My parents were both immigrants from Germany, though by the time I came along, their lives had already taken several unexpected turns. Both had grown up in Darmstadt, and both had seen their futures upended by the rise of Nazi Germany.
My father, Ludwig Guckenheimer, came to Chicago in 1933, carrying little more than his education and an affidavit signed by George Hirsch from Austin, Minnesota. My mother, Gertrude Goldschmidt, followed four years later. She arrived in Pasadena, California, in 1937, with an affidavit signed by Benno Gutenberg, the renowned seismologist who worked with Charles Richter on the invention of the Richter Scale.
Both Hirsch and Gutenberg were part of an informal network of relatives and friends who quietly assisted young Jews in finding safety in the United States. Without them, I’m not sure my parents would have made it here at all.
I was born in New Orleans on September 15, 1940 — the first in my family to be born in America.
Family Roots and Old Connections
The more I’ve learned, the more I realize our story didn’t begin with my parents. There’s at least a 150-year connection on my father’s side that ties our family to the Hirschs, Guckenheimers, and Newmans — families whose stories overlap across Germany, the Midwest, and Chicago.
I’ve been piecing this together from papers my cousin Nancy shared, along with letters, family trees, and a growing list of digital archives scattered across the internet. Some are housed at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, others are in local libraries, and some are in family collections that haven’t been digitized yet. My goal, ambitious as it may sound, is to bring these scattered histories together in one cohesive narrative.
It’s not just about genealogy. It’s about connection, seeing how one signature on an affidavit in 1933 could ripple through generations and continents.
My Father’s Journey
My father was born in Darmstadt and trained as a judge in Germany — a path that required a very different education from that of a lawyer. By the time he finished, he couldn’t work in the legal system anymore. Everything had changed.
When he arrived in Chicago, the Great Depression was in full swing, and jobs were scarce. His law degree didn’t open many doors, so he took what he could — first odd jobs in Chicago, then work at a boys’ school in Ohio.
During that time, he was constantly writing letters, trying to help his brother Siegfried and his mother Sophie, escape Germany. He succeeded, though it took years. Siegfried arrived in 1937, and my grandmother came through Portugal on a sealed train in 1940 or 1941. The family still has some of the papers from that journey — fragile, handwritten or typed documents, many of them in German, that somehow survived a trip to the United States..
My father met the Huckaby family, who had connections at the school in Ohio and also at Tulane University in New Orleans. They helped him apply to Tulane’s Graduate School of Social Work, where he was accepted — a remarkable thing for an immigrant whose law degree was from a German university.
That’s how he made it to Louisiana. And it’s where my parents’ paths finally converged.
My Mother’s Story
My mother had come to America a few years earlier. In California, she lived with Benno and Hertha Gutenberg, the same couple who had signed her immigration papers. She helped care for their children — not formally employed, more like a family helper.
She wasn’t completely settled there, but she was safe. And that mattered most.
My father, who had heard that she was in the U.S., started writing to her from Chicago and encouraged her to join him in New Orleans. They had known each other in Darmstadt — he had been a classmate of her sister’s. Additionally, I believe they had common relatives. In 1939, he wrote and asked if she might join him in New Orleans. She said yes.
They were married that September, and a year later, I was born.
A New Life in Louisiana
My father’s education and determination paid off. With Tulane’s support — and some financial assistance — he earned his degree in social work and joined the Louisiana Department of Public Welfare. He began his career as a caseworker in New Orleans but soon relocated to Baton Rouge, where he oversaw policy and systems for the state.
He was ahead of his time. In the 1950s, he led the creation of one of the first automated prescription drug programs for public welfare recipients, utilizing plastic identification cards —the early version of what we’d now call smart cards. He worked with IBM on the project and received a significant award for his contribution to it.
Later, he moved into federal service in Dallas for a few years, advising states on welfare programs and eventually transferring to Washington, D.C., after I’d already left for college.
Baton Rouge Childhood
My childhood in Baton Rouge was a blend of Southern life and my German heritage. My parents’ accents stood out. Our home was filled with love of music, family papers, a few books, including Grimm’s Fairy Tales written in German, a grandmother, and a steady sense of gratitude.
We belonged to Congregation B’nai Israel, the Jewish Reform synagogue in town. I was confirmed there, and my mother taught Sunday school, though I never felt deeply rooted in that community. We were friendly, but not well integrated.
I attended Istrouma Senior High School in Baton Rouge, where I excelled and graduated early at the age of sixteen. Most of the girls in my class married young or stayed close to home. I left for the University of Chicago on a scholarship. My brothers went to Harvard, and my sister to Mount Holyoke. It was clear that my parents’ belief in education had carried us far beyond the boundaries of our neighborhood.
The most famous person from my high school was Billy Cannon, who went on to win the Heisman Trophy and later gained notoriety. My brother knew him better than I did, but to me, he was a reminder that people’s stories could take surprising turns, and there could be well-known people even from Baton Rouge.
University Years and Early Career
At the University of Chicago, I found exactly what I needed: intellectual challenge, serious conversation, and a world far bigger than Baton Rouge. After two years, I decided to leave, and my education took a different turn.
I moved to New York City and began studying to become an actuary. It was a field that combined mathematics, logic, and human behavior, a realm that bridged science and foresight.
In 1963, at the age of twenty-three, I became a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, one of the youngest at the time. That same year, I was mentioned in The New York Times and named one of Mademoiselle magazine’s “Ten Promising Young Women in America.” I’m still not entirely sure what caught their attention, but it was an exciting time, and I managed to establish a promising career for myself
I started at New York Life, one of the most established life insurance companies in the U.S. insurance industry. Then I moved to Standard Security, a small life insurance company where I learned everything by necessity, including pricing, reporting, and sales strategy. It was the best education I could have asked for.
Later, I joined Equitable Life (now AXA), where I worked on market research and long-term strategy — a dream role for someone who loved both numbers and ideas. Around that same time, the Society of Actuaries began to open its leadership to younger members, and I was invited to help shape programs that would make the profession more forward-looking. I eventually served on the Board and later became an officer — one of the first women to do so.
Threads That Continue
Even now, as I sort through letters from my cousin Nancy Dosick, photographs from Germany, and links to archives spanning São Paulo to Chicago, I see the same pattern: generations of people helping one another, building bridges, keeping records, and keeping faith.
It’s not just history, it’s continuity.
My parents’ story was about survival and reinvention. Mine, I suppose, has been about connection, finding ways to bring those stories together so they’re not forgotten. Whether it becomes a book, a digital archive, or simply a set of links and notes passed to the next generation, I want it to show how one family — ordinary and extraordinary at once carried its roots across an ocean and made something enduring from what could have been lost.