The Lamb Family
In Search of the American Dream
Wah Jean Lamb, my grandmother Gertrude Lamb Chinn’s father, had come to America from China in the late 1880s to pursue his studies at the newly formed College of Medicine at the University of Southern California. According to my grandmother and other sources, he had been sent by Methodist missionaries with the full blessing of the Imperial Chinese government, which no doubt expected him upon completion of his studies to return to China to use his newly acquired knowledge of Western medicine by serving as one of the physicians to the imperial family.
Although traditional Chinese medicine was what was still relied upon, the possibility that Western medicine could also be effective in some cases was not totally lost on the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi.
Wah Jean had learned English as a child while attending a Methodist missionary school in China. He was an intelligent young man who showed a lot of promise, and ultimately he had been selected by the missionaries to continue his education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which was also a Methodist school at that time. So, sometime in 1889, he embarked on the first stage of a lifelong medical career.
The photograph attached to his 1894 United States of America Certificate of Residence shows a serious, pleasant young man. He is listed as a “Chinese person other than laborer.” His occupation is given as “Medical Student.”
The document also attests to the fact that he was in residence in the United States before the provisions of the Act of Congress approved on May 5, 1892, known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, came into effect.
In the years that he attended medical school in Los Angeles, Wah Jean boarded with an English family that he had met through the Presbyterian Church. The Sadlers immediately took to the young Chinese man and embraced him as if he were one of their own.
To repay their kindness and also to earn some money, he worked for them as a houseboy. It was in the Sadler house where he fell in love with the frail, young Edith, one of the Sadler daughters, and she also fell in love with him. It was indeed a highly unconventional romance for that time. In California especially, miscegenation was not only highly frowned upon but was even considered to be a serious crime. Fortunately, the Sadlers were forward-thinking people who harbored no prejudice against Wah Jean. Edith was a plain girl and she suffered from the misfortune of having ill health, but their future son-in-law would soon be a medical doctor.
In 1895, Wah Jean Lamb and Edith Sadler were married in the neighboring state of Nevada, since California law didn’t allow interracial marriages. Wah Jean Lamb graduated from the University of Southern California College of Medicine Class of 1896. He held the unique distinction of being the first person of Chinese ancestry to graduate from that school.
After graduating he decided to remain and take up his practice in the United States instead of returning to China. He began his professional career by opening up his first office at 550 East Thirty-Second Street in Los Angeles. His pretty Caucasian wife, who was now pregnant with their first child and who was also very seriously suffering from tuberculosis, became his first patient.
Wah Jean Lamb, MD soon found that most of his Chinese patients preferred the old, traditional herbal cures to Western medicine and that, strangely enough, many of his Caucasian patients expressed a great interest in herbal medicine as well, so he adapted his practice accordingly. But he also found that, with the overabundance of doctors practicing in Los Angeles, competition was fierce and it was difficult to make a living. Meanwhile, Edith’s condition worsened.
Perhaps thinking that his ailing wife’s health as well as his practice would benefit from a drier climate and rural environment, they decided to leave Los Angeles for Nevada. Unfortunately he encountered the same prejudice there that he had in California.
Sadly, his wife’s health did not get better, and when it became evident that she would soon die, he brought her back to Los Angeles so that she could be among her family when the time came.
Before she passed away in 1896, she bore Wah Jean a daughter who they named Gertrude Edith Lamb—and who would become my grandmother.
No pictures have survived of Gertrude’s mother, Edith Sadler—in fact, since she died when my grandmother was an infant, she never even had the chance to come to know her.
But my grandmother did have an old tintype that she treasured, which showed her as a small baby, warmly clothed and in the arms of her deceased mother’s mother, her maternal grandmother.
Wah Jean realized that he was going to need someone to help him care for his child. After all, he couldn’t successfully establish his practice as a doctor while having to care for his young daughter as well. He was also still a relatively young man, and the loss of his wife denied him the large family that he had always dreamed of having.
With her mixed blood and vibrant personality, Gertrude was growing into a pretty and adorable young child. She had become quite independent, but she still needed a mother to nurture her and care for her.
In 1899, when Gertrude was three years old, Wah Jean made a trip to San Francisco. There he found his young bride-to-be at an orphanage run by the Presbyterian Church. Her name was Alice Wong, and she became known as Lamb Ah Oi.
When he returned to his daughter in Los Angeles, Wah Jean had a new Chinese wife and little Gertrude had a stepmother.
Wah Jean moved with his new wife and daughter back to Nevada, where he briefly tried to make a living, but found that it was much too difficult to do so there. So he decided to continue moving on. This time he travelled north, and Wah Jean Lamb, MD eventually came to settle in a place called Butte, Montana, a prosperous copper mining boomtown where he would set up his practice as a physician and surgeon.
There, built around what came to be known as the Richest Hill on Earth, were shacks and mansions, workers’ cottages in the shadow of recently constructed brick business buildings, mineshafts, and dump heaps. The powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company presided over all of this.
The Chinese had first immigrated to America during the Gold Rush in search of the legendary Gold Mountain. Here, the town of Butte was situated on the earth’s mineral crown.
Wah Jean opened his first office at his home in Chinatown on 9 West Galena Street in 1902. Gertrude’s brother Paul was born shortly after they arrived in Butte.
In order to build his medical practice, Dr. Lamb would regularly place advertisements in Butte’s two newspapers, The Butte Miner and the Anaconda Standard.
My grandmother recalled that aside from seeing patients at his office, her father used to ride out to house calls on horseback. Butte had a fairly good-sized Chinese community, and his expert knowledge of the curative powers of Chinese herbs as well as his ability to practice traditional Western medicine made him very much sought after as a physician.
In addition, Butte still had relatively few highly qualified doctors, so his patients included a good many Caucasians as well as Chinese. Being the first Chinese person to have graduated from the highly renowned University of Southern California Medical School also put him in a position of prestige.
It was not long before he managed to establish a fairly successful practice for himself and became a highly respected physician in the constantly growing frontier town. Eventually, as his family and medical practice grew, he would move to a much larger office located in the famous Copper Block at 46 East Galena, just west of the intersection of Galena and Wyoming.
In 1904, Gertrude’s sister Gladys was born. From the very beginning Gertrude felt very close to her new sister. She would help her stepmother care for the infant, and as Gladys grew older she and her younger sister would become almost inseparable.
Fortunately for Gertrude, her new mother Ah Oi was not the wicked stepmother of the popular stereotypes. Even though she did harbor some resentment toward the half-white child that was her stepdaughter, in general they managed to get on fairly well.
As the years passed, not only did Wah Jean’s medical practice grow but his family grew as well. Gladys was followed by Esther in 1905, and then came Ruth in 1907, and a year later another brother, John. Wah Jean was making a comfortable living that could easily support his large family, but there were no servants, so the eldest child Gertrude was charged with taking care of her younger siblings.
They grew up as children of two worlds. Although they were American by birth, Wah Jean instilled in them a pride in the fact that they were also Chinese. They could speak both languages and were aware of Chinese as well as American traditions.
Wah Jean was doing well as a doctor in Butte and in the years that followed his family increased by two more daughters, Faith and Eleanor—the latter of whom would also come to be known as Aldrina. The compassionate doctor also adopted an orphaned child of Russian extraction named Philip, whom he found wandering around one day, hungry and without a place to go. Wah Jean took him home and raised him as if he were one of his own.
Dr. Lamb was strict but he was also fair. He was also a very religious man and a Christian, and his wife Alice was a devout churchgoing woman as well, so they both saw to it that all of their children were brought up with Mass, Sunday school, and bible study classes.
As Gertrude grew older, with her Eurasian blood and exotic looks, she began to develop into an attractive young woman. She had always been very particular about the clothes that she wore and she was always dressed fashionably. Gertrude graduated from high school in June of 1913 and that summer the whole family took a trip to Los Angeles. Dr. Lamb’s wife Alice had constantly complained about the cold weather in Montana, so he bought a house in Los Angeles where she and the children would live. He would commute back and forth from Butte to be with them whenever he could.
In the Los Angeles Chinatown of 1913, if a young Chinese man was sincerely interested in meeting an eligible young Chinese girl, he might go to one of the church socials where the young people gathered, even if he wasn’t a particularly religious person. It was at one of the gatherings at the Chinese Presbyterian Church where a prosperous thirty-one-year-old businessman, who owned his own wholesale butcher shop, named Frank You Chan met young Gertrude Edith Lamb. He was immediately attracted to her but she seemed to take no notice of him, so he tried to get her out of his mind. But no matter how hard he tried he found that there was something about her that he couldn’t quite define. He knew that somehow they were destined to meet.
At the next church social, Gertrude’s sister Gladys turned to her and said, “That old man over there is looking at you.”
Gertrude turned to see who she was talking about and saw Frank, who quickly turned away. “He’s not old,” she said.
“You like him, don’t you,” Gladys teased.
Frank was fourteen years older than Gertrude, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. When Frank finally mustered up enough courage to introduce himself to her, she invited him to come over to their house.
The first thing that Gertrude remembered asking Frank when they were alone together was, “Are you a member of the church?”
When Frank found out that Gertrude’s father was a doctor and that he also was an important figure in the church, he decided to join. After meeting Wah Jean, he realized that he had to improve his life so that he could be worthy of this man’s daughter. Although he came from a good family in China, because he had come to America with his father at an early age, he couldn’t boast much of a formal education even though he could read, write, and converse in both Chinese and English. He made a good living from his wholesale butcher business, which supplied many restaurants in the Los Angeles area, but, remembering his experience in Arizona, he longed to once again become a restaurant owner himself. He had attained financial success but, aside from Gertrude, what he wanted most of all now was prestige.
Over the next few years Frank and Gertrude went out with each other many times but they were never alone. Whenever they went to the beach or to a show, they would inevitably be in the company of one or two of Gertrude’s sisters or some of the other children, and their other dates were usually church social picnics, which were frequently held at the various parks in and around Los Angeles. Their love and respect grew as they got to know each other better. Their courtship lasted for five years.
In 1917, Frank realized one of his goals when he got the basement restaurant concession at the newly opened Grand Central Market at Fourth and Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was little more than a large two-section lunch counter, but at least it was a start.
Frank called his first food concession the Mandarin Chop Suey Inn and he hired cooks whom he taught to make the Chinese and American dishes that had found so much success back in Arizona. Frank realized that the market customers wanted good value for the money as well as tasty food, so the luncheon menu was much cheaper. It wasn’t long before he was making money hand over fist and considered opening an even larger restaurant.
Throughout the years, Frank and Gertrude’s mutual love and respect had not wavered, and Frank now felt that it was finally time to ask Wah Jean for the hand of his eldest daughter in marriage. However, he was still in awe of the man because, despite his small stature and kind demeanor, the doctor was still very intimidating.
He told himself that he should not really feel intimidated because he was, after all, a very successful man with two businesses and the possibility of a third. Still, he remained somewhat hesitant.
Gertrude, who was now twenty-one years old and of legal age as an adult, simply said, “Just ask him.”
So Frank mustered up his courage and told Wah Jean that he wanted to marry his daughter. He promised to be a faithful husband and a good provider.
Wah Jean looked at him for a long time and then finally gave his consent, and on June 27, 1917, Frank You Chan and Gertrude Edith Lamb were married at the Chinese First Presbyterian Church.
Not long after they were married, Frank purchased a large two-story house for them to live in with a separate garage in the back and a huge back yard. The house was located in a quiet and unpretentious middle-class neighborhood at 854 East Twenty-Eighth Street in South Central Los Angeles.
They settled into a relatively comfortable if rather ordinary married life for the next couple of years, and on December 10, 1919, at 7:30 p.m., my father Robert Clarence Chan was born. The handsome baby boy would become the light of Frank and Gertrude’s life. Now, more than ever, Frank wanted to build a business and a legacy that he could leave to his son.
Robert was three years old and growing into a good-looking, athletic, and somewhat mischievous young boy when an unexpected family tragedy occurred. Gertrude’s stepmother Alice had given birth Wah Jean’s eighth child, a boy that they named Leland, when she died as a result of complications during childbirth. As Wah Jean’s eldest daughter, the responsibility of caring for her infant stepbrother fell directly to Gertrude. She would care for Leland until he was old enough to rejoin the rest of the family.
In 1923, Frank bought the basement restaurant concession for the soon-to-be-opened Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre right across from Pershing Square. He envisioned great potential for the restaurant since it would be located in the largest theater ever built in Los Angeles, with a huge auditorium that seated over 3,600 people. He opened the Marigold Café, which served Chinese and American food and boasted the longest bar in Los Angeles, an impressive continuous double horseshoe affair. Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre would be acquired by Paramount Pictures in 1929 and renamed the Paramount Theatre, but Frank would continue on as the owner of the Marigold Café. The theatre also had vaudeville stage shows and many of the actors, musicians, and other celebrities performing in them would become Marigold customers.
The Marigold Café soon became very popular for serving delicious Chinese and American food at reasonable prices. Luncheon cost all of forty cents and a full-course evening dinner was a mere sixty-three cents. Cocktails sold for fifteen cents. With its convenient location, the restaurant attracted a steady trade from both the local businessmen and the numerous office workers from the busy downtown area. The Marigold Café would weather the depression years and continue to be a popular downtown restaurant for nearly three decades. The movies shown in the theatre above it would go from silent films to talkies and eventually even to 3-D.
With the Marigold Café prospering, Frank was on his way to attaining wealth and prestige. He worked hard and soon became a respected and important figure in the Chinese community for his good works and benevolence. He even became the president of the Los Angeles branch of his family association, the Gee How Oak Tin Tong, which was composed of members of three families: the Chin families, the Woo families, and the Yuen families. In those days the society saw to it that their members were protected. They also helped many Chinese enter the United States. Some of these new immigrants would initially go to work in one or another of Frank’s businesses.
Family life also agreed with Frank. He was very proud of his intelligent and attractive wife and his young son. When young Robert was old enough to go to school and take care of himself, Gertrude went to work behind the cash register at the Marigold, where she could keep an eye on the business. Frank’s mastery of the English language was fairly good but not great, and his wife proved to be an enormous help with the operation of the business.
Robert managed to get good grades and was particularly interested in anything to do with sports. They encouraged his reading by buying him a lot of books. He particularly enjoyed reading the Hardy Boys mysteries.
When he was twelve years old, Robert decided that he wanted to go to military school. Even at a young age he had begun to envision a career in the armed services. Frank believed if his son could learn how to live on his own, away from home, he would be better prepared for adult life, so they enrolled him in the Southern California Military Academy in Long Beach. Robert found that life in military school was tougher than he had expected it to be, but he soon fell into the rigid academic and disciplinary routine.
Aside from doing well in the academic department, young Robert especially enjoyed the excitement and competitiveness of school sporting events, in which he really excelled. He would continue with his athletic endeavors after finishing at the military academy in 1933 to go on to middle school and then to high school in Los Angeles. Robert was on the track team in both and would win medals and awards for track as well as the high jump.
The advanced educational and leadership grooming program Robert had received at SCMA stood him in good stead and he continued on with his military training with the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps program (ROTC) in both high school and college. He was now seriously considering a military career. At Los Angeles High School he was a track-and-field star who broke several of the school records. His vibrant and outgoing personality made him widely popular. He graduated from high school in 1936 and began his freshman year at Pomona College in Claremont, California, in the fall. Like any other college freshman, Robert would start to cultivate a more worldly view about life and actively pursue his interest in sports. He excelled in his military science studies and was also player number eight on the freshman football team. At the end of his freshman year he decided to attend the Presbyterian Youth Conference summer camp at Lake Tahoe.
In 1937, Japan invaded China in a deliberate military effort to gain more land and resources, and consolidate their power in East Asia. It was a grim time for a country that was still in the midst of the major civil war that had begun a decade prior between the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party and the forces of the Communist Party of China led by Mao Tse-tung. Word of the atrocities committed by the invading Japanese military reached the United States and the Chinese community was outraged.
Since they still had family back in China, many of the overseas Chinese immediately mobilized to send financial aid to help the war effort back in the mother country.
As prominent members of the Chinese-American community, Frank and Gertrude were, of course, among them. Frank supported his family in China during this trying time and he generously supported the struggle of the Nationalist government in their war effort against the Japanese invaders. Gertrude helped with the local fund raising of Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s China Relief effort.