Sergie Ann Christianson Conklin Remembers…
Interview, November 2008

Members of the Christianson family lived at 99 Rumson Road for 46 years, beginning in 1961. For Sergie (Mrs. Lloyd) Christianson, it was love at first sight. “She submitted a bid on the house the day she saw it, and it was accepted the same day,” recalls her daughter, Sergie Ann Conklin, who was high-school age at the time.

A Christianson family wedding at 99 Rumson Road.

Lloyd Christianson was president of Electronic Associates, Inc. (EAI), and needed a large house for entertaining. But there was significant work to do before guests would walk through the door.

An interior designer quickly went to work on the living room and the front hall, whose walls had not been touched since 1920. Previous owners had refurbished the library, powder room and dining room on the main floor, and updated one bath on the second floor. All the other baths were in their original condition.

The previous owners had also modernized the kitchen. “My mother was so happy to have a new kitchen,” says Sergie Conklin. “She had seen so many older homes with big, old kitchens, and this one was small, new, bright, and cheery.”

Outdoors, Mr. Christianson refurbished the fish pools, and stocked them with fish—“the ones the geese didn’t get,” his daughter remembers.

Her room was the second floor bedroom nearest to the master suite. “It was a big change from living in a regular house,” she says. “I loved having a fireplace and a balcony. When I opened up the doors on a summer night, the breeze would blow through.”

Christmas dinner in the banquet room.

She was intrigued by other items that would not be found in a “regular” house—the elevator and fire hoses, for example. The original hoses had rotted; they were replaced with hoses from a hotel.

The family loved the space in the house. My mother would say, “‘There’s no point in having it if you don’t use it,’ and my parents used every inch of space and every dish and spoon.” Mrs. Conklin says. Her mother enjoyed entertaining and usually prepared the food herself, although she engaged bartenders and people to serve. “One of the things she liked about the kitchen was that it was ‘not too spread out’,” Sergie Conklin recalls.

Sergie Christianson Conklin, November 2008.

“My dad liked big family gatherings and lots of commotion,” she says. There was one Christmas dinner when the parents learned that their children (Sergie Ann and two of her three brothers) had invited guests to a party on New Year’s Eve and the children discovered that their parents had planned a party for the same night. “My mother decided the adults would use the living room and the banquet [dining] room, the children would have the library and the loggia, and we’d share the kitchen. We had more than 80 people, and it was fine.” In 2007, when the Christianson children cleared out the house, they found 20 dozen punch cups.

Sergie Ann and her brothers George, Charles and Lloyd fleetingly considered keeping the house, but “it wasn’t realistic,” she says. “We hoped it wouldn’t be torn down and we are grateful to the Mulheren family for preserving it and bringing it back to its original beauty.” She experienced a nostalgic moment on her final visit to the house when “I walked past the telephone booth and saw my handwriting there on the memo pad.”

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