Richard L. Holt

My life, literally, almost began on the waters of the harbor in Balboa. The Port of Balboa on the Pacific end of the Panama Canal was the only port for ships in Panama on the Pacific Ocean.  My mom, carrying me in the womb, made it back to Balboa on the SS President Lincoln of the Dollar Lines from San Diego just hours before I was born. 

PRESIDENT LINCOLN (2)
The "President Lincoln" was a 14,124 gross ton ship, built by New York Shipbuilding as the "Hoosier State" for the US Shipping Board. Her length was 535ft x beam 72ft, one funnel, three masts, twin screw and a speed of 17 knots. Assigned to Pacific Mail Steamship Co, she started her first voyage from San Francisco to the Orient on 12th October 1921. In 1922 she was renamed "President Lincoln" and in 1925 was purchased by the Dollar Line. She resumed the same service for her new owners on 16th May 1925 and in 1938 was transferred to American President Lines. In 1940 she was sold to Berge & Co, and renamed "Maria del Carmen" and resold the same year to Ybarra y Cia, and renamed "Cabo di Buena Esperanza". She was eventually scrapped in Spain in 1958. [Pacific Liners 1927-72 by Frederick Emmons] - [Posted to The ShipsList by Ted Finch - 11 March 1998]

Robert Dollar & Co. (Dollar Line), San Francisco (1900-38)
The Dollar Line was the main US trans-Pacific shipping line in the early 20th century. It originated as a schooner fleet in late1890s carrying lumber from Robert Dollar's sawmills in the Pacific northwest to markets in California. Dollar entered the regular merchant shipping business after the Spanish-American War, originally using British-flagged ships. He was very successful in the trade between the US west coast and the Far East and initiated around-the-world service in 1921. However, the company became heavily indebted while trying to expand in late 1920s and could not recover once the Great Depression set in. The line was bought out by the US Government in 1938 and the assets were then used to establish American President Lines. The two lines share red and white in their colors.

By 1938 it was no secret to anyone living in the Panama Canal that war was coming soon.  We had seen the ships loaded down with scrap iron passing through the Canal on their way to Japan.  We knew that the Japanese were building an armory and the scrap was being used for bombs and bullets that would be used against us.  The people in the Canal Zone harassed the Japanese merchants and the workers on the ships so much that the ships just hurried through the Canal and went on their way to Japan.

My dad wanted the family to make one more trip back to the U.S. before the war began.  He knew that his future was tied up in the coming war with being activated into the Merchant Mariine as a ship's Captain, and he would not be able to see his family for many years.  (That is exactly what happened to him in 1942 - he drove tankers back and forth to the U.S. in between his piloting jobs on the Canal). His mother, my grandmother in Florida, was not well, and we all wanted to go see her.  So he set up a trip back to the U.S., through New York City, in early 1939 for all of us to go.  Ruth had just been born in January.  We left Cristobal in March with Ruth just an infant.  In this photo taken on board the Jamaica, she was in the baby care of a steward while my mom went up on deck to wave goodbye to our family on the dock at Cristobal.

The ship was almost full of bananas picked up in Ecuador.  We were to stop in Bocas del Toro, Panama to pick up more.  And then again the same thing in Puerto Limon in Costa Rica.  Bananas were always available to the crew and passengers with a big bunch always hanging out on the deck.  The cabins on these United Fruit boats weren't large, but comfortable.  The food, I thought as a kid, was fantastic.  This was the first banana boat I was to go aboard.  Later I would be on one after the war.

We lived in Panama City, but my folks wanted me to attend the American schools in the Canal Zone.  So I caught a public bus in front of our house every morning and went about 30 minutes to Ancon, Canal Zone by myself where I got off and boarded a Canal Zone U.S. Government school bus which took us to Balboa to attend Kindergarten.  At the end of school, the opposite took place, and I always made it home on time. The lower photo is of graduation in May of 1940.

The other photo is of me sitting on the stairs leading up to the living quarters at our house in Panama City on the beach.  The upstairs had living, kitchen, bedrooms and baths.  Under the house, as it was called, there was a very nice sitting area with big overhead fans.  Also the laundry facilities, parking for the car and a very nice maid quarters with its own bath.  This house was designed and built by my step-grandad.

A lot of political meetings took place "under our house".  Many of our family members were heavily involved in Panamanian politics.  Presidents of the country were my mother's cousins, and other politicians were close friends of both my grandfather and my father.  They would talk for hours under the house, drinking my granddad Johnny Walker Red Label and smoking his Cuban cigars which he always had available for them. 

I could sit on the stairs for hours and learn more history and politics than you would expect to in a classroom.  I learned all the reasons why the Panamanians disliked the U.S. and its people working in the Panama Canal Zone.  I was to soon form my own opinions as to why the Americans were hated by the Panamanians.  I was persecuted in their schools when I started and could not speak the language. In later years this kind of knowledge was to prove invaluable in dealing and negotiations with the administration of both Torijos and Noriega which I did for the U.S.

My brother and I, and later on my sister, stood out from the typical Panamanian in that all of us had very blonde hair for several years after birth.  We were called the "fulos", meaning the blondes.  The kids we played with learned our names, but when they talked about us, they used this name.  It was fun because all of this was done with a lot of love by the Panamanian kids. 

Later on when I started school in the Panama Canal Zone, the names I was called by the American kids weren't in fun.  They were quite cruel to me because I could not speak English fluently or not at all at the beginning.  I also got beat up a lot by the American kids until an incident in first grade brought that to a halt.  My dad was getting tired of me coming home all beat up and bleeding, crying, and not wanting to go to school the next day.  His visits to the school administration did no good.  Nothing was ever done.  So...he gave me what he called "an equalizer", which amounted to a short length of 1/2 inch pipe.  He told me to hide this in the bushes before school started, and run and get it when the big kids started beating up on me, and to defend myself with the pipe against the other kids.  I did so.  I did some serious damage to several of the 5th and 6th graders that had been beating me.  My dad almost lost his job.  I was suspended for a week from school.  The damaged kids with their split skulls and broken arms also missed school. 

But I was never bothered again.  No one anywhere in the Canal Zone ever again tried to take me on in a fight.  I was called that "tough Panamanian kid" and never had to resort to this tactic again.   This prejudice was the kind of thing that the Americans did to the Panamanians over the years leading up to the major revolt by Panama and the eventual turning over of the Panama Canal to Panama.  Panamanians were not allowed on the streets or in the towns of the Canal Zone.  If caught, they were put in jail.  How's that for being kept out of your own country?

My mom's family were all white European people in a country that was rapidly changing into mixed races since so many non-Spanish people had come to live there.  Her family,  coming from the German side, her father, and her Panamanian side, her mom where the heritage went back to Northern Spain and a lot of Scandinavian blood from that region of Spain were tall, blonde and very white skinned. 

Today there are less that 10% white skinned people in Panama.  This is not so much the mix with the native Indian tribes that were resident in Panama long before the Europeans, Africans and Orientals came in, but the mix with the tens of thousands of blacks that were left in Panama after the railroad, French canal effort and the U.S. canal effort left these blacks in Panama.  The Panama Railroad builders in 1855, and then the failed French Canal Company in 1898, left tens of thousands of blacks in Panama instead of returning them to the West Indian Islands of the Caribbean or Africa from where they had come for those particular construction tasks.  And then the Americans, in their efforts from 1904-1915 brought in tens of thousands of more African blooded people, and left those in Panama also after the Panama Canal was successfully completed.

This racial strife has created some serious problems in Panama over the years since the U.S. finished the Canal.  The local whites, called in a derogatory manner "rabiblancos" by the darker skinned Panamanians have had control through their ownership of property and financial strength.  They have been hated by the colored people in the country.  The Americans, of course, are blamed for all the problems by those of color in Panama who have been the major instigators of trouble between the U.S. and Panama over the years leading up to the turn-over of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999.

We moved to Gatun after kindergarten in early 1941.  I graduated from kindergarten in Balboa where I had had a tough time getting started in the American school system on the Canal Zone.  I was enrolled in the Gatun Elementary School in the first grade.  We made this move on the orders of the management of the Dredging Division for whom my father worked.  He was driving the large sea going tugs, some stationed out of Balboa, and some out of Cristobal.  They assigned him to the Atlantic side in Cristobal, and they wanted him living near where the tugs were located. 

I didn't speak a word of English at the time.  I could understand some but not enough to satisfy some of the kids.  I got harassed all the time.  I met a friend in that class that is still a friend and lives near me here in California, Irwin Frank.  We sat next to each other in the graduation photo which we both have hanging in our hallways now.

After graduation, we got on one of the Panama Line ships in Cristobal, the Ancon, and left for New York.   We were intercepted by a German U-boat almost outside of Cristobal.  He was intent on sinking us, but couldn't catch the Ancon.  It was a brand new ship, one of three the Panama Canal had just built, and could outdistance the sub easily.  He still chased us for about two days, surfacing and firing his 5 inch cannon on the deck.  We kids would stand on the back rail of the ship and watch the shell land in the water way behind us and cheer like mad for us, with boo's for the German.  The Captain was told to alter his course because this was going on all along the East Coast, so he changed his course and we went into New Orleans.

Click on thumbnail photos to see full size

The Bridge of the Americas was built in the 1960's to give Panamanians better access to both halves of their previously divided country, divided in the middle by the Panama Canal.  This was always one of the contentious issues between the two nations, that the U.S. had built the Canal, cut their country in half, and then didn't provide a good means to cross this waterway. Just before my dad died in 1951, he took the job of being one of the Captains on the ferry boats, one of which is shown below.  He hated the job, but it allowed our family to live in Balboa and would keep my brother and I from having to ride a train to and from school every day, from Gamboa to Balboa.  Lots of bad things happened on those trains full of school kids from the middle school through the high school level, and he wanted, at all cost, to avoid this for his sons. 

Growing up in Panama City was exciting.  I had for playmates, Panamanian kids who spoke no English, so my Spanish was a natural thing.  I spoke with no accent, and to this day, still speak Spanish like a native.  Since we were situated right on the beach, every day as I had the time, it was beach time, sometimes with other kids, and many times by myself.  I loved to explore at low tide when we had massive tide pools left in the many rock outcroppings.  We had a 22 foot tide on the Pacific side so the tide went out almost a mile from where the water came to at mean high tide.  Lots of rocks, lots of plant and animal life in the tide pools.  A wonder to me, and still remains the highlight of my youth.

As I got to know the English language better, I started to mix more and more with the American kids in the Canal Zone, the American zone.  We kept the house on the beach, but my dad was ordered to accept government housing in the Canal Zone when I reached first grade.  He was told to move to Gatun, which was on the Atlantic side.  That was the Atlantic base for the Captains of the tugs and ships.  We had a beautiful two story house right above Gatun Locks where we could sit in our rooms and watch ships transit that lock.  But would you know it, something ruined that beautiful setup which we all loved.  The Germans started WWII and began shelling Cristobal and Gatun in mid 1941.  My dad's division, the Dredging Division which had responsibility for all Canal operations, ordered all its key people to move to Gamboa, in the middle of the Isthmus, a long way from the shelling.  But they did not have enough houses there to do that, so they threw together a long row of houses cut right out of the jungle and called The Ridge.  We and the wild animals occupied The Ridge, and the animals weren't too happy to have us there.

I cover some of this phase of my life in another section, Family Roots.

For an in-depth look into my family background, please go on to Maternal Ancestry.