Laying Down Roots

The newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Mossler, honeymooned aboard the Queen Elizabeth as it made its week long cruise across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Southampton. After the ship docked in the United Kingdom, the Mosslers journeyed along the English countryside and beyond, visiting many locations and sites in a wide area of Western Europe.

Jacques and Candace dined, they romanced, they shopped, they visited countless major tourist attractions and off-the-beaten path locations, they enjoyed deep conversations, and they planned and they plotted their future lives both personal and professional.

Jacques was absolutely smitten with his new wife. All accounts indicate he was hardly a showman, so to speak, so it is safe to say it wasn’t the case that Candace was considered by him as any sort of “trophy wife”. Sure, she was Jayne Mansfield-esque beautiful and two and a half decades younger than him, but he genuinely adored her wholly. Her beauty, no doubt, was nice (as was her youth and her energy), but he was truly intrigued by her natural intellect and her instinctual saviness.

Jacques saw well beneath Candace’s beautiful. Furthermore, and perhaps uniquely for the era, he appreciated her independence and her strong will, and he also doted on the vulnerability that lay under her tough exterior. She was smart, wise and witty… she was youthful and playful… and all the while, she had a little bit of a “little girl lost” persona that made his 29-year-old bride particularly lovable to a middle-aged man who had already experienced more than a lifetime of living in his 54 years on Earth.

So it was the case that Candace was not the only one energized by this union… Jacques now felt like a new man with a new power partner and with a whole new world and all new ways to embrace and look forward to.

As for Candace, she very much loved her husband. He was not physically attractive as was her previous blonde-haired, blue-eyed Norse husband, but what Jacques lacked in physical presence, he made up for in his ability to genuinely care for Candace the way she wished to be cared for. She knew Jacques was absolutely enamored by her, and she loved how he doted on her… She felt a sense of having someone on her side who would do anything for her. She needed that. Strong as she was, she had long craved a partner who would tend to her variety of needs. Yes, she wanted her partner to allow her ample space and independence, but she also wanted affection and attention and it can not be omitted that she wanted… even needed… someone who would nurture her desires for the finer things. Jacques Mossler fit all of Candace’s wishes. For a while, anyway.

After their honeymoon and once the Mosslers were back in the States, they looked for a place to call home. At the top of their list of their considered geographic locations was Houston, Texas, where a branch of Jacques’ financial “empire” was in operation.

Houston was the fastest growing metropolitan city in the Southern United States. By the late 1940s, Houston was growing so fast and busting out of its boundaries, leading the city to annex almost 150 square miles and in the process tripling its population. The oil hub of the United States, Houston was rich, famous and totally chic. Houstonians were eagerly embracing the arts and humanities and this agreed with Candace Mossler’s tastes. She loved the opera and the ballet and the arts scene… she longed for anything that could be considered “high society,” anywhere she could flaunt her new riches in the company of the upper echelon of society.

With all that wealth and fanciness and with Jacques already having a branch office of his Mossler Acceptance Corporation in Houston, the “it” city, earning a reputation as the cultrual capital of the South, was the perfect geographic selection for Candace. It didn’t take any arm twisting to convince Jacques to relocate, so to Houston they went.

The Mosslers initially bought a two-story brick home in the once prestigious Riverside Terrace neighborhood of Houston. For a good many decades, Riverside Terrace was one of Houston’s most upscale neighborhoods open to Jewish residents (Jacques Mossler was Jewish). However, by the time the Mosslers moved there, the neighbhorhood was falling into a sort of decline as many of the properties there had grown old but were not being well maintained, leaving some and then more selective and “well-to-do” homeowners to move away, particularly as some African Americans began moving into the subdivision.

From Zillow real estate website, this was the first home of Jacques and Candace Mossler, located in the Riverside Terrace subdivison of Houston. The 3 bedroom, 3 bath home home was approximately 3,500 square feet of living space and located on MacGregor Way in Riverside.

Candace could absolutely care less about racial demographics of this or any other community… the only thing she cared about was having “the best” as it relates to demographics of the economic sort. Whatever the reasons, the undeniable fact was that Riverside was a long way from being “the best” any longer in Houston, Texas.

As it happened, the best” in Houston was now the River Oaks community, which was often called the Beverly Hills of Texas (ironically, Riverside Terrace was once alternately known as “The Jewish River Oaks”).

So, in 1952, Candace’s sites on “the best”, the Mosslers loaded up their things and they moved a bit across town to River Oaks. The couple purchased a multi-story Georgian-style red brick house featuring multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and including almost 10,000 square feet of livable space. Candace was in hog heaven, as for her, part and parcel of her desired prestige and and prominence in this world was location, location, location!

Taking up residence in a mansion in the city’s most upscale, elite and exclusive community located smack dab in the middle of Houston proper perfectly fit the lifestyle she sought.