The Scene

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Photo: Twin Oaks, Washington, DC, residence of Chinese Ambassador, c. 1952. Left to right: Ron, Jigi, Lil (back turned), Al (with cigarette)

The Scene

“Their children had more modern minds and manners....young ladies of nineteen and twenty, who had brought from school...all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry. Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.”

—Jane Austen, Persuasion

A Story Told In Letters

Time-travel back to an era of letter-writing and "Pillow Talk" a la Doris Day, when women were charming and sometimes empowered, but also made jokes about fending off the advances of "rapey" guys.

In twenty letters written mainly between Lily and her daughters, we catch up on the lives of the Quon family during this one eventful summer:

Lily and Albert are about to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Their four children are hosting a party, and family and friends are flying in from around the world. With four such paragons, surely Mom and Dad will be able to hold their heads up high?
As the youngest of the four, only son Ron is getting to spend a carefree summer, vacationing and ranching. Before shipping off to boarding school, can he knuckle down and get his license and finally learn some Chinese too??
Youngest daughter Jeannette (aka Jigi/Gigi or "G") is paying her respects to Mom's hometown of Honolulu, nominally enrolled in summer school. Even with all the maternal relatives around to keep a watchful eye, is she having a bit too much fun, or will she be allowed to cap things off with a cruise home on the Lurline "love boat"???

Middle sister Lil is graduating from USC. . . or is she? She's got a serious case of "puppy love", and what about all those young men stopping by her off-campus A.P.T.? Are they helping or hindering her scholarly progress, and how come none of them are Chinese????
Meanwhile back in New York, between design studies and modeling assignments, Al the eldest also has a lot of fellows on a string. Is she ready to nominate one to enter the state of holy matrimony with her?????

Read on!

Start: 1: Have I been busy

A Final Note

"The Summer of 1954" was originally compiled in the form of a print album (see PDF below) as a wedding present for Alberta and Ben's daughter, Karin, when she married Dave Sanders on June 20, 2009. The letters are therefore not merely a section of this website, but in fact its forerunner.

Karin died in early 2011. In the years before her death, she hadn't always endeared herself to her relatives, but Karin was a people person capable of great charm. So let's spare a thought for her very best qualities, which started us down this road of story-gathering.

The original print album provided here is unabridged, heavily illustrated with period images, and preserves each writer's typos and spelling idiosyncrasies. The file is about 60MB, so don't try to print it!

the_summer_of_1954_2009.pdf
File Size:	61825 kb
File Type:	pdf

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