5 10 47 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8df1fd7f6705eeb0f4f56c7674fc3f25.mp3 7a7b7c569f34f6539e56e7b7a2fd23d0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2019-11-14 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rodney Alexander Year of Graduation 1968 Biographical Text Harpur College BA Social Sciences, '68. Rodney Alexander was executive director of the Manhattan Educational Opportunity Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), CUNY. After graduating from Harpur College, he completed degrees in public administration and in business administration from NYU. His wife, Daryl Royster Alexander, was the founding editor of Essence magazine. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rodney Alexander Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexander, Rodney ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Harpur College BA Social Sciences, '68. Rodney Alexander was executive director of the Manhattan Educational Opportunity Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), CUNY. After graduating from Harpur College, he completed degrees in public administration and in business administration from NYU. His wife, Daryl Royster Alexander, was the founding editor of <em>Essence</em> magazine. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-11-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Rodney Alexander.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2019-11-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 63:15 minutes IIIF Item Metadata UUID db54668a-0dd7-404a-982b-740dfd1194a3 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/026a78dfd480db03ef5dfacf38cf11de.mp3 61b61e00dc776830e0c0d9cd3a84ba5a https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/88bf9370d60be4733617198dfa9eb086.jpg a826d33b2138197db9fcd8ca4fd43b4b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2018-01-26 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ronald Bayer Year of Graduation 1964 Biographical Text Ronald Bayer, PhD, is professor and co-chair for the History & Ethics of Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Medical Center. His research focuses on issues of social justice and ethical matters related to AIDS, tuberculosis, illicit drugs and tobacco. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has been a consultant to the World Health Organization on ethical issues related to public health surveillance, HIV and tuberculosis. He worked closely with Dr. Mathilde Krim, the founder of amfAR. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in public health; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni in AIDS research; Harpur College – Alumni at Columbia University Medical Center; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in the New York City area Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in public health; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni in AIDS research; Harpur College – Alumni at Columbia University Medical Center; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in the New York City area Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Ronald Bayer Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 26 January 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:00 Okay, so please tell us your name, your birth date and where we are, right. RB: 00:06 So, I am Ronald Bayer. My birth date is January 16, 1943 just celebrated my 75th and we are at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City on January 27, 2018. IG: 00:25 Where did you grow up? RB: 00:27 Where? I grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, before it was cool. I grew up on 10th Street and Second Avenue. It was a lower middle-class, working-class neighborhood. My- one of my funniest memories of that period of growing up was that I thought when people got older, they no longer spoke English. They had a different language. They had a different language. As they got older so old, people spoke Yiddish, they spoke Italian, they spoke Greek. They did not speak English. They aged into that language. Because I never met an old person who spoke English. So, it was an immigrant neigh- you know, nation- neighborhood of immigrants, Ukrainians, Italians. My building was an apartment house. My dad, my mother, was a milliner who worked from the- she stayed home for a while after I was born. But does she work in virtually a hat making factory for making women's hats, and then eventually moved over to B. Altman's department store, where she did custom hats for people buying fancy gowns and stuff. And my dad was a civil servant. Neither of them finished high school. My mother was born in Europe and came here when she was six. My father's parents came from Russia, and my grandfather, who's an Orthodox Jew, lived with us. IG: 02:08 Where in Russia did, they come from? RB: 02:12 Oh, I am sure it was like Lithuania someplace over there. IG: 02:16 Russian Empire. RB: 02:17 Yeah, the Russian Empire. And, I mean, the most important thing about that memory for me is that, although my parents never went to high school, my mother had very high cultural aspirations, and she took me to the Metropolitan Opera when I was nine years old. And she, you know, I knew always that I was going to college. I did not even know college I did not even know college was, but I knew I was going to college. I went to Stuyvesant High School, which then was on 15th Street, is now down at the Old-World Trade Center area, where I met lots of other kids whose parents had, I mean, some had parents who went to college, but a lot of the friends were first gens. They think they call them now and-and so [phone rings] when I- this is my wife, hello, and I guess what leads into the focus of our conversation is my last years in high school, the-the demonstrations at Woolworths around the country were taking place, so the sit ins had already begun in the south. And I remember on Saturday mornings going to a Woolworth on Broadway and Eighth Street to picket. I actually I was supposed to be going to synagogue, and I snuck out and went to picket, and I ultimately had to confess, but I did not get much flack for it. So that is my growing up, and I-I knew I was going to wait to college, and my parents did not have lots of money, and some count- and I somehow, I knew I wanted, I did not want, to go to City College or Queens College, and we did not have money for tuition. And so, I guess a counselor of some kind that Stuyvesant said, "Well, this is relatively new school." It had not yet moved to the new campus was just the process of moving, and it is, you know, it will be a campus out of town. It will be very different from being in the city, but, and it turned out that it had become kind of a go to place for people who, like me, who had aspirations but did not want to stay in the city, and did not have the money to go to private university, I think I got a New York State Scholarship, which paid part of my tuition, and then I landed in what is it called. It is not what is the town where the campus is? It is not Binghamton. It is Vest- Vestal. I landed in Vestal in those years. Glenn Bartle was the president, and had a hugely strong, I remember the correct the first two-year curriculum was, you know, they had a kind of a required course called Literature and Composition, which had used reading from the Greeks all the way in the sec- through the second year James Joyce and whatever it was like, built, I think, on the model of the University of Chicago in places where there was a strong core curriculum. And I felt liberated being there, I kind of met people from all different- I mean, most of my friends, actually, in the beginning, were New Yorkers, and that is one of the things that happened about Harpur. At that point, a lot of New Yorkers, first generation college kids came there, and it was the teachers were great, and the classes were small and-and that is where my, you know, stronger political consciousness began to emerge. IG: 06:09 Tell us about that. RB: 06:10 Yeah, well, I actually have a memory, and you probably can go online to find the stories about this. I think it was my second year. There was at that point a committee of the Congress called the house un–American Activities Committee, which was investigating so called subversives. It had its heyday during the McCarthy era, but they really went after left wing people, and if anyone-anyone who believed in civil liberties and civil rights was appalled by how they operated. People before called before the committee. They invoked the Fifth Amendment. They were held in contemporary Congress. And somehow, I do not know how I learned about it, but we learned, I think, that a film about the house un–American Activities Committee called this is thing that I remember operation UAC. And it was a film basically designed to denounce the opponents of the house un–American Activities Committee. And we learned that it was being shown at the American Legion Hall in Binghamton. So, a bunch of us went and they showed it. And as soon as soon as we finish, I got up and challenged it. I had never done anything like that before. I started reeling off all the- kind of lies. And then a few of my other friends jumped up and did the same thing, and it created a tumultuous situation. We were basically told to get out. It made the front page of the Binghamton Third speaker: 07:43 Press & Sun-Bulletins. RB: 07:45 Yeah, right. It was on the front page. IG: 07:47 What year was this? Do you remember? RB: 07:49 It had to be either (19)61 or (196)2. Third speaker: 07:55 When were you in Binghamton, Harpur College? RB: 07:58 Oh, from (19)60 to (19)64. Yeah, I came in the fall of (19)60 so. And I was startled. I mean, I mean, one of the newspapers was more liberal than the others, but it really made it sound like we were wild and-and I actually got called into some dean's office asked why I had done it, and did I think my behavior was appropriate? And I learned afterwards that she said- RB: 08:29 I said it was important to do, you know, they are taking away our constitution. You know, it was linked to my concern about liberal leftish causes, because the only people the committee was going after were, you know, they went after people like Arthur Miller and, you know, writers and whatever. So, I kind of, you know, it, kind of, I got my- IG: 08:29 What did you say? IG: 08:59 Did you know about Arthur Miller? Did you know about these titans of- RB: 09:04 Yes, I did [crosstalk] I did because when I was growing up, my best childhood friend, a guy named Paul Solman, who sometimes you may see on the on the TV hour, on Channel 13. He does business reporting, but he came from very left-wing family. He was my neighbor, and his father was an artist, and he was actually the one to brought me to my first Woolworth demonstration, and he- Arthur Miller's daughter was in his class at the Choate School House [Choate Rosemary Hall], which was a progressive private school. IG: 09:45 Which daughter? RB: 09:47 A daughter of Arthur Miller. IG: 09:51 Because there is one who is married to Daniel Day Lewis. She may have- Yeah. IG: 09:58 SDS? RB: 09:58 I have never met the daughter, no but I spent a lot of time in Paul's apartment with his parents. They were Dodger fans, which is what left wing Jewish people were, and the mother smoked cigarettes and wore jeans. No one wore jeans in the 1950s and I got a lot of political education in their apartment, some of which I accepted, some of which I-I did not. I cannot remember when I cannot remember actually, whether I, whether I was in high school when this happened? Yes, no, this is later in college. I think there was a, let me see- I cannot remember, let me, let me just jump into something else. So, the other thing that was a kind of way in which people- there was already, when we got there in 1960 already a group called some socialist club. RB: 10:01 No SDS came later. This was a, this was a local group of- they were, they were like juniors and seniors when I got there, and it was called the Social of something club, and they were pretty far left, and they had a- an advisor, who is a very famous social democrat named Kurt Shell, who was a professor of economics at Harpur, and he did not always agree with them, but he provided them with- because he believed in freedom of speech and whatever so but all of us, the younger people who had just come up from New York, used to meet every Friday night in a dormitory lounge, I cannot remember what it was called Dingman hall or something, and sang folk songs. And this sang folk songs with guitars. I did not play guitar, but I knew a lot of the songs. And we sang union songs. We sang solidarity forever, Pete Seeger type songs, and so and that was almost a routine on Friday nights to get together and sing these songs. And we brought people in who had never heard of these things before, who came became part of our world. There are- I actually had a few names come up to mind. And whether you will ever find these people. I am not sure even whether sure even whether some of them are even alive anymore. There was a woman named Jane Lagutis who was in my class, who went to Hunter High School. A lot of people who were there were Stuyvesant or Bronx Science or Hunter so Jane Lagutis, who then became a professor someplace, think of English someplace in New York State. My roommate at one point was someone named Dick Sherman, whose father was a labor activist in the--it was called the local 1199 which at that point was mostly a pharmacy union. So, it was a kind of fantastic learning. And since I was going to be in political science, it all seemed to fit together. And there was one other big demonstration that I remember, and that is-- bunch of us on how we kind of found the bandwidth to do this. We-we rented a bus to go to Washington, DC for a demonstration. It was not an anti-war demonstration because the war was a done then it was a demonstration supporting an end to nuclear testing. And I remember, we went down on a bus overnight to Washington, and we got to- we stayed in a church someplace and slept. We brought sleeping bags or something. We slept on the church. And I remember, I cannot remember who it was. The person who greeted us at this church was, he was an African American minister who may have just been stopping by. I do not know. I keep thinking- it cannot be, but I somehow have this vague memory that it was maybe Martin Luther King, but I cannot remember if that is correct. So that was, you know, it was kind of exciting to be part of the beginnings, and the beginnings, really, that they did not- the big- there was no SDS branch at Harpur [inaudible] I am not sure when SDS began. I think it was a little later. It was at University of Michigan, I think. But we, you know, I kind of- it-it was what drove it was the Civil Rights Movement and what was happening in the south. And, you know, there were the-the kind of echo demonstrations that took place places like Woolworth and whatever. But I think some of my colleagues one summer, actually went to, I do not know, Maryland or Virginia. There was a guy who was very active. I was not really close friends with him, but he was actually more active than I-- his name was Martin Liebowitz. I cannot tell you kind of pulling up these names, I have not heard them in years. Again, I do not know whether any of these people are still around. You know, when there were, you know, Binghamton was hardly all left. I mean, there was, there were, I think there was a branch of the young Americans of freedom on campus. There were, I know, I cannot remember any [inaudible]. I know there must have been moments when there was strife between our people, and they used to be. There were never. There were not fraternities at that time at Binghamton. They were called social clubs, and the people in the social clubs tended to be much more conservative. They were like, you know, frat boys. And of course, we all smoke cigarettes in the dormitories and at our, at our, I guess, you know, these, we think, in the (19)60s, of folk songs called hoot nannies. And that was, you know, when people got together at Carnegie Hall or whatever, and there would be a lead singer like Pete Seeger, and but they were not, they were not just songs. They were kind of our political education, and there was a way of developing political commitment. And I never, I never felt the school, in any way tried to thwart us or suppress us. I mean, the event in Binghamton with the House on American Activities Committee, you know, it was bad publicity. I do not know if someone from the administration said we do not necessarily agree with how they behave, but we-we support their right to express themselves in-in tradition of American freedom, I do not think anyone ever said that, but I know why my face was splashed on the front page of the newspaper, and that was it. IG: 18:10 You spoke of these activities giving you your political education. Was this political- did this political education involve any awareness of restrictions on the rights of women, of gays, of people of color? RB: 18:36 Well, certainly people of color. I-I remember, you know, contemporary feminism begins in the late (19)60s. So, it is interesting looking back at the issue of, I do not think, and the-the first decision of the Supreme Court on birth control was 1963 I was already a junior that was Griswold versus Connecticut, where the Supreme Court ruled that women, couples-couples, had a right to have their doctor prescribe birth control devices. And in uh, so it is actually interesting that I do not think the women's issue ever came up in that way. I do remember something about men and women in those days, I was in a small class, and someone who became my kind of girlfriend for a while was in the same class, freshman class, and I was talking, and she said, "Do not you ever shut up?" [laughs] And in a way, I hear echoes of that now when women say, "You know, men were always the first one to take the stage, take to talk, and we have to fight our way onto the stage." Maybe it is not this quite the same, but so I remember this memory of this woman named Judy, and it was sort of, I guess what I was being blabbering, you know, you know I was, I was actually more like my mother than like my father always talking. So, and there was never an issue of gay stuff. I mean that too, all this, I mean this was the-the first major moment in in gay liberation began around the bar in the village. I think it was 1968 as well. And it was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality was not a disease actually written about that. IG: 21:04 I know. RB: 21:06 So, I actually- so let me I actually think and so by the time I left, I really found- felt that I had my political wings, you know. And I felt so when I went to the University of Chicago for graduate school, and this is 1964 was the Goldwater election, I already felt that. And then we would get involved in demonstrations against the beginning of the war in Vietnam and draft and whatever I felt like I had already sort of been-this was not my first entry into politics. The other thing that isn't directly related to, you know, activism is that my education in terms of developing an interest in sort of socialist thought began in college. I, you know, I read my first marks. I read, you know, I just- it just seemed, you know, this is what, this is what you did. And I was a political scientist, and I took political theory classes, and I took, you know- IG: 22:31 This is at Binghamton? RB: 22:33 In Binghamton, mm-hmm. So, it all fit together, and that is why I went on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, but I remember feeling that I came to Chicago, which is a very powerful intellectual tradition. I came to Chicago from a place that was pretty unknown in those years, and I had classmates who were from Harvard and Yale and Princeton and, you know, Berkeley, I felt I came there intellectually and academically completely- I never felt, "Oh, I have a lot of catching up to do." And that was a great gift. I mean, you know, for a person who's the first person in his family to go to college, and who-who- Oh! And, I mean, I- how could I miss this? Of course, it was my, you know, my junior year when Kennedy was assassinated. And I remember that. I do not remember any politics around that. I uh- IG: 23:48 How-how so? RB: 23:49 Well, I mean, I-I remember the day I had- actually, there was a bank across from the campus at that point, on Vestal Parkway--was that, what it is called. And I was going to get some money out of the bank and-and nothing had happened yet. And the way back, I- someone was lowering the flag, and I could not understand what it was. And I went to the Student Union, and there, you know, and there is actually a picture of me in the yearbook of that year with a friend in the kind of cafeteria just staring at each other blankly listening to the news. And I remember those- the following days. I remember actually being it was around Thanksgiving time, and I remember being at a someone was- he was already living he had an apartment in town, and we were watching TV, and Oswald was being transferred from one prison to the other. Then Ruby came and shot him. And we watched this thing on TV, was an unbelievable thing to watch, you know, but I do not remember any- I do not actually remember. And I remember watching the funeral and stuff, but I do not remember, you know, what the political, what the political fallout was? I actually the other political, momentous political event that I remember in those years was the confrontation over Russian missiles in Cuba. And I remember really feeling that when I went to sleep that night, would we be would I wake up? It was very scary. I guess Russian ships were moving towards Cuba. America said, "If you cross this line," whatever, and then there was this backing off. And yes, we felt there was a lot of- I know among us, there was a lot of sympathy for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution. Cuban revolution is 1959 I think, or 1960 so I remember, I remember, you know, Cas- you know, those opposed to Castro, who are Cubans all seem to be like fascist reactionaries, I do not know. And the idea that the US government was going to try to overthrow the Cuban government, and they tried to with a- you know, with an invasion, that was a big moment of, I do not know what kind of demonstrations we had, but I know it was a big topic of anger and anxiety among us. IG: 26:50 Were there any Cuban students that you know of at Harpur? RB: 26:53 It was, it was very [crosstalk] It was very white. RB: 26:58 A few Asians. Actually, a woman who went to Hunter High School, actually also who was first generation was there. Her last name was, I think it was Dottie Chin. I do not remember. It is amazing what you can you know, so and I did not- after graduating, most of us sort of dispersed. I did not- I remained friends for a while with one of my roommates who I think lives in the Albany area now--his name was Robert Puzak. I what- one of my roommates died many years ago. He was- actually came from a Republican family. I had never met a Republican, to tell you, he came from a Republican family upstate. He had had polio as a child. He was a brilliant English major. It was funny though he when he took them to go to graduate school, when he took the GRE, he got like 99th percentile in English, and he got like fourth percentile in math, no one had ever seen such a low score. And I, he did fine. He went on to someplace special, you know. So that was it. And I kind of, I, I am sorry I lost touch with those people. But you know- IG: 26:58 Very white. IG: 28:42 How would your classmates remember you from that time? RB: 28:56 I think outspoken. I actually, I, you know, I-I-I-I think enough of-of oral history and the pitfalls of oral history not to kind of make things I feel I something about the-the wonderful wonders of oral history, but also some of the pitfalls of oral history, where people feel kind of impelled to make up a few stories that seem maybe they have not, maybe they did not. I do not want to do that because I think that- I mean, I think it is fair to say that I was a central figure in the, in the politics, I actually sort of interesting. It is a little different. But the- a year, my third year, I was a junior, a cousin of mine came to Harpur, and he was, he was not as political as I, but he- one spring day, who had been a long winter, he called together a bunch of people, and they had the first stepping on the coat celebration. His name was Larry Kressel. He unfortunately died some years ago of cancer, and there are pictures of him and people throwing that coat on the ground and jumping on them. So, it was a different kind that was, in a way, a celebration of life, you know- IG: 31:07 Celebration of spring. RB: 31:08 Yeah, yep. And I thought that was great. And he had, that was the class that had Andy Bergman in it, the filmmaker who might be worth trying to get. I do not know if he is Andy Bergman lives in New York. He was, he was the filmmaker who made Young Frankenstein. He made, oh, he was, at one point, like up, you know, among the- I would not say it, you know, sort of, he sort of seemed like the Woody Allen and his age or something. Third speaker: 31:39 Is it more independent movies? RB: 31:42 No, it was- he was, you know, he worked with Mel Brooks and-and, oh, Mel Brooks was in his movies. And if you look up his in Bergman, B, E, R, G, M, A, N, Andrew, and he might even remember me, because we were moved in the same sort of circles. IG: 32:07 What did the campus look like at the time? RB: 32:10 It was very small. There was where the library building was- it was the library and the faculty offices. It was only two stories high, across from it, sort of an L shaped brick building was the only where all the classes were, and there was the science building. IG: 32:45 Where was the science building in relation? RB: 32:47 it was between the academic building and the library. Everything was very spare. There were no- I think at some point we began to have the idea of planting new trees, because it seemed it was raw looking. I mean, all the buildings were new, and the dormitories were fine, and each dormitory there were four dormitories, then two women, two men. Dingman Hall, cannot remember the names of the other places, and they all had a big lounge. IG: 33:18 Is that where you spent most of your free time- RB: 33:22 No, the-the student, student union, where the cafeteria is- was, and there was a, oh yes, this is no longer there, I am sure. When you came down the central, what was then the central drive, there was a little bridge that separated the- that linked the Student Union and the dormitories, and it was supported by four pillars that were unusual because they-they were, they were normally these things supporting a little bridge. It was called the Esplanade, not there anymore. And so, the normally, you have a pillar that looks like this. You know, narrower top. No, yes, this is normally what you think of. And this had it came down like this. And it was just a design decision. It was not a very beautiful place. But I-I actually, you know, and I remember I had never seen fall leaves before. I mean, there are fall colors in New York, but not like I remember how incredible the hills were around the campus, you know, in the fall, it was just incredibly beautiful. So, you know, I mentioned that I had brought- I saw one of the groups I helped to found is called the International Relations club. Why we called that? I do not know. It was basically a way of talking about the political club. And we invited speakers to come. So, after many-many efforts, I-I contacted Eleanor Roosevelt, and I said, we would love you to come to talk and-and she said, you know, I guess I was in touch with her secretary, who said, Mrs. Roseville, speaking fee is, I do not know what she said, $3,000 $1,200 something like that. It was a long time ago, so that was a lot of money. And I said, unfortunately, we do not have any money we can pay for her airfare to-to Binghamton. And finally, I was persistent enough that she finally said, yes. IG: 35:59 How were you persistent? RB: 36:00 I kept writing, take no for a no, yeah. And I-I just said, you know, I described who we were, the nature of our students, the kind of students at the school. And she thought point, was writing a column, a daily column, for the New York Post from the New York Post was not a rag, and it was called my day. So, we got her, I do not know how we there was another person I remember bringing up who was. I cannot remember anything about her speech, no, but I remember her saying- IG: 36:40 What was her demeanor? RB: 36:42 Oh, she was talking about her years in the founding-founding of the UN that was it. Of course, we gave her corsage. And I actually remember that the person who ran the cafeteria made a special dinner for us, about 12 of us, and the main course was Chicken Kiev, which was, I do not even know chicken- I think it is, it is a breast of chicken wrapped around butter or something. So, the other person, we and I, actually, is it? I have a picture of it someplace. There was a very prominent left-wing journalist, not an apologist for the Soviet Union at all, but quite left, named I. F Stone, and he had a weekly newsletter. I. F. Stones Weekly, and we brought him to campus. So, we, I guess we tried to bring dissident- I mean, I do not know how many we did. I cannot remember, but we wanted to bring somewhat dissident voices to campus, and so those are the- RB: 37:08 Was the president there to meet Eleanor Roosevelt? RB: 37:59 I certainly know the dean was I at the airport, actually, and it was held the- her speech was held in the nicest, actually, I thought the nicest space on the old camp that campus those things was the auditorium. And there was a very beautiful auditorium, it seemed to me. It was wood peddled, sort of a little semicircular. It was in what was then the only academic building. It was out of using the gym, which, you know, sorry, big but ugly. So, I have stone whatever, and that is about it. I think I am trying to- no- so the years I was there was- they were the Kennedy years--right Kennedy and then Johnson becoming president in 1963 or (196)4. Oh, I do, yes. Oh, it did not happen there, but I that was also it was during that period that the-the big civil rights march on Washington took place, and we were actually shifting. Harpur had been on a semester system, and for reasons I never quite understood. They decided to go to a trimester system. So, in that transition year, which was actually the transition between my junior and senior years, there was a longer break, longer summer break, and I got a job, I do not know, some kind of stupid summer job in New York City-- just to make some money, and I remember taking a train down to the March on Washington, and I remember Martin Luther King's speech. I do not recall actually having met my Harpur colleagues while we were down there on the march. So, I do not think I was in touch with them about let us meet up or something. Well, there were no cell phones. The idea of meeting up in a crowd was a little different. So, I actually, I mean, I know this isn't about, you know, celebrating. I mean, I guess oral history sometimes we are about celebrating. But I-I think I was given the academic opportunity of a lifetime, and I sort of grew up. I, you know, started in college when I was, what, 16-17, I was 21 when I was just different. And- IG: 40:53 Do you remember any, any professors who made a particular impression on you? Were they- RB: 41:00 Yeah, well, they are all dead. No, yes. There was actually my Literature and Composition teacher- my first year was someone named. His last name was Huppe, H, U, P, P, E. RB: 41:04 And he was fantastic. He was a Chaucer scholar. I remember that. And I remember learning from him how to recite the first lines of [citing in Middle English]. And I mean, what is this Middle English stuff? So, he was my teacher. And to have a man like that with 15 or 18 students in a room just discussing literature was fantastic, and I had a- there was an economist whose name was Peter Vukasin, who was really a great teacher. It was another teacher I- it is odd that I cannot remember the names of my political science teachers, although that was my field, I remember one of the things, one of the things that was interesting about that period is in every- well, there are only four dormitories. There was an apartment for a faculty member, and the dormitory I lived in, the professor was named- he was an English professor. I never had him as a teacher. His name was Peter Mattheisen [Paul Mattheisen], and it was a thing that the door of the faculty member department was virtually always open in the evening. So, I remember spending a lot of time hanging out down there. I think I do not have anything more to say. So, who are most of the people you are trying to reach out to kind of post me, after me, or...? IG: 41:04 Yes. IG: 43:26 They are graduates from the 1960s. RB: 43:28 Okay. IG: 43:29 So, it is a big range. We started with 1967 because there was a reunion for that year last year. So, we tapped some of those people, and we have conducted about- Third speaker: 43:48 Six, seven, I think. IG: 43:48 -interviews. RB: 43:50 Was that [inaudible] who had organized that reunion from the (19)67? Do you know? IG: 43:57 Of (19)67? RB: 43:58 Yeah, the one you said, the first- IG: 43:59 Well, the Alumni Association, but the Alumni Association, but the library, also had a luncheon for these graduates. Just tell us a little bit about what you do? RB: 44:19 Now? IG: 44:19 Now, and just tell us about some of the high points of your career. RB: 44:27 So, after graduating from Harpur, I actually was lucky enough to get a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, and which supports graduate study, and I went to the University of Chicago for a PhD in political science. It was- those were heavy political days, but I and I was also a pretty devoted student, and um, I um, I-I became very interested in-I mean, I remember being at the University of Chicago and having professors like Hannah Arendt. You know when Hans Morgenthau and Leo Strauss, who's a founding figure of the very conservative intellectual, but I remember studying some Socratic dialog with him in a class where they went over every line and explicated it. And I-I got very involved in politics, actually. And I actually in one, one of the years, I guess, was 1967 there was a demonstration--it was before the Democratic Convention year. But I got was an anti- I guess it was an anti-war demonstration, yes, and in one of the main squares in Chicago, and they were trying to block us, and I was trying to move forward. Anyway, I got arrested, and I was clubbed by a cop, and I had my hand broken, and I was okay, but, you know, but it was not okay. Actually, I was in jail for about eight hours, and my-my school, my chair, the chair of my department, was very supportive, and they provided us with lawyers and but I kind of lost. Then I- my feet- I had committed myself to doing work on African politics, nations that were becoming liberated. And I- that was the moment was happening, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Houphouet-Boigny in Ivory Coast or whatever. And I-I went to Africa. I was- I remember my advisor said, "Ron, if you are not going to do this dissertation, do not go. Do not do it for me. Do not go. Take a breath. Think about it. I said "No-no-no, I am going. I am going, I am going." And I went. And I really was completely- I did some research, but my heart was not in it. There were all these demonstrations back home against the war, and I wanted to do it. I actually organized demonstrations in Accra outside the American Embassy. Finally got invited to dinner by the ambassador, who basically told me to stop. So, my academic career took a kind of a bump, and I came back, and I spent two years trying to write the dissertation on trade unions in Ghana, and I just could not do it. And you know, those are the days of note cards. I had piles of note cards at my desk, and I would keep pushing them forward and pulling them forward at that point just because of [ talking to his colleague] IG: 47:43 1015 minutes more. RB: 48:03 Yeah, let us check I have- it is in. I make- what I may have to do is ask you to stay here, and then I will come- do you have an appointment right after this? IG: 48:10 Not right after, we have an appointment at 1:30 on, I think 88th on Riverside. RB: 48:16 Oh, you are going to be there. I live on 88th on Broadway. [laughs] IG: 48:18 Oh really. Next door neighbors. He is another professor, but I am not quite sure, but he is not affiliated with Columbia. RB: 48:28 Uh-huh. Well, the only one I know who lived here is a guy who taught English at [inaudible] I do not think he went Harpur. IG: 48:35 His name is John Spiegel. RB: 48:37 Oh, I know John Spiegel. IG: 48:38 Really? RB: 48:39 Yes, he was, he was a friend of Larry Kressels and whatever. Of course, you said that, [inaudible]. So, it is a meeting now, James [talking to his colleague]. Okay, so anyway, so anyway, I-I happened to get a job working one of the early methadone maintenance programs in New York. I knew enough my brother was sort of involved with drugs, and he knew a lot of people involved. So, I got involved working. I never wrote it about Africa. Okay, so I got a job working in the- this method on maintenance program, and suddenly I realized, oh, this is really interesting, drug use, psychiatry, law, criminal law, criminalization. And ultimately, the idea came to me about writing a dissertation about that. I studied, none of it in graduate school, and I wrote a very good dissertation. And when I finished, it was- I started graduate school 1964 was 1973 when I finished, but I have been working in this drug program for two years. I got an eventually, got a 1979 I got a post doc at a place called the Hastings Center, which was a bioethics research institute. I had never studied bioethics before, but I was interested in relation with law and psychiatry. That then I feel like Forrest Gump. That then led me to the- I got at this Hasting Center I- when I started working there, someone said, you know, you are really interested in law psychiatry, how values shape psychiatry. I have a great idea for a book, the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a disease I did not know anything about it. He said, I know all the major players, and I will get you access to them as for interviews. And so, I did it. It was my first book about homosexuality in American psychiatry. And it was sort of, kind of became entailing the history of that moment. It was a landmark. It, you know, built on gay liberation, women's movement, whatever. And then I- while working at the Hastings Center, it was 1983-(19)82 someone came to us who was on the board of trustees and said, there was this new disease. She was a scientist working at Sloan Kettering. This new disease has many ethical issues. The research ethics are incredibly complicated. Her name was Mathilde Krim. Mathilde Krim just died. IG: 51:24 I know, I know, I know who that is. RB: 51:26 And I just, actually, just went to her memorial service. So, Mathilde Krim gave us our first grant to do ethical work on HIV. I then became completely involved in writing about ethical issues, and all my work focused on HIV. [side conversation with colleague regarding meeting time] All my work and I actually got to know Mathilde Krim quite well. I- it is like she was both a formidable activist, a brilliant scientist, and very-very rich. Her husband owned, United Artists, the film company, and then he owned another film company. They had a townhouse on 69th Street between Madison Park. It is like out of movies. He walked into this house, and there was a spiral staircase, and there was a butler who opened the door, and there was a movie theater on the ground floor that is had about 80 because [inaudible] was a business. So, because she supported my work a lot, and then she created a foundation called the American Foundation for AIDS Research that a lot of my work was funded. IG: 51:26 Were you attached to any university at that point? RB: 51:39 No, I was still working at the Hastings Center. This is the final piece of luck. I had been asked to give a talk at the board meeting of Planned Parenthood in Washington, DC in 1986 or (198)7, I cannot remember the year, it was the first talk anyone had presented on the issue of women and HIV. And I knew something about the issues because of issues around pregnancy and the transmission of virus from mother to child. At any rate, in the audience was sitting who was on the Board of Trustees of Planned Parenthood [inaudible] named Alan Rosenfield. Alan Rosenfield was the dean of this school. He came up to me after the talk and said, "Have you ever thought of coming to Columbia?" I said, "Actually, I am interested in the possibility of moving. I have been at the Hastings Center for nine or 10 years. Yes, I am interested." "Well, come see me in my office." In the meantime, uh- and so when I was trying to figure out what to do, I went to see Mathilde Krim, and she and Arthur had dinner for me in their palace, and said her husband was on the board of, he was on the Board of Trustees of Columbia. So, he said, I think you should go to Columbia. So, it did not, it was not just a show over. I mean, I, you know, I had written a lot, but, you know, this depart the department I am in said, what was academic credentials? He does not do traditional work and whatever, but they- I am basically, Rosenfield basically [crosstalk] IG: 54:35 Do- done your PhD by then? RB: 54:37 Oh, yes, I finished my PhD. And I was actually, I had finished my finished my PhD in (19)76 and I worked at the Hastings Center until (19)80 until- I was a person. Oh, I finished. I had a postdoc, which was a year, and I am coming to the end of the year. I had already my book is already in galleries, and the director, a guy named Dan Callahan, says, "What are you doing next year?" I said, "I am not quite sure." He said, "Would you like a staff position here?" So again, look, and I grabbed it, and that opened the whole world of bioethics to me, which led to the research on HIV, which led to, we did the no one had done work on the ethics of infectious disease until that point, because infectious disease was not an issue in the US. Bioethics was all about the clinical relationship. So, I, so then I came to Columbia in 1988 so it is now 30 years. Yeah, 30 years. And I came with the idea of teaching a course, oh, I came with a grant from the American Foundation for AIDS research, a five year, you know, these schools require a lot of grant money, a five-year fellowship to continue work on the ethics of AIDS. So, I came here, and I had to think about what courses I was going to teach. So, I decided I would teach a course on the ethics of on HIV, the age of epidemic. By that time, I had written a book about the AIDS epidemic, and then I developed one of the first courses in the United States on the ethics of public health, not the ethics, but not bioethics, not the ethics of the doctor patient relationship, but how you think about the ethical challenges raised in doing public health policy, whether it is about smoking or diet or-or motorcycle helmets or seat belts or or-or infectious disease or justice [crosstalk] IG: 56:46 So, what are the- you know, just give us a glimpse into what the ethics- RB: 56:52 Well, for example, yeah. I mean, for example- IG: 56:54 Smoking. RB: 56:55 Well, you know, people-people choose to smoke. They choose to smoke for many-many reasons, because they have been pushed into it by business. They have been seduced into it as children. They become addicted. On the other hand, stopping people from smoking because it hurts them is problematical if you believe that competent adults have a right to make all kinds of decisions, including to refuse therapy if even though that means they are going to die. So, the question about smoking was preeminently how far the state can go in-in pushing, nudging, shoving people to lead a healthier life. It is not an accident that most of the original aids efforts control efforts focused on innocent victims, non-smokers, who were in the presence of smokers and children where there is no ethical problem, you have no right to infect the air of smoker a non-smoker. But why do they focus on that when the real issue was 500,000 people dying every year smoking because it touched a raw nerve in America. We have come very far. We go pretty far now. We banned smoking on parks and beaches. We banned smoking in public housing projects. We this is so called a smoke free campus, and some of it, I think, is a stretch in terms of the harm to others part. So, tracing that arc, look, America is the only country that permits- does not regulate smoking advertising because of our First Amendment. From an ethical point of view, there should be no advertising, but our constitution is different, and it is not simply because business controls the story. I mean, the ACLU defends the right of tobacco companies to advertise. IG: 58:46 How interesting. RB: 58:46 And the other story that is paradigmatic is how you get to a position where you say that someone wearing a motorcycle not-not only is advised you, but must wear a motorcycle helmet or be fined. And the way the case was typically and we knew that people did not wear helmets smashed in their heads. They died more frequently. They had severe brain injuries. But when the move to mandate motorcycle helmets started, and there was a federal law that said, if you do not have motorcycle law, you do not get federal funding for Highway Safety. The argument was, if you get caught in an accident, if you are in an accident, then an ambulance has to pick you up, take you to a publicly funded emergency room, and where you may have to stay and then be hospitalized, where you may be have Medicaid, and then you may be crippled and have to be on public assistance. How can you say that it only affects you? So, it was a very stretch of harm to others in terms of economic burden. So those are the kinds of issues I love to teach about, and I have taught these courses for a long time. We revamped the curriculum here about eight years ago so that all incoming 400 students take a common curriculum. It is a [inaudible], and the first among the first six lectures they get, all 400 of them are the ethics of public health that I do. A colleague does the history of public health, someone does human rights and public health, and they do what they learn, Biostatistics and whatever. But I actually feel that one of my great contributions academically is that I sort of helped I am not the only one who does it now at all, but to spark the interest in the ethics of public health, not simply the ethics of clinical research. And that is my concerto. [laughs] IG: 1:00:42 Wonderful. Do you have any- I think that we are going to wrap up soon. RB: 1:00:49 Okay. IG: 1:00:52 So just in general, what do you think that there any lessons that you learned from your time at Harpur. RB: 1:01:01 Um, I- there were two things. I think I have no idea what the socioeconomic mixes of Harpur in this moment, and it was basically a white school when I went there, although, as I said, there were a few Asians, but there were lots of first-generation college students, not all, but enough. Kids who came from New York who would have gone to one of the city colleges, City College Queens, Brooklyn. I think creating a place that is- brings first generation college students as a mission, not just if they happen to apply, but as a mission. It is a great thing to do as a public university, and it is a great thing to do for what you- the kind of context you create. I know it is you know, may sound like, you know, old story now everyone wants, you know, campus that has diversity on it, and sometimes the diversity language seems to be a little kind of hot air stuff. I mean, the talk about diversity, but I actually think creating, making it a mission to draw people who are first generation people, and hopefully being able to bring dreamers in and to protect them. Columbia has been very good in its public statements about dreamers, and I think that so. The other thing is, and I do not know how much it remained, I think the people who created the curriculum at Harpur back then were very influenced by the idea that all incoming students should have some kind of core curriculum. We had. It was either one or two years of a social science sequence and wanted, and at least I know it was two years of literature and composition. It was mostly literature, and you had to do some writing, but it was literature. It was the most I mean; I am not a literature person. The fact that I read everything from Chaucer to Flaubert and James Joyce as part of a standard curriculum that was, it was viewed as, this is what everyone with an education need. I thought that was just spectacular. There is so much emphasis now on specialization, on skills, building Third speaker: 1:03:57 Standardized. RB: 1:03:58 Yeah, and I kind of yeah, so I actually, I understand all the pressures to do that. I see it here because, you know, our students in a school of tuition here at Columbia is about $60,000 a year when you get an MPH, you do not. It is not like getting an MD. And, you know- IG: 1:04:19 [inaudible] MD students get an MPH? RB: 1:04:20 Oh, absolutely, yes-yes-yes, that helps. But when our students get out, the income they can expect is very different from an MD and-and they and they want to make sure they have a job, something skills. So, I teach in a unit that teaches history and ethics in public health. We admit, in our department, we admit 150-130 students a year, [inaudible] of them choose to do this. There are many-many important things they can learn. But and I understand why, because they, when they go to an employer, they want to say, I know how to do this statistical method. I knew that statistical method. I know how to run a clinical- I know how to run a focus. Group and how to do things. So, I understand it, but it is for the same reason that many universities they have- they are getting rid of, you know, their universities get rid of their- I mean, I imagine you could count on hand the number of universities that teach Latin or Greek anymore, and there are even universities that have given up on Roman, you know, Italian, they may have Spanish and French and German and now Chinese, but there are many schools that just do not have comprehensive literature departments anymore. They are not supportable and-and you know from your time at-at Columbia that these places run on grants and gifts. You know, did you hear about this big gift they got from this guy, Vagelos [Dr. Roy Vagelos]? IG: 1:05:46 I heard about it. I also heard about the green gift to the neurosciences. RB: 1:05:54 Yes, right. IG: 1:05:55 [crosstalk] 200 million. RB: 1:05:56 Yeah. IG: 1:05:57 And actually, Dr. Fishback and I worked on the original proposal- RB: 1:06:02 Really? IG: 1:06:03 -Neuroscience Institute. RB: 1:06:04 Yeah, it is, you know, it is down on 100- but no, this guy, Vagelos, was the head of Merck. IG: 1:06:09 Yes. RB: 1:06:09 He gave $250 million to the school so that, no, this is interesting. He also built a building there, which is kind of a very modern building, two $50 million the income of which is to make sure that no student graduates medical school with debt. [crosstalk] IG: 1:06:13 That is tremendous. RB: 1:06:23 You know, he was the head of Merck, so he is very rich. And at any rate, I have felt, you know, as I said, I just celebrated my 75th birthday. You know, I am, I feel really privileged in many ways, but I, you know, I kind of being dogged and being ready to jump at opportunities, and sometimes just being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, IG: 1:07:07 Is that, is that one of the important life lessons? RB: 1:07:11 To me, it is. I cannot say that I would have been here had I, you know, for example, what would have happened had I trudged through and finished my dissertation on African Trade Unions, I would have been, I think, a kind of mediocre academic teaching political science- I could not do it, and I- it, it took a lot to decide I am not going to do that this. I am going to do another one. And I got a lot of you know, people around me were appalled that I was not writing my dissertation. My- I had a friend in the methadone clinic, a nurse, who said, you know, she was in a group therapy. She said, “You know, Ron, there is a guy in my group. He is 45 years old, and he still says he is writing his dissertation.” And people in the group do not know where to look when they hear him say it, because it is clearly not going to happen and he cannot face it. Do not let that happen to you. It is kind of scary when you hear that from people, because you know that you could just slip through the cracks. Third speaker: 1:08:15 I changed my topic. I know the feeling. So, I was doing something. I took all the prep work to do- to write that. When it was time to write it, I could not do it. I went through what you went through, and I wrote something totally different. RB: 1:08:32 Are you Russian, or? Third speaker: 1:08:33 I am Turkish. RB: 1:08:34 Turkish, uh, [speaking Turkish]. Actually, got some dirty words too. I had a Turkish girlfriend once at the University of Chicago. Third speaker: 1:08:47 Oh yeah. RB: 1:08:49 Her name is Ipek. Third speaker: 1:08:51 Yeah, means silk. RB: 1:08:55 Okay, I really have to [inaudible]. Yeah. IG: 1:08:57 Thank you so much. RB: 1:08:58 Thank you very much. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ronald Bayer Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in public health; Harpur College – Alumni in medical research; Harpur College – Alumni in AIDS research; Harpur College – Alumni at Columbia University Medical Center; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in the New York City area Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Bayer, Ronald ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Ronald Bayer, PhD, is professor and co-chair for the History & Ethics of Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Medical Center. His research focuses on issues of social justice and ethical matters related to AIDS, tuberculosis, illicit drugs and tobacco. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and has been a consultant to the World Health Organization on ethical issues related to public health surveillance, HIV and tuberculosis. He worked closely with Dr. Mathilde Krim, the founder of amfAR. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-01-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ronald Bayer.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-01-26 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 70:44 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/28ed262ac5ebc6bb3b8df7ab741ca2f7.mp3 dfd24e54737213ac823efb45b077053a https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7ba1e3137489841bf3ad117b4fb08e3a.png 08f47b8e52a383cbdd0dd99bc85b1d27 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2018-05-18 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dr. Ruth Silverman Year of Graduation 1964 Biographical Text Ruth Silverman, PhD, is a sociology professor at Nassau Community College, where she created the Women’s Studies Program. She is the sister of Dr. Amy Weintraub. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Women's’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Womens’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Ruth M. Silverman Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 15 May 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:01 Testing, testing, 1,2,3, it is working. Okay. So, we are here with Ruth Silverman. Ruth, RS: 00:08 My name is Ruth Silverman. I graduated in 1964 with a BA in sociology. I am being interviewed today, May 18, 2018 in my sister's apartment, who also graduated in 1964, my birth date is 11/24/(19)42. IG: 00:31 Perfect. Okay, so wh- where did you grow up? RS: 00:40 Do not worry about your back. IG: 00:42 Okay, all right, and I am going to actually move this up closer, if you do not mind, sorry, because I am hard of hearing, right. So, Amy, where did you grow up? IG: 00:56 Albany, New York. IG: 00:58 And tell me a little bit about your parents, what they did and- RS: 01:06 Well, my father had a PhD in sociology from Columbia University, and he headed up the Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Mental Hygiene in Albany. And my mother, my father retired and got a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. My mother became his assistant, his office assistant, under grant. IG: 01:35 Okay, so you are the only two siblings in your family. You are the two daughters. Were there other siblings? RS: 01:42 We have an older sister? IG: 01:44 Yes, so were the- were the expectations of for you similar? Do you think that all girls were expected to go on with their higher education? RS: 02:00 It was definitely an expectation. It was a- my mother came from a family. We were six children, and my grandparents, of course, were immigrants, and all six children went to college. I mean, that was just an expectation. And my mother's family and of course, my father was, well, let me put it this way, his brother did not go to college. My father went all the way through, but there was an expectation that you were going to go to college, of course. IG: 02:33 One thing that we did not say, I think that, you know, at the beginning we say, what you what you currently do what your profession is. RS: 02:43 I have been teaching at Nassau Community College since 1986 in sociology department. My appointments in the sociology department, but I have also taught courses in it was the Women's Studies project. There was no Women's Studies Department. Some people come from other departments. So, I was active in creating the Women's Studies program courses, the intro course, the first course. My doctoral work was in sociology of health, especially women's health. So, um- IG: 03:19 And where did you do your doctorate? RS: 03:22 I did my master's work University Wisconsin, Madison, and the PhD work at NYU. IG: 03:30 So, you know to backtrack, we will touch upon this a little bit later, but tell us a little bit about your growing up, what was that like, and where did you go to high school? What you know, what the preparation for Harpur College, what you know, predisposed you to- RS: 03:53 Albany was very small when we were growing up there. It has changed considerably. The State University of New York in Albany was originally State Teachers College at Albany, and it was a local teacher’s college. There were no dormitories. But of course, the State University has expanded tremendously. The State Government has expanded. I mean, it has got this downtown campus called the mall, and they traded the Avril Harriman campus out by the university. So, you know, it was, um, it was a different city. It was much, much smaller and more what insular, less cosmopolitan, I guess you would say, when we were growing up, but we did not go to the public school. My parents sent us to the middle school, which was the training school for the teacher. We were right next door to the Teacher's College. IG: 04:51 I see, I see. RS: 04:52 And so, we were- our teachers kept moving. As you know, we worked in semesters. And they had to do their student teaching, but the supervisors were the same. IG: 05:05 I see. So, do you think that you got over? Did you get your grounding for your future studies at the high school? RS: 05:17 I think we got a very good grounding. Because we were neither completely public. Of course, the state, the college was a public institution, but and we were already completely private. [laughs] We were- so it was a funny coming so we did not have to take, we want to- we did not take regents. They only recommended that for applying to colleges, you should take a few regions so they could have some basis to compare you with students in the in the public school system. And the preparation must have been very good, because we did very well. I did very well in the ones in the regent’s exam said I chose to take so they could see that that the middle school was teaching at a level to take the New York State Regents. IG: 06:17 So, I take it that you got the regents scholarship for college. RS: 06:24 No, and I do not know why we did not get it. IG: 06:32 Many-many-many people did get a regent scholarship, you know, but nonetheless, um, so-so, why did you decide on Harpur College? Did you apply to other schools? And what kind of- RS: 06:49 We applied to other schools, but Harpur, Harpur was just beginning then, and if I remember correctly, it was um Dr. House, the guidance counselor who recommended to my parents that it would be a good place for us to go. And four of us- we went. It was a small school. I think that there were 60 people in the graduating class. It was not and four of us applied to Harpur and got in. Yeah, four of us in the middle school applied to Harpur and got and we all got in so we were not competing against each other. So, the middle school must have had a good reputation. IG: 07:30 Right. And what you know, what- why did you decide on Harpur rather than, you know, buffalo, or any other school in the SUNY system, or anywhere else. Why? RS: 07:46 I guess my parents thought that that is they put us in instead of tending us to the big high school in Albany. I guess they figured that a smaller school would be good for us. And they were right. They were absolutely right. I think Amy and I both. I mean, we just blossomed. IG: 08:04 Well, so tell me about this experience. You know what- how when you arrived, you know what were, just tell us a little bit about that arc of what you were like when you first arrived at Harpur College and how you blossomed? Can you- RS: 08:25 I think I blossomed intellectually, definitely. I blossomed in the way I felt about myself being a competent person, one of our professors, or we both had the favorite, our favorite professor, Dr. Peter Dodge, who we had just because the fact that when we were freshmen, and we had to take World History two semesters of it, and we both ended up in his class. And we-we just connected. And actually, he was Amy's honors advisor, but he also mentioned the fact that to us how, and I think it is a tribute to the kind of school Harpur was that you could have a relationship with a professor for four years, and he could say to you at the end, how he saw us grow from when he had us as freshman in the history course to when we graduated. IG: 09:28 But any sense of the girl that you were when you first arrived in Binghamton and well, you mentioned that you became more self-possessed and more sure of yourself, but you know what-what-what were some of the big world view changes or internal changes? RS: 09:52 Oh, because Harpur was small and it took students from all over New York State, but there definitely was a cultural difference between the students who came from New York City and those who came from upstate. And I have a call. I am going to get a glass of water so I can hear my voice beginning to- IG: 10:25 Okay, we are back on so we continue with Ruth Silverman. RS: 10:33 There was a cultural difference between the students who came from New York City and political cultural and political difference between those who came from New York City and those who came from upstate. And it was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the protest against the war in Vietnam and most of the people who were politically active. And it was also the beginning of a student the student uprising against in loco parentis. And the students who were leading the movement were all the students from New York City. IG: 11:14 So, and how did you look upon these rebelling- RS: 11:19 Well, the big rebellions had not started when I got, when I got to the University of Wisconsin, you know, there it is, but the beginning of, you know, it was beginning- was beginning at Harpur, and it was my introduction to politics. I would have to say. Yeah. IG: 11:44 Because you had not thought of the world before in terms of politics. RS: 11:50 I do not think that if the student, if Harpur, had not attracted such a large contingent of students, I do not know whether or not the campus would have been the same, and I would have been the same because I teach at a local community college, and you do not, you do not get what at my at the local community college. What you got, and at Harpur, these were bright students. Sophisticated, used to traveling the subways, you know, traveling subways and busses by themselves. When they were younger, they just bought a different vibration, a different view of the world, a different politics as they had a different culture. IG: 12:38 And you found that exciting. RS: 12:40 Yes, yeah, the ones, the ones from upstate New York, were more laid back, placid, I guess, looking back upon it now, I would say they were more conservative. They were certainly not [inaudible] and forth on the moon. In fact, I remember there being some kind of a friction between a young woman, I think she was in our dormitory, who was Republican or something. Amy 13:09 Oh yes. And I had never been a Republican in my life. RS: 13:14 And there was some friction there between her and the ones who were beginning to leave, leave the upcoming movement [inaudible] are from upstate. [laughs] IG: 13:25 So, did you get involved in any of the student protests? Yourself? RS: 13:33 No, we were there because of the fact it was just beginning. Then, I mean, people were talking. And because you were in the sociology department, you know, issues were being discussed. But I think because by the time one year later, two years later, when I was at Wisconsin, I mean, that was the really beginning. You know, the free speech movement. The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley, during the time that I graduated Harpur and was at Wisconsin. And the free speech movement at that point, then just moved out, I-I assumed it also began. It went to Harpur, but it certainly went to University of Wisconsin. And interesting enough, one of the faculty members in the sociology department, William Sewell, circulated a letter around faculty at the University of Wisconsin supporting the free rights, free the free speech movement at Berkeley. So, things were just beginning to happen. I think if I had graduated in (19)66 I would have seen a bit more, but we were just on the cusp of it. I mean, you knew, you could tell it was coming. IG: 14:56 Right. So-so tell us you know, for those give us. A very quick history lesson. What was the free speech movement? Was it? And see, sort of, you know, the beginnings of it in at Harpur College. RS: 15:17 The free speech movement emerged as a protest against the war in Vietnam, and the students were, if I remember correctly, the students at Berkeley, Mario [Mario Savio], something about if I remember correctly, was the leader of the free speech movement at Berkeley, and he-he generated the students to come together and openly, you know, in protest-protest on campus, the war in Vietnam. And of course, at that point, college administrators were not we were not used to students protesting like that. In fact, I have a colleague who went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia right at the same time that I was going to Harpur, and she was editor of the newspaper, and she said that even a conservative-conservative-conservative place like the College of William and Mary, protest was beginning to start, even at a place like that, and she was editor of the newspaper, and somebody wanted to come to campus. Was it Aptheker [Herbert Aptheker], the historian, who was also a communist, and the students the college president would not let him come? And the college newspaper got involved, and they were writing articles in the newspaper, you know, free speech. So that was the issue. But you certainly did not have it in the (19)40s and the (19)50s, students organizing on campus, publicly coming out and protesting. And that is where the free speech, free speech movie goes. It is new. It is ever right to the same, you know, free speech that is in the bill of rights as students. IG: 17:04 Right. I mean, it must have been a very heavy time. Did it spill over into the way, into the dynamics of the classroom? Was there more, you know, challenging intellectually of the positions of your professors, although- RS: 17:26 Well, we had one professor in sociology. IG: 17:29 In Harpur or Wisconsin? RS: 17:31 Well, I will get to Wisconsin later, but now we are talking about Harpur. IG: 17:34 Yes-yes. RS: 17:35 Richard Hamilton, who seemed to attract a lot of those students, intellectually and politically. Oh, yes, a new club was formed in I think my junior year, the International Relations Club. And I think Ronald Bayer is one of the founders of the International and they managed to get Eleanor Roosevelt to come and speak, and that was what launched the International Relations Club. IG: 18:15 I remember speaking about Eleanor Roosevelt's visit. Amy 18:20 She visited the campus. Amy 18:21 Yes, it was a fantastic visit. The whole the whole campus, was filled with excitement that Eleanor Roosevelt was coming. IG: 18:29 Amy, just for the purpose of this interview, just tell us who you are. AW: 18:35 I am Amy Weintraub. I am Ruth Silverman's twin sister. IG: 18:38 Very good. AW: 18:39 Who also went to Harpur? IG: 18:40 Thank you. AW: 18:41 Yes, who also went to Harpur? RS: 18:44 So, yeah, Harpur, it was just beginning to Harpur, but I remember our professor, Dr. Dodge, we were listening there was talk show. So, they were talk shows back then, and I do not remember what the issue was, but it was just like today. And I do not know how I was listening to the radio, to this particular station and to this particular show, but somebody in the community was calling in and complaining about that socialist professor at Harpur College, you know, named Peter Dodge, and I remember being floored. And I remember going over to his office and saying, I just heard somebody on the radio call you a socialist professor. IG: 19:36 What did you think about that label at the time? Did you think it was ridiculous? Do you want to protect him? What-what- RS: 19:43 Absolutely it was absolutely ridiculous. Took, you know, to confuse sociology socialists. But he must have been interviewed somewhere, yeah, you know, and he must have said something. And he must have said he was a social- artfully, a sociology professor, and she heard that he was saying and she heard it a socialist. So, you know, it was just beginning at Wisconsin. I mean, at Harpur, two years later, at Wisconsin, I was taking a course on social change, and social change was happening on the campus and the course, I think that is the only time I dropped a course. But this course had no it was so up here, and it had no relation to what was happening outside on the campus. By the time I left, they were teachings all the time. And I was going through the teachings. I was learning so much at those teachings. IG: 20:46 Tell us about that. RS: 20:47 I think if I had, if I had entered Harpur two years later, it would have been the same thing. Okay, I do not because, in fact, it was the times, so it had nothing to do, I think, with Harpur versus Wisconsin, just the fact that I was at Wisconsin who graduated just on the cusp of the movie and the change. And one of the things, the changes that were being asked of the college at that time to do away with, it was not just, you know, the war and civil rights was the whole notion of in loco parentis, and we had to be in the dorm at 10 o'clock at night on weekdays, 12 o'clock on weekends. And there was a dorm mother who would lock the doors, and if you came in late, you have to ring the doorbell and explain where you were. But the big thing was, when you got to be a senior, you could stay out, but remember, there was no place to go. Anyhow, we were on the Harpur campus. Where were you going to go if you stayed out at night? The library closed right? Everything, everything closed down, right? So, the movement was to do away with this whole notion that you had to be in by a certain time and co-ed doors. Why were men and women separated. IG: 22:11 You know, clearly, you know, the movement reached a crescendo at Wisconsin. And you know, just if you could tell us about the teachings, because a lot of these institutions are, maybe have been absorbed by, you know, the culture, but we really do not know what they were at their very beginning. So, what are teachings? RS: 22:37 What is a teaching? IG: 22:38 Yes. RS: 22:38 A teaching is when you announce a public space and that you get some experts, like not-not-not necessarily people from your own university, but people who you have contacted, who are experts, and they come -and it can last for a whole day, and you can choose which one of those talks you want to go to, and it is like rolling, you know. And so, you are learning so much that is not part of a set curriculum. So, I remember, you know, learning so much about the history of Vietnam. And why? You know, why worry in Vietnam. They had never taken any history courses on that part of the world. But by (19)65, (19)66 we were really involved in Vietnam. And so, for that reason, there was more protest that was also, Wisconsin is a larger school, generate more people involved. It was a graduate and, you know, it was a graduate training school. But as I say, it was because you could feel it in the air. You could feel it in the air at Harpur. IG: 23:56 I am just trying to really see what a teaching is, is it, is it an auditorium filled up with experts, as you know, expounding on their subject? RS: 24:10 There was a certain sub, there was a certain topic that is going to be discussed, and it is going to be announced. The lectures are announced at a certain time, and who the speaker is, and these teaching because last the whole day. And you just decided which one it is that you wanted to go to. It was not like one little classroom where somebody was coming was a huge arena, and students were going to the teachings, rather than to their classes, as I did. I mean, I learned nothing about social change in the classroom, but boy, did I see social change occurring right before my very eyes, those two years at Wisconsin and-and the point is the fact that was students who were generating it. This was the whole notion of student. I mean, once before that time, administrators said one thing and everybody. The administrators were not used to students saying no. IG: 25:06 I can see that that is, that is- RS: 25:08 And at Harpur, we began to see students saying no. And I assume that after we left, that the young, the people who were one year, two years, three years behind us, moved into those positions, and, you know, because they saw what was happening. So, I assumed that after we left, it must have been like not, maybe not, because University of Wisconsin was such a large place, such a major university. But it must have been the same way at Harpur, because it was already beginning when we were there. IG: 25:42 So-so, for example, you said, you know, saying no to your administrators was one of the, one of the type of, you know, social, social changes that took place during those during those years, (19)64, (19)65 what were some other social changes that you were witness to, you know, during your college and early graduate years? What were some other social changes that were student-student initiative- RS: 26:18 Between our sophomore year and I am Junior here that summer, Amy and I were counselors at a camp in North Carolina, and we traveled down there by bus to a place called Hendersonville, North Carolina. I mean, train to Hendersonville, North Carolina, right? And it was the beginning of the student, students being involved in the Civil Rights Movement and going down in summertimes. And the last thing my father said to us before we left, he says, "Do not get involved in it." AW: 26:58 I am going to tell that story. RS: 27:00 What? AW: 27:01 I was going to tell that story. RS: 27:02 Do not get involved. You were going down there for the summer. I do not know what he thought we was doing. We were going to do. We were going to go. So, we take the train from New York to Washington, DC. This is, this is a fascinating story. We take the train and at Washington, DC, we have had to switch to another train. So, we walk into the first car, and it is really an old, old train, an old car, and it is completely black-black. So, Amy and I walk we made no what to do, so we walk out into the next car. It is the same thing. What we realized later on was that further up there were the nice, white coaches. We looked at each other, and when you are twins, you do not have to speak. But we knew being nice Jewish girls, that we could not move. We could not we would have to go in. And so, we traveled from Washington to Hendersonville AW: 28:13 In a black car. RS: 28:14 Completely black. AW: 28:15 Only whites in the car. RS: 28:17 And it was not years later until my husband could not take his class one day, and he said, I am showing a film called Eyes on the Prize, a very famous film about the Civil Rights Movement. And this particular one that I was showing was how interstate commerce, how Robert Kennedy had declared that anything that was going between states had to be desegregated, and it had recently been issued okay, that you had to- we did not know that. We just sat on the car, on the train, on the car, because we felt that we could not turn our backs people on the car, that particular car. Must have thought that Amy and I were two civil rights workers, and my father's words came back to me as I am sitting in this class, watching Eyes on the Prize and saying to myself, "Oh my gosh, my father's last words." And here we were. It had just been promulgated, and we were sitting on this train, the only two whites, what else could they think of us? That we were two young civil rights workers, right? Not that we were going to a Jewish camp to be councils for the summer. We were civil rights workers Testing, testing the new law. AW: 29:37 We got to know we got the house to go. They still had the black and white bathrooms. This was 1964. RS: 29:46 So now we go after in (19)64 This was (19)62, so of course, it would still be, AW: 29:51 You were right, we did not go in (19)64 we went in (19)62 years between [crosstalk] at a junior camp north and [crosstalk] [inaudible] to North Carolina. RS: 30:04 [crosstalk] When I went to Wisconsin and met my husband. [AW is offering tea: milk and the sugar and tea} and met my husband see between (19)64 he was two years ahead of me, so he arrived. When I arrived in (19)64, he arrived in (19)62 and between in January, I think between (19)63 and (19)64 He and three other white friends rented a car and drove down to the south. And they went to the trial, the Medgar Evers trial, and again, had just been the court said rumors had just been desegregated. But of course, they go to the trial, and there are these four white kids sitting in the with the blacks, even though it was desegregated, and I did not think anything of it when he first told me a story, but years later, I said, you drove down to the south with a car, four of you white with a Wisconsin license plate, and then you drop in on the trial, and you sit in that part of the courtroom that had been reserved for the Blacks. I said, "Where was your head?" But, of course, I did not purposely integrate the train, but in our own naive way. IG: 31:39 Yeah. But it is, it is, it is a wonderful story and a wonderful act, because we are too, either polite or-or- RS: 31:50 -to living. Yeah, Jewish-Jewish liberal. IG: 31:58 That you did not leave and you did. You know, it is, it is a wonderful thing. It is, you know- RS: 32:06 But anybody, could have come and looked at us and thought we were civil rights workers. Never told the story to my father. But of course, it was years like not that was not that long after, maybe, what 10 years later, when I saw that film and learned that they had just integrated the interstate, the trains and the busses going interstate. I mean, they had just done it like it was not a year before. IG: 32:39 But I am just interested, what were the feelings that sort of, you know, compelled you that no, we were going to stay here? Was it because of your liberality, of your, you know, ethics, of your politeness, or a combination? RS: 32:58 You know, it was both, because the year later, we broke that was the first time. Then we split up. Amy went back to the camp, and I was working at what was called the major camp, the head camp, and it was part of a new movement called Young Judea. And at the end of the summer, there will be a national meeting of everybody at the camp. Okay? So, Amy came up, and then there was this march on Washington. It was August 1963 and we had a debate whether or not young Judea, a delegation from Barryville, New York and [inaudible], would go to the March on Washington under the Young Judea banner. And there was pro and con. It was one of the most it was an epiphany for me, and we voted the vote Benjamin that we were going to send a group down and marching with a Young Judea banner. But what won the day was when people were talking about the prophetic tradition, that we must live that prophetic tradition as Jews of Isaiah, Amos, and that we had to go, and that was the first time in my life I had ever really seen religion used to justify, maybe not justify. So not a good word, but to use, just talk about, IG: 34:43 -to legitimize or- RS: 34:46 -maybe legitimize, also to back up a moral movement. IG: 34:51 Yeah, that is tremendous. It is tremendous. RS: 34:55 And, yeah. So, there was a lot happening. And Harpur being in Binghamton and being a small college, it was even happening there. But of course, it takes a while. I you know I was going to say earlier that this is the 50th anniversary of the sit ins at Columbia University. IG: 35:24 That is right. RS: 35:24 So, when we graduated in 19, when we were graduated in 1964 it was about two, three or four years before the-the real movement started. IG: 35:41 The only thing, the only you know, comparable thing that I could think of, was the when a religious movement actually legitimized a political one. Remember liberation theology in Latin America? IG: 35:57 Oh, yeah, yes, [inaudible] RS: 36:00 Yes, yeah. And we had, we belonged to a conservative synagogue. In addition to going to the middle school, we went to Hebrew high school three nights a week, from six to eight. But we had never really learned about talked about that prophetic tradition. That was the first time in my life, anybody brought up that prophetic tradition, but in Judaism, now, that whole profession, prophetic tradition is the thing that is behind what we call Tikkun Olam. AW: 36:29 Yes, it is called tikkun olam letak, a means to fix so the Reform Movement is very dominant. In the Reform Movement Tikkun Olam to fix the world, which means no to better the world. RS: 36:43 Actually, it comes from the Cesar Terek book. David has more of a mystical meaning, but it has taken over to have a social justice meeting that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, something was broken, and the sparks went out in- AW: 37:03 The Kabbalah. RS: 37:05 What? AW: 37:05 Kabbalah. RS: 37:05 Kabbalah, yeah, Kabbalah. Madonna said, the Kabbalah. But so, it had a mystical thing to bring together, those-those sparks as one. But then it became tied to, not mysticism, black social action. IG: 37:20 And there is a magazine Tikkun [crosstalk] RS: 37:27 So, Lerner, what is his name? Michael Lerner. IG: 37:33 So that, do you think that this prophetic movement was kind of a, not a driving force, but an accompaniment-accompaniment. RS: 37:44 It was a driving force for me because of the fact that I was not into Marxism. That was the time, basically, when Marxism came to college campuses. And a lot of the students from New York were into but they were political science majors, history majors, sociology majors, and they were into reading Marx. RS: 37:46 So, and you decided against that. RS: 37:46 Yeah, it did not. It did not speak to me. But when I discovered that I could be active and stand for certain things, and I could find it in my own tradition, I could find and I felt more I felt more comfortable coming to it from that tradition. IG: 37:46 So, tell us about sort of the formation of Ruth Silverman, the scholar, the- RS: 37:46 Yeah, and a lot of that was due to-to Dr. Peter Dodge, as I said, when we graduated, he said to us that we had grown so and when he first met us as freshman in his history class, and actually he became Amy's honors thesis advisor. And as a matter of fact, it was Amy, this is how close we were when we were sophomores. She said to me, “You know what?" When we are a senior, we are going to do an honors thesis, and we are going to graduate with honors." And I said, "Okay, sounds good to me," but she was determined to do it, and Dr. Dodge, which he could not, he could not be both of our thesis advisors, so Amy-Amy took him and I took somebody else. But Dr. Dodge was much more supportive of her, much more interested in what she was doing than the one that the one that I chose, what was exhilarating when at the end there was an honors thesis presentation, and all the faculty who had honor students and maybe some who did not, were invited to hear our presentations, and I had to get up in front of all of these professors and talk about my honors thesis, that changes you a lot. IG: 37:46 Susan, what did you talk about? RS: 37:46 What was my thesis in sociology? We had in sociology religion; we have read this book called Oligarchy. Well, the original book was by the Italian sociologist [Robert Michels] The iron law of oligarchy, and which he says, "Whoever says democracy", I think the famous quote was, "Whoever says democracy, it is actually me in the end, it is oligarchy." And he- Michelle's and he was, he had studied how the labor unions in Italy started out as being democratic, and then eventually they become less and less democratic as a small group of people tend to take over and run it. Okay? And so, a lot of people started taking that idea and applying it to other kinds of organizations. So, it was applied to the American Baptist. I know what you call the American Baptist Convention, or something like that. Somebody had written a book how they were supposed to be very lay oriented and very democratic. And he said, even in there, you tended towards this oligarchy. And then Seymour Martin Lipset did a study of the book was called Union Democracy. And he said, it is very interesting that when you have some people on top who form the organization or the union or whatever you want to call it, it is not going to be democratic. It tends to be more democratic when the groups exist already and then they coalesce together and forming a national organization. And then you tend to get more democracy, because they were autonomous to begin with. They were not so. So, I started the conservative movement in Judaism, which had three, three parts. There was the rabbinical training school. There was the organization for graduates of the rabbinical school. And then there was the organ, the organizational arm, which was called- AW: 37:46 Not son of America. United Synagogue of- RS: 37:46 United synagogue of America. And so, I did, you know, I went to conventions, I went did a lot of interviewing, and it was obvious that the one arm of the seminary had the- was, you know, the major controlling element, and that the congregational arm of it was not also autonomous, you know. And so that was my that was my honors thesis, and I had to get up and did not talk about my thesis. The fact that I still remember it. IG: 37:46 I was about to say, it is remarkable, but it really must have been a formative experience writing this. RS: 37:46 I see I see this today. I am on the board of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, which is the Long Island chapter of citizen action of New York. There are there is another called Metro Rochester, something like that. Both of us existed before citizen action of New York existed, but with they formed chapters in many places there were top down. It is actually top down because every chapter other than Rochester and Long Island were formed through Albany. So, because that we existed, we existed because we existed. You know, it is nice to have a statewide affiliation, but because of the fact that we existed before they existed, we have much. We have made it clear to them and certain issues, we are part of you, but we existed before you. But I can see that Seymour Martin Lipset was correct. It depends upon how the union was formed, or the organization was formed. And if you had [crosstalk] if you had individual chapters that people, come together, saying the strength in numbers, it is less likely to get oligarchy. IG: 37:46 D-o you think that that was a work that determined the future of your, you know, interests or, I mean, this is it must, you know. I mean, it must have propelled you on to- RS: 37:46 It must have, in some way. I mean- IG: 37:46 In some way, in some way. RS: 37:46 -because of the fact that I know every time there is some kind of a little friction between says an action in New York and us, I always say "I have said it before, I am going to say it again," that this is, this is what we learn in sociology, okay? And it is our history. That makes for that friction, because we existed before they did. IG: 45:24 By the time you got to your PhD studies- RS: 45:28 I was- I had changed my area. Well, when I got to Wisconsin, I became interested in sociology of health and illness, because that was my father's area. IG: 45:38 The sociology, excuse me, of- RS: 45:39 Health and illness. AW: 45:40 There is a thing here for you. Keep it. RS: 45:43 Became interested in sociology of health and illness, and my husband had done a master's thesis in that area, so actually, I built upon his master's thesis, and then when I went back to graduate school, there was a space between my masters and my doctoral work. IG: 46:03 How many years would you say I went back in (19)76 Yeah. So, what happened? You mentioned a husband. So where did you meet? RS: 46:19 At Wisconsin. IG: 46:20 At Wisconsin. RS: 46:21 Two years he was there, two years before me. So, there was, there was no sociology of health program major or anything like that. I am soon there is now. But being a small college, the course offerings were courses that you had to take if you were a sociology major, but Wisconsin, that was one of the major areas. My husband had a fellowship in national from the National Institute of Mental Health. So, but when I went back to NYU, I had given birth to my first child, and I became interested in studying the history of childbirth in the United States. And that got me- IG: 47:13 That is fascinating. RS: 47:14 What? IG: 47:14 Fascinating. RS: 47:15 And that got me involved. When I went back to NYU, I majored in women's health in the sociology department. IG: 47:24 Why did you decide to come to New York City rather than is that- RS: 47:28 Amy, I stayed in Madison the summer between my first and second years. Amy had a fellowship to New York City, and she stayed in New York City with three friends of ours. They rented the apartment of the wife of Hal Holbrook. Hal Holbrook, the actor Hal Holbrook, he would call up every once in a while, to find out how they were doing after his one of his performances as Abraham Lee, that is Mark Twain. He invited them to come. AW: 48:01 It was, um, it was a classroom, naturally. RS: 48:05 He, no, he was playing Tom Sawyer, not Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, Mark Twain. He was the famous performer of Mark Twain. IG: 48:12 I have seen him on television, yeah. RS: 48:14 So, he, they met him afterwards, right? And I had spent the summer, and Madison had a job with one of the State Departments doing something, and I came to New York before going back from my second year. And I said, "I have to, when I get my masters, I have to take a break between Albany Binghamton and Madison." I said, "I need to go to New York," right? I have had enough, you know what, these little places. So, it was fascinating that actually my husband came from Philadelphia during that semester, the Winter Break in (19)65 or going on (19)66. We met in New York, and we had a great time together. And then we get back to Madison, and the first Saturday back, he says to me, he proposes. And I remember saying to him, I will never forget it. Of course, I will never forget anything. Well, I want to tell you something. "My sister and I have both decided that after we get our masters, we want to go in. We want to live in New York." I said, "So if you want to join me in New York. [laughs] IG: 49:33 You must have, he must have been very much in love with you. RS: 49:41 So, it was not the yes, it was not the No, it was a kind of a strange proposal. And it was not until, like two weeks later, that we finally came to realize that that was a proposal. [laughs] IG: 49:55 That is very sweet. RS: 49:56 So, I just wanted to be able to be in New York. And of course, the minute we moved to New York was it, I cannot say it was the very minute, but by the time (19)68 rolled around, we involved. We got involved in the McCarthy the whole "Stay Clean for Gene." We got involved in the McCarthy campaign. IG: 50:22 So, tell us about that. RS: 50:28 57th Street. Amy saw a notice somewhere that there was an office, and Amy can open the door if you are hot--your apartment, as usual, it is hot. AW: 50:44 Huh that the Parker's village. When you leave, before you leave. No, I have all my flowers. We bought those chairs. So, my husband managed to assemble all those four chairs, and I think he did a great job. But the bathroom looks so pretty with the new chairs and my flowers. So, I thought we could sit out there today. But given the weather, we cannot do that. IG: 51:21 I think another time, but it is a lovely view. AW: 51:24 It is. RS: 51:26 So, Amy went and someone said to me, if you were from the Bronx, you do not want to work out of here. So, they sent me to a place in the Bronx on 161st Street. And I told them where I lived, and they said, oh, there is a lovely reform Democratic Club up right where you live. That is organizing for McCarthy, Gene McCarthy. So, it was right near me. And not only did I work for Gene McCarthy, um I became- my husband, and I became members of the club, it drew in a lot of young people, even up in the Bronx, because he was teaching at Fordham, they were young people who were protesting the war in Vietnam. And this little reformed Democratic Club attracted lots of young people who revitalized it. And I stayed with the fact. As a matter of fact, I ran for state office from my assembly district, and I won. I was taken the democratic state committee woman from the 83rd assembly district for several years. IG: 52:38 You have a very storied career. RS: 52:43 And the funny story is, the second they did not expect me to win the machine Democrats. So, the second time I ran, they put the assemblyman's mother ran against me, because this was a inter Democratic Party, intra Democratic Party primary, general election. So, I would go, you talk about how I changed. I went as a quiet little girl entering Harpur and a few years later, in 1968 in the morning, time I am doing subway stops, handing out my literature. And then I said, you know, I can do a lot, get to a lot more people. I cannot keep running up and down the platform. You know, a lot of people coming in on this end, and I cannot get to the people coming in on this end. So, I recruited Amy. I took one end of the platform, [laughter] I took my literature, and then about eight o'clock, it starts thinning out, because at eight o'clock I am going to work, and I see Amy heading towards somebody at the other end of the subway, and I look, oh my gosh, it is my assemblyman. She was heading over to him with my piece of literature, asking I made a [inaudible] something. [laughs] I got there just as she got [inaudible] [laughs] IG: 54:17 And does Amy realize what-what= RS: 54:21 She did not know who he was. I said, you know he was- I said, "Good morning, Assemblyman, taking the subway, the subway station." [laughter] IG: 54:22 It is a good story. So, you are in your work as a politician, what do you think are your main achievements? What did you aspire to do? What did you accomplish? RS: 54:52 I think, I think you know who started it, the position of a committee woman. Eleanor Roosevelt, she insisted that there be a position for women. So, from each district, each assembly district, there was a female committee woman and a male committee woman, and it started with her. So, I was not running against a male. I was running against I was running against a female. Um, so what-wat was the question? IG: 55:31 Accomplishments? RS: 55:32 Accomplishments. Oh, yeah. So, you know the reform Democrats wanted to reform the way elections and politics are in. They wanted to move away from the back room, okay, where people decided who was, who the candidates were going to be. So, there would be the statewide conventions, and if you got enough votes at the statewide convention, you did not have to go the petition, right? Which, when I learned that, I thought, well, this is not much of a reform. There should not be a convention at all. Why are we having a convention? Anybody who wants to run you get enough signatures and you get on the ballot to run. Why should it be that some people get, you know, the blessing that the convention and they get more than 25 percent and somebody else has to go to the petition route. So, my proudest moment was when Hugh Carey ran for governor. Oh, that year I got so many phone calls from people who wanted me to give them the vote at the state convention in Buffalo, and he calls me, and he asked him for my vote. And I said, well, the time that she placed it, I really do not like this convention system. I said, I would rather there would not be any convention at all, they say. So, I think when I get up to Buffalo, I am just going to pass. I am not going to vote for anybody. And he says, "Ruth Silverman, you could sound just like my kind of person." [laughs] And then the other thing was my Bronx- IG: 57:27 How old were you at the time? RS: 57:33 That was not the [inaudible] Well, I was 21 when I graduated in November, (19)64 and this was like (19)74 maybe by now 31 it takes, it takes growing up, but my growing up and becoming who I am started, started at Harpur and my parents were absolutely correct to realize that we needed a small college in order to grow we- I just, you know, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot sing the praises of small colleges enough. I even, I, no matter how large national is, we do not have large lecture classes. I mean, you have a large load of, you know, 4, 3, 5, classes to teach with. each class is top well, in sociology, it is 34 so students Nassau Community College do not sit in a large lecture hall. Well, nobody cares about you and who you are and what your name is. IG: 58:32 No, I have heard said a number of people I have interviewed from Harpur College, the Harpur College at the time, was equal to an excellent, you know, elite- RS: 58:48 You know what they call- IG: 58:50 Private college. RS: 58:53 You know what AW: 58:54 [crosstalk] Brown University. And I worked harder at Harpur College, and I did at Brown University. RS: 58:58 And, you know, they used to call Harpur when we were there, we were called the Swarthmore of the state university system. I do not know whether or not what it is like now. So-so much larger, whether or not students who go there IG: 59:10 Have the same experience. I do not think so. I do not think so. It is a very different- AW: 59:15 How many students are there now? IG: 59:18 At Harpur College? AW: 59:20 For college? IG: 59:20 I do not know. I do not know. I mean, it is, it is, I am sure that it is, RS: 59:25 it was, it was a special place. It was very special. And I felt when I went to University of Wisconsin that I was totally prepared. As a matter of fact, my theory course at Wisconsin was a- what was the exact same course I had to take social science majors. Had to take up what was it called at the end of the there is a word for it, to take- AW: 59:49 Colloquium. RS: 59:51 Yeah, it was, and it was based upon the philosopher Nagel. So, I had to go through the if then stuff about theory. I-I cannot tell Wisconsin, it is the same course I have already taken it at Harpur. IG: 1:00:06 Must have given you a great deal of confidence, right? You know and well, and it is probably an easy pass into a difficult graduate course. What was NYU like? What you know, you-you did a very interesting dissertation. And was kind of, what was, sort of, you know, the climate, what was then, what like in New York City- RS: 1:00:33 In NYU, I did part time- IG: 1:00:36 In intellectual circles- RS: 1:00:38 I did NYU part time, taking two courses in the fall and one course. You would not go to NYU for the high quality of the teaching. IG: 1:01:03 Really? RS: 1:01:04 I had Elliot Friedson was one of the top experts in this field of sociology of medicine, sociology and healthcare, whatever you-you know, whatever you want to call it, right? And then he moved from there. He became very much involved in studying professions, not just the medical profession. So, I take a seminar with him. Meets one day a week for an hour and 40 minutes. So you go to NYU, you take a course with one of the leading experts. He was writing a new book. He would come in, start reading us from where he had left off, and at an hour and 40 minutes, he put the book and correct there. And then the next time we would he would read from where he had left off, reading and chewing gum at the same time. IG: 1:01:59 Did not any of the students complain or about his manner of teaching? RS: 1:02:08 Not him in particular, but what the students did at one point, they wanted to have a student rep on one of the faculty committees. I do not remember how I got it, but I was the student rep, and by this time, you know, I knew my own mind, and I remember the students, well, it was not formal, but I remembered that some informally, the students were taking one stand, and I was supposed to be the representative, and I sitting in on this meeting, and I am listening and I am listening, and I think it was maybe by hiring somebody. I do not remember what it was, but I decided that their position was not the right one. So, I voted the way I felt the vote should go. And I do not remember what the issue was, whether or not it was courses, the hiring of somebody, I do not remember what it was. They were not faced with me, the students, I said, but I have to, you know, I am sitting there, I am listening to the arguments, and you know, you did not, you know, I was not sent here just to do what you [inaudible]. I was sent here to listen and to, you know, do the best I can, you know, but to raise my hand and to vote on something that you know based upon what every argument that I am hearing. And it just so happened that there was an argument that was, you know, different than I thought, better than yours. IG: 1:03:44 So-so, you know- RS: 1:03:46 But all this happened, I have to say this will happen, yeah, from going to Harpur. I do not know whether any of this would have come through if we had gone to a larger, a larger school, but it was the atmosphere of excellence, academic excellence, but also interaction between students and professors, beginning to feel that the times were changing. IG: 1:04:13 They were changing, but also your own upbringing, because your father was an academic. I think that- RS: 1:04:21 he was not, um, he was a state employee. He headed up the Department of Statistics. We did not teach, but AW: 1:04:27 He headed up the department was called epidemiology. I remember statistics or epidemiology; it was one of those. RS: 1:04:36 It was interesting that my father had done a study through the data from the Department of Mental Hygiene on violence committed by people who were mentally ill, and he did it with at that point, the Commissioner of the Department of Mental Hygiene and. Somebody wrote an article in The New Yorker, which I had never heard of at that point, in which they mentioned the study done by Benjamin Malzberg and Hoke. I think hope was the depart was head of department at that point, and Dr. Dodge got the New Yorker, and he was reading this article, and Malzberg is not a very common name. [laughs] So after class one day, he comes up to us, and he says, "Would you happen to have a father, Benjamin Malzberg, who is a sociologist. So, do you relate to him? " and we said, "Oh, that is our father." IG: 1:05:36 A proud moment. RS: 1:05:42 Very proud, very proud. Also in history, American history, when we got to the point about the nativist movement, the nativist movement of the early 1900s and a lot of my farmer, [crosstalk], that led to the passage of the immigration law in 1926 and he had done a lot of work using his data from the department, but that was his dissertation. As a matter of fact, using statistics to show that any tendency to immigrants having more mental illness was due if you control for variables like age, etc., you know, AW: 1:06:21 Or acculturation. RS: 1:06:22 You know, was, it was a culturation. AW: 1:06:23 The second generation, the mental illness among Jews had definitely dropped. RS: 1:06:27 So, any anyhow, um- IG: 1:06:29 From the first? AW: 1:06:30 From the first generation, RS: 1:06:32 Anyhow, that was- AW: 1:06:33 On the first generation more mental illness because they were getting, they were culturing a totally different culture. It was, you know, being- IG: 1:06:40 I have heard that said that they carried kind of the burden of- AW: 1:06:45 Exactly. IG: 1:06:45 -of, you know, scrambling, both [crosstalk] RS: 1:06:50 Alcoholism, anything that it was a matter of migration, and especially- IG: 1:06:54 That is so fascinating. RS: 1:06:55 So, and especially a lot of young men being here by themselves. They did not have any-any families with them? IG: 1:07:01 What are you calling first generation? Though, is it? Is it? You know people first gen born? RS: 1:07:07 I know people get confused on that. First generation is with those who are first born in this country. IG: 1:07:12 Yes, rather than their parents. RS: 1:07:14 Their parents are not first generation. First generation means those who were young. Yeah. So anyway, he-he asked us whether or not we were related to Benjamin Malzberg. AW: 1:07:27 The history professor, Oscar Hamlin had written a book. RS: 1:07:30 Oh, yes, so we got something, yeah, to the section on him when we had this book at that time. I do not know maybe that is the lead from colleges, but was every topic had a pro and a con. I mean two people, you know. I mean not-not opinion pieces, but from the academic literature. And so, the piece that was in there from the academic side. And there, in the body of one of the articles, a name pops up. And of course, the history professor also got it. [crosstalk] But that would not have happened had we gone to a larger university. IG: 1:07:31 Of course, of course. RS: 1:07:31 So, you know, our preparation for graduate school was top notch. And I am so happy that we got into Harpur, because while I was fourth in the class and Amy was fifth, math was not our [inaudible]. So, we got through algebra, and we got through geometry, and we decided not to take any more math, which was, I do not know how they allowed us to do that, because these days, in order, they did not call it the advanced Regents diploma, but you really need the third that third math class and that they took. They took the two of us anyway, and they took one other student who did not take the third math class, and the three of us, when we got to Harpur our first semester, had to take a course to make up for it in probability. There I am- we are without my father, the statistician I recently was talking to a friend who was an electrical engineer, and I told him that I had to take probability my first year because I did not take trigonometry in high school. He said, "Ruth, you should have taken trigonometry. It is much easier than probability." So, we made Harpur anyway. IG: 1:07:35 Yeah, you made Harpur anyway. RS: 1:07:35 And as a matter of fact, I do not know whether or not I even remember who Kathy Henderson and Stuart Lewis from Harpur also went and the admissions officer at one point. I guess, he, I do not know how my parents knew this, but the admissions over asked Dr. House, who was the guidance counselor at Milton, whether or not there were any more students and more [inaudible] and more students on the level of the four of us. RS: 1:07:35 Well, but that is, that is, you know, certainly a great, great accolade to Harpur College and the education that you all have gone. RS: 1:07:36 But I am curious, because people who were at Harpur, this is the (19)60s, yeah, so people who were at Harpur in (19)68 was there ferment there? IG: 1:10:43 Yes. RS: 1:10:44 Eventually? IG: 1:10:45 Eventually-eventually, I think that they were more certainly politically involved. But Ron Bayer, for example, is quite a graduate of (19)64- RS: 1:10:57 (19)64 and I think he was active in students for democratic [crosstalk] IG: 1:11:00 He was extremely-extremely active- RS: 1:11:02 When I think, when I think of the students coming from New York and how politically active they were, the name that always comes to mind is Ronald Bayer. IG: 1:11:12 I mean, he is tremendous. And so, in my mind, he sorts of, you know, epitomizes the most [crosstalk] RS: 1:11:19 He is the one who started the International Relations question, I am positive of it, and he must have been the one who contacted Eleanor Roosevelt. IG: 1:11:27 Right. So-so, yeah, you know, and I have heard from, you know, the majority, I would say, the vast majority, of individuals I interviewed what you know, superlative-superlative education, and they, they got at Harpur and individualized attention and all that. So, you know, just your career trajectory, you graduated from NYU. What-what did you do? RS: 1:12:01 I teach at Nassau. IG: 1:12:02 No, I know is that your, was that the job that you got after getting your PhD, and did you just stay there? Or did you, kind of- RS: 1:12:14 I had a teaching assistantship at NYU. RS: 1:12:16 I also had a research assistantship one year, and then when I graduated and was trying to work on the dissertation as well, but I had, you know, children, I had to go somewhere. So, I had to pay for-for Ari, and that when I had the second child to go, to go to daycare, so I taught a course at Nassau Community. And then, you know, I eventually just stayed there and I got two National Endowment for the Humanities awards, [inaudible] IG: 1:12:16 I see. IG: 1:12:54 In what? RS: 1:12:55 The first one because my area, that was a fascinating seminar. I spent the summer, spent eight weeks at Cornell. It was called humanities and medicine, but it was, really was a sociology, in many ways, a sociology, of course, but it was interdisciplinary. And was Sandra Gillen was an interdisciplinary and he ran the seminar. We read lots of literature to see the connection between medicine and how people illness is defined and how it is reflected in the humanities and in the literature, etc. It was a fascinating seminar and- RS: 1:13:37 And what was that? RS: 1:13:38 My essay to get in- IG: 1:13:40 Excuse me, what-what year was- RS: 1:13:44 1986. And then 10 years later, I think it was, I was asked to teach a course on the history of Israel in the history department, because, actually, my husband was approached by the chairperson because of the fact that they had it on the books and it had not been taught in years and years and years, the chairperson happened to know my husband, and my husband said, my wife can teach it. She has got an acknowledge. You have an excellent background. But in her graduate work at NYU, one of the first papers she wrote was a history of the labor movement in Israel. And so, she knows something. So, I taught the course. And then one summer, Michael Stanislavski was one of the leading experts in the history of Zionism, was giving a seminar. The first seminar at Cornell was open to people from community colleges and four-year colleges. No, that was the community college one, the one at the one at- AW: 1:14:51 Columbia. RS: 1:14:51 -Columbia. Now I do not remember which one, one of them was only four. For community college people. So, I was only competing against people from community colleges, but the other one was open to anybody, from anyone and yet, I was able to I was able to get in a community college competing against people from four-year colleges, and the college is very proud, because college likes to publicize the people who get these national awards- IG: 1:15:23 Of course. RS: 1:15:24 -and I brought two of them. IG: 1:15:26 So, humanities of medicine and? RS: 1:15:28 The humanities, it was so interdisciplinary. We were reading Roth [Philip Roth], The Anatomy Lesson and using that as a parttime to understand something about modern medicine. People were doing. There were people there who were art specialists. There were people there who came with a drama background and all bringing a different perspective on-on medicine and illness from their, from their disciplines. They, I mean the famous, but the famous painting, I do not remember. It is in the universe. It is in Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia Art Museum, the famous one, when the-the operation and shows the doctor. [crosstalk] IG: 1:16:19 I can see it. I can see it. I do not know. I can see it the very it is a surgery. It is an autopsy. RS: 1:16:29 Autopsy or something. IG: 1:16:31 I think it is an autopsy. And it is very stark, and so same colors black- RS: 1:16:35 It was brilliant, and they were the way he-he wove us back and forth between different disciplines and the understanding of- IG: 1:16:44 That is more commonplace now. You know, places like Columbia, for example, have narrative and medicine program that was started by a doctor who also has a PhD in literature in the early 2000s I forget her name, but it is sort of, you know, but when, when you were looking back at (19)86 I think it was really you were in the vanguard of such a movement. RS: 1:17:09 Oh, yeah. I remember somebody did a slide presentation on Da Vinci of his drawings. And he had one picture of himself in which he drew himself with a wound. I was taken aback. I raised my hand and I say, you know, psychology, psychiatry, has so much to say about penis envy. He said, "Look at this picture." I said, "Why has anybody ever written up womb envy?" AW: 1:17:46 Written up what? RS: 1:17:49 Womb envy, W, O, M, B, and it was actually directed towards Sondra Gilman, silence. But to me, that was an obvious. He was depicted in this drawing, having a womb. That tells us a lot about something. IG: 1:18:14 So, you got this- you had two awards, and that allowed you to do what? RS: 1:18:21 Well, when you get into the seminars, first of all, it is, it is prestigious for a community college to have somebody come in and get to get to and then you have to write a paper as part of this. You have to do some research. IG: 1:18:35 Right. Do they give you money to- RS: 1:18:37 Oh, yes, you get a stipend, of course. And actually, the one that I took, the one at Columbia, that was, that was the summer that my mother had her first heart attack, so I was going up and back to war on a lot. So, I did not do the best piece of research I possibly could, but I did something I was interested in. What since Freud did not consider himself Jewish in the traditional sense, I was always curious about, well, how did he feel about Zionism so? But then they were nine of us. All seminars are 12 people, three women. I was one of them. One of them was a Palestinian woman. It was very-very interesting. So, she was not, you know- Two years later, my colleague in the English department, Sharon leader, who was both a developer of the Jewish Studies project at the college and the Women's Studies project, called me up and said, "Ruth, you know, the National Women's, National Women's Association, the women of studies, whatever it was, she said, you know, has been very cool to having panels, having anything to do with Jewish women." And she says, "I finally worked on them, and they have agreed to have some panels this summer at Skidmore, which where they met. He said, “Would you give a talk on women in Israel?" And I said, "Well, I am not an expert on Israel." I said, "I am not an expert on women in Israel." But as for talking, I said, "What, you know, Sharon, I think I want to do a paper on women and Zionism. And I said, you know, of all the papers in that seminar on Zionism, not a single one of them was about a woman." AW: 1:20:36 And there is a book. Arthur Hertzberg. RS: 1:20:37 I am going to get there. I am going to get here. So, they made your book in the field, Arthur Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, came in 1959 published. It was a hit, and it was reissued and reissued and reissued and reissued. There is not a single woman in that compendium, right about of a woman I said, you know, I think I need to do a paper and do some research called Women Written out of History. So, I gave the paper, and I revised the paper so many times, and gave the paper at various places, and I was on to something. IG: 1:21:20 You were so forward looking. RS: 1:21:22 I was so for- because did you see this month- IG: 1:21:28 And when was this? This is- RS: 1:21:29 1990s. IG: 1:21:30 That is, that is tremendous. You know- RS: 1:21:32 -had awesome magazine, which my mother made us like [crosstalk] maintenance life, members of this organization had, also has an article this month. It just came the other day. [crosstalk] let me finish yet. I will get it. You can take a look at okay, go, get go, get it. Has been reissued, not reissued. A new a timely, new book, new people in it. And guess what? This volume now includes women. [inaudible] magazine [inaudible] to do about it that, finally, that women are coming back into the history. IG: 1:22:14 Well, exactly, [crosstalk] RS: 1:22:17 Zion is invented now, putting women back in the picture. I- boy, was I on to something? IG: 1:22:26 Just recently, the New York Times started doing an obituary column of the women were forgotten. [crosstalk] AW: 1:22:39 Yeah, right. I read some of those. It was absolutely fascinating. IG: 1:22:45 This was very recent. RS: 1:22:51 "Female and Zionist then and now, reclaiming the voices of the women who helped shape the Jewish liberation movement." Now, what is really fascinating is, okay. This is the article. IG: 1:23:02 Yes. RS: 1:23:04 Yesterday I get the Jewish week, and the Jewish Week has an interview with Gil Troy, the new the one who put he is fighting it. He is quite a scholar. AW: 1:23:16 if you want to take a look at that. RS: 1:23:17 Could not believe, I could not believe it was the same book, the person who was interviewing him does not mention there is not one mention that what is new about the new is that, not only that, it has got some new men in it that were not in the original one. Not one mention in this conversation, going back and forth, that the new book now includes women for the first time. IG: 1:23:43 Right. AW: 1:23:45 Here it is. IG: 1:23:47 It is, it is a tremendous- AW: 1:23:50 Jewish Week, Gil Troy, the most recent one. RS: 1:23:55 [crosstalk] And I got this earlier in the week, and then this came yesterday, and talking about the new addition, there is only one, there is only one mention of women in this conversation, right? And it is a criticism that Anne Roiphe was included in it, but does not mention any other woman that is included, and there is no addition. 63 women were mentioned. I am glad that it mentions, you know, it has been re-re edited, and includes women. I am not very happy that a major paper that goes out to hundreds, 1000s and 1000s of Jewish people in, you know, in the New York City area has this- is unhappy with the fact that, but Roiphe does not know diaspora Jewish or Zionist history or religion or philosophy, it is hard to place Roiphe seriously in a serious volume on Zionist ideas. Other than that, there is no mention in this- AW: 1:24:56 This whole review. RS: 1:24:58 -about all the other women who have been included, but having a problem with Anne Roiphe. [laughter] IG: 1:25:06 Right-right. So- RS: 1:25:09 Write that to the answer room. I think it is time to write a letter. IG: 1:25:11 Yes-yes-yes. So-so you are still kind of charging ahead and-and, you know, challenging the status quo, and you are sort of, you know, true to your value, to your roots, and as a young person, you know- RS: 1:25:32 Actually, in many ways, we are following me through on my father, not just, but not just the fact that we are sociologists, but he was one of the first immigrant boys, okay, Jewish boys, to go to City College, and then he went. He got a- he went, he got his masters at Columbia. Then he got a friend's fellowship to go to Europe. He was going to study with Emile Durkheim, but by the time he got there, and it was the war of an on Emile Durkheim had died, but he studied with, you know, I think, Amy Durkheim, son in law, who was also an expert in the field. And he went to the London School of Economics. Then he goes back to Columbia and finish up his PhD. And the reason why he did his dissertation on immigrants is it is because of that that when he you think, you think academia has left us today, back then, academia was leading the nativist you look at the literature on nativism is all coming from academia and especially from sociologists. And he is sitting in all of these courses, whether it is at Columbia City College- IG: 1:26:42 Oh, I remember, I remember- RS: 1:26:44 English, England, and they are all talking about, you know, these immigrants- IG: 1:26:50 Right. RS: 1:26:55 -whose genetics are lesser, and that, you know, what will happen if we cream them into the country. It was not coming from, you know, the- it was coming from academia. I took a seminar once at the American Museum of Natural History with Professor associate of biology, actually from Stony Brook, who became interested in these racist biological ideas. And he pointed out we were sitting in the Museum of Natural History that in the 1930s the guy named Mueller, who was head of the Museum of Natural History here in New York, was one of those nativist racists, and that Hitler thought in many ways that the United States would join the war on his side, because we had all of these academics and the Institute out in Long Island, the scientific Institute. IG: 1:27:46 Oh, that is [crosstalk] springs-springs. That is where [crosstalk] the people- RS: 1:28:05 That is what eugenics records were kept. IG: 1:28:05 Cold springs. RS: 1:28:06 Cold Spring, that is where the oceanic records were kept. So he is, so here is a young Jewish [crosstalk]. Here is a young Jewish boy, and he is sitting at all these classes, and he is hearing people lecture and talk about immigrants. And so, when he got the job up in Albany, he had a wonderful mentor. He first got the job as the assistant director, and the person who, Dr. Pollock, who was the director, was his mentor and helped him do his dissertation using the statistics from the Department of Mental Hygiene. And from there, he just, he has mentioned in the introduction to Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma [Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944)]. His work is mentioned. So anyway, one of the things I am involved in when I moved to the island is I am on the board of the Central American refugee center. And when people, when people ask me why I joined the Central American refugee center? Well, I joined it for two reasons. I said, I follow this. I am following through on my father's work. I said, he did it academically. I said, I give you I joined the board to do it in a different in a different fashion. IG: 1:29:19 That is beautiful. I think that you know we are going to, you know, think of wrapping up [crosstalk] RS: 1:29:29 When I think this, all began, shy, a shy little girl, I have a story to tell we all had to take on our freshman year at Harpur, this broad-based social science course that it was neither sociology political science, okay? And we read books like gold race all of a sudden, IG: 1:29:51 Not kingdoms of nations. RS: 1:29:54 No. IG: 1:29:55 Something of nations. RS: 1:29:57 No. We were reading. We were reading those books, right? Um, broad, general books, Pirenne. We did not read that in history, Pirenne], [Henri Pirenne], Medieval Cities [Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade], right? I think we read that in that social so, I mean, we were reading really high-level stuff, and the professor, one day, who was not Jewish, decided that he was going to devote the class discussion to the {inaudible] trial. AW: 1:30:22 I am not going to say that. IG: 1:30:24 To the what? AW: 1:30:24 [inaudible] trial. RS: 1:30:26 [inaudible] Franklin [crosstalk] was on trial. So, you know, instead of discussing this high level, okay, Richard Sawyer, I even remember his name, so he starts talking about it. And one of the first comments that come out, Paul [inaudible], I even remember the kid's name, Jewish from New York. Says, "Oh, well, why are we discussing that now, that was a while ago," and the teacher was not Jewish, literally, the mouth fell down. And from my community, where I grew up, in old New York, nobody, but nobody would ever say that. And what did I do? RS: 1:31:09 What did you do? RS: 1:31:10 I kept quiet. I had not yet found my voice, and in many ways, I was too shocked. IG: 1:31:21 Wonderful example, that is, that is, that is what I was searching for, I think, in the beginning, because that that shows you that huge road [crosstalk] RS: 1:31:30 In front of him was a small class, but nevertheless, in front of all these people, I was open my mouth. I had never heard a Jew speak like that. IG: 1:31:43 No. RS: 1:31:44 -not where I came from. IG: 1:31:45 No. RS: 1:31:45 -you would not. You would never say a thing like that. IG: 1:31:47 But-but you are saying this that you had not found your voice, that you-you were to, you know, we are taking a back. I was embarrassed for him. RS: 1:31:59 And I tell you, actually, I think the first time I ever found my voice, I used to go to services in Albany. We would go to service Saturday morning Binghamton. So, at Wisconsin, I went to the hill. Now, I went to services every Saturday. And one February, cold February day I walk in, it is quiet, it was so cold, and I walk into the sanctuary. There is eight men. They look at me and the look of disappointment on their face, but you cannot walk [crosstalk]. So, I sit down, and then somebody says, "Well, you know, we only need one other man, because then we can take the Torah out and count the Torah as a male." AW: 1:32:50 And the Torah is a female word. RS: 1:32:53 Well, this is the second time in my life I have got this total I had never known this. Heard anybody say that, and I had no control of what came out of my mouth. I was thinking this, and as it was in my head, I hear it coming out of my mouth. I do not believe this. I said, "I am sitting here a living, breathing human being, and you are not going to count me, but you are going to take the Torah out. And not only you and count the Torah, you are going to count the Torah as a male, [inaudible] this." Absolute silence. Nobody said anything, and we never did [inaudible] They got the Torah. It must have been my second year. I must have been engaged already, because the fact when I left to come to New York and get married, the rabbi called my apartment and spoke to my roommates. He-he had been sitting on it my comment for months and months, and he wanted to call and let me know that he wanted me to participate in the high holiday services in the fall. The only problem was, I was gone. [laughs] IG: 1:34:14 [inaudible] what? RS: 1:34:14 I was gone. IG: 1:34:15 You were gone. RS: 1:34:16 He waited until August, and I had never told him that he knew my husband, but I had never told him that Arnie and I were leaving and that we- I was too busy, you know, finishing up looking for a job, looking for a place where we were going to live, you know, preparing a wedding from Wisconsin that never thought on me to go tell him I should have. I really feel badly. I did. I so he waited until I am gone- IG: 1:34:43 Yeah, but-but you changed his mind. RS: 1:34:47 To-to think about it, and to say yes, he wanted me to, and I would have loved to have been there to participate, but I cannot be in two different places at the same time. IG: 1:34:56 That is a great That is a great story. That is a great story. Let us, let us, if you were, you know, since, since students are going to be listening to these interviews, I always ask my interviewees toward the conclusion, what advice would you give a beginning student about a beginning you know person, either you know about to graduate or how they how they should think about the rest of their career. You know, what are the most important lessons that you have learned from-from your you know, studies and from your life that you would like to impart to these young people. RS: 1:35:42 As important as the academic part is, one of the things that you should be open to is getting involved in groups and issues that are not tied completely to what you are there should be a connection, but there should be some kind of cause, or some kind of a group, because of the fact that often it is for these kinds of connections that you make, not completely in the academic world, but that can lead you into very, very interesting places. Now, if somebody wants to get a PhD in neuroscience, of course, my advice was, stick closely to your academic career and find yourself a professor who will be a mentor you would give academia but I still think that it is important to try and move outside of academia and try and, you know, there are groups out there that, even with your interest in getting a PhD in neuroscience, that would be love to have you come and join them, and, you know, be on some kind of, let us say, advisory board, and that can lead you often to all kinds of interesting, interesting places, people that you never would have met. IG: 1:37:15 That is very good advice. RS: 1:37:22 So it was, it was, you know, moving beyond-beyond, moving into McCarthy campaign. And then, you know, they are being so involved in running for a political office. And then when I moved to Long Island, I felt, I felt like, I need to, I need to join something. I need to become involved. take how to take my time. But it is all these groups that are now involved in that, you know, they make an- in fact, I become the expert on immigration and what is happening in Long Island, in my department, because my involvement with the immigration issue. Fact, in fact, actually, I wrote up a paper. I presented a paper at a Hofstra conference. They have a suburban study of suburbia center, or something like that. And they were having a conference, and they were talking about the changing nature of Long Island. And I actually, I know, because my involvement there, I actually went and did a research paper. We went to the census. I did, you know, I did a number of things, and I present [crosstalk] as a matter of fact- IG: 1:38:32 So-so about what-what-what- you know, in a nutshell- RS: 1:38:37 Why-why, why was, why was there so much conflict all of a sudden around immigration on Long Island? And I thought of this because Andrew Beveridge, one of the leading sociologists of immigration at Queens College, I attended a session of his sociological national meeting in New York City, and he said he is talking about the fact that, you know, there were no immigrants on Long Island. That is the guy ever driven around the place. You go to certain communities on Long Island, well, the South doors are, I mean, you are not going to see them. In memory where I live. You go to Hempstead. Yeah, you will see them. You go up to Glen Cove. Glen Cove had such a bitter- they tried to, they tried to pass that that they could not stand out. And you know, I said, so yes, I give him. And I said, the proper the problem is that, in terms of the general numbers, they might be like, but you take a place like Glen Cove and all of a sudden, for some reason or other, you see the numbers of immigrants increasing. And then I did a similar community out on Suffolk County Farmingdale. And he said, it is not so much whether the numbers are 70 percent the point is the fact that if you census after census, you see the numbers increasing. That is the important point, not whether you have a map of the census and you see that, you know, in a large census district that you look at within the census district, and that is why there was conflict on Long Island, because they were moving into suburbia, where they never been. We associate immigrants with New York City, right? But they were moving into suburbia, and maybe your census figures did not pick it up. But you cannot always go by the Census figure, and you got to break it down into smaller units, and that is why we had so much conflict. They were moving. It was the new movement, and there was a woman who came to Carson for a while, got a BA at Harvard. She got her law degree at Harvard. She came involved in a Spanish organization in western so when she came to New York, she started something the clinical the workplace project, because Carson deals with the legal issues. She was dealing with what was happening in Long Island, and she wrote a book called suburban sweatshops. How immigrants are moving to the Long Island, and maybe they are not working in a factory. But one other sweat shops, lawn care. Kitchen, restaurant kitchens, you know, you go through the issues, calling them suburban sweatshops. IG: 1:41:23 Right. That is very interesting. RS: 1:41:27 And but you know, if I had not looked out of the confines of academia and become involved with community organizations, would I know this. And as a matter of fact, then, matter of fact. Deborah, not, no, Jennifer-Jennifer, something, she kind of, she got a MacArthur reward for her work in setting up a workplace project and her book. IG: 1:41:50 Jennifer who? RS: 1:41:50 Jennifer Gordon, I think. She got it. She got she became a MacArthur scholar. But how would I know about this if I had just, if I had not gotten out of academia and looked around and said, “What else can I do?” IG: 1:42:04 Yeah, well, you know, there is, there is a tradition, I think in Italy, of that was sort of personified by Umberto Echo where, you know, intellectuals were public, public intellectuals, so they have both the role in their larger community- RS: 1:42:24 Europe has [crosstalk], the public of the public until at the public intellectual right? IG: 1:42:28 This has been a tremendous pleasure. RS: 1:42:32 Well, it was really lots of fun going back and thinking about Harpur and the- (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ruth M. Silverman Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Womens’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Silverman, Ruth ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Ruth Silverman, PhD, is a sociology professor at Nassau Community College, where she created the Women’s Studies Program. She is the sister of Dr. Amy Weintraub. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-05-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ruth Silverman.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-05-18 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 102:37 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/60cec59d770b9c91884d40fe45451305.mp3 52dee783fe7c9670de20d8714300c9ea https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3c63da288c8182b8d15396fff51ce06c.jpg c27841adc89d3cb54993eab65248cea4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2017-11-27 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Stephen Norman Weiss Year of Graduation 1967 Biographical Text Stephen Norman Weiss is an attorney in New York specializing in Litigation, Patent and Trademark and Intellectual Property cases. He is managing partner at Stephen Norman Weiss Law Office, but currently semi-retired. He pursued a liberal arts education at Harpur College, which he believes was on par with an education from an elite private college. His JD is from New York Law School. Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni living in Tenafly, NJ; Harpur College – Alumni working in New York City. Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Stephen Norman Weiss Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 27 November 2017 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:03 All right, okay, so for the record, this is Irene Gashurov interviewing Steve Weis. Steve, can you tell me your name, your age and who you are? SW: 00:23 Okay, my name is Stephen Weiss. I am 72 years old. I am a man. I graduated at Harpur College in October 1966 but I am officially the class of June 1967. I am a lawyer. I practice patent litigation and international law in New York City, and I live in Tenafly, New Jersey. I have a wife and four children and five grandchildren, and what else about me? That is who I am. IG: 01:01 Um, that is fine. That is [crosstalk] SW: 01:03 Tenafly, New Jersey. IG: 01:04 Okay, so where did you grow up? SW: 01:06 I was born in Bronx County, New York City, in 1945. I go- I-I grew up in, oh, I was I live- We lived in the Bronx until March 1958. My first memory, big memory of the Bronx, was coming home from elementary school, and there was a block party going on, celebrating the death of Joe McCarthy and the whole street and- It was fabulous. 815 Fairmount Place. You can actually find that in Google, but that is where I lived, and there was a big block party, and I was wondering what was going on, and they were all celebrating that someone had died, which was odd to a kid, but um the person that died was Joe McCarthy. So I lived, we lived there, and my sister, myself and my parents lived there until March (19)58 and then we moved to Flushing, Queens, and we lived there until- I lived there until June (19)63 when I left to go to college. I went to high school at Brooklyn Technical High School, which was in Brooklyn, New York, so I had to commute to high school, and there I studied engineering. I know I never became an engineer, and that is probably good, because the bridges and tunnels in New York City that stand today probably would not be there if I went for engineering. [laughs] So then I start- when I applied to Harpur College, at the time, there were two financial programs that made college free for me. I do not know if they still exist. One, you had to take a test for. It was called the Regent scholarship. And if you were a resident of the state of New York, you took a test, and I do not know a certain grade gave you the scholarship, and otherwise you did not get it. And so I got that. And then there was another program called the Scholar Incentive Award, and that was given to all residents of the state of New York, so if you had both, then basically went to college for free. And which is what I did, went to college basically, I mean, there was, there was, like a nominal fee, but I did not pay for dormitory. There was a meal plan, and of course, there was tuition. I paid for books. That was it. And at- when I got accepted to Harpur College, there was no state univ- there was a State University of New York system, but Harpur College was known as Harpur College. It was, was not, was not known as SUNY Binghamton. It was not, I do not know if it was part of SUNY Binghamton or not, but the sign was Harpur College. The acceptance documents which are going to donate to you say Harpur College. And they were just starting the trimester program. My class was the first class that had the opportunity to go in July of (19)63 I wanted to get out of my house as soon as possible, so I opted to go right after I graduated high school to go to college. So that is my background leading up to college. IG: 04:20 Yeah-yeah. so what I am just will return to Binghamton University, and I am very interested to learn what you knew of Harpur College at the time that you applied. SW: 04:37 They- there was no Internet, there was no email, the- we had a guidance counselor at the Brooklyn Tech. And at the time, if you went to school in the one of the New York City High Schools, because my sister went to music and art in New York City, what they would tell you is that you could apply to and I remember three or four colleges, period. I mean, you could not pay that. You could not apply to more, even if you wanted to. I think if you were rejected, you could get another application. But I know people, I know I have four kids and they, I know what they did, but I probably spent more in college applications than people spent on tuition back then, but, but then you could not do that, and one of the applications had to go to the city university system, which was city CCNY, Queens College, Brooklyn, you had to apply to one of them. So that left you with three. And then the guidance counselor said, Well, there was, there was a, he called it a new college. I guess it was not new. Was not was I do not think it was new. It was fairly new because it had been someplace else. Had been Vestal, I think, and they recently moved to the Binghamton just a few years before I started. I think, I think, I am not sure. So he gave me this brochure on Harpur College, and it was a liberal arts college, and I did not want to go into engineering. I want to want the liberal arts, because I like the literature. I like learning various subjects that it want to be, you know, science and engineering. So that was a liberal arts college, and I do not remember. Oh, I know where else I applied. I applied to Oberlin. Oberlin, Ohio. So Oberlin College, and I do not remember if I got in or not, but I mean, I went to gone there for free, then I could not afford it, and I applied to one more, and I did not want to go to the city colleges, because I had to get out. I had to get out. I was very highly motivated to get away for reasons that I will go into so I remember, I remember it was a green brochure, and it just, I just remember, I remember the brochure, it was green, it was like four pages, and it just described the liberal arts education. And so it intrigued me. Now, we did not visit colleges. Then the way, you know, as I said, with my four kids. I mean, I spent money. We flew all over, we flew to Michigan, we flew out to everywhere you can, you name it. We visited with four kids. As I said, on airfare and applications, I spent more than college tuition, but then you did not visit. So CCNY I knew because was in the city, Oberlin. I never visited. I just knew from the brochure the other college that I applied to, I do not even remember, and I did not visit Harpur so but that was the only university that, other than CCNY, that I applied to, where I could use the Regent scholarship and the incentive program. So it was liberal arts, and it just looked interesting, so that is why I applied there. But there was no visiting, no interviews, nothing. IG: 07:55 Let us just backtrack. Um-um, tell me what your parents did for a living, and how many were you in your family? SW: 08:11 My father worked for the state of New York as a tax examiner, and also had a second job selling insurance. He did that for my home, and my mother was a clerk or secretary for the Department of Buildings for the city of New York. And my sister, who is seven years older than I, she actually got married when I was 13 and became and finished the last two years of college, being married and she became a teacher. So she moved out in (19)58 she moved out the year that we left the Bronx and moved to Flushing. IG: 08:52 So did your parents value education, and did they see that education as a vehicle of to a better life. What was their attitude? SW: 09:06 I want to be totally honest [crosstalk]. IG: 09:07 Yes. SW: 09:08 Okay, well, I came from a dysfunctional family, okay, my parents really did not get along, just one of the reasons I had to get out, and that is one of the reasons that my sister left in (19)58 and she got married. She was sophomore in college. She just had to get out. So it was a very difficult childhood, and that is one of the reasons I went to wanted to go to Brooklyn Tech to just to get away. So I commuted to high school. I did not want to go to my local high school. I took a test, and in Brooklyn Tech, you could start in the ninth grade, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, you had to start the 10th grade, and I wanted to get out. So my mother, neither of my parents went to college, but my mother was-was more encouraging. My father, I actually had to forge his name on the consent form to go to Brooklyn Tech, but my mother helped me out, you know, when she could. So my mother valued education. Now my-my mother's brother, he was actually dean of the graduate school at CCNY during the (19)60s. His name is Oscar, was- is Oscar Zeichner, z, e, i, c, h, n, er, and my mother's maiden name is Zeichner. So his family was also dysfunctional. I do not want to fame my uncle, but he was, he was dean there, and they wrote history book, and so he obviously highly educated, PhD. So my mother valued education, my father, I mean, I did not really, I mean, would not really talk that much. So I do not know what, what he valued, but I always thought. I always knew I would go to college. I do not know why I knew, but I knew I would get actually, ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to be a lawyer. I mean, I have, like, I have some stuff from my childhood, like, like, old, autographed books in the sixth grade. You know, it starts off go little album far and near to all the friends I hold so dear, and tell them each to write a page that I might read in my old age. So now I am 72 I went back and looked at it when I was in the third grade. I wanted to be a lawyer. I do not know why, because I did not know any lawyers. No one in my family was a lawyer, but I wanted to be a lawyer. [laughs] so, so I knew I was going to get a higher education. I never doubted it, and that is not because of parental encouragement or anything. IG: 11:50 But it if not parental encouragement. Do you think that the encouragement came from your teachers and maybe your [crosstalk] SW: 11:57 I think everyone- IG: 11:58 -your, um- SW: 11:59 I am sorry. IG: 12:00 Yeah. SW: 12:01 -everyone in my neighborhood was expected to go to college. I mean, I was brought up in a Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx, and everyone there was expected. It was just like you were expected to go to kindergarten and expected to go from the sixth grade to the seventh grade- IG: 12:18 Right. Yeah. SW: 12:19 I mean, it was just-just understood that that would happen as natural as, you know, as guys going as eating dinner, We just understood that you would go to college. I do not know anyone who did not expect to go to college in the group of people that I grew up with. I mean, it just was, I do not know anyone who just thought of getting a job, or thought of enlisting in the military or thought of going becoming a technician, everyone that I knew, every page in my year, in my elementary school where they signed the autograph book. They all talked to talk about college. IG: 12:23 Right. So was that- was the culture [crosstalk] SW: 12:32 It was the environment, was the entire environment. Was the public, the most unbelievable public-school system. IG: 13:01 Yes. SW: 13:02 I read in high school. I read The Rubaiyat. I read, I read Heart of Darkness in high school. I mean, I mean, I remember, I remember, I remember poems I read in the in junior high, I remember reading John Green Whittier. Do you familiar with that? No. Do you know that? IG: 13:22 No. Third speaker: 13:22 Yeah. SW: 13:23 The Maud Muller, it says, "of all the words of tongue and pan the sad a star it might have been." I still remember that this elementary school would do a sixth grade. So it was the public-school system was unbelievable at that time, I mean, in my neighborhood, Jonas Salk, who had the polio vaccine. He went to my Junior High School in the Bronx, yeah. It was just-just unbelievable public education. IG: 13:37 Right. Right. SW: 13:53 So it was just expected. IG: 13:56 So when you arrived to Harpur College, what-what did the campus look like? You know, was it a culture shock for you to come from the city. SW: 14:10 No. IG: 14:10 And end up in the- SW: 14:12 The country. IG: 14:13 -in the country. Yes, SW: 14:14 No, it was not. I do not know why. It really was not. I mean, it just-just, I cannot explain it. I said, no, like, like zelig, like a chameleon. Third speaker: 14:26 Do you want to draw that for us? IG: 14:26 Yeah. SW: 14:26 Just, I just-just changed. I mean, I just, all of a sudden, I was a college student. I remember very early on there was, there were tables in the student center. Now, if you drove up to center drive, there was a, like, a like a circle, like you would drive up to center drive, you made a left, and you went around a circle, and there was the student center right in front, and there was an Esplanade, you know, an elevated walkway. I have a movie of it which I am going to email you. You see it there? I guess I could draw it. Yeah, I am not a good artist, but, but, but that is where the bus pulled up with that video I showed you. But anyway, in that building I remember, let us see, there was a bookstore, and there was some rooms, hold on, in the back and to the right, where we used to where we had meetings, including SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], but the date that within the day or two after you got there, there was not a formal orientation. There was a letter I got from an advisor which I gave you, which is in that folder. IG: 15:34 Right. SW: 15:34 That was my orientation. He met me. IG: 15:37 Right. SW: 15:37 And-and in there-there were tables, and there was the debate society, which I joined immediately. And the coach was Dr. Eugene Vasilew. And there was a thing called services for youth, which worked with poor children in the Binghamton area. So that intrigued me, so I joined that there were tables, and you would go to the table, and there was a pad and-and there were people who were in that group, and they would talk to you about it, and you could sign your name. IG: 16:11 Why did the opportunity of working with poor children in the neighborhood intrigue you? Was that part of your upbringing? SW: 16:20 I probably identified with them. IG: 16:22 Yeah. SW: 16:22 I mean, I would have to go through analysis the real reason, which I am not going to do, but-but probably, you know, probably I identified with them. IG: 16:34 So, do you think that there was a lot of outreach that Harpur College did to the community. Do you think that it, it had strong ties to the community? SW: 16:45 Right. I think so. Yeah, and they really, they made you feel welcome. I mean, they made me it was a very small school. I mean, when I visited it in October for the 50th, my 50th Homecoming was very- it was large. There was like, I saw those separate communities they called the College in the Woods. I think they called. IG: 17:04 Right. SW: 17:05 That did not exist. None of that existed. There was Harpur College, there was, there was, let us say, Champlain Hall. There was a building to the left of that. There were, like, just a few dorms who basically knew, I think that the cornerstone said (19)58 or (19)59 and I entered (19)63 I mean, some, some of them were being built. Then in the back there was a dawn being built called Chenango, it was not built yet. I moved in there in my third year as the first tenant. I mean, the first student. So you felt like it was a very small community. And at least those of us who entered in July knew everyone IG: 17:06 Right-right. SW: 17:07 Now that changed, because I could talk about trimester, but in that first going there, there was no-no one was there before us, because we were the first trimester. So there were, there were, you know, that was it. Everyone was started [crosstalk] IG: 18:05 You were really the path breakers. SW: 18:07 Yes, yeah, right. There were sophomores and juniors. I mean, people who were in the by- the two-semester system. Obviously, some of them opted to take the next semester starting July, but, but it was very small, so you sort of got to know everybody. So you really felt, I mean, you felt welcome. You- professors had us over it. One of the videos that I am going to email you, that I showed you was, Dr. Vasilew having us over at his house for barbecue. Dr. Carlip [Alfred Benjamin Carlip], he was an economics professor. I do not know if this name anything mean anything to you. He was chairman of the economics department, C, A, R, L, i, p, he had us over to his house. Dr Kadish [Gerald Kadish], he- Third speaker: 18:52 He is still there. SW: 18:53 Taught. He taught history. Third speaker: 18:54 He is still teaching. SW: 18:56 Really? He is still teaching. I have a picture. I have to send it to- it is in my basement. I got to find it. He, he came in my last year, the last semester I had an apartment in Vestal, right near the Vestal High School. So we had an anti-war meeting there, and he came, and I have a picture of him there with his wife, who I learned he divorced a few years after that. May have remarried, but he was a specialist in Egyptian- Third speaker: 19:25 That wife died, so it is, but he is, he is good. SW: 19:29 Really? He is what Egyptians are still specialized in Egyptian history. Third speaker: 19:33 Ancient. SW: 19:35 Ancient history. Yeah, right-right, conversational hieroglyphics. I am joking, but yeah, but yeah, so he is still, he is really teaching. Third speaker 19:43 And very sound, yeah. SW: 19:48 Well, he was young. He was young. I mean, I am 72 and he is maybe 10 years older than me. So he must, he must be in his 80s. Yeah-yeah. Third speaker: 19:53 Maybe even more. I mean, he is old, but he is still functioning. SW: 20:01 That is cool, huh? I value would have known that I would have looked for him at the October reunion. He would have remembered me because he came to, we had anti-war meetings in my in my apartment, he came, he came to a few of them. He came with his wife, the one that he divorced anyway. So, yes, so-so it was very welcoming, warm atmosphere, inclusive. IG: 20:26 And it is, it is very unusual that you had that much interaction with faculty being at a public university, because you would expect that, you know, from a Princeton or- SW: 20:37 Right. Right. IG: 20:40 -something like that, where there is very close interaction. SW: 20:43 Yeah. I saw that that in Columbia, yeah, but that was different. IG: 20:47 Yeah. SW: 20:47 But the but the thing is actually the movie that I showed you at Dr Vasilew's house, I am playing ball with his son. He is like, a five-year-old son, or something, six-year-old. You know, you just felt like, all of a sudden, my dysfunctional family that I grew up with became a functional, welcoming family at this college. It was really- IG: 21:09 It is wonderful. SW: 21:10 -totally different experience. Yeah, I do not know if I did not get that feeling when I was there and October, but I mean, it is only there for a day there, and it seemed much bigger. IG: 21:21 Did your parents visit you? Or did you visit them during your years at [crosstalk] SW: 21:28 My parents, my parents split. My mother said she was [inaudible] She always told me she was going to wait until I graduate high school. Oh, she should not have, but she did, because my father was a little bit nuts, but uh, but um, but they did. But actually, my father and sister came up with me when I went to college in July. I am trying to think how we got up there. We must have taken the Greyhound bus and Port Authority. That is how we got up there. They came up there, and then right across Vestal Parkway, there was a hotel, which is nothing, and then, but they were there for days. So they came up there. My father was not there again. He actually died the following year. I came home, I actually found his body in the bathroom. So, because he was living alone and my mother was living alone, they split. So I came home. I remember, I know why I came home, because I was campaigning for Robert Kennedy for Senate. So I came home in the in October. That was the end of October. Election Day was November, something November 3. And my father died November 1, so he wanted me to stay in his apartment, but I would not, and I came there, and I have had him dead in the floor. So that is sort of guilt. My mother did visit me, actually. She came up a few times, and I would, I would come back here. I would take the train and I came back here. So I would, I would, you know, stay by my mother's place or friends. So I would come. IG: 23:11 Hello. SW: 23:13 Hi, Mary. I am being interviewed. IG: 23:19 Yeah SW: 23:20 I am famous. IG: 23:22 So, I mean, I think I know the answer, but tell us how you-you felt about the Vietnam War at that time. SW: 23:33 Okay. I was against it. There are many, many reasons why somehow was selfish. I mean, we had the draft so that the-the (19)60s are often romanticized by the music and, you know, free love and all that, but there was a pervasive anxiety, because, you are killed. What do you do? You go to jail, go to Canada, maybe never come back. You go in and who knows what is going to happen to you. So there were many reasons why I was against at first, I read a lot and just seemed stupid. I mean, the one seemed stupid, it was no reason for it later on. I mean, if you saw the series on TV, I mean, they lied to us, but it was obvious then that they lied. And you could see, well, I could tell that there was, I can tell the guy's name because I did not like him, Irwin Romana. He was a student up there, and his family had money, so he hired a draft lawyer. So if you had money, you could manipulate the system. I remember his initial. He told me the initial. I said, you have a lawyer. And I remember. This conversation. He said, Yeah, is it expensive? He said, Well, the first visit is $1,000 you know, that was more than college for me for four years. So, but anyway, so it was unfair, it did and it was scary, and there was no justification for it. So, and we studied. I do not know if you, I do not know. Do you have any economic background? IG: 25:29 Well, I have read. SW: 25:30 Okay, so you see if we soon. You know the Mont Pèlerin Society, the what Pèlerin Society? You know the Mont Pèlerin Society? Okay, well, just go into this, because I was [crosstalk] okay. So-so at the end of World War Two, I think Mont Pèlerin was (19)46 I think you remember, yeah, so at the end of World War Two, there were a group of economists who were shocked at what happened with strong centralized government. I mean, in Germany, the strong centralized government gave us, obviously, Nazis. And strong centralized government in Italy was Mussolini, the strong centralized government in Russia was Stalin, and the strong centralized government in Japan was Tojo, Hirohito. And the strong centralized government in the US was created by the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt. There was big difference between the New Deal and fascism, but it was a strong central government, so they were frightened as to what was going to happen now, as Europe is about to be rebuilt, and how do we deal with the reemergence of strong central governments, how do we fight against it? So they had this meeting in Mont Pèlerin. It was in Switzerland. I think I do not remember you remember more better, more than I do, but and they discussed how to get rid of it. And of course, at that time, the only two strong central governments, was America based on capitalism and the Soviet Union. So they were petrified of the Soviet Union and communism, and they wanted America to become more capitalistic, and they wanted to get rid of a lot of the New Deal elements, which was strong centralized government like Social Security and TVA and all the things that Roosevelt did that they just did not want it so but the big fear was the Soviet Union and communism. And out of that, they broke their promise to, you know, to Ho Chi Minh, that Roosevelt made, that if you help, you will help you fight the Japanese and everything else, because, first of all, died and so anyway, so I was familiar with all that. So that that because I studied economics, and I could tell the teacher that taught it to me, Dr Melville, he was a professor at Harpur College, and they really went into things that, I do not know if they go into it now, but do they teach about the Mont Pèlerin now, I do not know. IG: 25:42 Yes, absolutely. Third speaker: 28:04 I am sure they do. SW: 28:05 Yeah, but so-so-so I was, there were many reasons where I was against Vietnam. So there was a selfish reason the draft, there was the pervasive anxiety that, as time went on, all my friends felt, and we had Dylan playing for the dorms. I mean, I remember, but that was nice and-and we had, you know, lots of sex and other things that were fun, but there was a pervasive anxiety that we were always, you were scared. So since I was against it scary, very scary time. And then we had friends who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, that there were people from, I guess you know that I think one was not the kids killed going down to one of the marches. I think, I think in (19)65 and I was a sophomore, I think, I think one of the students was killed down south. I did not get the only March I went on South was I went to DC, but I did not, I did not go to the I did not go all the way down south, but I think one of the kids that went down, they got hurt and killed. So there was the Civil Rights Movement. Then scary. IG: 29:16 When, when did you kind of become open to politics and the, you know, the American, American scene, and so engaged, was it because of your of the threat of being enlisted in the in the war, or what made you so alive to the political scene? SW: 29:41 Well, part of it was, we all, were- IG: 29:43 You all were- SW: 29:44 Yeah, I mean, it was, it was not there. Was this was not the this was the small group, maybe a small group joined SDS. That was not the only thing that was there. There was- IG: 29:54 I mean, did it, did it happen on campus, or did it happen before coming? Your Harpur college- SW: 30:00 I think it really evolved. It really got strong on campus. Yeah, not before first of before I was on campus, there was a lot of promise with Kennedy and the I did not know that he actually but he actually did not get I did not know that that, but no in high school, I mean, Kennedy was elected in November (19)60 I was in high school, and he was not killed until I was in college. And he was very popular with young people. One of the things I am giving you that Kennedy book I got the Hobb Bookstore, yeah, extremely popular. He was young. He was funny. And, you know, you got us, there was Bay of Pigs, and he admitted it was his fault. You know, he seemed, you know, almost like truancy. The buck stops here. I mean, he seemed honest so, and he said, I am a liberal and proud of it when people do not say that anymore. So, so through my high school years, when, before I went to college, I mean, I was really, you know, I was proud to be an American. Still, I am still thinking America is best country, you know, it is just that we have to do something about it. IG: 31:15 Right. SW: 31:15 But-but I was really felt the American pride. And then was after he was killed, the things started, you know, then, you know, it just like, like, shocked when he was killed, the chain, it changed a lot. And when Johnson came in, because we, you know, there were these theories, was he involved? And I am sure he was not, but, but then things started to jail. So Harpur College really happened. IG: 31:47 So tell us what your involvement in student activism was like, student protest or activism, and what that that scene was [crosstalk] SW: 31:56 Okay. So when it was still a very small college where in November (19)63 when he was killed. And through my through my years, there was that. There was not, if these other colleges did not exist, even when I graduated, there was no it was still small. It was bigger, but still small. And everyone, and everyone I knew was involved, it was not unique. It was not like the young democrats and young republicans, and they may have been stuff like that, but, you know, it was more focused. There was a group really focused on the Martin Luther King and on the south and, you know, and I remember, like we talked about, we talked we mentioned this, this, this country as good as it is, was a country where half of the country fought for the right of one human being to own another. Civil War was it was a war where someone fought for the right to own another person. So he was not with that, and obviously it was a long way uphill. So, so there was, there was, to some extent, there was separate. The SDS was both, was both was divert for a minute. One of the things that SDS fought for was ending the student curfew. You know about the student curfew? IG: 33:22 Yes, that is another thing that I will- SW: 33:24 That was one of the, one of the first things, the first time I went to a meeting, which was in the old student center under the Esplanade, one of the first things they talked about was the curfew. Because if you were a female, you had to have you did not get a key. They locked the door. I do not remember what time it was during the week. It was one certain time, and then then on the Friday night and Saturday night, it was a little bit later, but it was still they locked it. Now they did not lock my door, only the woman's dorm. So SDS, one of the first things that we did was to fight against the curfew. When we had petitions, we sent it around. These the mailboxes were. They were not in the student center. There was a building, so I do not remember what the mailboxes were. I remember I was box 38 Harpur College, but I do not remember where they were. You used to there was a, I think was a combination. I do not remember, but they would, we would stuff these petitions in the mailbox that in the curfew that was when big things that SDS did was fight for that. Because I remember I went out with this girl, and we got back late, and she was locked out and she was suspended, and nothing happened to me. Nothing. I mean, I nothing happened to me. Yeah, we felt horrible. IG: 34:48 It is. SW: 34:50 I felt horrible. I mean, we did not go to bed together. We just-just thought we would just, there was this hill that led to the gym. The gym was down here with the students was here; it was like a hill, and it was sitting on the hill and talking just and we went back and it was locked. IG: 35:07 Yeah. SW: 35:09 Now if you but if you were 21 you got a key. So if you were, like a junior or senior, and you were 21 years old, you did not have the curfew for a female. So-so-so that was one of the things we did. IG: 35:22 For a woman, for female and-and [crosstalk] SW: 35:25 Men did not need a key. I mean, there was no [crosstalk] IG: 35:27 Female after 21 they did not need a key. SW: 35:30 They did not need the kid. No, they got a key. I am sorry they did not get locked out. In other words, you could not get into the dorm after they locked unless you had a key. Was a little, you know, [inaudible] regular key. Yeah, so, but you got the key if you were 21 so, um, but you could drink when you were 18. So you get drunk. Mr. Curfew, get suspended. So, but you could not vote. Can vote in 21, but anyway, so that was one of the things that they were for. But then we talked about the war, the draft, one of the things that we did in, I forget which year it was, we had an intense debate about the Selective Service Exam. You are familiar with that? IG: 36:21 I do not think so. SW: 36:22 Okay, I forget when, what year was, when I was a sophomore or junior. I Think, I think Junior, it does not really matter. But Johnson, if you were in college, you were deferred from the draft, you had to register when you were 18 with your local board, and then if you were in school, you had what was known as a 2s which was a student deferment. But what Johnson did was, what was have a test, because he said that they wanted more manpower in the army, they wanted less student deferments, so they-they gave a test in the spring of the academic year, and the test was to select an exam just the general like, like a College Board test, like ETs and-and the test was being given in the gym, and there was only one gym, and you went down this, the main road of down this hill, and to the right there was a gym. And in the gym, they set up chairs, and they had this exam. So we were debated. We were against the exam, but then some of us said, “Well, look, you know, it is fine to be against the exam and not take it,” but what if they actually use this exam for the student deferment would be deprived if we, if we prevented other students from taking it, would we be giving them a ticket to Vietnam, getting rid of the 2s so they were back and forth, and anyway, it went the way the pro- We decided to protest it anyway and tell people not to take it. I did not take it. I did not take the test, but that was the decision I made for myself, but we wanted to make the decision for everyone else, so that was the debate. And debate was that we were going to make the decision for everyone else, not let them take it. But we never did that. But I remember we wanted to do that, but we did not. so. So it was not the homework. It was not, you know, everyone did not agree with every you know, it was not like- IG: 38:26 How many were you? How many were you in the SDS? SW: 38:32 Not a lot. IG: 38:34 100? SW: 38:35 No-no-no. Not the whole, the whole, no, 40, 50, maybe less, maybe less. We did not come to we did not come to meetings. Some people signed up. But-one of the reasons I signed up, there was a very attractive girl who said, you should because I was active. I mean, I did make my political views known. This is very attractive girl who came up to me says, Why did not you, why do not you go to an SDS meeting? And that is why I went for the first one. IG: 39:16 Well, it is a good enough reason. SW: 39:19 Yeah, but-but, I mean, most meetings, then they are not that many people. It would be, I mean, there may be 50 total in the whole thing, but there were, you know, maybe 10, 20, would come, maybe 10 would come. But we were active, like we got these petitions for the for the-in the curfew, we tried to block the-the Selective Service Exam, we-we put up the posters. Did you ever see the poster? Girls say yes, the boys who say no. IG: 39:59 No-no. That is, that is funny. So there were, were they? Were there females in SDS? SW: 40:07 Of course. IG: 40:08 Of course, yes. SW: 40:09 Yeah-yeah-yeah. IG: 40:15 Very funny. SW: 40:15 Sponsored there by the protest against the army. We put them up in dormitories. And we actually encouraged, for selfish region- reasons, also, we actually encouraged women to, you know, support the anti-war movement by, you know, free love, just-just, you know, resist the draft, go to go to a protest, and we will get sex. I am not kidding. That is, that was one of the things we talked about, you know, just-just doing that. There was no aids, there was none of that stuff there. IG: 40:53 Or it was not known about. SW: 40:54 It was known about, I do not think there was, was there back in the (19)60s. No, I do not know. It does not really matter, but that is what happened. So, you know, experimented. I mean, we were not the same, like the SDS started in Wisconsin with the Port Huron manifesto statement, you know. IG: 41:15 How were you different? SW: 41:17 Because we were not really part of, like, like a fraternity, like a national group, and we did not really get involved with them. IG: 41:23 Right. SW: 41:24 You know, there was not like a, it was not the it was not a unified thing. It was not like a, was not like the Democratic party with a Democratic National Committee. There was the Port Huron statement, and they probably did have involvement at Columbia, where they had the student strikes. CCNY had student strikes in the in the Lewisohn Stadium, I think was called [crosstalk]But we were a very small school and-and we did not, we did not have much to do with any national, any other-other SDS. We were basically contained. IG: 42:00 But you got your messages. SW: 42:03 Yeah. IG: 42:03 Platform- SW: 42:04 Oh yeah, oh yeah. No, we did. We did communicate, yeah. We did communicate it, but we did not get Yeah. IG: 42:08 And how did you communicate with them? With-with-with central [crosstalk] SW: 42:15 Yeah-yeah, no. IG: 42:16 So what was [crosstalk] SW: 42:19 We got brochures from them. I remember getting box, a box of brochures. We got a box of those posters girls, you know, things like that. IG: 42:27 That is interesting. SW: 42:28 -to put up on the wall. IG: 42:31 So we touched on this a little describe to me what your- the social scene was at Harpur College. Was it a party school? What is it? What did it have a reputation of being a party school at the time? SW: 42:46 No, did not. IG: 42:46 It did not. SW: 42:47 It was and it was serious. It was serious. Was serious, but it was fun. there- was it was fun. It was not fun because we know it got drunk or anything like that. First of all, you only have to be 18 to drink, so it was no big deal. I mean, you know, I drank when I could get a drink when I graduated high school, but legally, no bar. I mean, it is, you know, there was a we did not get drunk when, I guess we did sometimes, but it was not, it was not the big thing. No, it was not, was not the party school. We had fun. We had, we had, I remember seeing the Beach Boys at was not there. We went up. I remember a group of us went up to Ithaca, the Cornell, The Beach Boys performed. I remember seeing the [inaudible] Erin Quartet. IG: 42:56 Yeah, Oh, yes, they are still around. SW: 43:35 They are? Third speaker 43:36 I have a question, what were you doing? Like, other than attending classes, like when you are not going to school, or during the weekend? What were the like- Some of the activities? IG: 43:36 Yes. SW: 43:36 They were in residence, I think so, yeah, in Binghamton. So they- we- I remember seeing the great, great they had great entertainment that we saw. What is his name, if you have Max Morath. He did Ragtime. Did a show there. It was very crowded. Did that. It was, it was a lot of fun, you know, this, you know, other than the pervasive fear that we had with the war lingering over us when we graduated, it was, it was a lot of fun. There was, there was, you know, no, it was not, was not the party school. No serious students. We took academia seriously. We took politics seriously, and close relationships. And there was, there was, like, free love, but, you know, but that was pervasive. I think then, maybe now too, I do not know. Well, I was on the debate team, so we traveled to various schools like you saw that thing from. Lehigh University. We traveled to New York City. We stayed at a hotel on the Grand Concourse, concourse Plaza Hotel where the Yankees stayed. We actually had the first- where they had one of the first UN meetings there at the concourse Plaza. So we traveled. So I was the debate team. I was on services for youth, where we work with poor children in Binghamton, I was in SDS. We did. We went with the brochures rallies. We encouraged people to protest. A group of a group of them organized a bus to the south, I did not go. I do not remember, I do not remember where the dream. I thought that someone got killed, but I am not sure it was my house, school, or someone who went along. Yeah, I did not go this. I cannot think what happened. I did go to Washington, so we sponsored that. What else did I do? I worked. I worked in the in the Music Library, Music Library. IG: 46:08 that like, what did you do? SW: 46:12 We put on music. In other words, you would sit there, like, if you were taking music appreciation, you would sit there and put on headphones [crosstalk] and Beethoven's Ninth, and then we would, I would be in the control room, and I would put on a record with Beethoven's Ninth, and I would say, plug it to seat nine, right? There was no mp3, so things like that. So I worked there, and there was a language lab. What we do? You win, and then you put on headphones and you listen to German or Russian, yeah, and you would repeat. They would say, you know, guten tag, guten tag. So some people work there, but I remember working in the music. I had another job one of the summers I was up there driving a tractor on a golf course. I got paid $8 an hour, which is a lot then. IG: 46:19 Yeah, I remember yeah music library [crosstalk] it was, it was probably a lot in in certain parts of the country. SW: 47:07 Yeah-yeah, so that is one thing [crosstalk] IG: 47:09 So were you self-sufficient, pretty much with your scholarship and the money that you earned from part time jobs? Or- SW: 47:17 Yeah-yeah. IG: 47:17 It is tremendous. SW: 47:17 Yeah. Had to be. IG: 47:17 You had to be. SW: 47:21 Yeah. Yeah. I also, once, one summer, I worked in the I came back and I mother had my mother lived in the Bronx. My father already died, and I worked in the New York Public Library, actually, oh yes, from [inadible]. You know what I found them, I could bring it down later, I found the letter that I wrote saying, I think I am going to go into politics, to the person in the library on Harpur stationary. I will give it to you. I will give with the stuff. When we are finished, I will bring it down. IG: 47:53 Yeah. Was this is [crosstalk] SW: 47:58 I never went into politics. I never did. IG: 48:00 No-no speaking about politics, was there recruitment for the war on campus? SW: 48:05 No, that is not that I remember, I- IG: 48:09 -not that you remember. So do you think that that was unusual for because of the constituency? SW: 48:16 We did not have ROTC. IG: 48:17 I see. SW: 48:18 I mean, other schools did. We did not. First of the school is too small. We never had it. We did not have France either. I mean that to their fraternities. Third speaker: 48:25 They have now. SW: 48:27 Do they do? We did not. We did not have them. We had no fraternities. We had, we had society. They had, I was not a member of it. There was a Greeks society, but it was not fraternities. I do not know what it was, because I It was not very big, it was not very popular, and I do not know anyone who was in it, so, but there was no recruitment. There was no ROTC there was [crosstalk]. Third speaker 48:28 Oh yeah. IG: 48:49 That-that answers the question. So what was residential life like? What did you do for entertainment? SW: 48:56 Well, there was, there was a TV in the lounge. There was only one TV, and it was in the lounges, black and white TV. The lounge was in the first floor. If you went into Champlain Hall, let us see. There were two dormitories that faced each other, Champlain, I think, and something else. IG: 49:15 Right. SW: 49:16 And the first semester was in the one on the left. I do not remember what a name of it was. And then the go at the-the entrance was, let us see, there was a walkway, and then the entrance was this way, perpendicular to the walkway, and go in, and you wind up in the lounge, and there was a TV there. I remember seeing Ed Sullivan seeing the Beatles. We all sat around. IG: 49:39 I remember that too. SW: 49:40 The Beatles is on the Sullivan show. Yeah, that is where we watch the Kennedy funeral, and everyone was crying. And go to the Student Center. We go to a place [inaudible], and we go to a place called Sharkies. They had something called spiedie. It was like something on a skewer. Yeah, I do not know what it was. Third speaker 50:08 They still have that. Not Sharkies I do not know but spiedies, chicken spiedies. SW: 50:09 Sharkies, yeah. I do not think it was chicken, I would not eat it now, but- Third speaker 50:16 Yeah. SW: 50:17 I do not know what it was. So we did things like that. We had these, the SDS, we had the other clubs. I mean, there was always something to do. It was always, you know, there was a theater. If you faced the student, if you went up to the main driveway, and then you went down the circular thing to the right, and the movie where you saw those me and my friend breaking into the window. There was a theater in that building, and they had entertainment there. It was, it was, was fun. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was a lot of fun, actually. IG: 50:51 So were you in a in a kind of a circle with a lot of girls as well? It was, there, were there sort of mixing of the girls, it was everybody went out together. Or did you go out in pairs? Or, I mean, where did you go? Like [crosstalk] SW: 51:08 When you went to Shark- when you went to Sharkies, would go- IG: 51:10 Yeah. SW: 51:13 -in- IG: 51:13 Yeah. SW: 51:14 Boys and girls would go. IG: 51:15 Yeah. SW: 51:16 The thing with the debate society. IG: 51:19 Yeah. SW: 51:20 Boys and girls would go, there was no coed dorm. SDS, boys and girls that the video I showed you at Vasilew's House you saw female students and male students. IG: 51:28 Yeah. SW: 51:30 Kadish, if you are asking, give Kadish my name and just home Stephen Weiss and in the apartment in Vestal and the anti-war meetings. I mean, if he is still there, he will remember that. And his first wife, because he came there, he used to use the bum there, yeah, yeah. And one of his, one of his best students, was the kid running for the bus with the little stick they said, is dead now. His name was David Lorden, remember the name? You mentioned that to Mr. Katie, Professor Katie, she remember him too, as we used to go, yeah. But then, no, that was coed. We used to do things. You know, sometimes we students was, I forgot the name of it. That is my senior moment with the kids what I said was- IG: 52:23 Well, how did the faculty regard your you know, social interactions your dating. Do they get involved in it? I mean, or rather the supervisors, were they kind of scrutinizing what you were doing after- SW: 52:42 What surprises? IG: 52:44 Did not you have RA resident assistance or any kind of supervision in your dorms? Because obviously there was somebody monitoring your comings and goings with the curfew, right? SW: 52:58 But we did not have a curfew. IG: 52:59 You did not have a curfew, but the girls did. SW: 53:01 Yeah, I do not know. I do not I have no idea what was in the girls, but in the men, let me just think we did. I am sorry. Third speaker: 53:09 Not curfew, but maybe like rules, that- SW: 53:12 There were rules, but let me just think there was a there was a woman almost like a den mother for the Cub Scouts. There was no there was an older woman who I do not know what her involvement was, I mean, do you know what I am talking about? There was some, there was a woman who was like, part of out from Champlain. She was, she was like the den mother- IG: 53:35 Maybe she was- SW: 53:36 -for Champlain. And this other dorm that was quite opposite, this walkway, no Champlain would be here. This other dorm was here, and the left one, I am indicating left and the right, lawyer talk, indicating, but uh, and there was this woman, no, she was not a resident assistant. She was employed, I guess, by Harpur. But I do not remember they may have been. I do not remember what you would call I know RAs, because my four kids went to colleges and they were RAS but I do not remember that at Harpur. That does not mean they were not. IG: 54:08 I mean, I am I see a little bit of a discrepancy here, because on the one hand, you talk about free love, and that must have been taking place somewhere. SW: 54:20 Right. IG: 54:20 And on the other hand, there were curfews for female students- SW: 54:24 Right-right. IG: 54:24 -and if they were just a few minutes late, they would be suspended. SW: 54:28 Right. IG: 54:29 So-so where was there- SW: 54:32 Was, there was the- IG: 54:34 -happening. SW: 54:35 There was outdoors. There was this hill- IG: 54:37 Yeah. SW: 54:37 -that led down, I remember this hill that that went from where the dorms were down to the- IG: 54:44 Right. SW: 54:44 -gym, and lots of kids hung out there. IG: 54:46 Yeah. SW: 54:47 There were people with cars and doing the back seat of the car. IG: 54:52 Okay. SW: 54:57 I remember doing the back seat of a Volkswagen. IG: 54:58 Yeah. SW: 54:59 Yeah. I mean, you did what you had to do, but no, but there was- IG: 55:02 Yeah-yeah. SW: 55:07 But you could the girls could not go, wait. Oh yeah, you could wait. I am trying to think some rule that your feet had to be on the ground, wait- IG: 55:16 Yeah. SW: 55:17 -your feet had to be on the ground. [crosstalk] Or, that rings a bell. I do not remember what that was. IG: 55:22 Right, I forgot exactly, but yeah, along those lines. SW: 55:24 Yeah, you could visit, but your feet had to be on the ground. Door open [crosstalk] IG: 55:27 One-one of the you know members, well, the member of the office is sex, or had to have at least one foot on the ground. SW: 55:36 Yeah-yeah. But who would check? But then the door had to be open, so there must be somebody. IG: 55:40 Somebody could not be lying, SW: 55:41 Right. Yeah, but-but there must have been someone to check it. I mean, there must have been some walking by. IG: 55:46 Exactly-exactly [crosstalk] SW: 55:46 I do not remember who that could have been. IG: 55:48 Not hearing with that. SW: 55:49 I have no idea. I do not remember, but I am- just rang a bell about feet on the ground. I just-just thought of that right now. IG: 55:55 Yeah-yeah. I heard about that too. Third speaker: 55:58 Could you visit the girls' dorm? SW: 56:01 During the certain hours she could it was visible and that we had that feet on the ground, yeah, certain hours during the day, you could go into the other dormitory and go upstairs, they said the hours, and you could do that. There were not there was no men's room bathroom in the girls dorm, and we could not use their bathroom, and there was no girl's bathroom in the men's dorm, but you could visit. And it was said [inaudible] maybe, maybe was one to four or something on certain days, on the weekend. I do not remember what it was, but yeah, you could, and the door had to be opened. And the rule was both feet or one foot on the ground with the door open. Remember that. But when you want to have sex, you have sex, you find a place to do it. IG: 56:47 Yeah. SW: 56:47 I mean that there is no- IG: 56:48 Do you think that expectations about sex and marriage were changing very much then that, you know, the free love, of course, does not equate, you know, the expectation is that it, it will not necessarily lead to marriage. So- SW: 57:08 Just as no, there was no reason not to enjoy that feeling. IG: 57:12 Yeah. SW: 57:12 Just because you are not going to get married [crosstalk] or you are going to go your way. IG: 57:15 I am just sort of trying to get [crosstalk] SW: 57:21 People expected to get married. Yeah, I expected to get married someday. The girls that I knew expected to get married, not necessarily to me. I do not know any girl back then who wanted to marry me. Now, whoever would ever, ever think of marrying someone like me? I do not think I was- IG: 57:36 What were you like back then? SW: 57:38 I remember doc- I remember Dr Vasilew said-said to me personally. He said a girl would probably think twice because of your childhood, you know, like him broken home and you do not like to visit [inaudible], you know, he said that probably would have an effect on how, how I would relate to a partner, the type of relationship. He actually said that to me. Dr. Vasilew, I remember it very clearly, so- IG: 58:11 That is very prescient of him, you know, because people were not necessarily talking like that back then. SW: 58:16 Oh, he said that to me. Oh, yeah, he did. Meanwhile, I have been married at the same woman since 1974 it can look very well, no, that is something, you know there, but, um, yeah, but people expected to get married, but not necessarily to the people that they went to bed with then, and also people disappeared. now they went, well, they went a different way. This is an out of town college with a trimester program where people, you know, I, there was one time I went three semesters and took off a semester. I mean, you know, then someone else would not be there, and then when it come back a semester later. IG: 58:56 Right. SW: 58:56 And then, you know, we did not have emails. I lost contact with a lot of people because there was no email. You did not do an email, if you did not write a letter. I have letters upstairs that I wrote to some people, but when I left Binghamton, I mean, I could not email, you know, my old roommate, my kids, they still email roommates, they email friends from high school. And I could not, and we did not do that. So you lost contact. If you did not write a long hand letter, that was it, and you did not call, because it is not, you know, unlimited, you know, calls on the cell phone. IG: 59:33 So how did you stay in touch, because clearly you-you know the face of some of your classmates. SW: 59:40 The only reason I know faces, I looked them up on the on the Binghamton. I learned that, well, I learned that Harvey Bournfield died. Who was he was the one in the video, because I tried to email him. I kind of classmates.com recently, five years ago, and I remember, and I. And then I-I had a phone number, I called him and actually got his son, and I found out that I had missed him by a year, and he died of cancer. So I sent his son a copy of that video. I said, I have a video of your father you may want to see, because he was the one climbing through the window. So, you know, I said that to me, really, he liked that so, but that is that I learned about Dave Lawton, who I was on the debate team and knew Dr Kadesh. I found that he died because I checked him on the alumni page. I checked names before the reunion, before the October. That is the only reason I know otherwise I will not know, yeah, and we did not keep touch. No. IG: 59:45 Were you? You said that you know Binghamton or Harpur College was felt like a family that you had not had with your own- SW: 1:00:50 To me, not necessarily to people who did have a family. It is all subjective. IG: 1:00:56 Of course, we are talking about your experience. So were you very saddened when you graduated and you had to leave this family? SW: 1:01:05 No, that is a very interesting question. I actually thought about that recently, because I was talking to my wife about that I want before we went back to that reunion. I wondered why I was not. IG: 1:01:19 Yeah. SW: 1:01:20 I mean, I really wondered about myself, why? Why was not I sad about leaving like, like my old my last roommate was a fellow by the name of Ira Mintzer. And we were close. We were good friends. We went on double date, double dates together. We had an apartment in Vestal near the Vestal High School. And, you know, I had left in the I left Binghamton, and that was it. No contact, no letters. You want to hear an interesting story about Ira Mintzer. IG: 1:01:20 Yes. SW: 1:01:23 So I am on Facebook, so I searched for some names. I come across Ira Mintzer. I remember he wanted to be a doctor. So Ira Mintzer doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I contacted him, because my old roommate, and two years ago, my wife and I were going up to Boston, so I said, “We are coming up to Boston.” He had me at his house for dinner, and his wife- IG: 1:02:24 How nice! SW: 1:02:25 -had not seen him since 1967 this was two years ago, since 2015 and got along as if, as if, we just graduated. So it is Facebook. IG: 1:02:44 You probably felt connected with him. SW: 1:02:47 Yeah, no. Now we come with now we write each other. I mean, on Facebook, we do not, we do not write. But now you do not have to send letter. You do not the call. I mean, you just there. It is, yeah, indicating with my fingers, yeah, no. So. IG: 1:03:00 Maybe-maybe. SW: 1:03:02 I do not know why I did not feel that, but other people, other people would have cried graduation. I maybe it is a defect in my personality. IG: 1:03:10 No, maybe it gave you what you needed, and that was it. SW: 1:03:13 Yeah, it was time to was time to move on. IG: 1:03:16 Time to go. SW: 1:03:17 Well, it is time to move on. I moved. I guess that is good. Maybe, you know, yeah, but I did, yeah, well, I do not know, but yeah, but I did not feel I felt glad to leave my home and go there. IG: 1:03:34 Yeah. SW: 1:03:35 I was happy when I was there. Other the anxiety that was pervasive in the (19)60s, and I was but I was not sad when it came time to leave. It was time to leave. IG: 1:03:45 Yeah. SW: 1:03:46 I did keep in touch with Dr Vasilew. IG: 1:03:48 Oh. SW: 1:03:50 By-by letter, we wrote each other. I would write him, and he would write me, not frequently, maybe a few times a year, but we did. But he was more than a pro- he was my coach and debating, so we would travel together the debate team. You saw that article which mentioned the debate team was not at large. It was eight of us, and I do not remember, but it was not large, so we were close group also. And you know, it was also like a cub master, and I was friends with his kid. I was friends with his kids, but when we went there, we played with his kids ball. He had three kids, daughter and two sons. IG: 1:04:32 When you look back on this experience at Harpur College, what do you think you know? How do you think it changed you? What did it give you? You said [crosstalk] SW: 1:04:46 Liberal arts education, yeah, and nothing with the clubs or anything else. The edge, I felt like the classes were small. We did not have any. There was one hall. All that looked like a lecture hall, and that was across the street from across the lawn, from the library. There was a new building, which, I mean, I think was science or something. I remember what it was, and that had a lecture hall, and I remember taking Psychology 101, and that was a lecture hall. Even then there was, was not a lot of students. Every other class I had was in the classroom not much bigger than the classroom I had in high school, elementary school, which was, you know, what, was not big. So we were really, I mean, it was really an intimate educational environment, you know, what, the way you picture something in the in the Aristotle or the Socrates, and, you know, he really, it was really back and forth. You know, when we this, when Dr. Carlip, discussed the Mont Pèlerin Society, when we really discussed it. Remember discussing, well, the-the outcome of that was Reagan and taking back, undoing the New Deal, but really with their motives. And I remember debating it, their motives, to some extent, were good motives, because they were afraid of central government, the fascism and everything else that came with it. And I remember debating it back and forth, maybe like 15 of us in the class and Dr. Carlip, and every once in a while, he would have a sofa to his house for a class. So these were not big classes. So it was, I think I really learned a lot. I mean, my notebook, I used to, I used to type my notes, and it was just, was just, I mean, I really felt I got an unbelievable education. I mean, I remember just, I just remember things that these professors said I. I remember my English. I remember my English professor- IG: 1:06:45 For example, give us, give us some, you know, memorable things that they have told you that have influenced your thinking. SW: 1:06:52 Okay. they want my-my English, one of my English professors who had us to read The Rubaiyat [Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám]. So, I mean, I read that to my kids when they were young. the moving finger writes. You know that right? You know the Rubaiyat so. So just remember, I remember, I am saying "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit ". Can call it back the cancel half a line or your tears wash out of it. I just remember standing up there. I remember, remember how that influenced a young student, you know, did? I am a devout atheist. Let me enforce that. So just and Dr. Melville [Robert Melville], who he was an advisor to the House Committee on sales and use tax. So in my because of that, just because of him, yeah, I am just getting a notebook because of Dr. Melville and when they read, I read the bill, it was just a bill. But this was the bill back then, HR, 11, 798, he was the, he was the member of Congress in Binghamton. IG: 1:08:22 Oh, wow. SW: 1:08:23 And since Dr. Melville was involved in that, I mean, I wanted to research it, so I read it on my own, because, because of him, so, you know, and I wrote a paper about it. I think that is my paper. I am not sure. Is that about the sales, news, tax- IG: 1:08:47 -introduction, apology and justification? Is that it? SW: 1:08:51 Oh, I know what that was. Yeah, about economics. I do not remember. IG: 1:08:57 Yeah-yeah, theory and you agree beginning. SW: 1:09:03 But you could see what the type of student there was by looking at my notebook. I mean, there is my notes-notes. I mean, I typed everything, but I really like it really felt like, like a partnership. Let us pull my rope. I mean, I really, I really felt like there was a partnership between the students and the professors in the academic environment that we learned from each other. I said it was almost like the what you would think the Greek learning system was. So that is what, that is what I got out of it. I do not know if they do that now, I think the classes are bigger now, yeah, and the money's cut back now. I mean, education was still highly valued then by our society. Third speaker 1:09:50 Oh, graduate level, you get that? SW: 1:09:53 I am sure you do. Third speaker: 1:09:54 But undergraduate level , you do not. SW: 1:09:56 Oh, we got it. My undergraduate level, we got small class. Is, we delved into things deeply. We debated them. Third speaker: 1:10:04 You describe like, what you describe here sounds like, you know, graduate [crosstalk] IG: 1:10:12 Well or a very, you know, exclusive private college, right? SW: 1:10:18 It was like that. It was free. It was great. I do not believe I did all this. I am looking at these notes. I must have lunatic. I must have been very compulsive. My God. Third speaker: 1:10:18 Yeah. IG: 1:10:34 So how do you think that the college prepared you for your future life, what, what imprint did it leave on you? What, you know, in a quality of kind of thinking, or how did it- SW: 1:10:50 I think it made me help, make me a better human being. When my first job as a lawyer was legal aid, criminal, you know, I did not, was not there for the big bucks or anything I really want. I mean, that is the only job I applied for. That is the only thing I wanted to do. So, I do not know. I think it helped with everything. I think it was, it even helped me be a better husband and parent. I mean my kids. I mean I am proud of them. That is my four kids up there, but I mean they at Thanksgiving. I mean, we all went around to say what we are thankful for. We are all eight. We are all atheists, but we went around, but one of them things, Alex said, my youngest son, he said, I am thankful for a close knit, happy family. that was just, I mean, you know, just. And one of the things I remember, one of the things I envied of Dr. Vasilew, was because I came from a broken home, was to see him and his family when he took a sit into the to the house and so, so I think it helped me be, you know, and be a better lawyer, too. I think that the more liberal your education, the better you could be at whatever you do, whether you are a doctor or lawyer. So it helped me, you know, with the assigned counsel, because you were assigned as legal aid to defend people, I just, you know, I understood that, but for the grace of God, no, I so. So, yeah, I think, I think the education I got there really carried me far. IG: 1:12:34 So any thoughts for the future of how, of what elements, what ingredients are most essential for the kind of educational experience that you were provided? SW: 1:12:47 I think the most important thing, I disagree with what Obama talked about, and I supported Obama at both times, but when he talked about, you know, maybe not everyone, maybe we should have so much of a liberal arts education, but should prepare people for jobs and things like they said that. IG: 1:13:05 Yeah. SW: 1:13:06 I disagree. I think, I think, if you an educated society is the best guarantee of freedom of-of, you know, universal health care, of opportunity and-and that is a liberal arts education. You have to literature, math, science, history, economics. Mont Pèlerin, you went to study that, unless you went to economics. But that is really, that is really a philosophical Ryan [Paul Ryan], the House of Speaker is a Mont Pèlerin type person, right? I mean, he really believes that the government has no business in Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid. Well, that is right out of Mont Pèlerin's first year away from the New Deal or away from Nazism or away from the central government. So I think that a well-educated society, liberal arts is the most important thing. I think everyone should have liberal arts education. I mean, I do not know how we can do that. You know, Bernie Sanders said education for all, but the society, I do not think, is, is moving away from it. IG: 1:14:19 Right. SW: 1:14:19 You know, the-the thing that, and a non-educated society is more susceptible to fear. I mean, when you are, you know, if you are educated, then, then you-you can, you could, like we did in the classes in college, you know, you could look at something and ask, this, is this makes sense? Like Vietnam? Does this make sense? Does it make sense to go to war when, when a group of fanatics bomb the World Trade Center? Does it make more sense to have police work and deal with them and fight them, and that is and that is not a war, you know? Yeah, you use a reason, but you but, but that is the luxury of an. Educated person, but, but, but we should recognize that it is in our interest to have our neighbors educated, otherwise our neighbors will come at us with the pitchforks. You know, the educated one is not because, so it is a selfish reason, just like, Why was I against the war in Vietnam? Or part of it was altruistic, but part of it was selfish, so, but there is nothing wrong with having a selfish component, because we are people, so that is fine. So that is what I that is what I think, you know, and we have to invest more, but we are not going in that direction. I just told my son when he was here for Thanksgiving, I said, Why do not you go into politics? My youngest son- IG: 1:15:39 But you know, going to Harpur College at the time that you did, you know, during the mid (19)60s, when the country was really going through cataclysmic changes, you know, maybe intensified your educational experience. SW: 1:15:56 Of course it did. Yeah, we were forced to be involved. Well, part of it was the Selective Service system. You were forced. You could not-not be involved. You could choose not to take the exam in the gym, but you were involved with the ticket or not. You know, it is like Moby Dick in the whale. You know, you can decide to throw a spear into Moby Dick or not. The whale is going to be there. It is there. So, you know, we were involved with the you could not-not be involved. You know, we got those develops like I am going to give you from the draft, but we were involved, the civil rights movement. We were involved. There were people getting angry. Out of out of SDS, came the Black Panthers, yeah, [inaudible] the SDS, you know, so you we were involved, and there was nowhere not to be. There was areas of Binghamton where you would be afraid to walk because of blacks, and there were other bars. There was a bar that I remember, there was a street that was parallel to Vestal Parkway, where the we passed by, where the Dean's house was, and there is still a lot of house there the dean. IG: 1:16:59 I think so [crosstalk] SW: 1:17:01 Continued down all the way, almost like Binghamton, before the bridges, there was like a bar, was a black bar, and they used to charge what was known as white tax for the beer. So like, if you were a black person, you paid x for the beer, and if you were a white kid like me, you would pay 2x for the beer. IG: 1:17:18 Yeah, that is like the sub the Soviet Union used to have a dual- SW: 1:17:23 Yeah, the friendship currents, yeah. I remember that, yeah. I remember the [inaudible] Street and going, yeah-yeah. Third speaker: 1:17:30 How was the campus then, like, were there any black students in the campus? Like- SW: 1:17:38 Very, actually, I only remember one. He was next. He was a- an exchange student from Kenya. Third speaker: 1:17:48 Africa, not America. SW: 1:17:49 Not an American. Like, no, I do not remember. Third speaker: 1:17:52 Not even one? SW: 1:17:52 I do not remember. I do not remember one look at the yearbook from (19)67 and (19)66 it is in the-the Alumni Center. I do not think, yeah, I do not, I do not remember any black students. No. IG: 1:18:03 Most of the students were from New York City, from Long Island. SW: 1:18:06 New York City and Long Island, yeah, and- Third speaker: 1:18:09 Like, when you compare boys versus girls, like, majority of them like boys, right? Not many women? SW: 1:18:18 No, there were a lot of girls there, you know? I mean, I did not seem like I was, I mean, I went Brooklyn Tech, where I went to high school as an old boy school. So it was so refreshing, because it was coed, yeah, but I did not feel that, that, that we outnumbered them by any significant amount, that would no there may have been, but I do not I in my subjective memory. No. Third speaker 1:18:19 No, yeah, I am asking how you remember. SW: 1:18:34 Yeah, no, I do not, I do not remember it being overwhelmingly male. No. SDS had a lot of SDS had a lot of girls in it. Actually, that was an attraction, but they had a lot of girls, and they were not subject to the draft, but there were a lot of girls there. IG: 1:19:06 So did you have any interaction with the, with, with, you know, the rest of the population in Binghamton? I mean- SW: 1:19:16 Services for Youth. IG: 1:19:17 Yeah-yeah, that is right, of course. SW: 1:19:20 I do not remember how the kids got involved with us. I remember there was a-a park. If you went into Binghamton, we took him to a park. there was a zoo in the park, and you went into Binghamton and went to the right, up this little hill, there was some park there. And in the park, there was a zoo. Yeah, Ross Park. IG: 1:19:20 It still exist. SW: 1:19:39 Yeah. I remember taking kids there. Yes, we were involved in them, but I do not remember where the kids came from. I do not remember, but yes, we were involved. And not all of the faculties supported the anti-war group, Kadish went to my apartment to a rally. Vasilew, who I, who I liked a lot, who was the one that gave me my comment that a girl would think twice before marrying someone like you, which is true. I understand that. I mean, you know, like saying, if a plate is broken, you can glue it together, but the cracks still there. You know, so, but anyways, but he, I remember, you know, as I remember talking about the draft, and he said, he-he actually, he had two sides to him. First, he has he, he thought that the draft was appropriate. He was liberal, and on the other hand, he was not sure if we should have gotten involved in World War Two. I remember him saying that. So, which is fine, because there is no right answer. You know, it is unlike you know, two and two and was, what is the answer? There is no right answer. IG: 1:19:40 There is no right answer. SW: 1:21:02 No there are right questions. And then you think about the answers. So, I mean, back then, I probably was not so kind as to his response, because I thought, you know, for World War Two, we were the good guys, and to Vietnam, we had no business being there. And it is black and white. And it was not until I became more mature that I realized there is no right answer, and Vietnam is definitely wrong. And should we get involved too? Well, I still think we should have but, but there is no right answer. IG: 1:21:28 So it, you know, again, looking back, do you think that this was among your happy the happy period? Speaker 1 1:21:46 Yes, absolutely, I am basically, I basically became a happy person when I left home. I mean, I have a mean, that is my personality. I mean, I just my wife sometimes calls me the happy idiot. I am not kidding. No, I get happy sometimes for no reason. I mean, I because I am lucky. I mean, life has been good to me. I mean, but, but that was definitely that there was a change. It was a change for me from a miserable childhood up until I left, to-to not, you know, not being subject to that misery. So, yeah, it was definitely very happy period. IG: 1:22:25 So you never really returned to your family. SW: 1:22:30 Well, my parents- IG: 1:22:30 Your parents were split up. SW: 1:22:32 They split. [crosstalk] My mother waited until I graduated high school, and then then my father moved to, uh, an apartment in also in Flush, in Flushing off Main Street. And my mother moved to place in the Bronx called Riverdale. And-and so they lived, you know, apart. And so no, there was no home to come to. So and then I said, I tried to avoid this. I mean, I visited my father, I thought I could stand him. And as I told you, the one time that he asked me to visit him, and I said no, and then the next day I came and he was dead. So then the guilt that I felt was, you know, it took me a long time to get over that, I know. Very nice. IG: 1:23:11 Yeah, I could imagine. SW: 1:23:12 Because I felt, well, what if I have been there, then I would call a doctor or something, you know, but it was no.t IG: 1:23:18 Yeah. SW: 1:23:18 And he had been dead already he was lying in the bathroom. IG: 1:23:20 Yeah. SW: 1:23:21 So, but no, the college years, it was-was turning out what happened I was happy in college, basically, other than the fear. But yes. IG: 1:23:34 So, what-what do you have any message for? You know, a future student, a future you know, listening to this tape, you know, 5-10, years from now, of how they should approach their undergraduate- SW: 1:23:50 I would say liberal arts. Take, take, take, English literature, foreign literature, world history, American history, science, just take, take as much varied material as you can. When I went to law school, all took was law, you know my friend who is now my friend again, Ira. You know, medicine, science and medicine. But in college, you could take everything, do it. You know you could, do not take pre-law and just take poli sci or pre-med and just take science, take other things, because that will make you better at everything. IG: 1:24:33 And for-for our politicians, for example, listening to this interview 5-10, years from now, do you have a message for them. SW: 1:24:41 Yes, invest in education, unless you feel that the only way you will stay in office is to have an uneducated society. But if you want to make society better, then you invest in education. You know, then you realize, look, when Obama made the statement, you did not build this. Remember, he made that statement. When he was trying to convey. And he conveyed the people who understood him, educated people that, you know, the transcontinental railway, the highways, the telephone poles, all the things that people did for next to nothing made it possible for the wealthy people to have their wealth. It did not just come out of nowhere. So wars that people fought, the good wars and the bad wars, or, you know, the infrastructure, everything that existed, that people got paid nothing, or that slaves built. So that is what he meant when he said that you did not build this. He did not mean, you know, you did not build your grocery store and it is not yours. He did not because they turned it on him, like Romney turned it on him. But an educated person would understand that and would appreciate it that if I am wealthy, I mean, that is great, but, I mean, why should not other people participate in the wealth of a nation that is wealthy? Why should it just be limited to excuse me as it could be my office? No, it is not okay. So that is what, yeah, so, so for politicians edgy, if you really believe in this country, then-then education. That is the thing to invest in the most, not take away from teachers' unions and-and get and not, you know, not have, like, charter schools, where with something, we have to compete for a good school, otherwise you are stuck. I mean, I told you my public-school education was great. I mean, I it was really good. I had good teachers who were, you know, got paid well or no standards, and were respected. They were not demonized. Like, like the governor Wisconsin demonized teachers. Of course you are going to demonize a teacher if, if the only way to keep your power is to have uneducated people, like-like, like Trump said he bragged about uneducated people voting for him he bragged about it, which is true. So that is preaching to the choir. IG: 1:27:06 Well, that is, it is preaching to the choir, of course, but other people may not be the choir listening to this. So and do you have any words for President Stinger? SW: 1:27:18 Right now? He is the president of Harpur. IG: 1:27:21 He is a president of the university. Would you like to impart any, any of your thoughts to him or a future president? SW: 1:27:32 Well, he should do his best to bring, bring back true community, learning, small classes in depth learning, having faculty and students meet in each other's places of residence, like we did at barbecues. And the barbecue is not just, you know, just eating and drinking, but the barbecue is also talking about your subject and other subjects and relating, relating economics and literature and science. I mean, when you get together to barbecue, talk about all sorts of things, I think that that is the key, and that is what made it so great. Like you said, it is like a small private college, although it was not, but that is the key. Small classes, intimate settings and the environment that encourages questioning and debate, you know, so it is not my country right or wrong, it is my country. Make it better. But you know, there is no right or wrong. You should not do it that way. And you know, your emotional baggage, you know, you know, I had a lot of emotional baggage, but when I got to college, I was able to put it in the overhead bin, in a little chair, and go about my business. So, you know, so that that is, that is the key, you know, learn to be able to the baggage away. IG: 1:28:50 Maybe it allowed you the freedom. SW: 1:28:53 Yes. IG: 1:28:53 You know, freedom from the emotional baggage. SW: 1:28:57 Yes. IG: 1:28:57 You could come back to it a different person. SW: 1:29:00 Yes, but I have a certain but, like my wife said, I am like, I am a happy idiot, and I get happy I just do, like, Vasilew was wrong. He said, You know, he thought that I would never, actually thought I would never be able to have I-I went out with a lot of girls than in life, and I did not. And I was somewhat mean. I mean, I was nice, but-but-but, you know, like, if when I was-was not interested anymore, that was it. IG: 1:29:29 Yeah. SW: 1:29:31 But, yeah, that is not the way to be. But the thing is, but I learned from it and- but then I evolved. I mean, I said when I got married, I mean, you know, I very happy with it, just he would, he did not think it would ever work, but it really did. Actually, I [inaudible], my wife and I actually visited him. IG: 1:29:52 And what did he say? Did he Did you remind him what he said? SW: 1:29:56 No, I do not talk about that. No, you know, he said, he said, "I see you are a successful lawyer." I said “Yes,” and we talked about that, okay, no-no, I was not going to. There is no reason too. No. And then they, you know, no, but that is, that is the price I would give and have other artifacts I could show you when, once we finish talking before you go. IG: 1:30:22 Well, I you know, do you have concluding, you know, thoughts, remarks, anything that you would like to explore? I think we covered a lot of ground. SW: 1:30:30 No, I think, no. I think it encouraged students, no, just encourage student involvement and student involvement in politics and make-make it known that why education is important. You kind of invest in education, small classes in education, or there is no guarantee that this country will remain a democracy. IG: 1:30:51 Yeah. SW: 1:30:52 That is not guaranteed. It is not guaranteed. IG: 1:30:54 There is no guarantee. SW: 1:30:55 No, and they could very well not. And with overreactions, with-with, you know, people like Bush taking us into Iraq and-and torture becoming a norm again. You know, Guantanamo indefinite detention when lunatic Trump becomes president. You know who, who brags about, you know, fondling women and talks about arresting his opponents and egomaniac and having these Republicans love him and the Christian right loving him. I mean, yeah, a real danger here. IG: 1:31:33 Yeah. SW: 1:31:34 And it could happen here. IG: 1:31:36 Yeah. SW: 1:31:36 And it might very well happen here. So the key is just that education to get the educated people to expand like, like, we sent people from Harpur College down to the south, as I said, I personally did not go, but I know people who did, and people from SDS went, send them out to do things. I am going to a bar association meeting with us tomorrow night. One of the things we are talking about is working with the Alabama and other bar associations to get ID cards. The voters will have trouble getting ID cards, getting photographed and paying for their ID cards so they and making sure they vote, because there is voter suppression, obviously in these states. So we are thinking as a Bar Association project, almost like a school project. IG: 1:32:19 That is wonderful. SW: 1:32:20 Yeah. So we are thinking of doing that. So we are talking about that tomorrow night, after which we are going to go to the Algonquin hotel and drink scotch. So you-you know, lawyers find that the more Scotch they drink, the more interesting other lawyers become. So-so we do that too, yeah. Yeah. So-so that is the key to get, to get them to go out. I mean, keep the have a close community, and when you are close and secure, then you could go out. IG: 1:32:50 Well, that is exactly what happened to you at the college, the close community. And once you- SW: 1:32:57 With that security. IG: 1:32:58 -security. SW: 1:32:59 Then you are able to go out when you are insecure and you look, you know, then it is hard to go forward. IG: 1:33:06 Yeah. SW: 1:33:06 But so that is what you need. And then have them go out, having to, you know, help with small things, voter ID, getting out to vote, getting people to vote, you know, they suppress it by I mean, when I go to vote, I wait. I wait for one minute. I do not wait. We have, we have, we have more voting places here than the small fee community than, you know, there they have one black communities down there. They have one book, one polling place. It is open from, you know, 9:00 am on a work day to 5:00 pm they went online for three hours. You are not going to want to do that. Well, you have to make them do they have to go out there. You give them food, you know, bring out coffee. Just do it. We went that, you know, I, as I said, I did not go down south, so I am not going to say did, but people went down there and, you know, and help you got to do that. You got get a mat so you made him secure. Then come out and expand, because we are all in the same boat, right? You know, saying that, you know, I am in a lifeboat with you, and I start drilling a hole under my seat, and you say to me, what are you doing? I said, Well, same boat. Yeah, so that is my word of wisdom. Anything else? IG: 1:34:16 I think? I think not. I think it is a great interview. Thank you very much. SW: 1:34:21 My pleasure. I will show you like one artifact. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Stephen Norman Weiss Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weiss, Stephen Norman ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Stephen Norman Weiss is an attorney in New York specializing in Litigation, Patent and Trademark and Intellectual Property cases. He is managing partner at Stephen Norman Weiss Law Office, but currently semi-retired. He pursued a liberal arts education at Harpur College, which he believes was on par with an education from an elite private college. His JD is from New York Law School. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-11-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stephen Weiss.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-11-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 94:30 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4badaee07d692d2b4b93ac2f54f5a7f9.mp3 5df77c50a2aa7e3e4fc79488889921bd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2019-03-01 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Steven M. Weiss Year of Graduation 1970 Biographical Text Steven Mark Weiss is the president of Straightforward Communications, a marketing and research consultancy in consumer demography and trends. His clients have included Hilton Hotels, Denny’s and the California Department of Agriculture. A magna cum laude graduate of Binghamton University and of the Culinary Institute of America, Steve spent the early part of his career as the executive food &amp; beverage editor of <em>Restaurants &amp; Institutions</em> magazine. His work earned him a Jesse Neal award for editorial excellence from the American Business Media. For nearly a decade he was the regular columnist of <em>QSR Magazine</em>. He is also an award-winning journalist with 25 years’ experience as a marketing and management consultant to the food service industry. Steve resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, and serves as vice president of the Arizona Society of Astrologers. He has written books on astrology, including <em>Signs of Success</em>, which represents his lifetime avocational interest in astrology. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College - Seventies alumni; Harpur College - Alumni in the food industry; Harpur College - Alumni living in Phoenix, AZ; Harpur College - Alumni in astrology; Harpur College - Alumni in journalism Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Steven M. Weiss Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 1 March 2019 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SW: 00:02 I am Steven Weiss Harpur College, class of (19)70. I am in Phoenix, Arizona, and I am being interviewed by Irene Gashurov for the for the Binghamton Library Archives. Nope. Okay. Well, start again. [inaudible] IG: 00:26 It is for the Binghamton alumni. It is going to be an audio a collection of audio recordings with alumni from the (19)60s and early (19)70s. SW: 00:42 All right [crosstalk] IG: 00:44 Sixties collection [crosstalk] yes, I do, I do. Okay, so let us start from the beginning. Where did you- you said you grew up in Brooklyn. SW: 00: 53 I grew up in Rigo Park in Queens. Went to Forest Hills High School. I was born in Brooklyn. IG: 00: 57 I see, I see. So, who were your parents? What did they do? Do they encourage your education? SW: 01:08 Yeah, I think I was. We were in a culture where education was valuable. IG: 01:12 Yeah. SW: 01:13 My father was an executive in the camera and photography industry. Worked for a variety of companies, and my mother was a housewife. IG: 01:26 Are you one of several children, or? SW: 01:29 I am an only. IG: 01:29 You are an only. SW: 01:30 Yes. IG: 01:31 You are an only- so you went to Forest Hills High School? How did you decide to go to Harpur College? SW: 01:41 Do you know, on one level, it was as simple as being an affordable college, but-but that that denigrates or plays down the fact that it was considered a good college, even, even back in the (19)60s, I remember a New York Times article that everyone liked to quote, that that Harpur was the public Swarthmore, that that got a lot of play on the campus at that time and-and so. So, the idea I-I had in my mind to perhaps go to Tufts and in Massachusetts, but, but really, for a lot of people of my generation and our socio-economic class, you went to either Harpur or you went to Stony Brook, yeah, Harpur, if you were interested in liberal arts, Stony Brook, more for science. SW: 01:42 More for science. That is that is interesting. So, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to study? SW: 02:32 Until-until my freshman English class, I did. I-I had intended to go to Harpur and study political science with-with the notion that I would go into law, because that was that was appropriate at the time. But my freshman English teacher changed everything about my life. SW: 02:49 Let us hear about it. Who was the freshman English teacher? SW: 02:49 My freshman English teacher was Zach Bowen, who was an eminent James Joyce scholar, and in fact, he eventually moved from Harpur to become the chairman of the department of the English department the University of Delaware. And then from there, after several years, he went to the University of Miami in Florida and became their chairman. But-but Zach was a- anyone from my generation who encountered Zach, he was an enormous, jolly, wise, funny man, and for better or for worse, he took a liking to me to my work. And when I told him that I was going to major in political science, he sort of laughed at me and said, "No-no, you are an English major." [laughter] IG: 03:38 That is great. SW: 03:39 He put me in that direction. IG: 03:40 So, he claimed you as one of his own. SW: 03:44 I think that is a very good, apt way of putting it, yes. IG: 03:47 So, what kind of mind-expanding things did you learn in that, you know, with this professor? What-what did you learn? SW: 03: 56 I hope this is not too much of a segue, but you know, to think about I have been thinking about this because I know I was going to have this, this moment with you and-and I realized that it is, it is, it is obvious that we want to abstract generalities that make sense. You know, generational, generationally and collectively. But my generation, we were so individualistic, for better or for worse, that that, you know, it was part of the tapestry right of life. So-so-so I responded to Zach because he was totally avuncular and smart and funny, and a guy that I that I admired immediately, and it looked like what he was doing was fun. And so, there is that, there is that personality context where a young man looking for-for examples, not-not idols. Idols is too strong a word, but people [crosstalk] or just people that you could, you could model behavior on. You know that, oh, I could be this guy someday, and Zach was, Zach was that for me. But then there is also the-the coursework itself, being exposed to things like the Odyssey and the Aeneid and some of the, you know, some of the earlier classical literature. I believe we read some, if I am not mistaken, we read some classical Greek tragedy, and immediately that captivated me, and as captivated me my entire life. IG: 05:21 Right. SW: 05:22 Mythology. IG: 05:23 Have you studied different kinds of mythologies? SW: 05:27 I was, it turned out that I was not really an academic at heart, although I did have a I had a teaching assistantship. I was working on my Master's at Binghamton as well. I did very well in school, and I took, I took coursework very seriously, but, but another teacher who had an influence on me was a was an associate professor by the name of Betsy Oswald, who is a talented novelist, and she was teaching, she was my first writing teacher, and between Zach and Betsy-Betsy-Betsy convinced me that I was, I was cut out for writing, and so I found out that I was more of a journalist than I was a scholar. So-so not that I ever turned my back on mythology, but I did not choose to pursue the mythology as a as a career aspiration, the writing became more of an aspiration. IG: 06:16 That is wonderful that you discovered it so early in your life, right? SW: 06:23 I had been writing for, for, you know, for, I am the sort of guy who was in grade school, was writing for the other school magazines. I would always been writing. But I needed someone to confirm that that was something that one did, that it was okay to be what to aspire to be a journalist or to be a writer, and I think I needed someone to say, yeah, that is okay. "Yeah, that is what your talent is, and that is what your desires do it." IG: 06:47 I mean, did you become a journalist after that? SW: 06: 50 Yes-yes. I, well, I decided that that in order to be after my, after my-my Harpur, my Binghamton years, I felt that in order to be a journalist, I needed to have a specialty. That it was not just another I was not a general assignment reporter, and one of my lifelong interests was, is food. I come from a Jewish, Italian family, that is all we are interested in. So, I went to the Culinary Institute of America and got a chef's training yes in Hyde Park, New York, and put culinary and journalism together. And I spent several years as a as an editor of a major restaurant publication out of Chicago. IG: 07:33 Wow. SW: 07:35 Restaurants and institutions were- IG: 07:37 So, you were food critic? SW: 07:38 I was a food critic here in Phoenix for a while, but mostly I was, I was a I was working in the business press, as far as the restaurant and food industry went, so I was rather than, rather than a critic. I was, I was, let us say, an ally. I was more interested in what made a restaurant great than-than judging whether it was great. IG: 08:01 How do you mean, how it is sale, it is revenues, and- SW: 08:07 Yes, exactly, or-or as what became my, what became my major interest was, in fact, marketing and-and-and analysis of dietary habits and preferences you are looking this-this book is that kind of a book. For seven or eight years, I was the executive food editor of a magazine called restaurants and institutions, which was the largest, largest trade publication in the restaurant industry. So, I my job was to find out what they were doing and how they did it, and if they were willing to share with other restaurateurs. And I had a pretty international beat on that, so I got to go and eat a lot of great places and stay in a lot of great places. IG: 08: 52 What are among your I mean, we are veering off topic, but this is, personally so interesting. So, what- so when-when was this period of work. When did it take place in the- SW: 09:04 The period of work was from about 1975 after I graduated the Culinary Institute of America, to about 1981. IG: 09:11 Okay. SW: 09:12 When I moved down here. IG: 09:14 When you moved in 1981 so, you reviewed, you reviewed, you know successful New York restaurants. Do you any, any stand out in your mind? SW: 09:25 Oh, absolutely. [crosstalk]I do not want to the honest truth is that the great, the greatest restaurant company, probably that ever existed in New York, at least during my-my lifetime, was Restaurant Associates, and they were the company that did the Four Seasons and Forum of the 12 Caesars and-and the really great restaurants of their time. And the general, the gentleman who was responsible, you know, who led that company was, his name was Joe Baum, and Joe did all of these restaurants. And then he kind of just disappeared from the scene, and all of a sudden, his name came up attached to a project which was called the World Trade Center. And I so I called, I called Joe, because I knew him a little bit. I said, "Look, you know, you are a great restaurateur, and this is really interesting, what you are doing here." So, I made my-my reputation in the restaurant industry, writing an enormous article, I wrote one of the first articles about the integrated restaurant. I concept behind the World Trade Center, from the from the top that from the top of the building, to- IG: 10:33 Windows on the world. SW: 10:34 -windows on the world--got married there as a matter of fact—and-and to-to the marketplace, which was the concourse area, to the sky lobbies, which had restaurants on the 44th floor, but it was a very brilliant, integrated restaurant system. That is the sort of thing I wrote about. How did you- how does someone possibly create and then manage and run this kind of restaurant? So-so like on the on the on the creative level, the people like James Beard were coming in to-to brainstorm and-and then-then the actual building and running of it was another fascinating story, interesting to my readers. IG: 11:12 Right-right, no, interesting, interesting to any reader. And James Beard was brought in to consult on the menu, or? SW: 11:20 Yes, in fact, Joe Baum was a brilliant, brilliant man. The restaurant industry misses him, but he would, he would invite, invite James Beard into his office and just let James Beard free associate about what American cuisine should be, what American upscale cuisine, and he would talk, he would talk about, I have listened to some of these tapes. He would talk about brioche, lighter than air, floating off into the into this sky, and it was fantasy, but, but, but Joe and his people were plugged into this, and they just used it as an inspiration for- IG: 11: 51 Did the windows on the world have brioche? SW: 11: 54 I do not know [crosstalk] everything in its time. It had everything. IG: 11: 58 I forget what it had. I-I was there a couple of times, but I- SW: 12:02 Well, it was not just the fabulous, was not just the fabulous windows on the world, which was several restaurants, from the windows on the world to the Cellar in the Sky, which was the wine cellar restaurant. Then they had something called the Hors d'Oeuvreriewhich was just all hors-d'oeuvres, international hors-d'oeuvres. But on the lobby was, was just as interesting, on the on the main core concourse of the World Trade Center, they had something called the Big Kitchen. And the Big Kitchen was like the prototype for all of the for every, you know, casual fast-food concept that ever existed, but it was high scale. So, there was a bakery there, there was a there was a grill, there was a hamburger place. This one of the first places in America that ever had [crosstalk] and next to the Big Kitchen was a restaurant called the Market. And the Market was a, was a was in honor of all of the fresh food and produce in New York. So, every day, the chefs would go out and they would buy the best fish or meat or vegetables they could find. And all the menus were handwritten because it was that fresh. And that was that was that was ahead of time too. IG: 13:03 That was ahead of its time. Was very ahead of its time. It is, it is extremely interesting. It is extremely interesting. Were there any was there any connection? Do you know that the site of the former world trade, World's Fair in Flushing Meadow Park also has kind of a similar setup to Windows on the World? I mean, it also has sort of, you know, but it is a much smaller scale. Was it by the same proprietary or you know- SW: 13:36 Restaurant Associates was involved—It is funny you would mention that goes, I grew up in Queens on the 14th floor of an apartment building that looked over the World Fair site, the world that whole, you know, I used to watch the aggregated in the summer. We watched the shows and the fireworks. But the that-that World's Fair the first one, not the one in 1964 but the but the original. I want to, I want to put the date. It was the 1964 World's Fair, but that was the first time in the time in America that that there was a celebration of the International, the possibility of international food. That is such it was such a so I have written about it because it is such a seminal moment in culinary history that-that-that-that-that World's Fair, you know, was the first time there was like a giant concourse devoted to things, you know, you know, you know, Asian food, and even things like Belgian waffle was a big, was a big hit at that World's Fair, and they did not exist. The idea of cooking a fresh waffle and putting whip cream and strawberries on it. IG: 14:35 I think, I think, I think that is absolutely right. It kind of introduced, you know, not only well through food, essentially through food, you know, I mean, we can, we can discuss. I have, actually, my daughter has a friend, Joe Torella, who was also a journalist at People Magazine. But, you know, he wrote a book about the (19)64, (19)6 5 World’s Fair. Have you heard it? SW: 15:05 Yes, I am not, but I am going to look for it now, because it is dear to me. IG: 15:12 Probably touches on what you, you bring up, because it is, it is sort of, you know, it is heavily researched. And- SW: 15:20 Yeah-yeah, that was- IG: 15:22 -what we can, we can, all right, so let us go back to Harpur. Let us go back to Binghamton. So, you arrived on campus. What, in (19)66? SW: 15:33 (19)66, yes. IG: 15:34 (19)66, a city kid, and you are coming into really the boondocks. What was it like then? What was the college describe it? SW: 15:44 It was very small by today's standards. I think there were, there were either just south or just north of 2000 students there. And over the course of a year, you literally got to, if you did not know personally, everybody on campus, you recognized everyone on campus. It was that intimate. But, but the it, but-but the-the-the truth of it? Well, there is lots of truths to it. One is your, your only. I was only 17 years old when I started college, and it was the first, I mean, I travel some as a kid, but this was, you know, the first attachment from home. So, a lot of what goes on is just a, you know, once psycho psychology responding to the strangeness of being on your own, but it was also in the forest, as far as a New York City kid was concerned, and I was surrounded by a lot of kids like myself, really smart people who-who Harpur was a liberal, liberal place. I do not know what it is like today, but that was a very-very liberal campus and-and so it was, it was like, it was like, you took the compression of the city and young people and you it was a chance like-like the snakes coming out of the popcorn [laughter], the fake popcorn, we were springing all over the place, if the truth be told. On the other hand, I was very serious about academics. And I, you know, I gravitated, I liked, I liked going to college, I like, I like the education. And it was, it was a it was a mixture of social strangeness and a chance to- IG: 17:13 How so? Social strangeness? SW: 17:14 I just think the freedom that that is involved, they in the in the in the orientation week in the freshman year. One of the traditions that Harpur had, I do not know whether it exists, I hope not, but they had it called Patty's wake. And Patty's wake was a beer blast. And, you know, we were, I was not even old enough to drink beer, but so be it. You know, this should be my worst crime, but-but it was, it was it was it was so mind bending. Forget, forget the drugs and all the rest that came later was just mind bending to be served. You know, limitless amounts of beer in a space with music and hundreds of kids your age were just free for the first time. I do not know how to put a neat lasso around it- IG: 18:03 Exactly, but it is [inaudible] you vivid-vivid picture and memory, you know. So, you know, there probably was a sense of being part of this community, and uh- SW: 18:21 I think it is a very- I wrestle with that point a lot. [crosstalk] I wrestle with the community point a lot. Because as someone who eventually got into generational studies, that is what the consistent consumers. I do not know whether my generation was as collectivized as some of the other generations that I see. I think that the in primitive or the nature of the people that I went to Harpur with, everyone was in a play about themselves. IG: 18: 52 That is a brilliant way of describing it is very individualistic, very but that is great. SW: 18: 58 And so, our play is overlapped, but-but-but-but everyone was really existing in-in a script that was being written for them, personally. And so while it is fair to discuss the (19)60s in terms of anti-war culture or-or drug culture, or-or materialism is-is-is, you know, is laid upon the baby boomers, and that is and none of that is wrong, but-but-but I do not think it captures the essence of what every, every person who participated was going through, because there was a lot of ways to act out, whether you were in the theater department or whether you were an anti-war protester, or whether you were a musician, or whether you were a scholar, and people-people had a passion about what they were doing. And you know, sometimes that passion got a little too crazy, but, but I would describe my experience at Harpur in general as just being around a lot of passionate, crazy people. Pick crazy because the because I. Society teaches you to modulate a little. Yes, you get older, and these-these people are not entirely modulated. IG: 20:06 So do you think that this is true of the youth culture, because a lot is said about the youth culture in the late (19)60s, and you know all of these rebellions going on in the United States, protests and-and in Europe. Do you think that everyone was, you know, feeling, I mean, you cannot speak for the whole world? But do you think that this was more true of Harpur College or youth culture in general, that everybody was in their own play? SW: 20:38 I-I think that that the answer is yes to both, both the youth culture in general and Harpur, which gave people an opportunity because of the nature of the people who attended and the nature of the social structure of the school itself, allowed it to flourish. But-but as somebody who cares about this, because I have studied this and it is meaningful to me, I believe that every generation discovers its values in part as a break away from the preceding generations. In other words, that in order that-that the values of a generation are formulated in not necessarily in protest, but you need to create a unique identity that allows your generation to be a survival generation, there is got to be something that you are not just aping a previous generation, and what Tom Brokaw has described as the greatest generation, because they lived through a depression and because they fought a war. God bless them. Yes. However, I would tell you that one of the major, at least in my observation, one of the major qualities of that generation is well for one of a better term, excuse me, Tom Brokaw, fear and repression, because their survival depended on being brave, on enduring horrible, horrible things as a result. When they created us, my generation, when they created us, they wanted us to toe the line. They wanted us to behave because they felt that is the way you survived. You know that there was, there was there was an appreciation that you survived by following the laws of the tribe. Well, so turned out my generation was not having any of that, because we had to create our own values. So instead of, instead of cursing the darkness, we lit the candle and that. And so that is who we became. We became people who were, you know, we decided, rather than crawling back in the womb and being afraid that we would go out and party for a while. And I think that was true of my generation, and I think it was very true at Harpur, because Harpur was inclined to be liberal about those things. IG: 22:36 But-but you also acted as a collective. I mean, it was, it was very individualistic, but was not there a sense of collective of, you know, going out and marching on Washington, and also the music of the (19)60s was very much about, um, you know- SW: 22: 55 I think, I think that is eminently fair. And I think, I think when half a million people show up at Woodstock. You have a right to talk about collective but my experience and A, this may be just totally atypical to me or B, because I am a journalist by nature, and I was more of a watcher, you know, I was much more interested in observing than participating. But I just felt that even I acted a little bit in Binghamton too. I was a couple of plays, even though I was an English major and but the people in the theater department well, but you could say that they were collective. They were all doing plays together, but damn, they were a diverse group of people. IG: 23:33 That is a very good analogy. And I think so highly of the theater department is still excellent today, still excellent. SW: 23:41 Are you looking at Morris from Fiorello? That was my great moment. IG: 23:48 Yeah, so that was a great experience for you, acting in theater. And- SW: 23: 57 Yeah, those- IG: 23: 58 That is a very participant. I mean, still you are, you are, yes, you are a star, and you are in your own head, but I mean the nature of acting is that you are, it is imitative and, but you are acting as a collective. SW: 24:11 I-I was in a couple of demonstrations, and I was in a couple of-of plays, right? And, and had I been in the country at the time, I would have gone to Woodstock. I happened to be, I was, I was in the summer of my junior year, which was on Woodstock took place. I was at Oxford University on a summer program. I had applied to a summer program. So, I went to see the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in London that summer, which was the same summer. So, I get, I get some credit, but I guess what I am trying to say is that, yeah, okay, I participated in communal actions, but it was it. I was experiencing it on such an individual level. Did I get the paper in on time? Was my girlfriend happy? Was and that was as real as being, you know, part of the crowd that was watching, you know. Mick Jagger come out of the helicopter. IG: 25:01 I understand. I understand. SW: 25:04 But I do not know how you write history if you do not see some collective, you know, strains. But it was also- IG: 25:11 -a period of finding out about yourself. SW: 25:13 Absolutely more than anything, more than anything. IG: 25:18 So, you know how? Just tell me about you know what your when you were not studying, how did you spend your free time you acted? SW: 25:28 Yeah, it was. We did not have fraternities. So, I doubt whether the school does. I do not know if it does, but we had social clubs. For some reason, they were lost in historical there were no fraternity houses, and there were no sorority houses, but we had social clubs. So, I was a member of a social club, and I played ball with-with, you know, with my, with my brothers, and we had parties, you know, we-we dated, and we had, we had, we had, you know, so there was, there was that kind of, what might be called traditional college life, of having a having, you know, you know, friends, you played ball with and govern. So that was part of my life. And then you just knew people from all sorts of people, had all sorts of interests at Harpur, you know, one of my good friends was, was, you know, running Students for a Democratic Society. And one was a soft, you know, what was an athlete, and one was a- in the theater. IG: 26:19 Right-right. SW: 26:22 I feel like I, you know, poured over like the vial of mercury, and all of the little, you know, droplets are running every which way, because-because it is hard for me to just put a, you know, just a neat bow around-around it. IG: 26:35 It cannot be and but-but also it is, it is, it is you who are bringing, you know, it is easier to put a neat bow, I do not know. Or it is maybe a turn of mind- SW: 26:46 Yes- IG: 26:46 -that wants to put it. SW: 26:47 -yes, that is- IG: 26:48 -you do not, you do not. So, you know, how, how do you think people perceived you? How would you how would your classmates, for example, remember you? SW: 27:03 That is a great question. That is such a hard question to ask too. I do not you know, I would be honest with you if I, if I, if I could tell you that, although I think it is, I think it is part of a journalist nature that you do not want to be the story. I mean, maybe things are changed today. So-so I think that that every time I was able to just sit in and not be the focus of attention, I was, I was at my best. So-so-so the answer your question is they would probably say who that would be. That would be a sign of success. I do not think I was a follower or a leader. I just, I was interested in the zoo. But again, you know, in all honesty, I was very concerned that my girlfriend was happy. I was very concerned that I was getting good grades. Just-just that Harpur at that time, was impossible to ignore. What was going on around there, which was which was wild. Here is what I mean by individual being an individual. I was in the first draft lottery during the Vietnam War, okay, and so I remember, I remember being in my, my dorm room at the time, you know, and they are reading off the numbers on the radio this. That is really how it happened. Now you find out what number you were, but you know your birthday, you know, April 7 is one, and, you know, and for every second is two. So, I had a number that was low, but not really low, you know, it was, it was one of the in other words, I think they went up. I think eventually they went through, like 120 numbers. Like 1/3 of the people were in the draft lottery, were contacted by their draft boards. And I was around 120 I, you know, I, I had a number that was low, but I did not know what to do. Do, you know, I mean, I mean, I knew I had to register for the draft, but the Vietnam war was not popular in Binghamton, you know, on campus, but I did not want to. I had no, I had no intent of going to Canada, you know, leaving the country. But these, that was, that was pretty, that was pretty intense in my life, you know, whatever the collective was doing, I had to make a decision about-about what to do, and I eventually decided to join the National Guard in Binghamton. So, I joined, I joined the National Guard in Binghamton. And on the night of my graduation weekend, there was a very, there was a very famous Grateful Dead concert that took place in Binghamton in 1970 in May and-and-and-and I had to leave on a plane the next morning to go to Fort Knox, Kentucky for my basic training. I was more, you know, I was more of a I was closer to being a hippie than being a straight let us put it that way. The whole school is down there in the gym at the Grateful Dead concert, and I am sitting in the student center by myself because I was too blue. This is what life was like, as opposed to the-the-the, you know, the abstract collective. I am sitting in the thinking, “Oh man, I am going to the army tomorrow, and as fate would have it, I so I fly to Fort Know Kentucky.” You get there, they shave your head, they-they give you a uniform, and it is pretty it is pretty abrupt change of lifestyle. And that night, that night was Kent State, and I had just joined the National Guard as a as a compromise solution to not wanting to go to Canada, to not wanting to dodge the draft, and that night, I got one of the biggest lessons of my life, which was, there are no compromises. Life will life will instruct you in spite of yourself. That is the way Harpur felt to me. It was profound. And the things that were most profound were things that that that being in Binghamton and being a Harpur opened up for me, but they were in part, because I was an anti-war activist or some other collective, you know, phenomenon, and I think that is what is true of most of the people I knew there. IG: 30: 59 So let me understand you-you-you know, enlisted in National Guard in the hope of avoiding being sent to Vietnam. SW: 31:09 Yes, absolutely. IG: 31:10 Yeah, that, I mean, that is the way I read it. SW: 31:12 Yes. IG: 31:13 Why did you feel that the day that you know, the-the night before you would be sent to training, and you learned about Penn State? Why did you feel that that was a compromise? SW: 31:30 Because I felt like I was taking a middle road, rather than making, you know, rather than-than going out one way or the other, saying, you know, I am for the war, and, you know, I am willing to-to, you know, endure the responsibility of patriotism and fighting for my country, or I am against the war. And I thought it was, you know, an evil, hostile thing. And so, I was uncertain. I was uncertain about his doing, not to mention the fear of, oh my gosh, I am going to put a gun in my hand tomorrow, and I want to learn how to, how to shoot and do those things, the irony, because everything is, you know, connected and strange. I went to the local National Guard army in Binghamton just out, just for the heck of it, you know, I when I went the first time, it was not necessarily to sign up for all I knew they did not have any places, because people were joining the reserves to get out of going to Vietnam. And I went to the National Guard Armory, and the warrant officer said, “Well, I have two openings here. I learned that that the unit in Binghamton is a heavy construction unit. They-they build, they build the permanent-permanent, you know, facilities for the army. And he says, so I got, I got, I got two jobs. This is one you could sign up and I could teach you how to break big rocks into little rocks. I will never forget that was one of the jobs. I could learn how to operate the machine that broke the big rocks and little rocks, interesting, but not necessarily my skill set. He says "The other thing is, I need a cook." And so that is how the world is funny. So, I went to the army and went to cook some Baker's school. That was my first formal training as a cook. So, everything was connected. And I went to, I went- IG: 33:07 That is so interesting. So, you know, what was the training any-any- was there any resemblance to culinary school? SW: 33:20 Not, but it was like this. It was being around the mass production of food. I always, I always make people laugh. And in culinary school you say, "Oh, I know how to make a pie." You get a number 10 can of filling. You get a pre made pie crust. You pour the filling into the pie crust. But then you, you did get the Army gave me the opportunity to be around the mass production of food. You know, you cook breakfast. You are cooking French toast for 200 people. It is an interesting experience. So, there were things you could. IG: 33: 51 Of course, of course. So how long did you serve? How long uh- SW: 33: 58 I served in the National Guard for three years, and usually it is six years that you have to serve. But I have a very sympathetic company commander and a very-very sympathetic company priest, Father bill. I want to get father Bill in this lifetime. I said, Look, guys. I said, “This is not me. Help me. Help me find a, you know, an honorable way out.” I said, “I do not want dishonorable discharge. I want honorable discharge, but there is got to be somebody, because you have observed me for three years. I played the game, but I got to get out of Binghamton. I did. I had to go and live my life.” And they were sympathetic and helped me get out. So, I served for three years. IG: 34:36 And then you went back to New York. SW: 34:38 I went to the Culinary Institute. Well, actually, no, but I got out. When I got out of the National Guard, I did the strangest thing, because this, this feels like I should send you a check for a therapy session, because I am reliving things and moments in my life that are that are profoundly, you know, changed, big change moments. But when I got out of the National Guard, I wanted to prove to myself that I did not. Leave the National Guard because I was some sort of physical coward, right. This was something like I was not getting out just to avoid so my-my father had a contact, and I joined the Merchant Marine. You know, the Merchant Marine is not a military branch, it is just the just and so I sailed for about a year on a steel hauling ship that went from Baltimore around Florida into the eastern ship channel. But-but, so what I, what I did after, what I after, what I did after, you know, leaving Binghamton and leaving, you know, leaving graduate school and leaving the National Guard, was I sailed for a year and while I was on the ship, this is much more than anyone needs to know. But I was in Houston. We had docked in Houston, and I had applied to the Culinary Institute of America. I decided that I was going to take my desire to write, and I was going to marry it to food, which I loved, and then I was going to go to the Culinary Institute of America. And that worked out for me. I worked out for me. I worked for the public relations department the entire time I was at the Culinary Institute. I wrote all their magazines, and it opened up a door to becoming a food editor at a national publication. But that night in Houston, in the ship channel, it was during the first Russian wheat deal. They were taking American tankers, oil tankers, cleaning them out, loading them with wheat and sending them to Russia and, and I will say this about the Merchant Marine, it is a weird life. But they paid. The pay was, this was astonishing. Great, great. It was great. And they offered me the opportunity to go on one of these ships to Russia. The idea was, we clean out the hole from the oil, and then we would go to go to Russia. And because of the nature of the of the deal, it would have been very, very profitable for young men. And that was, that was another moment like, huh, should I go to Russia, or should I go to the Culinary Institute of America? And I think I wanted to be a little saner at that moment, so I went to Chef's college instead of going to Russia. IG: 37:00 That is so interesting. Do I know that that America was sending Russia- SW: 37:10 Wheat. IG: 37:10 -which used to be the bread basket of the world, the Ukraine. SW: 37:14 Yes. IG: 37:14 Ukraine was sending it. SW: 37:16 They needed our wheat. I think it was 1973 or 74 it was one of those two years. IG: 37:21 I vaguely remember something. SW: 37:22 That was a big deal. IG: 37:23 Yeah, so you went to the Culinary Institute. And, you know- SW: 37:30 Yeah because- IG: 37:31 -and how did your life, kind of, I mean, your personal life, for example, how was it shaping up? Did you have uh- SW: 37:40 Yeah, I went to the Culinary Institute in America, and I was paying my own way, and I needed, I needed a job, and I got a job in Kingston, New York. I was the cook at a Salvation Army daycare center in Kingston, New York, so that so that so in the afternoon, before I went to class, class would run from about one to seven. So, in the afternoon, I would go and I would cook for the kids and-and one day, I was driving from Kingston to Hyde Park, where the culinary suit was, and it was in a snowstorm, and my car slid off the road, and I, and it was this big, you know, deal of getting pulled out of a ditch and the rest of it. And I got to school, and school had been closed. They had announced the closure of the school. So, they did not announce, in other words, they had closed the school, but they did not announce it in a way that I that was accessible. So, I got, finally got to the school. I was the maddest guy on the planet. You mean, you made me drive in a snowstorm, I get an accident. So, I walk into the I walk into the building, and there was nobody around, and I walked up to the second floor of this used to be a Jesuit seminary on the banks. I walked into the second floor and there was one guy there, and I said, and I was, I was, I was fuming. And I said, I do not know who you are, but and I told him my story, just like you are asking me now, because I mentioned who I was and what I was doing. He says, "Well-well, I am the Public Relations Director of the school, and I need a writer." So, I put myself through school for the next two years being a writer for the Culinary Institute of America and that and that sort of, you know, pointed me in the direction that I wanted to go. So, I spent a lot of time spending sending out, you know, letters and resumes to-to magazines and newspapers and magazine in Chicago said, Yeah, you know, you should come work for us. IG: 39:36 It sounds very much that, you know, all of these very fateful encounters, you know, that led you to the career that you have now. But you know, it kind of presupposes a certain kind of openness to opportunity, because somebody else would not have taken the bait, right? It is, you know, a certain personality. SW: 40:03 I did not, I did not read the-the questionnaire thoroughly, but I took a glance at it. The one question that that stood out there that made me laugh was, are you still friends with anybody from-from-from your, from your alumni. Now I am close to one-one fellow who I went to graduate school with at Harpur. I am still close with him. But as far as the undergraduate people, nope-nope, and the owner, and the reason, it was not that I did not love them, and I still do, and I would be joyful to encounter them. Yes, I think we all just-just shot off into, you know, you said you are being open, being open to, you know, possibilities. I read everyone there, that way, that there was no I read everyone there. I do not think I share you my story, but I do not think I am exceptional. I think if you sat down most of the people from my classroom, my-my-my circle of contacts and friends, they would all tell you a story like this. It is funny. I went to school with Tony Kornheiser. Is one of the better-known alumni. You know, he is on ESPN, and Tony was the sports writer for the back then the newspaper was not by dream. It was called the Colonial News, and Tony was the sports editor, and I was the movie critic for the Colonial News. And, and that is how life is funny here, Tony is a household name, and I had other things to do. I was not going to be a movie critic. Did other things. IG: 41:28 I did not know that, but you were a movie critic. What you know, talk about this for a little while. So, what movies did you- SW: 41:35 I remember reviewing, I remember reviewing Franco Zepparelli's Romeo and Juliet. And I remember writing a review. I wrote a review of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Sidney-Sidney Poitier, and and-and, as with every other school, there were super characters. Most of us were kind of characters, but there were some people, you know, in the student body who were, you know, brilliant but slightly unhinged. I remember one of them coming over after the Sidney Poitier review and-and-and he-he smiled at me, and, you know, clamped me on the shoulder and said, "Good job." I never, I think those were the only two words I said to that guy the entire time. But I was happy. You know, I got, I got an atta boy from, from one of the characters, David Hammer was the guy- IG: 42:27 I think I interviewed him. I would not be surprised. He is a lawyer now, and his- he is a partner in his own- SW: 42:36 Would not be surprised. He could have done anything you wanted IG: 42:38 I interviewed. I interviewed him. SW: 42:40 Glad to know that he is still-still there, because he was a brilliant guy. He could have done anything; he could have done anything he wanted to do. IG: 42:42 That is so interesting. Well, it is not surprising that you know, you know some of the people that I have interviewed and, okay, so-so open, yeah, openness to the world, certainly, you know, is equality of the people that I interviewed. I think I think most, I think I think most, but of course, expressed in different ways anyway. So, you know, so what- this was a time of, you know, changing mores. Were you paying attention to, you know, civil rights movement, women's rights came later in the in the late (19)70s. Were you aware of inequality- did you care, did you take- SW: 43:49 I would be misrepresenting myself to say that it was particularly political, so-so it is really not a, it is really not an area that I have a lot to contribute to. IG: 44:00 Right, okay, all right. SW: 44:03 I was in the National Guard. [laughs] IG: 44:09 Okay, so do you think that this generation of young people has something to learn from your generation? SW: 44:27 I think that is a very fair question. And I think that the only fair answer is maybe, but-but I but I think that first of all, the nature of consciousness prior to the electronic revolution is it is a different kind of consciousness. And I do not know whether it is a better consciousness or a lesser consciousness, but it is a different kind of consciousness. And I said this about the younger generation is I am very impressed by their versatility. The they can do 10 things at once, but they cannot do anything longer than five minutes. And that that is just on one level, that is just an old guy going, you know those kids today, but-but on another level, I think that concentration is-is a valuable commodity, and I think when what my son is a data analyst. So, this is particularly, he is a brilliant kid, and he is a great data analyst. But the notion is, there is always one more fact, there is always one more piece of data. There is always something you could add to-to alter the algorithm or the equation, and-and it is like, no, there are times when it is good to dig deep rather than to dig wide. So, I would like to think that that that, you know, there is still a place for-for concentration, which I do not see, and I see, I see everyone responding at the, you know, to the to the immediate impulse of the moment, you know. And I do not know, maybe I have just described that kind of character because I was when I was a young man. So, I-I the real way I want to answer that question, though, and this is something that I thought about, and is important to me, is that in ancient civilizations, because I like ancient civilizations, I like mythology. In ancient civilizations, if you live to a certain age, let us pick 60 at random. But if you, if you are at the age of 60, and you lived past that time, you became an elder of the tribe, that you were valuable to your civilization as an older person, because you had lived some life and you knew things, and it was the nature of lots of organized cultures that you would access the wisdom of the elders. You would talk to an elder, because the elder could stop you from making mistakes, or had some insights into-into culturally repetitive situations. In our culture these days, you get to a certain age and you are useless. In other words, we-we do not have, we do not honor the elders in our society because of what they know. You know, in other words, I am saying you do not honor the elders because that is the right thing to do, or that is, that is the kind thing to do, or the ethical thing to do. You honor the elders because they know something. And it is funny, because in the nature of the work that I do now, the counseling work that I do, I am forever telling people who are over the age of 60, this is the fight for the rest of your life. Otherwise, it is funny. I talk to people my generation, they all they still want to know, you know, who they are going to date. Will they fall in love? You know, what is the next. You know, you know, business empire to conquer. And I say, you know, get a grip, man, or get a grip, you know, Gal, it is, it is, it is it. Life is finite. There is nothing you can do about that. And I try to say life comes in thirds. You know, from like one to 30, you are young and you are, you know, you are allowed to have, you know, the karma of the situation is you are learning things. From 30 to 60, you are an adult, and you do adult things, and you have you have a family, and you get married, or you have a business or whatever. But after that, there is a decision to make, because time is getting short, and you are not as vital in the same way you were vital. So, what are you going to use these years for? And I just believe that afterwards you can be an elder of the tribe, but life makes it hard to be an elder of the tribe in our society, so you have to fight for that. IG: 48:26 You have to find; you have to find a venue. SW: 48:28 Exactly. IG: 48:28 [inaudible] you can be older. SW: 48:30 Exactly, right. IG: 48:30 I absolutely agree. I-I that that is really very deep. You said you counsel. SW: 48:40 Yes. IG: 48:40 Is that, you know, who do you counsel? SW: 48:44 Well, you know, here we get into the area where I have always been from the time. Okay, here is another strain of Harpur that is important. I got. I became interested in astrology partially because of my interest in mythology as a student. But partially because of a girl who was into astrology. And she was fairly, fairly adept. She was fairly well read in astrology. She was another undergraduate, like I was- IG: 49:06 Linda Goodman Sun Signs. SW: 49:07 The first what was one of the first three books that was handed to me. Jody handed me three books. She handed me Linda Goodman Sun Signs because I said it turned out we had our birthday was one day apart, and I wanted to, I thought this would be a good way to-to-to impress a lady. So, she gave me Linda Goodman Sun Signs. She gave me Astrology for Adults, by Joan Quigley. Now Astrology for Adults, the interesting thing about it is Joan Quigley, remember when, when-when it was turned out that Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan were deeply into astrology. It was on the cover of People magazine and Time Magazine. Well, Joan Quigley was their astrologer and [crosstalk] So Joan quickly was the Reagan's astrologer, and she had written a book called Astrology for Adults, which was a second level astrology book. And I, all I want to do is run around for people do not worry to worry about the President's into astrology. She was a really good astrologer, but the third book she gave me was a very, very esoteric study called An Astrological Triptych, by a famous astrologer by the name of Dane Rudhyar, who was a very-very eminent, thoughtful, brilliant, philosophical astrologer. And I read, I read the first two books, no problem. The third book, I did not know what the hell I was reading, and it became kind of a challenge to me, an intellectual challenge. I wanted to know enough astrology to understand what I was reading in this book. So, astrology became an interest, because I liked mythology. I loved Athena. She was my favorite Goddess, and I, you know, the relationship did not go anywhere, but the astrology got under my skin. So, for from the age of 18, I have been interested in astrology and-and I have taken classes, I have written for astrological journals, but all on the QT. I was, I was having a career, and this was, this was my avocation. This was not my vocation, but I was, I was a serious, I was a serious student of astrology without being an astrologer at the age of 60, you know, apropos of this, you know, being an elder, life circumstances changed for me in my business and in my personal life. And it was a gateway. It was clearly a gateway. And I could either try to recapture the stuff I had been doing for 30 years, or I could say, "Look, you know, do what you do, what your passion tells you to do, for the running time while you, while you are still capable." So-so I had, it is funny, because it is it Louis, Louis Patler who is a who is a co-writer, and a very well-known if you, if you, if you Google Louis, you would see what, what an influential business consultant he is in the world right now. His daughter knew that I was into astrology. She kept bugging and bugging me about doing a reading for because I do not do readings purely in this, because this turns me on. It is sort of like, like a person who has some ability to paint, but paints the pictures for himself. And she became so incessant, I finally said to him, "Look, I am going to do this for her." And she became she became client one. Well, I never advertised. This is about 12 years ago. I never but I never tried to build a practice. She told friends. Friends told friends. Word got out. I published some books, and I have about 200 clients now, and most of them are very accomplished, in fact. In fact, this morning, I did a consultation with a doctor in Canada. These are not people who are they are scientists. There is business leaders. They want to keep you know, sharing names is not the right idea, but when I say counsel, I am having the sort of conversation you and I are having today. These are the conversations I have with people because the universe has been kind and sending me people who have are really thoughtful, you know, are really worth talking to. I am not. For me, astrology is not, you know, you know, I lost my dog. Where is my doll? Do that kind of astrology. I try to talk about life of you. I try to do my wisdom, my wisdom years via the via this consulting. But I find that you know, that people come back over and over again and-and the names and the the-the-the accomplishments of the people that I get to consult with are impressive. Let us just leave it that way. SW: 49:53 Again. They come to me because I am not trying to sell them that I am an Oracle. I mean, yes, there is synchronicity involved. Yes, I tell people things that. How did I know that the-the- it is funny, the doc, the Canadian doctor, a woman who is, I know, I know because I have read for her husband, too, has been married for 25 years? I could look at her chart, and I say, you know, I have to say this to you there, there is really a strong indication here of some sexual, you know, hanky panky attraction going on. And I was right. I was right on. I do not know how I know that, all right, that, you know, I do not know how I know that looking at a piece of paper, you know what I mean. And I am not, I am not going to, I would never advocate, oh, astrology is true. It is the word of you know, you know the universe. But sometimes it blows my mind. I do not think I would have stuck with it if it was not, if that did not occasionally happen. IG: 49:53 Right. Well, I think we should near we should think of concluding this extremely [crosstalk] SW: 49:53 This tape will be [crosstalk] IG: 49: 53 How interesting. Well, they are interesting. IG: 50:40 -your life and period. So, do you- what are some of the most important lessons that you have learned from your college years--life lessons? SW: 54: 59 Yeah-yeah. I think that Harpur was instrumental. And this is this, is this, this is something that is important to me. I think Harpur opened me up to the possibility of dreaming of-of not feeling that reality was something that came with a set of instructions. I think that, I think that that the nature of what I studied and what I did and who I was doing it with, made me believe in the possibility that that you could always learn something, you could always be surprised. You could always you could always trip into something that was, you know, oh, I could have never anticipated that life was going to take me down this road or this was going to happen. And I think, I think leaving a, you know, leaving-leaving New York as a young, young guy, as a 17 year old guy, and even though I was, you know, a little free spirited, I was still looking to my family in a, you know, in a community of, you know, belief and practice and-and Harpur could have been a different kind of school where I simply, you know, went for an academic reputation, and I studied hard, and I and I, you know, figured out how to become something. But the things that were important about Harpur were the was the was the open endness of it all, the free-floating associations that seem to have so much meaning. And I honestly feel that basically, and again, this is just for me, that is that, that is what Harpur opened me up. It is sort of like a look like, you know, like, like a meditation or a spiritual journey. I only can characterize it that looking back at it, it opened me up. It opened me up to the possibilities of the universe. And that was life lesson number one, that and I realized that in order to write, you had to concentrate. [laughs] IG: 56: 54 Well, that is that is absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for a really, very, you know, very substantive, unique interview, I think that we are going to conclude- SW: 57:09 Okay. IG: 57:10 -here and I thank you very much, Steve. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Steven M. Weiss Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weiss, Steven M. ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Steven Mark Weiss is the president of Straightforward Communications, a marketing and research consultancy in consumer demography and trends. His clients have included Hilton Hotels, Denny’s and the California Department of Agriculture. A magna cum laude graduate of Binghamton University and of the Culinary Institute of America, Steve spent the early part of his career as the executive food &amp; beverage editor of <em>Restaurants &amp; Institutions</em> magazine. His work earned him a Jesse Neal award for editorial excellence from the American Business Media. For nearly a decade he was the regular columnist of <em>QSR Magazine</em>. He is also an award-winning journalist with 25 years’ experience as a marketing and management consultant to the food service industry. Steve resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, and serves as vice president of the Arizona Society of Astrologers. He has written books on astrology, including <em>Signs of Success</em>, which represents his lifetime avocational interest in astrology. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Steven Weiss.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2019-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 57:14 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d7e94a3071777684d0eb0bfa99af75d4.mp3 8a994229d63f53f87e811a60fa3fa103 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/808c42498383c5166cefd0b00e9adf10.jpg 046639a5421397e294b8330f956a7d17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2019-02-28 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sue Castaldo Year of Graduation 1963 Biographical Text Sue Castaldo, of Italian descent, grew up in Mechanicville, New York, and graduated from Harpur College in 1963 with a degree in sociology and anthropology. While at Harpur, she met her husband, Ed Yaw, and together they raised four children. Sue began her career in education, teaching in Vestal schools and later working with adult learners in Illinois. She went on to earn an MBA from Adelphi University in 1983 and transitioned into customer service at Bank of America in Phoenix. A successful entrepreneur, Sue owned and operated the retail candy business Candy in Bloom for 25 years. Now retired, she continues to live in Phoenix, Arizona. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in small business; Harpur College – Alumni living in Phoenix, AZ; Harpur College – Alumni in Library Science; Harpur College – Alumni from Mechanicville, New York; Harpur College – Alumni of Italian descent Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Sue Castaldo Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 28 February 2019 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:00 So, please Sue. I would like you to introduce yourself, let us know where we are sitting, and what we are going to do. SC: 00:11 Okay, my name is Sue Costello. We are in Phoenix, Arizona. Where are we? So, um, ASU [Arizona State University] office, and we are going to be talking about my experiences at Harpur College in the (19)60s. IG: 00:24 Very good. Okay, so Sue. We can begin. And what year did you graduate? SC: 00:30 I graduated in (19)63. IG: 00:31 Where are you from? SC: 00:35 I am from Mechanicville, New York. IG: 00:37 Oh, and where is that exactly? SC: 00:40 It is between Albany and Saratoga, right on the Hudson, a little, tiny town. IG: 00:47 So, you know, where did your- just tell me a little bit about your background, who your parents were, what they did. SC: 00:58 My dad was a career army. So, we moved around a little bit. When I was a child, we lived in Panama for a while. Mom was a stay-at-home mom until they got, they got divorced when I was a when I was a freshman at Harpur, and she then worked in a local department store. They are both, they are both gone now. IG: 01:28 Are they from Mechanicville themselves? SC: 01:31 They were from Mechanicville. They were both of their parents. My grandparents came here as immigrants from Italy. Yeah, my small town is mostly Italian, mostly from the same area. IG: 01:43 How interesting. Where in Italy were they from? Do you know? SC: 01:49 Around the Naples area. IG: 01:52 Have you been watching the Elena Ferranti series on HBO? SC: 02:00 No. IG: 02:00 My Brilliant Friend, it is set in Naples. SC: 02:06 Oh. IG: 02:06 After the war. SC: 02:07 We are planning to go to Italy in September, so that would be nice. IG: 02:13 And so, you grew up there, and you lived in Panama for a while. How long were you in Panama? SC: 02:21 A couple of years, I was like, eight years old. IG: 02:23 Oh, I see. Where did you go to high school? SC: 02:28 In Mechanicville. IG: 02:29 Yeah, and- SC: 02:30 Yeah. IG: 02:30 A public school or? SC: 02:31 Yes-yes. I laugh at today's schools of 1000s. My graduating class had 140 students in it. IG: 02:42 So, do you think that you got a better education as a result? SC: 02:46 I feel like I got a good education. I had good teachers. I should have done better at Harpur, but I was experiencing so many things that I had never experienced before, coming from that little town. IG: 03:02 Well, we would like to talk about that. SC: 03:05 We had, like, I swear, two or three Jewish families in town, one black family. That was it. The rest of us were Italians. [laughs] And when I went to college, it was like, Oh my gosh. I did not even know what a bagel was, and I had so many Jewish friends, it was a brand-new experience for me. There were not- I remember two, one black person, one person from India, one person from Barbados, and they were all friends of mine, but that is it. Harpur was like, what 400, 600 students when I, when I started, IG: 03:52 Tell me a little bit about I am very interested in your Italian community in Mechanicsville. SC: 03:58 No mechanics. There was only one mechanic; there is no s [laughs]. IG: 04:00 Mechanic. SC: 04:01 Mechanicville. [laughs] IG: 04:04 Mechanicville. So, did you grow up hearing Italian spoken? SC: 04:11 Yes, yeah, yes, in grandparents’ homes, my mom did not speak Italian, but she spoke Italian to her-her parents. But we did not speak it at home, so I understood more than I spoke. IG: 04:27 But that is wonderful. SC: 04:29 It was wonderful. IG: 04:30 Yeah, so you grew up in two cultures. SC: 04:33 Yes-yes. IG: 04:36 Did you have an interest in learning more about your familial culture? SC: 04:46 No, because I felt like I knew quite a bit. IG: 04:50 Yes. SC: 04:52 Yeah, they were, I mean, they came over on the boat. [laughs] IG: 04:58 And so, you knew about the cuisine- SC: 05:01 Oh yes. IG: 05:01 -a little about the language, their histories- SC: 05:09 Not so much their histories. No, I have photos and, you know, and names, and but not so much about their histories. In my head, they came from that little, little smaller towns than where we were in Italy, you know, like close together. And I think even my great grandparents were from that those same little towns. IG: 05:40 Was education valued in your family? SC: 05:45 Not particularly, not in my extended family, yes, especially my dad's side. My mom only had one brother. My dad had six, and a couple of them were school teachers. One of them in particular pushed a lot, but yeah, but just extended family more than you know. IG: 06:12 So, what did they tell you about your schooling? Do they say do well, go to college. SC: 06:18 Oh yeah, oh yeah. Definitely pushed for college. And in my generation, I was the first one to go to college in my generation, and one of my brothers went to junior college. And my niece, who is 10 years younger than I, she went to college and she-she retired as a guidance counselor. So, there was some, but in my generation. IG: 06:56 So, what was your thinking about college as you were going to high school? Did you have a clear idea that this is what you would like to do, and what would you like to do? SC: 07:08 I really did not have an idea of what I would like to do. IG: 07:11 Right. SC: 07:13 I knew I wanted a liberal arts education. And I looked at Harpur because it had such a good reputation, it was close enough to home, but far enough away that I did not have to live at home. I wanted that experience. IG: 07:30 And is this the reason that you chose Harpur rather than Albany or Buffalo? SC: 07:37 You know, I cannot even remember if I applied to Albany. If I went to Albany, I would probably have to live at home, so that-that came into. Buffalo, forget it, no snow. I mean, there is enough snow in Binghamton. [laughs] But I did not know too much about this school, and when I got there, I was, "Oh, my God, what an experience that was." IG: 08:04 So, what were your first impressions? SC: 08:06 Mud-mud and boardwalks. There were only four dormitories, a student union. Maybe the library was there. Then, no classrooms, no, we took buses to Endicott. Had classes in old army barracks. We wore gloves to take tests. I mean, cold came through the windows and the walls. It was fun, but the first impression was definitely mud everywhere. IG: 08:48 But you saw, you know, a wooded area, or- SC: 08:52 It was gorgeous. IG: 08:53 It was gorgeous. SC: 08:54 It was beautiful. I mean, there were hills and trees all around the campus. IG: 08:59 And you arrived in early autumn? SC: 09:01 Yes. IG: 09:02 And you had never seen the campus before? SC: 09:04 No-no. IG: 09:06 So, you met students, and what were they like? SC: 09:14 They were just fantastic. I mean, they were all from New York City. They were worldly. They were people that I learned so much from. It was great. IG: 09:27 Like, what kind of things did you learn from? SC: 09:30 Well, I learned about the Jewish culture. IG: 09:32 Yeah. SC: 09:34 I learned about New York City. IG: 09:39 For example, give us a few examples. What did you learn about the Jewish culture? What did you learn about New York City? SC: 09:46 Well, the Jewish culture, I learned about their holidays, and I learned about their cuisine, and a little bit about their religion. I learned that they were; it might be the Mediterranean culture. They were so much like Italians in the fact that they were very family-oriented. Yeah, and they were smart. IG: 10:18 And they were very smart. SC: 10:19 They were very smart. And I looked around, and I said, "What am I doing here?" IG: 10:23 Yeah, did you feel that you had to catch up, that you had to study more as a result, or? SC: 10:32 I did. I did. But you know, I really did not do that. [laughs] IG: 10:32 Well, tell us what you did. SC: 10:38 I played a lot. IG: 10:39 Yeah. SC: 10:40 I was- somebody called me a few months ago that I had dated 50 years ago, and he said I was looking through the Harpur directory, I guess the newest one. And he said, "I found you when you were still alive." [laughs] He said, "I am glad you are still alive," but he remembered me as a Spitfire. I do not remember that, but I was- I had a small circle of friends, but I feel like I knew almost everybody, because I loved people, and I would go where there were people, and I just knew everybody. IG: 11:24 So, how did you know everybody? SC: 11:27 Through classes, and we would have what we called Hoot and Nannies sing-alongs. We would have movies in the lounge areas. IG: 11:36 Of the Student Union? SC: 11:39 And in the dorms and in the dorms. Yeah, I do not; you know, I did not participate in a lot of extracurricular activities, but I did belong to the Newman Club. IG: 11:52 And what was that? SC: 11:53 It was a Catholic organization, and I also was in the chorus for a while. So, I knew some people that way. IG: 12:04 What, what kind of music would you sing? SC: 12:06 You know, I cannot remember. IG: 12:08 Was it classical? Was it folk? Was it- SC: 12:11 Wasn't folk? No. IG: 12:13 Popular, or? SC: 12:14 It was a little bit of classical, a little bit of popular. You had to please everybody, I guess. IG: 12:22 So, you socialized a lot, and you met a, not really a diverse, but a different kind of student body, right? SC: 12:32 It was not very diverse. I mean, we did not have that many international students, but I made sure I got to know who they were. IG: 12:45 Did you have a sense of how they felt about being there among so many different people, or did you feel a kindred spirit to them? Because you felt, at first, you must have felt- SC: 12:58 I did not feel well. I may have, I may have. But the couple, I mean, they were so two of them in particular, were very outgoing, a fellow from India, he was a little more reserved, but the others just kind of fit in. They joined social clubs, and that is another thing I did not do. IG: 13:21 Why didn't you do that? SC: 13:22 To me, it was like a sorority. It was not sororities and fraternities, but-but it was, I just- it did not interest me. It just would not. IG: 13:35 What should interest you? What-what were your classes about, you know- SC: 13:39 Well, I started my major, ended up being sociology, with sociology, anthropology, and what I was going to do with that, I had no idea, but it sounded interesting to me. IG: 13:54 Was it interesting? SC: 13:55 It was, and I carried through all the way with it, all the way through, I did not change. IG: 14:00 So, are there any classes or professors that stand out? SC: 14:05 Oh yes-yes-yes, I wrote them down. You know what? I went through my yearbook. IG: 14:13 Okay. SC: 14:14 Because I did not think I would remember their names. I remembered their names, but I do remember who did what. Dr. Savage, in philosophy. I had never had a philosophy course. IG: 14:26 So, what kind of things- SC: 14:28 Absolutely- IG: 14:29 -he opened your mind to? SC: 14:31 Absolutely loved it. A lot of it was logic. And I had never been exposed to logic. And I have always been a very logical person. And he just explained it so well. And another one was Dr. Levin, and he taught a course in law, which fascinated me. I had taken an aptitude test once since, and they told me I should have been a tax lawyer. I guess that is where the logic comes in as well. And I really enjoyed his class. And there was an English class, Dr. Kasberg. I see these, and these were all freshman classes, and they were all taught in the old colonial building in Endicott. Have you been in that building? IG: 15:22 No. SC: 15:24 Have you seen that building? It is gorgeous. IG: 15:26 No. SC: 15:27 It was all run down then, though, and the classes were held upstairs, kind of in an attic, it was- IG: 15:33 And the barracks were also in Endicott. SC: 15:36 Yes-yes. IG: 15:37 Do you remember Bill Vogley from that time? SC: 15:41 I do remember that name. IG: 15:42 Name, because he also describes barracks, SC: 15:48 Cold. IG: 15:49 Cold and snow covering into the barracks. SC: 15:52 Wearing gloves. IG: 15:53 Yeah. SC: 15:53 But that is how you got to know everybody. You were crammed in these little buildings, and you- there was no place to go that was not, that was not a campus, you know, so you really did get to know everybody. IG: 16:08 Was there a bus to take you back to your dorms? SC: 16:11 Yes. IG: 16:12 Did any of the students drive their own cars? SC: 16:15 No, not until I do not remember anybody driving their own cars as a freshman, but as an upperclassman, I remember some, but I think most of them, the ones from New York City, did not know how to drive. They never had to drive. The ones who drove were the townies, and I knew so many of them. I do not know how I just people gravitate to me. They still do. I do not understand why, but I knew the very-very popular people, and I also knew the not-so-popular people, and we were all kind of friendly. IG: 16:59 So, you socialized with your classmates in the dormitories, but where else in town? SC: 17:13 We did we had a roller rink in Endicott that we could bus to you. I did that there was Pat Mitchell's ice cream, which I think is still there on Endicott, you are missing out. [laughs] And you know, typical college students, there was a bar in Endicott, I mean, in Binghamton, that was not very far from campus. IG: 17:42 What was it called? SC: 17:43 I cannot remember Sullivan's, and there is one, and there was one, and we used to play shuffleboard in that place, and we would go to a place in Johnson City. And I cannot remember the name of that one, but that is where we had speedies, and I think it is still there. IG: 18:02 What was the drinking age then? Did they check licenses? No? SC: 18:07 I do not ever remember them checking these. I do not, and I did have a circle offense that we went to church in Binghamton, and I even I started a group. There were people at church that wanted to do something, and I suggested, how about you adopt some college students and invite them to your homes? And- IG: 18:07 How nice. SC: 18:40 -like an adopt-a-grandmother kind of thing. And I had a group that went to this Mrs. Taylor's house on Pennsylvania Avenue almost every Sunday for fried chicken. IG: 18:51 Oh, how nice. SC: 18:52 It was so cool. I do not know how long it lasted. I cannot remember. IG: 18:57 So, you discovered organizational abilities in yourself, right? SC: 19:01 Yes. IG: 19:03 Did you know that you have them before? SC: 19:07 You know, I belonged to an awful lot of stuff in high school, but I do not think I myself organized anything. I was kind of a shy- I was a nerd. They know me in high school is, you know, a smart, a smarty. I was not that way in college. [laughs] I think if I got out with a C average, that was good. IG: 19:35 So, you, you know, any-any noteworthy academics that you can think of, in addition to those three profs that you mentioned. SC: 19:53 No, there were some I did not like at all. I had a calculus class that I went to one day and dropped out, mostly because I did not understand the subject right away. And the woman who taught the class was Indian, and I had a very hard time understanding her. So, I said, Okay, I do not need this class. So, I got out of that class. IG: 20:27 Um, was- were most of the professors’ locals, or were they from- they-they were from other countries? Was- SC: 20:40 They were not. I do not remember anyone from another country, except that-that math teacher, I think most of them were local. In fact, I worked for Professor Dodge. She was one of my sociology professors, and he had a couple of small children, and he needed help at you know, he and his wife needed help at home with the kids, and I remember doing some lighthouse work for them too. So, I did work, and that is another place I met a lot of people. I worked in the linen room. They would bring down their dirty linen, and I would give them clean linen. And I mean, and that was everybody in that dorm. IG: 21:27 So that was a way that you would make pocket money. SC: 21:30 Mm-hmm. IG: 21:31 Were you a Regents scholar? SC: 21:33 Yes. IG: 21:35 Do you remember what the college cost you at all? Were you- was it paid for it entirely? SC: 21:44 You know, I kind of remember $12 in credit hours. That sounds about right? IG: 21:50 I do not know. SC: 21:52 That is what I remember. I did not come from a lot of money. I must have had some scholarships. I won prizes in- at graduation from high school, and I know some of them were partial scholarships. I had a grandmother who used to give me money all the time when I came home and went back to school, and my mom would send me $5 every once in a while, but that was that. So, I did the linen, and I worked for Professor Dodge. And there, I cannot remember who there was another professor who brought their kids over from time to time, and I would babysit the group. IG: 22:39 For their- were there other students doing similar things to you? Were they making money outside of campus or? SC: 22:52 In my group, I do not [crosstalk], but there has always been kids who worked in the cafeteria, but in my little circle, I do not remember anybody. I know one-one girl who started out being a roommate. She spent her last three years, I think, living with the Andersons. He was a math teacher. She was a math major, and she would help out around their houses. He was in a wheelchair, and she helped out around their house and for room and board, she lived with them. They lived like right on the edge of campus, which is no longer the edge of campus. [laughs] IG: 23:38 Did you feel that you were more grown up than the others because you had to pay your way? SC: 23:44 No. IG: 23:46 No. How did that make you feel better? Bigger? SC: 23:52 I never- IG: 23:54 Self-sufficient? SC: 23:55 I never felt that. No, I just felt like this was what I had to do. IG: 23:59 What you had to do. SC: 24:00 And I did it. IG: 24:03 What-what kinds of things would you talk about with your roommates, with your classmates? SC: 24:10 Well, a lot of times it had to do with classes. If they had the same classes that that I did. IG: 24:17 Right. SC: 24:20 We would talk about our families back home and kid stuff, mostly, you know, clothing. It was IG: 24:37 Dating? SC: 24:38 That too. IG: 24:39 Were you dating? SC: 24:40 A lot. a lot. IG: 24:43 You were dating a lot. SC: 24:45 Yes, it was fun. IG: 24:49 It was fun. And you and you would spend your time off campus, on campus? SC: 24:55 Mostly on campus, because there were no cars there. You know, the buses were mostly for going back and forth to Endicott to school. If somebody had a car, we would go to the movies, like I said, we would go roller skating, but it was mostly on campus. We would have dances in the gym. IG: 25:18 Right. SC: 25:19 And that, that type of thing. IG: 25:23 Did you feel that you were going to meet your husband- SC: 25:27 I did. IG: 25:28 -during- You did? SC: 25:29 Yes. IG: 25:29 Well, tell us about it. SC: 25:32 I do not know very much. [laughs] He was, he was very popular. He was, at one point, he was the president of the Student Government. IG: 25:42 Are you still married to him? SC: 25:43 No, I was married to him for 16 years. Yeah, but no, maybe not. IG: 25:49 I mean, since he is an alum, could you mention his name? SC: 25:52 Yeah, his name is Ed Yaw. Y-W-W. IG: 25:54 Okay. SC: 25:58 Yeah, I do not know how involved he is, and I have never, I have been to a couple of college reunions, and I do not, I have never seen him there. No, and we are in touch because we did have four children together. And we go to all kinds of things that kid, you know, for the kids, you know, all the times up until this day. IG: 26:25 Was he from New York? SC: 26:27 Yes, he was from a small town to Potsdam, upstate New York. His-his father was a music teacher there. He taught French horn and cello. Yeah. IG: 26:40 So, uh- SC: 26:43 I think we met, and he was a year younger, so the first time we met each other, it was, you know, I was a sophomore, and we got married when he was a senior, and I was teaching in Vestal. IG: 27:03 You were already teaching? SC: 27:05 Yeah. IG: 27:05 So, you- SC: 27:05 I went to- IG: 27:07 [crosstalk] slightly older. SC: 27:08 I was a year older. I went to an intensive Teacher Training Program at Oneonta during this my- the summer after my graduation. IG: 27:19 I see. SC: 27:19 And then I got a teaching job in Vestal and taught for two years. IG: 27:24 So, how long did you remain in Vestal? SC: 27:30 Teaching in Vestal for two years, we lived in Johnson City. And then when he graduated a year after I did, in (19)60 he graduated in (19)64 he started working in the admissions office, and I believe he worked in the admissions office for two years, maybe three, and then we went to Carbondale, Illinois, so he could get his PhD in college administration, Southern Illinois University. IG: 28:10 What kind of um, so, what kind of work did you- what was your career in? Teaching? SC: 28:16 Mostly teaching. I did not. I was a stay-at-home mom for a long time, for a really long time. I mean, I did the two years of teaching in Vestal, and I had, you know, two little guys when we moved to Carbondale, and I taught some out there in a federal program for adults. IG: 28:38 I see and what kind of federal program. SC: 28:42 I cannot remember what it was, but I remember teaching. I just remember this one 85-year-old woman, a black woman, a cotton picker. We taught her how to write her name for the very first time. It was that kind of thing. It was just amazing. It was amazing. And when we came back to New York, we came back to Long Beach. I did a lot of little nothings. I sewed for somebody, some little shop, but I did not really have a career until I got divorced, and I got my MBA at Adelphi, and I went into the payroll business. I-I was a Customer Service Manager at a payroll company, and started out in Manhattan, moved to Queens, and that is what brought me out here. I got transferred out here. IG: 29:35 Could you mention the companies that you worked for? SC: 29:37 I worked it was called Payroll Plus when I first started. IG: 29:45 When-when was that? SC: 29:46 That was in (19)86 No-no-no-no-no-no, (19)81. Yeah, because I moved out of New York in (19)86. Yeah, in (19)81 I started there, and they moved me out here, and then Bank of America bought that payroll. So, I worked for Bank of America until they sold it to ADP, and that is when I said, "No more." IG: 30:14 So when-when did you when did you retire? SC: 30:16 I never retired. IG: 30:18 You never retired [crosstalk]. SC: 30:21 No [crosstalk] doing that. I-I started my-my own. It was not my own business. I started; I was a licensee of a company in Texas. They do not exist anymore, though. I started this. I always wanted to be a florist. I started a candy bouquet business, and I had a retail shop for 12 years, and then I moved it home, because my mother came out to stay with me. She stayed with me for three years before she died. But that was perfect. I moved it home, and when I made deliveries, she came with me. So, I- IG: 30:45 Do you still have a business? SC: 30:58 I just stopped accepting credit cards. I closed down my website, but I still have some customers that call me. So, I- IG: 31:09 What was the name of your business? SC: 31:11 Candy and bloom. I think I saw it somewhere on your list, Candy and Bloom. IG: 31:17 But this is for, this is for our listening audience, SC: 31:21 Okay. IG: 31:21 It is not for me. SC: 31:22 Candy and Bloom. And it was a licensee of a Texas company when I-I was working in Texas for Bank of America for a while, for I cannot even remember if it was a whole year or not. And I found this little shop, and I fell in love with it. So, I bought the license, and away I went. IG: 31:45 That is very interesting. I would like to circle back to your college days. SC: 31:52 Okay. IG: 31:53 And ask you, what were the politics that if, if any that were being discussed on campus? SC: 32:02 I remember falling in with a group that I do not know if they identified themselves or we all did, as the original beatniks, and I remember being encouraged by that group was a very artistic group, if you ever get a chance to look at a yearbook from that time, there was a club called the outing club, and it was mostly those people, and it was not real friendly with them. I just knew them, and I do not know how they kept encouraging me to do sit-in or sit-out when there were bomb drills and that kind of thing. IG: 32:50 You were doing bomb drills- SC: 32:51 We were- IG: 32:51 -on campus? SC: 32:53 Um, yeah. IG: 32:56 Against the threat of their Soviet empire? Is that what you were doing? SC: 33:00 Maybe it was not, maybe it was not, I do not know, we were not doing drills, but something was going on, and they were doing these great big sit-ins on the lawn in front of the Student Union SC: 33:19 Protesting what? SC: 33:20 Protesting nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons. They were very active, very vocal. IG: 33:31 Did they protest on campus alone, or did they go out to town or Washington? SC: 33:38 No-no, it was always on campus. IG: 33:41 And so, this was a small group. SC: 33:43 It was a small group. IG: 33:44 It was a small group. SC: 33:45 I would say, no more than, no more than 25. IG: 33:50 So, did you feel an affiliation with them in some way? Were you also against the bomb? SC: 33:55 Yeah-yeah. IG: 33:56 Yeah. What kind of music did you listen to? SC: 34:01 Folk music mostly. IG: 34:03 Yeah. SC: 34:04 Yeah. IG: 34:04 Peter, Paul, and Mary. SC: 34:05 Yeah. And we did Joan Baez. We did a lot of folk singing. There was a lot there were a lot of guitars on campus. IG: 34:13 That is right. You are a singer. SC: 34:14 One of my roommates played guitar, and she knew all the folk songs. And we did folk dancing in the gym. That was all new to me. IG: 34:30 Did you feel that you were swept up by some kind of youth movement on campus, you know, that was the beatniks were part of- SC: 34:40 No, I was a pretty independent thinker too. Yeah, I did not really submerge myself in-in that group. IG: 34:52 What were some of the other groups discussing? SC: 34:58 You know, I cannot. There was a group that tried to get me to play bridge. Those are the intellectuals. IG: 35:07 I am thinking about politics. SC: 35:08 Politics? You know, I do not remember anything political except for that one group, and I guess I remember a lot of political activity after (19)63 and I was trying to figure out what happened to me here, because I remember the day that Kennedy was shot, I was teaching, and I remember being on campus with a whole group of people watching TV for days, but my husband was still in school. He was not my husband then, but he was, he was still in school. So, I think that is how that happened, that I happened to be on campus then, and there was a lot of discussion at that point in time, but I do not remember anything very political. IG: 36:11 But what were people saying? How awful. SC: 36:14 Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is really all I remember, sorry. IG: 36:22 Uh, what were- did you notice, you know, the changing mores? Did you know women feel that they have to? Did they envision any kind of future for themselves beyond getting married- SC: 36:42 Oh, at that school, absolutely. IG: 36:46 Tell us about that. SC: 36:46 Absolutely. I mean, these were these-these were career women, these were intelligent women. IG: 36:54 Right. SC: 36:55 Yeah-yeah. IG: 36:57 It is not to say that intelligent women did not streamline into getting married [crosstalk] SC: 37:05 Right-right. And I, and I was not either, you know, but it happened, you know. It happens. But those were women who were, they were going to go out and be lawyers and doctors, and they were going to do stuff. IG: 37:08 And did they do the stuff? Yeah, have you kept in touch with some of these women? SC: 37:27 I have. IG: 37:28 So, what-what you know, what did they do? SC: 37:31 Bonnie Malecon was a chemist, and she became a chemist for NASA. IG: 37:37 Wow. SC: 37:38 And she worked in Boston. Stephanie Mandelbaum. She was Stephanie Singer at the time, and she did not even graduate. She was in my freshman year. She was a math professor at what was, what was the girls’ part of Rutgers. I always forget there is a girls’ school that goes along with Rutgers. There is a girl's counterpart- IG: 38:09 Oh, Douglas College. SC: 38:10 It was either there or Rutgers, one of the two where she where she taught math. I think they are both retired now, and Wren de Mattis, she was from Saranac Lake. She married. She and her husband started a computer company for municipalities. She now lives in France with her with another husband; her first husband died, and we visited them 20 years ago. [crosstalk]That was nice. That was nice, yeah. You know, I think most of the people that I am still in touch with those-those are the women, the others are all men. IG: 39:07 So, all the others are all men, and where are the- I mean, how do you get together? Do you get together individually? SC: 39:17 We do not- we mostly do it on Facebook- anymore. IG: 39:19 I see. SC: 39:20 That is how we keep in touch. IG: 39:21 I see, I see. SC: 39:23 And sometimes by telephone. IG: 39:25 And sometimes by telephone. Are there any chapters for, I mean- SC: 39:29 You know, there was a chapter here, but I think it just kind of fell apart. We-we started to get together. When was me, was it? Could it have been loved floor who came out here? It might have been, and she had a cocktail party at a local at a downtown restaurant or hotel, and several of us who graduated together got together, and we also had, we all met at another restaurant not too long after that, and then somebody organized a trip to a baseball game. They were all younger people, and I thought they would keep it going right, but I never heard another thing after that. IG: 40:17 How long ago was that? SC: 40:21 Oh, it has been a few years. It has been years. IG: 40:28 Okay. So, when you look back at your years in Binghamton at Harpur, what do you think that the college gave you? How were you changed by that experience? SC: 40:46 It grew me up. IG: 40:51 Yeah. SC: 40:54 I got a little bit more self-esteem, a little I got to be a little bit more outgoing. I was kind of shy in high school, even though I did not know a lot of people, but it was a small town. Yeah, more self-esteem, and you touched on something earlier, organizational ability. So many people are afraid of public speaking, and it brought you know that out in me, I would, I would speak up in class more than I more than I did before. IG: 41:31 What kind of things would you speak up against? Or did you just answer questions? SC: 41:37 I just answered questions. Or if we were in an, in a discussion, I would take part. But I know I cannot remember particulars. Come on, it was a long time ago. IG: 41:46 The general tenor, you know, some people were confronted authority. Others argumentative. SC: 41:56 I do not remember confronting authority at all. You do not know, except for that one group. IG: 42:05 But they, but you were not part of that group. SC: 42:07 I was not part of that group. IG: 42:10 Right? SC: 42:10 No. IG: 42:11 But you were friends with them. SC: 42:12 Yes. IG: 42:14 You know, did you feel that there were different expectations for women than there were for men? SC: 42:25 I never felt that. IG: 42:27 You never felt. SC: 42:28 I never felt that at all. No. I felt like we were treated as equals. IG: 42:37 So, there were no greater restrictions on the freedoms of women as opposed to men. SC: 42:45 I am trying to remember if the men had a curfew like the women did, and I cannot remember. IG: 42:50 That is, that is, that is one of the restrictions. SC: 42:50 We did have curfews. IG: 42:50 That is one of the restrictions. SC: 42:54 Yes. IG: 42:56 What do you think? Do you- do you believe that your generation's experience can teach, can say something to the present generation? Do you think that there are any, you know, major sort of lessons or major experiences that-that you were just- SC: 43:22 I think- IG: 43:22 -that would be useful for the current generation. SC: 43:26 Yeah, I do not know that they would listen. You know- IG: 43:30 You have a captive audience. They are listening [crosstalk] SC: 43:32 More civility. I mean, we did not confront authority. We had respect for our professors and each other; I do not see that anymore. We were kinder. I mean, there was probably an oddball out there who was not so kind, but I did not meet him. IG: 44:05 Do you think this is true of this generation, or just the culture outside of Harpur College? SC: 44:11 Oh, I think it is the culture- IG: 44:13 Outside of Harpur College? SC: 44:15 Yeah. Oh, yeah. IG: 44:18 So, it is not; it does not really have to do with a generation, this current generation of young people, but it has more to do with a culture outside of Harpur College. What do you think? SC: 44:35 Well, I think I, you know, I do not know what Harpur College is like these days. It is kind of a smaller college of my Harpur College, gosh, speaking to today's generation from Harpur College, my Harpur College. It, yeah, it is the authority. It is the respect for individuals that stands out in my mind, the respect for human life. Times have changed, and not for the best, and I wish we could go back. IG: 45:26 What lessons did you learn from this time in your life? SC: 45:32 I learned how to get along with a lot of different people, and I learned that you do not have a lot of money. Have to have a lot of money to have a good time and a good education, and you can be just as, just as good as somebody who has got a lot of money. I mean, I came from nothing, and I do not think anybody knew that about me, and I do not think anybody cared. Was a different time. IG: 46:12 It is a different time, but it is also a different group of people at Harpur College; it might not have been the same experience elsewhere, or do you think would have been? SC: 46:25 Might have. I do not know, [crosstalk], I kind of remember another person that I really got along with, really, really well. She was this big, she was a little person, and she lived on my floor, and we got along really well. I came to college wearing a, this is my Spitfire thing. I wore a kilt, you know, a little short skirt, big safety. She borrowed it all the time. And there was another one on my floor who was, she was a Hulk, and she was an RA, and she was not very nice, but she was nice to me, and I do not know why. IG: 47:07 You must have drawn that out from people. SC: 47:12 I do not know. I do not know I like people. IG: 47:20 That is, that is, I think that is key. I think that is key. So, I am just looking back at you at your life so far. What do you know, some of the lessons that you have learned from your experience at Harpur and your life that you would like to share with you know, young people listening to this interview, what are some of the key elements to having a successful life? SC: 47:57 Well, I think I have touched on almost all of them, as you know, just put yourself out there, and do not be afraid to mix with other kinds of people. And, you know, respect each other, basically. IG: 48:16 Do you have any concluding remarks? SC: 48:19 I do not, other than I loved my experience there. I really, really did. I had a good experience. I have, I have a cousin whose son did not have a good experience there, and I felt bad for him. He went to Harpur. IG: 48:39 But when? SC: 48:40 Probably was probably almost 20 years ago. IG: 48:47 It was a different, a different time. SC: 48:49 It was a different time, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I was lost a lot of the time in classes where I mean, what am I doing here? These are smart people, but I persevered, and I got through. Just keep on trucking. IG: 49:18 Well, that is great. That is great advice. Thank you so much. SC: 49:21 You are so welcome. I talked a little bit. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sue Castaldo Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Castaldo, Sue ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-02-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sue Castaldo.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2019-02-28 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 49:24 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3bf2f3e2e5171c16c5339bda288b1be5.mp3 1913782579f31bd4fdd62e836f8ee0e5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2019-05-03 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Wayne Coffey Year of Graduation 1976 Biographical Text An award-winning sports journalist and writer for the <em>Daily News</em> (one of NY's best papers back in the day). Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Wayne Coffey Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Coffey, Wayne ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource An award-winning sports journalist and writer for the <em>Daily News</em> (one of NY's best papers back in the day). Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-05-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Wayne Coffey.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2019-05-03 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 58:40 minutes