Manuscript Page 54

adequate supervision if they were combined to make a Unified District. His recommendation was made and the County Board of Supervisors approved the matter. As of July 1 1948, Corona was scheduled to become a Unified School District.

Then I began to worry. We were going to vote on school bond issues and tax increases in the elementary and the high school. Could these bonds be sold by the new unified district? Would the tax increases which were voted in separate districts be valid in a new single district? I needed to find out in a hurry so I called O'Melveny and Myers, a Los Angeles law firm that rules on the validity of all school bonds in California. I posed the question to them and followed up with a letter so I would have a written conformation of their opinion. I was relieved to find that everything was going to be OK as scheduled. All assets of the original districts would become assets of the newly formed Unified District.

No further problems came up and all the propositions carried with a healthy majority. Now we had to get busy with an application for State Building Assistance and begin planning for three new elementary schools.

During this whole flurry of activity I could not spend much time with Carol and Guin who were keeping the home fires burning. I would come home late at night and leave early the next morning. They provided a sheltered spot where I could find a quiet peace that really was the help required for me to keep going. Only those who have lived through the turmoil of political strife can appreciate the healing quality of a quiet, clean, loving home.

The Architect and I were struggling with the applications for State School Building Assistance since that aid would be required to build three new elementary schools. It would also require some bond funds that had just been voted. We had just finished all the paperwork on the applications when I got a call from Guin. Carol had fallen from the top of a picket fence and was injured. It was necessary to take her to the hospital in Riverside for X rays of her leg. This we did and, sure enough, she had a cracked bone in her leg. She stayed in the hospital to have the leg set and a cast put on it. Guin stayed with her and during the night Guin became ill. I managed to get her to a doctor and get them both back home but it took some help from a good baby sitter. I then drove to Indio to get signatures from the President of the School Board on the State Assistance applications. When I got back home Guin's doctor had called and told her that she should have surgery immediately. We had been trying to have another baby and it was just not working out. The doctor thought that there was a problem with at least one ovary so we opted to go for surgery immediately while Carol was in a cast and the baby sitter would be able to keep up with her. Guin went to the hospital and I flew to Sacramento with the Building Assistance Applications while Carol stayed with a baby sitter.

I made some important contacts in Sacramento in the State Department of Finance, Local Allocation Division and in the Senate. The applications were accepted and it was a matter of waiting for