different languages. They didn't understand each other, but I could understand them. And when we came to the United States, when the ship was coming in, the children just started screaming: "Look and look! The houses have the windows!" Because the houses where we came from, they didn't have any windows. Stuttgart had been flattened. We arrived in Boston on September 30, 1945, and I came straight to California because some relatives were here, and that's when I applied to International House. When I came here, I met someone who encouraged me to apply to the University of California. I was already a graduate from the University at Vilnius and somehow, when my former professor came here, he brought with him my diploma. So because I had all the documents, I applied. I went to the Graduate Division, and the lady looked at me, and she said, "You don't have a chance." That was in September. I came out of the office, and I didn't cry, but I was howling, and that howling brought a very nice young person from the Dean's office, and she came and said, "What are you crying about?" And I told her, and she said, "Stay here and I'll be right back – not right back, it will take me about half-an-hour before I get somebody." And then this older lady came, and her name was Miss Hoyt, and she was Dean of Women, and she said, "Do you have time?" and I said, "Of course; I took the day off of work." First of all, we went to the Graduate Division, and the Dean looked at my papers, and she said, "What in the world did she tell you?" "She said I didn't have a chance." "With your grades, you didn't have a chance?" So she said, "You're in!" and she said, "Can you start in February?" and I said, "I'm working in a factory, so I can quit at any time."

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