La Canada   1953-1958

Dorothy Griffin strove to obtain her teaching credentials and embark on a teaching career. She said that while John's salary would pay for the necessities, she needed to work in order to pay for college for the children and to furnish the house in the manner that she desired. Dorothy had only two years of college which was sufficient to teach in Utah in the 30's, but she needed a bachelor degree and to meet the academic requirements for a teaching certificate in California. She enrolled at Los Angeles State College and over a period of two years, completed her classwork and obtained her credentials. She bought an old 1935 Dodge car to travel to and from classes which worked until one day at an intersection, the transmission fell out onto the roadway. With the teaching credential, Dorothy took on a teaching job as a Kindergarten teacher in the LaCanada school district.


YEAR (FILE ) SCHOOL PORTRAITS
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1953 (9071) Dorothy Griffin's transcript, Los Angeles State College
1954 (4811) Dorothy Griffin - Oak Grove School
1955 (1334) Dorothy Griffin - School Portrait
1956 (1411) Dorothy Griffin - School Portrait
1957 (1317) Dorothy Griffin - School Portrait
1957 (1406) Dorothy Griffin - School Portrait
1958 (1363) Dorothy Griffin - School Portrait
1958 (9102) Dorothy Griffin's "Life Diploma"

Summer vacations were made up of long trips to Utah, usually driven overnight and into the next day. John discovered that he could rent a small house or cabin right on the beach at Oceanside, down the coast about 100 miles away from LaCanada, so for several summers the family rented a summer house for one or two weeks at Oceanside for $30 per week. As the early fifties were in the days before many freeways were built, the trip to Oceanside was a long one, through Pasadena to Rosemeade Boulevard, then for 30 miles down Rosemeade Boulevard to the coast at Newport Beach, with a traffic light every half mile or less. From Newport we turned left down the Coast Highway all the way to Oceanside. The whole trip took about a half day to make. Once, the family took Taffy, the newly acquired Cocker Spaniel down to Oceanside and then returned half way home before remembering that Taffy was still tied up at the cabin in Oceanside.

The owner of the summer houses at Oceanside - there were two of them, one in back of the other offered to sell John the smaller front house right across the street from the beach, for $6,000. John couldn't see how he could afford it, so the owner offered the lot next door to John for $2,000. The money just wasn't available, so John turned down the offers. Of course, today, the little beach cabins are gone, replaced by large hotels and condominiums worth hundreds of times these figures.


YEAR (FILE ) OCEANSIDE PICTURES
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1953 (4320) Griffin family and friends
1953 (4314) Sarah Jane Israelson and friend
1953 (4331) John and Dorothy Griffin
1953 (4336) John and Ben Griffin family at Oceanside

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