Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women
From her apartment on the 20th floor of a high rise building in Manhattan she has a view beyond the roofs and water towers of the Upper East Side. Summer flowers are in bloom in pots on her small terrace. From somewhere a gentle bell is chiming in the wind and finches are pecking at sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder.
She leans over the railing where a small American flag is fluttering: “I have no fear of heights. I probably inherited that from my father.” Back inside at the card table, she lays out a book of the Ammann family of Schaffhausen as well as a scrapbook of her father. The Seth Thomas clock is chiming every fifteen minutes.
“My father built long span suspension bridges here in America. In a symbolic sense I have built a bridge for myself between America and my Swiss heritage through frequent visits to Switzerland, as well as working there for a year – and my association here with Swiss activities and organizations such as the Swiss American Historical Society.”
It was only in recent years that Margot got to know details about the private life of her parents. “Mostly I learned these from the 485 letters that my father had sent from New York to Switzerland at the beginning of the last century to his parents and to my mother. My grandmother had saved these letters, often six to eight pages long, carefully bound in red ribbons in bundles according to year. After her death, these precious bundles traveled back over the ocean, returning to my father. His letters to my mother before they were married were saved in a lovely painted wooden box.” Margot adds: “It gave me great comfort to read the private thoughts and hopes of my father and also the expressions of love for his parents and my mother. From these valuable writings I also learned of the happiness he and my mother found in their lifetime in America. Letters are like valuable footprints of a person.”