A Dream Come True
My Very Good Life
by
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In Italy, prayers were part of our school day, too. The family was regaled at Christmas by our recitation of the poems about Baby Jesus that we had dutifully memorized at school. Between radio broadcasts about the terrible events in Germany, the family that had gathered to hear the news would indulge us with applause as we proudly recited the Christian poems taught in our public school.
Someone must have realized the irony of our reciting Christian prayers when we had left Germany because we were a Jewish family. So Hanukah lights were introduced at some point. Yet the memories of the Jesus prayers are much clearer today than those of the Hanukah ceremony. After all, we were a family to whom such religious observance did not come naturally.
…Occasionally, we would be allowed to attend Saturday matinees at the movie theatre on Broad Street. The theatre on College Avenue showed the first-run movies, but the Broad Street house catered to children and showed cartoons on Saturdays. A memorable part of these Saturday expeditions was the walk down Broad Street to the theatre. Black adults and children sat on the curbs and lingered before storefronts of businesses that catered primarily to them. As whites traversed, the blacks would step aside and make room, even for children. Apparently this was natural, as none of our acquaintances commented on the situation. Yet as a European transplant, I was vaguely aware of something disturbing.…
…So, as I near the end of my first term as the first mayor of Sandy Springs and look forward to a campaign for another four years, it is clear that forming the new city of Sandy Springs was a great idea, and our community is better off than it was.
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About the Book
This account covers so many sites—a railway station in Berlin, Germany in 1933, a penthouse overlooking the mountains that surround Genoa, Italy, the World War II experience of picking cotton while an Athens, GA, high school student, to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Chicago and eventually to the newly formed city of Sandy Springs, GA, which she created and leads as Mayor.
The major issues of life in America for the past 60 years are addressed through the life of an unusual lady with humor as well as mature perception. The struggle between labor and management, the women’s movement (we’ve got to get out into the world), the racial conflicts that engulfed the nation and especially the South, and the conflict between central cities and their suburbs, and finally the sometimes ridiculous aspects of politics all come alive as Eva narrates the twists and turns of her unusual life.
About the Author
Eva Galambos’s life experiences touch so many aspects of the American experience! She escaped the Nazis in the 1930’s, and then grew up in a typical small Southern town. But then her path diverged from the ordinary. With a master’s in the strange discipline of “Labor and Industrial Relations” she entered the Atlanta labor market and embarked on a series of unusual jobs, while supporting her new husband in medical school. From riding a locomotive to analyzing the wages of porpoise trainers, each challenge led to new adventures, and to a life totally out of the ordinary.
The 1960s, while raising a family, find Eva heavily embroiled in the social and cultural waves that engulfed the nation. While participating with community leaders in an effort to revitalize her suburban area, suddenly the news came on the radio that Martin Luther King had been murdered.
The women’s movement finds Eva and her friends questioning their roles as wives and mothers as they were bombarded with ever growing challenges to enter the work force and compete with the men.
A PhD in Economics leads Eva into new endeavors and an ever growing role in the political arena. The explosion of the suburbs and the attempt by the central city (Atlanta) to annex her suburb of Sandy Springs catapulted Eva into a thirty year leadership to gain incorporation of her area. In a state where the General Assembly controls local matters, her fight to gain cityhood involved years of lobbying and exposure to the political currents of the times.
Today Eva Galambos serves as Mayor of the City of Sandy Springs (7th largest in the State) after reelection for a second term at 81 years of age. The city is a “poster child” for public/private partnership, with all the major services outsourced to and performed by a private firm.