Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Relationship with Parents
I was very unhappy, truly unhappy but could never talk to my parents about it. They were so just involved with themselves. My father came here, went to work for his friend and his friend said in about a years time when he learns the business he would make him a partner. Well the year came, the year left and he didn't make him a partner. My father fought it and unfortunately, they parted ways after all of what they been through and everything and uh, my father went to work for a jewelry company--costume jewelry. And they decided they were going to open up their own business, this is what--so my father was in the wholesale jewelry business--costume jewelry. My mother and father bought--my mother was also a very, um, business-like woman. He, and he had two wives that were very, you know, they knew--that knew business like, the woman behind the man so to speak. My father was a very hard, hard worker and uh, they established a real good life for themselves here. But they were very much in love with each other and I was just there. I mean, they--unfortunately I was always looking for love and I didn't, didn't get it from them--not the way I wanted it. But I got it from, from the girls, there's no doubt, no doubt about it.
Do you think that was affection of his experience in the war or was it just the way...
I, I don't know.
...you were raised in Germany?
It was too bad that I lost my own mother so young that I can't remember, you know, how would she have been with me as I was growing up. They were so strict with me, I couldn't date, I couldn't go out, I couldn't bring friends to the home. Uh, and finally at eighteen when I was allowed to date, I had to be home at midnight and, I mean, I was already engaged to Bill and we came home at one o'clock in the morning and my father was in the kitchen waiting for me with his slipper in his hand and he said in German, "Where do you think you've been 'til one o'clock in the, in the morning?" I mean, it was just a few months before I got married, you know.
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