THEY ONLY CHANGED HIS NAME is a fictionalized presentation of selected biographical events in the life of Bernard E. Baumbach (1892-1981). It begins with an imaginative characterization of the circumstances that provoked his then unmarried father to emigrate from Germany in 1883 with an older brother. They dreamed of becoming wealthy in the developing oil fields of Northwestern Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen years old, Bernard ventured to Central California with Earl, a double-cousin. They, too, had dreamed of becoming wealthy. For them, it was to be as employees of The Standard Oil Company of California. Their adjustments to their new circumstances were eased because of the help provided by Bernard's older brother, Albert, who had made that same trip two years earlier. The story chronicles his life as he matured into manhood which, at first, was a foreign country. He grew up in a richly religious German neighborhood on the outskirts of Oil City, PA. Central California was strange also because there were no wooded hills and rushing rivers. The desert-like weather was yet another contending factor and the culture of California that provoked individuality and independence was daunting. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps on May 22, 1918 and served as a corporal in the Shore Patrol in France for four month prior to the Armistice and for eight months following. Three months later, he married Cordulla Julia Charlotte Becker of Pasadena, CA. He continued with Standard Oil of California until his retirement while garnering an exemplary record for safety as a driller. The centerpiece of the story, however, is that of family: his family on 'Dutch Hill' in the Cornplanter Township in PA; Julia's family in Pasadena, CA; and Julia's and his family of five children in Anaheim, CA.
