My mother, Linda, grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the 1940s.
Her father, Mike Clapp, was in some ways a working-class version of her future father-in-law, Fred Trump Sr.—entrepreneurial and hardworking, unaffectionate but a good provider, strict and accustomed to getting his own way. He had another side to him, too—like Freddy, his future son-in-law, he wanted to be a pilot. Mike started taking flying lessons right out of high school, but the Depression—and his father, Willis Clapp—had put a stop to his dreams.
Willis had suffered a serious head wound when Mike was still a young boy. Often in pain and unable to work, he spent most of his days sitting by the window staring into space. Usually taciturn, Willis had a frightening temper, and it was impossible to know what triggered it, making it difficult—and dangerous—for Mike’s mother, Nellie, to be alone with her husband.
Nellie, a spitfire who drove a car at a time when few women did, had borne the burden of supporting the family since her husband’s injury. She took in laundry, which back in the 1920s was backbreaking work. Clothes and linens had to be washed by hand in large buckets using a washboard, hung on a line to dry, and then pressed with a heavy flatiron heated on the stove.
Even so, every evening after work, Nellie took a bath, fixed her hair, and changed into one of the colorful cotton dresses she’d sewn by hand before starting dinner.
Linda’s mother, Mary Rolfe, had left home after her own mother died, because her father quickly remarried and she and her new stepmother didn’t get along. Mary moved from Menominee, Michigan, to Kalamazoo in the early 1920s to live with her aunt Pearl. She got a job at the YWCA, where she met Mike Clapp at one of the Y’s Saturday night dances. They married in 1933. Their first daughter, Carol, was born a year later, and Linda was born in 1939.
Mike, who owned a fairly successful feed mill, was exempt from serving in World War II because of his young family. In the early 1940s he sold the mill so he and his brother-in-law could buy a semitruck in order to provide long-distance delivery service. Mike loved the work, but it meant being away from home a lot, often for long stretches, while Mary and Carol were left to take care of the household. Mary also volunteered for the Red Cross to support the war effort. Around this time, she began experiencing extreme joint pain and fatigue. Her doctors diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis, and by 1949, she was sometimes in so much pain she couldn’t get out of bed.
Cortisone and gold shots were prescribed to relieve the pain, but not much was known about arthritis at that time, and the medications didn’t work consistently. Mary’s condition worsened rapidly—the harsh winters in Michigan were becoming increasingly difficult for her to bear—and her doctors recommended the family move to Florida. They’d vacationed in Florida before and liked it, but nobody, especially Linda, wanted to leave Kalamazoo. In August 1952, however, shortly after Linda turned thirteen, Mike packed his truck with all of their belongings and drove the family to Fort Lauderdale.
The Clapps stayed in an efficiency apartment at a hotel by the beach for a couple of weeks while they looked for a house. Mike sold his truck and used the proceeds to buy the restaurant—more of a clam shack, really—next door to the hotel. He knew nothing about the restaurant business, but it had once been a popular takeout place and the location was good, so he thought that, with the help of his wife and children, he could make it work.
Mike and Mary were an affectionate couple, and Mike clearly loved her, but he controlled pretty much everything and she had little or no say in any family decisions. As soon as Mary got sick, though, she became the entire focus of her husband’s life, to the detriment of his relationships with his daughters. It’s not that he didn’t care about them, or that he was actively cruel, but his wife came first and there wasn’t much attention left over for them.
For Linda, the first year in Florida was long and lonely. The junior high school she attended, in the barracks of a former naval air station, was a stark comedown from the beautiful, newly built school she’d attended in Kalamazoo. She made some friends freshman year, but her father made her work at the restaurant after school and on weekends, so she didn’t have much of a social life. Her job included taking orders and peeling shrimp. She hated it. Since the move to Florida, Linda had become painfully shy, and during her breaks, she sat on a stool in the back doing homework, which she preferred to waiting on customers, some of whom, especially on weekends, were kids from the high school. She couldn’t bear the thought of being seen by them. In fact, she hated everything having to do with the restaurant.
Back in Kalamazoo, Linda had had friends, a community, and an environment that compensated her for what she wasn’t getting from her parents. There was nothing compensatory about Fort Lauderdale until she joined the synchronized swimming team her sophomore year. Over the next three years the camaraderie with her teammates made life in high school manageable. The team performed all over South Florida and competed in statewide competitions. When Linda wasn’t in the pool, she swam along the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean to increase her endurance. I used to picture her slicing through the water with her powerful, confident strokes, the waves silvering as they crested, the sun reflecting off the schools of mullet keeping pace.