Margaret (Aunt Maggie) Puertas grew up in the midst of the Great Depression. She was born in 1920, ninth in a family of ten children. Life in the Puertas home was difficult. They were a poor Spanish-speaking Mexican family and endured the prejudice so common during that time. Her mother took in laundry to survive. Although times were extremely difficult, the family never wanted for food. This was a time before cars were common for the economically challenged. She remembered her grandparents used to come over and visit in a horse and buggy. Next to their modest home was a carpet cleaning business. Maggie and her sisters made some extra money answering the phones. Bob Wray worked there. Bob was the son of an itinerant artist, who made his small living travelling across Canada in a camper. Bob didn’t care for that lifestyle and wanted to have a permanent home. Bob took a liking to Maggie soon after they met. When Maggie was 18 and a senior in high school, Bob asked for her hand. Her family vehemently objected because Bob was not Catholic, all even though some of her older brothers and sisters had married outside the faith without incident. Maggie and Bob went ahead with their marriage. Maggie was disowned. In the late 1930s, the area known as Topanga was opened for development. Bob purchased one of the first lots available. It was up in the hills of Topanga, over a mile from the main road. There were no essential services back then. Their water came from a well up the hill, on a lot owned by a woman who turned it on at her leisure. Bob soon built a water tank. He built their house with his own two hands. He didn’t believe in owing money, so the young couple saved up and purchased materials as they were able. They lived in the house as it was being built. World War II brought catastrophic changes to the young couple. Bob joined the war effort in a Construction Battalion (troops were known as “CBs�). They were the ones who went in before the Marines to build landing strips and barracks with little protection from the enemy. He was stationed in the South Pacific. The house hadn’t been finished yet, so Maggie lived alone in a half-built house where the outside walls were still covered in tar paper. Their separation lasted four years. After the war, Bob used the skills he gained as a CB to work as a set designer at Fox Studios. He won an Emmy for his work on a movie about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. By then, Maggie had a job at the Rand Corporation, a well-respected think tank located in Santa Monica where she worked as a secretary in the math department. Bob and Maggie were famous for their parties. In the years before there was trash pickup, the revelers used to throw their empty liquor bottles over the bank to the lower part of the property. The area became covered with brush and a few years ago Maggie and her helper found them when they were doing their brush clearing. She had to explain to him that they really weren’t “those kind� of people.