ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Franz Alexander’s personal and professional life, the role of family in his decisions, and how those decisions affected other family members. Just as Alexander did not know America would eventually become his home after his disastrous first year in Chicago, neither did he know that, while spending many summers in La Jolla, California would be his final home. Alexander started to travel west to California even before his wife bought two adjoining plots of land in La Jolla in the early 1930s. The Alexanders came to La Jolla every summer through the mid-1930s and into the 1950s, like so many others who called La Jolla their summer home. Mrs. Alexander became part of the artist colony and began to experiment in oil pastels. Alexander’s granddaughter’s sterling silver baby cup came from Mexico and she was often seen enjoying a special Mexican candy, piruli.
