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Delbert Marion Saunders's Senior high school year book page.
He attended Fremont High School, in Oakland, CA.
He attended Fremont High School, in Oakland, CA.
Grandpa was due to graduate from high school in June 1930. Sadly, he never finished. Times were hard and he dropped out of high school to work full time, in order to support his grandmother, with whom he was living. In his own words (from a letter he wrote to us the year before he died):
"I studied hard in school and managed to skip a grade. I worked as a house boy for a family in Piedmont. Then I worked in a boarding house... They treated me like a slave. From there, I got a job working at an auto laundry, on Fridays and Saturdays, and also ran some poker games on the side. My problem holding that job was the extensive lying I had to do to my school counselor, regarding reasons that I was missing all my Friday classes. This had to end, so I managed to get a job driving for the Manila Meat Market, after school and all day Saturday. The job was punishing because of the long hours involved, and the difficult transportation getting to 82nd Avenue from High School. I had to do my homework on the street car and sometimes fell asleep on the way home, waking up at the end of the line in San Leandro. Never the less, I enjoyed it very much. The people I worked for, a nice German family, treated me just like a member of their own family. As would be happening all over, the depression was building up and the company went broke; and with it went my job. That ended my chance of going to college. But not all was lost. I had found the love of my life -- your Grandmother. Of this good fortune, I have been very blessed."
"I studied hard in school and managed to skip a grade. I worked as a house boy for a family in Piedmont. Then I worked in a boarding house... They treated me like a slave. From there, I got a job working at an auto laundry, on Fridays and Saturdays, and also ran some poker games on the side. My problem holding that job was the extensive lying I had to do to my school counselor, regarding reasons that I was missing all my Friday classes. This had to end, so I managed to get a job driving for the Manila Meat Market, after school and all day Saturday. The job was punishing because of the long hours involved, and the difficult transportation getting to 82nd Avenue from High School. I had to do my homework on the street car and sometimes fell asleep on the way home, waking up at the end of the line in San Leandro. Never the less, I enjoyed it very much. The people I worked for, a nice German family, treated me just like a member of their own family. As would be happening all over, the depression was building up and the company went broke; and with it went my job. That ended my chance of going to college. But not all was lost. I had found the love of my life -- your Grandmother. Of this good fortune, I have been very blessed."
