This Estonian Life: My Grandmother’s Immigrant Journey

“I didn’t know a word of English, and everything was so fascinating,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

I always wanted to know my grandmother’s story. I sometimes heard her retell a quick memory or two, but I knew there was only one way to get it all on paper — I had to sit down with her for an interview.

So without further ado, I present to you a story. A story of an Estonian immigrant family fleeing Russian violence, and a baby girl born under the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.

Lully Dunbar. If you asked her about her childhood, her answers would immediately pull you into an intriguing conversation.

Lully’s mother, nine months pregnant, traveled with her 5-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son from Estonia to New York City. She was fleeing Russian military violence. It was survival.

Russia had begun moving troops onto Estonian soil, and Lully’s mother was on one of the last boats to leave before the Russians took full control of the country.

Lully’s father Michael Seeberg had already traveled to the United States in an attempt to procure visas for his family. The quotas for immigrants allowed into the United States were filled alarmingly close after the departure of his pregnant wife.

“There was a lot of fighting, and people wanted to leave before the quotas were filled for the United States,” Lully explained.

Just a few days after reaching New York City, Lully was born. Due to the immigration laws at the time, if an immigrant family had a child born in the United States, they began the process of becoming a U.S. citizen immediately.

Despite, this good fortune, the transition to the “land of opportunity” was not easy, with few good opportunities because of the family’s language barrier.

Lully’s father was an accomplished chemist in Estonia, but when he moved to the United States, he had to pick up work with his brother as a painter in Long Island.

Instead of being a leader in his community, he was now purchasing paint thinner with the little earnings he had left over. He was keeping his family alive instead of giving lectures. None of the family knew much English.

“I honestly don’t know how I learned English,” said Lully. “We spoke Estonian at home. Gradually I just began speaking English from talking to my sister who picked it up in high school in New York City.”

Lully wanted to speak English well. She spent countless hours by the radio, trying to pick up on English phrases.

“I would rush home from school to listen to The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and ‘Let’s Pretend Fairy Tales’ on Saturday morning, which I enjoyed immensely,” she recalls.

When she was 5 years old, Lully’s father passed away from diabetes, leaving a family of four behind. The language barrier became less severe, and the family started to fall into the rhythm of American life.

Lully’s mother worked as a cook and housekeeper for a Russian concert pianist, and Lully began piano lessons, along with her siblings. Music and a steady job helped the family integrate into the community even faster than they expected.

Lully had high hopes for the future. She lived in New York City for the first six years of her life, and she never forgot the memories she had of the city.

She still remembers walking through the zoo in Central Park as a child, completely content with her surroundings, excited by all the fresh sights she saw. In the early 1930’s, animals were kept in rickety iron cages leaning against rock walls along the southern end of Central Park. Lully still remembers it like it was yesterday.

“It was incredible,” she exclaimed. “I loved the architecture and the structure of the zoo very much back then. It was quite unforgettable.”

She loved the city. Due to her father’s death, however, Lully was moved to her Uncle Oscar’s farm in the countryside of New Jersey where she began grammar school.

Lully still had a minimal understanding of the English language, but she attended a one room school house in New Jersey. She spent most of her time acclimating to the countryside, much different than the busy city where she was born.

“It was a very idyllic thing once I got used to being there in the country,” said Lully. “I remember traveling in the backseat of an old automobile sitting next to freshly picked lilac bushes. The scent was heavenly. I used to chase geese and ducks around the green pastures, but it was the turkeys that chased me. It was all very new to me. It was very thrilling.”

After mastering some English, Lully’s mother had her return to New York City, where she finished grade school and began her high school years.

During this time, Lully found love. And she found it in the way many only dream of — love at first sight.

She recalled the first time she met her future husband in New York.

“I was walking my Uncle’s Jack Russell in the park, and one of the people in that group was a friend of mine,” explained Lully, “She saw me, and she introduced me to her friends. Richard Dunbar was one of them. We played this game ‘salugee’ where two teams try to get the ball.”

“At one point I was catching the ball, and I fell in love with him then and there,” Lully said with a smile. “And I never thought about anyone else after that. It was awesome. It was incredible.”

Graduating at seventeen, Lully seemed to have the odds stacked against her looking for a job, but she was determined to enter the working world. Dressing in her sister’s clothes to appear older, she attended an interview for The Royal Netherlands Steamship Company in lower Manhattan. She was accepted for a temporary secretarial position.

“I dressed as old as I could for the interview, since I was technically not old enough to fit the description,” she laughs. “When I showed up to work the next Monday, the manager had realized how young I was, but he said I could stay on as long as I did well on the job.”

Lully worked for The Royal Netherlands Steamship Company for a couple years, enjoying every minute. But she had bigger ambitions.

Lully aimed for her dream company, 20th Century Fox. And she got it.

20th Century Fox hired Lully to work in their Print Department. Despite loving the idea of the job, she did not enjoy her first couple years at the company.

“It was so bad,” she remembers. “I got a headache every night. The New York 20th Century Fox office was like a business company. It had nothing to do with the acting done in California. The prints came in from California, and all the executives would watch it and decide what countries in Europe, South America and Africa this film would be good for.”

Lully continued to work diligently, trying to catch a break in a very competitive industry. Finally, she was signed onto a different department, finding herself working for the president of the company. Dunbar continued working for 20th Century Fox, but then Richard Dunbar returned from fighting in World War II, and she married him. She then settled down with a family of three daughters, one daughter of which married into the Sandford family in 1986. Richard went on to work as an executive at Bryant Press.

The family stayed in the New York/Connecticut area, raising a family, through good times and bad, frustration and contentment. But they never received awards or medals for their most phenomenal accomplishment — building a life from nothing.

Lully Dunbar was a newborn in an immigrant family when she began her time in the United States, but she overcame the language barrier, and she never stopped laughing.

She never stopped taking note of the beautiful animals behind the iron bars of the zoo.

Lully has three daughters and eight grandchildren. She now has the chance to leave the working world and witness her grandchildren grow up with something because she dared to dream.