The men and women who came before me lived remarkable lives—some documented, some nearly forgotten. My paternal grandfather, Truman Bailey, was an artist, photographer, and writer who spent the 1930s collecting textiles in Polynesia and Peru, publishing Polynesia Venture in 1939. My maternal grandfather was an engineer at Lockheed during WWII, helping design aircraft that changed the war.
Further back, the line runs through the American Civil War, the Underground Railroad, patriots in the American Revolution, and the French and Indian Wars. Soldiers, abolitionists, builders—people who showed up when history demanded it.
This is what I’ve been able to piece together about where I come from, and what got passed down to my five kids and three grandkids. The branches keep growing.
Five brothers answered the call when the Union was threatened by the rebel Army. Meet the Bailey men who joined the Iowa Infantry in 1861 through the eyes of George Bailey who documented their adventures as a family of pioneers and their experiences during these horrible times.
In the 1930s, when most men his age were looking for steady work during the Depression, my grandfather Truman Bailey was sailing through Polynesia and trekking through Peru, collecting indigenous textiles and documenting vanishing cultures. He was an artist first—a painter and photographer with an eye for pattern, color, and craft—but he was also a writer who understood that these textiles told stories worth preserving.
His book, Polynesia Venture, published in 1939, chronicled those years of wandering remote islands, trading with local artisans, and sleeping in places that didn’t appear on most maps. The textiles he collected—now scattered across museums and private collections—represent traditions that in many cases no longer exist.
He passed down more than artifacts. He passed down the idea that a life spent chasing curiosity and beauty, however impractical, was a life worth living.
Rosalie was born in 1903 – and had an incredible memory. She was barely three years old during the San Fransico earthquake – and she could remember it.
Her father, John “Yi” Maus was a vaudville musician, and they ended up in the San Francisco peninsula – my grandma sometimes having to perform on banjo.
She attended the San Francisco Academy of Fine Arts in 1923 where she met my grandfather Truman. She was a talented sculptres who inspired not only me but countless others with her art.
My maternal grandfather, Carl Oscar Svensson was born in April 1906 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of my immigrant great grandparents who came from Sweden in the 1890s. His father joined the US Navy and was decorated during the Vera Cruz incident in 1918, and was stationed on the USS Virginia. Unfortunately, my great grandfather died of injuries sustained on a ship yard when my grandfather was only 14.
My grandfather went on to MIT and studied aero engineering (class of 1931). It was during his MIT time that he was in the US Army Air Corps ROTC, and spent the summers at Mitchel Field, Long Island, NY where he trained as an observer in Curtis Falcons.
In 1940, he moved his family, to include my mom, to Burbank California where he worked for Lochheed until his retirement in the late 1960s.
He had a part in nearly all the famous aircrafts that came out Skunk works and numerous aircraft after the war. He assisted in the design of the P-38, he was a main engineer of the Constellation, SR-71 and the P-3 Orion.
Here are his photos from his days in the ROTC – many vintage aircraft here.