Autobiography of Ralph Raymond Beal, Jr.
(Copyright©1998 by Ralph Beal. All Rights Reserved.)
Chapter Four-Margie and Douglas Aircraft
During my stay in Palo Alto I looked up my old High School friend Marshall Virello, who I had introduced to Merrium Northrup during High School, and to whom he was now married. He was working at the Palo Alto Times.
During a visit to the Palo Alto Post Office, I was standing in line behind a very cute auburn-haired, brown-eyed girl who immediately took my fancy. She was trying to keep the wrapping on a tin of cookies which she was sending to a man in the Service, and I helped her manage it while I read her name off of the return address. Then I rushed to the Times office and asked for Marshall Virello, and asked him if he knew this girl named Marjory Runyon. He said "Yes, she works here" and he told me where she lived. I drove past her house several times, looking for her, but never saw her. So I went to the Times on several occasions when I knew that Marshall was out, and when she met me at the front desk, I asked her if Marshall was in. I was really hooked, so I finally asked her to go bowling, which we did. One thing led to another and when Marshall took pity and suggested having her over to his house so I could officially meet her, I accepted. We had been dating and arranged it so that when we met at his house, we threw our arms around each other and I said "Hi Darling". You should have seen Marshall and Merrium's expressions. After four days we were informally engaged and I had to leave for Santa Monica to report to work at Douglas Aircraft.
At first I lived in a furnished room at the west end of the Santa Monica Airport, riding my bicycle to work (gasoline rationing) and after a few weeks Chet Bauer, who had been a classmate and had become a best friend at NYU, joined me at Douglas and we rented an apartment in Westwood Village.
My correspondence to Palo Alto was hot and heavy, and Margie made a trip by train to visit her Aunt Mary and Uncle Roger Gunder, who lived in Glendale, and I was able to present her with her ring. Back to work for me and then came the great day on December 12, 1942 when we were married in Saint Albans Church in Westwood Village and honeymooned at the Lodge at Lake Arrowhead before moving into our apartment at 26 Midvale Avenue, West Los Angeles. We had known each other and corresponded but had few opportunities to be together from May to December, but we both knew we were right (I'm sure that our parents were not as sure as we were) . To prove that, we celebrated our 55th anniversary on December 12, 1997.
At Douglas I worked for W. Bailey Oswald, the man who designed the DC-1 and many subsequent airplanes. He was a wonderful person and a genius in his field of airplane design. I started out as a trainee at 90 cents per hour, and after a brief trial period I became an Aerodynamicist, specializing in stability and control, a responsibility which led me to conduct wind tunnel tests of various airplanes and components at many locations across the country, including Ames Aeronautical Lab. in Mountain View, Caltech in Pasadena, Cornell Aeronautical Lab. in Buffalo, New York, David Taylor Model Basin in Washington, DC, Langley Aeronautical Lab. in Virginia and Daingerfield Supersonic Test Lab. in East Texas, near Longview.
I spent many alternate weeks over a period of months commuting to Longview for testing, which was done on graveyard shift after midnight because the compressors were used during the day and evening by the adjoining mill to make steel. By the way, the commute involved flying in a DC-4 and later a DC-6 to Dallas (6 hours), driving to Longview (100 miles) and then to Daingerfield (30 miles) to arrive before midnight. There was so much driving involved that my crew called me Wheels Beal. We stayed at the Triangle Inn in Longview and slept when we could.
Richard, Marjory, Ralph 1945
We were living in our Westwood Village apartment on Midvale when Richard Allen Beal was born on February 12, 1945, and were unable to move to a house because of all of the freezes and rationing that were in effect.
By 1946 a tract of houses was built just south of the Santa Monica Airport, and after waiting in line for months we were able to buy a house at 12501 Appleton Way for $9750. It was wonderful to be in a house, but we couldn't buy a refrigerator or washing machine, so Margie kept the food cool in the laundry tray with a 50 pound block of ice covered with newspapers. She became expert on the wash board until we were finally able to buy a Bendix. Her Uncle Roger Gunder used his influence with friends to make it possible for us to buy a refrigerator in 1947. Believe it or not, that refrigerator is in our garage today, keeping soft drinks cold. It has never required a service call!
In due course, younger brother John Everett Beal was born on January 20, 1947, filling out our family.
We found the weather so close to the ocean was terribly damp, and we spent as much time as we could in the San Fernando Valley, enjoying the warm sun. We felt that the health of the boys would be better in the valley and in 1950 we finally found a house at 5143 Gloria Avenue, Encino that was a distress sale, and was very run down. They were asking $17,500, and the Realtor said to make a ridiculous offer, which we did. They accepted $13,500 and we were in business. I commuted to Douglas in Santa Monica over the old Sepulveda Boulevard through the mountains, and it was a three-lane road much of the way. That was an exciting experience.