Adapting to Life in America

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“Life was very hard at first for me in America. I didn’t speak much English. I couldn’t find much work at first, it was very difficult.” 
 
“I had made my way to Baltimore from New Orleans where I had been docked before on my previous days in America. I married Frances soon after this time.” 

“We went to Los Angeles because she had some family members there and it worked out for me because the climate was very similar to Israel.” 

“It was 1964 and Frances was told and recommended to get this heart surgery, this open-heart surgery, and her family told her to do the same. She then went in to get it and I told her I love her, and she never came back to me.” 

“I would work 3 jobs to just try and survive and pay these terrible women who were taking care of my daughters; I would come back home from the liquor store where I worked—my third job, and my daughter would be soaked in her crib, and I would ask the woman that night what she fed my daughters and she would answer ‘ice cream’. I was completely helpless.” 

Editor’s Note: After the death of Frances, Larry experienced tremendous hardship maintaining being a single father and working several jobs at once. He relied upon untrustworthy nannies to take care of and essentially raise his daughters; one being his daughter Sharon he had with Frances, and the other being Frances's daughter from her previous marriage, whom he later became estranged with. Larry left California to return to Balitmore to get help from his in-laws sometime in the late 1960s.