Dick Holt is both a Panamanian and U.S. citizen, born in the Republic of Panama to a Panamanian mother and a U.S. father. Both families have a long history in the Western Hemisphere. My Panamanian roots were among the first families to arrive in Panama in the early 1500's from Spain, and my U.S. family also were among the first arrivals in Virginia from England in the early 1600's.
I am a U.S. citizen by right of my father being an American. He got me a birth certificate from Panama and a proof of birth letter with the declaration of U.S. citizenship from the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, Panama. Later on in life this was going to cause me some problem when I was given a very high security clearance while in the U.S Army and later, working as a Civil Servant for the Navy. But it was straightened out and I was given those clearances without any further problems.
I also have a Cedula, which is a little card that proves that you are a citizen of Panama and gives you the full rights and privileges of a Panamanian citizen.
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| Santo Tomas Hospital on the beachfront in Panama City. I got this beautiful photograph from Sharon Glassburn, a Canal Zonian and a great photographer |
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Life started for me right here, at Santo Tomas Hospital situated on the waterfront in Panama Bay. My mom had an appointment with Dr. Prieto, the best of the best of baby doctors in Panama long before my birthdate, with an appointment made for her by my grandmother who was in Panama City while my mom (and I in the womb) were in San Diego. When we arrived in Balboa on January 19, 1935, I was ready for my entry into the world. A fast drive from the dock in Balboa harbor to Santo Tomas, and behold, I arrived late that morning of January 19. Just made it! But it all turned out well.
We lived on the outskirts of Panama City, in San Francisco de la Caleta, just outside the city limits. In those days there were no paved streets in that part of Panama City. In today's modern Panama City, San Francisco is a modern city with high rise buildings, great restaurants, shopping centers, the home of the Atlapa Convention Center, and also the home of the notorious Manual Noriega.
I grew up with Panamanian kids and in our home, we only spoke Spanish. There was no need to ever speak English. My grandmother never did learn any English, and all my relatives also did not speak much English. My dad was fluent in Spanish as was my grandfather who lived in the house next door. He had built two houses next to each other right on the waterfront. I grew up with my bedroom window looking down at the breaking surf below me. What a great sound that was for me with only a screen over the window opening separating me from the ocean.
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| My first home - San Francisco de la Caleta on the ocean just to the East of downtown Panama City and a few miles from the entrance to the Panama Canal which on this map is just to the left of the yellow area which is Panama City. The three small island are the entrance to the Canal and the Canal is seen as a line running up to the lakes at the top of the photo which is Gatun Lake |
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At the time I was born, my family were staunch Catholics. So, I was baptized as a baby in this beautiful cathedral, the main cathedral at that time, in the old section of Panama City. Somewhere in my pile of boxes in a storage shed I still have the old films made by my dad as I was being baptized in February 1935. I was being held by my Godfather, Carlos de Seda. They lived right across the road from us in San Francisco de la Caleta and were wealthy people, very influential in the Panamanian politics at the time, and good friends of my grandfather, Ed Galliher.
This cathedral was built in the late 1600's after the original cathedral was burned down by the pirate, Henry Morgan also in the late 1600's. The remains of that cathedral still stand in what is now called Panama Viejo or Old Panama located in the current suburbs of Panama City. That photo is shown below.
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| Main Cathedral in "Old Panama" or Casco Viejo as it is now called. A friend from Panama, Allan Hawkins took this photo and sent it to me to use on my web site. Thank you Allan. |
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| Another view of the Cathedral taken by Allan Hawkins. |
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| Original cathedral destroyed by Henry Morgan the pirate in 1671 |
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| Part of Panama Viejo that Henry Morgan destroyed |
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| Life in the Panama Canal Zone |
When I reached the age five and right at the beginning of the war with Germany, the Panama Canal administration made my dad take quarters in the Panama Canal Zone to be closer to his job as a tugboat Captain, and we were assigned a beautiful home in Gatun overlooking the Gatun Locks. We still kept our home in San Francisco de la Caleta and used it on weekends and whenever my mom wanted to go home to see her parents. I attended first grade in Gatun and didn't know much English at the time.
There is a web site on the Internet owned by Matt Armistead that is appropriately titled Paradise Lost ( http://lostparadise.com. ) who's title refers to the fact that the Utopia that had been the Panama Canal Zone is GONE. On December 31, 1999, the United States gave back to Panama the 10 mile wide strip of land where they had built the Panama Canal, the Canal Zone. Lost with the Canal was the life style for Americans working on the Panama Canal that could not be matched anywhere in the world. It was truly a Paradise!
I have included some photos of the Panama Canal Zone in this section, but to really get a great view of hundreds of photos, you ought to go to my friend's web site, Dino Barkema's site at www.chagres.com. There you will get to view all the cities and towns in both Panama and the Panama Canal Zone. Enjoy!
In this section I will cover just a tiny bit of what life was like, some of the housing that was provided in the Canal Zone, the safety of living in the middle of a beautiful country and the wonderful support that the United States Government provided for its unique people that were willing to "sacrifice being gone from the U.S." and willing to work in that hot, disease ridden environment called the Panama Canal.
In reality, I can't think of a better place to have grown up in. Sure, there were some things that made life different, living in the tropics. But overall, life here was fantastic. We lived among the cockaroaches, scorpions, mosquitoes, and leaf cutter ants that destroyed any plants around the houses, and so many other bugs that I can't begin to remember them all. We had heaters built into the closets to keep the clothes and shoes from becoming covered with mildew. And we never put on a pair of shoes without first banging the heels on the floor - this to make sure no scorpions had crawled into the shoes and were hiding in the toes, ready to bite you.
But other than those few disturbances, we had a great life. The houses weren't luxurious, but very livable. And when I was in my youth, we didn't have air conditioning in our houses or cars as we do now in today's world. It was HOT, but we survived. In fact there were no windows in the houses, only screens since there was no need to close up the houses without air conditioning. The sounds of the jungle living in a town such as Gamboa and having nothing but a screen between you and the animals of the jungle were fantastic. The problem that not having windows created was rain blowing right into the houses during the heavy and sometimes stormy rain periods we have in Panama. You had to be innovative to keep the rain out. In today's world, people wonder how we did it. We children loved it; not so sure the adults thought it was all that great!!
I have lots of great photos of houses, recreation facilities, churches, banks, clubhouses, etc. as well as the Canal itself, and more on what life was really like in the Canal Zone. Because of space limitations in this web site, I have only included a very small representation of all those photos. You will enjoy it.
I love going through the Canal on the cruise ships for it brings all the memories back again. And I love being asked to do the narration for the transits. It frees me to express my feelings for the place and to remember all the many things that went on in our lives in this great place. Cruise ship passengers do not get to see this side of a cruise through the Canal. There is no way they can imagine what it was like to live in the Canal Zone. |
| The Panama Canal Zone under the United States |
After the completion of the Panama Canal in 1915, eight towns were developed that housed the white skilled employees of the Panama Canal. These were the days long before racial integration. The black employees were in three towns. The Canal Zone was a 10 mile strip of land, five miles on each side of the Panama Canal route and all controlled by the U.S. as if it were their property.
Each town had its own schools through elementary school level and their own recreation and shopping facilities. There were two high schools, one in Balboa on the Pacific side and one in Cristobal, the Atlantic end of the Canal, and the middle schools were also located in those two towns. When students in any of the towns got to that level, they were transported either by bus or by the Panama Railroad to Balboa or Cristobal.
Employees were classified as either "Gold Roll" or "Silver Roll" signifying either white skilled or black unskilled employees, and each group had their own support facilities that were kept totally separate. This system was in use all the way through the 1960's until segregation was stopped in the US and subsequently in the Panama Canal Zone as well.
Rent on the houses was very cheap and utilities were provided at no cost. All the outside and inside maintenance of the houses was taken care of by the government. An employee could even ask for furniture to fill his home as he required at no cost. Every two years, an employee on the Gold Roll was eligible for vacation to the US on the Panama Railroad ships at little cost and he could bring back a new car on the ship every time that trip was taken.
It was a utopian life living in the Canal Zone, and appropriately called "Paradise".
Churches were also part of the communities, their facilities funded by the particular denomination. In the case of the Catholic denomination, they also maintained elementary schools on both the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the Canal. Clubs such as the Rotary, Lions and others also had their own buildings, paid for by that particular group. The Postal System had a Post Office in each town and the system was under the US Postal Service.
Many Canal Zone employees did shopping for fresh vegetables in Panama because the vegetables that came via refrigeration on the Panama Canal ships was often not of good quality by the time it reached the commissaries. Meats were from the US as were all the normal canned goods. Fresh bread was baked right on the Canal Zone by US government bakeries, but many people went into Panama to buy their breads which were excellent.
The two ships below, the Cristobal and the Ancon, were two of the three "cruise ships" that the US Government ran to take care of our needs in the Canal Zone. They were our transportation to and from the US for vacations. The other ship was called the Panama. Not luxury, but very nice. I made a lot of trips on these ships from Cristobal to New York or New Orleans. During WWII these ships stopped serving the Canal Zone and were incorporated into the fleet of merchant ships supporting troop and supply movements all over the world. Supply of the Panama Canal Zone became a problem and was carried out through the U.S. Military Supply System.
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| The town of Gamboa which is at mid-isthmus on the Panama Canal. It has been the home of the Dredging Division which is reponsible for the operation and maintenance of the Panama Canal since its inception. The shops, storage and maintenance facilities for the Division are located on the Canal waterfront. The large grassy area in the forefront of the photo is the area for sports fields. To the left and next to another grassy area is the elementary school where I attended 2-6 grades. Notice how close it is located to the Canal allowing the kids to spend many hours viewing ships passing through the Canal. During the second World War, we got to see the whole flotilla of war ships as they passed through the Canal en route to the war zones. Now, cruise ship passengers get to see Gamboa from the water as they pass by. I point out my grammar school to them as we make the transit. |
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Gatun
In early 1941 German U-boats stirred up some fears on the Atlantic Side of the Panama Canal by surfacing at night outside the breakwater and mine field and lobbing shells from their deck gun into the city of Cristobal. They did almost no damage, not hitting anything of value. But the mere fact that they did this caused Panama Canal management to panic and order that all their key people be moved from Cristobal and Gatun to the middle of the Isthmus where the guns could not reach them.
We were living in Gatun at the time in a very lovely two family home, two stories tall, overlooking the Gatun Locks. We had one of the best locations to live on the Panama Canal. We all loved it. I can still clearly remember those days when we would sit on our front porch and watch all kinds of ships going through the locks right below our house. What a view we had! And that house is still there. I see it every time we make a transit of the Canal. My dad was one of those "key people" that they could not afford to lose. Dad was working as a Captain on the big sea-going tugs at the time. The German U-boats were miles away from where we lived, but management thought they would try to reach the Gatun Locks with their guns. Impossible with the size guns that were on the submarines at that time, but that didn't matter. We were moved within days after the shelling to a new town, Gamboa. This brought about an emergency building program in Gamboa. There were not enough quarters in Gamboa to take the unexpected influx of new residents. A new housing development was built, cut out of raw jungle a short distance out of the main part of the town and called "The Ridge".
Gamboa:
This town was built especially to house the workers and their families of the Dredging Division. It was hacked right out of the jungle in the late 1920's. Because of this, it was right in the middle of the animal population of that area, and it wasn't unusual to see all kinds of wild animals wandering around the town even during the day.
Gamboa is located at the junction of where the Chagres River comes into the Panama Canal. The junction is just to the left in the photo of the town and out of sight in this photo image.
In the center of the photo you can make out the swimming pool for the community. Right next to this was an older home (which has since been torn down) built for an executive during construction days, luxurious for its times, where my dad was assigned to live after we had spent some months on The Ridge. We were right in the middle of the "shopping area" which consisted of the company commissary, the clubhouse, the Dispensary and Dental clinic, the pool, bowling alley, baseball and tennis areas, and of course the school which is on the left side of the photo.
The rest of the homes in Gamboa were built back away from the Canal which is in the background out of the photo. In this "company town" environment, everything was provided for the employees and their families. We paid for food in the commissary and for snacks and meals in the clubhouse, but the medical and dental and recreation were all free. We had US Army doctors, dentists, nurses for our medical care.
Now cruise ship passengers get to see this part of Gamboa as they cruise through the Canal. We were often let out of school to sit right on the bank of the Canal to view warships of the U.S. during the WWII days when I was attending Gamboa Grade School, grades 2-6, 1942-46. I suggest to the guests on the cruise ships that I am working aboard that they hold their right hand over their heart in respect to the memories that whole area, especially the school (which is clearly visible from the ships) that meant so much to me in my youth. My grade school is at the left edge of the grassy area to the left of the swimming pool. The grassy area was our playground for recess.
From Gamboa we also went aboard troop ships and warships of all kinds to entertain the troops on their way to war. We put on boxing matches on the fantails of the ships or in the hanger deck of aircraft carriers that really excited the soldiers and sailors. In the locks, a chamber opposite a troop ship would be overfilled, swim lane lines would be pulled across the lock chamber, and we kids would put on swim meets for the troops to watch. Then we would go across to the other chamber where ramps were put in place for us to board the ships, and we would transit with the troops until we reached the Port of Balboa where we would disembark.
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| Four-family house on the Ridge in Gamboa. I lived in this house, lower left apartment. That's my wife Cheryl standing in front, and my best friend of childhood days, Irwin Frank walking on the street where we used to play. The large open area under the houses was an invitation to the wild animals that had been displaced by this housing, and they frequently came to visit us, turn over our garbage cans, or just make a nuisance out of their visits, usually at night. |
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This photo is the actual house that we were moved to in Gamboa on "The Ridge", the lower left apartment, built in 1941 and still in use when I took this photo in 2002. In front of the house is my wife, Cheryl, and walking along the street, my best friend in the Canal Zone, Irwin Frank. My family occupied this home, the lower left apartment. On this day in 2002 we were allowed to go into the apartment and relive the times 61 years before when we moved into this brand new building. This house is now a part of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort built right on the edge of the Chagres River and rents out like any other room at the resort.
The wild animals that were displaced by the row of houses along The Ridge were not too happy with having lost their land. They especially became bothersome to the new residents at night when they would come right under the house and attack anything in sight. Garbage cans were their favorite targets. We kids would sit in the enclosed (by screen only) stairwell leading up to the apartments and hiss at the big "cats" that were into our garbage. These were fairly large panthers, jaguars and other members of the cat family in the jungle who were now trained to enjoy man-made garbage as their food source. They would ignore us and once in a while hiss back at us to remind us not to bother them.
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| Houses and other facilities in Gatun, Gamboa and Balboa |
| Many of the following photos are thumbnails. Click on them to see an expanded view of the photos. |
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| Typical duplex in Gatun. This is a duplicate of the house we lived in overlooking the Gatun Locks. These houses were super. A single thickness wood wall separated the two families, and from one side you could hear everything that was going on on the other side. For kids it was fantastic. We had close neighbors right in the same house. Under the house were maid's quarters and laundry facilities as well as parking. |
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| Gatun street with duplex houses. No windows in these days, only screens. We didn't have air conditioning. And when it rained hard with a lot of wind, it blew right into the houses. |
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| The Ridge in Gamboa, the new development cut right out of the jungle for employees being transferred from Gatun and Cristobal in 1941. |
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| The Ridge house before renovation was begun. We took this photo in 2002 as renovation was underway to turn these old homes into resident rooms for the Gamboa Rainforest Resort, a privately owned development. |
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| Gamboa Elementary School |
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| My family home in Balboa Heights. A single family home called a "cottage" and which was held for those employees with high level positions with lots of longevity. My dad had both. |
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| Tivoli Hotel in Ancon, next door to Balboa |
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| General view of downtown Balboa |
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| The town of Balboa - beautiful setting, beautiful houses |
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| Panama Canal Administration Building - first of the government buildings built in 1915 and located in Balboa - note the City of Panama in the background |
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| The Prado in 1916 with the Admin Building in the background - an old photo with the cars of the day and the giant palm trees just beginning their life - they are still there |
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| A four-family concrete house on the Prado built in 1914. These quarters were built under the management of my grandfather, Edward L. Galliher who was the Chief of the Building Division. In 2006 these houses are still there and in great shape |
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| Gamboa Pool |
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| Town of Diablo house that I lived in |
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| St. Mary's Church in Balboa |
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| St. Luke's Church in Balboa |
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| Diablo Clubhouse |
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| Balboa swim pool with my wife Cheryl on the side |
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| Clubhouse at Diablo with the Dispensary next to it |
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| Gorgas Hospital built in the 1915 era with the new addition in the forefront |
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| Balboa Elementary School where I attended sixth grade - located just at the bottom of the hill from the Administration Building |
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| The Cristobal in Culebra Cut - these were "our ships" for the Panama Canal employees. They carried about 250 passengers, autos, and a lot of supplies to keep the Canal and its people fed and supplied |
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| The SS Ancon in its WWII paint job. We had three ships, all of which were used to provide transportatin to and from the US as well as our foodstuffs for the commissaries |
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