The oldest child of Felix Anderson is Cameron Anderson, born in 1935, right at the time of the Great Depression. He’s the only one of the four who I’ve never met because he died long before I was born. From what Malcolm told me, he spent most of his childhood hanging out with friends on the streets of urban Los Angeles. They were sort of like the “Cool kids”. They didn’t care much about school and from what I was told, were bullying just about anyone they could. Cameron dropped out of his class when he was twelve along with many of his friends, and began to drink and smoke.
When he was even older, he started a whole gang which included himself and a bunch of random people from his friend group. Malcolm said that Cameron was angry after several punishments for bad grades. One particular punishment ended up banning Cameron from smoking, which angered him greatly. Malcolm said he ran away in the middle of the night. He’d gone to sleep in his bedroom and Malcolm thought he’d see him waking up next morning, like usual. But Cameron was nowhere to be found that day, and Malcolm would never see his older brother again. Felix did want Cameron to come back, and he was so desperate he attempted to bribe a few local officials into helping him find Cameron, but it didn’t work. Despite everything, everyone in the family did care for Cameron and now he was gone. Years of helping, investing, had turned to nothing. From what Malcolm told me, Cameron actually ended up joining a gang a few years later, participating in all sorts of illegal activities to survive.
When Malcolm told me about Cameron, I exploded out of shock. I had a criminal in the family? A gang member? And not only that— a close relative was a gang member? How had I not known this sooner?!
So Cameron was now on his own, living on the streets. I wasn’t able to find out much about his gang life from Malcolm, because he never saw Cameron again after that. But I was able to learn a little about Cameron’s life afterward because I was able to get a hold of his younger gang friend. Even though he was just an old man, I was really terrified the whole time— it had taken weeks of convincing to get an interview, and he seemed pretty aggressive. He said that Cameron worked to make money for the gang through various means, mainly by selling drugs and jumping people. Some of his fellow gang members even say he helped smuggle illegal items across the Mexican Border (Their gang had a presence in a few neighborhoods in Mexico). He owned a knife and a rifle which he used to kill people on numerous occasions, getting into many shootouts with the cops. In 1962, Cameron and a few friends got into a shootout with the police on the road because one of Cameron’s friends had slit a hostage’s throat open. Cameron died during that shootout.
The second child was Barbara Anderson. She is the only one out of the four who is still alive in 2023. From what I learned, she was kind of a nerd. Most of her time was spent learning about something— whether that was math, history, or science. She read a lot in her childhood and I think that reading fascination has stayed with her throughout her whole life, because every few weeks when she babysat me and Jason and Ava, she was usually telling us to read or making us do some boring math problems. She worked as a lawyer for most of her life and retired a few years ago. Even though she’s a nerd, she’s also really cool. Like Malcolm, she gave us a lot of fun candies to eat when she visited our house. She doesn’t come often because she moved to San Diego for her husband’s work a few years back, and she’s stayed there ever since. She also was fairly athletic. Even now, in her 80s, she’s still active and tries to get us to join in on her exercising. It’s not too rigorous, so usually I’m not mad about joining in. It just takes a lot of time.
She’s also the most traveled out of the four of them, which I think is very interesting because she’s seen so much of the world. During the summer between my 6th and 7th-grade year, I asked her to come to an interview to talk about her travels after I realized she had done by far the most traveling out of all the four siblings. She’s been to every continent except for Oceania (I’ve heard from mom and dad she’s going to Australia with some of her kids this summer) and I’ve seen her take pictures in many places. There’s the White House in Washington DC, the Christ the Redeemer Statue in Brazil, the Eiffel Tower in France, and there’s one of her making a funny face with her kids when she took them on a road trip to San Francisco in the 80s. I made a copy of that so I could look at it and laugh from time to time because I thought it was hilarious. It’s really interesting to hear her stories about her travels because I really enjoy learning about cultures, history, and the world as a whole.
Jack Anderson is the lower middle child. Born in 1939, I talked to him and this might sound rude; he admits it himself… he was more of an introvert. He had a lot of trouble in his social life from a young age, he says, and had no friends in his kindergarten days. He spent most of his time in class doing his activity in the shadows, making him a prime target for bullies.
At lunch, he would simply order whatever cafeteria food was available (from the menu he described to me, the cafeteria was even worse than the made burgers that we have at lunch at my school. Be grateful for your food, kids) and just sit in the corners. He was sort of a nerd like his older sister but to a lesser extent. I did some sneaking around (Please don’t tell them this) and got a hold of their report cards from when Jack was in 6th grade and Barbara was in 8th. (It was in Malcolm’s house and I stole it)
Grading Scale (Best to worst)
A, B, C, D, F
Barbara Anderson, 1950-1951 Academic Year Report Cards
8th Grade
Per 1 English – A
Per 2 Math – A
Per 3 Art – A
Per 4 Science – A
Per 5 History – A
Per 6 PE – A
Per 7 Music – A
Jack Anderson, 1950-1951 Academic Year Report Cards
8th Grade
Per 1 Math – A
Per 2 PE – A
Per 3 History – B
Per 4 Music – B
Per 5 Science – B
Per 6 Art – A
Per 7 English – C
So you can tell here that Barbara did much better in her academic life than Jack did although both were incredibly studious. I think Barbara simply could digest things easier than Jack. Both of them took IQ tests pretty recently and Barbara got a 150 while Jack only got a 110. But this doesn’t mean that Jack was an idiot. His IQ is already at the top 25% and Barbara admitted to me that he was even better than her when it came to math. Barbara did have some struggles in math and Jack Anderson was often helping her instead of Felix (Felix’s IQ was estimated by Barbara to be around 80).
As Jack got older, he became a bit more confident. He did get the courage to talk to people once he entered his high school years. He did talk to the right people because Barbara (Who was also still in high school at the time and watched over him) claimed they were very supportive when he got bullied. Barbara ended up majoring in Political Science and Jack majored in Applied Mathematics. Both of them got their degrees. Jack would go on to live a fairly good life as a mathematician. He died of a heart attack when I was just two months old.
All three of these siblings have very diverse stories. However, we still need to include one out of the four. Reason being? He’s my grandpa. My direct grandpa. His child was my father, and that’s why I missed him because he does deserve his chapter in this story. You all know him if you’ve read everything up to this point: He’s the man, the myth, the legend, Malcolm Anderson.