Today’s headlines report that Roy Disney, Jr. died 16 December (yesterday) at 79 years old. Roy was the namesake of Roy Sr., and the nephew of the Walt Disney, founder of the Disneyland empire.

In early 2006, I got a phone call from Roy’s cousin, Diane Disney Miller (daughter of Walt), who wanted to know more about the homes her father (Walt Disney) and his brother Roy had built side-by-side on Lyric Avenue near the Disney studios in Silver Lake (Los Angeles area). The homes had been ordered in 1928 from Pacific Ready Cut Homes, a kit home company based in Los Angeles. (Read the full story here.)

The houses were true kit homes, ordered out of a mail-order catalog and shipped to the site via train or truck, and typically arriving in about 12,000 pieces. The kits came with a 75-page instruction book that told you how all those pieces and parts went together.

In 2004, I’d co-authored a book on Pacific Ready Cut Homes and due to a dearth of information on this early 20th Century company, that book made my co-author and I the new experts on this topic. And that’s how Ms. Miller came to call me.

So when I traveled to Los Angeles in June 2006, I had the opportunity to visit the Disney brothers’ kit homes on Lyric Avenue. As was frequently the case, these kit homes had been customized and upgraded when built. This was very common and about 50% of these kit homes were altered to meet individual needs.  In more recent years, the houses had been the victim of insensitive remodeling and many original features had been stripped away and/or destroyed. Nonetheless, it was fun to stand in the living room of the old bungalow that Walt Disney and wife Lillian had occupied and feel the remnants of the creative energy that had once permeated those plaster walls.

As I mentioned in a prior posts, writers are the original starving artists and most of us make only a very small income but the benefits are lovely. Were it not for my books on kit homes, I’d never have had the opportunity to find myself chatting on the phone with Walt’s daughter Diane, and standing in the living room of Walt and Roy Disney’s former homes.

Buy Rose’s book on Pacific Ready-cut Homes here.

Read full article from Los Angeles Times here.

An image from the 1925 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog

In Pasadena, this Pacific Ready-cut home looks much like it did when built in the early 1920s.

An image from the 1925 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog shows how many pieces and parts came with your mail-order house.

1919 Pacific Ready Cut Homes catalog

Image from the 1925 Pacific Ready-cut Homes catalog

The older I get, the more I yearn to know something of our family history. My timing for all this  has turned out to be rather poor. My mother and her siblings passed on years ago. My father is still around, but his long-term memory is not. We recently looked at an old picture album together and I remembered more than he did about relatives I’d never met. After I was born in 1959, I became extremely ill and required a three-week hospitalization. My elderly father had no memory of any of this.

After my Aunt Engie passed away a few years ago, I went through an old shoe box I found buried in her closet and found several photographs from the 1920s and 30s. Sadly, there was no information scribbled on the back of the black and white snapshots. Now I can only make educated guesses as to who these people were.

During the years my children were growing up, I faithfully maintained photo albums, replete with names and dates and places. These many years later, those photo albums are the source of much joy. My oldest daughter Crystal told me recently, “If the house catches fire, and you can only save one thing, save the photo albums first! Everything else can be replaced!”

But what to do with all these early 20th Century photos that I found stuffed in a shoe box? These were my ancestors - I think. These were people my mother and her sister loved - I think.

Back in the day, photographs required an investment of time, effort and money. Photos were reserved for important days and special events. Who were these people? And what were the stories? All I know is that these pictures were taken in Rockford, Illinois (early 20s) and then sometime in 1925 or 1926, my grandfather (Edward Brown) moved his children to Alameda, California.

I wish I knew more.

The only person I recognize in this photo is my late mother (center on bottom row).

This is a photo of my mother (youngest girl) with her sister (Engie) and older brother Harry.

This is probably a picture of my maternal grandmother with her first son, Harry. It was probably taken in early 1910s.

Mom (the younger girl) and Aunt Engie with unknown person, perhaps a nanny?

Unknown person at unknown house in unknown place (house is late 1910s or early 20s)

I believe this is my Uncle Harry with his father (my maternal grandfather).

The author of four books on kit homes and the country’s leading expert in this field, Rose Thornton has been featured in the national media dozens of times. But when she tried online dating, she learned that her professional success and personal accomplishments didn’t carry much weight.

After 70 first dates, Rose learned what too many men consider most important: Physical beauty.

Read her engrossing and deeply personal (and at times heart-wrenching) story that frankly and honestly discusses the challenges of being less-than-beautiful in a dating world that judges you first and foremost, by your thumbnail profile picture.

Rose Thornton is the author of six books, including The Houses That Sears Built (2002,) Finding the Houses That Sears Built (2004) and California’s Kit Homes. Her newest book (a field guide to kit homes sold by Montgomery Ward) will be published in Winter 2009.

Rose has traveled to 24 states to give 200 lectures on Sears Homes, from Bungalow Heaven in Los Angeles to The Smithsonian in Washington, DC. She has addressed a wide variety of audiences from architectural preservationists in Boston, St. Louis and Chicago to kit home enthusiasts in small towns across America.

Rose has appeared on PBS (History Detectives), A&E (Biography), CBS (Sunday Morning News) and her book was featured in its own category on Jeopardy. She is considered the country’s #1 authority on kit homes. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, L. A. Times, Dallas Morning News, Old House Journal, American Bungalow, Blue Ridge Country and about 100 other publications. Twice in the last three years, the story of her unique career was picked up by the AP and in May 2009, she was interviewed on BBC Radio.