legacy my father built, The

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2001 by Kennard-Madyun, Gail

Backstory

The house where I live started as my father's dream more than 40 years ago. My father, Robert Kennard, was a native of Los Angeles, started his career there as an architect in the 1950s and, like Many architects, dreamed of the home he would build for himself.

He had sketched out some design ideas, and in his spare time on weekends and early weekday mornings, he would gather my mother, brother, sister and the into our station wagon and comb the hills around Los Angeles looking for a site. He had two criteria: It had to be in the hills with a view of the city, and it had to be within his tight budget. After much searching he found a lot on a steep ridge in the Hollywood Hills that others had bypassed because it seemed impossible to build on - it was solid granite. But my father's idea was not to perch the structure off the side of the ridge, as was popular, but rather to slice a wedge out of the ridge and create a level plot on top. His concept was a simple design. He sketched a rectangle with most of the rooms - the living room, family room and four bedrooms - connected by a long corridor.

He now had a design and the land, but he needed money for construction. Taking a risk, he sold the two-bedroom house we lived in and moved the family into a smaller rental house. My first memory of "the house" was a rendering he made and placed in the living room of our cramped rental. "The dreamers are dreaming big," he would say. Through his contacts in the construction industry, he was able to get materials at a discount and negotiate for lower rates with carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters and others. To further cut costs, he designed many of the furnishings as built-ins: deep walnut and birch desks, cabinets, bookcases, bedroom bureaus and headboards.

Soon the roof was completed and, as a further cost-cutting measure, my father moved the family out of the rental house into a still-smaller motel room. We were ready to move soon. Then we received a warning of one of the dangers of hillside living - wildfire. We watched television reports of a brush fire that had started and was burning within a few yards of the house. Only through the heroic actions of city firefighters was our house spared. Some of our future neighbors were not as lucky.

As soon as school ended in June 1961, we moved into the house. But it would still take another year for the floors to be finished and another two years before the more than 40 trees and shrubs were planted.

While my father was building our house, he was also building an architectural practice during the height of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. I recall watching the television coverage of the marches in the South, the fire hoses and dogs turned on peaceful demonstrators. At the same time, the newspapers in Los Angeles were writing about my father's public battle to force the Board of Education to hire Negro architects to design new schools.

Our family's dinner conversation often centered on my father's battles, but it also touched on the political and social climate swirling on around us - civil rights, Black power, Vietnam, the women's movement. The house became a place for family friends of various races and political persuasions to gather.

Over the past 40 years, I have reflected on the ways the house has influenced my family. The house is the concrete embodiment of my father's legacy -- that a vision can turn circumstances around if you are willing to take risks, work hard and make sacrifices. Today, six years after my father's death, the house has been the one constant presence to which my siblings and I return. My brother, William E. Kennard, recently completed his term as the first African American chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. My sister, Lydia Kennard, serves as the general manager of the Los Angeles World Airports, the first of both her gender and race to hold the position. And I have continued the architectural practice that my father started and ran for 38 years until his death. It is the oldest continuously operated African American architecture firm in the West. And the house my father built is still filled with the dinnertime conversations of not only my mother and siblings, but also of grandchildren who have come to know the house. Our hope is that our home will provide a similar inspiration for their dreams.

Gall Kennard-Madyun, a former journalist, is the president of Kennard Design Group in Los Angeles.