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While the official papers of Othmar Ammann are kept in an archive at the library of the ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Margot has kept his personal papers. “These are always helpful for researchers and reporters to consult for details of his private life. I translated his letters into English as well as the Archive records of the Ammann family of Schaffhausen, going back to 1450. In my eighties, I finally learned, through the patient direction of a friend, the use of the computer’s word processor, which enabled me to bring these translations up to the state of the art.”

Margot noticeably enjoyed the review of her life. “I have not reminisced on my childhood and adolescent years for a long time. I thought I had forgotten everything! It is wonderful to review my life, scene for scene – as if on stage in a theatre.”

But first she turned the pages in her father’s album to the description of his first years in America. “In 1904, at the age of 21, father came here to gain experience from the vast engineering opportunities before marrying his childhood sweetheart, Lilly Wehrli and settling down to raise a family and practice his profession in Switzerland. He wrote romantic letters back to Switzerland, and soon he was writing, ‘I would like to stay longer in America. But we do not want to spend our youth separated. My dearest, I would like you to come to America.’ She answered, ‘I will follow you anywhere in the world, but I would like to marry here.’ The boat trips to Switzerland and return left only 4 days of his vacation to marry and bring his bride back to America. In the course of the years, new and challenging engineering opportunities kept on presenting themselves, and his planned one-year stay in the United States became a lifetime.”