1940 Bay Ridge Life & Perspectives Winter / Spring - Softcover

Several days before  her wedding, Sophie Larsen stopped by Julius Blumberg's stationary store at 71 Broadway in Manhattan's Financial District.  She bought a 1940 diary and began recording her activities and thoughts.  The first entry was January 25, 2040.  

Sophie was born in an apartment on Columbia Street near the Brooklyn wharf where her father Oluf had arrived a young Danish seaman.  While attending P.S. 140 on 60th Street, she won a city-wide fire prevention essay contest and received her prize medal from Mayor John "Red Mike" Hylan on the steps of City Hall.

After eighth grade came secretarial school, stenography lessons and work for an optometrist while helping to support her parents and younger sister, Astrid.  That job turned out not much to her liking.  

Sophie then began 15 years of employment at Chase National Bank's main office on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan.  By the start of 1940 Chase had become the world's largest non-governmental bank and mom was senior executive assistant to its director of personnel. 

At that time my dad, Svend Aage Beyer, was a technician in the Kent Avenue power station which generated electricity moving trains of the Brooklyn - Manhattan Transit Corporation, the storied B.M.T.

Along with my wonderful grandmother Mary Larsen they loved reading newspapers, magazines, books, and listening to the radio -- rapidly getting attuned to the crackling flames of current events driving things to the boiling point around the world.  Roosevelt, Churchill, LaGuardia, and HItler were names often on their lips. 

During that beautiful eventful spring of 1940, a medical emergency occurred.  Refusing to go along with initially proposed treatments, Sophie contacted a skilled, compassionate surgeon who helped ensure that one day these words might meet your eyes. 

This volume comprises the first six months of Sophie's 1940 diary. 

           Steven Larsen Beyer, Staten Island  April 2025

Detail
Softcover
6 x 9 inches