Story Jonathan Stull

Photos Maren Fawkes

Video Marcella Lange's Depression-Era Story

Marcella May Lange remembers all too well when the American economy sputtered and died.

In the living room of her family’s East Los Angeles home, she listened as her father, Thomas Mercier, adjusted the antennae on the homemade radio. Her mother tended to a simmering pot of soup on the kitchen stove. Upon hearing knocks of hungry men on the back door, she called out to her daughter, “Marcella, you’ve got a customer." As they waited, the new voice of a generation broke through the radio static.

Lange was only 12 years old when Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his inaugural address announcing the New Deal in 1933. She was even younger when the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday in October 1929. During the Great Depression, she lived in a stable home, her father kept his job, and she continued her schooling. Her family not only survived the worst economic disaster in American history, they found ways to succeed. No, Lange’s life is not a horror story or cautionary tale. She remembers the chaos, fear, and doubt — though little of it was hers. She remembers the stoicism and determination that followed — though it belonged more to her parents. She was too young to grasp the financial burden of an unstable economy, and too insulated by her parents to suffer it. Yet, despite being little more than a spectator, Lange believes the lessons of her youth are of paramount importance to Americans today.

When Lange describes her father, her eyes become distant and her tone becomes reverent. Mercier’s mother died when he was just 2 years old. It wasn’t a man’s job to take care of children then, so his father placed him in a boarding school. Poor treatment and neglect motivated Mercier, a native of The Dalles, Oregon, to run away at the age of 11. He wandered along the Columbia River and down into the Willamette Valley, living off what he could find or steal and dodging men sent on horseback to return him home. After a year of running, Mercier was worn down, weak, and desperate for help. He took a chance and knocked on the door of a German couple’s home. It was an experience that would define the rest of his life, Lange says, and subsequently her own. They took him in, fed him a bowl of soup, and allowed him to work in exchange for shelter. Mercier wouldn’t leave for the next seven years.

After the Depression struck in 1929, Mercier looked for any opportunity to pass on the favor. Driven by the indebtedness her father felt toward his German caretakers, Lange says “Mercier” became a household name throughout her tight-knit community. He fought to protect the jobs of the men he supervised at Southern Pacific Railroad, and none of his employees lost theirs. He drove to El Monte, California, to pick up extra produce that farmers couldn’t sell, which the family separated into bags and gave to the hungry. He also converted his home into a soup kitchen.

As the crisis worsened in the early thirties, unemployed men poured into Southern California looking for work, which, Lange laments, didn’t exist. When more and more hungry men began appearing at their back door, Mercier gave his daughter the responsibility of delivering soup. “He thought it would be good training for me,” she explains. “We felt very, very badly and very sadly, because we knew that when people jumped out of windows, it’s because they feel they’ve lost everything.”

Mercier also revealed to his children one major effect of the Depression. On a Sunday, with what little gas remained in their car, he drove the family to San Bernardino, California. There, a city park had transformed into a Hooverville, with improvised tents, sleeping bags, and the bare minimum of living conditions. “It was pretty rough,” Lange describes. “It seemed like the children were running loose, and it kind of bothered me because I was taking care of my brother. It didn’t look like they could be eating right or anything.”

As Lange grew older, she realized how blessed she was the more she discussed the Depression with others. Her father’s example and lessons have been helpful all her life, and her involvement in her own community mirrors the contribution her father made. She is engaging and generous, eloquent and sincere. She believes that a strong sense of connection to others isn’t taught today. Reflecting on the resiliency and resourcefulness of her father, she emphasizes themes like togetherness, respect, solidarity, cooperation, and goodwill. All are themes she fears could be absent as the United States copes with its current economic crisis. Attitudes are different. The world is bigger. Americans have, and want, more than ever.

While the unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent in the United States in 2009, it’s still only a fraction of what it was eighty years before. Government intervention has been quicker and more informed, as well. The current crisis may not amount to the horrors of the decade after 1929, but the first ten years of the new millennium have forced Americans such as Lange to reflect on how far they’ve come — and realize how much they’ve forgotten in the process.

It’s been a long time since Lange’s family gathered around that homemade radio in March of 1933, but Roosevelt’s first inaugural address is just as relevant today.

“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization,” Roosevelt said. “We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and our fellow men.”

Lange fears things will get worse before they get better. She fears for her two daughters and many more grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She worries that Americans had too much to begin with. If things get worse, her experience indicates the only option will be to share as she did — something she feels will be difficult for some. To survive, Lange knows Americans must stick together.