The Beginning of the Story

The story is as follows: Vida is from Serbia. She married a man she called a “tall drink of water” who was also of Serbian descent. They opened a diner together in Southern California before the war. After the war they adopted over a dozen children from troubled homes. They saved these children from abuse and neglect and malnutrition and sadness and even death. Her name is Vida Kavosovitch, and her husband is Savo Kavosovithch. 
By the time I come to know them, in the late 1970's, their names have been changed to Sam and Vida Glush. They have been fully integrated into American life. One of their adopted children was my mother, Marilyn Rae Fowler. 
Marilyn was born in 1941 to an American father and a mother of Russian Jewish descent. 
The sands of time have blown away many of the pertinent facts about her biological parents, but this is what I think I know. Her mother and father were lower middle class laborers. Her father, R.W. Fowler, was a drunk who had trouble hanging on to gainful employment. Her mother, who came from a jewish family, gave up everything when she married R.W. When her jewish kin heard she had married a non-jew, they wrote her out of their lives. She was dead to them, to the point where they literally held a funeral for her. Into this morass was born my mother, one of seven children. Betty, Paul , Florence, Marilyn, Phillip, Terry, and another one I can't remember. Of the seven, two or three remain. I know that Betty and Florence are still with us and I am in touch with them. Terry disassociated himself from the family sometime in the early 80's and has never been heard from since. He may or may not be still alive.
The rest of the family came to their ends in this way; Phillip died of some sort of heart failure in the mid 80's. I remember him sleeping on our couch in Costa Mesa and breathing very heavily, his large lumbering chest toiling for air. Paul died of AIDS a bit later, in the late 80's. Marilyn, my mother, died of breast cancer in 1989. She was the only one in the family to have attended university.
On the other side of the family, there is a man named Victor Hemery. He is an internationally recognized, champion auto racer. In the early 1910's, he broke the world record for speed in an automobile, which he held for about twenty years. I think he went something like 100 miles and hour in one of those crazy jalopies that they drove back then. He drove for BMW and won races all over France and and europe, and also in Russia and the United Staes. There is a photo of him looking proud and fierce at the wheel of his car hanging on my hallway in Brooklyn and he looks exactly like my father. Or vice versa. My middle name is Victor, after this man. When he was 75 years old, after a life of fame and glory, he decided that he had had enough. He was ready to get off the ferris wheel of life. A madman and an egomaniac and probably a depressive, he had subjected his family to the whims of his scalding personality. They knew his ways and so they did not trust him to preserve his safety. His wife kept a close watch on him. She had two young daughters, one named Martine, (my great aunt, who I came to know and love very well, and to whom my father was very attached later in life) and Huguette, my grandmother. One fateful day Victor sent his wife and young daughters away, against their wishes. He turned on the oven and shut all the doors and windows in the kitchen, then he sat on a chair and fell asleep forever.
Victor's daughter Huguette married a man named Paul de Gaillande, my grandfather. He was a civil servant living in the south of France during the difficult years of German occupation in the 1940s. In 1943, they had their first child, a son named Philippe (my father). Times were tough under the Vichy regime and resources were scarce. The town organized a "cutest baby" contest, and the prize was an additional reserve of wartime rations. Baby Philippe was the winner, and the family received a bonus of food rations. In 1945, Paul was appointed a position as a an administrator in a French colony in North Africa, and the family moved to Morocco.
In 1946, while in Morocco, a second son was born, my uncle Yves. He was a "pied noir" (literally translated as "black feet") meaning he was a white man born on black soil, so only his feet were black. The family lived an idyllic and peaceful existence as colonial French occupiers in Morocco. My father recounts this part of his life as a dream of youthful nostalgia. The family lived in a seaside port town called Mazagan (a name left over from Portuguese occupation). They had a large, comfortable, government supplied villa with a cook and housekeeper. They coexisted in harmony with Moroccan society. They played on the beach with the many French expatriates in their community, and their associations with Moroccans were seemingly copacetic and friendly. My father recalls with fondness his cook Mohammed, who cheerfully admitted his sexual relations with livestock in times of desperation. For the French youth growing up in Morocco in the 50's, life was sunshine and wonder. The Moroccans, to their understanding, were appreciative of the influence of the French on their existence. And then in 1954, it all went topsy turvy and the Moroccans demanded their independence. They kicked out the French, but for some reason, they dind't kick them all out. My father's  family stayed another two years until 1956.
Then it was time to go back to France. My father was a moody and rebellious teenager. The family relocated to Tarbes, in the southwest. Philippe the heavy lidded philosopher was dissatisfied and restless. The move back to France was not to his liking. He did well in school and read well, but the spirit of the times manifested itself in his young mind as an overall dissatisfaction with society as a whole and a general personal feeling of alienation that would never leave him.
In 1956, southern California was a land of orange groves and newly built freeways. Marilyn Fowler was not satisfied with her lot in life. Her father had trouble holding a job, and her mother had turned to evangelical Christianity to soothe her suffering. The family of six was not making ends meet. Living in a trailer park in Baldwin Park, R.W. kept a gaggle of german shepherds which he seemed to value more than his own children. Marilyn was a bright student and very involved in school activities like cheerleading. But things at home were not to her liking. At age 14, she made the momentous decision to run away from home and try to find a better life. I'm not really sure how it all went down, but she turned herself in to the authorities and asked to be placed in a foster home. They placed her in the home of Sam and Vida Glush.
In the Glush home, Marilyn thrived. Sam and Vida provided material comfort and an abundance of love and support. A stream of foster children came and went, but Marilyn stayed. She was one of two children who the Glushes adopted as their own, the other being Carol. Marilyn was a very accomplished student, and she graduated from high school early, at age 16. She applied and was accepted to U.C. Berkeley. She entered in 1961 at age 17.
At Berkeley, Marilyn did her best to do well in school, fully appreciating the opportunity she had been given. She was the first person from her adopted and birth families to enter college. 
Once there, Marilyn found the political upheaval of the Vietnam war protests very distracting. She wanted to get to class and get her degree, and she found her way literally blocked by protesters, many of whom were kids with trust funds who could afford to jeopardize their educations. I think this formed the profound political ambivalence she carried for the rest of her life. On the one hand, she sympathized with the causes and philosophies being espoused and championed by the youth movements around her, but on he other hand she resented the casual irresponsibility of the leisure class who had the freedom to risk their educations in service of protest.
But Marilyn was a worldly and sophisticated young lady, and she wanted to embrace life. She befriended the daughter of wealthy New England Industrialists. Louise was a painter and artist and spirited hippie. She and Marilyn hit it off right away. Marilyn began to pursue a career in acting and modeling. Louise and her parents were happy to help relieve some of Marilyn's financial burdens, and they welcome Marilyn's stabilizing influence on their wild daughter. Louise and Marilyn made a plan to go to Paris. 
(to be continued)