["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published November 24, 2025] 2025
Last year at Thanksgiving, I wrote a column thanking my parents for all the things that I didn't even know to thank them for when they were alive. A year later and a new political era, the list has grown even longer.
I've covered in previous columns that I am a fourth-generation feminist and Democrat married to a life-long Republican, although Olof and I have both voted across party lines on many occasions. It's a dynamic that feels very familiar to me. My father was a conservative Republican and my mother a liberal feminist Democrat. It made for a lot of lively, but respectful, dinner table conversation at our house.
Conversations are pretty lively at our dinner table too but in the current era, for different reasons entirely. Olof and I have never been more politically aligned. My husband is still fervently hoping the Republican party will return to what he thinks of as its former glory. I, of course, think it never had one. We both feel failed by the parties we have supported our whole lives. But we are both committed to voting even on the occasions our votes cancel each other out. (Prop 50 was a recent example.)
Both of my parents were avid community volunteers. My father ran the United Fund campaign in our area and we referred to ourselves as United Fund orphans during the major fundraising season.
My mother's occupations, meanwhile, included teaching convicts at an area penitentiary, substitute teaching junior high (is there a parallel there?) and leading Brownies and Girl Scouts. But the one she was most passionate about was not only teaching ESL (English as a second language) but tutoring, on her own time, many of her students to pass the written driver s exam which in that era had to be taken in English. Given the lack of public transit in our area, a driver s license was essential to getting any kind of good job. Her efforts included teaching them to drive in our car. I think my mother could yell STOP! in eight languages.
Having immigrants regularly in our house meant that we kids got to learn about other cultures, and the challenges they faced surviving in a new land without knowing the language. It was one of the most valuable educations I've ever had. I've never known people who worked harder
It was largely from this immigrant influence that I was inspired to apply for a student exchange program to spend my senior year of high school in a foreign country which is, in fact, where I met my now-husband, Olof, who was a fellow student on the same program in Brazil.
As a total aside on the immigrant issue, I recently met a young woman who volunteered, in a conversation about illegal aliens being deported, that her ethnicity was White Mountain Apache. I had never heard of this tribe of some 12,000 native Americans mostly residing in a reservation in Arizona. Not surprisingly, her sardonic view was that the 342 million current Americans all fall into the illegal alien category.
I'm writing this column on November 11 - Veteran s Day - and realized that last year I failed to thank all the people in my family who have served in the military, including my current husband, Olof, who was an Air Force pilot for ten years. Even my first husband served two years as a Navy doctor under the Berry Plan (which was how we ended up in San Diego in the first place).
My father served in the Army Air Forces (now the Air Force) in World War II; my husband Olof s father as a Navy pilot in the Pacific an incredibly high-hazard assignment. Even my grandfather served in the US Army in World War I. All of these men were clear in their mission and put their lives on the line for it.
My father and Olof s were among sixteen million fellow Americans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Second World War, 407,000 of whom lost their lives in the process. It just seems that saying "thank you for your service", however well intended, doesn't begin to acknowledge the sacrifices that so many men and women have made to keep this country a democracy. I am especially grateful this year.
My parents, like everyone else, were flawed people making their share of mistakes. My mother, a smoker, died of lung cancer at 54. My father, like most of the neighbor men, could have done with fewer martinis. But there were three things I think my parents did extremely well.
Top among the things I am grateful to them for: they didn't hate. Whatever their prejudices might have been, we never heard them. They never referred to anyone by race or religion, and to this day, when I hear gratuitous (or even flat-out biased) references to people based on these factors, it immediately stands out to me in a very sad way.
Secondly, I consider one of the major gifts they gave their children was the concept that people could disagree, that over respectful - I can t emphasize the word enough - debate, ones view of the world could evolve and change. But you had to be willing to listen. And to vet your information to the best of your ability. And then: make your case.
And finally, one of the concepts my parents emphasized that seems especially important in current times involves the philosophy that what you accept, you teach. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who still talks to their dead relatives, but I can put myself at our dinner table and hear them, if they were still alive, soliciting our opinions on the current state of affairs, and asking us: is this what you want? And if not, speak up.
So on this Thanksgiving Day, thank you Mom and Dad, and all the family members who have served to protect this country. I so appreciate all of you.
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