By Susie Ling
A note from Oliver Beckwith: Susie Ling is a well known oral historian in Monrovia who volunteers with the Monrovia Historical Society. She has conducted more than 200 oral histories of local African American, Asian American, and Mexican American people. Because of segregation, these were the people who lived along Route 66 as it traversed through Monrovia on Huntington Drive. Here are some of their stories.
Rosalie Cardiel Garcia lived on Monrovia’s Route 66 in the 1930s, "We used to live on Huntington Drive... When I drive down Huntington [today], I would remember when my brother and I would lie down on that street. There wasn't that much traffic [then]. We would be lying there, and my brother would say, 'Oh, there's the light of a car way down there...' So we would then get up to let the car pass. Then we would lie on the street again. We played hopscotch on Route 66. There was an airport next to us. When it was really foggy, they would blow a horn. Then the men would all go to the airport with their cars and turn their headlights on for the incoming plane." Rosalie married Louis Garcia, grandson of Lucinda Garcia. This Garcia family traces their legacy on this land to before the Spaniards built the San Gabriel Mission in 1771.
From Henry Olivas: This circa 1925 photo shows my Great-Grandmother Lucinda Garcia (far right) along with her husband (far left), my Great-Grandfather Louis and most of their children, (back row L-R) Louis Jr., Dora, Grace, an unidentified man and Josefa, (front row L-R) Florence (Vivi), Alex, an unidentified girl and youngest daughter Clara (my grandmother). Not shown are additional siblings Manuel and Ernest (possibly cropped from the picture. They're posing in front of their Monrovia home, where I now reside.
I remember seeing this photo as a child, and for decades considered it lost. I was overjoyed to discover it yesterday among a slew of pictures my late mother, Rosalind Olivas, had stored away.
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