35 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f0e311fc930b98671ed9b4925b795b96.mp3 230a47a39051a06ef761d0e05b33eecc https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/658c9267362880e2e70d674158dd629b.mp3 dd5de00e982da20488acc88269486a77 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 Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> 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. Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56941">Interview with Leo J. Payne</a> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:47 minutes ; 7:19 minutes Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp3 Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Material Type Sound Subject LCSH Payne, Leo -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.) Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. 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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium BROOME COUNTY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interview with: Leo J. Payne Interviewer: Dan O’Neil Date of Interview: 10 February 1978 Dan: Mr. Payne, will you please tell me about your life and working experiences in the community starting with the early days, including the place of birth, education and family life with emphasis on your working experiences? Mr. Payne: Well I, ah, of course was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, ah, the family moved to Binghamton when I was two years old and ah, we, ah, my father went to work for Cyrus Clapp on ah Chenango Street–19 Chenango Street as a coachman and ah when I was five years old he ah went into trucking business for himself with a cart wagon and ah two horses and he moved to 25 Sherman Place. I was ah just as a small boy when ah he took me up to watch the ah ah the Courthouse burn down. We ah I saw that, that was quite a place and was up on quite a hill at that time. Now let’s see ah I ah I went to ah Carroll Street School until I was around 8 years old and then to ah Washington Street School–now the ah police station, where the Police Station used to be and ah when I was 12 years old, I went to to ah Central High School (Clock Chimes) and ah got my education there. After that I went to Riley's Business School that was oh can't think the name of that little street and ah from there I ah got a position as a Bookkeeper and Stenographer with ah Harry Doherty, who runs one of the first garages in Binghamton selling the Pierce Arrows and the White Steamers–not the Pierce Arrows, the Cadillacs and the Stanley Steamers. Ah business got bad and ah I was ah laid off. I went back to help my father then shovel coal–he used to have a contract with them and the Binghamton Cold Storage company. After about six months, a Professor Riley got me a position as a Bookkeeper and Stenographer at, ah, G.A. Glark Company in Sidney, N.Y. I stayed there until my–I worked too much inside–my Doctor told me I’d have to get outdoors or get a coffin–so the only thing I know what to do, I sold my house in Sidney and came down and bought out ah Rich ah Millard–he had that ah ah trucking business that people put him in business but he didn't want no business and so finally they ah put it up for sale but that was at the same time–so I came down and looked. He had two trucks & ah made a payment on them–I bought them. I went back to ah Sydney to get the ah ah additional loan so I could pay for it as my boss, my boss G.A. Clark's brother was President of the Sidney National Bank. Well I ah got along very good. After a couple years ah Mr. Clark came down, wanted to buy my trucks and ah have me come back to work and then my wife–I got married in between and ah at ah Cynthia Gifford, whose father was President of the ah People’s Trust Company in Sidney–he disowned her for you know ah marrying a colored man and ah we got, we got along very good. We came down to Binghamton and got married at the Centenary Church. I can remember at that time my people were living at 173 Henry Street in Binghamton. Had a, well, I got along very good by industrious working–I done a lot of work myself and I went around and worked up a very good business and finally connected with ah the Kroehler Manufacturing Company in 1930 and ah drawing furniture for them to different towns and ah I worked for them until around 1970, I think, in 1968 or 70 when I an gave ah a tractor and trailer one each to my two brothers, who were working for me and ah told them that they could go for their own as a gypsy as they had no rights–Interstate rights see, which I did have and I continued in a small way ah with a couple of moving vans doing moving jobs around ah near Binghamton as possible and in Binghamton and still doing it. Now that’s about all I ah had two children–one of my sons, Clark Payne, and we named him after my ah earlier boss in Sidney and ah he died here a short time ago and my daughter Doris is still with me and ah looking after me. I've had several heart attacks and ah two years ago I had two heart plants and ah, what you call it, pacemakers. Dan: Pacemakers. Mr. Payne: Put in and at the present time I'm feeling quite well. Dan: That’s fine. Mr. Payne: Now that’s about– Dan: How old are you, Mr. Payne? Mr. Payne: I’m 80–89 years old that 1st of February. Dan: Great, great, great. Now what year did you buy the Richard Millard Company? Mr. Payne: 1917. Dan: 1917 and when did you get married–what year? Mr. Payne: Oh dear, let’s see, 1913. Dan: 1913 Mr. Payne: Well I was married twice. Dan: I see. Mr. Payne: I was married in 1910 the first time. My wife died of childbirth. Dan: Oh. Mr. Payne: And they had ah close the operation. Dan: I see, did the baby die too? Mr. Payne: They died before. Dan: Oh. Mr. Payne: So they had to force the operation but they didn’t have no hospitals there in Sidney and they just ah a couple of Doctors and ah they ah charged an operation with car batteries like–yeah they were car batteries some way but ah she only lived two days afterwards. Dan: I see, I see. Mr. Payne: But the second time, I was married in 1913. Dan: In 1913 the second time and when did your wife die or is she still livine? Mr. Payne (to daughter Doris): Oh when did your Mother die, do you remember? Doris: December 7th ‘69. Dan: December 7th ‘69. Now you mentioned that you were kind of disowned by the family because ah of– Mr. Payne: Of racial– Dan: Of racial discrimination there, yeah. Now did you encounter any racial discrimination here, Mr Payne? Mr. Payne: I, I never ah ah had ah any ah racial ah ah trouble here in Binghamton at all–never. Dan: Never. Mr. Payne: I went any place anybody else could go and was received. Dan: Um hum. Mr. Payne: ‘Cause I always tried to live a life that people would respect me. I joined the Masonic Lodge as soon as I could join and I ah was very ah enthusiastic about Masonic work and I finally ah ah rose up until now I am a Past Grand Master of the State Prince Hall affiliation of Masonic work. Dan: What church do you belong to? Mr. Payne: Trinity M.E. Zion. Dan: OK, do you belong to any clubs there at all? Mr. Payne: What’s that? Dan: Do you belong to any clubs there at all? Mr. Payne: Clubs, no I never joined anything else because I’ve always been very active in my Church work. For 15 years I was Chairman of the ah ah church Board. I ah put the church and an apartment next to it in the ah church’s ah lap without investing a cent. Free and clear–I had to use my head a little. Ah the ah State took over the parsonage for forty ah ah they only offered $450.00 for it. Dan: Is that right? Mr. Payne: Thats when they started clearing out for the playgrounds on ah Sherman Place. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: So, being very active in church work, they ah the ah church association here ah heard that I was looking for a parsonage–so the Chairman of the Church Board here called me up said, "Mr. Payne, I hear you're looking for a parsonage.” I said, "Yes, but I can't get ahit [sic] for what the ah anything for what they want to allow me for ah my old parsonage because anything I looked at was from 10 to 12 thousand, 12 hundred dollars.” So I says, he says, "Well how would you like to buy a church and a parsonage?” I says, “I’ll tell you, Reverend, I haven’t got five cents to invest. We are $1100.00 in the hole.” He says, "Well, could you have a couple of your board members meet me at the church on the corner of Lydia & Oak at 2 o'clock?" Yes sir, so I got ‘em, cause I was very active then and ah I looked the place over and ah he said, "Now ah IBM ah not IBM, GAF wants to ah buy the corner and ah put ah ah watering place there and ah Kradjian wants it to tear down and put ah ah development there, he said, but we rather have it for a church–Now it'll have to go up for a bid–could you make me a bid?" I said, "Well listen Rev, the best I could do would he $20,000.00.” He says, "Well I’ll take your bid in–how could you pay for it?” I said, "Cash." He says "What? I thought you was broke.” I am so I says, "I'll take care of it. I'll get in touch with you just within the next couple days.” So I called my head Minister up and I told him I says "You go see the Priest at ah St. Mary’s on ah Hawley and Fayette Street and tell him ‘cause he had asked me once before for a price on my church which was in very bad shape and he offered me $10,000.00 for it." Well I said 10 then 4, all right. I called Mrs. Titchner up–she was the development ah Superintendent here at that time–and I says, “Mrs. Titchner, I've got a proposition–it’s only good for a week. I've got to have at least $8,000.00 for the parsonage." [She says,] “Oh, Mr. Payne, I could never get that much.” I said, "Well I'm going to tell you what I've got in mind. I said I have ah offered the Church to the ah St. Mary’s ah Catholic Church for $15,000.00. I've given them a week’s, ah, option, I said, otherwise I'm gonna rebuild it" and ah (Clock chimes) she said, "Well I'm going to tell you what I'll do, Mr. Payne. I, I, I appreciate what you're doing, I'll call the State and see what I can do for you. I'll tell them the situation.” About three days afterwards, she called back and said, "OK, you can have the $8,000.00"--so I got that $8,000.00. The, the Priest saw my Minister and told him he’d take it, so I got $15,000.00–so I got $23,000.00, see, without a dime invested no place and ah I don't know, it was transacted through ah the First City National Bank and I met there with them. Ah the President of the Bank at that time said, "I don't know I ah Mr. Payne, you' re marvelous, I ah wish we had a Chairman that could work it like you worked it." (Laughter) So I took the $20,000.00 ah ah to them to for the church, I mean to pay for it–I had $3000.00 left, I paid the $1100.00 off that ah we owed and ah cause the ceiling was falling down and ah I had that fixed and that’s what I owed and then I took a couple thousand dollars they ah they ah–the furnace was bad so I put a new furnace in or used one that was in very good shape I bought from Fred Kennedy–at that time he was in the ah ah used building ah business and ah used the rest of the money for decorating the inside and what we could on the outside painting he says and they didn't cost them a dime. (Laughter) Dan: Ah, now what you said, you went to Central High School–did you graduate from ah Central High School? Mr. Payne: I ah ah quit ah ah in the ah eleventh grade to go to ah cause my family was in a little bad shape to go to they had enough money to send me to Riley's Business College and so I, I didn't quite finish ah for that and went to Riley's Business College. Riley's son and I had been friends ever since we was small kids and ah he told me I've ah had enough education for what he can give me so I don't need no more and he'll see that I get a break cause there was a lot of prejudices you know at that time in Binghamton. Dan: Lot of what, lot of what? Mr. Payne: Prejudices. Dan: Oh, prejudices. Mr. Payne: Yeah, I can remember that ah Ralph Hackett was in charge of ah the ah G.F. Pavilion and ah he ah I don't know, I wanted to raise money for the Lodge, see if we could buy a place eventually, so I started ah ah giving some dances around and I went down to see Ralph cause we had been friends ah otherwise and ah I asked him if we could rent it. He says, "Oh, this is strictly ah ah company ah company place of amusement and it’s not for rent to anybody.” I says, “Well you tell ah George F. that I want it at least twice a year–once in the spring and once in the fall for a Masonic dance and I want to improve the colored people in Binghamton as much as possible," and ah so anyhow ah he said to tell Ralph to let me have it once or twice a year– once in the spring and once in the fall, so Ralph and I got to be quite friends. So they was ah bringing name bands here for their dances and ah so ah–oh, I'm trying to think of his name now, oh he was a good friend of mine. He just died. Oh colored ah band Leader–tops–what was his name? Oh dear, he was a composer as well as ah ah– Dan: Wouldn’t be Garner there, would it? Mr. Payne: What? Dan: Would it be Garner, Garner? Mr. Payne: No–Duke Ellington. Dan: Duke Ellington. Mr. Payne: Yeah, he came here. They wouldn't let him, they had 20 people. They wouldn't let his ah ah his group stay overnight in any hotel here. Dan: What year was this? Mr. Payne: Oh God, I don't quite remember the year, but anyhow, let’s see, Ralph called me up and wanted to know if I could find places for them to stay overnight among my friends because you know I you know because I was in top shape and had very good friends. I finally got 'em enough to room so I went back down–he come here on a bus with his band and ah I told him what I had done. He says, "Well listen, ah ah Mr. Payne, I'm I’m very thankful for what vou've done, but these white people in Binghamton do so and so, which I can't ever repeat.” Dan: In other words, in other words, there was discrimination. Mr. Payne: "From now on I'm going to play this engagement and I'm leaving afterwards and they'll get on their knees to get me back here again and they'll do it too.” And they really did and finally ah after many years they got him to come back. Dan: You know the Ku Klux Klan was very active at one time here in this city, wasn't it? Mr. Payne: All right - I had that, at that time when the Ku Klux Klan was active here in Binghamton, had a Convention here, I can't remember the date. It was in the 20s. Ah I was, ah, backed on Centenary Street with my truck, loading some furniture, and it blocked off the street and ah a guy come by with a pickup truck and wanted me to move my truck out of the street londside. Well I told him I couldn't do it because we was getting ready to put a piano in and ah he'd have to wait. Well I ain't waiting but he did ah went up on the sidewalk on the other side and he clipped the front of ah my truck. So I jumped out there boy and I let him have one. So he says, "We got an organization going to take care of you." I says, “Oh you have, well I've got an organization that says you can’t." I was very proud of proud to belong–I didn't belong of of to be a friend of the Mafia, that was here. That was ah at that time I had ah a associate business of welding on Collier Street, which was known at that time as Automobile Row and ah this one particular friend there was a liquor ah ah ah bar room on each side of where I was ah ah I had my welding shop and ah I this is where I met this one of the heads of the Mafia, who became a very good friend of mine. I told him about what this guy said ‘cause I know they was quite strong from talking with them before because there was a lot of Italian people down around that way, see. He says, ''All right, they're having ah ah big time here next year, Ku Klux Klan, I'm going with you and we're going up and see that parade and I want to tell them something anyhow." So we went up and stood on the corner of Chenango and Henry. All right, this ah parade come down and this big shot stopped right in front of us–so right away quick my pal says, "Listen you so and so, this is my pal Leo Payne, I heard that you was ah looking for him and here he is. If you touch one hair of his head, I blow your head off." And then he told me if I, I wanted him at that time, anybody put out of the way, for $125 .00 I could have it done and nobody would be the wiser who done it. Dan: Now you ah did you encounter any other prejudices as far as the white people in the community? Mr. Payne: Never had any trouble at all. Dan: No, no trouble at all. You're an old established family here, Mr. Payne. Mr. Payne: What? Dan: You’re an old established family here–respected family.. Mr. Payne: Yes. Dan: You are. Now you said your dad was in business in the piano moving business before you? Mr. Payne: He was in the moving business. Dan: Moving business. Mr. Payne: Moved anything, cleaning out cellars and moving. Dan: How long was he in business? Mr. Payne: Oh dear, uh uh until he died. Dan: Until he died–what year would that be approximately? Mr. Payne: I think, let’s see, he's been dead about 16 years. Dan: lb years. Mr. Payne: Yeah, and my mother died right afterwards–the next year. Dan: About 1961 then, huh? Mr. Payne: Yes. Dan: Uh huh, 62. Mr. Payne: They're buried in ah Chenango Valley Cemetery. So when my wife died, I bought five lots up there for my immediate family which I still own. Put a stone up there for both my wife and myself. Dan: Now you worked from 1917, when you started in business, right up until 67–did you say 1967 - 68? Mr. Payne: I quit work ah about ah oh about 4 years ago, myself that is, doing any labor. Dan: Oh you did. Did you that soon, huh? Just 4 years ago. Mr. Payne: Yes that’s all. Dan: Oh. Mr. Payne: I was good right up ‘til then. Dan: Who's carrying on your business now, Mr. Payne? Mr. Payne: Well I am. Dan: Oh, are you? Mr. Payne: Sure, I just answer the phone or have my daughter, if I can't hear–she answers for me. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: And I have a couple friends of mine that worked with me when I was ah ah driving myself years and years ago. Dan: Now what was the pay scale when you started out down in back in 1917. How much were you making - how much were you making yourself back in 1917? Mr. Payne: Ah, I was getting top pay $20.00. nan: $20.00 a week? Mr. Payne: Yeah. Dan: That’s out of your business? Mr. Payne: No, I ah ah that’s what I got up in Sidney. Dan : Oh, in Sidney. Mr. Payne: At the end. Dan: I see, but when you got in business for yourself? Mr. Payne: I just, whatever I made, I made and that’s it. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: And I improved my business as much as I could until finally I got tired and figured that I had enough. (Clock Chimes). I had a home up on South Washington Street which–when I, I got the first ah heart attack–everything was turned over to my daughter who has taken over since then. Dan: Yeah, how long have you lived here, sir? Mr. Payne: 4 years. Dan: 4 years Mr. Payne: About 4 years, maybe 5. Dan : Uh huh. Mr. Payne: It’s all paid for. Dan: Now ah this Henry Doherty that you spoke of–how do you spell his last name? Mr. Payne: D-O-H-E-R-T-Y.. Dan: Now you remember the Courthouse when it burned down? Mr. Payne: Yes. Dan: That was quite a few years ago, because that’s rebuilt. Mr. Payne: I think around, ah, I was about 5 years old. 1904, I think. Dan: 1904 is when it was built, I think, wasn't it or was it? Mr. Payne: Well it was just ahead. I was only just around about 4 or 5 years old. Dan: 4 or 5 years old. Mr. Payne: Yeah, because I know my Father, ah, we were living on Sherman Place only just below there a little ways. I seen so many changes. Dan: And you say you started out in the Cyrus Clapp– Mr. Payne: Yes, working for Cyrus Clapp. Dan: Did this, was the–you worked for Cyrus Clapp? Mr. Payne: That’s right–he sold out where the Press Building is. Dan: I see. Mr. Payne: And that’s where I lived in right behind there in the carriage house when we first moved here. Dan: Is that right? Mr. Payne: Yes, upstairs over the carriage. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: Where they kept the horses. Dan: You're 89 years old now, so it'd be 87 years ago that you lived in back. Mr. Payne: That’s right. Dan: Before the Press Building was built. Mr. Payne: Oh yes, yeah, there was quite a knoll there, yes. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: Which has all been distributed, I mean taken away, you know. Tommy, I think it was Tommy lived next door–he was rich too. I remember Conklin used to live on the corner of Exchange and Hawley Street and that was up on a hill where the YMCA is now and us kids used to ah get barrel staves and ah make skis (Laughter) and ride down there in the wintertime. Dan: So you were down in Sherman Place, ah, was where your business started or where you moved to–Sherman Place at one time. Mr. Payne: When I come? Dan: Yeah. Mr. Payne: My father was living on Exchange Street at the time. Dan: Yeah Mr. Payne: And I come down and, ah, lived with him for a few months when I moved over on ah ah 35 DeRussey Street. Dan: Is that where you started in business on DeRussey Street? Mr. Payne: That’s right. Dan: Uh huh. Mr. Payne: 35–I lived upstairs over Sam Katz. Dan: Uh huh, yeah, South Washington Street (to daughter) right right–I can remember when the DeRussey Street bridge went out. Mr. Payne: Oh dear. Dan: Uh huh. Well is there anything else you would like to add, Mr. Payne, before I– Mr. Payne: Well truthfully I can't think of anything of importance. Dan: You're a very successful business man. Very well respected in your community. Mr. Payne: I have been until just the last couple of months. Dan: Uh huh Mr. Payne: I had very bad luck from vandals–poured some water in the crankcase of my truck and it swelted such, the motor, and I had to have a new one put in and ah it cost me $1635.00 to get another motor put in. Dan: Gee. Mr. Payne: And then I burned up my Cadillac. Dan: Gee, everything comes at once. Mr. Payne: Right out here in the yard. Dan: Now when you first started your business, you got a loan from the Bank in Sidney–is that right? Mr. Payne: That’s right. Dan: And then you–how many trucks do you own now? Mr. Payne: l've only got ah the one I'm keeping now–I'm using. Dan: OK well, I certainly thank you very much, Mr. Payne–I'll play this back for you so you can hear how your own voice sounds. Date of Interview 1978-02-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dan O'Neil Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Leo J. Payne 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 Leo J. Payne Description An account of the resource Leo Payne speaks of his early childhood growing up in Binghamton and later working as a bookkeeper and stenographer. He owned his own trucking company in Binghamton in the early twentieth century. He discusses his inter-racial marriage and the death of his first wife in childbirth because there were no hospitals in Sidney, N.Y. where his wife had gone into labor. He was active in a Masonic Lodge and in his church, Trinity M.F. Zion, the latter for which he assisted in securing a new church building. He also discusses discrimination and discriminatory business practices in the area at the time, including an anecdote about Duke Ellington being refused a place to stay when he came to Binghamton to perform. He speaks about his experiences with the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia in Binghamton. At the time of the interview, Payne was 89 years old and still running his trucking business. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Payne, Leo J. ; O'Neil, Dan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-02-10 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 76A ; Recording 76B Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 33:47 minutes; 7:19 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4d5bbd5ad44990c839605d73f46a2814.mp3 ab42272e6141cfd0065e2d1381398db2 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 Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. 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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. Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56938">Interview with Mabel Quick</a> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 16:49 minutes Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp3 Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Material Type Sound Subject LCSH Quick, Mabel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.) Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. 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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mabel H. Quick Interviewed by: Susan Dobandi Date of interview: 13 March 1978 Susan: Miss Quick, could you tell us something about your early beginnings, where you were born and some of your recollections of your childhood? Miss Quick: Yes, I could. I’d be glad to. I was born in Scranton way back in 1893. I grew up in West Pittston where my father was a dentist. Later we moved to Nichols, NY, and I grew up in the West Pittston schools under the name of John but when I reached New York State I was told that if I had another name I should use it because I was going to take Regents so in this community where I am now I became known with my old name Mabel. I taught school after graduating from Cortland in Johnson City for 40 long years but we really taught then we had classes that we were proud to pass on they could read—they could write—and teaching was wonderful. We were only earning $500 a year but we could with our increments reach $1800 a year that was the limit that we could go. Well, I lived here in Johnson City came here in 1917 when I started my teaching and this was a lovely town then to be a part of to live in and it really was a pleasure. Things have changed here now—old buildings have disappeared and new ones in their place but it’s still a place I’d like to live a long long time. I came from good old English stock. The Quick name comes—a the Quicks really came from England although they say we have Irish and Dutch mixed in a little bit and my ancestors missed the Mayflower by 2 years. They went to Holland and I tell the girls we missed the Mayflower by two years and we’re missing things ever since but we get along the Quicks are kind of lively people and they settled—helped settle this country. I’m proud of that it’s a heritage that a lot of people don’t have and we do have old Tom Quick my ancestor the first one to come over from England, Holland bought Staten Island from the Indians for a bolt of cloth. The Quick silver is now in the Metropolitan Museum and a there’s an old chest desk in a museum in New Jersey made by old Tom was given to George Washington and signed. I wish I had that but of course I don’t but I have seen it and Tom’s oldest son got along beautifully with the Indians until they moved to Milford, Pennsylvania now. Another family came in and there was trouble over land grants and the Indians killed old Tom so Tom Jr. as we would say today sought revenge and he killed so many Indians that the government let him alone. He was not drafted for the Civil—a for the Revolutionary War and finally Tom got smallpox and died. The Indians couldn’t understand why he was put in the ground so they dug him up to see if he was dead and of course not having the techniques of medicine we have now the germs were still there the Indians caught the smallpox and Tom killed them even after he was dead. He is now—a the records we have in Cooperstown he is the character Natty Bumppo (clears throat) of ah (clears throat again) pardon me in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales so I have a good line. I’m proud of it. I joined the D.A.R., the Daughters of the Founders of the Patriots of America, the Daughters of the Colonial Colonial Colonies of America and now I expect sometime to go further with the Huguenots of the Colonial days. It’s a privilege and an honor as I see it. Many people would like to join but can’t. Their line is not complete but I like the genealogy and am glad that I have the opportunity of being one of the early American families. In school well perhaps I shouldn’t get into that too much it was really good in the old days. I don’t know what they’re teaching them today but I am proud and glad that I taught in the early days when we could really see and know and have the experience of realizing that we had taught the children to pick up a book and read it and know what they read. Today I wonder what they are doing. I wouldn’t want to go back and find out. I see it all over I don’t think that they could pull me back with a hay rake but I’m glad that I have lived all these 85 years and had the experiences I’ve had. Susan: Could you tell us a little about your hobby? Miss Quick: Yes, I have a very wonderful hobby. You know when I was teaching when I first started to teach I’d come home from school and I’d—I’d go in the kitchen—I thought food dropped into position on the table and I thought if I would go in the kitchen well maybe they’ll (clears throat) teach me to do something. When I’d reach the kitchen my aunt and my mother both wonderful cooks would say now, “Enough good cooks in the kitchen—we don’t need you.” So I got so I wouldn’t go into the kitchen I wouldn’t even come home from school, I’d patronize the antique shops because I like old things and I walked in one day to an antique shop I saw a doll lying face down. The dress was open at the back and it said, “Remember who wrote this when far away.” Well, I was intrigued so that started a wonderfully good collection. I now have between well around 400 dolls with all related items such as doll carriages and hats and furniture and chests and beds, cradles, chairs everything that might have been played with years and years ago. I’ve written an article which is being published in the Federated Doll News Magazine. I belong to two doll clubs and I have sent colored slides of my carriage in an article entitled “A Buggy for Dolly.” In each of the 35 carriages I had a lot of fun putting in a da—a doll a period that would go with the carriage one has a Charity Smith Kitty Cat the other a teddy bear and it was well received. They said it was a delightfully different approach to doll collecting. I’ve met so many wonderful people through this hobby. I’ve had exhibits oh many exhibits and a right now presently there is an exhibit (clock chimes) of the Easter parade and—and a that Roberson wanted for their Easter attraction and they came down and selected the dolls for that a occasion. At Easter time they wanted a big exhibit for their Christmas Forest so I gave them—they also came and selected what they wished and it was they told me about 2,000 people saw that. I’ve been guests at various clubs, doll clubs around the state and as I said before you meet the most charming people and I’ve enjoyed it I think that’s what has kept me going of course the family was after a while different ones the family was large my aunt, my uncle, my mother were here my sister she was an invalid for 11 years and after they all went it was a—a well even during the time when they were ill it was a life saver it sort of keeps you going. You have something to look forward to something to do and even if you don’t do it one day it’s there for the future and it what I have I think will preserve and give people an idea of what really was played with what the children really had whether they played with them or no. It was right for the period in which these very very old ladies grew up with. Susan: Children formed more attachment to their a— Miss Quick: When have you seen a child wheeling a doll carriage? You might see one in a store but I wouldn’t call it a doll carriage. I have the little old wooden carriages made by Joel Ellison and signed by him in the sixties. I have many wooden box carriages some made by the Whitney Carriage Co. and I also have a chests that are signed 1846. These were usually homemade things the little chests and beds and you don’t see it anymore children are—well it keeps production going now. They buy it today the child plays with it tomorrow and the next day it’s out broken and they go back and get another production is— Susan: Everything is plastic now. Miss Quick: Everything is plastic. There will I don’t know it isn’t saying really goodbye to the old but it’s trying now these people who would like to collect. They just have to take from what is given today and decide whether or not it will ever be collectible and will really last as the old things of—of yesteryear have done but I’m glad I have what I have. It gives me great deal of pleasure and it also gives pleasure to others. Susan: Well, is there anything more that you would like to add? Miss Quick: I can’t think of anything more. I think that a we’ve about covered it. Susan: Well, thank you very much for the interview Miss Quick it’s been very interesting. Miss Quick: I’ve enjoyed it. I really have enjoyed it and as I say I meet such interesting people. Susan: We do. Thank you. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dobandi, Susan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Quick, Mabel Biographical Text Mabel Quick speaks about growing up near Scranton and later in Nichols, N.Y. She discusses living and teaching in Johnson City. She discusses her ancestors coming to America from Europe, with particular focus on Tom Quick, her ancestor who purchased Staten Island from Native Americans. She discusses her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and related associations. She is an avid doll collector and has over 400 dolls with associated accessories; she discusses this collection and activities in which she participates related to this hobby. Date of Interview 1978-03-13 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 Mabel Quick Description An account of the resource Mabel Quick speaks about growing up near Scranton and later in Nichols, N.Y. She discusses living and teaching in Johnson City. She discusses her ancestors coming to America from Europe, with particular focus on Tom Quick, her ancestor who purchased Staten Island from Native Americans. She discusses her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and related associations. She is an avid doll collector and has over 400 dolls with associated accessories; she discusses this collection and activities in which she participates related to this hobby. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Quick, Mabel; Dobandi, Susan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-03-13 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 77 Subject The topic of the resource Quick, Mabel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 16:49 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/76252f56ad490efa814725f7b1c4f049.mp3 160abfba508ff039465b4a63d9c85147 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4b8924b08448b36c019a891ce6cd457f.jpg 559e1873e4ea0767790c3f3a02bfcb16 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 2018-01-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David and Janet Muir Year of Graduation 1967 Biographical Text David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University. Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life." Keywords Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Vietnam War; Harpur College – Alumni living in Marcellus, New York; Harpur College – Alumni in Higher Education - Spouses of Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Former Harpur students in higher education; Harpur College – Former Harpur students living in Marcellus, NY 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>. Interview Format Video or Audio Audio 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 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: David and Janet Muir Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 12 January 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) IG: 00:01 Okay, so David, please tell me your name, your full name, your birth date, our relationship and where we are. DM: 00:13 My name is David Muir. I was born in 1945 April-April 13--the day after Roosevelt died. IG: 00:29 The day? Excuse me. DM: 00:30 Day after FDR died. IG: 00:32 Yes-yes. DM: 00:33 Died April 12. So I know, I know exactly what the headlines were in every paper in the country on the day of my birth. [laughs] And we are in my home, which is in Marcellus, New York, Dunbar Woods Road. IG: 00:52 Okay, very good. Do you mind speaking up just a little bit? Okay, all right, so tell me a little bit about your family background. What did your parents do? Where did you live? DM: 01:13 I grew up in Western New York. My father was all his life unskilled labor. Worked in various jobs throughout his life. My mother was a homemaker when I was first born. She went back to school to Buffalo State Teachers College, got a teaching degree and taught second grade after that. And so I was not the first one to go to college, but my middle brother, I am one of three boys. My middle brother, Richard, also went to college. He went to Buffalo State and got a degree in Art Education. My youngest brother Tim, decided not to attend college after thinking he was going to go to Harpur College as well, but he- IG: 02:20 Thinking what? DM: 02:21 He was going to go to Harpur College. IG: 02:23 I see. DM: 02:23 But did not. IG: 02:24 But you-you did. DM: 02:25 I-I did, and so-so uh, and I went in, you know, graduated high school in (19)63 and entered Harpur College in that fall on the trimester. IG: 02:39 What were the expectations of you and your family in terms of education? Did they encourage you to go to college? Speaker 1 02:52 Yeah, it was understood my brother, my youngest brother, not going to college was the exception. It was understood all the way through that, that we were going to college. My- I went to high school and that had homogeneous grouping they had actually pioneered at Kenmore. Kenmore system had pioneered homogeneous grouping so that we had blue circle groups, which were the students who were thought to be most advanced, were given more advanced instruction, and I was part of blue circle group from the time I was in junior high right up through senior high. So my expedition so I was surrounded by students, all of whom had the expectation that we were all going to college. And it varied, you know, what their backgrounds were, whether their parents had gone to school. But I did grow up in, you know, in Kenmore, in the school system I was in, and in the particular classes I had, that was everybody's expectation as we were going to college. IG: 04:15 And so why did you decide on Harpur College? Was this your first choice? Or how many other colleges did you apply to? Speaker 1 04:25 I ended up only applying to Harpur. Dean Porter came to Kenmore at Ken-Kenmore West, it was and they had divided into two different high schools. So he came to Kenmore West, where I was going to school, and it was a college night, and I talked to him, and he was tremendously enthusiastic about Harpur College. He was a tremendous sales salesperson for the, for this school. And I had some-some literature about it, and checked on it, and I just decided from that time on, that would have been November of (19)62 November of my senior year, that that is where I was going to go. And uh- IG: 05:17 What-what do you remember? What reputation did Harpur College have at the time? Speaker 1 05:25 It was, I think, just building a reputation. But what-what it did have was a very low student faculty ratio. It had a very high percentage of PhDs on the faculty already, and number of those PhDs were very young. So it- if you read about it, it was impressive. But the joke when we were there is, you know, you would say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harpur," "Harvard?" "No-no. Harpur," but the joke was, yeah, but in 20 years, somebody's going to say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harvard." "Harpur?" "No-no, Harvard." [laughs] IG: 06:03 So what reputation did Harpur College have at the time? DM: 06:08 Just building? I think it had a good reputation. It was the first liberal arts college in-in the state of New York, and I think because there was lots of money going into this. And the Rockefeller years, as I say it-it did not have a reputation that outside of probably New York State, many people would have recognized it, but-but as I say it was, it was building a reputation. IG: 06:40 It was building a reputation. And what did you, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to study? DM: 06:49 Well, yes and no, I-I was sure that I was going to study philosophy, but I did not have a really clear idea what that meant, but that is what I ended up doing. I majored in philosophy and then went on from there to dig it, came up here to Syracuse, and got a master's and PhD in philosophy. So. IG: 07:13 From Syracuse in philosophy. DM: 07:15 Yeah, so-so what I had thought I was going to do turned out to be what I did do. So I guess, guess in a sense, and guess in a sense, I had, I had a clear idea of what I thought I wanted to do, and then I had to sort of discover that it really was what I wanted to do. IG: 07:33 And so when you first arrived on campus, I mean, what- how did it strike you? Was it-it-it [crosstalk] a huge difference from the environment that you were used to? DM: 07:49 Well, the major difference was coming from upstate New York, the percentage of downstairs who were there. That was a huge difference. First time I visited, it was a sea of mud, and you walked on planks because they were just finishing the dorm, set of dorms that we saw. So it-it was not extremely impressive in that way, when I got to campus and-and the- those dormitories had been completed, it was, I guess it was an atmosphere somewhat similar to what I was used to in high school, because, because of the homogeneous grouping, I was used to being surrounded by other students who were highly motivated. And there was a whole college of them. Our incoming graduating average of the class I came in with was somewhere around 63 or excuse me, 93 in (19)63 but it was somewhere around 90-93 was the incoming average. You had a number of people, the people who did not like being at college were people who were very bright. Wanted to go to Ivy League schools. Some of them had gotten in but could not afford them because they did not get financial aid, and they were unhappy because they thought that if they were there, their lives would be perfect. And then there were a whole lot of us who were perfectly happy. IG: 09:24 Did you find any differences between yourself and the students from downstate? Did you think that there were any cultural differences or...? DM: 09:38 Not-not. No, yeah. IG: 09:41 I mean downstream, New York City, and Long Island. DM: 09:43 Well, one of the, one of the things was that a number of them were from the, cannot remember, what is PS program, something which meant they graduated age 16. So there were a number of-of not-not the ones from Long Island, but a number of the people from the city were young, but these were people who became friends right away, as far as--well, still, we were just together at New Year's time with friends from Harpur who have been friends ever since. Of those friends, let us see two from Long Island and the rest from the city. Well, no and one from upstate, one other actually from Syracuse, but met him in Binghamton. IG: 10:46 So how so you have this tight knit circle of friends that you have kept throughout- DM: 10:51 Oh yeah-yeah. IG: 10:52 -your life actually. DM: 10:54 Oh yeah, yes, from, yeah, there-there-there were only, let us see eight of us got together this time because one person who comes regularly had knee surgery, lives down in New Jersey. His wife is not a Harpur grad, and Janet is not a Harpur grad, but, but, but we met. She was, she was a freshman, the same time I was so we entered together. [Janet speaks in the background] IG: 11:27 What was that meeting like? Speaker 1 11:30 Well, I think we met first because we met her roommate, who was at the- IG: 11:37 Reception, yeah. DM: 11:38 The reception, Bev Gross, but Bev Gross came bursting back into their-their dorm room and said, I met somebody else from Buffalo, as if, is it that was the rarest thing in the world? Not only was there one person, but she had met two others [laughter] at the cafeteria. Uh, but we met, I think the-the first thing was Patty's Wake, which was the introductory party that started off the-the semester back then. IG: 12:17 Oh, tell me about that. Because this is a rich this-this is, you know, something that I really do not know. Speaker 2 12:24 Oh, Patty's Wake we got, we got on busses, busses and went in. Oh, I am trying to remember the name of the bar. It was- JM: 12:31 Sharkies. DM: 12:32 No-no. Was not Sharkies. No. Sharkies was a, was a good place. This was a, this was a dive, but it was on the bus route, and so he and so all the freshmen would go Pat- the-the story of Paddy was that Patty died because he studied too hard and-and never had any fun, and finally he just wore away. So this was so in celebration of Patty's Wake. This was the back then the annual first, first thing that freshmen went off campus to do was go off and-and drink. What was it? 25 cent drafts or something like that? IG: 13:10 And did it? Did it happen around St Patrick's Day or...? DM: 13:15 No-no, this was, this was in the first this was in the first week of being here. IG: 13:15 Oh semester, I see. DM: 13:17 Very beginning of the semester, probably orientation week. I do not know it was, it was, yeah, this was the first thing and all, yeah. So freshmen went off [inaudible] so we met there. And-and then we have, we have been together for ever since. JM: 13:37 We actually met in Whitney dorm. DM: 13:38 Okay, did we meet? JM: 13:39 [inaudible] came in and said- DM: 13:40 Oh my god, did she, did she introduce- JM: 13:42 the dining hall [inaudible] DM: 13:44 Okay she introduced, yeah, because I had thought we had, because-because that was the first and Patty's Wake was very first week. Yeah. So anyway, that was so you drank a lot of cheap beer. And everybody you know, all the freshmen over drank, and the 16-year-old managed to get in somehow, and even though they were illegal. But it was 18. Was the drinking age back then, JM: 14:07 it was a dry campus. DM: 14:09 Yeah-yeah. It was. It was a dry campus because the student government kept being told that it was a state rule that you could not have a pub on campus. You could not have alcohol on campus, and then, oh, somewhere second or third year that I was there, some young, some of the-the student government leaders, went to Albany and found out there was not any such rule, and that began the process of bringing the pub onto campus. We mean, there is no rule we cannot do this. IG: 14:49 Janet is on the conversation, which is a wonderful thing. Janet, would you mind introducing yourself so we would- please tell us. your name, your birth date, and you know what your affiliation with Binghamton is, well with Harpur College. JM: 15:09 [inaudible] Janet, actually James Muir. James is my maiden name. I was born March 30, 1946, I went to Harpur, not as my first choice, again for financial reasons, I was not admitted in the fall semester, I- but I was put on a waiting list, and I could go in the summer ahead, if I wanted to, but I did not have, you know, the highest average from high school. I went to a very small school, smaller graduating class than David did. So I was a bit overwhelmed, I would say, by, you know, the whole size and atmosphere at Harpur. But what was fun was we were in the Co-Ed dorm, and at that time, they had the curfews, and so, you know, it was unusual to be able to meet, you know, David and the others, and we had friends in the dorm that would do things as a group, and that was really fun. That was really a nice thing to do, but at that time, they were switching to the trimester, and the course load was very heavy, so I found it overwhelming, which is why I did not stay past the first year. IG: 16:44 Past the first year. JM: 16:44 Yeah-yeah. IG: 16:45 Okay. And where are you from? JM: 16:49 We are from Easter, Elmo, New York, Western New York. David is from the north of the city, and I am from the south, IG: 16:56 I see, I see. JM: 16:57 So we had to go to Binghamton to meet. IG: 17:02 So where did you continue your education? JM: 17:04 Well, when I went back home, worked at Fisher Price toy company, and David and I were married when I was 19 and he was 20. He was still at Harpur just finishing. DM: 17:19 And I still had a year to still had two semesters to go. Speaker 3 17:22 Right. So we lived in Johnson City was it, Floral Avenue? We had an apartment there. I worked at Endicott Johnson while he went to school. DM: 17:35 And then we came up here. I continued graduate school. She worked at Upstate Medical and then decided she wanted to go back to school. IG: 17:45 So what-what did you do? JM: 17:47 I went down at a community college. I graduated from there, and then I transferred into Syracuse University, and I have a master's in English literature, undergrad degree in English literature and journalism. Speaker 3 18:01 Oh, so you remember [crosstalk] JM: 18:04 It took me about 10 years to get back. IG: 18:06 I mean, you were supporting a husband, right? JM: 18:08 Yeah. And when he graduated, I said, “Okay, it is my turn now.” Speaker 4 18:14 And so-so what did you, what did you do in your working life? You were uh- JM: 18:19 I worked in the offices Medicare at Upstate Medical. I worked in business offices at both Fisher Price and Endicott-Johnson. Actually, I started at Fisher Price on the assembly line and-and I said to myself, I do not want to be a lifer putting these together. So I took a test for computer. What do I want to say skills which I did not have? I mean, nobody did at that time, but they brought me into the office, and I worked in their office after that. So that started me in office. IG: 19:00 I see, I see. Well, so as-as married students, you had a completely different perspective on- DM: 19:11 Yeah, we- IG: 19:11 -the college. DM: 19:13 Yeah. Well, let us see. We arrived in fall of (19)63 November, because that was the second trimester. Excuse me, and I went home to Buffalo the first summer. And then when I came back, I stayed right straight through until I had finished. So I actually I am commencement class of (19)67 but I finished my degree at the end of October (19)66 so I was back for my-my commencement in (19)67 but so for the last two trimesters. Janet and I lived on Floral Avenue off campus, but we still had, you know, our friends came over to our house. [laughs] IG: 20:17 So it was, it was a kind of a seamless transition for you to, you know, move from dormitory life to your own apartment. Speaker 1 20:29 Yeah-yeah. It was not, I do not remember any anything in terms of-of any kind of special adjustment. The only thing that was really tough was I had the ideal senior schedule. No class started before noon, but I had to drop Janet off. I- we had to be up before six o'clock because Janet started work at Endicott Johnson. I think it was something like 7:30 and I had to drive her to Endicott-Johnson, drop her off, drive over to campus, get there about eight o'clock and not have any classes until noon. JM: 21:05 It is time to study. DM: 21:07 And-and because most of my friends were either seniors or juniors, they were still asleep at eight. And so I would go down into the common room at Whitney and-and study or-or nap. IG: 21:25 I am curious, how did you conduct your courtship leading to a marriage at a college with curfews, especially for women? DM: 21:36 Yes, well, on-on her-her birthday that that spring, one of our friends came back with a car for second semester, only car among all of us, Alan Gurwitz and my mother had had walking pneumonia when I was in high school, and with three boys, we had to take over doing her chores for a summer. And my chore at that time was ironing, and so I had learned to iron, and back then you did not have wrinkle free shirts. And so I offered to iron five shirts for Alan if he would lend me the car for Janet's birthday. He told me afterwards, if I would told him one shirt, he would have given me the car. Five shirts, he was in heaven. So I ironed five shirts for him, and got the car and we went off had dinner, and then went to see Lawrence of Arabia, which is too long a film. IG: 22:51 Yes. DM: 22:51 Because this was a weekend, and her curfew was not 10:30 which it was during the week, but noon, excuse me, noon. Yeah, midnight, midnight. And so, yeah, noon, [laughter] midnight, and we got, we got to-to the intermission in Lawrence of Arabia, looked at the at the time and thought, there was no way in the world we were going to have a 15- or 20-minute intermission. Watch the whole second half and get back to make curfew. So I do not think Janet ever saw the second half of Lawrence of Arabia for another 15 years, nor did I, but no we- courting, I think is fairly easy on a college campus. If you have a close relationship, you see every you see each other every day. JM: 23:45 Yeah. DM: 23:45 So for that first year, and by the end of the first year, we were pretty much committed to each other. Then we lived in Western New York, so when I went home for that-that summer, Janet was on the south side, I was on the north side, but I was back and forth. You know, all the time I worked at a wholesale florist, which is where my father was working. At that time, he was a salesman for a wholesale florist, and I got a job there, and they would throw out flowers that were beginning to turn a little bit on wholesale level, which meant that they were still really good, because they had not even gone to retail yet. And so all that summer Janet had roses, probably- DM: 24:34 -because they would throw out sprigs. The guy who handled the orchids, as soon as there was one spot on one of the orchids, and they come in sprigs, you know, as soon as you saw one brown spot, they would go out. And we were not supposed to pick them up, but I was not going to let these gorgeous orchids lie in the garbage. So I would pick them up and [inaudible], so she would get sprigs of orchids for that in that summer. JM: 24:35 And orchids. That convinced me. I married this guy. [laughs] IG: 24:40 That is lovely. JM: 24:44 Yeah. DM: 25:02 So-so, and then I went back to school. JM: 25:05 But also because in Whitney, we played ping pong all the time. We socialized all the time, because it was a co-ed dorm. Speaker 1 25:13 Yeah-yeah. The atmosphere, the atmosphere in Whitney, was very different. And of course, this was a different era. You know the- this was a radical notion of having one wing male and one wing female. I mean that, and that was as far as it went. At 10:30 you had the common areas were separated. The men had the upstairs, the women had the downstairs. All of all the vending machines were downstairs. So people would call down if they would hear one of the women downstairs call down, throw down money, and they would get, they would get things from the vending machines and throw them back up. But- and the other interesting thing is that when the 10:30 curfew occurred, a bunch of us, one-one night, sat down, and one of me said, "Okay," right, you know, "Why-why do the women, why do the women have a curfew," right? And you know, what would we think if we had a curfew. So-so remember, this was the (19)60s, when things were being challenged. And of course, by the time we were done- JM: 26:24 [inaudible] early (19)60s. DM: 26:25 This is early (19)60s. This is (19)63. JM: 26:28 (19)63-(19)64. DM: 26:28 And so this is when things are just beginning to be challenged. But-but tremendous change. By the time the- a number of our good friends left. They were in Co-Ed suites, in-in-in, what the-the? JM: 26:50 Hinman [inaudible] DM: 26:52 Yeah, the Hinman, the com- the complex is over there. JM: 26:56 Yeah. DM: 26:56 I mean, when we were there, they none of the, none of this was well- Speaker 1 26:59 And, you know, because of the separate wings, we would have open houses, and you would be able to visit the others' rooms. IG: 27:03 Right. JM: 27:03 Leaving the door open, leaving, what, three- DM: 27:12 Three feet on the floor and a door open. IG: 27:14 So I am, I am interested, how did do you remember challenging any of these rules, or questioning these notions about segregating the sexes. Um, I mean- DM: 27:26 Not there were not any, there were not any major- IG: 27:28 Your-your close friends. DM: 27:30 We talked about it. I do not think there were any. We did not get involved in any actual protests of it that I recall JM: 27:38 How about the boards? They would, they call them, the student- DM: 27:44 Judicial Board? JM: 27:45 Judicial Board to deal with- DM: 27:48 Yeah, people who buy violated curfew, yeah. We were the only dorm that had males on the on that-that panel, because, in every, in every yeah- JM: 28:01 [inaudible] feeling that this was not fair. DM: 28:03 Yeah, you try to be. Yeah. because I served on it for-for a semester. We had friends who served on it. IG: 28:11 So if you had so the judicial board that you served on, how would the complaints or escalate. Who would hear them? What impact would that have? DM: 28:25 Yeah. Mostly it was, yeah. Mostly it was violation of curfew, and you just had to decide. And there were penalties, you know, you had to decide, and whether there was a legitimate excuse, right? JM: 28:36 [inaudible] campus, you would be restricted. DM: 28:39 Yeah, and the- so it was, you know, that I think at that point we thought that it was ridiculous, but at that point we were not ready to-to start protesting. I think that came about just sort of naturally, as I say, by the time we were finishing up, the campus situation had changed tremendously from-from what it was, but it did. It did create for us a unique atmosphere unlike any of the other dorms. Because we did, it was just a group of friends and somebody say, you know, tired of studying, you would walk down to one of the common room, say, "Anybody interested in going see a ball game?" If there happened to be a ball game that, right? You know, basketball game, we go down and-and together, and it would just be whoever was there. And when we got a little bit older, and people, more people, had cars the place, we would go, Oh, I almost had the name of the of the dive, but I cannot remember, we go to Sharkies. Fact, that is where we did not go to the dinner that was sponsored at the reunion. The group of us who were there went to Sharkies because that was, that was the place we-we would go to speedies. Third speaker 29:55 I have a question related to that. So were there any women like in your dorm that rebelled against this idea and took an initiative? DM: 30:10 Not that I recall, I think that, I think there were some complaints about it, but at this point, this was pretty much what the practices were everywhere, you know, was not, it was not, it was not as, yeah, it was not as, yeah, it was not as if it this was something unique to Harpur, you know, I kind of understand. So I do not remember any-any kind of organized protest. I just remember that, you know, people beginning to question it, and- JM: 30:42 It was more restrictive than what I had at home. DM: 30:45 Yeah-yeah. That was something else saying, [crosstalk] yeah-yeah-yeah. A lot, a lot of- for some of the 16-year-old out of the city, it was different, I think. IG: 30:57 How so? DM: 30:58 Well, because they were 16 years old, although, I mean, I have a lot of city friends, and city friends are sophisticated in some ways, and parochial in others. IG: 31:08 How so? DM: 31:10 Well, because they-they are exposed to-to culture in the city of a rich kind. I mean, New York is one of the greatest cities in the world. So you are exposed to-to a richness of culture that you just do not have in certainly any other city in New York State, and in few cities in the world that you can match that. So they have that. But by the same token, a lot of them just know New York City. [crosstalk] So, yeah, so it is you know. So it is you know that there was an expansion of their world to be in upstate New York. JM: 31:51 We took some friends to Western New York, to our good friends farm, dairy farm, and they were like, "Cows. Wow!" Me, "This is where milk comes from." IG: 32:08 I am curious about the youth movement that was kind of growing in momentum in around that time, (19)63-(19)64. Did it have any influence on you? You know, rock and roll was beginning, um or...? DM: 32:30 Well, the-the actually- IG: 32:33 Sexual freedoms, drugs, that was all in the air, that was kind of filtering through- JM: 32:38 And Vietnam. IG: 32:40 -and Vietnam, which I will [inaudible]. Absolutely. Speaker 1 32:45 The theme of our orientation, which was chosen by the upperclassmen who ran the program, was all the orientation was completely run by students, as I recall it, but their theme was, do not think that at your age, you have to now know what you are going to do for the rest of your life. Take your time. It you know who says you have to be done in four years, you can take as much time as you want, take a take a semester off, take a year off. Do right! If you are not sure, find out what you want to do. And three years later, you could not do that without finding yourself in Vietnam. So it was a tremendous- that was, that was one of the biggest changes, was that, all right, I mean, the-the war in (19)63 was-was not anything yet that had had really was affecting people. Yeah, I had a good colleague who graduated from West Point and was over there as an advisor in the early days of Vietnam. But I-when we went on the campus, that was not an issue. It became an issue. As I said, it became an issue of, I was reclassified one a three times, but never went. IG: 34:09 I am sorry. DM: 34:10 I was reclassified one A, which, right, which meant immediately draft eligible three times, but I was never drafted. I was as I finished up at Harpur in the fall of (19)66 and I was immediately reclassified one a I challenged that I was going to challenge it as an objector because I did not agree. I did not think we should be in Vietnam. Changed that to arguing that I was class of (19)66 not class of (19)67 because even though it was my commencement class, and if you were (19)66 on and you were accepted to grad school, you continued to get a student deferment, and my draft board accepted that argument. And so I was defied that gave me my deferment until I finished grad, graduate, grad school. And then I forget how it came that it was the three times but-but by the time I finally was draft eligible, they had had the lottery system, and they never got to my number. They were nowhere near getting to my number. IG: 35:27 I am sorry- DM: 35:28 They never got anywhere near my number. They- the war was winding down. Then I finished my graduate work in (19)71, right? And so I never had to. I-I had to face it in the sense that I went through a I went through a physical in Buffalo. I got called for a physical. Went through a whole physical. JM: 35:50 And a lot of soul searching. DM: 35:52 Oh yeah, because I did not, because I did not, I had pretty much decided I would not, I would not serve in the war, because I did not think that it was a war that we should have been in. And so- Speaker 4 36:05 Was that, was that a common feeling among your friends? DM: 36:09 Yes. IG: 36:11 On campus? DM: 36:12 Among the friends that we were just with or get together with regularly, two of them were-were graduates of-of (19)66 and-and they got their-their deferments and managed not to go. One of them got his medical degree and served in the Public Health Service out in Arizona with the Native Americans. But of-of those group, one way or another, none of us ever ended up going to Vietnam. Another one was a conscientious objector, but racist and atheist, and his draft board rejected it because he did not have a religious affiliation. He refused. He refused induction. Was a fugitive from justice for two and a half years, without them ever pursuing him. He- his first wife, and he decided on a divorce because she, although she agreed with him, she did not want to, you know, continue that it was an amicable divorce. But they were, you know, they were also a Harpur couple. He continued on his own. He ended up in, I think it was in Philadelphia, at a Quaker protest, sit down protest, and when they checked his record and found out, all of a sudden, they put cuffs on him. Off he went. He had to go to but when his case came up, the judge looked at it and said, "This is the most arbitrary decision I have ever seen by a draft board," because he had, he had documentation of his conscientious objective status, and they just rejected it because he had no religious affiliation. So after all of that right, he was, he was free, and the case was dismissed. But all of us, all of us, that was, I think, the-the largest issue, and I, none of us favored the war, and all of us, through good fortune, were able to avoid service. IG: 38:32 And yet you grew, you probably experienced a very pervasive sense of anxiety, and that that really had an impact on your personal lives. DM: 38:45 Yeah, that, yeah. Once I once I was given the, once my draft board accepted my status, as long as I was in graduate school, my anxiety, well, I actually was not, I think I got reclassified as I when I completed my master's, but they immediately reversed that on the basis that I was continuing the PhD program, that there was no, there was no break in my- in my graduate school. IG: 39:16 Right. DM: 39:16 So I had to, I had the master's degree, but it was, it was continuous graduate school, and so that was, I think, the second time. But that did not, that did not upset me, because at that point, I think I pretty much knew that it would be automatic, that I could write, that I could get it. So the most tension we had was when I was first reclassified, and we were- IG: 39:40 At Harpur College? DM: 39:41 We had just finished Harpur College. Actually, we were up here in Syracuse, because I, and I cannot remember was-was the reclassification come when- JM: 39:58 I think it must have been up here in Syracuse. DM: 40:03 Yes, it had. Yeah. JM: 40:03 Because we were here in (19)67. DM: 40:03 Yeah, but, yeah, but-but as soon as I, as soon as I graduated in (19)66 so it may have been, it may have been, it may have been November. It may have been November, December. I think it was November of December. And we were still down in Binghamton, yeah, was right after out of Harpur, we were still living in Floral Avenue that-that-that was the, that was the greatest tension for those two months. IG: 40:22 So did you feel any support from your professors? Did they shelter you somehow? Did they encourage you to stay in school and pursue your graduate degrees to avoid the draft? Did you feel that kind of involvement from faculty or...? DM: 40:41 When okay at Harpur, it, I do not remember it being an issue within my classes at Harpur. It was an issue when I was in graduate school here and in talking to person who was the chair of the department, he sort of, he did not really agree with me, but he did not say outright that. He did not. He did it in a sort of backhanded way. But so in that one instance, JM: 40:42 But that was in Syracuse. DM: 41:14 Yeah, but at Harpur, I do not, I do not remember being involved again. I was off campus, you know, from the time we were married. And I do not remember any- anything. On campus itself, except that the general atmosphere, pretty much of almost everyone I knew, was that the war was a mistake. So-so that I think that pretty much predominated. I do not know that we knew people who-who really were in favor of the of the war. Certainly none of our close friends were. IG: 42:12 And do you suspect the-the faculty? Speaker 1 42:16 My suspicion would- was that the faculty was, for the most part, not pro war either. IG: 42:22 What do you remember about- were there any influential professors that you remember from Harpur College and that they took a personal interest in you and your career? DM: 42:35 Yeah, the very first philosophy course I took, still not really understanding fully what philosophy was-was-was from, and by the name of C. Wade Savage, yes, because he went by Wade. And by the- my first philosophy paper, I got a D minus, minus. He did not fail me, but I ended up getting an A in the course. And he wrote a really nice note at the end, saying, you know, because I had let him know that, you know, that this was, you know, this is something that I really thought I wanted to pursue, and I had other people were writing philosophy papers- were coming and talking to me and writing their papers. And I-I started out very poorly, but he wrote me an encouraging note. And then I, there were two others that I took most of my courses from somebody else who did not use his first name. Thomas was his first name, but he went by Patterson, T. Patterson Brown, and who was and very young, Brown was published when he was an Amherst- at Amherst as an undergraduate, and I think got his PhD from the University of London at age 24-25 and was hired. And then Emilio Roma, who also was very young. So these were all people who were only six, seven, maybe eight years older than I was, who were there and I got encouragement. In fact, Roma had what I thought was the ideal life. He lived with his wife in a farm house across the border in Pennsylvania, because I did my senior thesis with him and-and I was finishing up over the summer semester, and he was not teaching the summer semester, so I-I drove to his house to go over, go over it with him. And he had two absolutely beautiful children living in this rural setting, you know, as a professor of philosophy, and I thought, what a wonderful world, and he died young. I cannot remember now how many years ago, but I remember seeing a notice that- IG: 45:08 Do you think he might have been a role model for you, that- Speaker 1 45:14 I certainly-certainly the he had. What for me was, an ideal life, you know, as because, as a philosopher, if you do not teach, they do not hire many industrial philosophers. [laughter] So-so-so yeah, so, so he had, yeah, and I got encouragement from him. I got encouragement from Brown. I took a couple of courses with Brown where there were only junior level. There were only four or five of us in the class, so it was a lot of one-on-one discussion. He was the one who had me go to Syracuse. Brown encouraged me to go on to Syracuse because I was, I was interested at that time in philosophy of religion, but at that time, philosophy of religion was sort of dying out. And he said, "Yeah, well, you got Austin at-at Michigan," but he said, "I would not really go there." He said, "Better go someplace that has a really solid foundation in history of philosophy. You are better off building on that and then you can specialize later." And he said, "Syracuse has a, has a good program." So I was accepted into three different programs, but because I was finishing in the beginning of November, nobody had money, right. Everybody said, “No, you can apply, but you are not going to be able to get financial assistance until the following fall.” And so one of the three places I was skeptic to was San Diego, University of California in San Diego, North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Syracuse, all accepted me. All said, you know, you can apply for financial aid, but we are not going to have any available. So- JM: 47:18 Neither one of us came from wealthy families [crosstalk] DM: 47:21 So we were not going to go all the way out. We were not going to relocate that far without any guarantee. So we came up here to Syracuse, and I was on finance. I had NEA fellowship, and I had a I got a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship, so I finished without having to pay a cent in-in tuition, except for the first semester that I had to go in and back then that was affordable. IG: 47:50 Well, I have this question, actually two questions. But first of all, what was the emphasis of the philosophy department at Harpur College of the time? Did it have a focus on the philosophy of religion, or what kind of philosophy were you studying? DM: 48:12 I was, I was taking a smattering of courses. I do not know that I thought of them as having any emphasis, mainly because, remember, there was no, there were no grad programs. And if you have program in philosophy, it was geared for graduate programs. They were building one. In fact, the joke used to be retired studying, let us, let us go over the Esplanade and look for the graduate student. I do not remember how many. I remember only one ever being identified. So, you know, they were just building grad programs. So Harpur was pretty much a, you know, the range of courses, and I think, if you were majoring in philosophy, they expected you to take a range, and you might find something that you were mostly interested. I did- ended up in esthetics with Roma. Brown taught philosophy or religion, and as I said, he sort of discouraged me from pursuing that. But again, saying that, rather than pursue anything immediately, you know, pursue-pursue, general background history of philosophy, because that gives you a foundation to go any-any direction you want. IG: 49:30 You had a very important experience in your first philosophy class from you know, you were- you did poorly on your first test, and then you completed it with flying colors. What do you think what changed you and what did you learn from that first course? Do you recall it at all? DM: 49:55 Well, it was, it was, I think that it was simply a matter of-of focusing differently, on-on the issue. I cannot even remember exactly what I had done wrong in the in the first one, that was such a disaster. But again, just, I think, I think being in class, engaging in the classroom discussions. I think getting encouragement through the give and take within the classroom is what probably brought me to, you know, to doing better. IG: 50:36 You said, you said, when you first came to Harpur you had no understanding of what philosophy was, but you wanted to study it. What did you learn in that first class about philosophy? Why did it open- DM: 50:52 Well, I think that it involved [crosstalk] it involved critical thinking about important human questions. That is, that is because I spent my-my career teaching and teaching on a community college level. So I was teaching freshmen and sophomores, and so what I did for my whole career as a teacher of philosophy was to focus on how to develop critical thinking skills and apply those to the questions that human beings find, find most important. So I think that became my-my emphasis from the time I you know, from-from Harpur College on and right-right through my professional career. JM: 50:53 Excuse me, but your classes, what was the class size? And you are talking about the give and take of discussion- DM: 50:53 Yeah. JM: 50:53 -and that depends. I mean, I remember the student ratio was very good, right? And so your classes were very small. DM: 51:29 Yeah. I think the biggest class I probably had in philosophy was probably no more than about 25 students, and a lot of them were-were smaller, as I said, I took several classes with-with-with Patterson Brown, that there were, you know, six, seven of us in in the class. And, of course, there you get, you know, it was, it was very-very immediate, give and take. JM: 52:18 When you get the lecture hall experience- DM: 52:19 Yeah, vastly, [crosstalk] different yeah. JM: 52:20 -different than philosophy, DM: 52:25 But- Speaker 4 52:27 Small classes. And did you have an occasion to discuss the ideas that you learned in class with your classmates and- DM: 52:37 Some it was interesting. None of, none of the close friends of mine were philosophy majors. They majors in lots of different things, chem major, bio majors. They went on- JM: 52:49 Psychology majors- DM: 52:50 -psychology majors- JM: 52:51 -math majors. DM: 52:52 Yeah. So no, what most of my discussions were when people found they had to take a philosophy class. Friends of mine who were not into philosophy would come and talk to me about-about that, and I would- I was able to help. I think some of them JM: 53:12 And your roommates saying "David, you are not [inaudible].” DM: 53:15 Oh yes, I remember there was a running joke roommates or various friends would come into the room and when I would be lying back on the on my bed, say, "Do not you ever study?" And I say, "Yeah, I am." But- IG: 53:35 So did- DM: 53:36 Actually, that is true, because before you write a philosophy paper, a lot of it is simply the you know, the working out through your head, what you know, what-what-what you are going to do with it, but, but that was a running joke. IG: 53:50 So do you credit your professors at Harpur College in really giving you the foundation for your future career? DM: 54:01 Oh, yeah-yeah. I-I thought I had a wonderful education. I think all of the good friends that we have all considered that they had really solid-solid foundation from-from Harpur College. I think almost all of us are proud to be graduates of Harpur College. By the way, one of, one of the people who was there when I was there, was there when we came back for the trimester thing, Anthony Preus, I do not know if he is still there or not. Professor Preus, Professor Preus, he was in. He ancient-ancient philosophy was his-his area, JM: 54:25 Which is one of the areas that you I went into. DM: 54:49 Later on, yeah, but as I say there, I touched on various things. The only thing that I specialized at all in was I wrote my uh, senior thesis in esthetics. But for the rest of the time, it was just touching on lots of, lots of different periods of the history of philosophy in the different areas. You know, I took a logic course, I took an ethics course, and Third speaker 55:12 So you were into classical thinking, classical- DM: 55:20 Well, I have Third speaker 55:21 Plato? DM: 55:23 Yeah, when I ended up doing my-my-my doctorate in-in Plato, on Plato, on Plato's esthetics, actually, so, so. JM: 55:35 But you used the Socratic method in your teaching. DM: 55:37 Yeah [laughter] IG: 55:41 Did you discuss what you were learning with your wife since you were living off campus? Did you how do you remember him during this period? Speaker 1 55:54 I do not know. It is hard to say I remember one of the things, not while he was at Harpur, but when he was working on his dissertation, going to the beach while I was in at work. DM: 56:06 That was my master's thesis. [laughter] I had a, I had a summer in which I was all of my courses were paid for because I was on a fellowship, and it covered the credits for my master's thesis. And so I was registered as a full-time student for all those credits, but my task was simply to write my master's thesis, and I would drop her off at work, and I would drive to Green Lake State Park, [laughter] spread my blanket on the beach and get out my books. [laughs] And if, if a friend of ours had not come back and needed to be driven around looking for a job, I would have actually completed it at the beach. I was had almost written the last part. JM: 56:57 I also typed his papers. And then when it came to his PhD, I said, "No [inaudible], I am not going to type your PhD." IG: 57:05 So you know, were there any women in your philosophy classes? DM: 57:15 Yes, one I remember by name Laurie Billing, because the person who was most influential in my undergraduate was Patterson Brown. And Patterson Brown was married. At the time, he divorced his wife and he married Laurie Billing. [laughter] So yeah, and Laurie and I used to sit around and talk about because we- she took a number of courses from Brown as well as I did. So we knew each other from a number of different courses. So she and I would, you know, would talk over the material in the courses on a regular basis. IG: 57:57 At that point, there were really no rules about professors dating their students. Speaker 1 58:05 I think there probably were rules, but since he divorced and married her, I do not know that there was- IG: 58:09 Yeah. DM: 58:10 -I do not, I do not know. I do not know if that created problems. He had, he had real problems after I left. He ended up leaving without finishing a semester. And friends of ours found him in their suite, asleep on a on a couch one-one night. So what happened with-with him? I do not know. I never got a full-full account. I think it probably was a case of a whole lot of success and pressure from too young an age, because I think he completed his PhD at London by age 24. IG: 58:53 You completed your PhD by age- DM: 58:55 26. JM: 58:56 -26. DM: 58:56 But the 20-24 is-is, you know, because he had, he had expect- JM: 58:59 He probably had a lot of pressure. DM: 59:00 Well, he had expectations because he published as an undergraduate. IG: 59:08 Right. DM: 59:09 No, so-so anyway, that that I do not know what, what happened to him after that, and I asked once, and somebody else did not know either. IG: 59:23 Were there any international students in your philosophy classes? Do you remember any students of color? DM: 59:32 Not there. IG: 59:33 International from anywhere? DM: 59:37 Yes. Well, yeah, there was from Africa. I never got to be a close friend of his. Our other friends did. Who knew him very well. He went back. He was part of political and I am even blanking on his name. But you know, friends, yeah, you probably have because you. You have interviewed Jeff and Jan Strauss, and they were, they were close friends of his, but again, because I think he became a close friend of theirs at the time that we were off campus. And so I knew him, but very- I did not know him well as they did, and-and- Speaker 1 1:00:21 That was the difference, I think, between when we were there and our daughter went to Harpur, and graduated from Harpur, well, from Binghamton, and she went there for the diversity and, and I think that it built up, you know, over the years- DM: 1:00:40 Yeah. JM: 1:00:40 -but I do not recall it being, I mean, to us, diversity was all these Jewish friends DM: 1:00:47 for her, for her. What was really interesting, though, is- JM: 1:00:50 I came from a rural area that there was one Jewish family, no blacks. It was very, you know monoculture. DM: 1:00:57 Yeah, but my high school was interesting because even though we- I was, you know, in upstate, you know, North of Buffalo High School and was huge, my graduating class was over 600. I went, I went to eight graduation parties as a senior, seven of them were in homes of Jewish friends. So and, you know, I was raised as a Catholic so-so going down to-to Harpur, where there was a very high percentage of Jewish students, to me, was not unusual at all, but for a lot of upstate rural New Yorkers, you know, the that-that was a difference, but-but well, and you know, and just you know, there is, there is, there are differences between upstate and downstate, but never-never, never, any that that we found troubling or bothersome, as I say, you know, these are, these are these are friends we have had ever since. And, yeah, and, and I do not ever remember any clashes of that, of that sort. Again, it was, it was the beginning of open mindedness. IG: 1:02:19 How about your family? How they, how do they look upon you, the philosopher, their son, the philosopher? Speaker 1 1:02:27 Well, my father never quite got it right. I had to constantly correct my father on it. My mother, my mother idolized PhDs, so the fact that I got one was-was something that was tremendously important to my, to my mother, so that you know that-that, I guess, was, was, of yes, as I said, of tremendous importance that my parents were in the as I went off to school, my parents were in the process of getting divorced, and that is another real good friend of ours, also from Harpur days, who lives in Larchmont. She is right across the tracks from Larchmont, but she and I formed a close bond because both of us had family tensions that we were really happy to be at Harpur because we were away from those family tensions. DM: 1:03:34 Well, that is part of the reason we got married so young, was David did not want to go home, and I did not want to be home. IG: 1:03:41 So you know, during your time at Harpur College, during your years, what changes did you see the campus go through the physical campus? DM: 1:04:00 Yeah, well, they started the building. Let us see they built the- JM: 1:04:03 The camps in the woods. DM: 1:04:06 -the administration tower went up. They actually, they were just building the-the ones down the hill, when we first started, when-when we were first there, there was only one dining hall. It was Newing when they when they started the second one, most students called it brand Newing. The-the dorm complex opened, I think, the second year, which was the one by Lake Lieberman and-and my story of Lake Lieberman is different from everybody else's story about Lake Lieberman, so I do not know what the real story is, but my story about Lake Lieberman got his name because a bunch of student government people over the summer wanted to name the lake they went randomly through a list of students. Finger landed on Elliot Lieberman. He was not attending that trimester, so they called him up and paid his bus fare to come in, up, dedicated the lake to him, and then threw him in. And Lake Lieberman was just that. I do not even know if it is filled in, it is just a pond anyway, that is that is the story I heard of how Lake Lieberman got his name, named for Elliot Lieberman, and he was special invitation. He was a student. He just was not attending that-that semester. But you know that by the time I was the commencement, we had friends who were in, you know, in the-the new dorm, complexes that were being built when we first started there. You know, it had the shape of the brain, and there was nothing to the- let us see, that would have been the south off the top of the brain. That was just all woods. In fact, I used to hike through that. That was, it was I started that as a, as a habit when I was in high school. I just go out for long walks as a way of relieving tension. And I would just wander off over that hill and through-through the woods, sometimes even at night, just, you know what, if it were clear enough that you could see where you are going. So, so that is all champion. You know, what was all wilderness now is all, is all developed. And then, yeah, and then, then we, you know, we had the-the Esplanade, which was the site every year of the stepping on the coat ceremony, which you probably, if you have interviewed other people- IG: 1:06:46 Yes-yes. DM: 1:06:47 -which was- it would be, you know, there would be one, one person who was formally discarding the coat. And then they would, and it would, I it was either April 1 or the first week of April. But anyway, you take off the coat, and then they would recite one that [citing in old English], throw it down and stamp on it. And that was the-the official start of spring was-was the stepping on the coach ceremony? IG: 1:07:25 You went through enormous changes during your undergraduate career, personally and intellectually. And how did you- at the end of this period? How did you begin- did you have any How did your perception of where you came from, of yourself change during this period? DM: 1:07:49 Oh, I do not know that. I do not know that I would say that there was, I do not, I do not think that I went through anything during that time that I would call a major change. I think it was just a sort of steady progression of who I was from the time I was in high school, right through my undergraduate, I formed friendships. I had formed strong friendships in high school. I still were getting together with a couple in a couple of weeks, he and I have been friends since seventh grade, and so, you know, I do not know that there was any major change, except, of course. JM: 1:08:45 No, I was thinking, you came in join Newman Club. DM: 1:08:50 That, okay, the major-major change was probably my religious beliefs. The first thing I did was join Newman Club. I was up here in Syracuse the first week that I was on campus at Harpur, because I came up with somebody they wanted, they needed somebody to represent Harpur College's Newman Club at a at a statewide Newman Club mentioned, and I came up here for that, IG: 1:09:18 And the Newman Club was after Cardinal- Speaker 1 1:09:21 No, yeah, that yeah, that is, yeah, that is the, that is the campus-campus Catholic youth student organization. And so I, that was the first thing I joined. By the end of the-the first semester, I told the head, the- then president- JM: 1:09:42 John Phillips. DM: 1:09:43 John Phillips that I was dropping out of Newman Club because I was no longer a Catholic, and he knew that I was going with Janet, and he told me that it would never last, which is why we are still like. Other, yeah, which is why we are still together. It is just despite John, [laughter] I was not let him be right, but, but that and I went from that, I mean, you know, we have talked personally, I went from that to-to having no religious faith at all. I- religious skeptic. Even though I taught philosophy of religion for 20 some years, I would never let them know where I sit. I wanted them one day to be sure that I was a firm theist, and be sure the next day I was an atheist, and the day after that, because I wanted them to think for themselves, and I wanted just to introduce them to the give them the tools by which they could do some serious critical thinking about it, but that my own serious critical thinking just led me to doubts. And doubts are not things that you choose. Doubts come just as you, as you entertain them and-and once they-they become that way. I mean, if you doubt a person, a person's integrity, you cannot choose. IG: 1:11:13 No-no. Well, how did these doubts arise at you know, from-from this early period in your intellectual life? DM: 1:11:24 I think it had, I mean, I think that I chose philosophy simply because what little I knew about it was that it was asking, you know, asking questions. And so the doubts-doubts come, which is why so many strict fundamentalists do not want questions raised. JM: 1:11:49 And your grandparents, your grandparents growing up? Speaker 1 1:11:53 Well, yeah, I grew up in a very interesting environment, because my-my grandparents were people who were Protestant and thought of all Catholic as papists, but my father had been raised as a Catholic, and so my mother converted and promised that the children would be raised as Catholics. And but when I was with my mother's parents, and that was really close to them, I was born when my father was in Tinian in the war, and so I was born into their home. And so she taught Sunday school, and I would be as a little toe head. I would be, I would go along with her to Sunday school. So I, you know, [crosstalk] I was exposed since then JM: 1:12:40 -in the sense of, you know, why would my grandparents go to hell? Speaker 1 1:12:45 Not-not then, not, then I raised. My questions actually were raised when I first had lots of Jewish friends in high school and-and it seemed to me absolutely absurd that they, you know, the- my good friend Bob and I, who were Catholics, were saved. Our friend Dave, who was Protestant, had a smidgen of a chance, because he might come, he might come around. And our good Jewish friend Dick was, you know, he did not have a snowball's chance in hell [laughter] of ever making it, and all of this just seemed ridiculous to me. IG: 1:13:23 Right. DM: 1:13:23 And so my question, my questioning came about, religion came from-from early on, and then when I went but-but I was still, I was still a firm believer when I went [crosstalk] JM: 1:13:33 -into philosophy. DM: 1:13:34 Yes, yeah-yeah. Those are the, those are, yeah, those are the basic questions. And people still ask those questions. I mean, philosophy, what the earliest philosophers are asking those questions? Plato was the first one to develop a theory that there is an immortal soul. I mean, that is comes out of Greek philosophy. Does not come out of Judeo-Christian tradition. It is integrated into it much later. So-so those, yeah, those, those were what led me. So I think it was, it was just that experience, the continuing of the experience I had. I have been tremendously fortunate in the friendships that I have had throughout my life, people I would trust implicitly with, you know, with anything important to me and to have had so many from high school through college to now, has just been-been wonderful. IG: 1:14:32 Did you keep in touch with any of your professors? DM: 1:14:38 No, as I say once I came up here, Brown, shortly thereafter, was-was gone. I think Savage had taken a job somewhere else already, and Roma was the only one who was still there that I had connection with, and I did not, I did not keep up connection with-with-with him. So no, the other person actually was interesting. I was just thinking the other day. Another person who had influence on me was Edmund Wilson [Edward Wilson], who was a black sculptor. Because I found I could take my fine arts requirement by taking a studio art course. And I had always loved to draw, but had never really pursued it, and I took just an introductory drawing course from Edmund Wilson, and Wilson taught me how to look at things and how to conceptualize. And I took, yeah, I took a second course from somebody else who was a shy man. I cannot even remember his name. He was shy. The second course was all art majors, and he would talk to them. And I just felt kind of lost, so I just did whatever projects were necessary to get through it. But Wilson, I- we just fiddle around with drawing for ages. And then when I was coaching, I had a student who wanted to know if she could find a figure drawing class, and asked me if at the college there was one, and I called over it was, and they said, well, one of our adjuncts runs a program over at the Westcott center. So I knew she would not, she did not have transportation get over there. So I-I have been interested in getting back into drawing. And so I took her over there, and I have been doing that ever since. But it- you know, so the drawing has been, is now a part of my life, has been a part of my life. But Wilson-Wilson had a had a real influence, because I thought he was going to teach me how to draw, and he did not. He just taught me how to look and how to conceptualize. And- IG: 1:17:14 Far more important. DM: 1:17:15 It was the key was, and it was something that stayed with me right until I finally had an opportunity to do something on a regular basis, and-and I have been doing that for what, 25 years, I have been going to open figure drawing and-and just enjoying that. So-so yeah, Wilson was- he did a series of I went into his-his studio once or twice. Later, I guess I cannot remember what the occasion was, because I was not taking courses from him, but he did a series called minority man, you know, and as a black sculptor, they were all in wood, and they were very expressive. They were emotional. They-they were figures in emotional trauma just done in-in, you know, in what I, you know, getting tree things, and then just carving them. But they were very powerful. And I saw one of his works in one art history thing that I saw after that, but- IG: 1:18:29 That must have been highly unusual to have a Black art teacher. DM: 1:18:38 Yes, yeah. Speaker 1 1:18:40 Pretty much all one school. Third speaker 1:18:46 How diverse the faculty was at that time? Speaker 1 1:18:48 I do not remember it being an overly diverse faculty, but Wilson-Wilson had a tremendous impact on me because-because he not only was an artist, but he knew how to teach art, you know, and that is, that is, you know, JM: 1:19:01 That is a gift that. DM: 1:19:03 Yeah, that is a gift as well, yeah, and-and he and your grade was on the basis of how he thought where you went, from where you started to where you finished. So there was a young man in there who could not draw to save his life. He would work hard at it, right. [laughs] But Wilson did not fail him, because he worked hard at it, and he was encouraged to do that. The other thing about the difference, going back to how things were different back then, the art studio was open 24 hours a day. The only thing you did not have access to was painting stuff or clay materials, because those you had to pay for. But all the drawing materials, which included, you know, chalks, pastels, uh, charcoal, you know, and drawing paper was there. And I remember one of the projects- IG: 1:20:07 And the doors were open, DM: 1:20:08 -and the doors were open. One of the projects was, I just was not getting it. And so I went over there at, I think, 10:30 at night, and sat down. It was a, it was a pen, and pen and ink still life that I was supposed to do, just a series of bottles, and I had done them, and I, you know, he would go by, and I would look up expectantly, and he would shake-shake his head, no. I mean, he would just say no, right? Actually, we never say no. He just, you know, and I knew that I was not getting it and but I could go over there at night and just work on this on my own. So I went over there, and the bottles are all there, right. And I am looking, I am drawing, no, that is not right. I am doing that, and it is just outlines, right. That is not and all of a sudden, I drew an- oh, right. And I stopped looking at the bottles, because I draw them so many times, I knew all their shapes, and I drew five in a row that I knew he was going to say yes to. Because, again, it is a matter of looking right. JM: 1:21:10 Yeah. DM: 1:21:12 But-but that was the thing. It was those materials were just available at the- at dinner. Only time I have ever put on weight in my life was the first spring semester I was there because I ate two dinners every night. [laughter] My roommate and I had a, had routines going. We played off each other at the table, and group would we go over there early, and a group would sit down with us, and then they would all leave, and we would go back and get a second meal, and another group would join us and go through a second meal. But you could do that. We had lobster tails and steak once a month for birthday-birthday right. IG: 1:21:57 At the cafeteria? DM: 1:21:58 At the cafeteria, lobster tail and steak once a month for- we for special events, they would have a roast beef where they would cut off, you know, you want it from the rare part, right. Unlimited- go back for milk, anything you wanted that first couple of years was unlimited. I had a friend going to Hamilton, who ate nowhere near as well as I did for all the money his parents were paying to send him to Hamilton. JM: 1:22:29 I remember, you know, a bunch of us from Whitney would go over, you know, and he and his roommate, also from Kenmore, at that time, would be doing these routines back and forth. And they were so funny, you know, and everybody was spraying their juice, laughing, things like that. And I remember that. I do not remember the food, except for Blintz. Oh, I could not understand why a Blintz was a dinner. DM: 1:22:55 Yes, they would, they would serve Blintzes as dinner Speaker 1 1:22:57 And bagels and locks, no, that is just no food. DM: 1:23:04 But-but also, when they opened up brand Newing, they had the sandwich lady. And I was- no, I just, I might have gone there once, but the people who regularly went there the sand- is sandwich lady would make up any kind of sandwich you wanted. And you have seen dagwoods, well, people would walk out with sandwiches this high, yeah, okay, that, right? And then that, then, then some of that, right. Another slices, then some of that. [laughs] IG: 1:23:32 Did you take food into your dorm? DM: 1:23:35 I think they were eating those just at the cafeteria that was just said, Just be lunch time ago, and sit at a table, and because it would be tough to carry it, they did not bag it for you. It was not, was not a fast-food place. IG: 1:23:45 The cafeteria was opened certain hours, right? Speaker 1 1:23:48 Yeah-yeah. The cafeteria was, yeah. Cafeterias just-just open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. IG: 1:23:53 What was your relationship with the library? Did you spend a lot of time in the library, or was it open all hours? Speaker 1 1:23:58 I do not remember if it was open all hours. I remember being in the, I remember more in graduate school, because I-I had to, you know, I had a carrel that I had used there, but I remember some very clever graffiti in the Harpur College Library men's room, [laughter] but yeah, the- I do not remember spending that much time in the library, because most of what I was doing was reading primary sources, and those were the books you bought each year. So, you know, if I was not reading commentaries on Leibniz, I was reading Leibniz, I was not reading commentaries on Plato. I was reading Plato. So-so again, was not that grad school level? IG: 1:24:59 Did not the library have these books, these primary materials? DM: 1:25:03 It did as far as I can recall, I never remember anybody complaining that there was something that they could not get. But I did not have call to-to use it that much. JM: 1:25:15 Did you bought them all, right? DM: 1:25:17 Yeah. And back then, books were, books were reasonable. I mean, you know the book-book industry- IG: 1:25:24 How do you how do you think that your classmates from Harpur would remember you? Speaker 1 1:25:29 The only ones who remember me are the ones who still know me. [laughs] IG: 1:25:35 How did they talk about you from this period? How do you think that they would remember you? DM: 1:25:40 Oh, I do not know. I think we all laugh and joke. We were just this last get together, New Year's from an earlier get together when Mark Weinstein was not able to make it, somebody had picked up a badge with his picture from back then on it. And I think the running joke was, well, at least he improved with age. But it was, I do not know. I think that we all pretty much had. I think we are the same people now that we were then, even though Mark Wolraich has had a tremendously important career as a pediatrician, he has, he has written a number of books on dealing with children with special needs. He coordinates a program in right now, out of the University of Oklahoma, that works through the state to coordinate all the services in the state for students with special needs that he organized and put together, but we still rib him the same way we did across the campus, one family across the campus and but it is that it said we establish, yeah, we established an easy kind of relationship of people who are serious when we need to be serious and able to laugh. And I think we, you know, our individual personalities are just developments of what they-they were then. So it is not as so much of thinking how people would remember me, so much as thinking about how glad I am that all those so many of those good relationships I had, them are still a part of my life. Now. IG: 1:27:48 What lessons did you learn from this important period in your life? DM: 1:27:54 I do not know. I think, I think we have kind of- IG: 1:27:56 Covered a lot. DM: 1:27:57 Covered that, yeah-yeah, in general- IG: 1:27:59 But just- DM: 1:28:01 Yeah, no, I think that, as I have said, there was the-the beliefs and-and beliefs I have had about what is most important in life are things that simply developed through the associations there that I was fortunate enough to have good friends. You know, continuation of these, of these good friendships. And so I think that, I think that the- we were open minded to a diverse world. I think that meeting other people who were like that has just established a sort of-of a way of life in which you are critical about things that you think are wrong, but you are open to-to a diverse world of people who-who managed to get to those same places in life by a lot of different routes. And I think that-that started a little bit in in high school, really expanded in college. JM: 1:29:35 I remember, you know, sitting around talking to people about some serious things. DM: 1:29:42 Yeah-yeah. JM: 1:29:42 And, you know, and I think that is came out of that era, um- DM: 1:29:50 Yeah-yeah, no-no topics, no topics seem to be out of bounds. And the discussions that we would have were-were very serious. Whether they are about religion or about politics or about social conditions, or- IG: 1:30:06 Were they ever about the social conditions of women, women's rights? DM: 1:30:10 I think those developed as we went. I think that every woman I still know who is someone I knew back then I would describe as a feminist and-and I had, I had a student, Janet, and I shared a student, you know, went from my class in philosophy to her class in English, came in one day and said, "Dr Muir just yelled at us for not being feminist." And I had not really yelled at him for not being feminist. What I just simply asked him, "How many of you would-would be [inaudible]", this is in the (19)90s. "How many of you would-would say you were feminists?" And very few would raise their hands and I say, Well, you know. And then I would start to explain what feminism, you know, what the early feminism movement meant, and what people would try say and-and talk about, you expect that you can go out for any sport in high school? Of course, you can back then you could not, right? There were not any right. And just try to let them, let them know. I said, yeah, what I said, somehow people who are against feminism have made it a nasty word for young women. I do not understand that. I said, "How can it be a nasty word? Are you against equal pay for equal work? Are you against equal opportunity for in in every profession? Are you?" So-so that was yelling at them, asking, ask him, asking him a series of questions. "Dr. Muir was yelling." But anyway, she was one of the ones I got to, I think it was not yeah, but yeah, it was something that built. It built, I think, you know, it started to build in those years, and it just, you know, it just can continue to build from-from then on. JM: 1:31:59 In short of time, was, I was at Harpur when I decided, you know, to start going back to school and taking classes. I took music appreciation because at Harpur, I had been in a music appreciation class, and it introduced me to opera. I loved Aida, Leontyne Price, and all this music that, you know, I never was exposed to in my family. They were doing Lawrence Welk and stuff like that. But that was what I went back to. And the first literature classes I took was literature by and about women, you know, in the feminist mold and-and I got to teach, and I think it was the last semester I taught her. Last year I taught at OCC. I got to teach a course in literature by and about women. But those things, I came from a family of five girls, and my parents were out of the depression area- era, and they both were interested in going to college, but could not, because they both had to work. And my mother graduated from high school at the age of 16, and, you know, was very much interested in going on to school, and my father wanted to be an architect, so they were determined that all of their daughters would go to college, so there was not a question in my family about trying to go to college. My older sister went to a business school and then dropped out. She was not terribly interested. I went to college and dropped out after a year, which was, I think, a big disappointment to them, but then my next sister, my next sister, my next sister, all three of them went to college, went into nursing, occupational therapy and-and all of that. So growing up in a family of girls, I did not really recognize the lack of opportunity, although when I think back now, there were not any sports for us. And I might have been interested in sports. I now play tennis. I have been playing tennis for 40 years and-and enjoying it, and but there were not those things. So, you know, the feminism, they- was a big thing for me, and I think it started in those years, but I did not capitalize on it until- I did not capitalize, [crosstalk] I went back to college in the (19)70s. IG: 1:34:30 And-and your husband supported you? JM: 1:34:32 Absolutely. And you know, through grad school, there were a lot of couples that Syracuse that broke up because the wives were working and the husbands were in grad school, and they just went different ways. But when David finished his degree, his PhD, that is when I was pregnant with our daughter, and I-I wanted to go back to school. And he said all. Take care of the baby. IG: 1:35:03 How progressive of you. Speaker 1 1:35:05 Well, I still cook all our meals. After [crosstalk] Yeah-yeah-yeah. Because we were, we were married for seven years before he had a child, and then, and then, just as she decided she wanted to go back to-to school, all of a sudden, we found she was pregnant, and-and, but then, yeah, I said, I can I have a flexible- I can manage my schedule, and we can do this and-and-and we did, and made sure that she was able to go back to school. IG: 1:35:38 Well, what concluding remarks do you have? What message would you like to convey to future generations, or this generation listening to your interview? DM: 1:35:57 It is tough, because we came through a golden era that I do not know is going to be repeatable, because with what was happening in the (19)50s, the Cold War, and then Soviets launching Sputnik, and all of a Sudden, huge amounts of money being poured into education, and you combine that with the post war economy, where-where you just had the fastest growing middle class that I think there is ever been, and all of those things coming together for us at just that time, New York State converting their-their colleges into from State Teachers colleges into liberal arts colleges, forming university centers. I mean, Harpur was the first one, but Stony Brook had already begun by the time, you know what, By the second year in or sooner than that, Stony Brook was beginning, and then Albany, and then they purchased [inaudible]. So all of these things are happening at once. We are and I do not see those factors coming together again. We had not to have taken advantage of that would have been a real shame. Everything was there for us. Everything was there for us. But I guess the message would be, look to try to recreate those opportunities wherever you can. It is you- you are not likely to have the same set of circumstances, but we do not want to restrict. We want to-to open up. And I see too many things that are tending toward restricting, again, limiting again. Too many people who are afraid of diversity, afraid of various other things. This was as great a period, I think, as you could live through, and whatever anybody can do to recreate those open conditions, I think that is what they should be trying to do. IG: 1:38:17 Thank you very much. Would you like to add your concluding remarks to this interview? JM: 1:38:27 We have had a really charmed life and-and the fact that our daughter has picked up on a lot of the values that you know, we experience with our friends. We are very proud of her, and that when she wanted to go to college, she looked at Geneseo and she looked at Binghamton. She did not want to go too far, and luckily for us, she did not want to spend a lot of money. [laughter] But when she looked at Geneseo, she said “It is a lot of the same people.” She went to Marcellus High School, which is very small and rural. She said “It is a lot of the same people,” you know, a monoculture of middle class white upstate. And she said, I want to go to Binghamton because of the diversity and-and it was hard for her to go into that big school from here, but she was in Hinman, she was in a suite with, you know, that gave her a smaller cohort of-of students to be with, and she made wonderful friendships, and she had a wonderful experience at Binghamton. So even though it is bigger, she still had a core experience there that was very positive for her. So you know, it is still a great place to go. Yeah, I would say, even though my experience was not a positive one there, I have seen that it was- DM: 1:40:12 There was one thing that I did not that I did not say that-that to me, characterized the- an attitude that is no longer there, because Binghamton went division one sports and-and my understanding was that the President wanted to do it, and the faculty was against it, and as I was against it, in fact, I talked to people who were calling on fundraising drives, and I saying, oh, the most thing I am most disappointed in it was going Division One, because division one and what happened? It was a scandal. Why? Because you cannot build a division one program. Why would you go to a demanding school like Harpur instead of Cornell, right, which is still right, still, it is Ivy League. It still has the name. Why go there right when neither one is going to be able to offer you scholarship, and Cornell has been added a law a lot longer, and they know how to they know how to work the system. And I did not think they could write and what did they have? They had a scandal when we were there. It was Division three. I ran Division Three track until I got married [laughter] and-and it was fun, right. We, we played games on the on the small- it was a van we would go in, right? The coach would drive us in a van. Coach Lyons would drive us in a van, and the basketball team, right. JM: 1:41:41 Harass them. [inaudible] DM: 1:41:43 Yeah, that was, that was, that was that was the cheer we would go down there, "Harass them, harangue them, make them really relinquish the ball." I mean, that was, you know, that was the kind of fun sort of thing that you did. And it was, but it was very different. And because it you-you did not go there for athletics. The athletics were there because they were part of a traditional education. And the people in the in the phys ed department were wonderful instructors. Were great down there when we when we started the- but it was an academic institution, thoroughly and division one schools are not, first of all, academic institutions. If you are a division one, of course, they are never going to go football, thank goodness. But I have a loyalty to SU [Syracuse University] big on Division One, everything, but I really liked Harpur as a division three school. I wish it could have stayed a division three school. I think. I wish they were still chanting, [Harass them, harangue there. Make them. Make them relinquish the ball] at basketball games. IG: 1:42:53 Because that would have kept the emphasis on academics. DM: 1:42:56 Yes, yeah, because then-then- JM: 1:42:58 And sports are for enjoyment. DM: 1:43:00 Sports, yeah, they are, they are, yeah, they are for enjoyment. And you do that, right. You run track because you want to run track. You go out, you know you are out for the basketball team because you want to play basketball. But-but that, to me, was-was what Harpur College was, and I wish it was, was now what Binghamton University is, but it is not. It is not. And that that, to me, is a shame. I think that that is something lost that will never be regained. And I think it is a real shame that, but it is a totally different campus. I mean, you got a school, and you got all these different schools that it was, but still-still, I would love to have seen them have the courage to be a university center and a division and do division three sports. That would have been great, that it would have taken courage, but it would have put them on the map. And I think the best, best way. JM: 1:44:04 I do not know if they have sports for women down there. I really do not have a clue about that, but they did not when we were there. DM: 1:44:09 But they-they-they, they must not. Third speaker: 1:44:11 They have tennis. DM: 1:44:11 Do they have a women's basketball program? Third speaker 1:44:13 Yeah? They do. They have lacrosse- DM: 1:44:20 Yeah-yeah, all the same things, yeah, I will say yeah. But that is- JM: 1:44:28 Now. Third speaker 1:44:28 [crosstalk] tracks obviously. DM: 1:44:30 Yeah-yeah, but-but that-that-that to me, was something that I would have liked to have seen them keep, and it would have been a uniqueness that I think would have-have been a good. So, yep. IG: 1:44:47 Thank you so much. Thank you for a very interesting- DM: 1:44:50 Thank-thank you for having the interest in doing it. JM: 1:44:55 What-what is this going to be used for? (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 David and Janet Muir 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 Muir, David ; Muir, Janet ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University. Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life." 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 2018-01-12 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 David and Janet Muir.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-01-12 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. 105:00 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fd14cb6fd2a323666577c587b54a87ce.jpg 1ba1da65af72e110a94df2af283b4af6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3fe38fc5902eff667eef1349c6e1e5db.mp3 7bdd105bdeae8ceed1031d48aaa83ae0 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 2010-02-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Nancy Cain (Television producer) Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Nancy Cain is a videographer, producer and author. Cain started her career as a member of the Videofreex, a group that toured the country in the 1960s and 1970s and produced experimental videos on Woodstock, the Chicago Seven and geodesic domes. Cain was the co-creator and producer of the PSB show, The 1990s, and the author of the book, Video Days."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4995,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Nancy Cain is a videographer, producer and author. Cain started her career as a member of the Videofreex, a group that toured the country in the 1960s and 1970s and produced experimental videos on Woodstock, the Chicago Seven, and geodesic domes. Cain was the co-creator and producer of the PBS show The 1990s and the author of the book Video Days. Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam Videographers; Baby boom generation; Watergate; Free Speech Movement; The Cold War; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Angela Davis; Attica"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Vietnam Videographers; Baby boom generation; Watergate; Free Speech Movement; The Cold War; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Angela Davis; Attica Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 154:16 Subject LCSH Video recording; Authors; Television producers and directors; Videofreex (Production company); Cain, Nancy (Television producer)--Interviews 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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Nancy Cain Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 12 February 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: Nancy Kane. Nancy Kane. Well, with someone else. The first question I always ask, especially in the last 50 to 60 people I have interviewed, is to tell me about your growing up years, where you grew up, the influence your parents had on you, maybe a little bit about your high school and college years. NC: Oh. SM: Just kind of the most influential people in your life and what made you who you are. NC: Okay. Well, Detroit, Michigan. Just when everything was great in Detroit and the car industry was booming and everybody was rich. I was just thinking back about my childhood, a very happy childhood. My dad was in the advertising business. They were interested in theater and the arts, and I have a younger sister, and we were both interested in those things too. Went to Mumford High School. I went to the University of Arizona for two years. Then I came back to Detroit and did a year at Wayne State University. And then I left college and got a job in a resident professional theater. And I worked for about three years of full-time doing theater in Detroit. And I moved to New York and also worked in the theater. And I ultimately got a job working for a producer at CBS Network, which is where I discovered video and where I was completely radicalized. And my whole life really changed because of that. SM: What year was that when you were working there? NC: 1969. SM: Oh, that is a big year. NC: Yeah, it was that was summer. I started working at CBS during that summer of the Woodstock Festival. Let me see what else was happening at that summer. The meth one? The meth one. SM: I think there is also, that year is when the women protested at Atlantic City. NC: That is true. Right? They burned the proverbial bra. But yeah, women's lib was just starting. SM: Yeah, you went to Wayne State University, and I think that is where Charlene Hunter Gaunt went too in her early years. She graduated from Wayne State. She was on the Larry Report for many years, and she was from the south, but she went to Wayne State and graduated from there. When you were there, were there any teachers or family members or peers up to 1969, maybe even someone at the TV station you worked at that really inspired you, that helped you go the direction that you went? NC: Well, I knew quite a lot about television and television production because my dad was in the advertising business. When television first started in the late forties, he told his clients, "Look, this is where you are going to put your ad. Everybody is getting a television set, and this is what we are going to do." And they said, "Well, that is great, but there are not any programs to advertise on." So, my dad started producing quite a lot of television programs for his advertisers, and they spent a lot of time at TV station, and I watched the directors and the people who did all the jobs. But I think mostly that it was my family and what my family liked I liked. But when I got to New York, I think the big change that was happening at that particular time when I was at CBS, change was that there were only three TV stations. There were three television networks there. Everything was centralized, and there was no concept of people having their own communication decentralizing the television. So, in that summer of 1969, while we were trying to put together some kind of a new kind of documentary form for the network that I met people called the Video Freaks. SM: Yes. NC: Had just come back from the Woodstock Festival, and they were the first people I had ever known to have portable video recording equipment. There just was no such thing there. It was not even any tape until the end of the (19)50s. It was live television. That was, if they wanted to save it, they would make a kinescope, which means that they would film the TV screen and save it. And that is what they had. So, when video was invented, that kind of changed the whole landscape. And they came back, and I, at the time was interviewing a lot of people who had thoughts about changing television, what could be new in television. And they came back and they showed me pictures, video from the Woodstock Festival, which is the exact opposite of anything that I had ever seen before. The reverse angle of everything. In other words, I had seen some clips of famous rock and rollers up on the stage, and I saw that it had been raining and that there were like a hundred thousand people there. And it was phenomenal. The video freaks came to my office and showed me, they showed me video of miles, long lines waiting for the porta-potties. SM: Hmm. NC: They showed me people just totally stoned, tripping out acid. Fabulous. Not the show, but the actual event. So that is the first video that I ever saw. And we hired them immediately, and I spent then both rest of that summer traveling with the video freak trying to document what was going on in the counterculture in the United States. SM: Yes. NC: We traveled all over, and that is when I saw that that video was going to make it possible for all people to be able to communicate. You did not have to wait and see what the TV station sent you to make your own media and send it to the people that you wanted to send it to. It was really very primitive at that time. But if you look at the progression, it was the invention of videotape, cable television, the internet, YouTube, and it is now totally democratized media so that anyone can say anything and put it out to millions, gazillions of people in one click all over the planet. And that is what I had in mind, even though there was not the technology to do it. SM: Who were these people? How many of them were there? Was- it was just a small group that went to which... NC: The video freaks at the time that I met him, they were three people. David Court, who was a kind of media artist in New York City who had been working at the Brooklyn Children's Museum. He had a port attack. He went to the festival with his girlfriend, who was a painter at the time, Curtis Radcliffe. They lived down on the Lower East Side. They went out to the Woodstock Festival with their camera, and they met Perry Peace dale. He was 20 years old. He had a Panasonic camera with no viewfinder in it. And they met up and they were probably the only people there that had video cameras. And they set up a booth out there and started. People had never seen them, so they set up a little booth where people could, they would turn on a video camera and people would see themselves on video on the screen when they were just standing there. And how people say, "Wow, is that me?" They would look at it and be all excited. So, they did that. So, there were the three of them. By the end of the project at CBS, there were 10 of us very majorly fired after we did our proposal. SM: Did you become the leader of the group? NC: There was a... No, because leaders, that was not happening. SM: Oh, that was like, yes... NC: Very great for women at that time, because mostly up until that point, men had the thing, men had the jobs, men would hire the women, men would tell the women what to do, but no more. And suddenly there was equality. And by the end of the project, there were 10 of us, and we were all fired. They were all people that were working on the CBS project. And we all left CBS simultaneously after our pre-presentation to the network. SM: How long did Video Freaks last? NC: Video Freaks is still existing. We finally after, what, 30 years? I am not exactly sure, but about three or five years ago, we actually made a partnership agreement and are now kind of watching over these several thousand videotape that were shot, although we worked together and live together because for financial reasons, not because we were in love or anything. We had some equipment and we needed to share it. SM: Right. NC: So, we had a loft down in SoHo, New York, and that was too expensive. And so, in the summer of 1970, we rented a house in the Catskill Mountains, a big old farmhouse, and we turned that into a media center. SM: Oh, wow. NC: We were there for about nine years. And we were open to video artists and producers from all over who could come and edit video and work on, and then we... SM: Are a lot of your videos on YouTube. NC: Yes. SM: Yeah. Is YouTube a direct descendant of video Freaks? NC: I say yes, even though, because the concept, we had the concept, we spent several years traveling around, teaching people how to run this equipment. So, we got grants from the New York State Council on the Art and from the National Endowment and other such. And we started a not-for-profit called Media Bus. And we would traveled mostly over the state of New York. We traveled all the whole throughway system, and we went to libraries and museums and cultural places, and YMCA and any place where people gathered. And we would have workshops and we would show people how to work this equipment and how to take control of their own media. And we would go out on the streets and we would record people, actual real life, interviewing people, asking William, "What is happening in this community? What are you doing with this and that?" And then they'd say, "Okay, now we have these videotapes. What do with them?" And that was just the beginning of cable television. So, the cable companies were wiring up cabling, all the whole state, all these small towns now would sign contracts with cable company. And in their contracts with these cable companies, there was something called access, community access, public access. And what that meant was, "Hey, you big rich media conglomerate, we are letting you cable up our whole town. And so, what we expect is for you to give us a channel on your big cable system so that we can communicate in our own community with each other." But the cable companies, they did not like that. And we were kind of outside agitators. And we would keep to all these people and community people and young people and the Boy Scouts and everybody. We would walk them over there to the cable company, take our little meeting with the cable company and say, "Okay, we want to do it. We are ready to go and have our own C station." And they had to do it. SM: See, that is an unbelievable (19)60s 70 thing, because you are really challenging the establishment there, number one. Number two, you were truly living what, as Tom Hayden used to always say when he came to our campus, the difference between power and empowerment. You were empowered. NC: Yeah. SM: Because you were in control. NC: Yes, sort of except that we were not making any money and we were not telling anybody how to make any money either. So that was like... SM: I went into the, obviously the computer and I on the YouTube, and I found a couple of your things on there, and you probably know, you have probably seen them. One was that short film you did on that woman who was leaving. NC: Harriet. SM: Harriet, yeah. The first time I saw it, well, the first time, I did not know why she was laughing all the time. Why was she laughing all the time? NC: Well, you know what? I do not know. She was hysterical. You can hardly see that the image on that tape. SM: Right. NC: You barely see it anymore. But what it was is we lived in a small town called Lanesville. That is where our big farmhouse was. And there were maybe 300 people in that town altogether. So, we had put together, because there was no cable in Lanesville, we decided to make a broadcast television station. We had before we left the city, Abby Hoffman had given us a TV, a television transmitter, because he had wanted us to make something for him because he wanted to do pirate television. Abby was doing a book called, I do not know if it was Steal this book, or one before that, where he was trying to empower people in all areas. He wanted to do, was have some kind of a pirate television station that would be run out of a bus or a truck or someplace that could move around. He wanted it. He wanted it to cut into the networks and put on this people's television. So, he came over with that idea, and Perry and Chuck, our technical guy, tried to figure out how to make that happen. And he came over to our loft and they showed him that they were able to figure out how to actually broadcast from one room to the next room. And so, we would not have to pound on the wall or shout it. He could actually broadcast to the next room. But he was very disappointed in that because he was thinking the city or the five boroughs, at least. Come on kids, let us get together. And that seemed to be a little bit more that we can handle technically. So, he left, but he left the transmitter, which he had paid for 300 and something dollars. So, when we moved to the country, we took this transmitter with us. And what do you know, it worked with a little bit more copper wire and a little bit of mass. We figured out how to broadcast from the roof of our house to all these little houses in Lanesville. And so, we would put on Wednesdays and on Saturday night, we would put on Lanesville TV, probably America's smallest TV station. And that way we got to know everyone in town because it was the only station that came in because it was stuck in the mountains. It was in a very high mountains on both sides and very, very, a narrow roadway that went down there. So, everybody in Lanesville watched Lanesville TV. So, I would walk down the road to the post office, I would pass by this little trailer that was sitting next to the post office. And Harriet one day who lived down there in that little trailer, she called up to me, she said, "Hey, you want to see my baby?" And I said, "Yeah, I definitely want to see your baby." And I am always curious about going into people's houses. I always wonder what it is like. And so, I rushed right down in there, and she lived in this add-on trailer with her husband and five children. And right down there was just really intense. And she showed me her little baby Toddy, and she invited me in there, and I spent a lot of time in there talking, and she was reading the paper, the New York Daily News. And anyway, we got to be friends. And so, I asked her if I can make a videotape about her life. She said, "Sure." I said, "What I will do is I will just bring the camera down, we will leave the camera running, and we will see what you do all day. And then we will come back and we will edit it. We will see what the story is." So I would go down there and I would spend the time with her, and she'd be cleaning the house and doing the wash and hanging the wash. And then Bobby, her husband would come home with his father and all the Benjamin people. She would make hot dogs for them and they had lunch. And then the teenagers would come, mom, I this. I do not want to do that. And it was just like a whiny stuff and just typical family stuff. And it was going on. And one day I just asked her, I said, "Harriet, do you ever think of just, how can you stand it? Do not you ever feel like taking off?" And she said, "Well, that sounds like a good idea. Let us do that." I said, "Okay, we will do that." And the camera was running, camera one running. She grabs her suitcase. She starts putting everything that she owns into this suitcase. She walks out into the yard, opens up the door, puts her stuff in the trunk of the car. It was not a trunk, I think it was a station wagon, so it was back. Slams down the hood, jumps into the car. I jumped into the car with her, especially, she pulls out of the driveway and starts singing, "Roll Out the Barrel", and starts driving and we are driving and driving and driving and driving. I am thinking, what is happening? Is this an act? Is it real? Is this life? Is it what she wants? Anyway, it turned out that, of course, she went back home for her family and did all that. And I came home with this footage. And so, when I was cutting the tape, I went with it. And at a certain point, I had her leaving. And the further that we drove, the more hysterical she became. She just was so pleased with herself. And I think the answer to your question, why was she laughing? Was that she empowered herself. She saw that she could do it. SM: That is a very important message within the era too. NC: Yeah. SM: Yeah. One of the other videos, and again, I did not look at all of them, but there was that very short 32nd one with Abby Hoffman. I think Paul was to the right of Abby. And when he was talking about Jay Edgar Hoover, is that... NC: I do not know that tape. SM: That is a video freaks tape too. And it was very short and sweet. It was really good. NC: 30 seconds of Abby, where did you go? SM: Oh, you just go on the computer and you put your name in there under YouTube. NC: Oh, you went... SM: Yeah, you got to go YouTube and then YouTube, you will come up with the tape of that we just described, and then you will see a little snippet. Some of the things are not yours, but this one looks like it is a Video Freaks. And it was very good telling about J Edgar Hoover, a 70-year-old man who would never had sex. And I mean... NC: [inaudible] SM: Abby is unbelievable. Anyways, what were some of the events that Video Freaks covered in those times? I know they covered Woodstock with those films. NC: As it started out, it started out with Woodstock. All right. So then during that summer it was the... Oh, that is what you may have been talking about. It was the trial of the Chicago eight. SM: Yes. NC: And that was the first place that I was assigned by my boss at CBS, go with the Video Freak and cover that trial. And David Court had gone to Brandeis University with Abby, and that was our connection. They were friends. So, we drove out to Chicago, and I went with Perry, and David, and Curtis, the first three original Video Freaks. And we made that connection with Abby, and he had just been released from jail, although the trial was still on. We met them at some kind of basement coffee house. And there was a long, long interview with David Court shooting it in. Carrie holding the microphone. Oh no, I think it was Terry shooting and David holding the microphone. And there might have been a little clip from that of Abby speaking most out outrageously. And so, we were on the streets with that. The streets were just filled with people, and they were not only, there was huge protests going on it. So, it was not only protesting about the trial, it was protesting about everything that was going on. And the war, basically women's right. Basically, women's rights, everything. So that was the second major thing. And I really had no experience with the counterculture at all until I went on that shoot. SM: Were you allowed to go inside the trial or did you have to wait outside? NC: Oh, no, there were no cameras allowed inside there at all. Too bad. But a lot of people have recreated those events. SM: Were you able to sit there though, or just watch or- NC: No. SM: Okay. NC: No, but we spent a lot of time with them and also met the Black Panther Party at that time, and we did a long interview with Fred Hampton. SM: Oh, wow. NC: And he was killed by the Chicago police three weeks, maybe three or four weeks after we interviewed him. I was so strange. We went up to this place and there is all these Black Panthers who were at a beautiful town home owned by a supporter of theirs in Old Town Chicago. And we go up there bloated with people and they are saying, they are talking and they are laughing. They are like, "Oh, oh, off the pigs." And all this stuff. And I did not know what they were talking about. And I would say, "Well, what does that mean?" And I said, "Well, I am not from Chicago, so I do not know." I got a lot of big laughs. I did not really realize what it was. SM: Were the other Black Panthers there, like Stokely Carmichael? NC: Oh-no, no, not Stokely. Well, people that- SM: Cleavers? NC: I do not know the names of the, but we did a long interview with Fred, who was at that time. SM: What was the gist of that interview? What was he saying? NC: I am going to look up on a page and see if I can find something that I quote you. SM: Because I know there is a video of him on the streets, but I do not think that is a Videofreex- NC: But there is a Videofreex, and I think it is on, might be on, if you go to YouTube and go to Videofreex, the page Videofreex that has a bunch of stuff on it. And I think that it has pretty much a lot of the Fred Hampton interview. Let me see here. SM: One of the things when I was looking also at your experiences with CamNet later on, these are quotes that I think, and correct me if I am wrong, that go directly back to Videofreex. And these are quotes from you. "What we are after is emotional resonance. People are allowed to talk more than just a sentence or two. It is a window into the real dirty, unvarnished, unedited world. Just tell the story by telling us." And that was CamNet, but was not that Videofreex too? NC: Well, that was it. CamNet was, that is still my email address. So CamNet happened, well, let us see, after the Videofreex after Lanesville TV, some of us moved to Woodstock, New York. We did. And we started doing cable television access in Woodstock, New York, which was loaded with a lot of artists. And we got into a lot of trouble there with access and letting people say what they wanted to. And that was a lot of fun. And then I moved to Venice Beach, California. And well, by the time I got to California, I had with many of my friends and colleagues, put together a program called The (19)90s, which played on public television for seasons. And after The (19)90s, it was over, that played from 1989 to like (19)92. And after that, Judith Bender and I put together CamNet, which was the Camcorder Network. And somehow it was through a series of events it got cable access in, I think eight large cities, 24 hours a day. So, we are on the air 24 hours a day playing these videos that our correspondence would send us from all over the country. And that got a lot of press. And we got on the media food chain that the Wall Street Journal picked up on it. Wall Street Journal did a piece, and they actually made a little drawing of us, the whole thing, and put it on the front page of the marketplace. So, then the LA Times picked up on it and TV Guide picked up on it, and just one thing after another. And it got very big, but we could not raise enough money to keep it going, and it eventually folded. SM: Well, I have some questions here that are going back and forward between Videofreex and CamNet, so bear with me here. I am going to get back to Videofreex just briefly. In terms of you personally, no one else but you, what did this experience with Videofreex teach you about the young people of that period of (19)69 and (19)70, of the Boomer generation? And secondly, what did it teach you about our nation as a whole? NC: Oh, well, it certainly opened my eyes to the politic. I had never been really that political, but I think it was that, it was the opening, the freeing of the media and the ending the war. Those seemed to be the things that changed everything for me. And I never went back. SM: That Fred Hampton experience and videotaping him, or again, the tape I remember seeing is that he was a powerful speaker and that he seemed to be very well educated when he got on that stage in Chicago, wherever- NC: But he was like 22 years old or something. SM: Yeah. He so seemed to be, why was he such a threat to the establishment? NC: Well, let me see how I say... Why was he such a threat? Well, the Black Panther Party was a threat because they wanted their rights and they were powerful. And yes, they were definitely a threat. Let me just look, I am just looking through my notes here just to look back to see what kind of quotes I have from him here. Yeah. Fred Hampton. Fred Hampton, here is what I wrote about it. "Fred Hampton stood out among the Panthers as a thoughtful, soft-spoken leader. Perry asked him the first question, "You and the people around you always seem to be in danger. You could be killed as you walk out of here. If you are killed, will the breakfast program go on a day-to-day level?" And Fred Hampton answered, "Last year, we started a free Breakfast for Children program, and this year we gave it to the people, and they're running the program already. Our whole program is geared toward educating the masses of people. And say that Free health Clinic we have, the people in the community are going to run that clinic. And after a while, we are going to give them that clinic and we are going to move on to higher levels because we understand the difference between the vanguard and the people. We are not worried about them killing anybody. I think that you know they jailed Huey P. Newton, and they ran Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, and they jailed Bobby Seale. And we have got David Hilliard up there now who is very capable, most capable of running the Black Panther Party. So, they can just take all of them they want to, and we will have someone to fulfill that position because that is the type of organization the Black Panther Party is. We do not produce buffoons. We produce leaders. And anybody in the Black Panther Party and any type of cadre is becoming a leader. Our Deputy Minister of Health in the State of Illinois can run the Black Panther Party. And so, can anybody in this cadre. So, all that they are involved with is an excursion in futility. Because anybody that tries to deal with wiping out the leadership of the Black Panther Party is dealing with a time waste. A futile effort to seize some type of power that can never be seized, because a type of unending flow of this power. Every time somebody moves, we are just producing more and more people. The story goes, they wiped out Martin Luther King, and they wiped out Malcolm X, you know what I mean? And they wiped out all these people, and these people were produced. So, I think that in the near future, you will see programs initiated by the government. They will probably have the CIA protecting people like us, because when they wiped out Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver popped up, I know very well they would be saying, "I wish to hell we would have kept Huey P. Newton on the scene because this motherfucker is out of his mind." There was righteous laughter and nods of, "Right on, right on, right on."" And that was the beginning of our interview with them. SM: Wow. Can I use that in my- NC: Absolutely. SM: Yeah. This is important because when you are looking at the period that we are talking about, I think I even talked about this with Paul, that one of the challenges in this period was the Black Panther challenging these established African American leaders, which was the Dr. King's and the Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins. And even the Julian Bonds and the John Lewis's. This was Robert Moses, the guy from SNCC, I think left SNCC because he felt it was becoming too radical in some respects. So, did you sense that when you saw the Fred Hamptons, the Black Panthers? Did you even think about the people like I just mentioned here, the civil rights leaders that went through so much in the (19)50s and the (19)60s? NC: Well, because they could not have been a Black Panther party without that, I feel. That was the next step that it had to be. And they could not wait any longer. They just could not. They had to go. SM: Do you feel, it is something that I have felt for a long time, that when someone asked Martin Luther King what he thought of Thurgood Marshall, he had tremendous respect for Thurgood Marshall. But he felt that the Brown versus Board of Education decision and all the things that he had been involved in were two gradual. That was the gradual approach to civil rights. So, he wanted it now, Dr. King. So, the next phase you think was the Black Panthers, or even- NC: What it looks like, does not it? SM: Yeah. Then no more of this gradualness. The other thing is, what did you think of the Yippies? Because I know, I have talked to several people, Paul and many others now. I have a tremendous... I have always liked Abbie Hoffman, so- NC: He is great. SM: I have always respected Abbie. I have had my differences opinion about Jerry Rubin, but Abbie was kind of unique. But when you think overall about the Yippies, you were around them in Chicago. You saw Abbie, you saw Jerry. And then you were around people like Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Dave Gallinger, Lee Weiner, and even their lawyers, Leonard Weinglass, and William Kunstler. And Bobby Seale obviously was there. Just your thoughts on being around them. NC: Right. Well, was in intense and it was heavy. I know that the Yippies are kind of famous for being like comics. They made it exciting. They made it funny. They made it like a party. They made it good time. At least that is what it seemed like. And they brought a lot of kids to Chicago, so that when we went there, we were involved with the defense, the group. This one, I am looking down here to see if I can find. Okay. "Abbie invited us to the Conspiracy Defense office, Chicago seven. Dave Dellinger, renowned pacifist, activist for nonviolent socials change, the oldest of the defendants," I am just reading down my notes here," "was there, along with William Kunstler, fiery defense attorney, Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies, and Tom Hayden of the SDS." Okay. So, we were there at the place and we were taping and we were taping. We have been taping for an hour, and nobody said anything to us about the camera, the microphone. Finally, Tom Hayden, who ultimately turned to us and said, "Who are you with?" And David said, "Well, it is partly an underground thing, but we are also showing the footage to CBS." That is all Hayden had to hear. And he refused to let us leave the office with the footage. After a long, long, long debate, David erased the major sections of the video while Hayden, who did not trust CBS, looked on. And after the meeting, I called Don, my boss in New York, and I told him, "We have run into a little glitch here, and I was wondering if you could tell me, if just let us say, if the FBI calls you and asks to see the footage that we were shooting, would you show it to them?" Oops, just lost my page. I do not even know what page I was on. All right. Bear with me here a moment. SM: Okay. Yeah. While you are looking for that, I just want to say that some of the people that I have interviewed just are very flippant about you. They said, "Oh, they are just a theater group and they did not mean nothing." And so, it was very important in this project that I get substance from as many people as possible. But yeah, there was a lot of theater involved, but- NC: Yeah, but that is what brought them, that is what brought them. SM: There was also- NC: That brought kids. SM: Also, Abbie I thought was very serious. And actually, I find out he was well liked by just about everybody including his enemies. NC: Yeah. Here is some more Abbie stuff and you are going to have a hell of a job editing this. Sorry about this. SM: It is okay. NC: But just going around and around, talking to Abbie. He, in the beginning- SM: Let me turn my tape here. Hold on one second. NC: Okay. SM: All right, I am back. NC: Okay. All right. So, there we are down in the basement coffee house with Abbie, who is David Gold's friend from college. And David asked them, "So you have done TV interviews before? And no, you have not? This is your first?" Said David, getting a big laugh from the group. "Is there anything you would like to say?" Abbie says, "Fuck." And then there is a big laugh. SM: That is my cell phone. Bear with me. I do not know why... Do not worry. Go ahead. Hold on one second. Hold on. I am going to... NC: Oh, okay. SM: I thought I turned it off. Okay, go ahead. NC: All right, we cool? Okay. So, Abbie says "Fuck." That is the first thing he says on the interview. And David asked him if he was having fun. And then first thing Abbie says is, "What is this for?" Which is the typical thing that I heard from that time forward. Almost every place I went for the next 20 years, someone asked me, "What is this for?" But anyway, he did. And he said, "What are you going to do with this after it is done?" And David said, "Well, maybe we will put it on television." And Abbie says, "Network TV?" And David says, "Yeah, what do you think about network TV?" And Abbie says, "My favorite shows are Lawrence Welk and Land of the Giants. It is the truth. I thought I was just making fun of that because they are kind of campy. But then I figured out that they're the only shows I watch, so I must like them." SM: Actually, my parents loved Lawrence Welk. NC: Oh, there you go. Right, yeah. SM: So, they would have liked Abbie. NC: And let us see. Then they went on to discuss the weatherman action. Because then Abbie did say he liked the news, so David asked him about the weatherman. He said, "What do you think about the weatherman action last night when a brick was thrown through a barbershop window?" And Abbie said, he thought that was stupid. He said, "You have to lay an action so that you have some morality on your side so you can split the ruling class. What they did unites the ruling class," he said. Then David asked them if he thought he was going to get a fair trial. And Abbie said, "I will get the usual fair trial Chicago style. They are building gallows on the third floor. Some people say that is a pretty pessimistic sign, but I do not know. There is guys practicing a drum roll." And David says, "That is a little scary." And Abbie says, "No, no, not scary until the last days, then shocking. But it's never scary. No, it is just the last day when they say guilty and you said, "What? After all this shit, three fucking months, guilty?" And the poor jury says, "Abbie, they are doing time. They're just locked up. They cannot fuck or nothing. They cannot watch TV." "It is a good state of mind to put them in for the judge, isn't it?" Asked David. "Well, that is the thing that happens when you are locked up, because all they do is have contact with government people. US Marshals are the only ones they see, so eventually they feel an important part of the government team. The judge, the past four years has had 24 jury trials, and guess how many guilties?" "How many?" "24." Everyone laughs up joyously. What else could they do. SM: Now, just from being around, that is David Cort doing that interview? NC: Yes. Yeah. SM: Is this Cort K-O-R-T or C-O-R-T? NC: C-O-R-T. SM: K? NC: C-O-R-T. SM: Oh, yeah. Is he related to Cort Furniture? NC: I do not think so. SM: Okay. Because they are a pretty well-off group. How did these guys get along? I know that obviously Abbie and Jerry Rubin were in the Yippies, but how did he get along with the Haydens and the- NC: I am really not sure. They were from different groups. There was the Students for Democratic Society. There was mobilization for Bible and the Yippies and I do not know, a couple of other factions that really, I do not think they were together seriously, or friends, great, tight friends or anything, before the convention in (19)68. SM: Did you cover other countercultural happenings during that timeframe before you moved back- NC: Yes, because then we got totally involved in that and the war was refusing to be over. And so, we did cover many demonstrations, mostly in Washington DC. I am just going to look up the- SM: Were you at the, what do you call it? The- NC: was it (19)70 or (19)71? But I will find it. SM: There was the big one in (19)69, I know. NC: No, this was after that. It was very telling. Coming up here, coming up, coming up. Come on. SM: I am going to mention just two quotes of yours too, again. This is dealing going forward to (19)92 in the formation of CamNet, but I want you to talk about the counterculture, but these are quotes from you. "We are not here to confront them. We are here to hear them. I think people are starved to be heard. Most of the time people are not being heard." And then secondly, you love this, both you and other person, Kim. "And it is not just a job. It is a way of life." This is how one defines activism in the (19)60s and (19)70s. That is me talking, because when you start talking about, and the things I have read about you and your other organizer of CamNet is that activism is a 24/7 thing. It is a seven day a week happening. It is not like volunteerism where you have two hours. And when you start talking about, "It is not just a job, it is a way of life. This is how one defines activism in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. We have to do this." And I love you have an attitude, "We have to do it." And- NC: I do not remember saying that. I am saying, "Who is that?" SM: You. NC: That is so true. SM: That is, you. That is, you and the person you worked with. NC: Judith. SM: Yes. Yeah. NC: Oh yeah. Here it is. It was 1971, one year after Kent State University demonstration where four students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. To commemorate that event, protestors were going to Washington to close down the government by blocking all major roads to the District of Columbia. And the Videofreex were going to document it. On April 29th, David, Davidson... I am naming these names of the people who are now Videofreex, Davidson Gelati, Chuck Kennedy, of course, Perry Tisdale, Carol Vontobel, prepared to drive down to DC to cover it. David had met Davidson on West Broadway one day during the CBS project, and Davidson had a porta packet. He had a video camera in his hand. It was very rare. So, David brought him home immediately and he joined up. It was just like that. People would just quit everything they were doing and come along. It was crazy. It was wonderful. Anyway, "In DC the Videofreex met up with a larger video collective, including a lot of kids from Antioch College in Ohio. The Mayday Collective had arranged for Crash Pad for activists." So, I say here, oh, "The Videofreex hit the street. It was loud and tear-gassy, and hovering helicopters were scattering the protestors." SM: This is on the 29th of April? NC: Yeah, this was the 1st of May. I say, "It's loud and tear... On television, president Nixon was addressing the nation." NC: On television President Nixon was addressing the nation, here is Nixon. "Some people on television may have gotten the impression that when they saw the demonstrations down at the Senate, and that Barry Goldwater's door had red paint on it, I understand, and his office was locked, and that Washington is somewhat in a state of siege. But well, let me just make one thing very clear, that Congress is not intimidated, the President is not intimidated, this government is going to go forward. It does not mean that we are not going to listen to those who come peacefully, but those who come and break the law will be prosecuted, the full extent of the law. In the meantime, however, I as president, have my obligation to consider what they say and all the other things that I know, and then make the decision that I think will be in their best interest as well as the best interest of the people of the country." And then the police are shouting over loudspeakers. "Attention, attention, this is the Metropolitan Police Department. Everyone must leave the area immediately. Those who do not leave the area in violation of the law and will be arrested." Helicopters are landing, military troops are swarming the streets, sirens. A man is dragged off into the bushes and clubbed by two DC cops, the young boy is pulled from his bicycle and shoved into a paddy wagon by police who trampled his bike in the process. David got clubbed in the knee by a cop for shooting video. A young woman medic wearing a headband and white T-shirt with a red Cross painted on it spoke to David's video camera while the people were being arrested and dragged off all around her. She was a modern-day Clara Barton on the front lines, naive, innocent, brave. "Why are you staying here?" David asked. "Oh, I am here because I ought to stay and get busted with my people. Some of the medics are going to go behind the pig lines and use pig tactics and do what the pigs say, I am not going to, I am going to stay and get busted with my people. And when somebody is getting beat on the ground I am going to stop the pig from beating him so I can help him. I am not going to say, oh dear sir with a silver badge, can I help you? Can I treat my people now? Fuck that shit, I am not going to do none of that." And that is how the kids were at that thing. SM: Wow. Yeah, the intensity was... Back in sixty when you are talking about what happened with the Black Panthers, some of the people I have interviewed were very supportive of groups like SDS when they became the Weathermen, or when the American Indian Movement went toward violence at Wounded Knee, or when violence ever became part of any of the other movements, that is when it turned people off. NC: Well, the violence, it turns people off. Violence? What about the wars, and what about the government's violence? Yes, it is a terrible thing, but it is also a reality. SM: You think it hurt the Black Panthers though? Because there were people that thought they were violent. NC: Well, something hurt the Black Panthers, they are gone. I mean, there are new Black Panthers now, but I do not really know what kind of effect [inaudible]. SM: Well, I think the old Black Panthers do not like the new ones. But again, you and Judith Binder created CamNet. NC: Yes. SM: What movements or events brought you together in 1992? NC: Oh, well, I was living in LA, and I was working on The 90's, which was basically a larger group of the same people from the beginning for me. And it was based in Chicago, Tom Weinberg was the mover and shaker, he was the guy who got the money, he got the money from the MacArthur Foundation and some other places to put this together, and the sensibility of the videos was the same or even more so. And I met Judith downtown at the Wallenboyd Theater. I met Paul when I moved to Venice, and Paul was doing a show down at the Wallenboyd Theater, and Judith was producing other shows down there. And then we went out to dinner one night after a show, I had not known her. You know how you were sitting at a big table and there was a bunch of people? And she was sitting on one side of me, and I did not know her. And I overheard her saying something like, "I have so many videos that I have to shoot, I do not know what I am going to do. I do not have enough time, and I do not know what I am going to..." And I turned I said, " Videos, you are shooting videos?" And she said, "Yes." And she apparently had been doing it. She was a native LA, so she knew everybody in LA, and was putting together a lot of tape. And I said, "Well, you must come to Venice immediately." She came down there and she brought her tape, and we saw that we were doing the same thing. And so, I hired her to help me with The 90's, and after The 90's was over we stuck together and continued our quest. SM: I got some questions in a couple minutes about that program, The 90's. But I got here, you came together in (19)92, and then how... NC: We came together actually before that, but we came together and got CamNet going in (19)92. I think it was, or (19)91. SM: How did these movements that were taking place at this time... I am talking about the ones when you were at Videofreex, and then you moved off to different areas before CamNet. How did the development of these movements in the late (19)60s and (19)70s, which is the end... Well, obviously the women's movement formed, the gay and lesbian Movement after Stonewall in (19)69. You had the Native American movement, which is the AIM organization taking over Alcatraz in (19)69, through Wounded Knee in (19)73. You had Earth Day in 1970. You had the civil rights movement that was going through changes with the Black Panthers, and then the anti-war movement was continuing. So, you have got all these movements, did you cover all these movements, and did you see a closeness between the movements back then? NC: I do not know if I saw a closeness between the movements. I will tell you what, I do not know the answer to that. Everything was happening at once, it is true, it all happened, I did not know all the people that you just mentioned. But what is the question again? SM: It is basically, did you have a chance to cover all of these movements? NC: I did some things, it was not all politics either. It was arts, and it was sometimes just people who might not have been particularly activists or political. But we did a long series called Working based on Studs Terkel. SM: Oh yeah, great book. NC: So, we did a lot of things based on going to work with people, just ordinary people in all lines of work and all places. So, they were not necessary political or activists, but just being with them and spending that time, and seeing how people deal with their lives. The personal did become political to me, and I saw everything in sort of a larger sense. SM: Well, the people who write about the history of the anti-war movement and other movements say that only between five and 15 percent of the boomer generation was even involved in activism, and 85 percent were not. NC: That is right. I do not know what the boomers are, I do not even know what that is. SM: Boomer generation are people born between 1946 and 1964. NC: Right. So that does not mean anything to me, because I did not consider myself a boomer. Well, I am not really, I am a little older than that. But I do not think that just necessarily being born in those years would make you a part of the movements that happened while you were living. SM: Well, a lot of the people that were involved in leadership roles were born between (19)40 and (19)46. NC: That is me, yeah. SM: And I know Abbie Hoffman was, and I think Jerry Rubin was. But a lot of people have had problems with just the concept of generations like the Greatest Generation, which Tom Brokaw talked about. And then you got the boomer generation, you got the silent generation, you got Generation X, and then now you got the millennials. So, you have issues with those kinds of definitions? NC: Yeah, I am not concerned with that, because it is about what the issues are, what matters to you, or what becomes important to you. SM: When you were doing these things, like interviewing people linked to the Studs Terkel book, and people who were working, this was in the early (19)70s? NC: Yes, all through the (19)70s. SM: Did any of them ever say that any of these world events were having an effect on their lives, or they just talked about putting bread on the table every day? NC: That is right. I do not remember bringing up anything outside of their experience, because what I was doing was living their experience. SM: Right. And with Videofreex and CamNet, this is something I think you made reference to earlier, you are a female, and a lot of the problems in the late (19)60s is that most of these movements that I mentioned were sexist. That many women had to leave the anti-war movement and civil rights movements, because women were placed in secondary roles. And I know that in the gay and lesbian movement, it was the same thing, because I have talked to people. And I think in some of the other movements, except the environmental movement, I think it is similar. Did you sense sexism in the anti-war movement and the civil rights movements of the late (19)60s and (19)70s? NC: Oh, totally, yes. If I had been doing film, I do not know what I would have done, because of whole... Because video started when the women's movement started, and you were not allowed, it just was not acceptable to be sexist, and they were so very conscious of it. But in the meantime, film up until that point, and any filmmakers, even at the beginning, film collectives, definitely they did not have that thing going, because the men already knew how to run the film camera, and they already knew all that other stuff, and the woman might have just been learning. But with video, we all started at the same place, it was a new technology, it was a new camera, no one had ever seen it before, we all had to learn it together. So, when we learned it, it was not a question of the men learning it first and then deciding which women could do it. So, it just was my good fortune to run into this new tech, and all our boys were very good. SM: Did you see it in the Yippies, or even in the hippies? [inaudible]. NC: I am sure, I did not know the Yippies very well, but when you read about them, you do not hear too much about women. Although lately I have met a lot of women who did a lot of that stuff then and were not noticed. I know them now, and I know they are very powerful and smart, and they probably made a lot of things happen, that it was never known. SM: This next question just deals with periods of the times when boomers have been alive. And again, forget just thinking about the boomer generation now, these are just periods after World War II, and what they mean to you personally, I asked the same question to Paul. I will ask broken down into parts here. In your eyes, briefly describe how you would define the following periods, and the first one is the period between 1946 and 1960? NC: Between 1946 and 1960. SM: 1960, what was it like to live in America in that time from your perspective? NC: It was great, it was wonderful. Oh, your daddy was rich and your mom was good-looking. I did not have too many problems during those years, but I mean, of course the war was over, the cars were rolling off. I grew up in Detroit, Detroit now if you look, it is in the news how terrible it is. They're going to raise the whole town and put in farmland, there is nothing left in Detroit, the culture is gone, everything is gone. But between 1946 and 1960, the best years for Detroit. And in 1960 I turned 20, so I guess I was beginning to be an adult at the end of those times. So, I did not have any problems, I did not have to earn any money, and went to college, and I had a convertible car, and I drove anywhere I wanted to. SM: Did you have any issues with the late forties and (19)50s? NC: I am trying to think if I had any, I was just a child. But we were Democrats, and we never could win an election. But now looking back, I think Eisenhower was not so bad in comparison to what come after him. SM: What did you think of the period 1961 to 1970? NC: Oh, the (19)60s was just great, everything happened to me, my eyes were opened. I mean, I saw what a terrible world it was, and yet it was so very exciting, and I wanted to know everything. And I took a lot of chances, I had a lot of adventures, I took some drugs, met a lot of people, I moved around, and by the time 1970 happened I was clear about my past. So that was a very informative part of my life, everything happened then. And on the other end of the (19)60s, I ended up kind of feeling as if I knew who I was, and what I thought about things, and what I wanted to do. SM: Well, that gets right into 1971 to 1980. NC: Yes, those are my hippie years. It was just great, traveled everywhere. The camera took me everywhere, the camera was my ticket to adventure, thrills and chills, I really enjoyed it. I had just one health issue in the (19)70s. SM: How about the 1980s? 1981 to 1990. NC: Right. Well, in 1978 I moved to Woodstock, and in 1984 I moved to California. So, the beginning of the (19)80s was kind of not that exciting for me, because I had already done so much video. But I moved to Woodstock and put together this little access TV station, which was a lot of fun, and I taught a lot of people how to do it. But then I was not so excited about doing it with them anymore, I wanted something else. And so, I left it with them to do, and started over again in California. When I came to California, I had been working for so many years at a not-for-profit company. I realized that I did not have anything to show for it, I had to borrow $700 to fly to California with my duffel bag. SM: How about the (19)90s? 1991 to 2000. NC: Yes, and that was the Venice Beach. And then it was going back and forth from Chicago and traveling around, putting together the show for PBS, and then doing CamNet out of the back bedroom of our little house in Venice. SM: Wow, and how about 2001 to right now? NC: Right, in the end was 2000, the beginning of 2001, Paul and I moved to the desert. And let us see, I am trying to think. Well, it has gone so fast, it has gone by so quickly. I learned how to cook, I learned how to be a homemaker. We bought a house, which neither of us had ever owned a home before, so we have a home. I still shoot video, but I shoot it on a flip video, have you ever seen those things? I mean, it is the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it holds a couple of hours of... And it is not tape, everything is digital. So, I carry it in my pocket, if something is moving that interests me, I tape it. I do not tape it, I record it, and then I put it up on YouTube. So, I can put up anything I want at any time that is interesting to me. And there is a lot of protests and some things, and we're fighting to legalize marijuana and other things locally around here, that is kind of fun. SM: I am trying to get an interview with Dennis Peron, do you know? NC: Oh, definitely. SM: Yeah. Well, I had an interview with him and he was sick. Well, he emailed me and said he was sick about 15 minutes before I was supposed to call him, so I got to find out how he's doing, because that was three or four weeks ago. NC: Yeah. So that is good, and I also take hundreds of pictures every week, photos. SM: Are the Videofreex and the CamNet, are they all going someplace for posterity and history? NC: Yes, the Videofreex is at the Video Data Bank in Chicago. It's part of the Chicago Institute of Art. SM: Very good. NC: And it is so interesting, because I just went there a couple of years ago. And they have all of our tapes that were in Lanesville that were on shelves with all our handwriting on the side spines, and on shelves exactly the way that they were, they have them there. And I am looking down there, I say, "Oh, there is me playing Santa Claus." Just everything, it is amazing. And the Videofreex have, as I said earlier, put together a partnership. We are trying to restore a lot of these things, which many of these tapes may not be able to be played more than once, they are growing mold and other things. So, each tape has to be dealt with individually, and it costs some money to put them back in shape. So, we are raising money, and people and filmmakers are looking for this information, and are interested in having these tapes restored. SM: Important for history. NC: So yes, that is happening. And the other later stuff is being kept in Chicago also with a project called Media Burn, and they also have thousands of tapes from the (19)70s, (19)80s. SM: So, everything you are doing the rest of your life are actually going to go there as well? NC: Yes. SM: Okay, good. NC: Yeah. And pretty much a lot of it is digitized, and you can go there and look at hundreds of hours of videos at Media Burn, and can see all that. And there's even a lot of Lanesville TV there. SM: This is a question; how would you respond to critics who say that a lot of the problems in our society today go back to the (19)60s and (19)70s when morality and ethics seemed to be wanting. And it led directly to the following, expansive drug culture, sexual mores dwindled, the divorce rate increased, more people became dependent on government welfare, more irresponsible behavior, sense of violence in our society, a lack of respect for authority, and the breakup of the American family. And then you even had Barney Frank, a Democrat, who in his book speaking frankly, saying that the Democratic Party could not survive if it did not denounce the anti-war people linked to George McGovern in 1972. For the Democratic Party to survive, it must say goodbye to the anti-war people. Just your thoughts on the critics of this era, and the critics are people like Newt Gingrich, George Will, Governor Huckabee, it is conservatives, but there are some liberals that say it too. NC: Well, that whole thing you just said, I think that is total bullshit, a hundred percent bullshit. So, all the things that you mentioned, those are all the good things that happened, and anything good that is happening now happened because, go back down on that list. I say the opposite. SM: Okay, and why would you say that? NC: Okay. Well, what was the first thing on that list? [inaudible]. SM: Drug culture. NC: Drug use? SM: Yes. NC: Oh, please. It expanded your mind, it opened up your mind, it made you smarter and wiser. And I disregard that, I think that... SM: The divorce rate. NC: Divorce rate? Well, if they got divorced, that means that they should be divorced. SM: Sexual mores. NC: Sexual mores? Please, let us forget that puritan ethic. We do not want that. SM: Government welfare. NC: Government welfare? Well, I really wish there was more of it, we deserve to have it. SM: Irresponsible behavior. NC: Irresponsible behavior? And more of it. SM: Violence. NC: Violence? Well, violence breeds violence, that is true. I am for peace a hundred percent. I do not like violence, but I do not think it is the fault of the previous mentioned things that brings it on. SM: Breakup of the American family. NC: All right. SM: Lack of respect... NC: I do not think that is true though, because the families I know are not broken up, and the families I know their kids are brilliant and fabulous. And all the kids in my family are just superb, and all my friends' kids turned out great. SM: How about the... What was it here? I guess, the violence, lack of respect for authority. NC: Definitely, let us not respect authority. SM: And how about Barney Frank? NC: Barney Frank wants to get elected, he wants to keep his job. Nobody's perfect, I think he is probably a nice guy. SM: Yeah. Could you define some of the positive characteristics of the boomer generation based on those you have known and seen over the years? I know you cannot talk about 74 million people, but just some of the positives or negatives within the boomers that you have known, or some of their characteristics. NC: Well, I mean, everybody that I grew up with is them, right? SM: If they were born after the war. NC: Yeah, my sister was born the day after the war. She is so smart and brilliant, my sister, I wish she was president. I do not know. [inaudible]. Oh, give me a hint. SM: Well, that is up to you. Some people say they just cannot talk about 74 million people. NC: Well, I can talk about 70... I do not know, the boomer generation as opposed to... Well, the boomer generation, they had a good chance at it. They had a good chance, all the things that were happening between 1946 and now, because they are still alive, just a great time to be alive. SM: Was there a generation gap in your family between your parents and you? NC: Oh, yes. SM: Explain that. NC: Yeah. I think my parents were freaking out when I took off in the Volkswagen bus to drive to... I mean, because it was a little late for me to do that, but I did take some time off in the (19)60s to drive across the country and do some things that made them very worried. And they were just a little bit worried about in the early days, in the CBS project, they were kind of afraid for me, like my niece has just joined the Peace Corps and is going to Cameroon. "Right, that would be [inaudible]." If I did not know her, and I would say that. But my first reaction was, "Oh my God, where's that? Who lives there? What do you have to do?" I mean, I was afraid for her. SM: Yeah. I have always said one positive, this is about you, but I have always said one positive, is you could hitchhike back in the (19)60s and the early (19)70s and go across the country and not worry about being murdered. Today you cannot hitchhike because you would probably end up dead. NC: That is right. So, I am afraid for her, but that is not rational because she's doing what she wants to do, and she is going to have a great adventure. And so, then my parents actually realized that at a certain point, when I said, "I do not want Nancy to go off with these crazy hippies, where people might be dangerous." And they finally said, "Well, that is what I do not want to do. Nancy wants to do that." SM: We always think of the generation gap as between parents and children, was there a generation gap within the generation, that is of boomers? Those who served in Vietnam or served in the military, and those who avoided service in Vietnam, would you consider that a generation gap? NC: Yeah, I would agree. I think so, that was tough. SM: Did you have any experiences with Videofreex interviewing Vietnam vets on their return, and their feelings toward the end of the war? NC: Yes, very much so, and also with the Vietnam Vets Against the War. And when we went to both political conventions in 1972, we went to the McGovern Convention and we went to the second Nixon, they were both in Miami Beach. SM (02:34:05): Can you hold it right there? I got to- NC: Yeah. Yes, I did not mention this group TV-TV, which stands for, what did it call? Top Value Television that was put together by a producer name of Michael Shamberg, who is big movie producer now. But we started out in New York together. There was Video Freaks, there was RainDance Corporation, there was People's Video Theater, and there was Global Village, were the four big video groups in New York City during the time of the Video Freaks. And RainDance Corporation was run by Michael Shamberg and was a very-very intellectual guy and put out a publication called Radical Software in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. Very smart guy. And he put together this video production group to cover the political conventions in 1972. And the video freaks marched with the Vietnam Veterans against the war, to both these conventions. SM: Ron Kovic, I believe was... NC: Ron Kovic had lots of videos. Ron, what a fantastic person. Really powerful. SM: I think that Bobby Mueller was another one, was not he? Bobby Mueller? NC: Bobby Mueller, but I do not know him. But video that we shot of Ron Kovic on the floor of the convention in 1972 at the Republican Convention Oliver Stone took that exact scene and recreated exactly in Born on the 4th of July. Tom Cruise. You can look at that movie and you can see him saying, stop the bombing. Stop the killing on the floor of the... SM: Do you remember some of the other Vietnam vets who you got to know? NC: Well, Frank Cavestani, he was also a video maker and also had been in the war and was a member of that group. SM: Did you ever have a chance to meet Jane Fonda? NC: I do not know Jane Fonda, no. I passed by her here and there at events, but I never met her or talked to her. I think Paul knows her, but I do not know. SM: In your own words, what was it like to be young in the (19)60s and (19)70s? Has there been a time like that for the young ever since, in your opinion? And in describing this period, give three examples that you remember of being young that stand out, could be good or bad. NC: Three examples of being young. Okay. Wait. SM: Good or bad. NC: Okay. How did you start the question? SM: In your own words, what was it like to be young in the (19)60s and (19)70s? NC: Well, it was just great, good luck, good fortune. And you know what, also for that other thing about sexual morals and that was, we did not have AIDS then. The kids today, they have the internet, they have digital, and they have a lot of things that move along more quickly and get you satisfied a lot faster. But they also have, that comes along with it, some terrible realities like AIDS and other things that are not so much fun. Well, and the music is not as great as it used to be, but I am old. Yeah, I think that being young at that time, that was... A lot of kids today, they wish they were... A lot of people say to me, they wish they would have been alive then. SM: You have had so many experiences in your life. NC: Many. SM: But are there three that you can remember that it was, wow, am I glad I am young now, or Geez, this is rough. This is a bad scene here, and I am a young person. Any just anecdotes that stand out? NC: I do not know. There was a sense of freedom, it is hard to describe. Well, there's the thing about money. We do not talk about money. I never made any. I could say that that is the bummer of the whole thing is I ended up here with 4 cents. SM: Well, that is a lot of people thought of the (19)60s money was secondary. NC: Worse than secondary. Hated it. Anything that had to do with money, I had no respect for money or people who liked or had or wanted to make money, no respect for that. Now I do not feel quite that way. SM: Yeah. And some of the richest people in the world today are Boomers. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? NC: Yeah, the (19)60s. Well, the (19)60s began for me, I am not going to say (19)65, even though for most people it probably did. But I was very straight working in the theater in New York at the time, was thinking about politics. I noticed that there was something happening at Columbia University, and a lot of people were protesting. Then I became much aware, that was like (19)67, (19)68, I became very aware of the counterculture, which I considered to be the (19)60s. And I think for me, maybe it was a short period of time, although it seems like it was so huge. But Kent State kind of killed it, all the goodness of it all. SM: Right. NC: And although I lived the (19)60s all during the (19)70s. For some people it might have ended, but for me it maybe ended around (19)78, I would say, because cause of my lifestyle. SM: Was there a watershed moment? NC: When it was over? SM: No. Was there a watershed moment that you feel for you was the most important happening during that timeframe? Maybe not only for you, but for the young people of the Boomer generation? It is a two-part question basically. NC: For me, a watershed, I do not know. I do not know the answer. I could... SM: Some people it was the Kennedy assassination. NC: Oh, right. Yeah. That was bad. SM: And when you were talking about theaters, you were in New York in the late (19)60s, were you caught up in the theater of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, because those were the two? NC: Yes, but I was not playing on Broadway. I played in cabaret theater, musical theater and cabaret. And I played in some Off Broadway, and I did radio shows, and I did TV commercials. I had an agent, my agent would send me for the best gig. Oh, I had a watershed back then, I suppose, because somebody sent me some acid from California when I was still working at theater. I had smoked pot, but I was never into psychedelics particularly. But I did not know it would work. It was like a little piece of [inaudible]. It was nothing. It was a joke. I just put it on my tongue. I forgot about it. I thought it was a joke and then I started to trip. And it was that day that I had an audition at Gray Advertising on Third Avenue for a big commercial for Dial soap. This was important. I was tripping, but I knew I had to go. And I went on the subway and everybody's face was melting and wild animals on the train. SM: Oh my God. NC: It was crazy. And I found the place, and I went up there and I read the ad. I was waiting for my chance to read for these advertising executives to see if I could get this commercial. And it was so disgusting that I quit the business. SM: Oh. NC: I gave the script back. They wanted me to take a shower and feeling really not so good feeling. And then you get in the shower with this bar of soap and it makes you feel so great and exhilarated. And I did not want to do it, I do not want to do what they tell me. And I said, well, wait a second. I am an actor and my job is to do what the director tells me. And I was sitting there in the waiting room there next to a woman who looked just like me, who was reading the same script. I said, no, I do not want to do this. I just did not know what I was going to do really, but I just handed the script back to the receptionist and said, oh, I do not like this. And I left. And I went outside onto Third Avenue, and I was like exhilarated and thrilled. And I said, oh, I just quit showing business. This is the greatest moment in my life. And it was maybe a year later that I got this job as the assistant to the producer at CBS after not having worked in show business as it was. SM: You would have been real good as a backdrop for 60 Minutes. You would have been. That is right up your alley. NC: Yeah, that is true. Except that was just really too straight for me, I could never go back to something like that. SM: Why did the war in Vietnam end, in your opinion? NC: Why did it end? SM: Mm-hmm. NC: Because we lost I think. We lost the war. Us lost the war. SM: How important were the college students in ending the war, in your opinion? NC: Well, I think they had something to do with it, because you cannot tell somebody that they are going to be drafted. Talk about quitting show business. You have to do what they tell you and go where they say and go and get killed. That is why they protested. That is why we do not have so much protest now, I think, because we have a professional army rather than a citizen army. SM: Do you remember exactly where you were when you heard that JFK was killed? NC: Yes. SM: Could you describe that? NC: Sure. I was working at the Vanguard Playhouse in Detroit. It was my first day off without a rehearsal because I was working in repertory theater. You do the show at night, and then you're rehearsing all day the next day for the next show, but then you go. But we had just opened a show, and I did not have any rehearsal that day. Living in a little apartment by myself. And I had just made myself a nice plate of asparagus and was watching a movie on TV with Betty Davis on it. I do not know the name of the movie because I did not see the beginning of it. There was tension, and it was black and white, very noir, very, very exciting. And she was walking with tension down the stairway. Someone was knocking on the door, she was about to open the door, and they cut away. Then they showed what was happening. They never cut back to anything for a week. They played for a week. And I was hysterical, crying, what did I know? I really loved him. I thought I really loved him. And I called up the director at the theater. I said, [inaudible] we cannot do the show tonight, we cannot go on. Everything is canceled. Everything is closed. No one is doing anything. It is all over. Everything is over. The world is over. He said, Nancy, just make sure you get here by call time for our show tonight. I said, no, how can we? How can we? He said, we have subscribers. They want theater. Whether they come or not, we are doing the show. The show must go on. And that is what it was. The show must go on. He actually said that. SM: And John Kennedy, if he were alive, would have told you to do it. NC: Maybe so, that is true. And then afterwards, I was singing in a club. After the show, I would go down to Momo's Cocktail Lounge where I was singing with a little trio, jazz stuff. And it was very not crowded. It was very, very glum and dreary over at the piano bar. And then as it got late, midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning, people started coming in. Just to be, we were there together with each other. SM: Have you been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC? NC: The what? SM: Have you been to the wall in Washington DC? NC: I have not. SM: Oh. Because I just want to know what your initial thoughts were on the wall? NC: But it is beautiful, and I think it is amazing. Better than a statue or some shit. SM: Since you have not been there it is hard to say. But if you are in a dream, say, and you are visiting the wall, what do you think your first reaction would be upon seeing it or being near it? NC: Well, I probably would go and touch it. I remember once I was at the Western wall in Jerusalem, approaching that, and my first instinct was to press my body up against it. I do not know why, but I did. But I feel like I might have the same reaction. SM: Was the generation born between (19)46 and (19)64, or the people born around it, which would include, I call pre-Boomers like you and Paul and Abby. I think you're all part of it. Richie Haven said to me once, he was born in (19)40, between (19)40 and I think 1940. He said, I am a Boomer. I am a Boomer in attitude. And I am not of the greatest generation or the silent generation. I am a Boomer. NC: Yeah. I think of him as that. SM: Yeah. The question I am asking is, do you think that the attitude that this generation, that they were the most unique generation in American history. What are your thoughts when you hear that? Because a lot of young people thought it when they were young and they thought they were going to change the world. They were going to bring peace to the world, and racism, sexism, homophobia. And people look at the world today and they say, man, the Boomers have failed. NC: Right. Well, I did not think the Boomers thought they were going to change the world, now that you mention it. It just happened to them, that a lot of things changed during that time. Not too many people I know told me at a young age they felt they were going to change the world. SM: So, this attitude of uniqueness, you do not think. NC: Well, I think it is okay if some people think that, but sure, why not? SM: Has the idealism died within the Boomer generation for most? NC: Probably. SM: Yeah. NC: I think there is still idealism in the new generations. I think the new generation, my little Sarah [inaudible] who was born in Lanesville at the commune, she is a physician, she is doctor. And actually two of our girls are physicians. And they study all kinds of things like new world planning. This new generation, I have hope for them, I think that they can fix things. They really care. What do you call people who are between 25 and 35 now? SM: I think their generation Xer's. NC: Okay. The kids that we raised, that we know are a lot of generation Xer's, and they are smart. SM: The ones that were born between (19)65 and (19)81 are Generation Xer's. The ones from (19)82 on are millennials. So, which... NC: I do not know too much about the millennials. The Xer's I think they can do something. SM: The materials and literature I have is that Xer's do not get along with Boomers, but that is another story. The two issues here, very important. The first one is a label that is been put on many people in the generation is they're a generation that does not trust. Is that a good or a negative? NC: Trust. That the Boomers do not trust? SM: Yeah, it is a quality, that they are not a very trusting generation. And they may pass... NC: Oh, I do not trust anybody. I used to trust people, but I do not trust anybody anymore. SM: A lot of this lack of trust was because many of them saw the leaders that had failed them or lied to them, whether it be President Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin. NC: Sure. SM: Watergate with Richard Nixon. Of course, you do not know about Agnew. NC: All of it. SM: McNamara and the lies about the numbers game. And so there's a lot of lying and lack of trust. So... NC: That is right. And I do not think it is any different now. It is just worse and worse and worse. Trust fewer. And I do not trust, maybe there is like three people I trust. SM: Well, the two things, one, I had a professor once who said in an introduction into psychology, if you cannot trust others in your life, you will not be a success. And then if you are a political science major, the first thing you will learn is a healthy democracy means that people do not trust their government. And by not trusting their government, it shows that liberty is alive and well. NC: Yeah. Right. That is both ends there. SM: The other thing, and this is very important, and it is a question of healing. I took a group of students to Washington to meet former Senator Musky, who was at the (19)68 convention. He was a Democratic vice-presidential nominee. NC: Wonderful guy. SM: And it was before he died, and it was in the middle (19)90s. And the students came up with this question. They thought he would respond based on what was happening in America in 1968. And this is the question. Due to the divisions that were taking place at the time, between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops, those who were against the troops, and all the violence that was happening in the inner cities because there were a lot of riots and burnings like at Watts, and after Dr. King died. Do you feel that this generation, which is the Boomer generation, will go to its grave when their time comes similar to the civil war generation, not healing from the divisions that tore them apart? Do you think that is an issue within the post-World War II generation? NC: What did he say? SM: I want to hear what you said first. NC: Oh, well, I think healing is possible. And I think to a certain extent there has been some healing between those factions that you mentioned. Maybe it's wishful thinking. But no, I think there has been some healing from women's movement and I think between the races, possibly, at least in this country. No, I think there is, and can be healing between these facts. SM: Senator Musky did not even respond to 1968. He did not even mention it in his response. He said, we have not healed since the Civil War because of the racial issues that are still present in our society. And he said he had just watched the Ken Burns Civil War series, and it just brought tears to his eyes because almost an entire generation was wiped out. 430,000 men were killed in that war, not including the ones that were hurt. And it was a devastating war, and that people did go to their graves not healing in the Civil War generation. NC: Yes, the Civil War is unforgivable. SM: But he did not even mention 1968. In other words, he was saying it was a non-issue. NC: Yeah. SM: And some people have said that I should rephrase the question and simply say, those who fought in the war and those who were in the anti-war movement, that would make it much more relevant a question. NC: Oh, well, I do not know. I do not know what people are thinking about that. The people who were in the war and the people who were not in the war. SM: Any other thoughts on that? NC: No-no. SM: Since you were in the video area, there were a lot of movies in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s that kind of stood out. They kind of showed the (19)60s and the (19)70s for what they were all about. Are there movies that you feel, or if someone a hundred years from now was to put on a whole group of movies that would really define the Boomer generation, what would those movies be? NC: We are talking about regular movies alone or something? SM: Yeah. Regular movies. NC: Movies are a big disappointment, especially if they are trying to make some be kind of realistic when they are not. SM: Are there any movies from the (19)50s, the (19)60s, and the (19)70s, or even the (19)80s, that when you see them or watch them, wow, that is really emblematic of the time they were made? NC: Oh, emblematic when they were made. (19)50s. Well, I am not saying I like these movies. If I mention them, it does not mean I like them. But I was just reading this morning about Dennis Hopper's movie about, what was the name of that? SM: Easy Rider? NC: Easy Rider. That was a (19)60s movie. Right? SM: Mm-hmm. NC: Okay. (19)70s. I am saying that it was about what was going on, and it sort of was and artistic in a certain way. Okay. Movies. I watch movies every day. We watch Flickers almost every day. We watch... SM: How about, can I mention something? NC: They are so forgettable. Yes. Do tell- SM: The Graduate. NC: The Graduate. Yes. Yes. The Graduate. SM: And another one, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice was... NC: Bob and Carol Ted and Alice is a terrible movie. What was that supposed to be saying? Was supposed to be saying what? That we could all sleep together. SM: Yeah. Then of course, you have got the movies like Shaft in the (19)70s. NC: Shaft. Right. And Shaft is like that... SM: Saturday Night Fever. NC: ... [inaudible] exploited this. SM: Saturday Night Fever, which the beginning of the disco. NC: Saturday Night Fever. I enjoyed that film. SM: There has been a lot of good movies on Vietnam from Apocalypse Now to A Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver. I mean the... NC: Taxi river. You got them all. I would say, yeah. Those are the me memorable films. It is true. For me, I do not think about them. SM: But in the (19)50s, you got to look back at the James Dean movies because of The Rebel. NC: The Rebel. SM: The kind of gangs, before we had that was the (19)50s. Okay. The other thing here, I am now to the section where I just want you to, what did the following mean to you? That you do not have to have any long descriptions, just immediate reactions to it. NC: Okay. SM: What does the Wall mean to you? It could just be a sentence. NC: The wall? SM: Yeah. The Vietnam Memorial. NC: It means a lot of people died for nothing. SM: Watergate? NC: Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Oh, Watergate. The first thing I think of is Fuck Nixon. SM: That is all I need. Woodstock? NC: Woodstock, of course. Well, Woodstock changed my life. Really. It did. Even though I could not get there because the freeway was too full. SM: How about the Summer of Love? NC: Summer of Love. Oh, I did not participate in the Summer of Love. It was just right before I became a love person. Although I did watch them from the Plaza Hotel where I was having brunch. I saw the them in the park across by having a good time. SM: Did that song, Are You Going to San Francisco wear some flowers in your hair, did that influence you at all? NC: No. SM: Okay. How about Freedom Summer in 1964? NC: Freedom Summer. Yes. That was extremely important, right? I am not sure why. SM: That is when the people went down south for voting. NC: Yes. Oh yes, please. Yeah. That was very good. I was working in the theater and I did not think too much about it, but I knew it was big. SM: How about the free speech movement in Berkeley? NC: Yes. Free speech, the most important thing. Yes. SM: Kent State and Jackson State? NC: Well, Kent State and Jackson State, both just, it was the worst thing because it was true. It was true. It was truly happening. SM: How about Columbia? NC: Columbia. SM: (19)68. NC: Yeah. I remember Columbia. Although again, I was not involved, but I got caught up in one of their protests up town one time in a taxi. I thought it was pretty scary. It was just really the beginning. It was before the big push. SM: Right. How about the year 1968? NC: Year 1968, I dropped out. That is the year I dropped out. That was between the acid trip at the advertising agency and my job at CBS, where I traveled across the country in a Volkswagen bus... across the country in a Volkswagen bus. And I was not thinking about the world other than my own, in front of my own eyes. SM: How about 1975? NC: 1975? SM: That is the year the helicopter went off the roof in Saigon. NC: Oh, the end of the war ish. Yeah. Whoa, long overdue. SM: Chicago eight. NC: Chicago eight. The greatest. The greatest, how should I say it? It was a big, big entertainment, cute. I loved it. SM: How about Tet? NC: Who? SM: Tet. T-E-T. NC: Oh, the Tet. The Tet. Oh, the Tet. SM: Tet in Vietnam. NC: Yeah. Yeah. That was what year was that? SM: That was in 1968. NC: Yeah. SM: Some people say it is the beginning of the end for Johnson, so. NC: Yeah. Well, yeah. At least that. SM: Hippies, just the term hippies. NC: Love hippies. Love the hippies. SM: How about yippies? NC: Love the yippies. SM: With more emphasis. How about the- NC: Yeah. I have got my own personal hippie yippie. SM: Yeah, with Paul's unbelievable. You know something, I have interviewed people that know him. He has got so many people that respect him with a capital R. NC: You bet. SM: And there are people that I have interviewed that are not only friends of his, but critics of his, but the worst thing that they come up is genuine, real, and respected. NC: That is right. SM: And boy, he is a tremendous person. I read his biography. It is a great book. NC: It is. SM: The term counterculture. NC: Yeah, counterculture. That is what we needed and that is what we got. SM: Now these are just going back to the (19)50s now. You were younger. What is your perception of the McCarthy hearings? NC: McCarthy hearings was great television, for one of the first live television experiences that we had as a family. And it was remarkable in that way. SM: The Cuban Missile Crisis. NC: Cuban Missile Crisis, scary. That was really scary. Everyone was scared. But I had rehearsals and I could not be concerned, but I noticed all around me, people were very worried that it was, we were going to get nuked or something. SM: The Gulf of Tonkin. NC: The Gulf of Tonkin. I do not know. SM: That was the thing that started the Vietnam War. NC: Yeah. No, I do not. SM: March on Washington, 1963. NC: Yeah, a beautiful thing that is gave you hope. SM: Black Power. NC: Black Power definitely had to happen, had to have it. SM: Black Panthers. NC: Same there. SM: Students for Democratic Society. NC: Yes. Well, they did not have a very good sense of humor, I do not think, but they were very, very serious students for a democratic society. I do not know them too well. SM: The Weathermen. NC: The Weathermen. Oh, yeah. They blew up the house next door to my friend on 11th Street. SM: Yeah. Dustin Hoffman lived nearby. I remember that he used to go, he went over and was looking at it. They had him within- NC: Next door blew. I had to move out of their house because the wall was fucked up because the house next door was blown up. SM: Wow. NC: The Weathermen. Really, what were they thinking? I could have never done anything like that. SM: The American Indian movement. NC: Yes, very important. Please, we need it so much still. SM: And of course, they are known for Alcatraz, taking it over there. NC: Yes. SM: Stonewall. NC: Stonewall. Yes, we had it. That came finally. SM: (19)69. NC: And that made a big, big difference. And that really, I think, got that movement going big time. SM: Earth Day. NC: Earth Day was- SM: 1970. NC: Much respect in the beginning. I remember the first one. I think we have tape of that. Plenty of good tape for the first Earth Day. SM: Did you interview Gaylord Nelson? NC: I did not personally, but I think there might be some stuff there. There might be some stuff. SM: You may not know that, again, I got to know him quite well and before he died, and I interviewed his daughter. If there is any tapes of Gaylord Nelson, this is just for, to put it on the back of your brain here. His archives at the University of Wisconsin are being put together now since he died, and I am sending all my pictures that I have taken of him when he came to our campus. So, if there is anything in the life of Gaylord Nelson. NC: I will look around for that. SM: Yeah. Tia Nelson, the daughter, who is now one of the top environmental leaders in Wisconsin. So, I would let them know that they exist, because then they would be going right to the archives for students. NC: All right. Let me put the word out, see if I can find any. SM: Okay. How about the Peace Corps? NC: The Peace Corps. I would never consider the Peace Corps, but as I mentioned, my darling niece is signed up and they accepted her. But for me, this may or not may be true, but I do not feel like I would want to go as a representative of the US government to any country. I think that is the end of my sin. SM: Yeah. How about the Pentagon Papers? NC: Pentagon Papers were an important thing. Speaking of those recently, what is that guy's name again? SM: Oh, it is ... Now I am getting tired. Let us see here. NC: Daniel. Daniel Els. SM: Daniel Ellsberg, yes. NC: Yes. Well, he was no hippie, that is for sure. But he- SM: He was a Marine. NC: Yeah. His eyes were opened. I believe that he saw the truth and had the courage to. SM: How about Woodward and Bernstein? NC: Woodward and Bernstein. Not bad writers. SM: They are the ones that revealed Watergate. NC: Yeah. SM: And black and white TV of the 1950s and (19)60s. What did you think of it? NC: Beautiful. Love it. I was into it. SM: Was it truthful? NC: Truthful? What do you mean, truthful? SM: I bring it up because it kind of made you feel good, but it hid the racism in our society. NC: Oh, that. Oh, yeah. Well, it was just a baby. It was just about [inaudible]. SM: Still there? Hello? Well, I am just at the last part here, which is about some of the personalities of the period. And again, real quick thoughts, a few words about these people or their products. The first one is Tom Hayden. What were your thoughts on Tom? NC: He is a seriously smart guy. SM: How about Jane Fonda? NC: Jane, I think she has been used and abused. SM: Huey Newton? NC: Huey P newton. Huey P Newton. I do not really know. I do not too much about him personally. SM: How about Eldridge Cleaver and Kathleen Cleaver? NC: Eldridge Cleaver. Oh, it is... SM: They are Black. NC: I know they went to Algeria, kidnapped Timothy Leary. Let me see. Those guys, they are too heavy duty for me to really understand what it was, the inner workings of the Black Panther party and the politics of that. Are they murderers? Are they not murderers? I do not know. SM: And the last two are Bobby Seale and H. Rap Brown. Of course, they are Black Panthers too. NC: Bobby Seale. I know Bobby Seale, not well, but I ... That is him recently. He is an easy interview. SM: I tried to get him to be interviewed. He said nope. NC: You are kidding. SM: No. He does not interview too many people. He does not. NC: Oh. Well, I do not know because he has got his wrath. He is a very lucid speaker and very dedicated and is not really changed his mind over the years. He has been saying the same thing. SM: The other one was H. Rap Brown. He is in jail the rest of his life. NC: I do not know H. Rap. SM: Malcolm X. NC: Malcolm X, I think he was a great person. I can see how people were frightened of him. But even if a wimpy person, I am, but I still think that he was major, brilliant. SM: How about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? NC: Yes. Yes, finest. SM: Angela Davis. NC: Angela Davis. Strong, powerful sister. SM: This is an event, Attica. NC: Attica, Governor Rockefeller. To this day, everything he touched was horrible. It is still going on. And that just reminds me of the horrible corruption of the government of the State of New York. SM: San Quentin, which is where George Jackson was. NC: Yeah. No, I do not know much about that. It was not good, right? SM: Yes, it is a prison with a lot of inmates. NC: Yeah. SM: Alcatraz. I say that because that is what the Native Americans took over. Actually, Jane Fonda went over there and supported them. NC: Yes. Yes, she did. I do not know. SM: Stokely Carmichael? NC: I do not know Stokely. SM: How about Bayard Rustin? NC: No, I do not even know that name. SM: Oh, he was the co-organizer of the March on Washington (19)63. NC: Oh. Oh, for him, that is good. SM: With A. Philip Randolph. How about Eleanor Roosevelt? NC: Eleanor Roosevelt, a brilliant woman way ahead of her time. SM: JFK. NC: JFK. Oh, JFK. JFK, I have heard of him. SM: John Kennedy. NC: Yeah, John Kennedy. Well, I think everything has been said about John F. Kennedy. SM: How about LBJ? NC: I hated him. I really, truly did. SM: How about Bobby Kennedy? NC: Bobby Kennedy, if it only it were true, and if only he had lived. SM: Hubert Humphrey? NC: No, not Hubert Humphrey. I am not interested in him. SM: Eugene McCarthy. NC: Yes. Good guy. Yes. But it could have never won, but because he was so good, so right. SM: George McGovern. NC: Yes, I liked him too. Same reason. SM: Richard Nixon. NC: Richard Nixon will live forever. And just when you think he has gone, he is back. And he has got tons of stuff that has not been released yet. SM: Both he and LBJ. NC: Endlessly fascinating. I did not agree with him, but he was so much fun. SM: Probably the greatest Vice President in the history of America, Spiro Agnew. NC: Spiro. SM: I am only kidding. Any thoughts on him? NC: No. I think that, but somebody did tell me that an anagram of his name is grow a penis. SM: No, that might be true then. That is what a lot of people thought of him. Robert McNamara. NC: Robert McNamara. Robert McNamara, the guy who lied about everything in the war? SM: Yep. He was in charge, Secretary of Defense. NC: Yeah, unforgivable. Unforgivable, twice. SM: How about Henry Kissinger? NC: Oh, the worst. SM: We are getting into the (19)80s now. Ronald Reagan. NC: Ronald Reagan. I despised him. SM: Gerald Ford. NC: What a dope. SM: Jimmy Carter. NC: He was never elected, ever to be president. I mean he is. He is just a joke. Okay. SM: Jimmy Carter. NC: Jimmy Carter, naive. Right on all the environmental issues. Just a little bit too Christian for my taste. SM: Dwight Eisenhower. NC: Dwight Eisenhower, the military industrial complex. But then again, he was a general in the Army. How good could that be? I do not know. SM: Harry Truman. NC: Harry Truman. I do not like Harry Truman. I do not like the Atomic Bomber, anyone who would drop it. SM: Bill Clinton. NC: No. And I was a fool. He is the only person I ever voted for who won as president, but I only voted for him once. Oh. But, ah. SM: George Bush, the first. Sounds like a king. NC: I do not even want to say anything about him. He is nothing. He is worse than none. SM: And how about his son, George Bush the second? NC: Is he a boomer? SM: Yes, he is. Both he and Clinton are boomers. NC: Right. Well, it is not the boomers' fault. I am trying to think of something relevant about him. I do not even like to make jokes about him. SM: President Obama. He is a boomer too. NC: I know. But I still love Obama. SM: George Wallace. NC: George Wallace, the guy who changed from being a racist to being an invalid? Even after they take off their take, take, take caps, can you really ever like them? SM: Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Spock. NC: Dr. Spock. I do not think my mother used his book with me, but most bloomers got raised by Dr. Spock. And a lot of them are very disappointed in his advice. SM: Dr. Timothy Leary. NC: I love Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary is great. A lot of people criticize him, but he's a brilliant guy and he escaped from prison. I mean, how big is that? How impossible could be. SM: Think I forget who the people were that got him out. NC: The Weathermen. The Weathermen. SM: Oh, that is right. That is right. NC: Well, I read a few of his books, some of the books, and I knew him personally mostly in his dying days. And I just joined his company some. SM: Oh, so you were around him during his dying days? NC: Yes. SM: Did he change at all from the time he left Harvard to when he died? NC: I do not know if he changed when he, no. I do not know. I would not say that he changed a lot. No. No. SM: He was a close friend of Ram Dass, I believe. NC: Yes, I know him too. SM: And Ram Dass- NC: They are both friends. They are both close. SM: One had a stroke. I think Ram Dass had a stroke. NC: Yes, he did. Yes, he did. But he is doing very well, considering. SM: Can he talk? NC: Yes, he can talk. He lives here. He would be fun to go see. He lives in Hawaii. SM: He lives where? NC: In Hawaii. SM: Oh. NC: Yeah. SM: You do not think he would do an interview, do you? NC: He might. You never know. SM: Could you send me his email address? NC: Oh, I will ask Paul. Yeah. SM: Yeah. Yeah, because I mentioned to Paul about Ferlinghetti, who's the beat writer, and he said go for it. NC: Yeah, sure. SM: Your thoughts on the beats, because many people thought that they were the precursors to the (19)60s, and their challenge to authority way back in the (19)50s. Allen Ginsberg, Cassidy Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Waldman Snyder, and Jones. Your thoughts on the beats? NC: Yes. I liked those poems. I was kind of interested in poetry for a while and the brattier, the better. SM: Did you meet any of the beats ever? NC: Not really. SM: Have you ever met Ferlinghetti? He is right down in San Francisco, I guess. NC: I know. They just published Paul's most recent book. SM: Yes. NC: They were up. But I have not met Ferlinghetti. No, I do not know him. SM: Did you ever read any of their books? NC: Yes. SM: Which one did you like the best? NC: Ferlinghetti, what was the name of the book to? SM: I am not sure. He wrote so many. NC: I know. SM: What would you think of Barry Goldwater? NC: Barry Goldwater, I like him better now than I did then. Although, we did not really know what was happening back in those days. He was just the president. SM: William Buckley. NC: William Buckley. Oh. I see he is really smart. SM: How about- NC: I do not agree with. SM: How about your thoughts on communes? NC: Well, people say I lived on a commune for eight years. I lived with some several other people in one place, and it worked out very well for me. I did not need to have any money and our company paid for all the dentist, doctor, all the food, the thing, this, all the equipment. They wrote all the grants, got all the money, did all the things. But I worked in the garden, did all that stuff. And it did not seem like anything out of the ordinary to me. It was like a way to live for me. But I do not know about the communes that are the famous communes. SM: Like the farm still exists. NC: Right. And I know them. I know with the farm, and I like them very much. SM: Steve Casket. I interviewed him. NC: I liked Steve, and I like Aida May very, very much. And he's just adorable, wonderful. Changed the life of so many women. SM: LSD. NC: LSD, that was a great thing. It was a great thing that happened and it was good for humankind. SM: Just the whole concept of the Cold War, did that ever scare you? NC: It did not really. I wish it was back, actually. Better than the other one. SM: Yeah. When you said you were 20. When you turned six, was it 1960? NC: Yeah. SM: So you were in high school when the Cold War was in its prime. Did you ever fear the nuclear attacks and all the other stuff? NC: No, I never did. SM: Okay. NC: Just it had no basis in reality to me. I could not relate to it. SM: That was also the period of Sputnik. NC: Yeah. SM: There is a rise of higher education, which is a very important part of the (19)60s too. So many people going to college. How about the Korean War? Did that have any links to that at all? NC: Oh, was it summer? It was at summer camp. I could not believe there was another war. Well, it was just one was over and now there was another war. It was crazy. It is still going on too. SM: I agree. A lot of people think it's coming back because of our tensions with Russia. Although, President Obama's a friend right now with the president, but we will see what happens. My next to last question is pictures say a thousand words. You were a photographer. Of all the pictures from the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, and (19)80s that were in magazines and that were in newspapers, are there several pictures that you think stood out that were symbolic of the times? NC: Well. Oh, well, the 10th state picture and the picture of the man shooting the man in the head. And well, there are the images I think of are all horrible. SM: Yeah, that is interesting. NC: Just off the top of my head there are, it just, I could never read Life Magazine. I would never even open it. People said, "Oh, why, because they could have great photography." Well, I did not want to see the pictures for every time I looked at it, it was something horrible and big and in really good definition. No. SM: Yeah. I think there were, you hit one. The picture of the girl over the body at Ken State. That is one of the top 100 of the 20th century. NC: Yeah. Is it? SM: And of the girl in the picture, the one that was burned in the Vietnam War. NC: Yes. Oh. SM: That is Kim Phuc. And then the athletes at the (19)68. NC: It is the fifth. SM: The fifth up in the air. That is another big one. And certainly, mean lies another one and that. NC: But were there any happy pictures? SM: I am trying to think of any. Of course, the Kennedy or the assassination of Dr. King. NC: Oh, it is awful. SM: I am trying to think. I think the happy ones may have been the space. Well, because the space program is growing then and landing on the moon and everything. When all is said and done, the best books are written about a 50 to 100 years after a particular event are happening. When the last boomer or the last person who was in this group has passed on, what do you think historians and sociologists will be writing about this period, about this generation and their impact on America and the world? NC: I have no idea. I hope they have your book. SM: My books, at the rate it is going, it is going to be two books. NC: Really? I mean, it is huge, huge, huge. And I think that, and I hope that it will work. SM: Well, what I am hoping to do in this book is that I am going to be adamant. I have already been one University Press. I have only contacted two. They are both interested, but I do not have any contract. But the thing is, you got to cut them down and you have got to, I am going to edit them. You will see your, so will Paul eventually, because I am six months I am hibernating to transcribe and send them out, is that they are not going to compromise the interviews. I am not going to do it. I want to reach college students and high school students. I want them to love history again. I want them to read about people and to understand the times that they may not have lived in, but also to inspire boomers to read this because every person has a story to tell. Everybody is legitimate. We may disagree, but I think we can agree that we can disagree. And that is what I want to do on this. So that there is a lot of people that do not like other people in the book. I have one person who told me, "I am not going to be interviewed by you. You interviewed that person." And he said goodbye. I do not want that kind of a person. NC: That is right. I agree with you. SM: And so I like people like you and Paul, and some of the people that Paul has recommended. I did not get all the people that Paul recommended because a couple of them said no, and then some did not respond. But that is okay. That is part of any process. NC: Yeah. SM: But what other-other organization I wanted to mention was the Young Americans for Freedom. Did you know anything about that group? NC: Well, sort of, maybe. SM: They were the more conservative group. NC: Yes, they were. I thought they were a bunch of dopes. But they are still very, very big today. SM: Yeah, and they were- NC: Because they got their start in that organization, became very successful. The people I knew who got their start in that organization became very successful in Washington, DC in several different. SM: That started at William Buckley's home. NC: Did it? SM: Yeah. She started it in the early (19)50s. And one thing I did not ask you is about the women, which is the Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug. NC: Yes. Yes-yes. Yes, them. SM: And Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan. What did you think of those women? NC: Well, I loved them. And Bella, she was at the ... I met her in 1972 at the Democratic Convention, and she was just great with us. She was so wonderful, so forthcoming, just right there for us. So we enjoyed her company so much. And I liked Ms. Magazine. I wrote for it a couple of times, and I think that Gloria Steinem is the person that asks the question to whatever the question is. I said, "Well, why do not you ask Gloria Steinem because she is so smart and fast, she is going to get it right away." SM: Yeah. I have learned it even within the movements, there is disagreements, which is obvious. And so, one of the questions that I have asked a lot of people, and I am not going to ask this, but is that the unity that seemed to be so present in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s amongst all these groups at anti-war, you do not see it anymore. You see a protest and you do not see very many. They are kind of become, one of the criticisms of the movement groups is that they have become so special interest, and that is conservative. The special interest groups have taken over. But it is a legitimate criticism even amongst many liberals, because if you have a women's movement and you have a protest, you do not see the gay and lesbian groups there. You do not see the anti, I mean, there is no unity anymore. I am not sure if that is just me seeing this or whether you see it as well. I do not know. NC: Well, I think that right now that was trying to happen. And I have a friend who is right now putting together a big protest for October. She got the permit for the location before she knew what it was going to be. She just graduated from UCLA and she is into that community organizing and things like that. Yeah. She is bringing, what she is doing is she is going to be in Sacramento in October, and she is trying to bring together exactly that, a coalition of all these groups who need to be heard. And so, it is the gay and lesbian. They have all these initials, GLG, LD, LV. I know she has got all of those. She has got every possible fact, and she is trying to bring them together under one roof. But I think that one of the reasons, what you mentioned, one of the reasons that might be a problem is that there are not these individual personalities who can bring attention to it all. There used to be an Abbie and there was a sign. I mean, you go to the World Trade thing in Canada or wherever it is, and you see a bunch of kids in the street breaking windows. But you do not have a sense of who are these people? How can I relate to them? Are they me? They are just nobody. SM: I know that close with this. I know that when Abbie Hoffman committed suicide, when I heard, he lived over in Bucks County. And I remember the article that was written about when they found him, that he was on his bed. He had written a note saying that no one was listening to me anymore and that he only had $2000 in the bank or something like that, because he had given all his money away. I almost cried when I heard it because the fact that. I almost cried when I heard it because of the fact that I did not know him. I had seen him so many times. There were times when... And I knew a lot of people did not like him and what he represented, but when I saw him on the Phil Donahue show, when I lived in California, when he came out of hiding, and he knew he was going to have to go to jail, and he had changed his nose and he had plastic surgery, and he had been working on issues behind the scenes under another name to save a river. NC: Right. SM: You knew this man. It was more than just the theatrics, it was the substance. NC: Yes. SM: And people that I have interviewed, beyond Paul had told me that, "How can you not really? How do you dislike him?" People disliked Jerry Ruben. They disliked him. NC: Yeah. SM: Because they thought he had a mean streak in him. And he did a scene on the Phil Donahue show that just about embarrassed, but they hit the Yippies and I [inaudible] if you Phil Donahue, but he is so darn protected. I do not know, but he kind of really made Phil Donahue look terrible, and it is on YouTube. But Abby Hoffman never would have done that. He never would have been respectful, but I am just sad that he died feeling that way if there was truth that no one is listening anymore. Because you know something, Abby? I was listening. NC: Oh, bless your heart. SM: See, and what some of the regrets is never getting to meet some of the people that you and others are talking about, because they would have been my friends. NC: Yeah. SM: And both conservatives and liberals, now. I have worked with all of them in the university environment, so people that know me know I am pretty fair. And I just like people who stand for something, people who are not... It is like Teddy Roosevelt said, people who are not afraid to go into the arena of life, knowing that when you go into that arena of life, you are going to add enemies and friends. But even though if you want to live in a world where you are not vulnerable and you do not want to be hurt, then you will never help other people in this world. So, I do not know how I got on this tangent here, but... NC: I am glad you told me. SM: Yeah. Well, it is important because I am not going to let the interviews that I have of some people, and it is honest and true when they just go past the Yippies and the other things. I am not going to let that happen on any group and any entity because this is about what people think about them. The yippies were much more than just a theatrical group trying to raise hell. So anyways. NC: Wow. I am impressed. This is going to be great. SM: Well, I will be staying in touch with you. If you can think of any people, be even yourself that even Paul does not know about that would be good for interviews. Ron Doss, I thought he had a stroke and could not talk, but people like that. I am interviewing Robert. J. Lifton. I do not know if you have heard of him. NC: Robert. J. Lifton, this name... SM: The professor at Harvard who talked about the Vietnam Vets and post-traumatic stress disorder. NC: Right. SM: Well, I am interviewing him. He is 86 years old and... NC: Oh, beautiful. SM: And he is retired. But I want to interview him because he wrote a book on the Holocaust. He wrote a book on the Vietnam Veterans. He wrote Upon Man's Inhumanity, the Man. It is more of a psychological, so I am not only going to talk about Vietnam vets, I am going to talk about the effect that it had on the other side. Did you see the anti-war people or the people that were so passionate on the other side, the effects that it may have affect them mentally as well. And I am asking questions and I am never going to be able to ask any other person but him. NC: Right. SM: So I got an interview with him on the 29th up in... And then I am going to interview Jerry Lemke, the professor at Holy Cross when I am up there and he's the guy, the real spitting image, which is the person that said that the story about people spitting on Vietnam vets is totally a myth. NC: That is right. SM: And so, I am interviewing him, and then I just found out today that Alan Wolf from Boston College, a great professor up there, philosopher, religious professor, is agreed to be interviewed because I want him to address the issues of morality and ethics within the generation. Of course, he has written a lot about it, and so I want him to talk about the effect this has had from his perspective. So, everybody has got their unique angle and anyways. NC: Great. Great-great, great. SM: Well... NC: Thank you for including me. It is fascinating and fun. SM: Yes. Well, thank you for agreeing to do it and for spending so much time with me, as did Paul. NC: Okay. SM: Obviously, you are a great couple. I hope sometime when I come to the West Coast I can visit you guys because... NC: Okay. SM: After I talk with Paul and got to know him on the phone and everything, I consider him a friend, and now he is on my Facebook. NC: Oh. SM: Are you on Facebook too? NC: Yeah, sure. SM: You want to be a Facebook friend? NC: Absolutely. SM: I only have about 80 and... NC: Okay. SM: I am a very, I do not, and just some of my former students and then some former professional people, and so it has been great talking to you. NC: Same here. SM: And you have a great day. NC: Okay. You too. SM: And say hi to Paul. NC: Okay, I will. SM: Bye. NC: Okay, bye-bye. (End of Interview) 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 Nancy Cain Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cain, Nancy (Television producer) ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Video recording; Authors; Television producers and directors; Videofreex (Production company); Cain, Nancy (Television producer)--Interviews Description An account of the resource Nancy Cain is a videographer, producer and author. Cain started her career as a member of the Videofreex, a group that toured the country in the 1960s and 1970s and produced experimental videos on Woodstock, the Chicago Seven and geodesic domes. Cain was the co-creator and producer of the PBS show The 1990s and the author of the book Video Days. 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 2010-02-12 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.176a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.176b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 154:16 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/06d55d4187e0310b6bfc7059913b88af.jpg f106037500b185d02f99a83345bc68e1 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/409574f0375b627e5b55c6e953d48be7.mp3 b589ffdf58b1f2e7361af161c57c7497 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 2009-07-06 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Hettie Jones Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Hettie Jones is the author of 20 books but is best known for her memoir of the Beat Scene. She started the literary magazine Yugen, has taught writing at SUNY Purchase, Penn State, the University of Wyoming, and is one of the faculty members in the graduate program for creative writing at The New School in New York City. She has been chair of a plethora of writing programs and has received grants to start a writing program in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jones received her Bachelor's degree in Drama from the University of Virginia and pursued her postgraduate work at Columbia University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4527,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"15":"Arial"}">Hettie Jones (1934-2024) was the author of 20 books but is best known for her memoir of the Beat Scene. She started the literary magazine Yugen, has taught writing at SUNY Purchase, Penn State, and the University of Wyoming, and was one of the faculty members in the graduate program for creative writing at The New School in New York City. She has been chair of a plethora of writing programs and has received grants to start a writing program in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jones received her Bachelor's degree in Drama from the University of Virginia and pursued her postgraduate work at Columbia University. Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Beat Generation; WWII; Art expression; American Art; Literature; Women; Sex; SDS; Baby boom generation; Atomic bomb; Freedom of expression; Hippies; Trust."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5041,"3":{"1":0},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Beat Generation; WWII; Art expression; American Art; Literature; Women; Sex; SDS; Baby boom generation; Atomic bomb; Freedom of expression; Hippies; Trust; Beats; Seventies; Sixties; Fifties; War; Writing; Writers; Students; Activism. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 105:31 Subject LCSH Authors; College teachers; Jones, Hettie--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Hettie Jones Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: 6 July 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:09 SM: Still there? Hello, Hettie? 00:18 HJ: Are you there? 00:19 SM: Yep, I am here. 00:20 HJ: Okay. I do not know which phone is better, but I am just going to try them all out. Sometimes it is so difficult, and they are doing something to the street, you know, this is just an incredible area for change. 00:35 SM: Right. 00:36 HJ: But I have closed the windows and hopefully they are on a break. They started this I think at seven o'clock this morning doing something in the street, you know, and jack hammers 00:48 SM: Ah, yeah, there is a lot of that going around here. Not near me but road construction. 00:55 HJ: That is the way it is. Okay, well, I am trying this phone. Can you hear me well enough? 00:59 SM: Yeah, yep, I can hear you. 01:01 HJ: That is good. Okay. 01:02 SM: All right, let us start. The first question I wanted to ask is, when I met with Dr. Marilyn Young, the historian at New York University, maybe five, six years ago, and I asked the question, when did the (19)60s begin and she said, the (19)60s began with the Beat writers. And I think I mentioned this to you on the phone too, or in my letter, she is the only person that ever said that and all the people I have interviewed. Of course, she is a great historian. What do you think she was talking about when she said the (19)60s began with the Beats? 01:39 HJ: Well, because the (19)60s began with the television exposure and the media exposure. Do not forget that was just about the time, that television was growing into it as a medium for the dissemination of information. Before that, it was just sort of game shows and roller derby and just comedy and stuff like that. It was not a very serious thing. Yeah, they had the news but, the Beats somehow were well, I believe there were two things that I can think of: Jack Kerouac appeared on television, reading his poetry. And, what else was the other thing? Life magazine published an article about the Beats. So that these two small things, you would think small, things have made a big change. We were a very, very small group as I have written, you know. Everybody fit into my living room and it was not a very large living room. But then when we moved to a larger space, suddenly there were all these, well, I can only describe them as "wanna beats". And, the whole, the whole idea of rebellion had exploded, the whole idea of forging ahead with your own life and not conforming had made its way into the culture. And then there was suddenly hundreds of people doing that! And you know, in the later (19)60s, because of the Vietnam War and everything, people, young people felt that they could speak out. The threat of, I guess the silence that was imposed on the populace during the Second World War "Loose lips sink ships." You are not old enough to recall that, but I remember posters and things like that. So we were all expected to conform and to go live in the suburbs and be quiet and build peace and have a lot of children to replace all the people that died in the war. But suddenly it was not like that anymore. So that is why I believe it began, and we were a role model for people. 04:28 SM: I was looking up in a book, like four qualities that were described for the Beat Generation, which was, these qualities were: Eastern spirituality, alternative forms of sexuality, experimentation with drugs, and a rejection of a mainstream American values. And when I see that being described for the Beats, that is a lot of what happened in the counterculture in the (19)60s. That when you have the, the Beats, maybe the counterculture was the follow-up to those qualities in the in the (19)60s. Could you comment on those four qualities? 05:13 HJ: Well, you know, you are talking about everything except art. You are talking about everything except writing. 05:20 SM: Right. 05:21 HJ: So the Beats were writers. But they, if you want to include the entire Bohemia at that time, the abstract expressionist painters, the jazz musicians who were changing things. I think we were all interactive with one another, and it was more than lifestyle changing and more than attitudinal changing. It was really the Beats challenged the expected established ideas of what was American art. And you know, everybody knows that art goes before social change, it points the way to social change, points the way to real estate! Art is there, that is why they call us avant-garde! You know. And so, those four points that you mentioned, I would associate so much more with the people who came after us. The hippies, because, we were not; yes, we were doing that, all the points you mentioned it, but our focus was mainly on the commentary and the challenge to the culture that writing, that the writing brought, I think. But yeah, I guess certainly you know, they took the ball and ran with it. But they ran with it; the experimenting with drugs, for example, the only reason we did that was to achieve a higher consciousness and not for quote, unquote "recreation." And, I think it just had, it just had a little segue there into let us get, you know, who was it who used to say? Let us all get stoned, whatever that whoever made that, I forget! [laughs] 07:39 SM: Might have been Tim Leary. Who knows. 07:41 HJ: No, I think it was maybe Bob Dylan. [laughs] 07:44 SM: Yeah. 07:45 HJ: Do not forget, Bob Dylan was around in the village and if you read his autobiography, he attended LeRoi Jones' plays, he read On the Road. Yeah, he was very much influenced. 08:04 SM: When you talk about the arts here, obviously the arts of either the great writers of the Beats in the (19)50s and early (19)60s, and of course, they continue to write throughout their entire lives and are continuing to do so. But when you look at the, maybe some of the artists that came up in the (19)60s, or early (19)70s, whether they be musicians or painters, who would those that influenced the boomers. Who would? Who would they be? 08:33 HJ: Well, you know, it is hard for me to really project. I am not an historian and you know, I specialize in having a Zen mind. It is a blank mind so that I can write. 08:46 SM: Right? 08:47 HJ: So when I am thinking back into history, as to, I am not a critic, who influenced whom, I would still have to say, you know, thousands of people and billions of people read On the Road. Young black people have read or heard about or saw LeRoi Jones' plays. I think some of the women, but women were not really in the mix so much, but who else? Allen Ginsberg, of course. You know, millions and millions of people here and overseas listen to Allen and his rants. He was probably the most influential of anybody, and everybody wanted to "Mola Mola", you know. Turn over the establishment. Rail against war. Do this, do that. But they felt free to open their mouths because of those writers, I think. 09:58 SM: One of the things here, I put these thoughts down regarding the (19)50s. What were the circumstances in the late (19)40s and (19)50s that created the Beats and influenced the early lives of their children? Which are boomers. I put down some of the things that I would remember if I was just an elementary school kid from the (19)50s. President Eisenhower and his smile, the Space Race, Sputnik, Castro and (19)57, Khrushchev, Hungry in 1956, the Berlin Wall, parents had jobs that were secure, parents wanted to make sure that their kids were protected and they had more than when they grew up in the Depression. Moms were at home taking care of the kids and dads were always at work. And there was a seeming respect for authority. And certainly the term Communism was popular, was around at that time and of course McCarthyism, he was trying to find scapegoats and we all know that there is still a lot of segregation in the South. Just your thoughts on those qualities that obviously affected the Beats. They were commenting on them. 11:17 HJ: Well, we were running from them and, and doing whatever we could to set them aside and to try to invent a new life. You know, personally. I guess I experienced every single thing that that you have just listed and, my whole attitude was that I would just going to invent a whole new way to become a woman. From the clothing I wore, to my attitudes about being free to be a sexual being. Yes, certainly. I was in opposition to all of those, but I was not necessarily willing to engage all of those things that were in place. Because if you spend your time fighting, what is the established rule in every aspect, then you are just fighting and fighting, but you have not invented anything new. So my attitude and they attitude of all of the Beats that I knew and particularly women was simply go it alone or find kindred spirits, if you could, which we did a few of us. Just invent a new way of life by embarking on one and going forward rather than forever issuing challenges. 12:59 SM: Hettie, you bring up an important point, because when, when a lot of people think of the (19)50s, the (19)60s and early (19)70s, they see men always in charge of movements. And what was interesting is even when you look at the women's movement, and you study the history of it in the (19)60s, and how women were tired of being second figures and a lot of the anti-war and civil rights and all the other movements, that was when the Women's Movement really came to fruition. But what you are saying is there was a lot going on in the (19)50s with women trying to assert their attitudes and beliefs and feelings. Could you comment a little bit on women of the (19)50s, Beat writers who are female of the (19)50s and what they had to overcome? 13:49 HJ: Well, let us establish the fact that there were not very many of them. Very few, very, very few people. And of all the people who fit into my living room, probably a third were women. So, but they were all just running, you know. I think in a story, "Running from home as hard as they could, but bringing them, bringing it with them all the same." It is a line from a story I have written but we brought our attitudes. We, we were not out to particularly offend people, but only to seize our lives. To take control of our lives. But as I said, we were castigated. Let us think about a time when if you did not live with your parents until you got married and then live with your husband, there was something suspect about you. You were suspect for having your own apartment no matter where it was, in the village, in my case and then the case of many of the Beats. But you were suspect. If you were a sexual being you, you know? You were violating the law, but everybody knew that kind of subversive life. You know, also as I have written that supporting myself, women have always had sex, you know, you could always have sex. You could have sex in the backseat of a car or in the under the haystack or behind the barn, you know. But you could not talk about it. You could not feel free to live your life as though that were a part of your life. And that I think was very different, that we did what we did, but it was clear that it was open and aboveboard. And that made a big difference. We did not want to hide again. But I think that the, the women who say the women in SDS who came later and the women at Kent State, places like that, had somehow absorbed that idea through whatever effects the Beats on them and felt freer. It is like, you know, the pebbles that you throw in the water and the rings go out, and out and out. 16:39 SM: You raise a very important point here because if you study the history of the Students for Democratic Society, and I just read a book on them by the leader of the anti-war movement at Columbia, Mark Rudd. He talks about the women who were involved with SDS and all the, basically, all the sex they had with different partners, and it was encouraged! It was encouraged by the leadership of SDS. 17:11 HJ: Yeah but you see that was a little different and they are something different. Nobody was controlling it. The Beats were a small enough group or the art community that I am speaking of really basically, not just the Beats. Nobody going to tell you that was a ̶ you know, go ahead and have sex with this one and that one. You just did what you wanted to do. You were not - you know sex was not emphasized. It was just considered a part of everyone's life and you were lucky enough to be able to handle it. It was not, "Oh, I am going to go have sex!" It was more like, "Oh, I am going to live in New Year where people are challenging the establishment by making art and trying to describe life as we want to be able to live it." But it was almost with SDS people and all those people, it was almost deliberate flaunting and opposition. 18:24 SM: Right. 18:25 HJ: That is the ̶ I think that, maybe it is a subtle difference, but it was a bit of a difference. 18:33 SM: Well, I know we are going to ̶ we want to talk more about the (19)50s. But I do have to ask one question because you raise kids that are Boomers. 18:41 HJ: No, not really. Well, I suppose your definition says (19)64 but they do not consider themselves that at all. 18:51 SM: (19)46 and (19)64. 18:54 HJ: Right. My kids were born and (19)59 and (19)61. But there were, you know, black women who never considered themselves a part of that generation at all. They really grew up in a time that was more the Civil Rights era, and do not forget they have a very well-known father and they marched and they did this and that. So, they are a little different. 19:26 SM: What? Is there one a specific event in your life that shaped you when you were young? 19:32 HJ: Oh, well. You know, it is, I always saw that I was going, that art was a talent for me and I have written about this. In my memoir, there was that scene in the beginning of my book when I talked about weaving a basket when I was six. But even prior to that one, I was probably four. I remember making some comments. Making a metaphor and all the adults around me making a big fuss over me and it stayed with me for a very long time. And I have actually got a little written piece about it. So, I always I just always knew that I was a little bit, not a little bit, but a lot, but basically different from the rest of my family. You know, the whole changeling thing. 20:46 SM: Yes. This might be a repetition here, but this is a question I sent when I sent the six questions dealing directly with the Beats. Do you feel the Beats had a direct influence on the (19)60s and (19)70s, even though they were identified with the (19)50s? 21:04 HJ: Oh, yes! And, you know, they are no longer - you know, I taught classes on the Beats. And they are no longer identified with one particular era. You have to, when you are teaching young people who are so far removed from those events, you have to point out all of the historical patterns that led to what the Beats did. But they simply identify with the open road and the freedom and the wonderful writing. That is what they like. And the fact that, you know, that, particularly On the Road or Howl, or any other [those are the two iconic pieces from the time] that they are not about what is usually the case now. Novels are about relationships and poems are about looking at your navel and like that. I think young people appreciate the fact that these are works of engagement in some way or another, and they like them. They like the freedom. They like the spirit. They like the voice. I think that is what they like. So I forgot your original question. I am just meandering here. 22:41 SM: That is okay. To you, when did the (19)50s begin? Now I am talking, we know (19)50s begin in 1950 and (19)51. But when people talk about the (19)60s, we know the (19)60s really did not end until (19)73 and (19)74. So when did the (19)50s really begin in your eyes with the postwar and all things that I mentioned? 23:06 HJ: I feels like the (19)50s were always there, even in the (19)40s. 23:11 SM: Yeah, talk about that. 23:14 HJ: You know, everything was so devoted to the war. The war! The war, the Second World War began when I was seven years old. And I had just, you know, I was beginning to read and I was conscious of the world around me at that point. And the whole idea was to hunker down. Do not forget, I am a Jew, and therefore, we were kept very quietly at home. Because if it could happen over there, it could happen over here. So I lead a, what you would probably call a very comfortable, but ghettoized life. And that seems to be operative until the end of the (19)40s. I went to college in 1951. But at that point, I was beginning to think a lot about where I was in the world and what the world was in the midst of. McCarthy. The Rosenbergs. The atom bomb. All of that kind of stuff. And I had political opinions. I went to college in the South and encountered for the first time my life prejudice against me as well as against black people. The roommate with whom I had been assigned did not want to live with me because I was a Jew, and a Yankee. So you see, it all began for me as soon as I got away from home and started to see a little bit of the rest of the world and thankfully be way from having myself under wraps in a certain sense when I was at home. I already saw that I had to invent a new way of life at that time, and that was when the (19)50s really, really began for me. In the (19)50s, I began to be a (19)60s person. Does that makes sense? 25:48 SM: Yes. 25:50 HJ: Good. 25:51 SM: Yeah, that I will follow that up with when do you think the (19)60s and early (19)70s began? 25:58 HJ: Well, you know, the Bohemia that in which we lived in the later (19)50s and in the early (19)60s. It was short lived but intense and, everything just began around that time. I do not know, (19)62, (19)63. I remember, maybe (19)59, that was the first time we had a television set. And I remember watching someone college student being spit upon and that was the first time television had that much of an effect. Watching television and watching these kids at a lunch counter in some state, I do not know exactly where it was, shopping, their all dressed up in their suits and you know, Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, looking real respectable, and being spit upon in a diner in the South. The (19)50s began right there for me, because I already had one child and was committing that child for that, to that kind of life and wow, you know, my head was expanding every day. 27:29 SM: So that really is that experience of seeing that on TV and then having a child was kind of a watershed moment for you. 27:37 HJ: I guess so. I can still, I can still see it in my mind. Yeah, you know, you do not take a consideration like that lightly when you are thinking all the time and you are twenty-five years old. 27:59 SM: One of questions I wanted to ask and think I got a couple more before I switch my tape here. Allen Ginsburg, who you knew very well, seemed to be all the writers of the Beats the one that transcended decades. Because I can remember as a college student in 1972, seeing him at Ohio State in the Ohio union doing his chanting. And he never spoke, never read any poetry, he just was there for almost two hours chanting. And the room was packed. It was kind of, it was a, it was kind of a "be in", it was a "happening". 28:37 HJ: Yes. 28:38 SM: But he seemed to be at a lot of the anti-war protests. He was all over the world, was dealing with a lot of issues. What was it about Ginsburg? Because he obviously was very close to a lot of the Boomers and the (19)60s people. What separated him from the other Beat writers with respect to his involvement? He was out there, he was everywhere! 29:01 HJ: Well, God bless him. You know, he was the one to do it. You know. What separates Bob Dylan from all the rest of the people? He was a man with a message, right? A rolling stone. And Allen was a, you know, from his very beginning, even at Columbia, somebody who was breaking away from the future that had been ordained for him, had he followed the usual pattern and going into something wider, and he had lots of media exposure, and he was very good. He had marvelous stage presence. He had incredible concentration. Allen was a very, very multitalented man in that respect, and fearless! And everyone had a lot of respect for him, because he would just stand up to anything. And he was very, you know, all these things were people who were very well read. And they, they were intellectual, in a lot of senses. They were not just populist figures who came out of nowhere. They, they were men with the messages. And Allen particularly was good with audiences. His politics were radical for the day, but, and he used it and he used the forum. Any forum he was offered. But he is less of a figure today more of an occult figure, although he is still beloved by people who read Howl. 31:19 SM: Alright, go right ahead. 31:22 HJ: So he is still beloved, but you know he is not in that, young people caught onto him because they see his rants against the establishment as theirs as well. I do not think anybody but Barack Obama has taken young people by storm, since Allen. 31:51 SM: I often noticed, because I have a lot of books on the Beats and some actually like Ferlinghetti's poetry and I have a lot of the City Lights books and I know Ferlinghetti has written poems on the (19)60s and the (19)70s many, and also, Anne Waldman wrote a great group of poems on Vietnam and Ed Sanders; so there was no question that the (19)60s and (19)70s really have - that many of the Beats were still - this is a very important period for them. 32:22 HJ: Oh, yeah, I think so. Well, do not forget Anne Waldman is much younger than everybody, you know. Anne Waldman is a decades younger and was way younger than Allen too. So, she was. Oh, I think more, more, if you want to talk about I do not know that. She doesn't identify with Boomers but who are the Boomer poets? We think we I do not know really. 32:58 SM: I can only, I can only think of one: Rod McKuen. 33:03 HJ: Yeah, I am not even familiar with him. As I told you when we discussed this interview, during the (19)70s, I was, during the late (19)60s and (19)70s, I was trying to keep my head up, trying to not lose my apartment, of trying to keep my kids on the straight and narrow, you know. I was trying to earn a living, and become a writer and the world just had to fall away at a certain point because even the feminist movement had to pass me by. I was not interested in a glass ceiling. I was not at all. I was concerned in trying to reinvent a life between the races for myself. So when you talk about popular figures and writers of the (19)70s, I am going to be at a loss. 34:12 SM: Right. Well, what is interesting here is you are talking about the writers of different periods. I have a question here. Before I get to that question, I wanted, you in your email to me, you gave a one line regarding the fact about the Boomers. And, I know we are not going to basically talk about the qualities and so forth about them. But I did want to ask you from afar, if you were to be asked, what are your thoughts on the young people that were involved in the anti-war movement and, you know, they were challenging authorities during that timeframe, and also the fact that the intellectual links because you have reiterated over and over again, I believe this, just like you that the intellectual environment which was, was set central core to the Beats, that a lot of the anti-war, and a lot of the things happening in the movements was also happening in the university environment, which is supposed to be an intellectual environment. And the challenges were coming in freedom of expression on university campuses, just as the writers are writing about it, you know, in the (19)50s. Challenging authority. Do you? Can you see, again, the link somehow even from afar, between these two intellectual environments, and the challenging of authority? 35:42 HJ: Well, when we talk about universities, do not forget, up to that point, universities were modeled on the Greek model and we studied Western civilization. Right? 35:59 SM: Yes. 36:00 HJ: And that was really the core curriculum. I think because of the fact that a lot of information pops up, is the right word to use here, about groups who are tangential to all of that came into the culture. People, the young people in the universities, were challenging what was taught. And there began the movement or inclusivity that had been, again challenged every step of the way because nobody learns the same thing anymore. Because the universities have eventually bowed to that and began including courses about other aspects about America. Right? American literature. I mean who read Momaday? He was an Indian? Hardly anybody. You know, who read Langston Hughes? Hardly anybody. Because he is a black man. But trying to get all of these brains into the university as part of American culture. This was an era when film criticism grew as a discipline. When, jazz began to be considered as music! Instead of just entertainment. A lot of different disciplines that required intellectual attention were being promoted. And I think young people who now felt freer than ever to speak their mind were challenging the university's old ways of, you know, studying dead white men and that was all we ever knew about. I mean, you know, unless you took specific courses, you did not learn about the American labor movement. I never had a class in which I learned about the women, the Suffragettes. I mean, yes, I had some general ideas that women got the vote in, you know 19(00), whatever it was (19)11 or something or other like that, but one did not do close studies of that. So, you know, a lot was changing in the universities that had to do with the desire that somehow began to be abroad in the land, and that there was a lot more to learn than what you learned in school. 39:06 SM: One of the qualities you are also looking at Herbert Huncke, who you obviously know. When I am reading on the beats, very important thing came out to the edge of Beat came to the group through the underworld association with Herbert Huncke, where it originally meant tired or beaten down. And a lot of the people in the (19)60s had that same feeling about being beaten down. And so I see these comparisons constantly between the Beat writers, the intellectual writing, the arts, and a lot of the activism of the (19)60s, the feeling of being beaten down. And just your thoughts on that. 39:53 HJ: Well, oppression, you know. And I do not know. You know the word 'beat', 85,000 ways. [laughs] It was a, it was a very convenient, very convenient term, but nobody, you can define it any way you really want to. But the, you know, Huncke, of course, oh, I think he was right. I think, you know, that is the generally accepted definition of it. But I think more, you know, in terms of the people in the sixtes; the college students, they were not beat. They were not junkies hanging out in Times Square. The way they interpreted really all of that kind of feeling was that they will repressed and of course, they were repressed. It was every kind of repression going on. Suppression. It was political for them and sexual and everything, and I think they just responded to it by acknowledging it. And you know how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? Right? 41:17 SM: Yes. 41:20 HJ: They just took this fuse and I think popularized them. And of course, you know young people, they do whatever seems hippest. You have got to realize that when you are, well you know, when you are seventeen or eighteen, if you see something that is exciting, you will gravitate toward it that is where the cutest people were right? 41:48 SM: Freedom of expression is something you know, we just came off the July fourth weekend and our founding fathers and through two hundred plus years here in the United States freedom of expression is something we all love. We see what happens in Iran and the suppression going on over there. But if the Beats and their writing, obviously there was some suppression going on there. And even though we talk about freedom of expression in the United States of America, is not there a price one has to pay for truly speaking up? Whether it be through a great book, whether it be through an interview, or a TV show, or in the (19)60s through a protest? There is a price. Dr. King used to always say that if you are not willing to go to jail for your beliefs, then you really do not have any beliefs. And especially if there is injustice happening, this concept of free expression - if you were in the room right now, with all the great Beat writers of the (19)50s and you were just going to have a conversation on the term "freedom of speech in the United States of America in 1955" what do you think most of your peers would say? 43:14 HJ: That it was limited, you know, I am just thinking of McCarthy in his day. I know I was in, I think I was still in college? Do you have McCarthy's dates? When the House on American Activities was? 43:32 SM: Yeah. That was early (19)50s. 43:38 HJ: (19)52, (19)53? 43:39 SM: Yes. 43:39 HJ: Yes. So that it was evident that speaking out and were using to speak up. People were jailed, blacklisted, jailed! So that had happened in the immediate past. In 1955, it would have been on everyone's mind. The bomb. Speaking out against the bomb. Speaking out against. You were a communist sympathizer, if you even said that maybe there was something to socialism, not even communism but socialism heaven forbid. Equality for women, parity in the work ̶ We did not even get that far in the mid (19)50s. But, yeah, of course a price would be paid! You know the first demonstration that I ever went on was not until I had one child so it would have been 1960 and it was when Castro came to the UN, and we marched around the park. I have written about this in front of the UN. And they had a whole cordon of mounted policemen who [inaudible] us. And they did not let me march with my baby in her stroller. 44:31 SM: Hmm. 44:44 HJ: You know, and they made me go sit on a bench. They said it was too dangerous. So yeah. Oh dear, someone is ringing my bell. Steve can you bear with me because that may be a kind of a package. 45:37 SM: Yep, yeah, I will bear with it. I will wait. 45:38 HJ: I do not want it to go back to the - Okay, thanks a lot. 45:41 SM: Yep. Alright, I got my tape back on. Continue what you are saying. 45:48 HJ: Now I forgot what I was saying. I was so, what was I talking about? 45:52 SM: I am not even sure now. Maybe I will just go to the next question. 45:57 HJ: Sure. 45:58 SM: Okay. This is just again, I know we are not going to talk about specifically about the Boomers but just from that one line you sent me on the email again. If you were ̶ Just your general thoughts on the Boomer generation. What, what were their good qualities or bad qualities in your mind, from afar? 46:21 HJ: Um, well, you know, it is funny because all of those kids as I, I thought of them, and I never thought of them as Boomers I mean, we did not even we did not use that word then. I thought, the ones that I knew and who hung around my neighborhood and everything, were hippy. And, and that was how I saw them. I appreciated a lot of their impulses. That was what I appreciated, were their impulses. They had certain ideas: back to the land, nonmaterialistic culture, things like that. I appreciated all of that. However, they seemed to lack the kind of, I do not think 'political will' is what I really mean here, but they seemed this kind of laid back on, you know, 'let us go get stoned' sort of thing and that was not what we were about. We were about hard work and making our, you know making the changes that we wanted known through, were not only political protests, but through writing. And so I saw a lot them as, a lot of them were, aimless at first. But, you know, then throughout I think the (19)70s people had to shape up. But at first, they seemed, I do not know what they were living on, you know. Whatever they were living on, they might have been drifting? I just, you know, there were a lot, I because of my position I saw them a lot of the time as spoiled little white kids who could do whatever they wanted, because they did not have a hardscrabble existence. They could straighten themselves up and put on a jacket and tie and go work in an office when they wanted to. I felt that there was some, a little bit of a nonseriousness about them. But then, I am sure things changed. And do not forget, as you know, I have to keep reminding you, I was off in my own little world. 49:05 SM: Yes. 49:05 HJ: Kind of trying to figure out how to get through each month. 49:11 SM: A lot of the hippies went into the communes. What were your thoughts on the communal life that many of them participated in? 49:20 HJ: Well, if you look at the history of it, they did not really they did not succeed in a lot of ways, because they had forgotten to take into account the fact of human feelings; of jealousies and the need for privacy and, we were not all meant for a communal existence. Some of them, some of us are lone wolves. You know, I think you have to applaud a lot of what they, a lot of what they did. But you know, communal, well, there are still a few communes that are running but communes very often degenerate into cults. And I have seen and read the effect of cults on people. I have had students who had formerly been in cults and you know, directionless people looking for direction are going to look for a leader and sometimes the leader is less than trustworthy, were exploited. 50:41 SM: One of the one of the things about I always looked at where people genuine when they did things and obviously, I want to come in and if you felt the Beat writers were genuine in their writing. And also when you look at the generation of followed them, the Boomers, 15 percent of the people that were in that generation of seventy to seventy-five million really participated, though the rest of them did not. But always, the question that I have to ask myself to who experienced it, how genuine were most of them in in their concerns? Or you know - so basically, could you comment on how genuine the Beats were in their writing? Because obviously, they were intellectually gifted. They were deep thinkers. But the term genuine is something that is a very important quality in people. And so your comments on both the Beats of the (19)50s and the ones that continue writing today, plus the Boomers and their activism during that (19)60s and (19)70s. 51:54 HJ: Regarding genuine, you know, you certainly are genuine when you are putting yourself up for criticism and castigation because do not forget when the Beats were first published that they began to write. I mean, I worked, I ran the Partisan Review office at that time and the general response from the literary establishment was, oh, this is ridiculous. You know. This is just, you know, they just dismissed them. So if you are the genuine article and you believe in what you have to say, you are just going to say, okay, that is the way they feel and I will just continue to go on. I think that the fact that they were genuine is evidenced by the fact that they have lasted so long and are in now the tannin. You know? Now kids who take freshmen "Comp." are reading On the Road. So, there you go! Talk about the cannons they have been admitted. But had they not spoken from their heart, who would have bothered you know? They would have faded away. 53:19 SM: Well, were the anti-war, civil rights, women's movement, gay and lesbian, where would you place them in there? 53:28 HJ: Certainly somebody like Adrienne Rich, certainly. Yeah. You know, like the other people who really are associated with the beginnings of the feminist movement all of a sudden, I am blanking on their names. Who I do I mean? They had to! Of course they were genuine! Otherwise, they wouldn't have been considered so, over and over and over by so many different generations tracing the history of the feminist movement. And you know, genuineness is the fact that Allen spoke openly of homosexuality let a lot of people come out of the closet. The fact that the feminist movement led women to make demands of their own, do not forget, we were also we were making something like fifty-five cents on the dollar compared to men or sixty-five? I have forgotten. A very, very low salary. And you never saw women lawyers, you never saw, we hardly had any women doctors. The whole world has changed a great deal in terms of what we accept the ability of women to do! So, yeah, they were genuine. But as far as the writers that I think of they are more polemicists than artists in that sense. The writing is to formulate a political agenda rather than to create art, and that is a bit of a [inaudible] I think. 55:19 SM: One of the important questions I have asked all of my guests and this just applies to everyone here and you probably saw this on the list, it was number eleven. The concept of healing. I want to - I took a group of students, to see former senator Edmund Muskie before he died when I was working at the university and it was one of our leadership on the road programs. And I took fourteen students with me, we got into the room, we were taping we were talking about the (19)68 convention and all the divisions in America the anti-war movement, and of course he was he had long since retired and actually he was not feeling very well either he had just come out of the hospital. And I asked the question, I said, about healing and this is the ̶ I am going to just read it here: Do you feel Boomers and I guess I will say the people of the (19)50s too. Do you feel Boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth and their growing up years? The division between black and white. Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it. Division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role did the Wall play in healing these divisions in Washington? Do you feel that the Boomer generation will go to it is grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has thirty-five years made that statement "Time heals all wounds," a truth? I bring this up and Senator Muskie when I asked him a question specifically about the divisions in America in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s and (19)80s. He did not even respond for about a minute. And then he looked up at us and said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." 57:06 HJ: Yes. 57:06 SM: And just your thoughts? To me healing, I have worked with a lot of veterans, I have worked with a lot of people that were involved with the (19)60s and they still have issues about you know, what happened then. And a lot of times people do not come together that are opposing sides. Your thoughts on this concept? Do we have a problem with healing in this nation? 57:29 HJ: Well, I think Senator Muskie was right, you know, the Civil War. But, then yeah, I mean, we keep going slowly toward it and then drawing away and slowly toward it and drawing away. It has so many little subtexts and so many ramifications. The war in Vietnam, of course, divided people. You know, any war. I am just thinking about the Gulf War, the war in Iraq. All the people who marched all over the world. All the people who marched here and try to keep it from happening. There are people, who still live with the idea that, that this is America. We are the strongest nation, we control. Everything we do is correct. And if you criticize, you are not patriotic. And then, of course, there is the other side who feel free to change direction. I think that was what everybody was hoping. Healing was what everybody was hoping for when they elected Barack. And we see it is hard. It is hard to do, but oh you know, we have to give it – we are a young country, with a lot of different immigrant groups who have not yet become an American thoroughly. We are still group identified. We play identity politics all the time. And that is a result also of that, push for inclusion in the universities. You know, everybody talks about that now, how nobody learns the same thing anymore and we are all half educated and half-assed. But if we live long enough and we do not destroy each other, if we can still manage to go to the polls and vote and not have this same sorts of guys who won the election then we can. You know, democracy is a very messy, messy thing. And generations change. You can see it in families, children think differently from their parents. 1:00:11 SM: Can you speak again more clearly into the phone? 1:00:15 HJ: Yeah, I am sorry. I got up, I moved! [laughs] That was what happened, okay? America is a young country and we are a young people. And eventually the whole country will look the way New York looks now, which is everybody is a different, slightly different color when you look at somebody. I sometimes have no idea when I encounter students and little children. I do not know. I cannot imagine what their parenthood is and why would you want to know? So we still have a ways to go. You know, Europeans who now call themselves Europeans, they have hundreds and hundreds of years behind them. And here we are, you know, we just dumped ourselves on the Indians not too long ago. [laughs] 1:01:18 SM: This business of healing and other one is the issue of trust. And I say this even to the Beat writers of the (19)50s. And, and then also to the Boomer generation, and the, the issue of trust because there was a lot of things in our lives when we were young and as we were growing up that we look at authority figures that really turn young people off. And the Boomers saw so many of them through Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon and even Ronald Reagan in later years. I speak of the Iran Contra with Kennedy and what was really going on Vietnam, Johnson with a Gulf of Tonkin. Eisenhower lied about the U2 incident. And the Boomers really did not trust anybody in authority, whether it was a minister, a rabbi, a priest, a university president, a corporate leader. We did not trust anybody. The question I am asking you, and I, you know, be a great question also, while the Beats were in a room too, as they get as they grew up. I remember a psychology professor telling me this in PSYC101 at my university, Binghamton University. I can remember him saying this in our in our PSYC101 class that if you cannot trust somebody, and if you have no sense of trust, then you yourself will not be a success in life. And that always stuck to me and I remember that class and then as I got older. So what I am getting at is that you know, not having it - do we have an issue of trust in this country? And had the writings of the Beats and the activism of the Boomers of the (19)60s and (19)70s and hopefully in their lives, helped? What do they trust after all of their efforts? 1:03:25 HJ: Well, if you want blind trust it is one thing. If you add a trust with keeping your eye on, on what people are doing, I think that is a different thing. But we've learned to withhold our immediate sense of trust because we've been disappointed, you know, here, look at the most recent - look at the look at the war in Iraq! Who were we trusting? Who did? Did we question the evidence that was manufactured about weapons of mass destruction, etcetera, etcetera? And if you; we've learned over and over again, that people lie. That people in authority will lie sometimes to keep their own interest or what they believe to be right with, there is you know, the fact that there was no open discussion of well, there was open discussion, there was protests as you know, more recently with Bush and then he went ahead and did what he wanted to do. But why? Why would one? Why would one give them what I am thinking? I do not agree with your professor. If you do not trust anyone. Let me hedge that a little bit. 1:05:08 SM: Make sure you speak closer to that mike. 1:05:10 HJ: Oh, yeah, it is my phone. You know, sorry. I think that personal trust in one's daily interactions with people is a good thing to have. One should be open to the hope that one another instead of you having an exchange with someone, it will be built on mutual trust and respect. But we have to learn politically to cast a wary eye and I think that is a very good thing. That is what democracy is. You know, we are participating I think, when we criticize. 1:06:00 SM: Just a general question. Why do you think the Vietnam War ended? 1:06:06 HJ: Huh. 1:06:06 SM: What was the ̶ if they were to pinpoint one thing? Why did it end? 1:06:11 HJ: You know, McNamara died yesterday. I heard that on the radio this morning. 1:06:17 SM: I did not know that! 1:06:18 HJ: Yeah, he died. So they were talking a little bit about that. Why do I think it ended? Well, it was, you know, everybody - it was understood that it was a lost cause! That this was, well, was not our first war of imperialism, you know, if you think of the Spanish American War. That was also. But I think we learned what the French had learned and what the British had learned. There was so much protest here that I think that public officials had to understand and take into account the will of the people finally, finally. But, you know, it was a whole lot of different facts. 1:07:21 SM: Is it is it realistic, you know, the Wall in Washington and I do not know if you visited it, but it is, it is unbelievable. It was done an awful lot to heal veterans and their families. But also a lot of vets will not go there because it brings back sad memories but your thoughts on him? I, me, Steve McKiernan, the writer of this book, and the person who puts these questions together, am I kind of asking an almost impossible question regarding the fact of healing that, that one day we will not do what they did in the Civil War, which they never did heal, but that one day, people who are against the war in Vietnam and those who were for the war will hug each other? 1:08:09 HJ: They are all going to be dead Steve. [laughs] So it is not going to make one bit of difference. Right now we are focusing on what is going on over in the Middle East. And that has become, you know, it is not that we have a limited attention span. It is just that will have to that will take the war in Vietnam will remain a sticky issue and it can be argued by historians from then on and but the Boomers will go to their graves debating that. I think. Because they believe so firmly in, each in his own way. There was no win and there was no loss. So there were no winners and losers there. 1:09:11 SM: It is amazing at Gettysburg this past weekend, one of the park rangers; retired, his son, who serves in Iraq and I asked him point blank about the Wall and he went into a rage about the anti-war protesters and boy, he said, if he the chance, he'd, "put them up against a wall and shoot him!" 1:09:29 HJ: Yeah, right. 1:09:30 SM: So that the rage is still in some people. So, 1:09:34 HJ: You know, how old was this park ranger? 1:09:36 SM: Oh, he was sixty or sixty-one he was not a park ranger. He was a volunteer. 1:09:41 HJ: Okay. All right. Yeah. But, you know, he is still fighting the Civil War too, right? 1:09:47 SM: Yes. [laughter] 1:09:52 HJ: You know and the Civil War is not going to be over until the New South truly becomes the New South. You know, every time I go down south with my family, especially, I am always aware that the New South is just the Old South in a new dress. 1:10:11 SM: Hmm. 1:10:12 HJ: You know, many of the attitudes have not changed. You know, when I went to college in Virginia, it was in my sociology class, it was "our people," and when I asked, "What do you mean our people?" Well, it was "our Negroes." You know, and I was just shocked and offended. 1:10:32 SM: Oh my gosh. 1:10:33 HJ: that people my age, which was, you know, seventeen years old and eighteen years old, we were fighting the Civil War again, one hundred years later. So people will absorb what they learn from their families and what they are on in school. But I think right now, there is a whole generation of young people who are very willing to open their mouths. And Vietnam means nothing to them at all. What they are concerned about is what is happening now. And one of the differences is that the wars being fought by a volunteer army of generally poor people. Mostly poor guys from, from all over America who, liked the idea of picking up a gun and going to shoot people who wear head wraps. The same way there were those people who wanted to go in Vietnam and shoot at the "Gooks" or whatever they called them. But there is, but there is no draft. Were there a draft, boy that would be a whole different story? So, we'll see. I do not know, I mean, nobody knows what the future holds. 1:12:02 SM: Kind of a follow up to that, one of the things when you think about you in the in all the Beat writers is you would write and you are not afraid to go it alone. That you go it alone and then pay a price for it and one of the things we try to instill in college students when they become first year then by the time they graduate is the concept of self-esteem. Where they are comfortable with who they are, what they stand for, and what they believe in and they kind of develop a concept of integrity, which I believe the Beats have, and certainly the people that were genuine and the anti-war movement had. Do you feel? Do you sense this too? About how important it is that the Beats can really send a message to today's college students? Because of that concept of going at it alone? Because you have to have a sense of self-esteem to, to speak up and to believe in something and stand on your own two feet. 1:13:01 HJ: The kids I teach are far more vocal but these days, I am teaching graduate students. But I have taught undergraduates in the last couple of years and, and it is true that I am in New York, and I get really smart students at the New School but, I think there are pretty smart students everywhere. And they also they write a lot. Look at that! They write emails. They write all over Facebook. They do this, that. They are always expressing themselves, whether it is important or whether it is not important. But they have the idea of free expression, and that is a great entitlement. That is a very different thing. And in the course of expressing themselves, they are figuring out what they think. So that I think is a very, very good thing. And if I am me I have respect for, they are a little concerned about how they are going to support themselves, given the economy. There is no longer any sense that oh, well, I will just go get a job and stay with it then and then I will do my art on the side or whatever. Nothing like that! Their position is a little more open and scary. But they have to rely on themselves. Also, something we have not mentioned, which has to do with pop psychology. When I went to college, psychology and psychiatry and related professions, were very young. Not everybody went to be psychoanalyzed. Only a few intellectuals. You know, you did not have TV shows that explored people's motives and this and that and the other thing. There were not self-help books. The whole idea of self-correction was; hadn't even yet been developed. So there is a very different zeitgeist in that respect. That people think of their inner lives and, and their desires and are more willing to express them than before because that is socially acceptable. 1:15:36 SM: One thing, Hettie, though, is when you - willingness to express and willingness to act. And there is a big difference. I know today's college students are really into volunteerism. Probably 90 to 95 percent of college students are volunteering and helping people in a variety of ways. But when you define volunteerism, and you separate it from activism. Activism is twenty-four seven, seven days a week and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Whereas volunteerism is a specific time you go and do things and even though it is part of activism, it is not the way one lives one's life. And my question to you is, the impact that Boomers have had that is, they are now in their late (19)50s and to mid (19)60s, or heading toward mid (19)60s is that activism is the willingness to speak but also the willingness to act. And, and I have gotten a sense, this is just, just me, that universities today are afraid of the term activism, and they will constantly talk about volunteerism. Activism reminds them of an era when students protested whether it be in the late (19)30s or in the 1960s and it connotes disruption of the university, a challenge to authority again, and they are fearful of it. And um, I'd like your thoughts on that if you are teaching college students, and also the fact that I am sensing that a lot of college students, aren't activists, they are volunteers. 1:17:15 HJ: Well, you know, I think you are right, because they, all of those who have, you know, take a look at the election. All the volunteers, the student volunteers for the election, they saw the electoral process as an act for which they have something they could do volunteer, no matter what you call it, that could actually have a result within the democratic process. And I, you know, that was the first time I have seen that and it was to be applauded. Now, you know, like, one of one of the things that you learn if you study [inaudible] and people like that. It is like when people are hungry, you cannot expect them to be active politically, they are looking for something to eat. 1:18:16 SM: Mmm. 1:18:17 HJ: And a lot of these college students today are looking for something to eat. They are not as you know, they are not as confident that daddy and mommy will support them. And they are looking around rather warily. But they believe in participatory democracy. They believe in helping. But I do not think they have reached that stage although, ho! ho! Ho! If you want to look for one example, look at what a few was last month when the students at the New School took over a building. 1:19:02 SM: I did not know that. 1:19:03 HJ: You did not know that. 1:19:04 SM: No, I did not. 1:19:05 HJ: Well you better read up on it! Okay. Everybody wanted Bob Perry, the President, of the New School to resign. And guess what? After enough foment, he resigned. 1:19:18 SM: What was it over? 1:19:19 HJ: What? 1:19:19 SM: What was the issue? 1:19:21 HJ: The issue was the management of the university and his taking control and appointing himself not only the president, but provost and pre-Provost as with under his tenure. 1:19:34 SM: Wow. 1:19:36 HJ: There were firings of professors who'd worked in various departments or a long period of time. I was a couple of years ago, there was a lot of reorganization at the university but I had been teaching a class on the beats at the invitation of the person who was the head of the writing program at the undergraduate school, Lange. 1:19:59 SM: Uh huh 1:19:59 HJ: And he said that nobody needed to study the Beats anymore. So he took away my class. 1:20:06 SM: Unbelievable. 1:20:07 HJ: So I was fired for, you know, somebody I know would been working at the New School in various departments for ten years was fired. You know, things like that. Anyway, there was general dissatisfaction and the students, they figured well, you better, you know, you can look that up and see. 1:20:17 SM: I definitely will. I am proud of the students! 1:20:32 HJ: They were on the roof with masks on and everything. 1:20:35 SM: Okay. 1:20:37 HJ: [laughs] 1:20:37 SM: Well, that is, well, that is, that is good! 1:20:42 HJ: Yeah. 1:20:43 SM: Because I have always felt that students need to be empowered and feel that they are. 1:20:48 HJ: Yeah, well, you know, like, as I said, this is New York, and we get a lot of people here who have come here, specifically to make a big fuss, make a lot of noise and to do art and whatever and they are doing it. 1:21:07 SM: If there was one event, if, if we had a room of five hundred Boomers. And if there was one event that had the greatest impact on their life when they were young, and I mean, between the time they were born and say, thirty, what would that event be? 1:21:26 HJ: Gee, you know, I do not know, if you have to give me a date and one event? 1:21:35 SM: After 1960. 1:21:37 HJ: In the (19)60s? 1:21:39 SM: It would be mostly ̶̶ because Boomers did not go to seventh grade until they were in the 1960s. So it would have to be when they were in high school or college or early adulthood. 1:21:53 HJ: Well, you know certainly the constriction for the Vietnam War. When everyone had to register for the draft. Now and the war and it was revealed early on as a useless, colonialist war. That it seems to me what has to be the point because that really caused the most foment. 1:22:23 SM: Right. 1:22:24 HJ: You know, I guess for my generation would have been more the McCarthy era, but it has to be the war the war was the biggest thing. The Vietnam War was. 1:22:38 SM: If you could just respond just a quick thoughts on these things. What just your quick thoughts: Kent State and Jackson State? 1:22:48 HJ: Oh, Kent State got a lot of notice because of the killings, because of the photography, because at that point, TV news could disseminate information easily. But Jackson State, you see there you go! Jack State demonstrates how, again, the lives of young white people were valued more than the lives of young black people. 1:23:22 SM: Hmm. 1:23:23 HJ: And that is the way that you know, this is the world. This is the world in which I was bringing up black children. So you can understand why my emphasis has more to do with that issue, the civil rights issue, than anything else. 1:23:45 SM: How about Watergate? 1:23:48 HJ: Oh, well, Watergate, you know. None of us liked Nixon anyway, but that exposure you know! What year was Watergate again? 1:24:03 SM: (19)72, (19)73, (19)74. 1:24:08 HJ: Right. Well, it was exposing that kind of terrible lying and shenanigans that you would never expect from quote your word "authority." And it made us disrespect the elected political figure. 1:24:35 SM: Woodstock. 1:24:35 HJ: Woodstock? Oh, you know, Woodstock. Woodstock was charming and all people were covered with mud and everything it was so cute. I had to look upon it from afar and think is not it wonderful that they had all the time to go listen to music. 1:24:55 SM: How about the term "counterculture" which they think is the expansion of the Beat Generation. Yeah, 1:25:02 HJ: Yeah. You know, counterculture. It is all part of the culture from this removes. The counterculture has consumed the other culture although we still read a Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald is quoted a lot these days. It will all be one culture eventually. I was thinking the other day about there is a guy on the radio on WNYC who has a program called the American Songbook. And I have a son-in-law who's a musician and we were talking on the fourth about music and of course, we were talking about Michael Jackson and I thought well you know the American Songbook; one of these days, they will figure out that it has to include Carole King, and has to include all those wonderful you know, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay Wasting Time." You know, yeah, that is America and that is what, that is what, a lot of the rest of the world sees as American culture, so whether it is counter or not, it was counter then but it is not counter no more. 1:26:19 SM: How about the term "1968?" That was a pretty rough year. 1:26:25 HJ: Yeah, it was a pretty rough year, but, um, you know, it was personally harder for me than just about anything else. So, I do not know that I can quantify it. 1:26:39 SM: If you look in the while, you know, more than anybody, they have the beatniks whenever you know, especially in the (19)50s when I was a kid and I am sure a lot of Boomers this way they look they watched Dobie Gillis and of course Maynard G. Krebs. He was the beatnik and of course everybody loves Sandra D. is beautiful white girlfriend. But the beatniks became the hippies of the (19)60s then you had the yippies which was the extreme. What are your thoughts on the hippies and the yippies? 1:27:11 HJ: You know, everybody likes a name for something or other. The hippies, you know it was very cute. "Beatniks" also that that is something that Herbert (Huncke) made up after the beats had achieved some kind of note ̶ you know, it was right after Sputnik went up and that "N-I-K" is a Russian diminutive. I never thought us beatnik but people use it interchangeably with the Beats and I have to correct them all the time although sometimes I am too lazy to do that. But, you know, hippies, oh hippies wore flowers and smelled like patchouli and, you know, asked for spare change on the street and went barefoot and you know, were very sweet and very young and smoked a lot of dope. 1:28:14 SM: [laughs] 1:28:14 HJ: A very, very small group of you know, again using your word "activists", but they really did not have very much effect. 1:28:28 SM: Your thoughts on the students for. 1:28:30 HJ: Abbie Hoffman. 1:28:31 SM: Jerry Rubins. 1:28:33 HJ: Jerry ̶ yeah, but if you know if you think of the trouble in Chicago. 1:28:44 SM: Yes. 1:28:45 HJ: That was 1960 - what year? 1:28:48 SM: That was 1968. 1:28:50 HJ: Yeah, that was 1968. 1:28:51 SM: It was after the "Chicago Eight" when Bobby Seale was chained and that was the "Chicago Seven" because he wouldn't stop speaking. 1:29:01 HJ: But you see, that kind of thing. 1:29:04 SM: The SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society and The Weathermen and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, those groups. 1:29:13 HJ: Yeah, well, you know, I am personally acquainted with people who were in the Weather Underground, and they, they, if you talk about activism, they felt that what they were doing was just. But they did not realize, you know, they were naive. They were naive. They had no backing, they were just small underground groups of people and, you know, I am personally acquainted with some people who served time and many years in prison and some who still are in prison for those actions and they regret them. Because they were first acts that, you know, brought all of the all of the armor of the state against them as well as public opinion. You have to be ready if you are going to conduct guerilla warfare you have got to go up into the mountains and get a lot of folks around you, you can do it with ten people. I do not believe. 1:30:30 SM: When the best history books are written, and normally it is fifty years after an era, so when we are talking about the Beats, actually the best ones, are probably being written right now or in the coming years. And certainly the same thing is going to happen about the Boomer generation there has been so much written about the war and all the activisms be it right now and down the road are going to be the best books. What do you think? The, like, say one hundred years from now when students are in school, and they are reading about the (19)50s and the (19)60s and the (19)70s. How important were the Beats be in those history books, the Beat writers, and, and how important with the Boomers or the (19)60s and (19)70s be in those history books? 1:31:21 HJ: Well, I think, given the fact that we still read, Edgar Allan Poe, and we still read, oh, those wonderful Abigail Adams letters, it is possible that people will still be reading the Beats for their literary interest. But not but as I said, you know, I do not think much. I do not know what exactly people will be reading of the Boomer generation because that, you know, they did not have very much of an effect on me. So maybe there'll be maybe people will still be studying the history of the feminist movement. You know, when I was young, I used to be able to predict the future. And now that I am pretty old, I do not exactly know. Technology will change very many things. Who knows whether we'll, I hope will be reading. I do not know that we'll be reading books. If we cannot figure out some way to replace all the oil that is in the ground. We are not going to be able to have this wonderful internet anymore. So we got to figure out alternative energies. But you know, you cannot imagine. Could you imagine if you lived in 1850, the motor car? [laughs] 1:32:59 SM: My golly! Yeah, you are right in that, you know, the Boomers oftentimes, I do not know if this is the naiveté or whatever they always think they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to end racism, sexism, end all war. And that is not every member of the generation, but certainly a lot of them that were involved in activism. What, what kind of, is that just youthful thinking? Or is there a belief that one day we can do that? 1:33:27 HJ: At least their desire was in the right place. They wanted to, they wanted to heal. You know, going back to our first question. They saw what was wrong and what needed to be remedied. And being the problem is not, it is not addressing the problem, but it is not curing the problem. Maybe - 1:33:57 SM: There you go. OK? I am ready. Still there? 1:34:04 HJ: Well, I am saying that their last, they are seeing all those problems and wanting to remedy them doesn't have any bearing on whether they were able to. But, you know, we had the Voting Rights Act, we had the Equal Opportunity Employment Act, we had all different kinds of governmental decisions that were based on popular desires. If they were not, generally they were, yes, some quarters, they were imposed but we were still challenging all these, these, these laws and everything and it was still, as I said, we were young country and we were still fighting and that democracy is messy. 1:34:59 SM: I agree. One of the novels that was written in the early (19)70s. I forget the gentleman who wrote it, he only wrote three, he wrote a book called, "I think, therefore I am." And for me, and you can comment on this, I would hope that when people are reading books one hundred years from now that they will look at the Beats and some of the activism of the (19)60s and the issues that people were involved with, is that people can challenge authority, when for justice and equality and things that are right. Dr. King said oftentimes that, you know, he was not about breaking laws, but if laws were unjust, you have to protest against those laws. And I hope forever young people will look at this era because of the examples that these people raised that they think therefore they are, and they stand for something. Just your thoughts on that. 1:35:59 HJ: Well that is from Descartes, 'je pense' [I think in French] they took the translation from French. I think, therefore I am. Well, of course, I have you know, the idea that one can participate in democracy implies a basic understanding that that is how democracy works. And that one can, in concert with others affect change. And that is what that is what protests meant. You know resulted in sometimes. Or they publicize the opinions that people share. So I think it is quite wonderful. I think we've gone through, through electronic means to be able to do what the Greeks thought they were doing, although of course, yes, yes, they had slaves but participatory democracy. You know, it is a great, great invention. And oh, I hope it will last. 1:37:11 SM: Yeah, that was the SDS manifesto too. Yeah, I know that Harold Brown wrote a book in the early (19)70s, called "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." And, and so that was the kind of things that would be written at that particular time. My last question that centers on the, you know, the beats were often linked to San Francisco, a lot of the poets. San Francisco and New York. San Francisco and New York. And you look at one of the major happenings of the (19)60s, which was the summer of love and (19)67 in San Francisco and of course, Allen Ginsburg was part of that. But so you see these constant links between the beats and the boomers, particularly those that may be connected to the counterculture or activists dealing with a lot of issues. Your thoughts on some why San Francisco? Why New York? They were the two centers and youth obviously went to San Francisco in that (19)67: Summer of Love. 1:38:14 HJ: Well, you know, those are the two places that had established our, our colonies, if you want to call them colonies or whatever. Our scenes, our world, both coasts like that. You did not care about Chicago art, particularly nor did you hear about Dallas, Texas art or you know, or Knoxville, Tennessee, maybe, maybe the Grand Ole Opry. But those were places where one could live a bohemian life and it had thriving poetry scenes and that was that was why Allen was out there in the first place. That is why "Howl" was published there. Ferlinghetti had settled there, you know, he is from Westchester County, New York. And then of course, New York. New York was always thought of as, heaven help me, the cultural capital of the United States. People will disagree, I suppose. But even so, it remains that way. And I think all of us just figured those were the two places to be. I do not think there is any, any particular reason. Except that the swimming is good. 1:39:37 SM: Yeah. Well, I am not going to ask you to respond to all these names, because I am, you know, there is there are a lot of personalities of the (19)60s if you want to, but I think you are okay. Is there any question that you thought I was going to ask that I did not ask that you'd like to respond for a final comment? 1:39:59 HJ: No. Not, not really and, you know, as I told you, my perspective on the whole thing is from somebody who was always off trying to struggle through her life and invent myself. And, you know, talk about feeling trying to make a place in the world for the races. I suppose to interact, come together if they would. And so, that is what I am still doing, I suppose. 1:40:41 SM: As I conclude the interview, and I will go back to that very first question of Marilyn Young making the comment that the (19)60s began with the Beats. Could you make a final comment on why she felt that way? And you, I think, agreed. Why were the beats so important and as the precursor to the (19)60s. 1:41:01 HJ: Because we were the first people to open her mouths. (Laughs.) Against, everything that we saw that was wrong. But do not forget along with the beat there were, I keep plugging the painters and the musicians but you know, there was Tom Leherer who wrote "Little boxes, and they are all made out of ticky tacky," you know that song? *"Little Boxes" was written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, and was made popular in 1963 by Pete Seeger. 1:41:28 SM: Right. 1:41:28 HJ: Yeah, you know, everyone was beginning to see that the instructions that were given after the war, which did not end really, until (19)46. And then there was, you know, a period of people coming home and the (19)50s, but the ideas of go forth and multiply and make a lot of money and shut up, was not working anymore, because people were suffering under it. Under that load of silence and the Cold War so yeah, that is where it began, you know. Especially with Allen and Jack so we have to applaud the both and I hope they are watching. 1:42:10 SM: I am sure they are and then when you look at the musicians, people, the one person that comes to mind and that is just me is Nat King Cole. I just think he was an unbelievable person. They had him on television last night in a retrospective. He died in (19)65. But he was such a, he was the first African American to have his own TV show. So would he be included in some of these musicians and artists you are talking about? 1:42:38 HJ: Well, you know, I am just talking about not, not necessarily exposure, but style. And the inclusion of say, Jazz, not just as not popular music for entertainment but as, as a great American art form. So that has to do with studying women's history. You know, it is all connected with this push for inclusion, and for proper estimation, and quality above all, talk about counterculture of inclusion in American culture. A void, a voice, in American culture. 1:43:29 SM: What musicians in the (19)60s do you think had that feeling? 1:43:33 HJ: No, well say musicians in general. Look at Bob Dylan. You know, all the blues musicians who influenced him and were. Oh what about Aretha Franklin? You know all these people. Aretha saying "You better think, think about what you what you are trying to do to me." You know, all that. Oh, Michael Jackson. (Laughs.) there has been a lot of stuff about Michael Jackson and some people are very tired of it. But, you know, he was such an influence on my kids and you know. 1:44:17 SM: Oh yeah, I agree. 1:44:20 HJ: And, you know, every when I had the windows open all weekend, cars would go by with their radio blasting. Michael Jackson song "You got to be starting' something." 1:44:36 SM: His memorial is tomorrow. 1:44:38 HJ: Yeah. 1:44:39 SM: So well, Hettie, thank you very much. In a couple weeks, I will be sending you a form. It is a waiver form you just sign it and it is going to be a while for you all these things transcribed, but you will see it before I ever do anything with it. And wish Susan, I mean, I wish Joyce would still do it, but she is not going to I guess so. 1:44:58 HJ: Yeah. You cannot change her mind sometimes. 1:45:01 SM: Yeah, and I sent a letter to Anne but I never heard from her so I got to put a call through out to the school. And I have sent three letters to Ed Sanders and 1:45:13 HJ: I have no idea where to find him now. 1:45:15 SM: Well, nobody can. He has moved three times. Maybe on purpose. 1:45:20 HJ: It could be. 1:45:21 SM: But Hettie, thank you very much. 1:45:24 HJ: You are welcome. 1:45:25 SM: And you have a great day. 1:45:26 HJ: You too. 1:45:27 SM: Bye. (End of Interview) 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>. Description 2 Microcassettes 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 Hettie Jones Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jones, Hettie ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; College teachers; Jones, Hettie--Interviews Description An account of the resource Hettie Jones is the author of 20 books but is best known for her memoir of the Beat Scene. She started the literary magazine Yugen, has taught writing at SUNY Purchase, Penn State, and the University of Wyoming, and is one of the faculty members in the graduate program for creative writing at The New School in New York City. She has been chair of a plethora of writing programs and has received grants to start a writing program in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Jones received her Bachelor's degree in Drama from the University of Virginia and pursued her postgraduate work at Columbia University. 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 2009-07-06 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.131a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.131b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 105:31 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/efe8765bb6f08aeb73e174d64a397a2a.jpg 7cf0040f5b0e5e71fed8340105ccb07a https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7408df7b8256f4f5206599cf616b0257.mp3 23faea88a00e74e06173990854e5de75 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 2003-11-25 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Morris Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"John Morris, a native of Downingtown, PA, joined the Army Security Agency in 1965 and served two years in Vietnam. Following Vietnam, he was stationed at Fort Wolters, Texas, to train other operators in route to Vietnam until 1969. John Morris is a life member and active with the Vietnam Veterans of America. He is also a life member of the Veterans of Foreign War and the Disabled American Veterans. He received the Chapel of the Four Chaplain’s Legion of Honor Award."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4487,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"15":"Arial"}">John Morris, a native of Downingtown, PA, joined the Army Security Agency in 1965 and served two years in Vietnam. Following Vietnam, he was stationed at Fort Wolters, Texas, to train other operators in route to Vietnam until 1969. John Morris is a life member and active with the Vietnam Veterans of America. He is also a life member of the Veterans of Foreign War and the Disabled American Veterans. He received the Chapel of the Four Chaplain’s Legion of Honor Award. Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Veterans; Bill Clinton; Watergate; Dwight Eisenhower; George Bush; Dr. \\nMartin Luther King Jr.; Anti-war movement; Lyndon Johnson; Richard Nixon; Eugene McCarthy; Muhammad Ali; Baby boom generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Veterans; Bill Clinton; Watergate; Dwight Eisenhower; George Bush; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Anti-war movement; Lyndon Johnson; Richard Nixon; Eugene McCarthy; Muhammad Ali; Baby boom generation. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 230:02 Subject LCSH Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Interviews; Morris, John--Interviews 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 McKiernan Interviews Interview with: John Morris Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 20 November 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: And yeah, I tested this beforehand. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s and when you were young, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of that period? JM: With the question? I will answer the draft. Okay. The draft was something that was always there hanging over my head from the time I left high school until the time I was finally drafted. And it sort of controlled a lot of things that happened to me. For example, it was hard to get a job because you might get drafted. It was hard to start a relationship because you might get drafted. So that would be the first thing to come to my mind. The draft itself. SM: Do you think that was also on the minds of many of your peers? JM: No, absolutely. SM: In terms of their futures? JM: Well, and of course back in those days a lot of guys forced their way into college just to stay out from under the draft for some period of time, just to get some relief from it because it is always there. And you always knew who was being drafted that week or that month and where you stood in line to be drafted. How many months did you have before it would be your turn? SM: Do you remember what your number was? JM: Oh, I was before numbers. SM: Oh, you were before the numbers. JM: Before the numbers, yeah. SM: Okay. JM: Numbers were for wimps. Come On. SM: Okay, well, I remember the numbers. JM: Yeah, no, I was in the service when the number thing started. SM: One of the things about the boomer generation, which is often defined as individuals born between (19)46 and (19)64, some people say there are people born between (19)42 and 1960, give or take a couple years. But when you look at the boomer generation, in recent years there has been a lot of criticism of this generation of 70 million for the breakdown of some of the values in our society and our culture. And I would like your thoughts on people who make those kinds of comments on that particular generation. And of course they are making comments on the drugs and a lot of different things. JM: They are mostly right. We were the most pampered generation up to our time. Our parents, who we now refer to as the greatest generation, fought a war and depression and did not have any of the benefits we have and gave them to us. And we turned around and acted as though they were some sort of birthright. So we, the group that you are referring to, the boomers, of which I am a point man since I was born in (19)45, we were spoiled. We really were. We did not know about hunger. We did not know what it meant to have to get up and help around the farm and things like that. And in a sense, we probably had it too easy and drugs became a passage for us. Most people of my age smoked marijuana, perhaps just things that were quite a bit harder. I believe we almost all drank. So we were out for a good time and we were not very mature. So yes, they were right. SM: Do you think a lot of this stuff has been passed on to their children? Because right now what you are seeing on college campuses and all over America is the children of boomers have been in college for a lot of years. Now we are starting to see the very beginning of grandchildren of boomers coming, although it is still mostly the children of boomers. What sort of an influence do you feel that they have had on their children in terms of not only these issues dealing with our culture, but involvement in caring about America, but most involvement in voting and things like that? JM: Well, I am probably one of the luckiest people. My children are great. They have turned into two very sparkling young adults. So I can only speak from a very narrow point of view and I am lucky in that their friends also fall into that category. So I see mostly the good of the younger generation. And I think that is mostly the majority of the younger generation. And this newer crowd seems far more levelheaded than that X generation that came between the boomers and the new generation. And this newer crowd is, I will say from 18 through 25, seem to have their act together at a very young age. I am encouraged, but also, again, I see a very small segment of that grouping. SM: It is always hard to generalize an entire generation of 70 million. But I think the individuals that have been making these comments over the years have been people like George Will. And he always likes to get a jab at the Boomers whenever he can. I know Newt Gingrich had his time when he made commentaries, yet he was a boomer himself. JM: Yeah. SM: So there is a lot of thoughts on this particular thing. Have you changed at all in terms of your thoughts on the boomers over time? What were your thoughts of your generation at the time you were young and here it is now, believe it or not, 30 plus years hence. Have you changed your opinions on your generation over time or are they still the same? JM: Well, at the time when we were younger, say high school, mostly what I feel we felt was pressure. We looked at our parents as our role models, promptly decided that was not who we wanted to be and yet did not know how to go out and forge a new way. And we did find a way that we may call those the (19)60s, especially the late (19)60s. I think we turned everything upside down during this period of time looking for a way to become anything other than our parents. Now, looking back on that, that was again part of our selfishness. We decided we had to make our mark. And even today I think we are still doing that same thing because we are changing healthcare, we are changing retirement, all the other things. And I guess it is because of the great numbers that we have and you move that many people around, things change. Especially if they wanted them to change. SM: All right. That leads into something about one of the most unique things about the generation is its size. There has never been anything like it before, whether 65 to 70 million is the count most people give to the generation. Is there anything that is unique to this generation beyond its size? Because obviously its size stands out. JM: Yeah, selfishness there, both individually and collectively. And I say that and I put myself in that category. I was selfish. I still look at everything and think how does it affect me? How's the best going to be in my favor? Things like that. And I think that is be part and parcel of being a boomer. Yes. Other people are that way who are not boomers, but I think we pretty much set the stage for that or gave them the role model. But again, selfishness. SM: Thing is, a lot of the people our age and boomers as a whole used to always say amongst themselves when they are young that we are the most feeling, that we are the most unique generation in history because we are going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. We are going to end racism, sexism, homophobia. We are going to end war, we are going to have peace, help the poor, and all these other things. Well, if selfishness in your thought is number one, what happened? Because a lot of the people got involved in the causes to help others. JM: And I think they got disillusioned because they had a very low threshold for that sort of thing, that they could not get instant results through gratification. They just moved along. That is not to demean those folks that stayed in it for the long run. More credit to them. But going back to your question, yeah, well, we wanted to change all those things and we have not done a whole lot of good about it. And those things still exist today and probably will for far too long a period of time. SM: Looking at the generation now and kind of looking at characteristics, both positive, negative, if you were to list, and you have already talked about selfishness, but if you are going to list some of the negatives and some of the positives, what would they be? JM: I think part and parcel we are a very creative generation. I think a lot of the inventions we now take for granted came from our generation. That is definitely a positive. I think we had a work ethic taught to us by our parents that we continued. I think we picked some of the good out of the greatest generation and kept it going forward. That is one of them. The negative thing would be, I am not really certain there is a large number of us who are active in controlling our governments, both in the local and national levels. I think the ones that are in that are the ones that would have always been political, whatever generation they were born to. A large number of us get apathetic about things. It is that old fa- JM: Large number as get apathetic about things. It is that whole thing again, we wanted to make such a change in the world, at least in our country. And then when it could not happen, we thought, What the heck. Cannot be done? If we cannot do it this generation, then it just cannot be done. And we became that apathetic. It has been a fun group to be involved with. I think humor has been cranked up quite a bit since we took over the reins. I think industry and commerce and all business has changed quite a bit simply because we were in there now pulling the strings. We were the power seats. We were the guys in their (19)50s that are controlling everything. And I think for the betterment of business everywhere. And I think some of the things you see in today's workforce that were not there 30 years ago are there because boomers put them there. We were the guys that put in the baby nursery rooms for people of schools. I think were the ones that probably cranked up the healthcare coverage. These are things I do not think you went to work and expected back in 1965. SM: Of course your main negative one was the selfishness aspects. Do you think the generation X, the generation of now, were equally selfish? JM: I think they might have even been more selfish, but they were also... What is the word I am looking for? I think they played angst too much. They wanted to be un-understood, not understood, and they made that their mask. So the selfishness was inner and was in focus and they did not want you to know who they were. SM: Peter Mack was a Painter of that area. He is actually still doing paintings. He is a multi-millionaire now. But back then he was up and coming and struggling and then very successful Artist. He had a painting with words that said, You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful. Your thoughts on that in reference to the boomer generation and the youth of the (19)60s and (19)70s? Because I put them together. Okay. JM: Well, the phraseology you used sounds very (19)60s, does not it? Do your thing, I will do mine. Come together like The Beatles. Well, first thing I hear in there is this overwhelming granting of permission. I am going to let you go ahead and do whatever you want. I am expecting that in return. I am expecting you to grant me the same permission. That is a nice overall way to explain what I think this boomer generation wanted. They wanted to do what they wanted to do and they wanted other people to feel free to do it. And I think the last part of that is a great phrase because if you come together, it is even better. But it is very difficult to go do your thing and then not conflict with other people doing their thing. Example might be, I want to have children, but I do not want to get married. What a burden that puts on society. That is the selfishness I was talking about. And bumping it up a generation, I think that phrase probably would have stuck in their throats. They probably would have said that is my mom and dad's thing. I do not want any part of that. They wanted to be left alone. I do not think necessarily they even thought about their own thing in doing it. Might be way off base, but that is just what I would say. SM: John, when you think of that period, is there any one movement that stands out above all others? And I mean, we are talking about a generation that saw so many movements, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, gay and lesbian, the Chicano, the Native American, they all seem to be together. But was there one movement that you feel stood out amongst everything else that when you talk about the (19)60s generation and the boomers, that is the movement? JM: Well, as you asked that question, what came to my mind was the sports industry. Back in the (19)60s, we all lived for the World Series, sports athletes were heroes to us. It has changed so much in the past 35, 40 years that I do not recognize it anymore. And I think what they have done is we still put these people up on pedestals and then we try to follow their example. And that is where I think we get a little off. And as you were saying that the first thing that, like I said, just went right to the front of my mind is sports world. I know they do not have a whole lot of effect on our society, but they have changed quite a bit. I am very disappointed in what they have done. I used to be a great fan of all sports. I hardly watch anything anymore. I cannot put up with it. SM: Do you think that what has happened to your thoughts and what has happened to the athlete is a symptom of, again, a generation which covers the (19)60s and the (19)70s of people who, because they did not trust leaders and they saw so many things that they were disappointed in that, they have even got to find something wrong when something is right, even in an athlete? That no athlete can be pure and clean anymore. You have always got to find something negative on a person. Is there something there on that? JM: That is a good point. Back in the (19)60s, they used to hide these things about athletes. I mean, look like Mickey Mantle is an example. I had all night party and drinking hard and waking up from a drunken stupid to go four for four. And we did not know about that. Yeah, it was not until you told us, he got out. But now today, let us use Darryl Strawberry is an example, we knew his every movement. If he did not come to practice that day, we knew about him. And yesterday it was easy to find fault with a guy like that. Whereas we still idolized Mickey Mantle. And I think that what I was trying to find is the gist of your question is how fair has that been, it is our view of these athletes. Yes, they are like the poster child for the people that are in it for themselves. And it is probably been the way it has always been with sports, but it has changed so much. I can remember when the local sports teams in Philadelphia would not play Wilt Chamberlain a hundred thousand dollars a year and now they are paying guys like that that kind of money a game. SM: And the minimum for a rookie, I think is a quarter million or something like that today, if you sit on the bench and get to bat 40 times. Amazing. Getting back to the movements, I want to get back to the anti-war movement in America and what was happening on the college campuses. How important, in your opinion as a veteran, because you are coming from a different perspective here than maybe some other people I have interviewed, how important do you feel the anti-war movement was on college campuses over the (19)60s and early (19)70s in ending that war? JM: Well, it sure got a lot of press. From the time I can remember, maybe I should give you a little background here. When I went to Vietnam, that was 1966, there was hardly any type of protest anywhere against the war. I got back in (19)67 and that was just starting the White Heat of the protest movement. So I went from nothing to intensity within a short period of time, pan of year, not knowing anything. That information was not given to us over there. We heard about it from the new guys coming in. So I think what they did, they got a lot of press. The newspapers and TV people loved them. So they got up there a lot. And I think they bumped the service people off of the stage. And I think they behaved, my word is childishly, is that right? They behave like children and they wanted to spotlight. And in the long run, I do not want to cast this aspersions to anybody's beliefs, but I think a lot of them were just in it for the fun, for what they think they could do. It might have been that part of their lives where they thought they could make a change. And were trying very hard. And I think they cluttered up as they clogged up the works, in my opinion. And then the final question was, do I think they helped bring me in into war? I think what they did was they made it sound as though their opinion was so prevalent throughout the United States that it was the common opinion. And I think Nixon being the consummate politician he was, decided to bring war to some form of an end, his peace with honor to get it behind us. I think he probably saw that along with his cohorts, that America was not going to go anywhere as long as the war was going on and people were still protesting it. So in a sense, yeah, they did. I think they may have prolonged the war is another aspect because if we had have been able to go in and do what we needed to do militarily, we would not have been there until (19)72. SM: All right. When you are talking about the anti-war movement, again, could you give me a little bit about your background when you went to school, high school and how right out... If you had college or you went right into the military, just a little bit of that background and the years. JM: Graduated in (19)63. Bishop Shanahan just had our College Reunion this past Saturday, and went to work. I did not go to college. And there is that drafting again. So (19)63 through November of (19)65, I was under the cloud of the draft. Went to work here in West Chester near the college. Now I will think about it, I did not pick up on anything anti-war moves. I did not pick up on any student activities one way or the other. Well, I worked in West Chester at Mosteller, the old department store. Left that in 1965 to start my own business. And I started out in dining town and became oblivious to everything else that was going on in my life. I was not married, I was starting a business. I was working 16, 18 hours a day. I was not reading the paper, I was not watching television. I do not know what was going on. Anything I cared about was where am I in the draft. So long behold or round about September, October, I knew my number was going to be up. So I looked for alternative ways to do my service. And most of those doors were slammed shut. There was no openings in the National Guard or the reserves. Getting into the Navy was difficult. Air Force was almost impossible. And for some reason I could still never explain even to myself, I joined the Army to avoid getting drafted. SM: I heard that before, but- JM: I joined the Army to avoid being drafted. I signed up for four years where I could have got out in two of being drafted. Now if you ever want an example of a bad decision, that was it. My time spent in the military till November of (19)66 was in training. No contact or no attitude or anything like that about anybody else who was doing anything else. The college kids, other people of my generation. Drafted to go in November 29th, which was my birthday. I thought that was cruel that the government could do that to me. Joined on the 17th of November and November 17th, 1966, left Boston for Vietnam. Stayed over there till November of (19)67. Came back here. And now looking back on it, I was going into a world I did not know. We were told not to pick fights with civilians when we got off the plane. I am thinking, nobody ever said that to me before. Why would I pick a fight with a civilian? We did not know. The big thing then, Steve, was the mini-skirt. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. SM: I remember that. JM: We were all anxious to get home and see these mini-skirt things. And we were in the airport at 3:00 in the morning, there was not much going on. There was Austin, there was a group of other people. And probably for the first time I encountered that coldness that people of my own age had towards the military. When you are just hanging out, there is people your age. You gravitate together. Well, as I gravitated towards them, they gravitated away from me. They did not want [inaudible]. When I finally got that through my sleepy head, I just walked away. That was my first in contact with that sort of thing. And on the way home, I encountered another one time, right here in West Chester. And I just pretty much said, They were a bunch of jerks, and went home. So that was my background. Now it was November, 1967. The summer of love is over and the demonstrations, the protests are starting to really heat up. And I am looking around saying, Did I do something wrong? And some people bother to tell me that yes I did. By agreeing to go in over there, I was branded a coward by people. SM: Could you explain again, just your thoughts on those moments when you were on that plane flying to Vietnam and when you were on that plane returning from Vietnam? JM: A little background, I did not go over on plane. I went on a boat, ship. That took, I think 11 days. Mostly what that was, the whole time spent was we were apprehensive. They tried to fill our days in with the DS classes and things like that. [inaudible], Jalapeno gun for the thousand time in your life. They try to do that, but the whole time all you know is you are going to Vietnam. And they tried to keep it... What is the word I am looking for? Not somber. Professional. There was no partying. Nobody was in the mood to party. The night before we landed in Vietnam, they let the marines land by letting them crawl down those ladders they put down the side and into those sand pants and take them off to the beach. And we are watching these guys and often the distance, we can see the flashing lights, what we assume were some mortar rounds, bullets, whatever. And we are watching these guys going in there and we are just saying, poor some of bitches, man. They are drawing into the heat of the... They are going at night. How smart is that? And then we got Marines. He expected. So next day it was our turn. And rather than climbing down rope ladders, they just had some kind of gang wave for us to walk down. We just walked with our stuff and we were not Marines. So I had our stuff, which is double bags, rifles, whatever else we had on us. And we got into the same sand pants and we were hardhats when we were in gear, we had all our gear on and we were riding to the shore to where they were going to let us out. And all I am thinking about are those movies I have seen where they were sitting in those metal targets and this big thing goes dropping down like that. And there was this Major standing there taking pictures. And I thought how could it be. So we just drug our shit out of there. And he was just there, just taking pictures. And he directed us to some people who told us where we needed to go. And that was the way over. Now, the way back, that was quite a bit different story. I have written an article about this one. They lined us up on the tarmac and they put us alphabetically. So I was able to tell a guy who had been ragging me for a year to put my time in, to put his time in, because I was M and he was S. So it was, put your time in. I was leaving Vietnam before. So we got into the Continental Airlines. I cannot forget. First Miniskirt. First mini skirt on a regular American girl, because we had entertainers over there and they wore the miniskirts on purpose. First American girl with the miniskirt. So we got into the plane and we were sitting there and there is this feeling you get, it was almost like, okay, move this effing plane. And you feel the runway. You feel it running down the runway, I should say. Just as the wheels lift, you get that weightless feeling. Just as they lifted, the plane went nuts. We all started cheering and slapping fires, all that stuff like that. And the plane took off and it settled down for five minutes later. Guys did not know each other. We were just congratulating to each other. Things like that. And it was wonderful on our way home. Plane had not cleared space yet, we were not going to wait to party. We were on the air off the ground, We were an American territory now. And I will never forget this, the Crown Royal comes in that blue bag, purple bag. This old guy got up there. He was like [inaudible], and he said, Would anybody like to drink? And he held up, and of course we went, Whoa, yeah. He says, I got one thing to ask you, is do not drink, I got a toast. And okay, so we passed on little plastic cups. Rule was, and they told us this, if you open a bottle, it must be finished before the plane lands. Yeah, you can have your alcohol, but if you open the bottle, it has got to be finished. You cannot walk off a plane with a bottle with booze in. So that bottle was going down. So we all got our cups, and the sole guy, he says, I do not know any of you guys on this plane. I just got one thing to say to you. And that old Sergeant Gruff, he says, Well done. And then, hear-hear. These Stewards came by and says, Would anybody else like a drink? Yeah, mama over here. SM: Yeah, my friend is going to move his seat so that your miniskirts can down. JM: And he woke us up about every three hours to eat. I will never forget that. SM: And how many hours to get back from Austin? 22? It is a real long flight. JM: It was 24 hours total. So part of that was spent in a wide waiting, which was the hard part. The hard part, meaning there were guys who were getting off the plane to meet their... Guys on R and R. That was where they were going. They were going to pick up other flights to go to other places. I was going to stay on the flight to San Francisco and people got off were Military, and the people who got on were civilians. And all of a sudden we were contagious. We got the looks that leave us alone. Can you be more quiet please? Type of attitude. That was the first of that I encountered anywhere that, oh my God, I have to sit with soldiers, type of attitude. And they were rather snotty about it. SM: These are all ages, these people? JM: All ages. Yeah. Forgive them now, probably guys who were in World War II. I do not know if it was just that group of people who knows who they were. They were going back to America and they had to suffer in a ride with a bunch of returning Soldiers. But it got better. It got better because the plane I picked up in San Francisco and flew into Chicago. I was sitting back in what we call coach now, that was second class, but those days, and the Steward just came up to me and said, Come with me please. I thought, yeah. What do you have in my mom? Right after the first class, first seat on the right-hand side on the aisle, she had, The Captain instructed me to put you here. You have been upgraded, because I was new. SM: That is wow. JM: And I sat next to a guy who was a Korean War veteran, and we talked the whole way over. And he was not a snot, he was one of the good guys. And we talked and I told him I did not do combat. I said, I almost used that as a sort of, “Hi, my name is John Morris. I did not do any combat. First thing I wanted you to know about me.” And we talked. And it was nice. Of course, you did not buy any drinks. The Stewards just came by and talked all the time to me. It was nice. SM: And that was a long flight. JM: Sam says it was a Chicago. Chicago got a little uglier in that. That is a hard airport. The ride back was great highs and great lows, followed by great highs and then great lows. Chicago was one of the great lows. Get to your plane, remembering the admonition. Do not pick any fights. Hang together. Military guys were clustering together. That is what would happen. Probably the only time I can remember that guys like Marines, Navy, Air Force would get together on purpose. Usually you break off into your own little groups, but we sit with Marines and Airmen, Sailors and all that stuff. SM: I remember my dad in World War II when he was in Japan two weeks after they dropped the bomb and they were told to be together because if they went individually, they would probably be dead. Getting back to some general questions here, I want your thoughts again about the boomers. The thought was that they were going to change the world. A lot of people thought they were going to change the world. There has been a lot of good things that have happened since they have... Hopefully we still have problems with race relations, but there has been a lot of laws passed on outlawing segregation. There has been quite a few positive things from respect to women's and women's equality in the United States and so forth, but just overall was that hubris on the part of the boomers that were going to change the world, that were going to be different or that were going to be the greatest generation, and in the history of this place, there will be no group ever like us? JM: Yeah, you make a good point. A lot of the things that we see now has improvement since we took over, things happened because we changed them. There are a lot of things now, although the women's rights movement is a good example. Women are now equal to men, as in some areas it did not happen for a long time, in the employment world, for example. The idea of a woman owning a company back in 1960 was unusual using that woman inherited it from her father. Today it is common. And we applaud women who step forward and take roles in industry and politics and things like that. And it is okay for them to still want to be mommies. And I think that is a great change that this generation has made that, Go back to Peter or Max, do your own thing. SM: Yes. I am trying to ask veterans their thoughts on the Nurses, the women who served there with the men. John, could you explain how the Vietnam vets looked at the women who were over in Vietnam? What were their thoughts? JM: Well, I never encountered a Nurse the whole time I was over there. Does that help you any? SM: Yeah. Or women in any other positions, whether they be like the services I mentioned earlier, or people in civilian positions, or the Donut Dollies. There were a lot of women in different roles and not just Nurses in the medical area. JM: I ran across civilian women in two categories, Donut Dollies, who were wonderful women. And for the most part they were not attractive women. And it is probably not a nice thing to say, but they were not the decent ones I met. But they were just common American women who wanted to do something. They came over from America to Vietnam to hand out the donuts, to talk to the soldiers. And they were always very nice. They would always very nice of us. They would serve us chow, which was a surprise when you went into the chow line because there you were covered in mud. Chances are good. You had those metal eating things and messier that we had. You did not expect to look up and see a woman of any caliber standing. It is like, ugh. The ones I had met always made it a point to call you Mr. Morris. Not specialist or private. Mr. Morris. And I always thought that was a nice touch because they brought you back home. You were not a private, you were not a number anymore. This nice lady was calling you Mr. And then you say, Well, call me John. SM: One of the things about the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC is that the wall was built to help with the healing process for the Vietnam veterans and their families, and certainly to heal a nation. Anybody who have read Jan Scruggs book knows it was supposed to be a non-political entity. It is to heal and to pay tribute to those who served, those who were wounded in the families and so forth. To heal. I like your thoughts on where are the Vietnam veterans, just in your thoughts in terms of obviously the healing, how important that wall is toward the healing and had the divisions that were so strong at that period between those who were against the war and the people who served, has there been any healing with respect to those two groups? JM: Let me start with that one. When you had the wall here, that is probably the most dramatic example of what you are just talking about. As you might remember, we had a bunch of guys who were bent out of shape about some of the problems you had with that. The political problems. The guys I encountered that put me off were the guys who seemed to be expecting me to agree with them that what they did was, and the only thing I could say is, Well, if you did the right thing, if that is what you thought at the time was right, I am not going to say it was wrong. But they wanted me to say what they did was right and say, Well, you have to be more comfortable with that than me. That is an example of one of the situations that come out for this particular issue. I still think today that these baby boomer protestors who are in their (19)50s and (19)60s right now should get comfortable with what they did, accept it and move along and not try to get confirmation from people like me and other veterans that what they did was right. And for most part, I will speak for the veterans I have had contact with, we do not care about the protestors. We do not hate them, we do not like them. They were there, they existed, but that is done. And we are dealing with our own issues and we are trying to get through it all. And we have to deal with that same issue. Are we comfortable with what we did? If the answer is yes, then we are happy. If it is no, then you have to find a way to get to yes. And hating somebody else that is not going to get you there. But every now and then, I run across an old protestor and they push that button on me. They are looking for me to validate what they did. That is fine. SM: During that, we have had those individuals who were here, who were protestors during that conference. And of course a lot of people have met Professor Davidson here on campus who had been the founder of SDS. And he is very comfortable with what he did. But he never needs to have validation. JM: Good friend. I liked him. SM: Yeah. And he is so genuine, that is why I am finding out between a lot of vets that I have interviewed is the fact that they are... And I like your opinion- SM: ...between a lot of vets that I have interviewed is the fact that they are... And I would like your opinion. Maybe they may never like the person totally, but do you feel there was a greater respect toward the person who was truly against the war, not trying to get out of the draft, but it was just truly against the war, was sent to jail oftentimes and paid a price for what they did than the person who was just trying, as you said, playing the game to get out of the draft, having a good time? Is there a difference or are all protestors the same? JM: No, not all protestors are the same. I am trying to remember his last name. David something, married to Joan Baez. He went to jail. SM: David Harris. JM: David Harris. He burned his draft card, did all the protesting, went to jail. For that, I think he could be admired. He, to this day, is a very strong war protestor. He is one of those guys that keeps trying to explain why he did what he did. Probably that is the only reason he is on TV is because of what he did. Now see, I do not have a problem with a guy like that. I do not know if many other people will. Muhammad Ali, there are guys in my chapter who said what he did was fine with them. With me it was not. I had to answer the call. I had to do the step forward. Anybody who did not do that to me was not as forthright as David Harris was. Now, if Ali walked through the door I would shake his hand, absolutely. But that particular thing he did with his life, I did not approve of then and I still do not. SM: The wall. Sometimes when you ask people there is an obvious answer, but every answer I have ever received is totally different. And the unique effect that that wall has had on them, just your thoughts on the importance of that wall in the veteran community, period. JM: It is mecca to the Vietnam veteran. It is where we go because we are drawn there. I did not go there until my 40th birthday and I told my wife that I was going to take my 40th birthday off work and I was going to go to the wall and I wanted to go alone because I did not know what I was going to do when I got there. I did not know if I was going to get half a mile away and back down. I did not know. So, that is what I did on my 40th birthday. And it was somewhat cleansing for me to do that. The reality still never hit me until I went with my chapter. And there I think is where I am headed with this answer. I think it is groups of veterans versus veteran singular. It is what it means to the groups of veterans, the VFWs, the Vietnam Veterans of America, all those guys. To us it is our home away from home. It is our mecca. And on a personal level, I am tickled to death that Jan Scruggs was able to do that. It probably took somebody like him to get it done, but thank God he was there to do it. SM: Yeah. You know about the politics of Washington to be able to get through the crap. Well, I will not even go into that, but you got to admire the person. You just have to admire him. You have really said some really good things on the healing process. I have a question here. Actually, it is going to go into the section where we are talking about when the best history books are written. My background is in history and the best World War II books are being written right now, 50 years after World War II. There has always been some good ones. But the historians will always say that the best books on any particular period begin 50 years after an event. Now, we are 30 years out from Vietnam and a lot of the books have been written and so forth, and a lot of books in the (19)60s have been written. But when the best history books are written on this particular era, what do you think they will say about this generation of Americans born over a 20-year period of time defined as the boomer generation, their impact on America, and I am including in this for your answer, those who served and those who did not serve? JM: Okay. Starting with those who served. Those- SM: You are fine. JM: Okay. Those guys were put into a no-win situation and when they ever had any movement towards winning, they would change the game. And then when they did not win, they were blamed for not winning. So, that has to be probably the most frustrating thing about that time for veterans who are boomers, the hell that they put some of those guys through over there, the combat veteran, to not make it worth anything in the long run. What we did in 1975, we bugged out. We left everybody behind and we just turned our back on all the hard work that was done. And that is probably going to be what those best books are going to talk about, the frustrations of the wars. Why did we go out every morning into the rice paddies and the jungles and recapture the same land that we captured the day before, only to leave it again at dusk day after day after day? That is senseless. If you want to lose a war, that is what you do. It is almost as though our leaders sat down with that purpose in mind. How can we lose this war? We cannot go into Cambodia even though we are being shot at from there. There is all these rules. Our hands were tied. SM: If you were to ultimately place the, it could be a combination of a lot of things, but if you were to just simply say point blank, the reason why we lost this war, who is to blame? Is it our leaders or lack thereof? JM: Our civilian leaders I think are responsible because they never had the intention... Well, first I think they found themselves caught in the war. The early stages of the war, we sent advisors under that catchall phrase. And I think as things got worse and we started to commit troops, we got stuck there, the quagmire that was Vietnam. And then our leaders decided for their reasons, which maybe in 50 years we will find out, that they did not want to do anything to actually win this war. And that is who I lay the blame at. Now, if you want to say Johnson and McNamara and Nixon, Kissinger and that bunch. That bunch. And whoever pushes their buttons, that bunch too. SM: But it is interesting. Military leaders report to the civilian, which is the President of the United States. But in the end, the joint chief of staff can still have tremendous influence. Are military leaders part of this blame here? Because ultimately oftentimes military leaders can persuade civilian leaders and the president that we must continue. Obviously, we are doing it to continue the war and they were getting reports. Is there some part of blame on the military leadership? JM: Yeah, the blame I think they should accept is the fact that they let it happen. And they could have easily done exactly as you said, use that influence. Explain to the civilians that that is not how war is waged, won today. But they did not. Maybe it is because they could not. Maybe the deck was stacked that much against them. Maybe they did not know how to do it. They have never been in that situation before. Maybe they just were not the Lee's and Grant's that we once had. SM: You go to the wall though, and you see the ceremonies there at the wall, the reverence they have for the leaders of their troops and the war is amazing. General McCaffrey, he has his whole big section there of people that served under him and he is almost like a god to them. Obviously, he cares about his troops. JM: What was he during the war? What rank? SM: Yeah, he was pretty high up. I do not know what his rank was during the Vietnam War, but I do know he always has a lot of people there at a wall that really... And of course he was involved in the Middle East War with George Bush and he was responsible for the killing of all the people that were going back to Baghdad. He oversaw that. So, he was off with his troops. He had troops during that timeframe as well. He became [inaudible] there for a short period of time. JM: Well, there certainly were those people who, if we had more of them, there would have been a different outcome. SM: I am going to finish up my last question and then I am going to just name some names here and if we want to take a break in between, it is okay too. JM: Sure. SM: But I want to get back to, again, this healing business you have talked about within the veteran community and as a nation, but do you think there is an ultimate responsibility on the part of Vietnam veterans or people who care about this issue to really try to heal people in a group, a generation, before they pass away? I say this because through history books, oftentimes even during the Civil War, I use the Civil War as an example, that there were years and years of opportunities for the north and south troops to come together to try to heal and respect each other as a warrior, and people who did not serve. But just simply say, "We got caught up in the times and I respect what you did." But I am not sure if I see that here as a generation. And it is like a funeral. I am leading into a question here, but it is like a funeral when a person has died and all the nice things are said about a person, but that person never heard it in their lifetime. Is there an inherent responsibility, particularly among Vietnam vets who have gone through hell upon their return, but they were the leaders in creating a memorial for the people who served in Vietnam, which has become a model for the Korean War veteran... It has become a model for the World War II veteran. They have become leaders in so many areas. Should they also maybe be a leader to make this nation better, to heal it and could do anything in its... Not only to heal within themselves. And you have really put it beautifully in terms of, "I do not have to heal for someone who was against the war. We have our own issues." But can we ever think as a collective, as a nation, so that this does not happen again? And we might be in one right now for all we know. JM: I think- SM: And John, I am going to turn this... JM: To answer your question, the single veteran can do a lot. He can run for political office. He can work within his community, things like that. But what I see more now, mostly because of my activities again, are the organizations stepping in now trying to not make change so much, but make things that are good better and make things that might not be good at all good, working within the communities as a powerful force within the community. Now, as far as healing, there are a lot of guys in my chapter who hold strong hateful feelings towards groups of people because of the war. There are people in my chapter that do not like the Vietnamese, no matter what side they fall on. They do not like the protestors. Never will. Those guys have their problems. And until we can heal those guys, we cannot let them out into the general population because they will just create more havoc. So, what we try to do is we try to work with those guys, not so much to change them, but just try to show them another way. And after that is done, then I guess it is the old story about if you want to change the world you change the person. And again, I think the veteran communities, the veterans organizations are doing a lot behind the scenes. And if you go to a VFW or an American Legion and ask them what they have been doing lately, you will think all they do is sit there and drink. But they do a lot of good. If nothing else, they put on the parades every patriotic holiday. They are in the schools working with the kids. And when somebody needs a helping hand, they are there. If there is an organization that needs some funding, some children's organization that needs a few bucks, they are there to help out. And I think they are doing a lot to heal. I just think the healing process is so long and the pain is so great that the pain remains the same size, it just becomes less intense. SM: When I interviewed Gaylord Nelson too many years ago when I first started this project and then I stopped for three years when my parents were ill, he point blank said that no one goes around Washington DC who's a boomer, who is in a political position or any kind of position, looking down on their arm and saying, "I am not healing. I am not healing." People do not think that way. But he did say one thing that really struck me and that was that forever the body politic of America has changed. The body politic. That is where the change happened. It will never be the same again. And as a United States senator, co-founder of Earth Day and all the other things, and ousted in 1980 like so many of the Democrats were... He was an anti-war senator. And course he was one of those ousted along with McGovern and Birch Bayh and a whole other group. He paid the price for his beliefs. But he thought the body politic had changed forever. I have some names here. Would you like to take a quick break or get a- JM: I am fine. SM: These are some names that I have been asking everyone. Just some quick thoughts on each of them and let me go on to the next one. Tom Hayden. JM: Married Jane Fonda. I think he was strident. You probably use that word quite a bit with the protestors. Articulate. He was good at making a point. I just think that the points he made were off the mark. SM: Jane Fonda. JM: We will never forgive Jane Fonda. Never. For what she did. And probably their biggest mistake was to become so visual, so much in the spotlight about what she did. And even now these many years later when she did try to make some sort of amends, it even came up sounding hollow. So, we just said, "Pfft." She is the second most beautiful woman in America. The first one is everybody else. SM: Lyndon Johnson. JM: The only thing I know about Lyndon Johnson, of course, is what they tell me. But I saw him as someone who was extremely good at working the political game. He was the guy who got us from the point of intervention into quagmire in Vietnam. And I think basically had a testosterone problem in that area. I think he wanted to prove something. He wanted to prove Americans had balls and that he was the head ball holder. That, I think, was his classic mistake. And I think he was probably the top dog in a kennel where there were a lot of little small dogs nipping at his heels all the time. And those people probably in the long run won out. SM: Hubert Humphrey. JM: Yeah. I do not whole lot about him. Seemed a likable kind of guy. SM: Some people believe, again, if he had had the courage to stand up to the president and he was pretty close to winning and beating Nixon, if they had said the election had gone any further, a week, Humphrey probably would have won and we had have been out of the Vietnam War even faster. We will never know. But- JM: No, not much. SM: How about the individuals that were the Black Panthers of that era? Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on the Black Panther party. JM: Opportunists. SM: Angela Davis and that group. JM: Opportunists. They saw a way to cash in, either for money or for fame, and maybe that hate that may seed in every Black person in America, they were able to exemplify and point it out. Which in a way is a benefit, because up until that point, we all thought that they were happy in their life. We did not know there would be angry Black people. I knew of a militant Black man in the army and probably he is the most responsible person to break me from my fog about race relations to a little bit of clarity in my conversations with him. But I think the ones you mentioned were opportunists. They saw, "Oh, here is a way to cash in some fashion." SM: Right. You had your thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. and of course Thurgood Marshall who went through all the [inaudible] approach. Mostly Martin Luther King Jr., who also was upset with America. And just your thoughts on the civil rights leaders of that era, of which Dr. King was the central force. JM: I was working in Texas the night he was shot. I was working. I was helping deliver televisions as a part-time job. I was in the army. And all of a sudden the news was, he was shot. Well, remember, I am in Texas. And the people are dragging me in to watch TV into this TV repair shop, and they are talking about, "It is about time somebody shot that nigger, and we are going to be better off because of this." And I am sitting there and I am in some sense of sorrow. I am thinking, "Oh my God, somebody shot that poor guy. Here was a guy," this is what I was thinking, "Here was the guy who put it on the line. He got his whipped ass a lot for doing what he did. He probably had to have tenacity we cannot imagine to get anywhere with what he did and how he did things. And now some cretin has shot him down in cold blood. And at this stage in his life, he is on his way out of the limelight. He is being downgraded. There are others who are coming to the foreground that are pushing him aside. And at this stage of his life, he gets assassinated like this." And as it is turned out now, I do not know how many years later, he is reached near sainthood in America and to the point where his birthday might even become a national holiday. So, my major remembrance of Dr. King was the fact that the night he was shot, I was in room full of these rednecks. They were in their glory because this guy had been killed. And all I can think about is a life wasted and all that work and all that hard work that he did, maybe all that work he did will never really be appreciated. I was wrong. It has been appreciated. SM: How about Malcolm X? JM: Anything I know about him probably I saw in this movie. I read the book, Malcolm X's autobiography, while I was still in the army, compliments of my friend. He also gave me Soul on Ice to read. SM: Oh yeah, Eldridge Cleaver. JM: Eldridge Cleaver. SM: Yep. Classic. JM: And I think with Malcolm X I could just say, that anger that most Black people feel had a very eloquent voice. From what I understand, I only learned this from the movie, he was changing quite a bit towards the end of his life. And then again, he is assassinated. It seems though, when they are at a point in their lives where there is major changes going to happen to them, maybe for the good. They are taken from us. SM: Leads me right into John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. JM: Well, we all remember where we were. SM: Yeah. 40 years ago. JM: With Kennedy, I had reached the point in my life where my world was shaken because it gave me that feeling that I was not safe. If the President of the United States could be murdered like that, how safe am I? Because he had all those cops around him. Everything about his movements are scheduled and you cannot get near him, yet he was killed. He has been murdered. And where are we going? Well, who is the next guy in line? Well, Lyndon Johnson. Is not he a buffoon? What is happening? What is going to happen to us? That is what I remember most about John Kennedy as far as the assassination goes. It is a shame he has been reduced to how he died versus how he lived. We will never know what kind of president he could have been. And if he would have lived, maybe he would have been a lousy president, just one of those ones we forget about, but we will not know. We lost all that promise. Bobby Kennedy, I think he was a warmed up version of John. He tried to recapture that Camelot spirit, bring us back to where we thought we were with Kennedy before the assassination. Naturally I was sad at his murder, but not nowhere near what it was like with John Kennedy. SM: Right. Eugene McCarthy. JM: Clueless. He had a thought. It was a good one, but he had to have more thoughts to put them together and he just did not have the talent for that. Probably was a brilliant guy. Some of the things that I read he wrote were very well written. So, he was probably a brilliant guy, but he did not have the political savvy to bring it forward. And unfortunately, they made mincemeat out of him. SM: How about George McGovern? JM: McGovern is somewhat like that too. I think he probably just was a little bit more politically strong. I think the thing with McCarthy is that he could easily be led astray, and I think he was. Whereas McGovern, I do not think you could easily lead him astray, but you could still do it. SM: Some other characters from that particular period. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the hippies. JM: Yeah. Oh, I think they were over the top. I think that is how they played it. They wanted to be that in your face, loud guerilla protestor. And I think that is what they wanted. And Abbie's book says it best. Steal This Book. He wanted to be so out there that you had to kind of admire his audacity. And I think Rubin was just annoying. SM: You ever read his book, Do It? Rubin's book. Rubin's book. JM: No, I never read that. SM: I will tell you a story beyond this interview about him. It is kind of hilarious. Timothy Leary. JM: He was in a position to have caused a lot of harm to this country because he was an admired person because of his position. He was pressing drugs on young people who were impressionable. And I can remember when LSD was the then popular drug. He was pressing it and people had a tendency to believe that it must be okay, or at least not as bad as our parents are telling us it is if this guy is for it. But I think in his sense he was probably more harmful to our country in the fact that he presented that false impression of how are, how drugs work. Thank God he is probably being seen for what he really was. And I think what he really was-was just the guy who wanted his 15 minutes and snapped it up. SM: How about the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip? JM: The priests? SM: Yes. Daniel and Philip. JM: They were both Jesuits, were not they? SM: Mm-hmm. JM: Okay. Not that that has any bearing on anything other than my answer. I am Catholic. Jesuits are considered the tip of the spear in the Catholic religion in that if there is any goofiness going on, you can find a Jesuit. And I think that is where they fit in. They became involved with the anti-war movement and they put the Catholic face on the anti-war movement. SM: What about Benjamin Spock? JM: The protestor or the doctor wrote the kids’ books? SM: Both. JM: Okay. SM: He is one and the same. JM: The doctor wrote the books that our parents used to raise us, probably relatively harmless that. I think that he was too certain of his thoughts and his beliefs and he tried to ram them down people's throats. I remember that from the interviews I saw on TV. It was almost as though, "Sit there and listen. I am going to tell you how it is. Dare not challenge me." And that bothered me. SM: Richard Nixon. JM: God, we elected him twice? SM: Not me. JM: Not me either, but- SM: No comment. JM: ...in my opinion, a lot of the problems we had at the time we had because we elected him president. He was a polarizing force in America. If you loved him, he did no wrong and you would drink the Kool-Aid for the guy. If you hated him, he could do no right. And everything seemed to go down the hill because of it. SM: What about Spiro Agnew? JM: A buffoon. I am saying that because of how he exited the political arena. He was taking kickbacks when he was the governor and things like that. He was doing all the things that politicians do that make us hate them. And Nixon plunked him out of nowhere. And I think Nixon got screwed by the people who are supposed to do their work by presenting this guy to him. SM: How about Daniel Ellsberg? JM: Daniel Ellsberg. Pentagon papers, right? SM: Mm-hmm. JM: I do not know a lot about him other than the movie I saw. Well, first of all, by the movie, he was in Vietnam. And then he came back here and became a reporter. He supported the war, then he went against it. I know nothing. I believe his psychiatrist's office should not have been ransacked. That is wrong. SM: Robert McNamara. JM: I think he was an extremely brilliant and smart man who probably did not have a lot of inner courage. And I think he probably did not see big pictures. He saw details, and it was the details he would focus on to the exclusion of the big picture. And I think he screwed up and I think he will admit that. SM: How about Gerald Ford? JM: I think he was just thrust into the limelight probably because he was a good soldier for the Republican Party. It was fun when he was president. You did not expect much of the guy and if he did anything, you were happy. And when he screwed up, he probably just smiled. That is all I remember about him. And his stupid WIN buttons. What the hell was he thinking? SM: Well, history will oftentimes say the war ended. He ended it. JM: By supporting Nixon? SM: No-no. We got out of Vietnam on April 30th, 1975 under his watch. So, a lot of people give him the credit, and I am not sure if history has really looked at him. I think the role that he played over that two years... I forgot. Nixon was kicked out. I am not sure what people think really of him in the long run. JM: It is amazing you brought that up because I would not have remembered he was president when the war ended. In my mind, the ending of the war was an event in place and to happen, and it just so happened under his watch, as you said. I do not think he consciously said, "Let us end this war now." It was just ending. Somebody else ended it for him. He was just doing the leg work. Somebody else ended it for him, he was just doing the leg work. SM: You had already made reference to Muhammad Ali, but I bring him up again. Muhammad Ali and all the COs, conscientious objectors, from that period. He stood up late to the forefront. But your thoughts on Muhammad Ali and the conscientious objector. JM: Well, I will start off with general conscientious objector. If they indeed did their service, which was an alternative you had, you could go clean bed pants at the Valley Forge Hospital. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: Do your time there. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: Then fine. As it turns out, they were actually aiding the war effort. Because that was one less thing that we had to pay for. And the ones I had known in my life were pain in the asses because they would always try to make me feel that because I would do something like going to the military, that they were much better than I was. They would not lower themselves to harm somebody. And in my mind, I would always say, "yeah, until pressed." Anyone can be pushed into a situation where you will defend yourself, if nothing else. So I did not really think they had the courage of their convictions. As long as it was easy to be a conscientious objector, I think that is when it was fine for them. When it became difficult, it may have separated a bit. And if anyone held that belief today, after being a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, then I will admire that person. But I think a lot of them now will probably be just as bloodthirsty as anybody else. SM: And Muhammad Ali again in terms of... JM: I think he wanted to prove that no matter how much we are told that you have no choice. You have a choice. If you are willing to pay the price, the choice is there. He did. He paid an awful price for what he did, I do not think he paid enough, but he paid. He lost his championship, he lost his right to earn a living, and he lost a lot of respect of Americans because of it. SM: Barry Goldwater. JM: He ran for president, right? SM: You run against Johnson (19)64 or the big one. JM: Well, I guess the only thing I can remember about him was people went out of their way to convince me he was so conservative that he might just be the end of us all. And I am thinking to myself, "How can anybody be that bad, that evil, that stiff- necked, that if we put him in the President of the United States, he is going to get us into a war? A bombing war? A hot war? Nah." And then Johnson did the same thing. SM: Right. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, the women who were in the forefront of the women's movement. JM: Betty Friedan wrote a very good book about aging for women. I will probably be affected by that book that I read. As I understand those two women were front-runners for the women's movement, which was when it first came out, was somewhat laughable in that they did not seem to have a platform that was something you can get onto. Where things like inequity and pay for jobs, that was an issue and that is something they should have gone after and did, but there were other things that they harped about, excuse the phrase, harped about that seemed, "Why are you concerned about that when they had so many other bigger issues to deal with?" SM: The music of the period, how important was the music of the period in your life? The music of the (19)60s, in terms of both positive? And secondly, I have two-part question here, your thoughts on the music of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, impact on your life, and your thoughts on the musicians who were anti-war. And there were a lot of them. JM: Mm-hmm. SM: Joan Baez, was very obvious. Everybody knows about Phil Ochs. But of course you can even say John Lennon and The Beatles. There is a lot of things in there. And certainly Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. And you are dealing with a lot of the musicians of that period who were anti-war, just your thoughts on that, through their music. JM: Let us see. First part of the question. What effect did it have on me? SM: Mm-hmm. JM: Profound. I actually believe that I changed as music changed. In early, well, in the late (19)50s, early (19)60s, I was into that, what they called, " doo-wop music," and The Platters and The Drifters and The Coasters and all that stuff. And then The Beatles arrived, changing music the way they did, British Invasion, I feel I changed. Some of my favorite singers, Janis Joplin, for example, to this day when I am feeling low, I put her music on to give me a list. I have got Joan Baez tapes at home. I love her music. A woman? No. SM: Right. JM: Now, she was too strident. She and Tom Hayden, they were both strident. So, now I think music had a profound effect on my generation because it was the thing we created. And I do not know how many of our people did, but we created it by liking it. There had not been a market for rock and roll. SM: Right. JM: There would not have been there any rock and roll. And then as we grew up and became the rock and rollers, we changed it once again. SM: Is there any one musician that stood out for you? Group or musician? JM: Well, I will say Janis. Yeah. The first time I heard Janice sing, the hair on the back of my neck stood out. SM: Oh. JM: It was a moment I will never forget. We had the album, Big Brother & The Holding Company- SM: Oh, yeah. JM: Cheap Thrills. SM: Yeah, the cover is unbelievable. JM: Yeah, Robert Crumb. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: We brought into the barracks and we had waited. I mean, we were literally salivating, because none of us had ever heard this phenomenon sing. So you put it on and playing it on your basic record player. SM: Right. JM: And as I said, as she started to sing, the hair in the back of my neck stood out. And what she would do for me is she would get me there, and then she would make me profoundly sad when she sang. And then the next thing out, she would make me feel excited. I would feel the blood pumping in my veins. She could do all that for me. SM: And when you heard she died, and the way she died, you may not remember where you were, but what were your thoughts on how she just passed away? JM: I remember where I was. I still feel to this day that I wish I would have been there that night to put my arms around her and talk her out of it. Maybe I could have saved her. Now, obviously that is ridiculous. But that is how I felt. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: And I was really, very sad. And of course, when Pearl the album came out, which was just finished as she died, that was sort of like her gift to us. SM: I am almost done. JM: Okay. But you did ask me about the ones who protested the war. SM: Yes. JM: So what did I think about them? SM: Mm-hmm. JM: I enjoyed it. The guy who wrote Draft Dodger Rag, was that Phil Ochs? SM: I think Country Joe McDonald was another one of the singers that was a protester. JM: Yeah. I enjoyed that. I thought that was great. I loved the protest music. Did it make sense that I liked the protest music? I did not care. It was funny. It was interesting. It was fun. SM: Your thoughts, I will not mention the name, one of the individuals that I interviewed, is a very well-known Vietnam veteran, pretty high up. And he has a problem. And his problem is that he had no problem with those people who protested against the Vietnam War who were musicians and entertainers. But he has a tremendous problem today with entertainers and musicians who protest against their current war in Iraq or are just out there protesting. He was making references to Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, the people that have been out there that have been so visible. And he says, "I do not understand my problem because I had none and I almost died in Vietnam. Yet I have a problem today, and I am trying to deal with this." I do not know how Vietnam vets look at it. Whether you think that Vietnam vets have problems with today's people who protest the Iraq War? Or they do not make that kind of thinking, "This is just one person's thoughts." JM: Well, there is a connection really between the singer protestors of our era and the ones today. And that is they should just sing and entertain us and just shut up. SM: Okay. JM: I do not want to hear Naomi Main's opinions about Bush or Ed Asner myself. SM: Right. JM: Entertain me. That is why I am looking at you. I want you to entertain me. SM: Right. JM: So I am bothered by the fact that they take the stage the way they do and the platform and then use that to preach to me about things like that. Just sing, just act, just do what you do. Do what puts you here. SM: Right. JM: Do not use it as a format to come after this. Yes, there is a lot of difference now of how people feel about entertainers who protest as compared to what it was in the (19)60s. In the (19)60s, it was almost the thing to do. Everybody was against the war, so you have to be against the war. SM: Right. JM: And then if you say, "Well, I am for the war," people would think there was something wrong with you. SM: I got a couple terms here. I just want your thoughts to these terms. SDS. JM: Students for Democratic Society. What is the young guys pretending they are at war with their government? [Inaudible]. SM: Counterculture. JM: Good phrase. My problem with that phrase goes back to when the counterculture became the culture. And if you did anything else, there was something wrong with you. And back in those days, if you wore Chinos and got a short haircut, you were counterculture and they would not accept you. SM: Right. Yeah. Pentagon Papers, I have already gone through that, but just maybe mention to the (19)60s and (19)70s, people had thoughts about the Pentagon Papers. JM: All I know about that is the movie I saw. And James Spader was the actor in it, I do not know. That is all I know. SM: Chicago Eight or Seven depending on- JM: Yeah. They were found guilty of leading the riots in Chicago, as I understand it. What I remember most about them, other than the fact they were loud and a little bit obnoxious, was they used the trial as a format, as a springboard for their idealism. They did not care if they were going to become guilty or innocent, they just wanted the rest of the world to hear them one more time. And it was tiresome. I filed it very little because I got tired of hearing about it. SM: Kent State. JM: Oh, true tragedy. In all honesty, I think if they would have sent a regular troops there, it would not have happened. But they did not. I guess I am saying something against the Guard and Reserves, but I think regular troops would have been a little bit more disciplined and would not have happened, more likely, would not have happened. A true tragedy. Probably a pivotal moment in the way our society viewed the world. SM: What is that? JM: Love to have been there. Sat on a foot locker waiting to be mobilized to go there to keep the crowd controlled. SM: Oh really? JM: I was in Kansas. SM: Oh my God, you really wanted to be there. JM: We were ready. They told us that we had to, all these classes were canceled, we had to be there. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: We had to be able to move within a four, five hour notice. We would be in the barrack. We were sitting on foot lockers listening as much as we could about what was going on at Woodstock. And that is Woodstock for me. I would love to have been there, but I was in Kansas. I think it probably was that [inaudible] of a boil for the summer of love. Got to build off to it. SM: The leaders of Vietnam, during that timeframe- JM: Excuse me a second. That was (19)68, was not it? SM: That was (19)69. JM: (19)69, yeah. SM: And Reverend Pastor [inaudible] was there. JM: Okay. SM: I think 17. But it certainly does not let us [inaudible] JM: They used the term, "Summer of Love" and that was (19)67. SM: Right. JM: So [inaudible] SM: That was in San Francisco. President Q and General Call Key, those are the two people that ever remembers who were the leaders during the (19)60s and right after the war. And then they had a couple toward the end. But your thoughts on the leadership of Vietnam? JM: In most part, I will say that those who served in the army of South Vietnamese were mostly brave people. They lived a life where the war was never going to end for them, really. We went home after a year, they stayed. So, you know, hear the stories about the South Vietnamese soldier not being a good warrior and everything. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: But I think that was an unfair assessment. The leaders, I think, fall in that category where you kind of hoped they were not corrupt, because they were putting people's lives in jeopardy for the wrong reasons. Maybe they were or maybe they were not. I think they probably had good solid generals to lead them. I think they probably got told what to do by the American generals there. Mostly it was our show. SM: Your thoughts on the generals? Because when you think of the Vietnam War, I think of three, I think of General Maxwell Taylor, I think of General William Westmoreland, and I think of Creighton Abrams. Those are the names that come to the forefront over this war. Your thoughts on them as leaders in the military? A war that, I hate to keep saying the term, the only war we have ever lost, but I think I am wondering if history's really going to say in the long run that we truly lost it. That is why I believe history books, who people are unbiased will tell the truth. JM: They will say we lost the war and won the peace. But now to answer your question, I think earlier we talked about the generals, and I think I had mentioned that I thought they were just unable to not have the civilians call the shots. They probably were as good a general leading man as generals generally are, but they just did not have the political clout or the savvy to pull it off. They probably could have used a patent, that might be the best way for me to put it. Just a son of bitch who did not care. He knew he was right and he was going to do it. He would have gone to the Delta and marched all the way up through Hanaway, and they did not let us do that. SM: Just a couple few more names and then we are done. John Lennon; I would bring him out because he stands to the forefront of all The Beatles. He was killed in 1980, but he was this "give peace a chance," he was as anti-war as you can get. The United States, he is as high up on the enemy's list as you could find. They wanted him out of the country. John Lennon. JM: And you succeeded getting him out of the country too. SM: Yeah. JM: And he had to go on radio wearing a fatigue shirt with the, I think it is the second Army patch on it, I remember that clearly. I will go back to what I said earlier. Sing, entertain me, do not talk. I tuned him out. If he had an opinion about the war, it did not matter to me. It sort of just bounced off the wall. SM: But you listened to his music stuff. JM: Oh sure. SM: Yeah. JM: Well the music is a great equalizer. SM: How about Ramsey Clark? Of all these former attorney generals, he is the most anti-war person you could get. He was anti-war during the (19)60s, the (19)70s, he still is today. JM: Well then, I congratulate him for holding onto his beliefs. I know very little about the man. SM: It has been pretty consistent. And I am going to end this with actually two questions. One of them is a question centering around Country Joe McDonald, who was here back in (19)98. JM: I remember. SM: And he made a statement in the room when Jan Scruggs was at dinner, I think you were there, John, I think there is a group here at this dinner, and I am not sure if he caught everybody's attention. He made a comment that, and I want your thoughts on this comment. JM: Okay. SM: His comment was the reason why Vietnam vets have such a problem upon their return, particularly he was emphasizing the combat vets, is that that there were no POWs left. There were no North Vietnamese POWs. And he was making a reference that, "You figure out what happened to him." And that is part of the reason why there is guilt on the part of some vets toward what happened over there. They cannot heal mainly because what may have happened to the people they captured who were the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese troops, who they in turn handed over to the South East were in turn just plain killed. It was a pretty strong statement. And it was just a reference he made and it was a joking kind of a reference, but it was dead serious. I may be interpreting him wrong, but I think that is what he was referring to toward the combat, that is not all Vietnam vets. Because you have the story of the POWs of American troops and of course we lost many and they were treated poorly, so we were not talking about that, but we were talking about why were not their POWs, those individuals who a lot of them were captured and that is what he was referring to. And that is why he thinks there is so much of a problem with the combat vet in their healing, reference to the guilt of handing them over to the South Vietnamese troops, who they knew what they were going to do them. JM: Well, I will say I do not know what they did with POWs. I know I was there when they had captured them. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: I mean, I heard the stories, but I do not know if there was an internment camp for them. Well, let me finish my thought on that. I know that there was a strongly held belief that if you brought in a Viet Cong warrior and fed him and gave a place to live and worked with him, taught him that Americans are not so bad, he would probably convince you that you had won him over and then as soon as your back was turned, he would be going back out in the bushes with his buddies. That was the strongly held belief. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: So I guess what I am saying is there was everybody believed there was no way you would ever get this POW from either Viet Cong or the Northern forces ever to stop wanting to go back and fight against you. That to me, that is the first thing that comes to my mind. I think if you took that issue away completely, the same guys you are talking about, the combat vets who have problems dealing with the healing process, but still have problems dealing with the healing process. It may be a part of that problem that they face, but without it, they would still have the same problems. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: And I heard about the guys that did things like that, but I never did it, nor did I know anybody who did, nor did- SM: And I may be in misinterpreting Country Joe, but he just made a straight comment, "What happened to him?" That is what his reference is to, then you be the judge. JM: Yeah, there was 300,000 of them missing, right? SM: Right. JM: And there is plenty of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese POW MIAs. SM: Right. JM: There is 300, 000 of them. SM: Yep. JM: We are complaining because we have 1,800 missing and we want ours back. SM: Was there one particular tragic event in your young life, and I am not referring to your service in Vietnam, is there any one American event that had the greatest impact on you? JM: When you say young life, you mean when I was younger? SM: When you were younger. Or it could be even today, but it is basically during that period, during the (19)60s and (19)70s. The thing that stood out, that may have had the greatest impact on you. It could have been a tragic event or it could be a very positive event. JM: I will give you what came to my mind first, the assassination of John Kennedy. That feeling that I was no longer safe. If they can get to the president, they can get to me. And I did not know who they were, but they scared me more. There is a bunch of crazies out there running around and I do not have any way of protecting myself from them. You cannot be protected from them. Kennedy was proved positive of that. So if there is any one thing, yes. And I will give you another example; I remember growing up as a kid, not being able to look at horizon without thinking of a mushroom cloud. And I, to this day, drift into that. I will be somewhere just looking out the horizon and I will mentally envision a mushroom cloud. So maybe it was the understanding of what nuclear weapons were, how devastating they could be, and how unsafe I was. Because here I am looking at this nice bucolic scene and who knows, some bomb may go off. SM: The last question, I guarantee. JM: I hope not. SM: I will certainly ask you for final thoughts if I did not hit something that you may have thought I was going to ask. This gets into the whole concept of trust. We are dealing with it here on the college campus. We are going to be bringing a speaker in next semester on the leadership of trust. Because I am wondering your thoughts on how that period in American history, because of the failure of our leaders, the very obvious failure of, and the lies that were told to the Americans by President Johnson and probably President Nixon, the enemy's list. But you can even go back to the Eisenhower when he lied about the U-2. And then you can go into President Kennedy. Well, did he have anything to do with the DM murders or killings? Then you go to Johnson, then you go to obviously Nixon, then you getting into the Reagan era about The Iran-Contra. But what I am getting at here is do you feel that in your youth when you were young, you as a teenager and in your twenties, that the trust issue, the lack of trust, the impact that young people had, whether they were veterans or non-veterans, had toward leaders. And I refer to not only leaders in the White House, but leaders of our churches, leaders of our corporations, leaders in university presidents, leaders in any capacity. The youth did not trust them because they have been lied to. And I want to know if your thoughts on whether this trust issue is something that I am over exaggerating or that really is part of the boomer generation, generation that is not trusting, and they have passed that on to their kids, who in turn do not trust who now will in turn pass it on to their kids, because they are seeing some things even today. Who can you trust in this world? I see that personally, and I mean it is not my interview, but I see that as a major issue in the boomer generation. But I may be totally wrong. Just your thoughts. JM: Okay. Well first, I think that a certain amount of distrust is a healthy thing. It is what stops children from talking to strangers and things like that. I am going to deal with the distrust you are talking about though. When I was growing up, Eisenhower was the president. We had complete faith in this guy. Well, here was a five-star general hero of World War II, builder of our highways. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: Almost a Scratch Golfer, right? This guy you could trust. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: And of course that guy, he had his vice president. He was a little seedy looking. But I grew up in an era where you could trust your leaders or at least you felt like you could. Obviously, I was wrong because we go back in that period of time, you can find lots of examples. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: I think what happened was there was this explosion of distrust during the (19)60s that happened. "Do not trust anyone over 30," common thought. Now those people, the guy who said that, is something like 65 now. I think we used that distrust as one of our shields, one of our weapons, when we went to try to make changes when we went to exert our own personalities, we were distrustful. And yes, we have passed that along to our children because we have gotten so good at it that it does not seem to be a yoke or a cloth we want to shed. We want to remain distrustful to some extent. And yes, there is a sadness in that. Now, I would like a world where we can feel a little bit more trust towards people. And yeah, it is probably just as strong today as it was back then. And in that sense, it is sad because I think, along with a lot of things that went right with how the boomers changed things, this might be one of those things that did not go quite right, it went wrong. SM: Mm-hmm. JM: By this time we would, I will use me as an example, I would want people my children's age to trust me. And if I ran for Mayor of Downingtown, I would want those young people to trust that I have their best interests at heart. I do not know if they believe that. And if you cross racial lines, I would know they do not believe that. SM: I am finished. Is there any other final comments or thoughts you would like to state on anything linked to the interview or a question that you thought I may ask that I did not? Any final thoughts? JM: Question that maybe you should have asked that you did not? Yeah, okay. We hit on it briefly, but I mentioned earlier that when you were 20, you have a tendency to gravitate towards people your own age. And when I came back and we would go to a party or something and the subject would come up, "now I am in the army, I just got back in Vietnam," or "I am going to Vietnam," or something like that. Actually, after I got back, I should be more clear. After I got back, I sensed the people my age who did not have my experience turned cold. Were maybe distrustful, but all of a sudden somebody, I should have something in common with I no longer do. And to add to the worst thing, I did not seek out those people that I had something in common with for 25 years. I did not do anything within the veteran community. I did not join the VFW, I did not do any of the things I am doing now. SM: [inaudible] hold that thought, I am going to change- JM: I was talking about being young and losing the trust of people of your own age group. And then I segued into not seeking out those people that I would have something in common with, other veterans for 25 years. And I think that was pivotal to me in my life, that I at one point 25 years later decided, "There is something in here inside of me that needs to get out." And I think I found an avenue for that, and that was joining veterans organizations and becoming active with veterans. And I think if I could add any one thing, it would be to tell any veteran out there who is not home yet to try and come home. Go to your VVA meeting, join your VFW, work through it. Because it made the most difference to me in my life to have done that. SM: And in the veterans community today, is it a strong unit? In other words, World War II and Korean vets, Gulf War Vets and Vietnam vets, there is no animosity toward them, there is a feeling of [inaudible]- JM: I am glad you asked that question. I think the Vietnam veterans actually changed that. When we came back, they did not accept us. World War II, Korean guys did not accept us. We were not veterans. I heard that. It was said to me. And we, the Vietnam Veterans of America, we decided that is not right. Never again should any generation of veterans turn its back on another, which is our credo. And we went out there and we said, "Okay, fine. World War II and Korea, we forgive you. What you said is forgotten. Now, let us be veterans together." And with the passage of time, the aging of the World War II, Korea guy, turning over the mantle of responsibility and power to the Vietnam veterans at the organizations, they have come now to understand we were not the people they thought we were. There was a cohesiveness within the veterans’ organizations that did not exist 25, 30 years ago. And we were not the force that was creating the problem either. It was the World War II, Korea guy who did not accept us. SM: Again, to clarify, why did not they accept you? JM: [inaudible]- SM: And was it combat vets or was it non-combat vets? JM: You would like me to give you their answers? SM: Yeah, their answers. Yeah, from their perspective. JM: That is the only thing I have, because their answers would be, "I spent four years in the Army. I did not know when I was going to get out of Germany. You guys went over there for what, 12 months? And maybe you did not even see any combat? You went on R&R; I did not get any of that. I was fighting for the world's freedom. What were you doing?" These are things that people said to me. Basically, what I tried to do was become wallpaper. I did not want to talk about it. People talked to me about it. Short story, buddy of mine was at the VFW, this was in the (19)70s, Vietnam veteran. He was the kind of guy that would go in there and say, "I do not give a damn if you accept me as a veteran. I am joining. Here is my DD 214, now sign me up." They signed him up. He became active. He came like vice president, vice commander, whatever they call that. And he would drag guys like me there to join. I mean, that is a good veteran. He is a good member of any organization. And one night he dragged me to the VFW in Downingtown. And I am sitting at the bar and my friend is going around the bar talking to his buddies. And he has told the bartender, whose name was Bernie, I will never forget, "Bernie, get this guy an application. He is with me," like that. No application; drinks, no application. Finally, he goes, "Hey Bernie, give this guy an application. He wants to join." Now, he did not ask me if I wanted to join. He just wanted to get the application in my hand. Guy sitting over to my left said, "I think we have enough Vietnam veterans in this club." Not under his breath. And then there was that missing shock that did not come. Nobody said anything to him, like, "Shut your face," or, "You are out of line." None of that happened. My friend, I am expecting him to go ballistic, but nobody else did. So I pushed my drink back towards the bar and I said, "I am out of here." And I never walked back into that VFW again until the night I joined the VVF, which had to be, I do not know, 15 years later. And that happened. And people will say, "Well, cannot you forgive?" Yeah, we did. We forgave these guys. That is why the veteran’s organizations today are so good. And that is why these guys coming up from first Persian Gulf War to this one now, it is going to be much better. We paved the way for these things to work for them. There is my answer to your question. SM: And of course, that experience you had with the World War II vets, and then you had to deal with all these Americans who treated the vets poorly upon their return and trying to figure out why... in your estimation, as to why vets were treated poorly upon their return, do you think it went back to how the media portrayed the vets in terms on the news, the bad things that happened in Vietnam, whether it be the My Lai massacre, the drug scene, as we got into the late (19)60s? And actually, there was a lot of people did not want to fight in the late (19)60s that were actually over there. When you look at the American population as the whole, and their very poor treatment of Vietnam vets, I know each one has their own individual story, and probably each person has their reason for not treating vets properly, but in general terms, why do you think Americans treated vets so poorly upon their return? JM: They were confusing the war with the warrior. They did not like the war, so ergo, we were the problem. And a couple young people would confront me in my lifetime, I should say, and ask me, "Why did not I not go? Why did not I just stand up and say, 'I am not going'"? Well, I was in the Army. They would court-martial you, they would throw you in jail for that. "Well, if I would have been in the service, that is what I would have done." I said, "But you are not in the service. You have this right to say this. I do not have that choice. When I signed up for the army, I gave away, in my mind, the rights to do that." And I pretty much always would never do anything that I could not live with. I could not live with that, saying, "Well, I am not going to fight. I am not going to go to Vietnam. Even though you are trying to send me over there, forget about it. I will not go." I could not live with that decision. I would not be happy today if I would have made that decision. SM: Would you agree that one of the commonalities of all veterans, no matter what war they faced, and that would be World War II vets, Korea, Vietnam, and maybe even the Gulf War and the young people coming back today from Iraq, is that it is such a private thing that oftentimes vets in general just keep quiet and do not tell themselves... Because it is all too common now in the stories of World War II vets about parents who never came back and told their families about anything. They just went on with their lives. Korean War vets were that way as well. We know about the Vietnam vets. Is this just something that is common to the warrior? JM: Yeah. I once wrote that silence is the language of the veteran. We know silence and we are more comfortable with it. I did not talk about it. I was with the Rotary Club of Downingtown for nine years. And after I made my transformation into becoming a veteran, I spoke in front of them and I said to them, "My name is John Morris. I am a Vietnam veteran." That group never heard that from me before. Yeah, that silence is our language. We were comfortable with it. We were miserable in it, but it is more comfortable sometimes than talking. I know if I start talking to a veteran and I can just see he is uncomfortable talking, we drift right into silence. And it is that acceptance, that thing, "I am not going to make you talk, sir." Fine. I understand. It is that acceptance that works. SM: In conclusion here, could you just state your name again and your date of birth and what you are currently doing and where you live? JM: My name is John Morris. I was born 11/29/45. I work selling concrete products for Binkley and Ober in Lancaster, and I live in Downingtown. SM: And also, and proudly state your position with VVA, because I know you are an ... John, you are. You are an outstanding citizen of Chester County, and just some of the things that you have done once you joined the veteran organizations and what you have done for vets over these past few years. JM: Currently, I am on the board of directors, have been for about five years. I am just finished my eighth year of writing a monthly newsletter we call the Voice of 436. I am fortunate enough to have the local newspaper, daily local news, republish my articles that I write in that newsletter. I have been in every chair there is for the Vietnam Veterans of America. I have been the vice president, I have been the president. One of my proudest moments as president was working with Steve McKiernan to bring The Wall That Heals here to West Chester University. I think of that as my crowning moment, as my year of ... as a veteran. The other things we do, I work with other newsletter editors throughout the country. We swap our magazines and we trade ideas, things like that. Other than that, I think I have a few other things, but that is pretty much got it covered. SM: Well, John, I just want to say, as I always do when I see you and all Vietnam vets, welcome home. JM: Thank you, Steve. SM: And thank you very much for the opportunity to interview you. JM: My pleasure. SM: ...with that in mind, when you think of the 1960s, and actually when you think of your youth, what is the first thing that comes to your mind for that entire period? JM: My military service, of course, without a doubt. And that was (19)65, (19)67. SM: Explain a little more detail why that was the defining moment in your youth. JM: It was when I left home. I graduated high school, went on to college, and then got a job going to night school, and bam, suddenly I was out of town, and not on a vacation to Atlantic City. I got to see a piece of the country that had the culture, that had no idea existed. SM: What culture was that? JM: It would be a culture where you saw people who had never worn shoes before they were drafted into the military, they came from the boondocks; a culture where the Civil War was not ancient history, it was current history, things like that. SM: And the community that you were stationed in that you saw this? JM: Everywhere from, let us say, Fort Gordon, Georgia... we are talking about the military community, to Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. For example, when I got to El Paso, there were signs above the restroom doors in the train station that said, "Whites" and "Colored." And it was like you might have seen that in the (19)60s on a newspaper during the marches, but it was like that is on TV, but damn, this really exists. SM: How were you treated as members of the military during the time you were stationed there? JM: The people treated us extremely well. El Paso, Texas is a military town. Fort Bliss, Fort Bliss at that time was probably the largest military installation in the United States. Something like 65,000 troops were there. It is huge, absolutely huge. And it was also a ... not just Fort Bliss, but it was also an Air Force base, a strategic air command base built up against it, and White Sands Missile Range, which is also up against it. So you could drive for 100 miles and not leave to the military installation. SM: How many years you was stationed there? JM: Almost a full two years. SM: And those two years, again, were... JM: Two years were 1965, September (19)65, to September (19)67. SM: When you think of that particular period and you think of the boomer generation, one of the things that comes to mind often amongst people in that age group is that they felt they were the most unique generation in American history, that they were the generation that was going to change the world for the better, a generation that was going to end, racism, sexism, poverty, end all wars, bring peace to the world, bring general harmony. And this is the commentary not of boomers as they age, but boomers when they were young. Your thoughts on that kind of a mentality from the (19)60s and (19)70s? JM: At least my viewpoint was there was nothing that this country could not do. Putting a man on the moon, not a problem. We had the engineering, we had the talent, we had the vision, we could do it all. I found myself working for GE Missile and Space in Philadelphia, doing nothing significant other than playing with these things, which were eventually to become warheads. And that was just the way it was. Every now and then you would have somebody try to picket a building that we were working in because we were making nuclear nose guns. That is fine with me. I am glad we are making them, and I am glad we are making them better than the other guys, I hope. And that is the way I looked at that. But a different kind of a mindset I think than [inaudible 00:16:39] but again, it was a positive attitude that we could do things. Again, it was also the realization that there is this tide of, "Let us get rid of this racial persecution. It is terrible." And for the most part, it was like I never really cognizant of it. It was not something in our house that was done except the N word, as they say today, was periodically used. And when I went into the military, again in (19)65, I left a lily-white environment, for the most part, into a racially more integrated military than you would find in my neighborhood, I think. SM: Your neighborhood is? JM: My neighborhood is northeast Philadelphia. I do not remember the year, but I remember it was either in (19)57 or it would have been like 1960 when Northeast High first opened up, or one of the first early years of it. And one of the Black teachers had her son transfer in, and he was the first Black student. And again, Northeast High was huge. We had about 3,800 students in that high school, and one kid was Black. And it was nothing like, "Oh, that is unusual." And that was it. But it was one of those things that you remember. SM: One of the things in recent years from pundits on television or around the radio, whether they be George Will or when Newt Gingrich took over in the Republican Revolution, (19)94, you heard the commentary, that there is an overall criticism of the boomer generation as the reason why we have so many problems in this world today and why our culture has, some would say, gone backward. And this is not me, this is others. The criticisms are leveled at the breakup of the family, the use of drugs, disrespect for authority, and all these other things. Your thoughts on the pundits of the world who will generalize the boomer generation as being more negative than positive with respect to our culture today? JM: I would have to say that it was not so much them as the media and the media revolution. Everybody by the (19)60s had one TV in the house. I grew up with a TV in the house from 1949. I remember us having a TV when we lived in South Philly, and I remember neighbors coming in to watch TV in our house. It was a big deal. Today, our kids run around with cell phones. Our children run around with cell phones. But the communications revolution has been, I think, a major player in the perception of what the boomer culture was for, was against, and was it 80 percent for or 80 percent against? I think the spin on that came from the media, which I will go to my grave believing is a liberal, left side of the continuum, the political continuum. And they are biased. And I do not stamp all of them as being unethical, but you have got to be balanced in reporting. And I do not think they were balanced, and I think it holds true to today. SM: So you are talking about the (19)60s and 2003? JM: Correct. A huge span of time. And the biggest difference is now that if you want a different slant on what you are seeing, you can go to a different cable channel. You can press a button and you can get the BBC and you will see, "Whoa, wait a second, let me rethink this. I am hearing something different than what I am being spoon-fed every day from Channel 6," I will pick on Channel 6, "every day." It is different if you go to CNN. It is different if you go to nbc.com. It is different if you go to BBC. [inaudible] well, that is a different opinion. But the fact that whoever controlled the media back then really controlled what the people were being fed and educated with. And that is my two cents on the media. SM: So when you are talking about George Will and you are talking about New Gingrich, were they off-key? They were conservatives, packing the liberals. JM: It is like point, counterpoint. On one side, you can have George will, and on the other side you can have George Stephanopoulos. SM: [inaudible] I do not believe somebody is phoning me. Hang on one second. When you look at the boomer generation, could you give me some of the qualities... And by boomers, I mean the young people from the (19)60s and early (19)70s or middle (19)70s. When you look at that generation, what are some of the positive qualities that you saw in these young people, and some of the negative qualities? JM: Again, just I guess the positive ones is that we seemed focused. It was go to college. It was get a career. It was really just try to be that next rung of the socioeconomic ladder than your parents, because the parents would tell us, "I do not want you to work like a dog like me. I want you to get an education. I want you to do good things and get out there." It was a generation of Boy Scouts. It was not so much community service as it was you do the right things. And if you did something wrong, by the way, out on the street doing some mischief, you did not have to worry about your parents coming after you. The neighbors saw you. They would grab you by the scruff of the neck, drag you to your house, then you were really in trouble. But nobody got away with a whole lot. It was the eyes and ears of a community that kept a bunch of the kids straight. Now, there was always a couple of kids who were going to get into trouble, but I think that is what makes us great. Some people get misdirected, some people get to channel it in a different direction and do good things. But it was pretty pleasant. There were the screw-ups that came with the times, and how we viewed it. This is the week of the Kennedy assassination, about 40 years now. That is hard to believe. I mean, sitting here, that is hard to believe, that I am 58. That was 40 years ago. But where were you and what was your action? In hindsight, my actions were deplorable. When I say deplorable, in my family, the Kennedy name was not a very good thing. My father would take his name in vain frequently, which I think he tied back to Kennedy's dad, Joe Kennedy, in the liquor business. My father had a saloon. Actually, both sides of my family were in the booze business before Prohibition, during Prohibition, and until the early (19)70s. So when Kennedy died, I know exactly where it was. I was jubilant almost. And again, I apologize to whoever I offend, but it was like... And I knew who got him, in my mind. It was the military who got him because he did not succeed in turning the missiles away from Cuba. He did it by trading off our missiles in Turkey, which we had six months later. So it was like, what a cowardly thing to do. Again, this is hindsight. What I know now, what I knew then, two different things. And I remember my wife, who lived five doors away, as it turns out, she [inaudible] terrible things on me and said, "Oh, how about Kennedy getting" ... I said, "No loss." And again, this is a very politically aware, historically-oriented person at that time, at the ripe old age of 17, 18, whatever, and saying, "You know what? Hey, I am glad he is gone." Hindsight, I am an idiot. What a terrible thing to say. You would not do that. Even if you truly believe that, you are insensitive, totally insensitive to everyone else who was mourning. And I was in front of Bucky's Sticky Buns, Margaret and Orthodox, in Philadelphia bus station when I got to work. So do you remember where you were? Yes. I can almost smell the sticky buns cooking. SM: Brings it all back from- JM: It does. It really does. It is funny, different things triggered it. Again, this is Kennedy on every channel. But in our house, the Kennedy name was not something that you touted. And after he was assassinated, again, the marksman in me is... I grew up shooting in the Scouts. And I am saying, "The guy is a good shot, but nobody is that good." So to this day, I will still watch who shot Kennedy. And my younger brother who is only 13 months younger than me, if we want to really bug each other, say, "Which time do you want to take?" And we will go at the two-player conspiracy theory, go back and forth. And I am a shooter to this day, and I am extremely good. I do not care what anybody says, there were two shooters, one from the front, one from the back. And I am willing to bet it was the military, some... I will say a general, for lack of a better word, but some general who basically had the same upbringing or background that I was given, that "Kennedy is a bad guy, he sold the country out, the Cuban missile crisis was mistake, the Bay of Pigs invasion [inaudible] Kennedy's doorstep also. We are not going to let this guy do this anymore and make us look like fools." I do not know, but people have been shot for a whole lot less than that. SM: If you were to, again, look at your generation, if you were to list some things, adjectives to describe their positive and negative qualities, what would they be? JM: Focused, forward-looking or forward-thinking, very optimistic, until about the Vietnam War, mid-(19)60s. And then it all came home. I am trying to think of another word... almost idyllic. It went from idyllic to chaotic to unfocused. And I think it almost bred the next generation that came along and said, "I am the me generation. I am not worried about the world. I am worried about me, and I want my share. And I do not care whether you have your share or not." I think it was the (19)80s when they came around and said, "The company is worth more if you sell it off in parts. It may be worth $10 million as an entity by itself, it is worth $20 million to chop it up and sell it. To hell with the people whose lives are affected. Do not care. It is the bottom line. I am a Wharton MBA, and it is strictly business. No offense." My father's words to me was, again, "Go to work for a big company. They will take care of you. You take care of them. And 25 years, you will retire with a gold watch." I saw that die, but that was my upbringing. The happiest day in his life almost is probably when I went to work for General Electric Missile and Space and came back with a $ 10 check, which I guess is worth probably about $100 today, that said... He turned in a suggestion, "We are not going to use it, but hey, keep those ideas coming along. Here is a $10 check." And he was just thrilled to pieces with that. He said, "See, I told you. You take care of them, they will take care of you." And then Secretary of Defense McNamara would open his mouth, kill an Air Force contract, and they would let 2,000 employees go in a heartbeat. Strange times. I think we were a generous generation, and I think we were very much focused on that. Of course, culturally, I think the pill came around in (19)63. Did not do me a whole lot of good. SM: At home or away? JM: Either, either. And I will not go into that detail, thank you. SM: I want to get right into the Vietnam War, especially on college campuses. How important do you feel, in your own personal feelings, the anti-war movement was in ending the war in Vietnam? And anti-war is defined as primarily a lot of college students and youth from that period, as well as priests and political leaders. JM: Boy, like I said, that is a chunk right there. How important were they in bringing the war to an end? SM: Mm-hmm. JM: I think they were very important. And I would have to flip a coin as to whether I hold them accountable for prolonging the war or shortening it. Along those lines, I am thinking, again, it just ties in with today with Iraq. If I was an Iraqi general, I would look back on history and I would say, "You know something? When the American people lost faith that they could win the war, when it was day after day of protracted combat with no light at the end of the tunnel, the Americans gave up." When Nixon decided to pull away from the peace tables and bomb Hanoi- JM: ...From the peace tables and bomb Hanoi. I said, bomb them back to the Stone Age. When 9/11 hit here, my first thought was we were at war, and I am glad my finger is not on the big red nuclear button. Because I would have pressed that sucker just to get even with somebody. Not the right thing to do. Again, this is me, not the 18-year-old, but this is me, the 58-year-old. I look at what happens again with the news media, the coverage of the war, body bags every night. And the station saying, "Hey, a couple of troops were dragged out of their shot-up Humvee and beaten with stones." And then the military comes out with a version that says, "That did not happen." "The wounds they suffered were..." And again, that is today, the story will change again tomorrow. "Was caused by the impact of the blast," or whatever. I think if I was Ho Chi Minh, and I think you can go back and check his history notes, you will find he was ready for a 100-year war. They have been fighting for a hundred years. If it was not the Chinese, it was the French. If it was not the French, he will take on whoever comes along. Iraq is probably the same thing. They got the Sunni, the Shia, the Basque. It is the same thing. They have been fighting each other for years. You do not walk into the middle of the Civil War. It is just a nasty turf. Ho Chi Minh, I am sure him and his followers sat there and said "You know something? We can take a bombing, but we can watch them rioting in the streets. We can watch them protesting on the campuses and it is just a matter of time. They ain't going to go. And we just have to wait them out." And again, with the electronic revolution, I said, our troops are watching this thing. It is not us watching them in Vietnam on 24-hour old footage. It is they are watching us live on a satellite down link to a phone in their hands. They are watching us protest. What kind of support is that? When you make a decision to send troops into battle, you support them a hundred percent. You do not give aid and comfort to the enemy. To see a picture of Jane Fonda over there. And I am just like, I know what she was feeling, but what was she thinking, when she sat on an anti-aircraft gun? She is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. And God bless America, she can do that. But if you are at war, realize that, if that had been World War II, the previous generation, the greatest generation. She would have been tagged with the name of Hanoi Jane as opposed to Axis Sally, or, what was the other one? Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose, and she would have done jail time. If they would have caught her back in the country. That was the generation that brought me into the world. And then all of a sudden what went differently that people would allow the First Amendment to be stretched that far, that we would not support the troops. Different story. SM: When you look at the movements of the time when you were young, because there were a lot of movements in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. Obviously the Civil Rights movement was in the (19)50s, when you were even a lot younger. And of course the anti-war movement and the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Chicano movement, Native American movement, environmental movement, a lot of movements during that era. Is there one movement that you think truly does define the boomer generation and truly defines America? When you think of the youth of the (19)60s, and when I say youth of the (19)60s, I mean people who were born and obviously raised in the late (19)40s and (19)50s through their mid (19)60s and then of course going to college in the (19)60s and (19)70s. So what movement would you say, is there one that stands out? JM: There was several that stand out. Number one, all the Vietnam vets. Every last one of them. And I think there were like, I do not know the numbers, probably 3 million of them. And again, guys like myself who I got orders for Vietnam and never went, had to go, got very lucky. But I did my battle on Temple University's campus. Again, I got out in (19)67, went to Temple University, back to school, (19)68, (19)69 and (19)70. The height of the anti-war movement. The cubicles next to our, we had a group called Veterans at Temple, just veterans who gathered together because we did not fit in. We were not your normal students. Besides being older, we had just seen a whole lot of other stuff. We had been outside the campus. We had left home, and come back. But next to us we had Students for a Democratic Society, we had Veterans Against the War, Veterans at Temple. We had some Black student league, I think was the name of the first Black organization on campus. There was a Black veterans' organization we also had who banded together in our own group, strictly Black, strictly veteran, strictly to become teachers and go back and teach their own, and pull them out of the ghetto. So a unique environment. SM: So you are really Civil Rights, or anti-war was there or... JM: Civil Rights was huge. Absolutely huge in the (19)60s and the war movement were probably the two biggest movements. I do not think the women's movement was that big. And again, I hope nobody horse whips me for blasphemy, but I am going back into history. I remember saying in high school, I had no problem with a woman getting a scholarship to college if she takes it and does more with it than just marry a guy. If she uses that education. Because for the most part, and to this day I know it, women are far smarter than guys. I do not know, we are good for hunting and getting dirty, but I think ounce for ounce, women have a certain intellectual evolutionary advantage on thinking on the guys. And I do not know what, it is all testosterone or lack thereof or what. But I remember feeling that. SM: Do you remember at the time, did you sense that when you were at Temple University that there was a togetherness amongst the African American students who were fighting for civil rights and certainly there were many white students who were in Freedom Summer. And was there ever a split where African American students went to strictly work on civil rights and white students went to work on the anti-war movement? Did you see that at Temple when you were there, particularly in the late (19)60s? JM: I would say so. I recall my disassociation from the Black movement. I forget who the speaker was, but Cecil Moore, who now has a street named after him in Philadelphia and his entourage of thugs/bodyguards, came to some kind of a demonstration on campus. And literally one of those guys shoved me out of the way, from the back. Like cold cocking me. Well, I turned around and I was going to take a shot at the guy, but again, I learned something in the army, you do not take on an army if you are a patrol of one. He had the biggest guys surrounding him. And the Black movement was getting very militaristic. You had the Black Panthers for a number of years already. I felt unsafe on Temple's campus. Matter fact, my only word to my daughter to this day, I will swear to it. And so will she. She had her choice in any college she could go to take that thing from Bill Cosby. And I said, "You can go to any college you want." Bill Cosby chose Temple. I had no choice. I took Temple, the only one I could afford under the GI Bill. There was no way in hell I would let her go to Temple University's campus. To this day, I think it is unsafe. When I was there, it was unsafe. A white student was gunned down two hours before I was across the same spot by a bunch of kids who just wanted to kill a whitey. Memories of the (19)60s? Yeah, those are some of the memories I had. There was that schism. I do not think any the Black students were doing anything other than saying we are not going to go to Vietnam, because I think the rumor was, percentage wise, they were directly more Blacks than Whites. To this day, I do not believe that I is true. And I think the statistics of whoever you check will go one way or the other. But it is not like 90 percent, it is more like you want to be 40 percent or you want to be 60 percent? SM: I am going to get into another area here, commentary. When you look at the Vietnam Memorial itself, the Vietnam Memorial is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to America. I am pretty biased on that. This is your interview though. JM: Yeah. SM: How do you feel the Vietnam Memorial has done with respect to the Vietnam veteran and their families, number one, but secondly, what the wall has done for America as a nation? Have we healed? JM: I think we are still healing. I think it has been tremendous. I remember personally being against the design when I first saw it. I do not think you can appreciate it until you go there. And that is like watching TV, that is one thing. You actually go there, whoa, that is a different thing. It is priceless. And the impact I think it has will probably go one for at least another a hundred years. It will be like, who do you go to see? Do you go to see the Lincoln Memorial? No. You go to see the Vietnam Memorial. It was a turning point in our country's history, when people suddenly again stood up, took notice, and either pro or con, voiced their opposition or voiced their favor, and clashed over it. And I think the last time that happened was the Civil War. Indeed, it pitted family against family. Well, Vietnam did the same thing. You had in the same family. Brother, pro-war, sister, peacenik. In the same family. And a lot of them took years to mend from that animosity. And that wall, I think it just has shown its healing effect. SM: One of the questions I have asked everyone in the interview process is, I have actually gone out and dwelled on the issue of healing. Because how important is it, with respect to the future of our nation. And what do veterans owe society to give back? What do people who were against the war owe society to give back? Overall with respect to healing, do you still feel, and I know I have a leading question here. That the divisions were so strong at that time in so many different ways, talking (19)60s and through the early (19)70s, that I think those divisions are still present in our society today because no one forgives? No one forgets, no one forgives. JM: No one forgets, no one forgives and it is just under the surface, it is just under the skin. Scratch it and it will surface. Again, yeah, we are looking back in retrospect, a lot of things that I did I would not do today. For example, there were anti-war marchers who blocked the staircase in one of the buildings on Temple's campus because a recruiter was there. You are not going to stop me from going to see a recruiter. We are talking about a company recruiter, a GE or DuPont or whatever. I basically stomped up the whole staircase stomping on my fellow students because they were getting in my face. And I was telling them, no you are not. In hindsight, I probably would have talked a little bit more, probably should have talked a little bit more, but I was just pissed. And it is like when you are young, you know everything. And when you are older, the more you realize that you do not know everything. Again, as hindsight is 20/20. SM: People have even asked me as a person who was not a vet. One of the things that I learned early that to gain trust of Vietnam vets or Vietnam era vets is to say who you are, where you were, and why you did not serve. And I have been very honest my whole life about that. Breaking an arm and there is a lot of things there. I will not go into that. But getting back to the healing process, when people go to the wall who did not serve in the war. It is my perception that there is a lot of guilt feelings, amongst individuals who now upon being older are reflecting on what they did. But not necessarily the true anti-war protestor, they got arrested, were in the service. And was really against the war. Your thoughts on whether there are guilt feelings and whether Vietnam vets feel that there are a lot of guilt feelings amongst the boomer males who did not serve? JM: Good question. Again, I know there are Vietnam vets who have guilt feelings about admitting that they are Vietnam vets, because they were not in a combat role over there. And I am one of those, and what do I tell people that "Gee, you are a Vietnam War vet. Where were you, Pleiku, Da Nang?" I said, "No, El Paso, Texas. Beautiful Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas." And as great as I thought I had it, I know one guy who was a lifeguard in Hawaii for his tour. So it is the flip of the coin. I was in orders once; the orders were shot down. Two guys on one side, one guy on the other, they are in action. Whether they alive today or not, I do not know. It was the luck of the draw. I think there were people who went to Canada, and then Carter gave them an amnesty. And I think that changed history right there. Where if you would ask me would I allow my daughter to be drafted, and would I tell her "No, go to Canada." I do not think I would tell him to go to Canada. We would have the discussion. We really would, "Do you want to do government service as an alternative? Do you want to do like Muhammad Ali/Cassius Clay?" He basically said, "You can take my prize fighting title, and you can send me to jail. I ain't going." I respected that. The ones who basically said, "Nope, I am going to Canada." I do not hold them as high as Ali. But it is like there is a ranking. It is not just everybody into certain categories. If there was extreme religious reasons, for one. But the times I think really changed with Carter's amnesty as to how we need to look at that question. The precedent has been set. We can run, just 50 bucks to get you across the border. And you are safe for the duration, which we are pretty darn sure is not going to be another 10-year war. I do not think we will ever do that again. which is why I do not think Iraq will run 10 years. Closer more to 10 months. Where we get to the point that says, "We are declaring victory." As we probably should have done it in Vietnam, and then leave. Or you bomb them back to the Stone Age and open up a jihad that the world has never seen before. It is going to go one way or the other. It might be Armageddon. All I know is there was the Cold War that we grew up with, with nuclear annihilation, just a shadow away. And then we went to this new war, that we have been fighting since I think the (19)80s and the (19)90s, which is a religious war that we are still fighting. And people are just realizing this war did not happen... The World Trade Tower was hit with a car bomb, a truck bomb in (19)93, not 2001. 2001 was a couple of years back. That plane was targeted, those buildings were targeted years ago. And we have been taking hits. A lot of it, we cannot prove, a lot of what we can prove. But we are in a totally new communications and literally a global world war. This is a world war like no one has ever seen before. Make World War II look like a turkey shoot. This is going to be huge, and it is going to be huge, and it is religiously driven. Which means in our country, we open our doors to everybody. SM: How does the Vietnam War have the continuous relevance in our society today with all these, the war on terrorism, Iraq and 9/11? I can answer that personally myself, but I want other people to answer that. Does the experience of the Vietnam War have lasting and forever impact on America? JM: Looking back at it, the Vietnam War, and again in hindsight, is if I decide to go to war, I turn it over to our military men. And I basically say, "This is what I want done, do it." I do not say you cannot go above the 38th parallel in Korea, as in the Korean War, you fight wherever the enemy is. And by the way, you do not fight on your turf. You fight on their turf. Vietnam, classic example of a screw-up of not looking at history. We had North and South Korea, it was a civil war. We have North and South Vietnam. And we could not bomb North Vietnam for the longest time. I would have bombed them back to the Stone Age. If I could not buy them off economically. I mean, my first move is to take B52's and load them with food and radios, and I drop them on the enemy. Take a look what the rest of the world is doing, and have a good meal while you are doing it. And here goes $50 million, let me buy you out of a war. We can reach an agreement. Now if I cannot do that, if I have to go to war, it is not an interdiction. I would ask the military, I would say, "This is what I want to accomplish. Do it. And you have no limits. Get it done." They will come to me with the game plan, and it gets a political decision. We either go to war or we do not. But before we put one service man at risk, we make that decision. It is all or nothing. SM: I am going to switch this. JM: Again, it is an evolutionary thing. Where we are at right now is a global conflict. And I do not think the media is playing it up. The media is just basically saying, "We are in Iraq." Yeah, but they are blowing up in the Philippines, Muslims. They are blowing up here. Whether it is just Muslims or whether it is the... I am not sure [inaudible] just off the African coast. But if you have a religious war, guess what, that is nothing new. We have got the crusades. Go back before that. It just goes back way-way-way back. SM: Got the ongoing battle in Ireland between the Protestants and Catholics. JM: The Israelis and the Palestinians. When was the seven-day war? SM: (19)67. JM: (19)67? SM: Yep. JM: Okay. I was a Jewish chaplain's assistant in a country at war with Vietnam, with an allegiance to Israel, a religious allegiance. We had a contingent of Israeli Air Force taking this training, the same missile training I had taken. And the debate was, "How do we get off the fort? How do we get to Israel? How do we fight for a war that we could personally relate to?" The war ended before anybody could do anything really stupid. But boy that was a piece of history right there. The conflict that you are presented with, do I go to Canada? No. My case was "Do I go to Israel?" I mean that was the only thought in my mind. SM: There is a good point there. Because I am not sure anything has been written that much on our Jewish Vietnam era or Vietnam vets who truly cared about what was going on in Israel in 1967. They were willing to go over there and risk their lives as American citizens to help the Israeli citizens. JM: And just an aside, in basic training, one of the first formations we went to after we got to Fort Jackson, or Fort Gordon, Georgia, for training, was a chaplain's orientation. And they basically announced, okay, all the Catholic troops over here, the Catholic chaplain will see you, and all the Protestants and all the Baptists. And oh, by the way, if there are any Jewish personnel, the Jewish chaplain's assistant will meet you over here. Then they dismiss back to the company level and our company commander says, "Okay guys, I have had all the Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, whatever. Oh, by the way, are there any Jewish personnel? Please step forward." 10 of us stepped forward in our company. And he stepped back, literally stepped back, and said "Jewish, right?" said, "Yeah." He says, "How did I get 10 Jews in my company? I do not think there are ten in the whole fort." Uh oh. But as it turned out, he was just being... But again, from his vision, his perspective, he usually was used to maybe one or two. Again, percentage wise, the population, but here they were drafted out of Philadelphia, New York City, Jewish ghettos. SM: Right. Yeah. I knew a lot of Jewish Vietnam vets in Philly. Lots. I want to, before I get into the next segment of the interview, since you served the late (19)60s. JM: Mid (19)60s. SM: Or mid (19)60s, when that helicopter, when the news was showing on April 30th, 1975, the final evacuation of the few Americans that were left in Saigon. And then of course their allies there, the South Vietnamese troops and families that were linked to America. What were your thoughts when that was on the nightly news? JM: Thank God the war is over. The retreat is over. To me, that was the end of the war. We were literally pulling out the last troops and the war was over. We had lost the war. We had left with our tail tucked between our legs, and the war was over. It really was a good feeling knowing it was over, and to me that was at the end of the discussion. There would be no other photographs of Vietnam. No, it was over. SM: No thought of what might happen to those who were left behind and... JM: Yeah, I had thoughts about that and my thoughts were that they would be treated no better or worse than the Korean vets. If they were in custody, they would eventually be turned over, repatriated. We would have found out that they were grossly mistreated, because that is the way it has played in the Third World nations. It is the nature of the beast, the Japs did it in World War 2. The Germans did not mistreat the prisoners, military prisoners, but that was a separate little niche. Korea was a different story. Vietnam was a different story. I think you see the same mistreatment now in Iraq or Afghanistan. I think Mogadishu is, I guess, the one that goes back about 15 years, maybe? We were trapped there for a while. But Mogadishu, they dragged that trooper through the streets. The press played that up, and at that point it was, we were declaring victory in Mogadishu and getting out of town. Because we were not going to make a stand here. It is a civil war, it is warlord against warlord. We learned from Vietnam, we are not going to get involved in that again, it ain't worth it. SM: Following up on what you just said. When you think about when President George Bush Sr. Was president, in the Gulf War, we heard a lot about, even in Ronald Reagan's administration, that the Vietnam syndrome is over. And George Bush emphatically stated that the Vietnam syndrome was over. What do you think he meant by that? We all know what the Vietnam syndrome means, but was he prophetic or was he not telling the truth? Because it seems like there is still constant references back to Vietnam no matter what conflict we get into? JM: And I think that has to be said. Because it is the yard stick by which you measure, I guess, two things. How you execute a war, and how you treat the veterans who return. The war in Vietnam was prosecuted poorly. Reasons aside, that is political. It was militarily executed poorly, and the troops were basically shunned by their own people when they returned. After the 100-day war in Iraq, George Bush Sr., there was a full military parade. And it was like, yes, the objective was to get him out of Kuwait. That was done. The troops did an outstanding job. It was a military victory, clear cut without any argument whatsoever. And the troops were welcomed home. I believe the Vietnam troops led the parade in Washington DC, as their homecoming. And to people who have not been in the military, perhaps it does not mean anything. But to those who have served, there was that camaraderie, loyalty of saying, yeah, you recognized that whether we served as a lifeguard in Hawaii or a chaplain's assistant in El Paso, Texas, we put our lives on the line. I mean, I volunteered. I was asked to serve the chaplain. With the [inaudible], it is the same. Hey, let us face it, you are an expert rifleman, and you know how to drive, and I will probably get sent there and that is what you will be doing, is being my bodyguard. That is the only way you would describe it, I did not have to go. My military specialty at that point was a Nike Hercules missile crewman. 30-foot rocket. It only goes to Korea or Germany, fairly decent duty assignments. And nobody is shooting at you. Or I took Plan B, which is be the chaplain's assistant, and run the risk. SM: Did you volunteer? Or were you drafted? JM: I was drafted. But by the way, that is another thing. That it was surprising how many people who, oh, they watched either the football game or they listened to Bandstand. They had no idea that when the president upped the draft, the Secretary of Defense of McNamara upped the draft 50,000 a month. I mean, I knew. But when he did that, I called the draft board. I knew my number was out there, and I had been looking at different military branches. The Air Force offered me a seven-year deal, to a 20-year-old, "We will send you back to college. But you have got to get another degree, can only take it two or three years to do it. You give us four years after that." That is what, six, seven years? To a 20-year-old? That is one third of your life. And I said, "What else have we got out here?" The joke of it was I took my chances with the draft, thinking that military intelligence would make a wise decision how to use Private Mo Green. Again. Got lucky. SM: You have said a lot of things here. If someone were to ask you tomorrow at work, come in and there is a survey done, and "Please write down in one sentence the reason why we lost the Vietnam War." Why did we lose the Vietnam War? JM: Failure to pursue a military victory. And total failure to support the troops on the line by the civilian population. SM: If you were to evaluate the military leadership, not the civilian, and that is certainly the President of the United States, who gets a lot of criticism, but if you were... SM: ...and certainly the President of the United States, who gets a lot of criticism. If you were to evaluate the military leaders, the General- JM: William Westmoreland [inaudible]- SM: ...William Westmoreland and Abrams, and even Maxwell Taylor early on, how would you rate them, and their leaders underneath? JM: Yeah. Probably a little foolhardy and a little ignorant of history, or more concerned with their career and not arguing back, and I do not know that they did or did not, with the presidents, saying, "Let us not do this. What do you want me to do there? You do not want me to go into North Vietnam? Where is the enemy? North Vietnam, that is where I am going. If you do not want me to go there, let us not [inaudible]." Again, you can have the general spout off like MacArthur did to Truman in Korea, saying, "I am going up there, I am going to raise hell." I think that would have worked. I do not think the Chinese would have flowed across the border if they really thought we were serious. Now, they did. But I think at that point they said like, "They are not going to nuke us." I would have nuked the Chinese. I will tell you that right now. I would have nuked them. I would have done the same thing that was proposed by some generals, to put nuclear minefields between the north and the south; hindsight, really stupid. Probably a bad idea. It is like building canals using nuclear devices. If you do not mind the leftover radiation in the canal, not a problem. Very effective way of doing it. I would have used nuclear blackmail. I would have drawn a line in the sand and said, "Hey, you go back and you stay up there and we work these things out. And oh by the way, here is 20 million bucks, and all the rice you can eat, and education for your people." And that is cheaper than a war. SM: That is exactly some of the criticism leveled at Barry Goldwater and the reason why he did not win the election, because they had that one advertisement that showed the little girl. It was only shown once, and it really cost him probably the election. It made him look like a warmonger. And President Johnson followed suit with the Gulf of Tonkin. JM: "In your heart, you know he is right," was the Republican defense for him. And the counterculture said, "In your guts, you know he is nuts." Boy, it is coming back like was yesterday. SM: He did not turn out to be a bad senator, either. JM: No. SM: And this is just a note, I find it very ironic that he and Senator Scott of Pennsylvania were the two senators that walked in and asked Nixon to resign. What irony, what irony. JM: I recall Senator Scott coming to General Electric when I was working there in (19)65. I had gotten out of school, was an electronics technician working in GE, and I remember telling him, "Do not go into Vietnam. If you are going to do it, do not do it like Korea." That is all I said to him. But I literally had the handshake and told the guy. I remember telling a college professor, we got [inaudible] talking about the Vietnam War. This is (19)64. I said, "I hope we do not do it like Korea." As it turns out, he was a Korean War vet. He said, "You do not know what war's like." I said, "You are right, but I know you do not fight it like you fought Korea. You do not draw a line and say, 'You can escape over there.'" I said, "Let me tell you what I am going to do. I am going to kill every one of you, or we make a deal. You want to make a deal? Let us make a deal. We will stop all that stuff. You do not have to lose all of your cities, because by the way, on Monday I am going to take out this one. On Tuesday, I am going to take out this one. You can call it Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or you can call it Seoul. Call it whatever you want. But I will bring you to your knees militarily, and I will do it real quick." I think that is what Colin Powell meant during the 1990 Iraqi war, the Kuwaiti war: "I am going find the leadership, I am going cut its head off, and I am going to kill it." And that is what you do. When you go to war, that is exactly what you do. But you ultimately have to have a game plan. What do you do if things do not go the way you want? Declare victory? Respectable option. Who's to say otherwise? B, go for everything? Or just with withdraw with your tail between your legs? Not an acceptable option. SM: Some might say, though, that cut the head off, you heard this during the Iraq war, you cut the head off by killing all the leaders, but you still got the tail. And we are seeing the tail right now. Even though Saddam Hussein's alive, but if he were gone, this would still be happening. And so I find it interesting, you strongly believe that you would have used strong force and they would have come to their knees, but there is no guarantee they would have, because you explained also the Vietnam War, and then thousands of years and the enemies and we are willing to wait. Do you think that our lack of patience was another reason why we may have lost that war? We had been there a long time, it was a long war. JM: We had been there far too long. World War I was five years long. The Korean War was three years long, not even three years long. Vietnam was over 10 years. And we were not going to do that again. SM: The best history books, they are often written about 50 years after an event. The best World War II books are being written now. There has been a lot of them; Stephen Ambrose, even though he was criticized recently before he died. When the best history books are written about the (19)60s generation, I know a lot of them talk about Vietnam, but it is so part of the boomer generation and how they formed as people in our society, that when the best history books are written, what do you think the historians are going to say about the boomer generation when they were young? JM: They were presented with challenges that people had not been presented with before. And they had to make a decision at a very, very young age. I am sure you could probably go back generation, generation, generation, there is probably a turning point for all of them that they had to come contend with what they can do and what they cannot do. I do not know if that answered the question, but Vietnam, for the (19)60s generation, the boomer generation was it. And it marked people as to whether they said, "Well, I will take my chance with the draft," like I did, or some people said, "You know something? It is more convenient for me to be drafted next week. Let me volunteer for the draft." And other people who said, "I am going to Canada. I am not participating." They opted out. They made a decision to go to another country. That is a tough decision to make at the age of 19, the age of 20. I think the same decision was made during World War II, but we were the victim of a sneak attack. And the perception is it is the right thing to do. We are defending the country. We have been attacked. Vietnam was not we were attacked. We were going there to nation build, we were going there to defend liberty because the domino theory was that eventually... wind up with the commies in Camden and San Francisco. San Francisco would probably be a better breeding ground. SM: Right. Also during the (19)60s, President Nixon had the enemies list and it was a long list and included people from the media, leading activists in the country, Black liberation individuals, Catholic priests, to doctors. JM: [inaudible] sure. SM: What does that say about America too, though, the enemies list of leaders looking at people who do not agree with a foreign policy? [inaudible] ... surveillance of individuals who are against foreign policy or... JM: Now, we are not talking McCarthy in the (19)50s, right? SM: No. No, we are not talking about that period. We are talk- JM: I am looking at it as a continuation of... it is something that in my mind, even back then, it was nothing new. The fact that today we can look back at Kennedy's womanizing after Clinton, it is like, "Well is this something new or was it a cultural thing that was tacitly condoned all these years?" I mean, [inaudible] was supposed to have dalliances with his driver during the war [inaudible] but I just hope... I am not going to say that. This is just a continuation. I think once you crossed... there were certain boundaries, again, with the media, certain things are private, certain things are public. I do not think there is anything now which is private. Now, just a matter of the way you look at it, I myself am looking for a president who is part Boy Scout and also has the ability to look at the enemy in the face and lie through his teeth to the advantage of this country. I need him to lie through his teeth to our people, to our citizens, only in that remote instance where it is to the benefit of the country. But after that, I expect him to be a straight shooter. When Clinton obviously lied with his arms raised up, to me, that was the okay, the cart blanche for all future generations to lie, and sworn testimony does not mean anything, perjury does not mean anything, as long as you can get away with it. And that was condoned by the press. I would have crucified the guy, not what he did, but for lying about it. That is not politics. It is what I expect from a man. I expect a man to be with all the niceties of the gentleman, but with the ability to lie and play poker. But once you have been caught, I expect you to own up. I do not expect you to lie to a court of law. It just sets precedent. And the precedent is now set that they gave him a pass. I would not give him a pass. And I do not know how many of my generation would, other than my wife, who gave him the pass. I looked at her like she is an alien, but we are just diametrically opposed. Is that because I am five years older than her? I do not know. SM: You get into this whole area of leadership and trust, the impact that leaders had on us and boomers in general when we were young, and obviously possibly continuing through as we aged. When you look at President Johnson and the history books of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which we do not have to go into that, but we know what happened there. JM: Sure. SM: We know about President Eisenhower, and he did lie to the public about the U-2 incident. He did lie. And I can remember him being a little boy and seeing him on television, and I admired him. We saw President Nixon with his enemies list, which then of course we know about Watergate. Some people claim that even during Reagan in the Iran Contra, but maybe it is more Reagan's people than it is him. And then some people are complaining now about Bush not being up upfront and honest, and Tony Blair and others. What I am basically getting at is, was one of the impacts of the (19)60s and the (19)70s is that we do not trust anybody anymore, or have the American public ever trusted their leaders prior to? JM: Well, I think that they trusted their leaders, and I think they still trust their leaders, but giving them an ounce of doubt today would have been like a ton of doubt before. There has got to be that faith in your leader. But again, and I keep bringing the media into it, the media flavors the doubt, the media builds the doubt, the credibility. And they do it in such an obviously biased manner; and again, my jaundiced view of the world. But if the press says a Republican has done something, I give that 12 ounces worth of credibility, as opposed to if they say it about a Democrat, it is like no credibility at all. They are just not going to say it. So gee, who is more guilty, the Republican or the Democrat? There is probably a shred truth of both of them, but the media will play it up, again, in a biased fashion, condemn one party over the other. And for the life of me, I think they can play both sides of the street, condemn them both, and make twice as much news, but they do not. SM: What influence have you had on your kids? And I share that with respect to all people who were young in the (19)60s and (19)70s and what they passed on to their kids with respect to public service, the ideals that the (19)60s had that we were going to change the world, that everybody is equal; I am going to vote; giving back. We have seen this past week that slogan over and over, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, which so many young people of the (19)60s and (19)70s took into it. What happened with the boomers, the 770 million who heard that and went through all the experience of civil rights, Vietnam, all those who we have been talking about, and passing this on to their kids who became Generation X? And then we got another generation of kids in here right now. Just your thoughts on that. JM: Well, I have got one of those kids. She is 26 years old. And again, very socially aware, very giving to the community, very generous. And I hope that she got those beautiful thoughts from myself and my wife. I think we passed on all the good stuff. I think she sees me go a little over the edge on occasion. And she recognized that dad's over the edge again. We are talking about a 26-year-old. And got her head screwed on straight and has the values that I have, which I think are pretty good; I am slightly biased [inaudible]. But again, a very generous individual. She will help out fundraising. She has volunteered for... the Coatesville VA Hospital veterans Thanksgiving Day dinner at the Stadium Grill is Thursday. This Thursday? Yeah. She will be working there, just feeding the [inaudible] the hospital. SM: [inaudible]. JM: And she brought that to my attention three years ago. It is an annual outing for us to do that. But that is just typical of what she does. She graduated number one here in West Chester. She could have gone on to a high paying job anywhere. She said, "No, I want to do something else." She helps manage the Chester County SPCA. And she has got a heart of gold. So am I saddened that she did not marry a millionaire and support her daddy in the manner to which he has got accustomed? No-no. But she is very generous and she does want to justice. So it is like big plus, big plus, big plus. And I think all of her friends, to a large extent, are of a similar grain. I think it is a wonderful generation. I think they are looking at what their parents have been through and recognize it and say, "Well, if we can do anything that makes their life easier or avoid making the same mistakes that they have told us not to make," they are pretty good. They have their heads screwed on straight. SM: We hear often from the pundits and the media and everybody else that is out there that the parents rarely share their experiences of their youth with their kids. And if they do, it is either when a person's dying or has had an illness or something as they get older. And we also hear all too often that vets, no matter whether they served in Vietnam or World War II or Korea, just do not like talking about it. But as they age, their stories have to be told, Vietnam era and Vietnam vets. And I will get to that after the interview, about a project that I would like to see Chester County do [inaudible] every single vet that ever served in Vietnam are taped for historic record, male and female. But your thoughts on that in terms of the sharing? Because obviously you have shared. Do you feel just from talking to your veteran friends and maybe some people that did not serve but were on the other side of the anti-war movement, that they have not really sat down with their kids, that their ideals have not been passed down to their kids; what went wrong, kind of thing? What happened? Your story is a positive one, but- JM: Yeah, but [inaudible] I have seen vets in tears publicly in front of their families. Now, in our good old cowboy, Texas president attitude, we do not do that. You do not cry in public. Well, that is dumb. Do anti-war guys of the same generation, same timeframe, do that? They might. I do not think that they do. I do not think that they do. As for talking about the experience, again, there is some guilt that says, "Hey, nobody shot in me. I did not go in the Jones. I partied almost every night. So I do not want to bring that up." I mean, I am comparing myself to a combat vet. And for the most part, there were very few combat vets. An awful lot of people got wounded. 300-some-odd-thousand got wounded. But during that time, that 10-plus-year time span, an awful lot of people went in. It is one of those crazy things. In basic training, I caught a ricochet bullet up against my neck. How close do you want to get? That was an eye-opener, when you say, "You know something? It did not break the skin." It put a little burn mark. I thought, "Bullets are hot." So when you get shot, it is not only, "Ouch, that hurts," but it is like, "Ouch, that burns." So it is like, "Well, how do you tell somebody about that?" Well, I told my daughter. I said, "Hey, touch wood. I am the luckiest guy around. I caught a ricochet and all I got is little burn mark from it." They would not let me keep it either. SM: Oh, my God. JM: But I share everything, except the girls that I dated. But it has helped me build an open relationship with my kids and with their friends. I suspect from the comments that she brings back to me that all parents are not as open with the kids as we are. There is no subject we will not touch. And is it because while we have touched all subjects there is to touch? It has always been, "Talk to me. And you got a question? What about this and what about that?" It is an open relationship with the kids. SM: One last question before I get into the names here, which will be the last third, is very bluntly, what will be the last legacy of the boomer generation, the 70 million born between (19)42 and (19)60 or (19)46 and (19)64, depending on what you want to say, of which 15 percent sociologists will say were ever involved either in service in Vietnam or involved as an activist in any protest movement? So we are talking 85 percent of 70 million who never served and were never involved in any anti-war or any movement of any kind. JM: Can you rephrase it for me [inaudible]- SM: What do you feel the lasting legacy of this generation will be, I guess when they are all gone? I raised this because I am a historian by trade and before I ever got into higher education with my major. And I have read an awful lot of oral histories and thoughts on the Civil War and how the Civil War people never healed. They went to their graves hating the South or the North, never forgiving, although they had had the great ceremonies in Gettysburg where they tried to come together, but many would not. And all too often the sadness that historians have written about the Civil War veterans who just never, ever healed or wanted to heal. And part of the lasting legacy is the sadness of the bitterness that so many of them had when they went to their graves. So just your thoughts on the lasting legacy of a generation. JM: I do not think it would be bitterness going to our graves. I think it is more like we showed the world a different way, or I should say we showed the wrong way to treat veterans returning from a conflict, and to separate the military from the political. The military is a tool to be used with great discretion. And something which is, again, basically a great bunch of people who are willing to put their life on the line and not question the order, to achieve the hopefully correct politics of the country. And it also taught us that you just do not go to war without a game plan. And regardless of how it comes out, the soldiers who returned are the heroes [inaudible]. I do not think anybody will ever go to war again, and this includes the current Iraqi war, without a whole lot of thought and ongoing thought. But the thought has got to be constructive, the actions, the discussions, the politics. Rioting is counterproductive; not rioting, protesting, I think, is counterproductive. I do not think it will be tolerated unless it is done with respect. Again, trusting the politicians, we trust them as far as the next election. We do not have 100 percent faith in them. We know they are not pure. We know they are not perfect. We expect a level of honesty from them and we damn well better get it, or we will vote them out. SM: Which leads right back to trust, just right back to the whole issue of trust and how important it is. Well, the last part of this interview is just going to be your thoughts on names from that era, people who were in different positions, older or younger, during the (19)60s and early (19)70s, just your comments and thoughts on them. The first one is Tom Hayden, who just happened to be on our campus a week and a half ago. JM: And I am sorry I could not make it. He is a protestor. I do not think he helped the war end any sooner. I think he actually added names to the wall by protesting. But I respect his right to protest. SM: How about the other members of that Chicago 8 group? Because it was Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, and I am going to get into Abbie Hoffman- JM: Abbie Hoffman [inaudible] Bobby Seale. SM: ...Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale. I will go right into Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin from the Yippies. JM: Yeah, another group. SM: [inaudible] another, different group? JM: I think they could have been far more effective by being far more in suit and tie than clown makeup. I think if they wanted to end the war, as I told people way back when I was on campus, "You want to make a difference, go to senator so-and-so's office. Get an appointment, talk to the guy, send him a postcard. Show him that you are his kid and you have got serious concerns." But the whole idea that tipping over trash cans, setting fires, burning buildings, that creates a backlash and it is counterproductive. Make the system work. The system works. It is not perfect, it is not extremely fast, but it does work. SM: How do you feel about the Black liberation? There was Black power people who were... Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Angela Davis. JM: That is Angela Davis over there, is not it? SM: Yes, it is. She is a professor at University of California Santa Cruz right now. JM: How do I feel about them? SM: Yeah, the whole Black power group. JM: I remember having to step in between a Black soldier and a white soldier during the riots of (19)65 or (19)66, I think. One guy's uncle got I think killed by a Black man. And I stepped between them and said, "Hey, look. We are in the Army. We are a unit, we are together. I know it hurts. And I know the guy used the N word, his uncle, his brother was killed by it." I said, "We have got to stand together." I think that they did the right thing, but again, it is the method that they used. They were far too confrontational, and it was counterproductive. But it could have [inaudible] it was productive. It could have been far more productive, I think, if they would have used Martin Luther King type... If you are looking in a mirror and the only difference is I am Black, I think you are going to have a tough time disagreeing with me if I am using your language, if I am using your wardrobe. Again, I appreciate this is the land we can be different. Thank God for that. But it is like if you want to accomplish a mission, you have got to be willing to make some concessions. SM: It goes right into the other... Of course, you got Martin Luther King, Jr. Then you have got Malcolm X. Those are two central figures of the period. JM: [inaudible] a guy wore a white shirt and tie, excuse me, a white shirt and bow tie, but a jacket. But he was different. If he would have put on a regular necktie, I think it would have been to his benefit, but he was creating a uniform. Good, productive steps and then a counterproductive move could have been more effective. SM: Dr. King, of course, is known as the civil rights leader who became involved in the anti-war movement. In fact, he got heavily criticized in the civil rights movement amongst his peers. Bayard Rustin, right here from West Chester, along with Dr. King, were two of the very few African American leaders who went big time anti-war. And your thoughts on ... Dr. King always [inaudible] Bayard Rustin is that they made the comparison of being Black in America to being the yellow skin over... concerned about people of all colors. Just your thoughts on Dr. King overall, and Bayard Rustin, who were civil rights leaders who were against the war? JM: And again, being against the war, I do not have a problem with that. It is how you manifest that and the effects on the troops who are over there fighting the war. If it is perceived as giving aid, comfort to the enemy, I do not think that is good. I think it is counterproductive, and you are going to make enemies. But talk about a span of time from their days, Martin Luther King's days, if you would have asked Martin Luther King 40 years ago, "We have got this guy named Colin Powell and people are talking about him as being President of the United States and has a big groundswell of support," he would say, " 400 years from now maybe, but not 40" [inaudible]- JM: 400 years from now maybe, but not 40. Hell no. And again, while Colin will not run, if he did, there is no doubt in my mind that he would probably win. He is squeezing. But again, here we are. It is only 40 years later. And how many years was Martin Luther King after the Civil War? That is like, do my math, hundred years. SM: (19)65, right. (19)63. JM: It is a hundred years to him. And that is forty years to Colin Powell [inaudible] Condoleezza Rice. SM: Right. JM: Very powerful, influential people today. Now is that because the media now puts them out front because they are black? I do not care. They are extremely talented individuals by what little I know to judge them by. But that is time. That is communications. SM: Can I take a two-minute break and go to the restroom? JM: Sure. SM: And then we will finish. All right. Make sure this is working properly. It is. All right. Jane Fonda, I know you have been waiting for- JM: I just thought of the- SM: How about that in Washington? JM: And I have seen that at other VFW posts around the country. Again, I know what she was thinking. I know what she was feeling. But what was she thinking? Counterproductive. And I literally rank her with Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally for World War II. As simple as that. What she did was deplorable. if she wanted to give an interview in Hollywood saying, "I have thought about it and I see no reason whatsoever for us to be there. I think it is a big mistake." That is one thing. But to sit there in an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi while we have got prisoners over there languishing, and giving the photo op. No, no. To me that is, that is treason. SM: How about Benjamin Spock? Dr. Spock, he was involved in the anti-war movement. He was a baby doctor. JM: Yeah. Mr. baby book himself. I do not have any thoughts one way or the other about him, other than saying he was against the war. And I am sure he was in some rallies and stuff like that. But I cannot picture him being here. And other than the suit and tie, he may not have been. But... SM: How about the Berrigan brothers? Daniel and Philip, right from Baltimore. JM: Yeah. SM: But Philip died last year. JM: Yeah. Not a whole lot of thought about him. SM: From the Catholic movement. How about Lyndon Johnson? JM: Lyndon Johnson. I feel sorry for the guy. I think he either just did not ask the right questions or he got somewhat fraudulent, bogus answers from the military. When he asked, again, we can speculate as to what he asked the generals, but like Gulf of Tonkin. That is a fuzzy area that really, I do not believe that somebody said, "Hey, let us Trump up charges that the torpedo votes attacked the Turner Joy, the destroyer." SM: Right? JM: I do not believe that. I think somebody said something. They saw something and relayed, it got a little blown out proportion. Then he made a move, said, "Oh, okay, fine. Well I have got to have congressional war power because we have been fired upon." And he does not have that? I thought he always did. But I think it says as the nuclear commander, he always had the power to declare a war at a button's press. And he had the button. SM: Richard Nixon. JM: Talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I do not hold him in as terrible a position. He got caught trying to do a coverup and he did not fess up. If he would have fessed up, I think he would have stayed in office. Just as Clinton got caught, Clinton did not fess up. He went to whole nine yards and stonewalled, unlike Nixon. So I hold Nixon in at a higher level than I hold Clinton if I am going to rank my presidents. And for that very reason. SM: And of course James Buchanan's the top. Gerald Ford. JM: Gerry Ford, well, I think he was just trying to do the best that he could. Not a whole lot of thought on that. SM: He ended the war. JM: Yeah, But I think the options he were presented was, we can either stick in there another 10 years, we can end it overnight with a nuclear catastrophe, or we just give up as nicely as we can. [inaudible] SM: Hubert Humphrey. JM: Again, I think he is probably a good anti-war advocate as could be described. SM: Spiro Agnew. JM: Piece of [inaudible] comes to mind. Anybody gets caught with their hands in a cookie jar like he got caught... He was a quirky personality. I do not think he could ever have been president other than by Nixon dying. But just I was impressed by his vocabulary, as was everybody. And his sense of humor. But that is all I remember about the guy. SM: How about Eugene McCarthy. JM: Gene McCarthy. SM: Not Joe, Eugene. JM: Yeah. Again, on the flavor of Humphrey. Anti-war, had his reasons, he ended very professionally, if I can use that term, with decency. SM: George McGovern. JM: Not a whole lot of thought on George. SM: Presidential candidate, 1972. JM: Yeah. SM: Symbolized him as the far left. JM: But no. SM: Timothy Leary. JM: Timothy is up there in one of those big clouds of smoke, I am sure. I could never understand him, like I said. And again, you are talking to somebody who I have never taken a drag of a cigarette. Okay. Let alone marijuana. SM: Never inhaled. JM: Never dropped LSD. Can honestly say I probably never inhaled other than might have been secondary. SM: From a rock concert. Yeah. JM: From somebody else. SM: Yeah. JM: Timothy Leary I just told was a nut case. Always did and company always will. SM: John Kennedy. JM: We discussed that earlier, going in. I think, again, because hindsight is 20/20, he is an overrated president. Camelot was almost a Hollywood manifestation by the press. They created an image, they fell on it. See, like all of a sudden, let us do cop shows on TV. Then it lasts about six years, comes back 10 years later. Let us do real life or shows. Let us do trading places. Let us make overage hotels. And here is another one. Let us do the Kennedy's love life. Okay? We cannot do that. So we got kid gloves first thing. What is his face? Clinton came along and all of a sudden, hey, we did not do it Kennedy. But that was then. This is now. He is fair game. But let us not overdo it. We do not want him getting impeached. We just want to play it for as long as we can. Let us wag the dog at the movie ring. SM: How about Robert Kennedy? JM: Robert Kennedy. Mostly kind thoughts about him other than against Sirhan. Killed him, but no great big thoughts one way or the other. Teddy Kennedy I did not particularly care for. SM: What were your thoughts of the general Cao Ky and President Thieu of South Vietnam? Those are the people that come to mind at least after the Diem regime. JM: Yeah, General Ky who I think is still a very, he is still alive in this day. SM: I would like to bring him here to pull it off. JM: Yeah. I think he, like the aristocracy of Vietnam at the time, Was doing whatever he could do to succeed. Whether he was militarily inept or not. I do not know if anybody could be a military genius, a Colin Powell of Vietnam. Unless the circumstances were different. I am glad he came here. I think he probably contributed to the country and is doing whatever he can do to make a buck. Just as he did in Vietnam. SM: Go back to, you see someone that when people remember the most for the longevity. JM: And I am just drawing a blank with him, to be honest with you. SM: Ralph Nader. JM: I bought a Corvair and the car was unsafe at any speed because you could not get it to run half the time. No. Nader, again, I think is like anybody else's. He just, while he wears the suit, he does not wear it well. And in fact you are telling us you have worn the same suit for 20 years, it is probably not the best thing you want to tell us. You would lose credibility. He could have been far more effective with a little bit of coaching. SM: George Wallace. JM: George Wallace. Interesting. I remember being judge of elections in Philadelphia when people were trying to vote for him. And we were told that you have to write his name in because he was not going a ballot in Philadelphia. We had people going crazy. But I respected the truth of what he said. If he said, "I do not want blacks in here," he was telling you, "I do not want blacks in here." Okay. There was honesty about him. I do not think the guy would lie about something like that. Of course, he got paralyzed and shot from that nut job. SM: Daniel Ellsberg. JM: Pentagon Papers, right? SM: Yep. Vietnam vet. JM: Leaking government papers is a no-no. I admire the fact that he did it. I think he could have done it better. Again, hindsight is 20/20. Do not ask me how, I think he could have been far more effective than having himself portrayed as a traitor. SM: How about Robert McNamara? JM: Think that is a guy I do not hold in very high opinion. I think he made a lot of very, very stupid, ill-informed snap decisions that really do not matter a big deal when you are manufacturing cars, but costs tremendously. I think he prolonged the war. I do not think he helped a whole lot. I think he was counterproductive. I think the war would have over far sooner. And if you want to call it a victory, it would have been a victory without McNamara. SM: The women's movement leaders, and you always think of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Those are that kind of the- JM: I think of Bella Abzug, myself. SM: Oh yeah, definitely. JM: Yeah. Some people had credibility, some did not. And I feel sorry for the women's movement when we talk about, well these were the front-runners or the initiators of the women's movement who stood by with President Clinton and basically, by their silence, endorsed his behavior, which says, "Well, the hell with what I have been saying to you folks in the past 30 years." Now stands behind his president, were so forgiving of him and forgiving by their silence. If I was a woman, I would basically tell them all to go jump in a lake. SM: When you are looking at women, it is interesting that during the (19)60s and (19)70s that during all the movements, men are in most of the positions of power and women are in secondary roles. That is why many ended up starting the women's movement. But they have learned from the civil rights movement. How important were women in the (19)50s and (19)60s with respect to not only the women's movement, but other movements, period? And we were finding out now how important they were in Vietnam. They were always important that it took a long time for women to be recognized some of their [inaudible] with respect to their contributions in the Vietnam War. JM: I think the whole idea of, or I should say the growth of use of contraceptives opened the door to women fulfilling themselves to the max. Being in the working world, making a decision to have a career or a family or both on their own terms. I think that was the advantage that came out of the (19)60s was birth control, which totally reshaped what they could do. Again, my biggest argument has always been their far superior to men, mentally speaking. I can still take most of them in fight. SM: Right? JM: Five out of 10 times. SM: Right. JM: But it always been, I have always said it was a waste of intellectual capacity for them to be just barefoot pregnant down on the farm. What a waste. They should be out there. I am thrilled when I see a leader who really excites me, who has got the talent and the guts, the everything. Condoleezza Rice I mentioned. There was a sharp, sharp woman. I would follow her orders into battle if she was a military person like Colin Powell or I believe what she says. She has got that much credibility in her voice. And I do not think she is acting. That that woman is pure talent, pure influence. SM: I am a firm believer that Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, will be running against each other in four years after Bush is done. JM: Condy will kill her. SM: Well, yeah. And the question is, if President Bush wins, because I think she is going to leave his administration, that is another story to go back and run consent. I just think there is some things going on there. Muhammad Ali. JM: I, looking back at the time, I said, "Boy, is that a dumb thing to do." He could have had it all. He could have done just like Elvis Presley, put a uniform on, be a spec for, tour the camps, be promotional and run [inaudible] machine and still retain his championship. He decided to leave or to not to leave but to serve. I respect his opinion. It was as I believe a religious based opinion, like a total respect for that. I think he should opt for military service. That is his call. SM: People like Ron Kovic and the people like John Kerry, the Vietnam veterans against the war, because when they came back, they were as adamant as Tom Hayden. Your thoughts on them and their involvement in prolonging the war. JM: Again, I think they could have done a better job, but they looked like longhaired, dope smoking, Commie free person. And I have not used that term in what, at least three days. But it is like, again, do not shoot the messenger, however, if the messenger looks like the enemy, you are probably going to take a shot at them. They could have done better. Wearing fatigue shirts, it was very symbolic. But smoking pot and growing your hair long and using F this and F that it is counterproductive because they are far more productive. SM: A lot of them threw their medals away. JM: Yes. SM: Purple hearts. John Kerry being one of them. JM: Yes. SM: The people linked to Watergate, which would be the John Dean. Just your thoughts on him, because he is the guy that brokered everything. JM: It is a fine line. Watergate again, I think was one of those moments in cultural history where the communications media, the press, the news, the TV crossed the line and said, "You know something? We are going to pursue this story. And we do not care whether we find a woman under the bed or a burglar at the door. We are going to take no prisoners. Because we have got to have something for the 11 o'clock news." I think in World War II they would not have done it. They just would not have done it. What, make the President look bad during a time of war? We are not going to do it. But that was that generation. Here we are 60 years later. SM: Great. Barry Goldwater again, I brought him up. He has become a big hero in the conservative movement. Just your thoughts on him. JM: I remember backing Barry in high school. I do not know whether I passed leaflets out at the polling place or something like that. But I remember closely watching it and I very much liked the man's style. I thought he was an honest, straightforward individual. SM: And I am going to finish with just some terms from the, well, one of them is your thoughts on the music, your thoughts on the thoughts on the music of the (19)60s and the thoughts on those musicians and entertainers who were anti-war and the effect that they had on the war itself. JM: I think the musicians served as a rallying point because they were so different. I think they were an easy way to grab the audience. And oh, by the way, the change of music style to acid rock drove me to country western in the (19)60s, which as it turns out, was great because my father-in-law happened to like country western music. Of course he did not become my father-in-law for a couple of years after that. I think they were a tool. Again, the media will focus on Woodstock. It is a happening. It is a gathering. It is the 11 o'clock news. We have got something. And again, who went to these? Kids who were almost ready to be drafted or who were drafted. And I still cannot stand. I can stand rap today a little bit better than I can stand acid rock and I cannot stand acid rock. SM: Did you like Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix? JM: Not really. I mean, if I could not follow the music and let us say you are talking to a guy who cannot dance. Let us be honest about this. No, I just thought were, again, they were just tied up with the movement. And who linked them together? The media by accident probably. But it became one and the same. SM: The folk singers were very important in the anti-war movement. Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul, and Mary, the list goes on and on. Holly Near, I mean, there is many of them. Just your thoughts on the folk musicians and Bob Dylan. They were people that really had an effect. JM: Again, they were part and parcel of the whole culture. I mean, there was another piece that was, gee, are you a long haired, dope smoking Commie, pre [inaudible] rock musician, anti-war protestor. All that shape. And each new layer was added to that. Did they contribute to elongation of the war? Probably a little. I do not think a whole lot. SM: I know at the Vietnam Memorial they have certainly invited some of the musicians or the singers, but that is never been any of the folk singers. Joan Baez at the wall? I do not think so. JM: I think he was here in (19)99. (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 John Morris Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Morris, John ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Interviews; Morris, John--Interviews Description An account of the resource John Morris, a native of Downingtown, PA, joined the Army Security Agency in 1965 and served two years in Vietnam. Following Vietnam, he was stationed at Fort Wolters, Texas, to train other operators in route to Vietnam until 1969. John Morris is a life member and active with the Vietnam Veterans of America. He is also a life member of the Veterans of Foreign War and the Disabled American Veterans. He received the Chapel of the Four Chaplain’s Legion of Honor Award. 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 2003-11-25 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.134a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.134b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 230:02 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fd942ffef0e5ff08e6aeedd1c0386891.jpg 9dcc26cd2857d0cb7e99fe250df3650e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9b2d9174377c9729585e0282c5fc60bf.mp3 a9280ed620612055cf574d30b99ef6d4 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Torie Osborn Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She received her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master's degree in Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She received her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master's degree in Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation. Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Counterculture; Watergate; Black Panthers; Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; Civil rights movement; Women's movement; Vietnam memorial; Tom Hayden; Lyndon B. Johnson; Eugene McCarthy; Angela Davis; George McGovern; Daniel Ellsberg; Spiro Agnew; Richard Nixon; LGBT, Gay and Lesbian Movement"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5041,"3":{"1":0},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Counterculture; Watergate; Black Panthers; Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; Civil rights movement; Women's movement; Vietnam memorial; Tom Hayden; Lyndon B. Johnson; Eugene McCarthy; Angela Davis; George McGovern; Daniel Ellsberg; Spiro Agnew; Richard Nixon; LGBT; Gay and Lesbian Movement. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 96:12 Subject LCSH Authors; Civil rights workers; Osborn, Torie--Interviews 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 Torrie Osborn Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Osborn, Torie ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Civil rights workers; Osborn, Torie--Interviews Description An account of the resource Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She got her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master of Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation. 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 ND 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.138a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.138b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 96:12 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b6d0eaf29a11155e2ecab64bebb36d27.jpg d9198edc03dc7190eafb4b6994c70b01 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9c3fff6823264773c958a4115711929e.mp3 b37026a91216edadeea69b404333327d 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 2010-03-17 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Charles Kaiser Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at The Guardian US. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival and his book The Cost of Courage received great reviews from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor along with some other publications. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at The Guardian US. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival, and his book The Cost of Courage received great reviews from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor along with some other publications. Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Marijuana; Rock and Roll; George Orwell; John Lennon; Greed; Materialism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Non-violence; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war movement; De-segregation; Homophobia; Ronald Reagan; Kent State; Diversity; Edmund Muskie; Gay bar; NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt; Harvey Milk; Movies. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5041,"3":{"1":0},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Marijuana; Rock and Roll; George Orwell; John Lennon; Greed; Materialism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Non-violence; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war movement; De-segregation; Homophobia; Ronald Reagan; Kent State; Diversity; Edmund Muskie; Gay bar; NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt; Harvey Milk; Movies. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 118:10 Subject LCSH Authors, American; Journalists; Hunter College; Kaiser, Charles--Interviews 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 McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Charles Kaiser Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 17 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two, testing. I guess we will start again. CK (00:00:17): By the way, I had lunch with two people today who you should strongly consider for your list. One of them in particular is Peter Goldman, who was the heart and soul of Newsweek Magazine from about 1962 to 1980 and he pretty much wrote all of the major cover stories about the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. And he also wrote a biography of Malcolm X, which I believe is still in print in Houston colleges. And I think he would be a terrific person for you. SM (00:00:48): I think I have that book. I have so many books, I have to check that. CK (00:00:52): I do. It is one of the serious autobiographies. SM (00:00:56): Who was the second person? CK (00:00:58): The other one is Henrik Hertzberg, who was the chief political writer for the New Yorker, who was at Newsweek in Francisco in 1965. He wrote the first file about the [inaudible] and then he was Jimmy Carter's principal speech for the last two years of Carter's presidency. And he was twice the editor of the New Republic, and he was an extremely intelligent and particular fellow. SM (00:01:25): Wow. Did you mention I was doing this book? CK (00:01:28): I did. I mentioned that I had to get home so I could talk to you. SM (00:01:31): Okay. CK (00:01:33): But I will send you their emails and you can take it from there, do as you like. SM (00:01:37): Super. Actually, I read yesterday your fantastic piece on Walter Cronkite. CK (00:01:44): Oh, thank you very much. SM (00:01:45): Yeah, I had not seen that. I was going into the computer again and checking on some of your most recent last year, year and a half pieces, and I thought that was very well written and it really hit at home because he was the man I look to for the news. He was so different. CK (00:02:04): He was the glue for the whole country for a long time or he was certainly the glue for, well, for more than just the liberal part. He was the glue for the same part of the country throughout all of that insanity. SM (00:02:18): And I think you hit it right on target when you said when they hired Dan Rather. CK (00:02:23): It was the beginning of the end. SM (00:02:24): Yeah. I mean, his whole persona was so totally different, and Roger Mudd would have kind of continued. CK (00:02:34): Oh, Roger was completely in the same, and he had been Walter Cronkite for three months every summer for years before that and he just was not a good in-house politician. It was nothing more complicated than that. SM (00:02:45): Yep. All right. Well, we are going to start off here and I am going to start a little differently than I did when I was in New York because I have done a little more reading and I read (19)68, but I was kind of pinpointing some points here that you made in the book. You said that you thought the election of President Kennedy taught the students about the power of the individual, how an individual person could change the way the whole country felt about itself. And I know you put that in your introduction. Could you explain that in more detail in your thoughts? CK (00:03:25): Well, I think for anybody between the ages of, well, I was only 10, but I was pretty precautious 10 year old. But for anybody who was a teenager through his twenties living in America, that the contrast between this aged and maybe even a little senile President Eisenhower, who I agree looks better and better in fresh respect, but did not look so great at the time. The contrast between having this very old person and this extremely young and vigorous person with two young children in the White House and a glamorous wife, it was a breath of fresh air and it was also... Mean, his whole message was let us move the country forward, let us move into the modern world. And how better to move into the modern world than with a 40, I think he was 43-year-old president when he was in office. SM (00:04:21): Yes. Do you think that when boomers were very young though, they looked at Eisenhower as that grandfather figure and it made him feel comfortable when they were very young because he was like a grandfather to them. CK (00:04:34): I do not know about that. SM (00:04:35): No? CK (00:04:36): I do not really buy that, no. SM (00:04:39): You also talk early on in your book in the introduction, and we talked about this, about the Beatles and how important message of these four kids coming out of nowhere, but they had a talent that they could be involved in changing the world. And you also talked a lot about Bob Dylan. You kind of bring Kennedy, the Beatles and Dylan all together as the major forces that merged the culture and the politics. Could you briefly summarize your thoughts on that? CK (00:05:11): Well, the Beatles were important partly because they basically take the inspiration of Black American music and transform it into something which is accessible to everybody and they are important, as Allen Ginsburg put it, because they taught people that men could be friends and they really transformed, I think, they began the transformation of what the ideal of masculinity was. And it was certainly something with these long-haired, very attractive, very cute boys being the main cultural figures on the planet. It certainly softened the ideal of masculinity for an entire generation. Dylan, especially in the first four years of his recording career is the person who most successfully puts the ideals of an era to music. I mean, when he writes The Times They Are A-Changin', which, as he said to me, I wanted to write a big song in a simple way. He was very explicitly trying to, I think, galvanize a generation. Now, he quite soon decides that being explicitly political is going to limit him as an artist and he kind of abandons that around 1965. But for four years there-there was nobody who was more important in supporting the ideals of the civil rights movement through music than he. And Kennedy, Kennedy is intelligent and glamour and modernity. I do not know. Kennedy's the person who gets men to stop wearing hats. Kennedy stopped wearing a hat, the world stopped wearing hats. He had huge cultural influence way beyond whatever his political stance was. SM (00:07:20): I have ordered Gay Metropolis. I ordered it on Amazon because I wanted to get a first edition, so I got one on the way. But I have read a few things since I met you about two weeks ago, and that that you brought up the fact that there were four basic elements that kind of led to the Gay Liberation Movement. Obviously the Civil Rights Movement is an example of- CK (00:07:46): The civil rights movement is by far the most important thing of all because it is the example of Black people that really provides the entire blueprint for the gay liberation movement in terms of standing up to the power structure of straight white men in America. Nothing's more important than the civil rights movement as a model, but go on. SM (00:08:10): The other three. You have already talked about the Beatles. And the pill and the psychedelic revolution. CK (00:08:18): Yeah. Well, the pill, I think I said to you before, the reason the pill is so important is that it becomes the sort of public acknowledgement that sex can have a value which is not attached to appropriation. The straight sexual revolution is a necessary prerequisite to the gay sexual revolution because sex is no longer viewed as something which should only take place given marriage and for the purpose of creating a child. And until sex is given a value which is not connected to procreation, it is very hard to make an argument for gay liberation. SM (00:08:58): And then the psychedelic revolution. CK (00:09:00): Well, the psychedelic revolution is just part of... I mean, it is that and really the Vietnam War. It is everything which throws the established order into question. It is everything which makes it possible to question the way things are right now, and that includes the antiwar movement, taking LSD, you name it. SM (00:09:24): Well, you were at Columbia University, I believe, from (19)68 to (19)72. CK (00:09:28): Well, yeah, but I got there in the fall of (19)68, keep in mind. So I actually missed the biggest upheaval. I get there in the fall after the biggest upheaval, which is of course, the spring of (19)68. SM (00:09:46): Right. What was it like to be a college student in 1968? I know you got involved in the McCarthy campaign as a volunteer. CK (00:09:51): It was really more when I was at prep school because that was in the spring. So I was working out of the storefront in Windsor, Connecticut the fall of (19)68. Well, I do not know. Partly being a Columbia you had this sense that you were at the center of the world because even though there was not any particular disruption in the fall of (19)68, you still had enormous media attention. I mean, I can remember there was, I believe, a cover story about Newsweek probably with Mark Ru on the cover like a week or two after I got there. So you did feel like you were sort of under the microscope. I would say the main social thing going on was that everybody was smoking marijuana, except me. I was one of two people in my entire graduating class from prep school out of a hundred. I think I was one of two people who had not tried marijuana while I was in high school. And I did not until the spring of my freshman year at Columbia initially. I think movies were very important in the (19)60s. I think movies really were more important than books as a cultural driving force. And of course, most important of all was music. I think what connected us all more than anything else during that period was the music that we were listening to. SM (00:11:27): Now, you obviously talk a lot in your book about Bob Dylan, the Beatles music and particular songs that shaped the generation and may have even been a theme for the Generation. But besides the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are your top three, so to speak? What other musicians did you really look up to in the songs that had a meaning in your life? CK (00:11:52): Well, I would say everybody in Motown, all of the Motown stars and both the composers like Holland-Dozier-Holland and The Supremes, the Four Tops, all of those people. I think the success of Black Rock and Roll stars, the huge success, the mainstream success of Black rock and roll stars. Of course, there had been successful Black musicians before that, but I do not think there had ever been as many at the same time who had complete crossover appeal. And I think the fact that people in Birmingham, Alabama were as enthusiastic about The Supremes as the people in Philadelphia and Detroit was very important in a subliminal way to making the move towards Black equality possible. Because these were show business stars who were on the Ed Sullivan Show and everywhere else and it meant that there was, at least at the top, there was suddenly real equality between Black and white at least at the top of the music business. SM (00:13:08): Now, one of the albums in 1971, I can remember in the summer, I had to walk almost 10 blocks in Philadelphia to get it because I heard it came out, and that is What's Going On with Marvin Gaye. CK (00:13:20): Right, for example- SM (00:13:22): What an album. And then even a simple song, but it was one of the songs that the OJs did, Backstabbers. I thought that was... It had a message too. I listened to that over and over again and a lot of people liked the tune, but I always listened to the words itself. I know we asked this when I was in New York, but again, briefly describe your background. I know about your parents, your growing up years. And I am very curious again for you to talk about your relationship with Teddy White and the influence and inspired you to become a writer. Could you just give me a little bit about your background before you arrived at Columbia? CK (00:14:09): Well, before I was at Columbia I lived in Senegal from the age of 10 to 13. And I lived in London from the age of 13 to 16. And my father, one way or another, seemed to know most of the most successful writers and journalists of his generation and that very much included Teddy White who would come to our house occasionally from time to time. I remember he visited us once from the suburbs of Washington where we were living before we went to Senegal. And since he wrote really the most important book about John Kennedy's election and John Kennedy was the most important political figure in my life and everybody in my family fell in love with Teddy's book. And I think that at that point sort of subliminally implanted the idea in me of how exciting it could be to write a great non-fiction book. I always said that that book and the kingdom and the power about the New York Times were probably one of the two most important inspirations for me. SM (00:15:20): Well, one of the things I also learned since I was in New York is how important George Orwell is. You considered him the greatest writer ever. CK (00:15:30): Greatest journalist ever. SM (00:15:31): Yeah, greatest journalist ever. How were you introduced to him? CK (00:15:37): I was introduced to him because my brother, David, was at Harvard, was a senior, I think. Was he a senior? Yeah, he was probably the class of (19)69. And he decided to write his senior thesis about Orwell. And coincidentally it was in 1968 or... I do not know if it was considered or if this was White decided to do it, but the collected letters, essays and journalism, all of it came out in four volumes in 1968. So for the first time all of this nonfiction and work was available in one place. And I think I was infected by my brother's enthusiasm, who when you came across a particularly exciting passage in any of these volumes, he would read it aloud at the dinner table. SM (00:16:33): Was 1984 a major influence on you? CK (00:16:39): I certainly remember it as one of the scariest books I have ever read. I remember it that way. Really what Orwell did was he had all of these ideas. He wrote about all the ideas in 1984 and in Animal Farm first in the non-fiction form and then he took the same ideas and use them again to write novels. And I think for me probably cumulatively the non-fiction stuff is more important. But I admire him because he is the cleanest most effective writer I know and he was utterly courageous, perfectly willing to infuriate all the communists by writing a very balanced book about the Civil War in Spain after fighting on the Republican side. But he wrote a book which showed that there were no obvious heroes on either side of that war. And it is just his lifelong iconic of his class. And the fact that most of the time, but I think probably overall if you look at everything he wrote, that he had a be better record of predicting what was going to happen than anybody else. So there were certainly exceptions. He thought that there would be inevitably be fascism in wartime Britain, which never happened. But that was one of his rare mistakes, right? SM (00:18:11): When you think of the (19)60s, what was the watershed moment that you thought the (19)60s began and when you thought it ended from your personal perspective? CK (00:18:23): I think surely they begin for me with the election of John F. Kennedy. And there is so many arbitrary ways to say when they ended, but I think they began to end when Richard Nixon resigned from office and I would say the absolute final nail on the coffin was when John Lennon was murdered in 1980. SM (00:18:52): 1980, yeah. When you look at that period, from your own perspective as a person who lived it, who was a college student in those crucial years, (19)68 to (19)72, I am not sure if you really said this in your book, what is the biggest disappointment that you feel when you look at that whole era and when you look at your generation, the boomers? What is your biggest disappointment in them and what is your thing you are most proud of within that group from that period? CK (00:19:35): I am proudest of the fact that I think we did more than any other generation to do what Molly Ivins describes. She says that the whole history of the United States can be viewed as steadily extending the principles of the Constitution to everyone. I mean, I am proudest of the fact that life for the average woman, the average African American, the average gay person could not hardly be more dramatic, different in 2010 than it was in 1958. I think all of that stuff is unbelievably important. And of course, I am most disgusted by the fact that what was briefly an anti-materialistic generation has become the most materialistic generation in the history of the world probably. SM (00:20:34): Give some examples of that because I have gotten that feedback from others too. CK (00:20:41): Examples of greed? What are you looking for? What do you mean? SM (00:20:44): Just some examples that you say you are disappointed in them because of their love for materialism. Is there specific instances you can explain, individuals? CK (00:20:56): Well, it is just a general. I mean, it seems like the general... Nothing was more looked down upon in my family than conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption was considered one of the venal sins and I would say this generation has become as famous for conspicuous consumption as it is for anything else. SM (00:21:24): One of the most important things of, who said, the expansion of higher education, more students going to college in the (19)60s and (19)70s with the State universities and the community colleges, and of course you had your Ivy League schools, Clark Kerr in his book, The Uses of the University talks about the multiversity, about the links between what is going on in the university and what is going on in the corporate world. And supposedly during the time that you and I were both in college, the concept within local parentis where the college is acting like a parent, which was very big in the (19)50s, in early (19)60s, was not happening and the students did not want it in the (19)60s. It seems like it has come back. The question I am trying to get at here are your thoughts on the universities from that period, not just the Ivy league Columbia, but universities all over the country and how they responded to the student protest movement and whether the criticism that was sent their way by students was correct, that we were linked too closely with the corporate world. Charles, I want to mention, I interviewed Arthur Chickering last week, one of the great educators in higher education who wrote Education and Identity. And he said to me, one of the most revealing things he said, I never thought I would live to see again the corporations taking over the university. He has written a major piece, I think it is going to come out next month in one of the major magazines, that it is the same way it was when the students were criticizing it in the (19)60s. CK (00:23:04): That sounds right. Interesting. Well, in the short term, at least at Columbia, basically all of the.... I mean, the short term for the next 20 years or so, most of the goals of the protestors were fulfilled by the university administration. They democratized things by having a student senate or a university senate, which included student representation. They certainly did much less expansion into the community for a long time of the kind like going to gym in a public park, which is one of the things that is popular in 1968. But probably the thing that we were most excited about was in the fall of 1968, and which was a very explicitly done to dampen political activity, was the fact that they lifted all of this restrictions on the hours when women could visit men in their dormitory rooms. SM (00:24:11): Well, that was important. CK (00:24:12): That was important. SM (00:24:15): Yeah. I remember when my mom went to college back in the forties, my dad used to visit her in the residence hall and they had the woman, I forget the name of the person who ran the residence hall, the house mother or whatever, they had to walk by the room, they had to make sure the legs were on the floor at all times. CK (00:24:32): Said that was one limb on the floor. SM (00:24:36): Yeah. She told me about that. Some of the, I put down here, what do you think the overall impact is of the boomer generation on society? Do you think they have then good parents and or good grandparents in terms of sharing what it was like in the (19)60s and carrying some of the values into the future generations? Have they done a good job with that? CK (00:25:07): Yeah, I think certainly the parents of my social class and my generation I would say are more self-consciously parental than our parents were and partly because... I think that one of the really good things of the women's liberation movement was that it meant that men did become far more involved in the emotional lives of their children than the men of our parents' generation who were... It was a really a large part, a feeling that... Elise and I may be extrapolating too much from my own family, but I think everywhere that it was the woman's job to take care of the emotional development of the children and it was the man's job to bring home the bacon basically. SM (00:25:59): If you were to- CK (00:26:00): And I think now there is much more equality in the division of responsibilities. SM (00:26:07): If you were to place some adjectives on the boomer generation, particularly this 15 percent of the activist that seemed to participate in some sort of protest, what were some of their strengths and what were some of their weaknesses in your point of view? CK (00:26:29): Well, I think the main strengths of the activist was the perception of the white activist was the perception that the Vietnam War was an evil and wasteful enterprise and that almost anything that you could do to call attention to that was a worthy thing to do, an important thing to do. Certainly when people veered off into violence of making bombs, I would say I certainly parted company with them there. But I think all of the nonviolent stuff I think is very important and very useful. SM (00:27:17): How do you respond when you hear critics of that era, that timeframe say that most of the problems we have in America today go directly back to that period when, again, the increasing in the divorce rate, the drug culture, the no respect for authority, a sense of irresponsibility on the critics part? CK (00:27:43): I think all of our current problems can date from really primarily from the Reagan era, whose main philosophical message was be as greedy as you want to be and do not feel that you have to do anything for people who are less fortunate then you are and that that is far more important to our current catastrophic situation than any of the things that you just mentioned. SM (00:28:10): Yeah, that gets me into it because you remember when we spoke the last time we broke down the decades, on how the decades kind of influenced the boomers. And why do not we talk about the (19)80s? When you talk about the (19)80s, you really think of Ronald Reagan. And of course toward the end you think of George Bush who became president, but Iran Contra, those kinds of things. Of course, the economy was not very good. Jobs or lack of jobs in the early (19)80s, of course, the assassination attempt. What does the (19)80s mean to the boomers who had just been through the (19)60s and the (19)70s? CK (00:28:57): Well, the (19)80s is the decade that validates and encourages their pre-occupation with materialism. I think it is the absolute end of... For many people it kills off whatever remnants or the idealism of the (19)60s and the idea that you really should devote part of your life to improving the lives of people less fortunate than yourself. SM (00:29:36): When you think, of course, boomers being born between (19)46 and (19)64, when you think about the end of World War II, certainly the GI Bill, the baby boom started right around that timeframe. The greatest number of babies were born in 1957. Saw that in a statistic. But what was it about the late forties and (19)50s- [inaudible]. But what was it about the late (19)40s and (19)50s, what was it like at that time to be a young child growing up in that period? CK (00:30:13): Well, I think the most important thing was the explosion in the middle class, and the huge number of people who did not have to worry about providing the basic necessities of life, the huge number of people who were relatively prosperous, a larger proportion of the pot probably than at any other time up till that time. And that in turn, by the time the Boomers... Having grown up with this comparative lack of financial anxiety, if you were lucky enough to be part of that middle class, I think that it is the reason that 1968 to about 1971 were the years when college students spent the least amount of time worrying about how they were going to make a living for the rest of their lives and the largest amount of time thinking about how they could recreate the world and themselves. I think that amount of affluence was very liberating. SM (00:31:30): Well, I wrote down just off the top of my head some things. When you think of the (19)50s, this is just good old Steve McKiernan, and I would like your response to see if there is something missing here, I think of a GI Bill, I think Levittown, I think of Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. Of course, you think of President Truman and Eisenhower, the nuclear threat, black and white TV. Parents giving everything to their kids. Church attendance seemed to be up. Parents were- CK (00:32:01): In the (19)50s was church attendance... Is that true? Is church attendants up in the (19)50s? I would be doubtful about that one. SM (00:32:06): Church attendance, well, some of them, things I have been reading was at least larger than it was in the (19)60s. CK (00:32:12): Than in the (19)60s, yeah. But I think the decline... I am guessing here, I do not know the numbers, but I would think the go decline begins after World War II and just accelerates in the (19)60s. SM (00:32:27): Is that because of their parents failed in World War ii or the nuclear threat and everything? CK (00:32:36): I think, well, certainly for my own parents, people of my own parents' intellectual class, I think that the creation or the invention of the atomic bomb contributed to a decline in the belief of an almighty God. SM (00:32:52): The other things were that the parents were proud that they defeated Germany and Japan- CK (00:33:01): Well, we talked about that. Yeah. I mean, I think that people of our age grew up as the beneficiaries of this kind of huge surge of confidence and self-esteem that our parents had, having participated in the greatest and most black and white triumph of good over evil over the last 100 years, for sure. I mean, the fact that the world was confronted with this absolute pure evil of Adolf Hitler and belatedly and that this gigantic cause overcame it, but at least it did come out the right way, I think that was extremely important. SM (00:33:47): And of course, the other things would be the civil rights movement was happening at that time with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Little Rock Nine, and a lot of the things were happening there. The Beats were around, and Jackie Robinson was in baseball, and so it is really good things. CK (00:34:05): The Black people were giving a moral sample to the rest of the country. SM (00:34:14): Of course, I got a long list here, but the (19)60s, you could talk for five hours on the (19)60s. But what was it about the (19)60s that influenced the Boomer generation? CK (00:34:26): Everything. Drugs, the greatest probably access to the sex of any generation up to that time, at least in the United States. The idealism of the civil rights movement, the example of Martin Luther King. And the idealism of the anti-war movement, surely. SM (00:34:59): Yeah, and of course then we- CK (00:35:02): All the... I mean, it is just very hard to describe how the music and the politics and the culture and the drugs all did work together, but they did all work together very much to give us for a brief shining moment- SM (00:35:22): Still there? CK (00:35:23): Hold on. You there? Sorry, the phone fell. SM (00:35:27): Yep, that is okay. CK (00:35:29): ...gave us very much a sense of ourselves as a generation apart, a generation that was new and different and in a way that I think more so than many other generations have had. SM (00:35:43): Well, you have written this great book, 1968, which I know is used in a couple universities here in this region. West Chester does not use it, I do not know why, but- CK (00:35:53): Well, you would better do something about that. SM (00:35:55): Well, I have got to talk to Dr. Kodosky because I know it is used at Villanova and I know it is used at other schools, so I have got to find out, he is- CK (00:36:06): At Duke, I know it is used at Duke. SM (00:36:06): Yeah. Well, it is a great book. And you wrote on a year that will forever be imprinted in the minds of every single Boomer, whether they were an activist or not. The question I am trying to ask is, were we close to a second civil war in 1968 in terms of all the terrible divisions that were happening? It came out, of course, at the convention, we had the assassinations. America really started getting divided really over the war with Tet experience early in the year. Of course, the riots in the cities, the burnings. Just were we close to a second civil war? CK (00:36:53): I am not sure we were closer to a second civil war, but we were closer to a sense of the world falling apart where all of the established order being in jeopardy, at least from April through November, which, I mean, the peak would really begin with the riots everywhere after Martin Luther King was killed. I would think it was that. Apart from the blunt, gigantic shock of the various assassinations, I think that surely the scariest time was that period immediately after Martin Luther King was killed when Washington looked like a scarier place than Saigon was, [inaudible] from all over the place and machine guns mounted on the parapet in front of the Capitol and the White House worrying whether they were literally going to run out of enough federal troops to pacify all the riots that were going on all over the country. And then there was that, and then I think to the part of the country which had escaped those riots, which was not very much except for the rural part, I think the scene of the disarray on the streets of Chicago was extremely unsettling thing to see, something to watch and to see not only poorer Black people or poorer black people revolting, but also middle-class white men. It just seemed like everything was a little bit kind of cruel. But I think certainly those images from the street of Chicago were as helpful that Richard Nixon getting elected as anything else that happened that year. SM (00:38:57): I think in your book, you say some three really important points that I did not know. First one, I knew about the National Student Association and because I knew people that were part of that group, but I did not know it had really started way back and in (19)47. And so when we talk about the anti-war movement and students involved in protests and caring about social concerns, well, the National Student Association had been involved and they cared about concerns kind of all the way through, did not they, from its outset? And you talk about how the CIA infiltrated it right before Loewenstein became, I guess, the president of it or-or after. But how important was that organization in the (19)50s? CK (00:39:43): Well, I think it was important to an idealistic vanguard, but I do not think it was important in a mass way. I do not think must people more all that aware of it. SM (00:39:55): You mentioned you made a point that a lot of the people that went down South maybe did Freedom Summer, who went down to voter registration, got involved in some of the non-violent protests, they were students from that period and they ended up many of them becoming the leaders of the anti-war movement. CK (00:40:12): Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly there was a great overlap, the leaders of this civil rights movement and the first leaders of the anti-war movement, yeah. SM (00:40:27): Could you also talk about the irony that the man who became, who you volunteered for in 1968 was the only man really political figure that challenged Joe McCarthy? CK (00:40:41): Right-right. Right, yes. Well, so that he did, he had two sterling moments of courage in his career: debating Joe McCarthy on the radio, and challenging Lyndon Johnson for re-nomination when every other Democratic senator was too scared to do so. SM (00:41:01): Now, were you able to hear that debate? Do you- CK (00:41:05): No, I do not know if it exists on tape, but I do not think I ever found it. No. SM (00:41:11): Was there ever a transcript of it? CK (00:41:14): I do not remember. I do not think I ever saw one. I think the closest I came was reading contemporary news stories about it. SM (00:41:26): Boy, he must have been fearless because that McCarthy, the other McCarthy, you went against him, you were in trouble. CK (00:41:33): Yeah. Although I did would be important to know, and I do not know whether that debate was before or after Ed Murrow had taken him on. Because that certainly I would say from the time that Ed Murrow does his first show attacking McCarthy, that is the beginning of the decline of his influence. SM (00:41:53): Could you also talk about the fact that maybe we would have had more people with a white Caucasian background who may have been against the war or spoke up sooner on civil rights issues, but they admired the African American community for their stand on what was happening in the South? They were kind of role models to many of the white people who wanted to speak up and did not out of fear. CK (00:42:23): I am not quite sure what you are saying. SM (00:42:25): You mentioned in your book that a lot of white people who may have spoken up earlier about the injustices toward African Americans in America, but were afraid to do so because of McCarthy. CK (00:42:40): Oh, because of Joe McCarthy. SM (00:42:41): Yeah, Joe McCarthy, and the fact that you know it... And of course- CK (00:42:47): I do not think there is any single individual who had a more negative impact in every way than Joe McCarthy did in the 1950s. I mean, in terms of making people unnecessarily fearful, anybody who had ever had the remotest connection to a Left-wing organization in the 1930s, regardless of whether they still had any of those views or not. I mean, he was a massively destructive figure. SM (00:43:15): There is a brand-new book out, I think by M. Stanton Evans saying that McCarthy got a raw deal. I do not know if you have seen that book. CK (00:43:23): I have not, but I do not need to read it to know that he is full of shit. SM (00:43:29): Charles, let me change my tape here. All right. I guess we are heading into the (19)70s here. What was it about the (19)70s that... And again, part of the (19)60s really goes to about 1973, but what was it about the (19)70s that was so different than the (19)60s in terms of its impact on Boomers? CK (00:43:55): Well, the (19)70s is really the era in which what had been the (19)60s in places like New York and Los Angeles and all the big cities, it is really when that sort of ethos, I think spreads out throughout the country into the smaller places and the more rural places. And everybody has long hair by 1973, whereas only people in big cities probably had long hair in 1968. But it is also the period where, well, I think for the main activists in the (19)60s, the fact of Richard Nixon's election was kind of a symbol of the fundamental failure of the movement to bring about real change, at least in the government. I think it was a very depressing event for people who were in the streets in (19)60s, the fact that all of that activism in some sense culminated in... I had an exchange with... When I published 1968, Arthur Crim, who was another dear friend of my father's and was a big fundraiser for Lyndon Johnson at a ranch named for Lyndon Johnson, he read the book and obviously lauded, celebratory tone but he said, "But God, did not we pay this huge price in the reaction the country went through to all that disruption." And obviously we did pay a huge price because it had been so upsetting to so many people that it in some sense enabled the rise of the Conservative movement for the next 40 years. So, there is that. But we have never... Even though, well, you can argue with the Supreme Court we have gone certainly backwards somewhat on school desegregation. But there has never been an attempt really, except [inaudible], to paint Black people is inferior to white people, and there is nobody who questions any, the capacity of women to be competent chief executive officers of major corporations. And I cannot say it often enough that the transformation of the way gay people are treated and what they are allowed to become, what professions they are allowed to be in openly, could not be more dramatic. I do not know if you saw what I wrote most recently about the New York Times with Ted Olson and David Boies were at the New York Times last week talking about gay marriage? SM (00:47:03): No, I did not see that. CK (00:47:04): And in the audience were Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was the publisher of the paper, and Andrew Rosenthal, who was the editorial page editor who's probably written more pro-equal rights editorials about gay people than anybody else. And 30 years ago, their fathers ran the paper, Punch Sulzberger and Abe Rosenthal, and both of them were extremely homophobic, and every gay employee of the newspaper assumed that their career depended on keeping their sexual orientation a secret. And basically, this current publisher single-handedly, really, transformed it from one of the most homophobic institutions in the world to one of the most gay-friendly institutions in the world. SM (00:47:56): That is in the... Was that in... I will look it up. CK (00:47:59): That was in the blog I posted last week. SM (00:48:03): Okay. I will have to check that out. Was that the one, the Columbia Journalism blog? CK (00:48:08): No, it is now hosted by the Hillman Foundation. SM (00:48:10): Oh, okay. Yeah, that is where I saw some of yours, too. Okay. CK (00:48:13): Yeah. It was originally hosted by Radar Magazine when there was a Radar Magazine, and then I moved to the Columbia Journalism Review, and then I moved to the Hillman Foundation when they offered me more money than the Columbia Journalism Review. SM (00:48:26): A couple of things within the (19)70s that stand out. Of course, Kent State and Jackson State, Watergate, Nixon resigning and Ford becoming president, the Pentagon Papers. And the only other thing kind of disco music, the music changes drastically. Your thoughts on any of those events? And then oftentimes, and I would like your thoughts on this, when we talk about the sexual revolution, we talk about more of the (19)70s and the (19)60s sometimes. And the critics of the (19)70s will say that because of the sexual revolution, there was a direct link to the AIDS crisis of the (19)80s. And of course, when you think about the (19)80s, again, you have got to think of Reagan. I interviewed Mark Thompson a couple weeks ago, and Mark Thompson almost, he actually started crying on the phone. That is the only time he did it, he said, when he starts thinking of Ronald Reagan. CK (00:49:20): Who is Mark Thompson? SM (00:49:21): He wrote Advocate Days. He is Malcolm Boyd's lifelong partner, and he was one of the leaders of the Advocate for many years. He said when he talks about Ronald Reagan and about how Ronald Reagan treated gay and lesbians in America, as if they did not even exist, he gets real emotional. But- CK (00:49:48): You know what he said about his son though, Ronald Junior, when he first took the office? He said, "He is all man, we have made sure." SM (00:49:57): Oh, wow. CK (00:49:59): I have always wanted to know what the test had been. SM (00:50:02): Yeah. His son does not seem to be all that bad. I think his son is a little liberal, is not he or something? CK (00:50:07): His son is very liberal, yeah. SM (00:50:08): He has got his own radio show, I think, out in the West someplace. Your thoughts on those major events of the (19)70s, Kent State, and their impact and either something- CK (00:50:18): Well, there was still a huge... I mean, the (19)70s is when I witnessed all this. The second biggest disruption of Columbia University was in 1972 when there was, again, buildings occupied, and anti-war protests and police came on the campus, and it was really kind of a mini version of what had happened in 1968, and it was a period... There was still a period when there was a lot of middle-class protests in the streets going against the war, which was after all, dragging on and on thanks to Henry Kissinger. But there was also the music was less interesting, except for Stevie Wonder and a couple of other people. But the amount of diversity, which was really the hallmark in the music of the (19)60s, was that someone with almost any conceivable musical style had a shot at being a star. Whereas my mid (19)70s I would say, disco was the main form of a popular musical entertainment in America. And certainly there is a huge amount of sexual promiscuity in the 1970s, that is undeniable. I mean, it is the really the time in our time when you felt like the biggest danger, physical danger, to you of being promiscuous was getting something which could have gotten rid of with a couple of shots of antibiotics. So, there would never be quite that same libertine spirit again because of the AIDS virus. SM (00:52:05): Yeah. When you think of all the movements that really evolved from the civil rights movement and used the civil rights as their role model... I have been asking this question to a lot of my guests, too. There seem to be a lot of unity within these movements. That is, the women's movement would come out strong, they would be at any gay lesbian protest and vice versa. CK (00:52:30): Well, no, not at all. On the contrary, the women's movement, especially at the beginning, Betty Friedan was obsessed with not letting lesbians take over the women's movement. That was a big leitmotif. SM (00:52:41): What year was that though? CK (00:52:44): Oh, as late as 1968 or so. If you really want the right women's movement person, you should interview Susan Brownmiller, who wrote Against Our Will, which was the groundbreaking book which changed the law on rape. Because up until then in most states, the victim could barely testify in her own trial. It was a very important book. Then she did a big look about the women's movement about 10 years ago. But she would be the person to get the blow-by-blow on that. I can give you her email, too. SM (00:53:17): Yeah, that would be good. CK (00:53:17): Three emails I owe you: Susan, [inaudible], and Peter Goldman. SM (00:53:21): Yeah, and Susan, I believe I could tried to contact her, but it was her book company, and something Susan Brownmiller books or something. CK (00:53:30): She is in the phone book on Jane Street in Manhattan. SM (00:53:33): Okay. You corrected me on that, but what I am getting at is that the (19)60s seemed to be a period when movements evolved for individual rights for so many different groups, whether it be the Native American group and the American Indian Movement, which was in its heyday from (19)69 to (19)73. Then obviously, you have got Stonewall, which was a historic event for gay and lesbians. You have got the Chicano movement. I just spoke to Dr. Franklin last week about that group out in San Francisco. And certainly, the environmental movement in 1970. What are your thoughts on all these movements? Are you pleased with the direction they have gone as years have progressed? Are they still strong or do you think they have become so singular in their... they do not work with other groups? CK (00:54:32): Well, I certainly think that the Conservatives are much better at uniting their movement than the Left has been, with the exception of the election of Barack Obama. But generally speaking, I would say there has not been. Of course, part of the problem is the complete withering of the labor union movement in America, which was extremely important as a source of self-financed progressivism, and it has gotten so much smaller than it was in the heyday. Your question is really too broad for me to answer, is what do I think of all these movements? I mean, that is just too... I cannot get a handle on that. SM (00:55:17): Yeah. I think what I am getting at is, do they work with other groups or are they just concentrate on their own issues and become isolated? CK (00:55:27): There is some [inaudible] but not as much as I would like there to be, probably. SM (00:55:32): How about Boomers that say they feel they were the most unique generation in the history of the United States because they were going to change the world in every way? They were going to end Racism, sexism, homophobia. That was an attitude that a lot of the Boomers had back in the (19)60s, and some still have it. CK (00:55:51): Well, I mean, there was more progress made for women and gays and Blacks when we were young than at any other period in America since at least the Emancipation Proclamation, I would say so. I mean, to say we were the most unique generation? Well, that is not a statement that I would want to defend. But we were, briefly, one of the most successfully activists generations, is the way I would put it. SM (00:56:31): You will remember this question, and I have the whole issue of healing. Do you feel the Boomers are still having a problem with healing from the extreme divisions that tore them apart when they were young, divisions between Black and white, and obviously those who supported the war and those who did not, and the troops as well? Do you think the generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Or is there truth to the statement time heals all wounds? Do you think that the Boomers are a generation- CK (00:57:00): Wounds all heals, is the other way to put it. SM (00:57:02): Yeah. Do you think- CK (00:57:06): I do not know the answer to that question, that is another one of those. But I mean, I think there will always be fundamental disagreements. I would say one of the fundamental disagreements now is between the people who realized that the war was a pointless and wasteful exercise, which could not have been won under any circumstances, and the counter movement, which says if only we would just hung in there a little longer, we could have defeated the Viet Cong, which I think is completely ridiculous. But I do not know. The rest of the questions, I do not think I really want to answer. SM (00:57:47): I know that when we took our students to meet Ed Muskie, he answered it in this way, "We have not healed since the Civil War." That is- CK (00:57:55): Yeah. You told me that. Yeah. SM (00:57:57): Yeah, and he did not even comment on 1968, which is what I was- CK (00:58:01): He is probably still too traumatized by 1968 to comment on that. SM (00:58:05): Yeah, you may be right. The other question is dealing with the issue of trust. One of the qualities that the Boomers have always been looked upon as having is this business of not trusting anybody in positions of responsibility and whether they pass that on to their children or their grandchildren. But would you say that this generation, more than any other, was just not a very trusting generation because of all the leaders that lied to them and assassinations and all the things, that dreams- CK (00:58:40): [inaudible] different point of view towards figures of authority than the generation that proceeded us, certainly, I would say that. And a lot of that had to do specifically with Lyndon Johnson, who after all, did run on an anti- war platform in 1964 and then proceeded to escalate the war in ways that I thought only Barry Goldwater could have done. SM (00:59:12): I would like your comments, you had mentioned that Walter Cronkite was so unique amongst all the journalists from that period when Boomers were young or even into their twenties watching television in thirties and forties. What do you remember about the media from the (19)50s and (19)60s and (19)70s that stands out, beyond just Cronkite? I want to mention these names here because these are names that I remember as being kind of important. These are the people we watched when there were only three channels. Huntley-Brinkley, John Cameron Swayze, Dave Garaway, Frank Reynolds, Douglas Edwards, Don McNeill and the Breakfast Club, Arthur Godfrey, Frank McGee, Hugh Downs, Dan Rather- Arthur Godfrey, Frank McGee, Hugh Downs, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, and I guess Nancy Dickerson was the first female that I think was on TV all the time, along with Sander Vanocur. Were they kind of special? Were they different than the ones we see today? CK (01:00:24): Well, I mean, Huntley-Brinkley are the inventors, really, of the modern evening news broadcast, as we know it. Although, twice as long as it was when they started, still basically the format, they were the first ones who made it a kind of mass cultural phenomenon. The main difference was that the big newspapers and the big networks really did have a monopoly on the distribution of information, which is unimaginable in the internet age, but probably, in the coverage of black people by southern newspapers in that era, with some honorable exceptions like the Atlantic Constitution, was largely awful, and the coverage of gay people was uniformly awful by all publications everywhere, pretty much without exception, in the 1950s and the early 1960s. On the other hand, we did not have cable news, and I am convinced that cable news has done more to denigrate or to degrade the national conversation than anything else in the history of the modern mass media because they do so much to focus on the trivial and things that are not important, and they also put on the air all kinds of people who are supposed experts who never would have had any public outlet back in the day when there were only three networks. So I do not know if that [inaudible] or not. SM (01:02:22): Well, I wish I had had a chance to totally read your book, Gay Metropolis, but after talking to Mark Thompson for almost two hours a couple weeks ago about The Advocate and everything, we talked a lot about the AIDS crisis and the loss of life within the gay community. He mentioned that he went to as many as a hundred funerals of friends, and the fact that when you talk about gay and lesbian boomers, so many of them have passed on, some of the most talented ones. He talked a little bit about Paul Monette, the great writer, and some of his friends that were at The Advocate as well. Could you explain in your own words what it was like to be a gay person, say in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, and where we are today, just briefly? CK (01:03:25): Well, my knowledge of the (19)50s is obviously from people older than myself. To be gay in the 1950s was to be invisible or was to make the large proportion of your energy to making sure that your sexuality was invisible to everybody else. It was a time when you never saw any positive depiction of gay people anywhere in the public media, and the only openly gay people in the world practically were Ginsburg, James Baldwin, and Gore Vidal, sort of, kind of, but not exactly. Things are not all that different in the (19)60s, we have accepted, until the Stonewall Riot in 1969, and then you have immediately, this kind of organizational energy that you had never had before. The (19)70s is the great flowering of open gay life, and huge matter of fact, obviously, but it is still a time when in the (19)70s there were no openly gay reporters at any major newspapers, anywhere. There were two gay reporters that I know of at the Washington Post in the (19)70s, Roy Aarons, and I am going to forget the name of the other one again, who ran into each other in a gay bar, and they were both so embarrassed, even though they were both gay, they were both so embarrassed to see each other in a gay bar, that instead of saying hello to each other, they ran in the opposite direction, never talked about it again. In 1980, there was a total of two openly gay reporters in San Francisco and New York City, Randy Schultz in San Francisco, and a guy named Joe Nicholson who was at the New York Post. Well, what I say in the Gay Metropolis, is really that the AIDS crisis was, well, first of all, you have to say, as you were saying before, the AIDS crisis wiped out half of my generation of urban gay men. I think the most likely number is 50 percent, and I think that had a really devastating effect on the culture. I think that is really an important reason, why the culture in the (19)90s was relatively arid and vapid. So many of the most creative people, I mean, were dead. But age is the best and the worst thing that happens to us; the worst for that reason, because half of us were wiped out, and the best because it finally stimulated us to do something like the kind of mass organization that we should have done 10 years earlier, and it resulted in everybody, millions of people, being forced out of the closet, and America realizing that people like Roy Cohn, and Brock Hudson, and so many others were in fact gay, which is something most people did not realize before the AIDS epidemic. So, it created all this organizational energy and it made it clear to people for the first time, just how many people really were gay. SM (01:07:09): Has the AIDS quilt done to the gay and lesbian population and their families what the Vietnam Memorial has done to veterans? CK (01:07:20): I think it certainly did at the beginning. It certainly did in its heyday. I mean, I can remember very vividly, I cannot give you the year, it might be (19)88, I am not sure, but the first year that it was displayed in Washington during one of the gay marches on Washington, it was an unbelievably traumatic event for many of us. I mean, you literally walked around the quilt and discovered that the people that you did not know were dead were dead for the first time, but because it does not have a permanent display anywhere, I do not think you can say that it has quite the same effect as the Vietnam Memorial, just because it is not somewhere to be seen at any time. SM (01:08:09): I know I have been trying to get an interview with Cleve Jones. It is kind of hard. CK (01:08:14): What has happened? What happened? SM (01:08:16): Well, I contacted his assistant, but I think he let his assistant go. I got to get back to him again, because there is different people. I think they might have interns in there, wherever he works, and so they are not very good at getting word to him, so I got to get to him directly. You mentioned, I want to also know your thoughts on what happened in 1978 in San Francisco, because here it is, to some people who may not live in the Bay Area, it is not big to them, but certainly the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk were major events. It is almost like, they are not like Dr. King, and Bobby Kennedy, and John Kennedy, but here we are again, somebody murdered, who was so visible, who was fighting for somebody's rights and the answer, even whether this guy was on Twinkies or whatever, they ended up dead. Your thoughts on that particular day in San Francisco in November? I lived out in the West Coast. I know the impact it had on that city, and I know the impact it had on the state is sad. Just your thoughts on 1978 and what happened in San Francisco with the Harvey Milk and George Moscone? CK (01:09:40): It was a terrifying event, a devastating event, I mean, you could see it as an extreme reaction by one deranged individual to all the progress that gay people had made up to that point. Harvey Milk was extremely important, as the recent movie captured so well. He was an extremely important, early, charismatic gay leader in a period where we had had very, very few, if any, charismatic gay leaders. So it was both a tremendous shock, tremendously depressing, and on an individual basis, it was just a tremendous loss for the movement, just to lose somebody who had been so effective in that way. SM (01:10:39): You mentioned that movie, and that leads me in back to something you mentioned much earlier about the counterculture of the (19)60s and (19)70s and how important the music was, certainly the art was, and the movies. In your view again, or for the first time, I know you mentioned this in our interview before, what were the movies that you felt really explained the culture of the (19)60s? That really talked about the (19)60s? CK (01:11:07): Explained or captured? SM (01:11:09): Yeah, I would say captured the (19)60s and the (19)70s. CK (01:11:17): Medium pool; have you ever seen Medium Pool? SM (01:11:18): Yes, I have. CK (01:11:21): Bonnie and Clyde, in a funny way, has a real 60s sensibility, and I cannot exactly explain why, but partly because it is a very violent movie, and partly because that was a very violent era, so I think it has something to do with that. Ell, my favorite movie in the world is A Thousand Clowns with Jason Robards, which is really the first celebration of someone who is questioning authority, so it is, in a way, in it is way, it is kind of the first movie about the (19)60s, in New York City at least. I do not know. I mean, movies were very important in the (19)60s, but not so much because they captured the era, because I think most of the important movies of that era were mostly set in other time periods. SM (01:12:25): Where would you place the Vietnam films Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver? CK (01:12:35): Deer Hunter, I thought it was a big [inaudible]; Apocalypse. Now, I thought it was kind of a mess; Taxi, I did not see until this year on an airplane; Platoon is very important, but that is much later, right? SM (01:12:52): Yes. CK (01:12:52): Is that the (19)80s or something? SM (01:12:52): Tom Cruise, yes. CK (01:12:54): Coming Home, that is a very important movie. That is about, I think late (19)70s, is not it? SM (01:13:01): Yes. CK (01:13:01): With Jane Fonda and John Voight? SM (01:13:10): Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yep. Then the other ones are, The Graduate. CK (01:13:11): Well, The Graduate is the key movie, in terms of, I mean, no other movie ever captured the division [inaudible] generation. SM (01:13:26): Another one in that period was The Sterile Cuckoo. I do not know if you saw that with Liza Minelli. CK (01:13:31): Yeah, correct. SM (01:13:32): Of course, she followed it up with Cabaret, which was... CK (01:13:34): Well, that is the (19)70s. I mean, I write about that in the Gay Metropolis, that really, although it is set in the 1930s Germany because of the bisexual theme of it, and also the kind of sense of forces beyond your control taking over. That was, I mean, I really felt when Cabaret came out was when I was in my twenties, that this was as much a portrait of the life I was leading in Manhattan, in terms of social interactions, as it was a portrait of 1930s Berlin. SM (01:14:18): Another one is Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which was about the sexual revolution of the time. CK (01:14:24): Yeah, I saw it and I do not really have enough to recollect. SM (01:14:29): Then there were the black films like Shaft and all those other, they were fairly big as well. CK (01:14:37): Yeah, well, they were mostly about making money. SM (01:14:40): Now, I mentioned this, I keep saying it, I am going to cut this out of the editing, but the three slogans that I felt really defined the period were Malcolm X's "By any means necessary"; Bobby Kennedy, when he talked a Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and why, I see things that never were and ask why not," which is kind of symbolic of all the activists of the era fighting for different causes; and then of course you had the Peter Max poster, but not too many people remember seeing these words, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," symbolic of the hippie kind of mentality. Your thoughts on.... CK (01:15:24): You have left out, "black is beautiful and gay is good." SM (01:15:27): Well see, I am asking yours. I am asking what quote you would... CK (01:15:32): "Black is beautiful," which I believe is Stokely Carmichael's creation, and "gay is good," which was Frank Kameny's creation in direct response to "black is beautiful." He saw Stokely Carmichael say that on TV, and he said to himself, we need something like that for the gay movement, and there upon invented "gay is good." SM (01:15:51): Well, David Michener said something about the, you probably know him? CK (01:15:56): I do not really know him. no. SM (01:15:57): Yeah, well, he said something about the gay community because he says, I have been working for years trying to get them to include music in their protests or music linked to their causes, and he says it has been a fruitless battle. He said there was no music, and all the other movements had music, so that was just a... CK (01:16:20): [inaudible] music was the disco music. SM (01:16:22): Right, you may be right. I know the Bee Gees came to be well known at that particular time. Again, the other thing is the pictures that really stand out in your mind, because pictures say more than a thousand words. The pictures that you feel define the (19)60s and the (19)70s, or when Boomers were young? CK (01:16:42): Which pictures we... SM (01:16:44): We are talking about photography. CK (01:16:47): Yeah, well, the Vietnamese girl, and the picture of the girl at Kent State, and the picture of the three athletes at the Olympics in 1968, and certainly at the time, although I do not think it has the resonance down through the years, but the gigantic picture of the funeral procession for Martin Luther King on the front page of the New York Times the day that he was buried. SM (01:17:26): I have got only two more questions. One of them is, when you talk about the (19)60s and look at that period, you saw the Civil Rights Movement and you saw that Stokely Carmichael challenging Dr. King saying, your time has passed. Byard Rustin, another person who was well known for being a gay person, right here from Westchester, in this debate with Malcolm X, where he also told Rustin that your time has passed because Black Power is here now, and non-violent protests is a thing of the past. What I am getting at here is, whether it be the Black Panthers, or Black Power Weathermen taking over for Students for Democratic Society, the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, what sent them down was the violence there, and even I was talking to someone yesterday about the environmental movement and some of the violence that has really hurt their cause. Even in San Francisco, the area where I lived in 1978, the violence that took place after Harvey Milk, violence seems to hurt every cause. Just your thoughts on the whole concept of fighting for certain issues, and beliefs, and justice, and rights, and then this violent segment comes in, by any means necessary, and it seems to really hurt a cause; your thoughts on that? CK (01:19:00): Well, I guess there is something to the idea that some of the people who remained active in these causes the longest probably had a frustration over the lack of progress, or whatever specific thing they were interested in, did turn to violence and in no case was this the decision which actually contributed to any real social progress. SM (01:19:30): Who are your mentors and role models that you look up to today, whether historic or people that you have known in your life? CK (01:19:47): Frank Cleins, of the New York Times, because he was the most honest and the most... Cleins, c-l-i-n-e-s, the most honest and the most elegant journalist I know. George Orwell still, even though he is dead, he certainly is saying, George Orwell reminds me every day of the obligations of a writer to be fearless and accurate, as accurate as you can be. Everybody says Nelson Mandela, but I will say Nelson Mandela too. I mean, he is the extraordinary, modern figure of our time, modern political figure of our times, for sure. SM (01:20:37): What do you think the history books will say after all the boomers have passed on? What will be their legacy, when people write about them who were not alive, when they were alive? CK (01:20:53): I suspect what they will write about the most is the music, because that will be the part that they can actually experience in almost the same way that we did. I mean, that is the big difference between the 20th century and all the centuries before it, is that all of the people in exceeding generations are all going to be able to experience all the popular music that was around. Whereas before the phonograph, only a tiny proportion of the popular music of any era survived into the next one. Also, I think the music was the most was lasting artistic thing that we created in that time. So I would say it will be the music and it will be the perception that this was the generation which exploded centuries of prejudice against people who were not white, male, or straight. SM (01:22:03): The one slogan that came out in your book, and I have heard it before, please define what you mean by this; I know what it means, but for people that are reading it, "just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you." CK (01:22:21): Well, we discovered as decades went on, that there had been an awful lot of surveillance by the FBI, and by the CIA, [inaudible] by the CIA being completely illegal at the time. It means that paranoia was often grounded in reality, even then when you did not know it for a fact at the time. SM (01:22:48): COINTELPRO was pretty scary. It was almost like McCarthy all over again. CK (01:22:52): Yeah, on a broader scale, I think. SM (01:22:55): Yeah, lives were ruined there too. Charles, is there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to this time? CK (01:23:04): I do not think so. SM (01:23:06): All right, well, that is it. I got it. That is exactly an hour and a half. CK (01:23:09): Okay. SM (01:23:17): John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. CK (01:23:24): Well, John Kennedy was the first great love affair of my life, and I was a big Kennedy supporter at the age of 10, and we had a debate in fifth grade in Mrs. Green's class, and I debated Steve Lane, who took the Nixon position, and I had the Democratic National Committee Handbook, which had a whole series of questions for the Republicans, which seemed to be completely unanswerable at the time. I think it is important to remember that at this point in his presidency, or certainly two years into his presidency, that people did not feel markedly different about him than Obama's supporters feel about Obama. That he was seen as very ineffective; he had had this disaster of the Bay of Pigs, he had had one big success in the missile crisis, but the Civil Rights legislation was stalled, and nobody quite saw how it was ever going to get passed, and there was a, I think, big perception that this was a great speaker and a pretty boy, and not someone who could get a lot done. I think we will never know, but the odds are that my brother David is correct in believing that he would have resisted the quagmire that Lyndon Johnson took us into because he had the balls to stand up to his own advisors, and Lyndon Johnson did not have the balls to stand up to the Kennedy advisors who he inherited. I think in particular that there is a pretty good chance that Dean Russ would have only lasted one term, and that alone would have made a huge difference. I shook Bobby Kennedy's hand once. I never shook Jack's; I saw Jack and the inaugural... SM (01:25:46): Well, I shook his. CK (01:25:47): Yeah? SM (01:25:48): Yeah, that is on the bottom of my letter; at Hyde Park. CK (01:25:52): Oh, yes, I remember. SM (01:25:53): Yeah, I was 11? I do not know. CK (01:26:00): Anyway, I met Bobby, who came to my father's swearing in when he became Ambassador to Senegal. Then he was supposed to come visit us in Senegal, and I spent a week experimenting in front of the mirror trying to get my hair flip the way his did, and then his plans changed and he never came to visit us in Senegal. In 1968, I was exactly like Murray Kempton and many, many others, and I hated Bobby Kennedy because I was a hundred percent for Gene McCarthy... SM (01:26:31): That was my next guy, McCarthy. CK (01:26:33): And Bobby was the coward who would come down from the hills to shoot the wounded, as Murray Kempton put it, after McCarthy almost wins in New Hampshire, and he comes in to steal all the fire, and then when he was shot, it was the end of everything. It was the most horrible [inaudible] of all. Especially because of the cumulative effect of it, you know? SM (01:27:05): Yeah, Eugene McCarthy, because he was the first person I interviewed. CK (01:27:11): Oh, good. I am glad you got him. SM (01:27:12): I got him, and we got along real well. I am Irish, he is Irish. I spent two and a half hours, and I got a long interview with him, but I had met him twice before, but he would not answer two questions. He said, when I asked him about Bobby Kennedy, he said, read the book, just read my book. Got a little emotional, but he said, just read the book. I did not ever have the guts to ask him a question. I would have asked it to him now, why did not you continue? Because I still... CK (01:27:48): He had a breakdown. He had a complete break. He never recovered. He, more than anybody else except Ethel, never recovered from Bobby Kennedy's assassination. That was it. He was never, he never functioned after that. That was it. He blamed himself. I am convinced he blamed himself as everybody kind of blamed themselves for contributing, and it was irrational, of course, but we all felt that we had contributed to this climate of hatred and viciousness, and especially hatred of Bobby. He had been as nasty and vicious to Bobby, in print, and in public, as anybody else was in 1968. But, he is the crucial figure of the year because he is the only person with the balls to run for President against Lyndon Johnson, even though I do not think he had the slightest interest. I mean, he pretty much admitted when I interviewed him that he never really intended, he never intended to be President. What his goal, his ambition, his intention, was to force Lyndon Johnson to change his position on the war, but certainly not to force Johnson out of office. SM (01:29:03): How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, because they were the yippies. CK (01:29:10): Yeah, I never took either of them very seriously at the time. They were both too radical and too theatrical for my taste. I was much more of a, I was not very radical, except that I was gay, but that did not really make me radical politically. I was a real old-fashioned Democratic Liberal; Gene McCarthy liberal. Gene McCarthy was also pretty radical in what he said about the CIA and what he said about America being the arms merchants of the world. SM (01:29:52): Right. CK (01:29:52): He said a lot of things that no modern progressive candidate would say. SM (01:29:59): I just found him to be brilliant. CK (01:30:01): Oh, he was brilliant. He was brilliant, but he was not... SM (01:30:03): Wanted to be brilliant. CK (01:30:03): Oh, he was brilliant was brilliant, but he was not a serious person. He was brilliant, but he was unbelievably, and he fails us terribly from June to August of 1968 in ways which are... I mean, from June through the rest of the year, he is just a complete catastrophe. A, because he never reaches out to Bobby's people B, because he does not function as a candidate from June until August and C, because he does everything he can really to undermine Hubert. He hates Hubert and- SM (01:30:41): Yeah. Well, Hubert Humphrey and Spiro Agnew were the next two, because Spiro was the hatchet man, he was going all over the college campuses with all this highfalutin language. Your thoughts on... CK (01:30:56): Hubert is the tragic figure. I think it would have been a different world if he had been elected in 1968, but he really was genuinely emasculated by Lyndon Johnson. When Johnson said, "Do not worry about Hubert, I have got his pecker in my pocket." He was not exaggerating. Spiro Agnew inaugurated the most successful right-wing propaganda campaign ever. He really changed the way the press was perceived, and he was the beginning of this obsession with balance, and the beginning of really moving the whole debate in Washington 25 degrees further to the right than it had been before. I think the seeds of those speeches have grown into giant trees of Fox News and Pat Buchanan being a major... Just all kinds of terrible things came out of him. SM (01:32:28): Benjamin Spock and Daniel and Philip Berrigan. CK (01:32:34): Well, we did all think we were Spock's children there for a minute. And he was very good about the war, and the Berrigans were two of the most courageous and honorable people of their time, I think, probably. SM (01:32:51): And then the women, which is Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, your thoughts on so-called leaders. I got Phyllis Schlafly's thoughts in person, but... CK (01:33:03): I admired Gloria enormously as a journalist. She wrote great stuff for New York Magazine. My favorite will always be her profile of Pat Nixon in the 68 campaign. And she asked Pat who she most wanted to emulate, and Pat naturally said, "Mamie Eisenhower." And Gloria said, why Mamie Eisenhower? And Pat said, "Because she captured the imagination of America's youth." SM (01:33:44): Wow. CK (01:33:44): And then she lost it, which Pat never did. But she lost it and she got pissed off, and she said, "We have not had it easy like other people, we have had to fight for everything we got. We have not had time to sit around and think about things like who we wanted to emulate." And Bella was... Well Bella, introduced the first gay civil rights law in Congress, so I guess I am grateful to her for that. And I think I probably voted for her against Pat Moynihan in the Senate primary, because I had not forgiven Pat for working for Richard Nixon. And I never read Betty for Dan's book, but I went to college with her son who I liked very much. Sean Friedan. SM (01:34:32): That is the one Phyllis Schlafly kept commenting on was her. She is the one that started it all with her books about the... Well, the attack on motherhood... CK (01:34:44): Betty was... SM (01:34:44): All that other stuff. CK (01:34:44): No, but she was very important in living a greater imagination about what possibilities of life were for them. SM (01:34:54): I know I mentioned the Black Panthers, but there is unique personalities within them. You have got Eldridge Cleaver, you have got Huey Newton, you have got Bobby Seale, you have got HRF Brown, you have got Stokely Carmichael, you have got Kathleen Cleaver. And of course you, Dave Hilliard is not as well known, and Elaine Brown, but Newton was pretty big. Seale was big too, but Newton was like, and Eldridge Cleaver who ended up becoming a conservative at the end. But just your thoughts on their personalities. Angela Davis was not one of them. She was just an activist. She was not a Black Panther. CK (01:35:30): I do not know enough about their personalities to have a useful opinion. SM (01:35:35): But overall, you just were afraid of them? CK (01:35:39): I thought they were pretty scary at the time, yeah. SM (01:35:42): How about George Wallace and Ronald Reagan? CK (01:35:55): George Wallace perfected what really became the strategy of the Republican Party for the next 40 years after he ran for president, not obviously as a Republican. But he really was the genius at focusing the fear of poor, dumb white men on everything that was different from them. And that is really pretty much been the essence of most Republican campaigns since then. And Ronald Reagan's campaign was successful for, among other reasons, a TV campaign run in all of the Southern states three weeks before the election, whose theme was the gaze of taking over San Francisco, and now they want to take over the White House. And Jimmy Carter's approval rating among evangelicals was, these are not real numbers, but something like 65 percent before this campaign and 35 percent after that campaign. And the Republicans under understood how to use and exploit the fear of black people and then gay people more effectively than any other major party. And they owe a lot of it to the path making of George Wallace. SM (01:37:50): Only about three or four more here, and then we are almost done with one final question. And that is Daniel, not Daniel Berrigan, Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers number one. And Robert McNamara himself, the man himself. CK (01:38:13): McNamara did a lot to try to redeem himself during all the years after he was Secretary of Defense. He did actually understand by the time Johnson pushed him out, that the war had been a disaster, but he also probably had as much as any other single person had to do with getting us in there. And he was terribly two-faced throughout the time that he was in the administration. My favorite story, which I think I tell in 1968, which is when Kosygin was in London on one of the 18 failed peace missions, and there was a bombing halt in place, and they were about to resume the bombing while Kosygin was there. And David Bruce, my father's [inaudible] ambassador in England, wrote a telegram, marked it please pass to the President. This would be a catastrophe if you resumed the bombing while Kosygin is here. It will set a terrible message throughout the world. Cannot do this. And they did delay it for three more days. And the day after, or a couple of days after, Bruce sent his telegram, McNamara called him up and said, "David, thank you so much for that telegram, it arrived at just the right time. It was just enough to turn the tide and cannot tell you how useful it was." SM (01:39:55): Wow. CK (01:39:57): And then my father learned from somebody else who had been in the same room that when Bruce's telegram arrived, McNamara said, "Who the fuck is David Bruce to tell us when we should bomb and not bomb? What does he know about bombing?" So there was that. SM (01:40:16): Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater? CK (01:40:21): Well, Richard Nixon was, when I was growing up, Richard Nixon was... My family had exactly the same shoot of Richard Nixon as Herblock did, that this was a man who hopped up out of sewers all across America when he was campaigning. And his role in the McCarthy period, and in all the red baiting and all of that stuff made him as bad a person as there was. Now, it is true that Ronald Reagan and the second George Bush have managed to make him look like a relative moderate, but this was not a great president. He went to China. He was the only person who could go to China and do that because he had spent all of his life up in that time taking the wine that would have made it impossible for any Democratic president to do that. So yes, it is great that he went to China. It is not great that he contributed to the isolation of the Chinese from the rest of the world for the previous 20 years. And without question, he prolonged that fucking war for five years longer than it should... SM (01:41:50): Can I use that word in the... CK (01:41:51): Absolutely. I mean, that is... SM (01:41:54): Everybody is going to see the transcription. CK (01:41:59): They were terrible. SM (01:42:00): And Barry Goldwater? CK (01:42:06): Well, my brother, David's favorite Art Buchwald column was the 180 wrote, I think in the spring of 1965, saying, "Thank God we defeated Barry Goldwater. If we had not, we would now have a hundred thousand more troops on the way to Vietnam and we would be bombing the hell out of the North Vietnamese, and it would all be a catastrophe." So I do not think the conservative movement has done America any real good in the last 50 years. And to the extent that Barry was the father of the modern conservative movement, I am not an admirer. On the other hand, he did have the balls to have the right position on gays in the military, I think long before Colin Powell did. SM (01:43:05): What is your thoughts on Buckley? Because Buckley was very important in the... CK (01:43:11): I think Buckley is also the father of many terrible ideas which have worked their way into the mainstream and done grave damage to America. SM (01:43:21): Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps, and then Harvey Milk. I want your thoughts on... CK (01:43:28): The Peace Corps was an entirely good thing. And whatever Sarge did to make it a success was a wonderful thing. And when we lived in Senegal, we had the first class of Peace Corps people who were in Senegal and all over the world as well, but they were a very impressive group of young idealists who were responding to the call of the Kennedy administration to give two years of their life to make the world a better place. And that was genuinely impressive. SM (01:44:11): What was the second person? CK (01:44:13): Harvey Mill. SM (01:44:14): Yes. CK (01:44:18): I had a good friend named Jeff Katzoff who worked in gay democratic politics in San Francisco, so I used to hear a lot about Harvey through him. And I mean, he was very courageous and effective guy and a trailblazer. He was not the first openly gay person elected, that was really the state legislator in Minnesota. But he was certainly one of the first, and he was very important. And his assassination was an extremely disturbing event. And the second most disturbing thing was the pathetic sentence that his murderer received for this. And the movie, what is the name? Who plays the... SM (01:45:22): Sean Penn. CK (01:45:22): Sean Penn does one of the performances of a lifetime. The movie does something really important by capturing the political and emotional power of this person. SM (01:45:36): I am trying to interview Cleve Jones, but he is kind of... CK (01:45:39): Oh, you must be able to get to Cleve. SM (01:45:41): I ended up, I am going through this Tanner, they delayed it and delayed it. So I do not know what the delay is. Two more. Your thoughts on Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, which may be the predominant black personalities of the period. CK (01:46:03): Well, Jackie Robinson was a miracle. Both because he was so unbelievably talented and he seemed to have exactly the constitution and the demeanor that was necessary to play this unbelievably difficult trailblazing role. And who were the other two? King and... SM (01:46:32): King and Malcolm X. CK (01:46:39): I lived in Bethesda when King spoke on the march on Washington. And my Unitarian uncle minister Roger Greeley came to Washington for it. And everybody went into Washington, and there was an official, I think an official request by the organizers of the march not to have children there because they were so obsessed with having it to be a controlled event. So I stayed home and watched it on TV, and I have a vivid memory of one of the neighbors running into one of the kids my age in the neighborhood the next day saying, "We heard you cheering for Martin Luther King yesterday." He is not the most important American of the 20th century, which is probably Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is certainly one of the five most important Americans in the 20th century because of his courage, intelligence, breadth of vision and charisma. He is, of all those great public speakers, he is probably the best of all those great public speakers. And most admirable for being so right so early about the Vietnam War, and being willing to do that, knowing exactly what the cost to him would be and still doing it. My favorite quote is at the beginning of that chapter of [inaudible 01:48:49], " One has to conquer the fear of death if he is going to do anything constructive in life and take a stand against evil." 1965. He was fearless. I think he was genuinely fearless. SM (01:49:20): Yep, I agree. And Malcolm. CK (01:49:22): Malcolm X, I was mesmerized by his autobiography that was ghost- written by, what is his name? SM (01:49:32): Alex Haley. CK (01:49:33): Alex Haley, yeah. That was one of the most powerful and exciting reading experiences of my adolescence just because I guess it described a life that I did not know anything about, and it was written with energy and passion. And certainly he is someone who I admire a great deal more afterwards than I did when he was alive. He also was somebody who I probably thought was a fairly threatening and scary figure, but he got less scary as he got it along. He went along, I think, and certainly his death was a terrible, terrible loss. SM (01:50:28): One of the important things, then we are done. We are done. Is the issue of religion too, and spirituality. The Beatles are very important part of this, how the Beatles split up, and George Harrison in particular. Well, all of them kind of... CK (01:50:43): That is the first end of the Beatles. How the (19)60s when the Beatles split up. That is certainly the first. SM (01:50:48): But also there is the fact that people went to church a lot, or synagogue in the (19)50s and they did not do it as much in the (19)60s. So there is a lot happening here. Billy Graham stands out to me as the number one evangelical of this whole period, and he has been pretty solid throughout. I think there was one president he did not like, and that was, Carter I think. He was not invited to the White House with him. But can you explain, when you talk about going off to make money, is the whole issue of religion and spirituality important? As the end of the Vietnam War happens, there is no more draft. So people will say, "Well, they go into themselves now they become, it is not we, it is about me." Is that really an important part of it there? CK (01:51:35): What the absence of religion? SM (01:51:37): Yeah, the absence of religion. The fact that I do not, more of fact I believe in the power above, but I do not necessarily believe in God. It was almost like an agnostic dogma. CK (01:51:48): Right. It probably, of course, parts of the church are very materialistic too, but I suppose it is broad absence made the wholesale embrace of crass materialism even easier. SM (01:52:10): Then the communal movement. Communes was that whole thing of getting away from it all. And so when the best history books are written about the (19)60s when we are all gone, I always say that when all the boomers have passed on, what do you think they will be saying about the boomer generation, historians, sociologists? CK (01:52:26): We made the best music. SM (01:52:29): Made the best music. CK (01:52:31): And we did transform. We transformed America. We transformed what was possible for black people and for women and for gay people. And all for the better. We did contribute a lot to America living up to the principles of the Constitution, of the Declaration of Independence in dramatic and important ways. It really was, before the (19)60s it really was a country defined by prejudice, and in which most of the most important positions of power were reserved or of avowedly heterosexual Protestant white men. And that has changed, and we deserve all the credit for that. SM (01:53:51): This is the absolute last question, and I swear. You already told about the fact that when you were a senior, you wrote that piece in your college paper. If you had... CK (01:54:02): In the New York Times about... SM (01:54:04): Yeah, in the New York Times. If you look at your (19)68 to (19)72 time in college, is there one specific event, either a speaker who came to your school or... CK (01:54:15): Saul Alinsky came to my... SM (01:54:17): Or a professor. CK (01:54:18): Saul Alinsky came to my prep school in about (19)67. That was very important. And the only good thing that happened to me in my entire prep school experience, I would say. The only public performance that I remember actually at Columbia, which was in (19)72 or three, was Don McLean coming and performing American Pie. SM (01:54:48): Wow. CK (01:54:48): And it was the only time I ever used my press card to talk my way into a performance at Columbia. No, I do not remember any other... SM (01:55:03): Any speakers you went to see at college? No? CK (01:55:04): I remember going to see Arthur Schlesinger speak at the University of Connecticut also during prep school. No. SM (01:55:20): Okay. CK (01:55:21): First thing I did politically was hand out stuff for John Lindsay at the polls in fall of (19)69 when he lost the Republican primary and he got reelected as an independent. SM (01:55:34): When you debated as a 10-year-old that other student where you had the platform, did you know going in into your opponent was not going to be as prepared as you were because you had the platform and he did not? CK (01:55:47): I think I as probably pretty confident as the son of Philip Kaiser that I would be more prepared than any opponent could be, yeah. I saw Steve again five years ago, and he apologized for taking the part of Richard Nixon. Steve Lane, L A N E. SM (01:56:05): Oh, wow. Is there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? Because I have had some... CK (01:56:12): We did not really talk about Bob Dylan, who is as important a cultural figure as there is. SM (01:56:16): You can say a few things. I know I have to be 2:45. What time is it now? CK (01:56:22): 10 after two. SM (01:56:22): Yeah. I got to be over at his place at 2:45. CK (01:56:25): I have to be at the dentist at three, which is downtown. SM (01:56:29): Just on Bob Dylan. CK (01:56:33): Well, I would say the most religious, public religious experience I have ever had was listening to Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, when the uniform feeling within the audience was worship. Because he figured out a way to put our hopes and ideals to music in the most powerful way imaginable. And he demonstrated that one middle class Jewish kid from Minnesota could completely reinvent his life, and with nothing but a guitar and a harmonica transformed the way the entire vanguard of a generation around the world thought about itself and thought about its time. I think that as good as I will do, I think we can end there. SM (01:58:06): Yep. (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 Charles Kaiser Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaiser, Charles ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors, American; Journalists; Hunter College; Kaiser, Charles--Interviews Description An account of the resource Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at The Guardian US. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival and his book The Cost of Courage received great reviews from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor along with some other publications. 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 2010-03-17 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.133a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.133b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 118:10 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/65a958ce18c1b7be6f8c4b456fd6817c.jpg 4d70d54f3f273a0abb41cebe442ed3d6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b389af43142f7802f2a35d8796c9a7c3.mp3 4c7ebeb9b8ea53921c07ee4f960ecc6d 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 Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism. <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English 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 2010-11-23 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Marvin N. Olasky Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Marvin Olasky is an editor, an author of more than 20 books and a distinguished chair in Journalism and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College. He received his Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Yale University and his Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. Olasky let his position of provost of the King's College to focus on his position of editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Marvin Olasky is an editor, an author of more than 20 books and a distinguished chair in Journalism and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College. He received his Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Yale University and his Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. Olasky left his position of provost of the King's College to focus on his position of editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 146:19 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; VIetnam War; John F Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; NAACP; Students \\nfor Democratic Society; Black Panthers; Vietnam Veterans; Free speech movement; Activism; Kent State"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Baby boom generation; VIetnam War; John F Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; NAACP; Students \nfor Democratic Society; Black Panthers; Vietnam Veterans; Free speech movement; Activism; Kent State Subject LCSH Editors; Authors, American; College teachers; Patrick Henry College (Purcellville, Va.); Olasky, Marvin N.--Interviews 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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Marvin Olasky Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 23 November 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. MO (00:00:08): Yeah. A company is putting out his first in comic book perform, and then they will all be accumulated next spring. So. SM (00:00:17): Okay. MO (00:00:17): Some kind of fun writing fiction. SM (00:00:20): My first question is how did you become who you are? You are a fry edge boomer, which is those boomers born in those first 10 years, between (19)46 and (19)56. So how did you become who you are? And secondly, when you look at who you are, you went to Yale and graduated in (19)71, and then you went to Michigan and got a PhD there in American Studies. So what were your experiences like at those two universities, the college environment? MO (00:00:52): Well, first I became who I am because my parents at a certain time in 1946 decided to get married, and they had a son in 1947, and they had a second son in 1950. Mainly me, I owe it all to them. Those are a lot of questions you have asked. Kind of a multiple warhead question. Which one do you want me to start with? SM (00:01:18): I would start with that first one, how you became who you are first and the influences you had in your very early life with your parents and so forth. MO (00:01:36): Influences in very early life. Well, there is a lot there too. Growing up in the (19)50s, I think there was a certain amount of fear in the air concerning the possibility of nuclear warfare. Growing up as a kid in suburban Boston, there were lots of cultural influences. I think my grandparents were real pioneers. They managed to make their way out of the Russian Empire and get all the way to Massachusetts, usually by the way of Germany, in one case by London and Ellis Island and then Boston. So they had a pioneering spirit, and I think they wanted to assure as best they could, that their children would not have the same difficulties that they did. And so there was a certain protectiveness on the part of the grandparents towards their kids. That is my parent. On my father's side, my grandfather Lewis, who in my family would call Lewis the pioneer with my kids, I call them, that was a devout Jew. He would be praying a lot and my father had the forms, but not the belief. He was a very smart kid who graduated at the top of his Marden high school class in 1936, and he was accepted to Harvard at a time when I think there was a quota on Jewish student. He learned in the 1930s, he majored in anthropology. He learned that various tribes all made up their own creation myths and their concepts of God. He learned that there was no reason beyond tribal identity to choose one over another. He came to believe in religious evolution with cultures over time, moving from primitive belief to rationalistic understandings. So he began to think that the most important part of Judaism was not theology. There was no reason to think that writings from so long ago were grinding on us. Writing emphasized culture, which reflected the history of the people. And this actually is very common in the 1930s, whether in a very painful form like the Nazis or the fascist Italy. They emphasized, here is the genius of our particular tribe. And that was a murderous form. My father had a benevolent form of the same thing. Namely, there are tribes. The Judaism is a tribe, here are particular customs to follow, but there were no particular beliefs there. And then on my mother's side, her parents, as far as I know, were not particularly religious. They were entrepreneurs. Her father went to the streets of Boston with a horse and wagon, collect and used mattresses and then stuffing them. And that over time became a furniture store that made him fairly prosperous, but there was no particular belief there. And so, I think my older brother and myself in the 1950s were raised with a certain set of rituals, but no real belief behind them. And both of us in time noticed that. And that led me, I think probably with my brother's urging in some ways, or I think he was three years older or so, he came to these ideas. I think I started reading some books like Sigmund Freud, the Future of Illusion. This is about when I am 14 years old, or HG Wells book, the history of the world. And I became a pretty straightforward materialist. And then in my teenage play, an atheist. So that came out of, I think, living in an atmosphere in the 1950s and the early 1960s when there was a certain set of rituals, but there really was not belief, at least in my parents. There was a fearful time in certain ways. Again, nuclear warfare as a prospect. And the question was, well, what is there really? And if the answer was there is not really anything there, then that led into a search for alternative. SM (00:08:27): Was McCarthyism part of this too? This fear? MO (00:08:30): What? SM (00:08:31): Was McCarthy is not part of this fear? MO (00:08:34): No, not that I ever recognized, no. My parents were not particularly active, politically active. That was just a world that was really foreign to me. And then I am just thinking that there was a thing of just the other influences. There was a series of books, about hundred, over a hundred non-fiction books published by Random House in the 1950s and the 1960s called Landmark Books. SM (00:09:29): Oh, yeah. I had a lot of them. MO (00:09:32): And so I just read and read and read. This probably started when I was in probably the fifth grade, sixth grade. I read a lot of these about Christopher Columbus and Captain John Smith and Paul Revere and the Minuteman and Lee and Grant Appomattox. And I think the story of my grandparents pioneering, and I never knew very much about it, mean they spoke Yiddish, I did not. There was not a whole lot of communication, but I had a sense that they were particularly Lewis the Pioneer, a heroic person leaving his home. And somehow, he was actually drafted into the Russian Army in just about, I think 1912 or so, perhaps 1910. He deserted and somehow made his way across Russia, across Europe, and eventually came to the United States. And so, I did not know much about that, but I had the sense of being a pioneer. And so I basically was learning American history from the Landmark books, and I really bonded with it. So I think there was a certain love of America, or Love of the West, or love of pioneering. And then there were, I think this [inaudible], some of the television shows of the time. I was looking back recently and trying to remember what I was watching, and there were two that had an influence on me. I think The Rifleman was a popular show in the late (19)50s. And the Lucas McCain, who was the character in the show, was really, I mean, he got into gun sites, but I suppose was some sort of compassionate and conservative also. He gave ex-con an job on his ranch. I was looking back recently at some of the episode, I mean just this plot descriptions, there was one of his old enemies who had changed to become a doctor. He could not believe it at first, but then this Palmer adversary helped him in a gunfight. So it was a Western that many of the Westerns at the time. The writers were trying to make certain political and cultural points in them. And so it was an interesting western. It was to shoot them up, but also with the idea of helping people defending the rights of immigrants. Lucas McCain helps the man from China open a laundry, helps the family from Argentina buy a ranch. And they were very well directed. The creator and initial screenwriter and director of the series with Sam Peckinpah, who went on to direct some very good Western movies in the 1960s. So anyway, I think there were television shows that had a cultural impact. And then there was another one called Have Gun Will Travel. SM (00:13:24): Paladin, yeah. MO (00:13:27): Which there was an actor, Richard Boone, who played Paladin and Paladin, again, a gun fighter who had come to the rescue of those in need. So, he was also a chess player. I grew up playing chess, and he was smart. He was a high IQ gunslinger. So, there was this idea of being a hero in some ways and fighting for those who needed help fighting for the oppressed. So I suspect that had some influence on me too, in a way. Baseball had a lot of influence to me. I was a mediocre player, mediocre is probably over exaggerating my perilous, a pretty bad player. But I became a fan of Boston Red Sox and started to follow them. And baseball is just an interesting combination of the one and the many in it has had individual community. Everyone gets a ton of that. You are also part of a team. And so stuck in some ways also that an influence on me. Maybe that is deeper down, but if you ask about some of the influences. SM (00:14:55): Yeah, those are excellent examples. Well said. You went to Yale from (19)67 to (19)71, and of course you went to Michigan too for your PhD. The first question I had here is what were your college years like at Yale? Because everybody knows there were a lot of protests there. I know that John Hersey wrote a book, I think in (19)69, A letter to the alumni, explaining what happened there. And I know that I think the Black Panthers were involved in something at that time over there. MO (00:15:27): Oh, yeah. SM (00:15:27): With Bobby Seal. Your thoughts about your college years at Yale? MO (00:15:34): Oh... SM (00:15:34): Any influence on you there. MO (00:15:37): For sure, and very strange times now. I came into Yale in my own mind, an atheist and critical of lots of things. Some of the things at Yale, I would like to say this was all intellectual in a way. But I suspect I had a full of covetousness and I went to Yale. And I entered in the fall of (19)68- so hold on just one moment, please. SM (00:16:24): Yep. MO (00:16:50): And so, I am there with my two polyester sweaters, and I met one roommate, one of my roommates had his, had brought his own dresser, just to hold all of his luxurious woolen sweaters. So there may have been some covetousness there in my part. Had another roommate who was the son of a Virginia banker, and he brought with him a great [inaudible]. Excuse me, I am just going to be heading down an elevator if I lose you for a moment. I do not think I will. But if I do, just call me right back. SM (00:17:30): Okay. MO (00:17:31): No. Cause now I am trying to walk a little. SM (00:17:35): Okay. MO (00:17:37): And he sat for hours in the corner of a living room next to a high intensity lamp. But he focused away from himself, so he was invisible, and everyone else had to squint. I just remember the interesting characters, and that probably had an influence on me. But then also the- Hold on a moment. I am on the, let me just see. I do not think this is going to work. It will be harder to hear, because I will just walk around inside. SM (00:18:26): Okay. MO (00:18:32): No, and I am not blaming the professors because again, I came already predisposed to some of these things. But what I learned in history classes is that America, also known as Amerikkka, the way it was often spelt a deeply embedded class system within which, let us say expensive sweaters or stereos, could be seen as stolen. So in a sense, my covetousness could be made broader or bigger. And instead of having to look at myself and in my own sin, I will use that word, I could say, well, I am right. And we have a class system in America, and therefore, if I am going to be on the side of the pool in the oppressed, I should be out to attack the capitalist. And those folks, Amerikkka industrial machine, theoretically manufactured deaths in Napalm's, Vietnam, the excess of the machine, threatened to turn all of us into machines. So there was all that aspect to it. Essentially, I had a hole in my soul. I needed a good preacher. But Yale provided Williams Sloan Coffin. SM (00:20:24): Oh, yes. MO (00:20:25): Who was preaching, and [inaudible] about the Vietnam War. I mean, actually went several times and listened to him. And it would have been great if I had heard some message about my own, the hole in my soul and my need to change. But instead, I could see myself as good and the system as oppressive. I took a course offered by Charlie Wright. Charlie Wright had a number one bestseller, the Greening of America. SM (00:20:58): Oh, yes. MO (00:20:59): And in that book its told, it was my generation that would solve all the nation's problems. So, it always allowed me to look at someone else as the problem, or some system as the problem. Again, I do not at all blame Yale for some of my political weirdness, but I did not get their answers that would have been useful to me. I will give you just some other, well, Charlie Rock's class, it was kind of bizarre. You could do whatever you wanted as long as it showed some dislike for America. I think I received an honors in that class for cutting out pictures from old Red Sox's yearbooks and interspersing them with comments about baseball racism. There was a required art class in the art museum, and my artistic ability was even worse than my ability in baseball. So one of my roommates that year had a black cat. So I carried the black cat and let the cat out of the back onto the museum floor explaining that I had just created a work of art, showing how the Black Panthers were freeing themselves from the bag, the container in which America society placed members of their race. And I received an honors for that effort, even though the cat ran away. SM (00:23:13): Oh my God. MO (00:23:13): And hid among some expensive canvases that prompted a frenzy search. But nevertheless, got my honors. That was just a weird time where, as long as you, this was before political correctness was a term, but as long as you wrote things like that you could do well, and this was also period, the understanding was yes, humanity in some way had a change. And so how would that happen? There was a Yale professor named Jose Delgado, who was doing experiments in electrical stimulation of the brain. So he was putting tiny sensors into monkey brains to control their behavior. And the idea as well, maybe you could do this for people. And there were lots of cults and so forth. So there was salvation through science, salvation through engineering, salvation through various eastern religions, salvation through drugs. And I, instead of embracing drugs, recent religions, I began to look for salvation through Marxism. Actually, see if I have this, oh, Che Guevara was, he died in 1967. So, I am coming to Yale in (19)68, and this was the beginning of the Che Guevara cult. And Guevara talked about how we have to make sacrifices. We may find ourselves at the edge of destruction, but we will at the end, have created a communist society or ideal. So I could see what I called sin, but not my own. And it was caused by alienation derived from the division of labor, the existence of capitalists and so forth. So yeah, I kept moving further and further and further to the left. And I started running some columns in the Yale Daily News going around New Haven and exploring things. And my answer for everything was, go left young man. So... SM (00:26:05): Did you... MO (00:26:07): ... Had a rather blinker view of the world. And again, not blaming Yale, but that is what I picked up there. And it pushed me further and faster in a direction I was probably heading otherwise. Now, why did I go all the way to communism? And others did not. Number one, their heads may have been screwed on straighter than mine was. In my own mind, the justification was, well, I am willing to be bold, and they are timid, which was very nicely self-congratulatory. There may be a little bit of truth to that, and that probably because my social antenna were not as well tuned as they should have been, I would sometimes actually read things and believe them and try to act on them rather than just dismissing that and something, well, "That is fine for those folks to do, but I am not going to do it." So this came in a sense, in my own thinking, probably there was a merger of, well, my grandparents were heroic. I mean, they set off across the ocean and they did all this, and I am going to be heroic also and do something striking and unusual. And the two, in a sense, the two political parties at Yale were liberals and radical. Conservatives were fairly non-existent. And the only ones I ever encountered were there was a party of the right, which essentially believed in wearing suits some smoking cigars. That is all I saw of them. So that did not appeal to me at all. But as far as the folks who were appealing liberalism, radicalism, and I did not think liberalism worked very well in my understanding of what I thought was my wisdom. And so I just kept becoming more and more radical and thought, "Yeah, I am being bold and courageous." So that was my justification. SM (00:28:38): When you went off to Michigan and you picked majored in American Studies, why did you pick American Studies? And was Michigan any different in your doctoral program than Yale? MO (00:28:50): I picked American Studies originally because I had some advanced placement credits from high school. I had the option of graduating from Yale in three years rather than four. And even though I look back and wonder why I was in such a hurry to leave a place with lots of libraries and time to do what you wanted to do and so forth, I was in a hurry. And American Studies was the major I could take that the requirements were such that I could take care of all that in three years. I think originally, I was thinking of majoring in history, but that would have taken four years. And I found I enjoyed it because it is a mix of history and literature and film and so forth. And I was interested in writing, and I have been a reporter for a while in Boston and out in Oregon, this is also part of my pioneer stuff. I mean, the day after I graduated from college, I started bicycle across the country and bicycle from Boston to Oregon. SM (00:30:00): Wow. MO (00:30:00): So, yeah, that was it and... MO (00:30:03): Okay. SM (00:30:03): Wow. MO (00:30:03): So yeah, that was it and then continued around the world. After working in Oregon for a while, I took a Soviet freighter across Pacific, and then Trans-Siberian Railroad and stuff like that. I was interested in traveling and seeing things and probably doing something in journalism down the road. Michigan had a program in American culture that was appealing. They offered a very good fellowship, and so I took it. Now, why Michigan? Curiously enough, I had never been there. I had just been told, cool place. A professor in the American studies program named Robert Skalar, S-K-A-L-A-R, who was a Marxist or a radical or something and would be very sympathetic. Why do not you just apply there and see if they will give you some money, so you can afford to go there? And when they did, I went. As it turned out, Skalar was on leave my first year. After my first year, my beliefs were changing. So, I was no longer interested in taking classes with Skalar, but that was the one professor I had heard of. I mean, actually I applied there while in Europe and had just heard, why not? Why not do that? I applied to a couple other places too. Michigan offered the best fellowship. And, yeah, it seemed interesting. Before I traveled across the country, I had never been west of the Hudson River except for one short plane trip to Chicago. So, I did not know anything about the Midwest. I mean, I had bicycled through it. It seemed like an interesting place. And Ann Arbor would have the reputation of a hip community, so that is why there. And again, America Studies was just accidental originally. SM (00:32:18): Was that- MO (00:32:18): To Michigan in many ways, but I am glad it worked out that way. SM (00:32:21): Was that the place where you started reading the Bible and became a Christian, or- MO (00:32:27): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the place where, yeah, I went through a big transformation. It was also the place where I met my wife with whom I have been married now for 34 and a half years. So yeah, I am very glad to have gone to Michigan SM (00:32:46): As a student of the (19)60s and the mid-(19)70s, how do boomer students differ from... You not only were, you went to school with the boomers and you have been a professor teaching the generation Xers and the millennials, and as I say here, how do the boomer students differ from generation Xers or millennial students of today? And what would be some of the strengths and weaknesses of the boomer generation of 74 million? If have any thoughts on that. MO (00:33:19): Yeah, hold yeah, hold on for just one moment, please. SM (00:33:21): Okay. MO (00:33:21): Good question. I do not know of any other generation in American history that has been so prematurely honored. In other words, when Sean Charlie Reich was wearing the greeting of America, he apparently wrote a lot of it sitting in a couple of dining halls of Yale, listening to students. And he wrote that this was the most wonderful generation as opposed to... He wrote about consciousness one, the old consciousness of small business and consciousness two was the consciousness of big organizations. And then consciousness three was going to be a new benevolent, wonderful processes that would bring peace and good times to America and the whole world. And the exemplars of consciousness three were these college students. So typically, you have had students going to college with the idea, at least in theory of learning from professors, doing lots of other things as well, but the draw was supposedly learning from professors, and it was all reversed. The world turned upside down and professors were supposed to be learning from students. So that is what this generation grew up with basically in college. And because it is so big bigger than before and after, in a sense that leadership, for better or worse for the whole culture, has remained with this generation as it has gone through the route within the body of the snake moving down. So, whatever this generation has found most interesting is what has led the culture in many ways and so it is no surprise. But right now we're seeing you saw in this past year such an attention paid to healthcare, because this is something that this generation cares most deeply about. So, there is that solid system, that self-infatuation. Being told early on, "You are the best and the brightest," and then just by the power of numbers being always the center of attention for advertisers and propaganda and others. SM (00:36:21): When did the (19)60s begin and when did it end in your opinion? And was there a watershed moment? MO (00:36:32): Yeah, probably began with the assassination of President Kennedy. Probably ended in some ways... I am shortening the decade a little bit. In some ways it may have ended with the shootings at Kent State or may have continued all the way to the end of the Vietnam War- SM (00:37:10): (19)75. MO (00:37:11): ... The impeachment of Nixon, the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. I can see either way, going from 1960 to 1970, from 1963 to 1975. And I think of the Kent State shooting because that is when it became obvious to lots of people that this was not play. Three days before there had been big demonstrations in New Haven over the trial of Black Panther leader, Bobby Seale. The Chicago Seven, Abby Hoffman, and all had come to New Haven and were poor ratings. There were probably about thousand [inaudible 00:38:11] around the country who came there. There were rumors of gun shipments being stolen. There were several thousand National Guard troops dispensed to New Haven with live ammunition. And people were walking up to the National Guard soldiers and taunting them and at night there was some rock throwing and so forth and providentially, the National Guard soldiers did not fire in response, but it could have happened. I do not think there was a sense of reality that in fact people could be dead. Three days later that changed. I mean, it is interesting that the war demonstrations fell off sharply when two things happened. I mean, number one, there was instead of men generally being draft able, there was the draft lottery. And so, two-thirds of men were safe at that point, and the draft was sprawling off at that point anyway. And then second, you had people trot dead in a demonstration. So instead of just being able to play, it was serious, and instead of your own life being on the line through the draft, suddenly lots of people were protected and it became less of an urgent matter. So, I can see that aspect of the (19)60s dying then. And then of course, the other big thing in the (19)60s is you have the civil rights movement, in many ways culminating in Martin Luther King Jr's speech at the Washington monument, I mean the Lincoln Memorial. But then morphing into something very different and instead of peace often bringing violence. So, you have the race riots in (19)65, and then big time in (19)68. So, the civil rights era that had the moral superiority of the civil rights movement with sit-ins and peaceful not violent. Yeah, that died and there was talk of, from Stokely Carmichael and others, a violent activity. This was not connected with the civil rights movement, but the riots did break out that basically ended the good spirit of things. And then you moved from a situation where African Americans were discriminated against quickly to a situation where at least in terms of university placement and so forth, and some jobs with affirmative action, they actually had benefits. And so, the good feeling that grew out among a lot of white folks of wanted to help the underdog, got dissipated. So that is why I think you could look upon 1970 or so at the end of the decade. But on the other hand, since the Vietnam War continued and there were actually a lot more Americans, and I suspect a lot more Vietnamese, dying during the first Nixon term than during Johnson's years in office, that you could say which led to a lot of education kept going. And culturally, you start to see lots of changes in music and drug use and so forth and so that might continue all the way up to 1975. SM (00:42:27): Yeah. Do you remember where you were when John Kennedy was assassinated? The exact moment that you heard? MO (00:42:34): Yeah, I was 13 and playing a board hockey game with my brother. My father came home and gave the news. I mean, this was several hours after it happened. There had not been an announcement of my school, I had walked home, had not been listening to the radio or watching television or anything. So I was a late learner. But I certainly remember that whole weekend with the television broadcast and the funeral and so forth. SM (00:43:09): In 1990, I think it was 1994, Newt Gingrich made some pretty strong comments against the (19)60s' generation when he came into power. And of course, he's a boomer himself, but I know George Will has oftentimes in his writings made some strong attacks against the generation. Of course, during the recent campaign, I know even John McCain had made some comments about Hillary Clinton, even though they're close friends because of her (19)60s and so forth. And my question is this, many people on the right have attacked the (19)60s' generation for the breakup of the American family, the drug culture, the divorce rate, the lack of respect for authority, the welfare state, which the idea of a handout society, a lot of the isms that we see today, your thoughts on the right, these are people from the right making strong attacks against the voter generation basically for most of the problems we have in our society today. MO (00:44:19): Well, yeah, I think some of those attacks are justified, but the (19)60s came after the (19)50s. It is not as if the (19)60s just grew out of nothing. There were real problems in the (19)50s. While you had a lot of people, as I mentioned at the outset, and my parents were among them, but I think this is more general, a lot of people observing certain rituals going to church, going to synagogue. I am not sure how deep the belief was or how much it affected what people did not on Saturday or Sunday, but throughout the week. So, there were real theological weaknesses. In the 19th and the early 20th century, there were great opportunities for smart and entrepreneurial women in leading a great number of volunteer associations, civil society groups, social service organizations. So there was real outlet for, say, middle class women who wanted to be executives. They were not in the business world, but they were in the social service world, which was very big because the volunteer nonprofit sector, because you did not have government doing so many of these things. And then as governments started growing in the 1930s and this kept going in the 1950s, a lot of those opportunities disappeared. So, there were a lot of bright entrepreneurial women who no longer had those opportunities, but they were not yet welcomed into the world of business or the ranks of the governmental bureaucracy and so forth and so there was a lot of frustration there. Betty Peran wrote out of frustration. So there were problems there. And you go down the line, it's not as if the 1950s were a great decade in the 1960s, a horrible decade. While you certainly see some major cultural shifts, there's a lot of continuity. Now at the same time, yeah, I certainly see my own generation as pacific, tending to be self-gratifying, self-infatuating. So yeah, if I hear negative things said about this generation, I tend to agree with them. But this was part of a long process, not just something that came out of nowhere. SM (00:47:43): The generation gap was... Did you have that in your family in any way, particularly in your Yale years, because... So then you changed, of course, when you went to grad school, but was the generation gap, which was so prevalent amongst the boomer generation between parents and kids at that time, number one, was that part of what your experience was like? And number two, a book was written in 1980 called The Wounded Generation, and in there was a panel that met, which included Jim Webb, Bobby Mueller, James Fallows, Phil Caputo. They talked about the Vietnam War and in that discussion, it came up that the stronger generation gap was between those who went to Vietnam and those who did not. So just your thoughts on the concept of the generation gap itself in the boomer generation. MO (00:48:44): No, I think as far as the second part, I think that is very true. I mean, a huge gap and probably bigger than the generation gap as such. Yeah, I do not know. Look, historically, there is always a gap of some kind, it is hard for me to measure how good this was compared to others, but certainly the gap between those who went and those who did not was very large. SM (00:49:17): How about between you and your parents when you were at Yale? MO (00:49:23): Oh, sure. But again, hard for me to measure. And if you read a book like the Education of Henry Adams, there was a gap. Just about every autobiography I have read, there is a gap of some kind. So yeah, it is just hard to measure how large this was or how significant compared to others. SM (00:49:59): One of the qualities, and I think you have already made reference to this in your commentary about being self-indulgent, but many of the young people in college camps in the (19)60s felt they were the most unique generation in ,American history when they were young because there was a kind of spirit and a belief, and it may have been naive, but a belief that they were going to be change agents for the betterment of society. That they were going to help end racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace, save the environment. Some of the older boomers still believe that this was a very important part of the spirit of the times. Your thoughts on this concept of unique generation? MO (00:50:40): Oh, yeah. I mean, as I mentioned in terms of the Charles A. Reich book, The Greening of America, that was very much there, and not just among the students at Yale, it was among the professors. And so there was a tendency of professors to, in a sense, kiss up to the students. SM (00:51:03): There was another book at that time that was equivalent to Greening of America, and it was the Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. You ever had a chance to read that? MO (00:51:12): Yeah, I remember that vaguely. SM (00:51:18): That was- MO (00:51:19): And I think that was strong. I mean, there were a lot of different aspects of the counterculture. So, I gravitated in the early (19)70s to the Marxist aspect, which in some ways was more traditional. There was not a lot of drug use, his people would sit around listening to Paul Robeson music and playing chess. So yeah, some of the more colorful aspects in terms I may have missed as I pursued some other parts of it. SM (00:52:04): One of the things that you will learn in studying the Free Speech Movement is that Ronald Reagan really came to national prominence, everybody knew his acting, but in terms of politically, he came to prominence in California because he took on two issues. He wanted to bring law and order to the college campuses. He was tired of students protesting, and he was making reference to the Free Speech Movement is (19)64, (19)65, and also People's Park in (19)69, which was more violent. There's no violence in the Free Speech Movement and then the end of the welfare state. Those are two issues that were important in California. And obviously those are two issues, certainly, they kind of brought them to national attention. Your thoughts on the rise of Ronald Reagan, because part of his rise was his attack on the students. MO (00:52:56): Well, I remember once in 1972, I hitchhiked from Salem, Oregon down to San Francisco and went to sleep on the interstate highway at one of the bus stops and was awakened at 6:00 AM or something by the sprinklers going off. I remember getting up and condemning Ronald Reagan. So I was blaming him for waking me up wet from the sprinkler. So yeah, there was a tendency to look upon him as the bad guy for anything. Well, the Free Speech Movement, as I understand, it quickly became the Dirty Speech Movement. I do not know how glorious an episode it was, because I do not think there was any lack of opportunity for free speech among students, but anyway. So it was an attempt basically with the aid and comfort of professors to overturn the university system. And in many ways, it may have deserved overturning, but I do not think the results were any improvement. SM (00:54:47): Well, I know one of the central thesis was that the university's about ideas, not about corporate takeover of college campuses. And even some of the critics of higher education today say that the corporation has again taken over the university because of the issues of money and fundraising is become so prominent. Some things- MO (00:55:08): Hold on a moment please. SM (00:55:09): Tape player back out. Forget what I was saying. Oh, it is about the free speech. The university is about ideas, not about corporate takeover. So that was the basic premise of... And free speech and certainly justice and the beginning of rights, student rights and so forth. And of course, I have interviewed a lot of people about the impact and well, the universities have forgotten the entire history of the student movement is because the corporations are again in predominant power again on university campuses. Just your thoughts on that. MO (00:55:50): Well, but look there are, certainly in areas of science and engineering and so forth, I mean, I saw this at the University of Texas. There is corporate power there, but there is actually much more governmental power and corporations certainly do not run these universities now. I mean, these universities are run by the left. At the University of Texas, I do not know of any cases where someone on the left has been denied tenure or promotion or law and honor of various kinds, but it happens to conservatives a lot, it happens to Christians a lot. So yeah, there is the tenured left. A lot of folks from this generation, the 1960s, are now running the universities and creating, again, a state where the two political parties are liberal or radical, and usually the dominant political party's radical. SM (00:57:16): I know when I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly, and I know David Horowitz, I interviewed him too, and we had them on our campus twice. But Phyllis Schlafly's main quote is this. She said that the troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running the schools, and particularly in certain academic areas and studies departments. And she was referring to women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, Chicano studies, black studies, environmental studies. Basically about those areas, she said they're run by the left. MO (00:57:52): Yeah, I think that is largely accurate, at least in my experience from what I saw at the University of Texas, what I have read occasionally from the American Culture Program with the University of Michigan, what I saw during the year at Princeton when I was on leave and so forth. I think that is largely accurate. SM (00:58:22): I am going to turn the aside of my case. Hold on one second. You are still going to be at the school though through the end of January. I might come down to New York. I have to take three professors pictures. I may come down and take your pictures sometime early January, if that is okay. MO (00:58:42): Okay, sure. SM (00:58:44): Looking at the presidents of the boomer regeneration, from Harry Truman, right through to President Obama. You wrote a great book, a really good book on leadership, I like that. And then your three books on compassionate conservatism. I like that book. And the one you wrote in 1992, the Newt Gingrich, we talked about, those are my three favorite books. But when you look at the presidents of the time that the boomers have been alive, I would just like to brief comments on your thoughts on John Kennedy and his new frontier President Johnson and his great society, and Richard Nixon, who, when he came to power, I guess he was going to vietnamize the armies in Vietnam or whatever. And brief comments on all the other presidents from Truman to Obama in terms of leadership quality. MO (00:59:41): Truman and Eisenhower, I do not have any personal memory of. Kennedy was in many ways an old-style Democrat, machine politics from Boston, but a strenuous foreign policy. But a strenuous foreign policy, very, very opposed to the Soviet Union, and willing, as he sat in his inaugural desk, wanting to bear any price in order to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Economically, he cut taxes. So, these days, I mean, he would be called a conservative Democrat. Lyndon Johnson was, I think, a terrible failure as a president. Domestically, the enormous expansion of the federal government, part of which designed to help the poor, the War on Poverty, Great Society, but actually has been enormously destructive. And you can see this in a whole variety of ways, including... Again, there are a lot of cultural changes involved in this, but certainly some contribution to the disintegration of many families and poor communities. So, a terrible president domestically, and then internationally, trying to fight the Vietnam War as he did, turned out to be a disaster. SM (01:01:43): Mm-hmm. MO (01:01:43): I do not know. At this point, was back in the (19)60s. In the late (19)60s, I was certainly a dove. I think the hawks at the time made an argument, but at least what I understand is if every escalation is so carefully planned that the adversary has time to get ready for it, you are unlikely to be able to win a war that way. So it just seemed to be trying to fight a war as a politician does not, at least from my very small understanding of military history, seem to be the most effective thing. SM (01:02:26): And those two presidents seem to have what they call, as David Halberstam said, the best and the brightest within their administration. MO (01:02:35): Yeah. And this certainly showed that someone who ran the Ford Motor Company is not necessarily the best person to run a war. So that is what I think. I mean, I just think of Johnson as a total disaster as a president. SM (01:03:03): Nixon? MO (01:03:03): Oh, Richard Nixon? SM (01:03:04): Yeah. MO (01:03:07): I am not a particular fan of his either, and it would take a while to go into that. Gerald Ford, a Michigander, seemed like a nice guy, and probably did the best he could with the very bad hand he was dealt coming in right after Watergate. Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is the first modern Democratic president, and not exactly having a realistic understanding of the world. And that contributed to the mess in Iran that we're still having difficulties with. Yeah. And then you have Ronald Reagan, who understood the world situation better than any president since John F. Kennedy, let us say. And I used to have a poster on my door at the University of Texas. On one side of it were statements made by leading college professors, leading Sovietologists, experts on the Soviet Union as late as 1988, talking about how strong the Soviet Union was, how it would survive for decades, how it was winning the Cold War against the U.S., and so forth. And then there was Ronald Reagan who was saying against all the advice of the experts and the advice of the experts within his own administration, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." So that is impressive. And his stance took the Soviet Union was not as strong as it looked and could quickly crumble was just seen as totally out to lunch just a few years before the Soviet Union in fact did crumble. And that is the clearest example in my lifetime of a political leader who had a vision that proved to be accurate and feasible much faster than even some of the people on his own team, probably most of the people on his own team would have expected or imagined possible. So that is impressive. And there are a lot of other ups and downs of the administration, but the tax cut seemed to help the economy a lot. So he's the flip side of Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson a failure both internationally and domestically, and Reagan a success both internationally and domestically. SM (01:06:21): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. MO (01:06:24): George H. W. Bush, the first president that I met, and so have some sense of beyond that mediated by television, but seemed like a very nice guy, a very honorable person, did not have the vision of Reagan. And that got him, that made him a one-term president essentially. Bill Clinton, just, I mean, such a supremely competent politician. Probably no better politician in America. I mean, he is probably the best politician in America since Henry Clay and probably better than Clay, and then Clay ran for the President three times and lost, but very similar in a sense of the person who was good at doing small things to gain popularity and insinuate himself and into the confidence of people. Tell you a Bill Clinton story. Well, so a few Clinton stories, if I may. SM (01:07:55): That is okay. MO (01:07:55): Because this right... At the end of 1995, and then again at the end of 1997, my family and I were invited guests for the annual New Year's thing down at Hilton Head, Renaissance Weekend. And in (19)95, this was right after the battle with the Republicans about supposedly shutting down the government. In (19)95 he and Hillary came at the last moment. They came on December 31st. Typically, I was told that they would come maybe on December 28th or 7th, go to a variety of panels. They came on December 31st. And December 31st, New Year's Eve, the schedule was that Hillary at 11:00 PM was supposed to introduce Bill, and then he would speak until about 11:50, at which point people could break and go to the champagne and dessert table. Now at dinner, Bill and Hillary were a couple of tables away, but she had her back turned to him a lot. And from one person who was at the table, I mean, she was incredibly frosty towards him. And then at 11 o'clock she stood up just to introduce Bill. But instead of doing that, she started giving a speech about her travels around the world. She took us all the way around the world and then took us all the way around again and kept speaking until about 11:55, maybe 11:50, but giving Bill only time for a few short remarks ending at about 10 seconds to midnight, at which point there was a mad dash for the dessert and champagne table. Now, I find that interesting because later on, reading Ken Starr's chronology, it appears that earlier that day, Bill and Monica had a tryst. SM (01:10:02): Oh, wow. MO (01:10:02): And I suspect that Hillary, despite her later denials, knew about all this. And thus not only leading her frostiness at dinner, but her extraordinary, taking what was supposed to be a five-minute introduction, turning into a 50-minute speech. SM (01:10:17): Wow. MO (01:10:17): For instance, squeezing out Bill. So Bill Clinton had to live. I mean, he messed around a lot. He also had to live with Hillary, which does not justify his messing around at all. But this was the type of... Well, let me just go on. I mean, that was just my early first experience. And my second experience with him, I think, is more telling. I mean, the first one kind of sets it up that here was some of the tensions in his life and the way he lived. But the second one, he did come. He and Hillary came down a few days early. And so he would go into these various sessions. And the way it works, there are lot of these different panels on different subjects. So everyone's involved in a variety of panels, and he just bobs in and bobs out, and wherever he bobs in, whoever's speaking might finish speaking and then the chairman... I saw this several times. The chairman would stop and say, "Now, Mr. President, what do you have to say about this topic?" So, I was on one panel talking about interracial adoption, and Bill comes in and I, of course, finish up what I am saying at that point, and then he says, "And this question, interracial adoption, is the most important question, so important in our national life that I am thinking about it all the time." Okay? SM (01:11:59): Mm-hmm. MO (01:11:59): Then I heard him say the same thing in relation to several other questions, thinking about it all the time, and this is what he would do. There was-was one session where Bill Nye the Science Guy from CBS was talking about the importance of the U.S. going onto a metric system, and having heard Bill Clinton say all these different things, "I am thinking about this all the time," I expect him to say that then. But he did not that time, so he was not thinking all the time about the U.S. going on a metric system. He is thinking all the time about transracial adoption. So, I went up to him at one point, and this is when I was writing this book on the American leadership tradition that he referred to. And so I mentioned to him that I had been studying the 1830s, 1840s, and finding very interesting. And reading about Henry Clay, and Clinton was a lot like Henry Clay. And I expected him to ask me how, at which point would have talked a little bit about how Clay was. Henry Clay had a reputation as an extreme womanizer with adultery and so forth. But he did not give me that opportunity. He said, "That period, those decades, 1830s, 1840s are so important. I think about them all the time." Anyway. SM (01:13:21): Yeah. Wow. Those are quite the stories. How about the last Bush and, of course, President Obama? MO (01:13:30): Oh, well, the last Bush, I liked him. I still do. I did some occasional talking with him in Texas about what became known as compassionate conservatism. Yeah. I think he had a personal visceral understanding of it from the way he himself changed from being pretty much at least a borderline alcoholic. And then his life changing. I mean, he understood how other people can change. He understood the way that a long-term alcoholic or an addict or someone else through God's grace can change. And so, he just understood this in a way that other politicians cannot. And then he had this kind of individual history, thinking about going about baseball. The Governor's Mansion in Texas is a nice old building a couple of blocks away from the Capitol, but the dome of the Texas Capitol is even a slightly bigger, I am told, than the U.S. Capitol. But very similar. And so, he showed me up once on his balcony that overlooks the Capitol and talk about how he would sit up there at night and listen to Texas Rangers games on the radio and just sort of look over at the Capitol and listen to baseball and things like that. So there was a certain romantic streak there about... I am not all the time just being a policy wonk. I care about baseball. I found that all very appealing, and his administration was disappointing to me in that compassionate conservatism that was supposed to be a decentralizing policy became looked upon as part of big government. And so it really ruined the brand. But that was the smallest part of his activities. I mean, once 9/11 happened, he became a foreign policy or war president, or any hope of real change in domestic policy really went out the window at that point. It was Iraq and Afghanistan all the time. So that I found disappointing since I was involved in these matters. I mean, you read about it in The Tragedy of American Compassion. SM (01:16:14): Yes. Yes. MO (01:16:14): Welfare reform and fighting poverty, and really not much got done. And compassionate conservatism got a bad reputation. And the faith-based initiative pretty much fizzled. But that was outside of his control. SM (01:16:29): And, of course, President Obama, he has been there two years, but... MO (01:16:36): Oh, well, I disagree with a lot of his policies, most of his policies I suspect. But personally, as compared to Bill Clinton, he seems to have a strong marriage and strong family, and I credit him on that. And I really do not like it when conservatives attack him personally or start psychoanalyzing him. I mean, we disagreed politically. But he seems to be within his political mode, which is essentially an attempt to syncretize Marxism and Christianity. I mean, he's consistent and honorable in that, which again, I very much disagreed with back when I was in the Communist Party. I got some training in how to talk to church people trying to syncretize Christianity and Marxism. And I recognize in the types of approaches Obama the has basically that attempt, which I think is trying to meld two beliefs that are diametrically opposed. So, I mean, I see some policy incoherence, and I do not like his approach, his policy aspects, but personally, it is important to have a guy right down in the White House who is honorable, and particularly important, I hope, and useful in the Black community, where over 70 percent of kids are born out of wedlock, to actually be an operating family, and to see a guy who says, being smart is good, it is not being white. It is you. And you can get somewhere. So personally, I applaud his presidency, but politically, public policy, I think he is totally wrong. SM (01:18:49): Yeah. One of the things about President Obama is he tries to separate himself from the (19)60s generation, but his critics say he is the epitome of it. And some of his critics, like Newt Gingrich will say he is even to the Left or the Left and... MO (01:19:03): Yeah. SM (01:19:04): So, he cannot win know-how, and he is a boomer because he was only two years old, but... MO (01:19:11): Right. SM (01:19:11): Yeah. So- MO (01:19:14): So, I mean, he is the epitome of it in terms of policy. But in terms of personal discipline, he is the antithesis. SM (01:19:22): On Richard Nixon, I know we cannot talk about him, but would you say that Watergate was a watershed moment in the lives of many boomers because there were a lot of other experiences, the Vietnam War and McNamara and the Gulf of Tonkin. But that watershed experience really showed about not trusting leaders. And how can a guy so smart be so stupid in what he did? MO (01:19:53): Yeah. That is a good question. I think that there was already so much distrust of leaders. I do not know if he made it all that much worse. I mean, that was right at the tail of an era where the operative mantra was never trust anyone over 30. It is not as if he created that distrust. In fact, the distrust probably created Watergate in some ways because the country had gone to the Left. Nixon did not think he could get any favorable treatment from the wizards of media or academia, and that seemed to speed the sense that you have to fight back by whatever means necessary. So he in a sense became the mirror image operatively of his opponent. And that is what brought down his presidency. SM (01:21:12): In terms of the Eisenhower, I think a lot of boomers do remember him because they were in elementary school, and I remember him as a kind of a grandfather figure, and I felt kind of comfortable because he had been a hero of World War II and he had that smile and he made you feel comfortable. I do not know. Maybe he was not doing what other presidents have done, but there was something about Eisenhower in the (19)50s that fit right. MO (01:21:40): I do not know if you are- SM (01:21:40): Yeah. MO (01:21:43): Yeah. I just do not remember very well. The grandfather figure I remember is when I was 20 years old in 1970. In May of 1970, we had a whole series of long weekends, one being the anti-war demonstrations, and then Bobby Seale demonstrations in New Haven. And then I think the next weekend there was a big anti-war march, a few 100,000 people in Washington. And on Monday after that weekend, the idea was that college kids were supposed to camp the halls of Congress and talk with their representatives. Did not have any success in there really. But towards the end of the day, we were just walking past the office of the Speaker of the House, John McCormick at the time. And McCormack was from Cambridge, which was right next door where I grew up. And so my roommates and I decided just to go in and see. This is about 05:30 or so, see if McCormack would talk with us for a few minutes. And surprisingly enough, he said, "Sure." And so we went in, and I thought I was being very bright, making analogies, since McCormack was of Irish ancestry, making analogies of the Irish revolt against the British to the position of the Vietnamese in regards to the U.S., and so forth. And he kind of laughed it off, but engaged just in a very grandfatherly way. And then he said, and I found out later this is true, he said, "Well, I need to go home to have dinner with my wife. That is what I do every day." And apparently this is true. Whenever he was in Washington, I mean, they would always have dinner together. But for here, let me show you something. And so, he took us into the Chamber of the House of Representatives and pointed us to this chair, this big tall chair that swivels around. He said, "Here. Go sit in my chair. And I am often out at dinner, but please have fun, sit in my chair. And there's the sergeant of arms or whatever who will watch you." And we all did. I mean, we all thought of ourselves as 20 year old mature radicals, but we enjoyed being like McCormack's grandchildren or great-grandchildren, probably at that point, and swiveling in his chair. SM (01:23:53): How incredible. Yeah. I remember. MO (01:23:57): So... SM (01:23:57): Yeah. MO (01:23:58): Yeah. So he actually knew how to treat us. I mean, he took us seriously, but not too seriously. He did not kiss up to us. He did not agree with us. He basically knew, I mean, here are kids who think they're very wise in their own eyes, and I will humor them and enjoy them, and then let them fool around in my chair. SM (01:24:19): What's interesting is the first lie that I remember as a young person growing up was very clear. It was 1959 when Eisenhower went on television and said that the U2 incident, we were not spying. And Eisenhower lied. And it was well known that he was lying. So the question I had here now is about your books. The two in particular, The Tragedy of American Compassion and Compassionate Conservatism are two very important and influential books that you wrote. What is the basic meaning of those two books, and why are they so influential, not only back when Newt Gingrich was handing them out in Congress, but still today? I have read a lot of literature that they're still talking about it. And so what's the basic premise? MO (01:25:09): Well, The Tragedy of American Compassion told the story, essentially tragic story, that with good intentions of helping the poor, government grew and created new programs, and those programs, for reasons that I explained, produced exactly the opposite results. So it's a tragedy because there's an attempt to soar high towards the suns and there's hubris and the wings melt and you plummet to Earth. So, it is a tragedy when attempting to do something that is exciting, to be a pioneer, to do the right thing, you end up actually hurting those you are inclined to help. So, I tend to look upon a lot of poverty fighting by the Left as not... There certainly was a power grabbing aspect of it, but a lot of it was very well-intentioned. It just failed for reasons I saw. And so that is why I think that it had some play, and if it is useful, that is why, because it is not so much attacking or psychoanalyzing or yelling, but trying to tell a story and explain what happened in a way that indicates there were honorable people on both sides. SM (01:26:44): What are your thoughts on the new Left? Obviously, a lot of times when people criticize the (19)60s generation, we know that only five to 10 percent may have been the activists of a particular era, and 90 percent we are probably subconsciously affected, but were not out on the streets or on the front lines. What are your thoughts on the new Left in the (19)60s and the liberal activists linked to the following groups? So just your quick comments on these following groups. Do not have to be in any great detail. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? MO (01:27:21): Playing with violence. SM (01:27:23): Because that was SNCC. MO (01:27:25): Right? SM (01:27:27): Southern Christian Leadership? MO (01:27:29): So, you are saying, what, you are saying, the Student Nonviolent... This is SNCC you are talking about? SM (01:27:32): Yes. MO (01:27:33): Right? Yeah. Yeah. SM (01:27:35): Southern- MO (01:27:36): Playing with Fire. Playing with fire. SM (01:27:38): Southern Christian Leadership Conference? MO (01:27:43): Largely Christian. SM (01:27:45): Congress of Racial Equality? MO (01:27:53): The same two involved with the government. SM (01:27:57): NAACP? MO (01:28:00): Same. More so than core, I suspect, but similar. SM (01:28:05): The National Urban League? MO (01:28:08): Similar. SM (01:28:09): Students for Democratic- MO (01:28:11): In other words, the problem was instead of helping people to be independent of government, it made people more dependent. It made people dependent on government. And that is not a good situation in which to be. SM (01:28:25): Students for Democratic Society? MO (01:28:31): Students in essence for non-democratic society. SM (01:28:36): Of course, the Weathermen? MO (01:28:41): Turned out they really... It was Ronald Reagan who knew which way the wind was blowing. And they did not know. SM (01:28:49): The American Indian Movement? MO (01:28:53): Never had much involvement with them. SM (01:28:56): National Organization for Women? MO (01:29:03): Sympathizing with the plight of Betty Friedan. I mean, I sympathize with the plight of Betty Friedan, but they did not help. The organization has not helped women. SM (01:29:20): Earth Day? MO (01:29:28): Replacing in some ways Arbor Day, and Arbor Day emphasized, let us say, going out and planting a tree, and Earth Day by pushing for more. That is probably accomplished less. SM (01:29:44): The Young Lords? MO (01:29:49): I had no involvement. Do not really know. SM (01:29:52): Black Panthers? MO (01:29:59): Yeah. The. MO (01:30:00): There was a Black Panther led rally in the Yale hockey rink in 1970, where one of the Black Panther leaders beat a white kid in front of everyone, and the populist cheered. SM (01:30:36): Vietnam Veterans Against the War. MO (01:30:37): Well, a lot of them had reason to be against the war, but at least from what I understand of John Kerry's testimony, there is a tendency to emphasize the worst and not keep in mind the reasons America went into Vietnam. Again, there is a tragedy. There were initially good intentions of initially good intentions, and then it became a mess. SM (01:31:21): Young Americans for Freedom. MO (01:31:31): I never had any involvement with them in their peak. So while ideologically I would tend to be in agreement with a lot of what they were saying. I just really did not, I did not know them personally. SM (01:31:49): I think you have talked already about this, but the Free Speech Movement, I think you have already... MO (01:31:56): Yeah. SM (01:31:57): Yeah. Kent State and Colo... I think you have talked about Kent State already. Columbia, (19)68. MO (01:32:06): Oh. Then for too many professors lacking any confidence and catering to students unwisely. SM (01:32:28): Chicago, (19)68. MO (01:32:32): Well, that I just saw on television was not there, so I have just heard different things about it, and so I do not necessarily blame either side there. This was a confrontation waiting to happen. SM (01:32:50): And then the Moratorium, (19)69. MO (01:32:54): Yeah, this was a... Led to a big demonstration in Washington. I did not go that one, I went to the next one. So again, I am just generally aware of this I do not have any personal involvement. SM (01:33:06): When you look at the year that the boomers have been alive, which is 1946 to 2011, the oldest is now 64, and the youngest is 49. So, there are no young squirts anymore in this generation, even in the latter group. In a few words, I know you have already talked a little bit about the (19)50s, but in a few words, could you describe the following periods in America, just from your perspective, the period 1946 to 1960. MO (01:33:39): The two were not... SM (01:33:43): Well, you know. MO (01:33:44): No, they, Cold War, economic growth. Nothing. I have no brilliant observations tonight. SM (01:33:56): The year 1961 to 1970. MO (01:34:06): Yeah, I think I will skip this because I have already sort talked about that and do not have any pithy observations here. SM (01:34:12): Yeah, it is all those different eras through... I think you talked about the president, so... In the (19)60s and (19)70s, students protested against the Vietnam War, but they were also against the IBM mentality that universities were like factories producing mines that where they tried to get people to think alike based on the needs of society, like a production line. The Free Speech Movement was a front-runner of many protests later on in the (19)60s and early (19)70s where they wanted the universities to be about ideas, not corporate takeover. Yet today, some top educators say we have returned to this mentality when corporate takeover takes precedence over ideas. If you could, and I am particularly... I know I asked this before, but the area of fundraising has become so prominent in universities today that the... I have read a lot of articles, there's a fear that fundraising has gone to not only that the president of universities are, that is their number one job, but there is a fear that ideas will stop in universities if, for example: speakers, whether it be conservative or liberal, come to a university and thus there may be a potential loss of revenue because these speakers have come to the school. Just your thoughts on that, my comment there. MO (01:35:42): Oh, I mean that may be, I tend to see the, as we have talked about, I tend to see the left political emphasis to be greater having. So I mean that indeed is a problem, but not the most serious problem. SM (01:36:05): Well, I remember when Michelle Malkin went to Berkeley and the students were not allowing her to... did not want her to speak. And to me that is ridiculous. I do not care if it is conservative or liberal, everybody has a right to give their ideas, especially if they are invited. MO (01:36:25): I agree. I once was charged with introducing Wade Connolly, the... SM (01:36:29): Oh, we had him on our campus. MO (01:36:36): And yeah, the left students came with... They had a big bass drum that they kept beating and he eventually gave up. I mean, they would not allow them to speak at all. So yes, this is why at least this epitome of the free speech movement is not for free speech at all. SM (01:36:56): Wow. Yeah, many members of the boomer generation wanted to change the world for the better. We talked about this, but how would you grade them overall on the scale of 1 to 10, in terms of their ability to change the world we live in? MO (01:37:14): Well, I mean, every generation changes the world in some ways. I spoke the idea was to change the world and make it a more wonderful place, and I would probably give about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. SM (01:37:27): How would you rate their leadership on a scale of one to ten? We have had two boomer presidents now, President Clinton, and actually President Obama, pshaw, he is two years old, so. How would you rate their leadership on a scale of one to ten as a boomer generation? MO (01:37:46): Oh, that is hard. There is so many different leaders. There are the two presidents, I would rate them differently. That is too causes of question for me. SM (01:37:58): Okay. And how would you rate them in the area of compassion, as a generation of compassion? MO (01:38:08): Oh about... Well, again I would not generalize. I would say that some of them, I would rate some of them a 10, I would rate some of them a 1. Overall to make a generalization, I would tell you about an 8 in talking. About a 3 in doing. SM (01:38:30): Oh, wow. Do you believe today's universities are afraid of the return of activism? You are working in a college environment right now that has a basic philosophy, but you were also at the University of Texas Austin. MO (01:38:43): Correct. SM (01:38:45): Do you feel that universities are afraid of that word, that volunteerism is the okay word on campuses today? And the reason why they're afraid of the term activism as a return to the (19)60s kind of? MO (01:39:00): Yeah, but I do not see any huge worries about that because the (19)60s have not happened again. I mean, the reaction to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been so small compared to that to Vietnam. And part may be because we do not have to draft anymore, and part there may be other reasons, but I do not see any huge fear in part of university administrators. SM (01:39:28): And could you discuss in your own words how you defined the culture wars or what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s is still alive today in our body politic and in everyday interactions between people who disagree on tactics, solutions, belief systems between each other? MO (01:39:48): Well, I mean, the basic cultural divide is between people who essentially, as fallen sinners as all of us are, try to live or aspire to live in accord with biblical principles and those who have become self-proclaim gods. [inaudible] So, I mean, that is the basic cultural divide and there are lots of ripples from that all over the place. But that is the, basically, "Who do we worship God or a man?" SM (01:40:33): I have just a list of names here of people. You can just give quick comments on them. These are personalities from the (19)60s and (19)70s. The first one is Eugene McCarthy. MO (01:40:49): Again, did not know him personally, but he showed courage and seemed to be a personally virtuous individual as far as I know. SM (01:41:05): Bobby Kennedy. MO (01:41:14): Certainly a person who thought things through carefully, who thought things through with political care and caution. And I tend to think of him to some extent like John Kennedy, a representative of the older Democratic Party, that while I might disagree about some things. I mean, they had a lot of personal reasons to be associated with it. I mean, said personal, I mean a lot of decency associated with it. There were all sorts of different things about personal lives and so forth, but from what I know he did care about his family, he did care about this country, and was willing to be... Well gave his life campaigning. So basically, I think positively about him. SM (01:42:27): Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. MO (01:42:32): Well, I tend to think positive about Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, again, there are all sorts of questions about his dissertation, his sexual life, his this, his that. But I think he was a positive force in American life, particularly in his emphasis on non-violent. Malcolm X, hard to know because he seemed to be in a period of change at the time he was gunned down. Hard to know what would have happened. Certainly his early writing and the autobiography of Malcolm X was filled with hatred. Again, the earlier part of it, and who knows what would have happened to him. But his legacy, I do not think was positive in the way that I still tend to think positively of towards Martin Luther King Jr. SM (01:43:20): How about Bayard Rustin? MO (01:43:25): He was more of an ideological leader, a theorist. It's been so long since I read it in college, so I will defer on that. SM (01:43:40): Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. MO (01:43:45): Oh, Jane Fonda certainly very cute and crute in other movies. Pretty good actress. At the time I applauded her, so I am no better than she. But certainly going to North Vietnam, and as I understand it, posing with anti-aircraft gun that shot down American flyers and so forth, not a good thing to do. Tom Hayden, very consistent through his career of trying to push forward radical ideas and sometimes in one way, sometimes through California politics. So, I think he has been largely a destructive force, and he does not have the virtue of being cute and a good actress like his wife. SM (01:44:51): David Harris. MO (01:44:54): Oh, that is the name I remember so vaguely mean. SM (01:44:58): Joann Baez's husband. MO (01:45:03): Yeah, I do not remember much about him. SM (01:45:04): William Buckley and Barry Goldwater. MO (01:45:12): Well, Buckley did a lot to revive the Conservative movement and in largely a positive way. I mean, he turned to be a fusionist, he wanted to bring together libertarians and traditionalists. Wanted to bring together Christians and non-Christians. I think he was a positive force in American life and fun to listen to, and a good writer. And there are not all that many good writers, so I tend to esteem them. Barry Goldwater. Well, the world is the theater of God and the way God brings in particular actors fits the time. I mean he briefly had a starring role, and I think overall acquitted himself recently in that role. So I just tend to think of him... He was an astounding American character from the 1960s who was quintessentially American and regardless of any... I could tell you a lot, but kind of delightful as an American character, SM (01:46:36): Benjamin Spock and Timothy Leary. MO (01:46:42): I remember Timothy Leary turned, what is it? Turn on, tune in, drop out? A destructive presence in American life. And I never took LSD, that is one of the things I missed, I am glad I did not. Cause apparently it had some very bad effects on some people whose lives were ruined in the process. So, a very destructive. Benjamin Spock, I mean who knows whether his baby book was useful or not. I guess a lot of parents found it useful. There's a lot of controversy about whether the way kids were raised, Spock kids. Later on, his anti-war stuff I do not think was particularly helpful. SM (01:47:25): How about Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman? MO (01:47:29): Well, Abbie Hoffman, I remember from the Bobby Seale demonstrations and that he got up and he was chanting, the president of Yale was named Kingman Brewster, and he got up and was chanting always, "Fuck Kingman Brewer. Fuck Kingman Brewer." And I do not know whether he was deliberately mispronouncing the name as an insult. Seems kind of a strange insult or whether he was so ill-informed what was going on that he actually did not even get the name. That to me as a reporter, if you do not even get the name, that tends to, leaves me to look less favorably on anything else. So he was kind of... again there's a very opposite person from Barry Goldwater, but one of these, a uniquely character who was amusing and had a passing role in the theater. And at this point I look back and I see him as being very destructive, but this is part of the panorama of American life. And so I just think back at him with amusement, but also certain disdain. SM (01:48:45): How about George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey? MO (01:48:49): George McGovern I rode around with when I was a reporter in Bend, Oregon, early in his campaign before he got any chance at all. I mean, I was reporting and wrote a profile on him. Seemed like a very nice guy personally. Later on, after he was in the Senate, I read that he owned for a while a hotel or an inn of some kind in Connecticut and learn something about a business and about the difficulty of managing a business, and said he wished he had known some of that when he was in the Senate. So yeah, I think of McGovern as the person who turned the Democratic Party from something that had good points to it, to something that is culturally and internationally very unhelpful. Yeah, nice guy. Personally, I wish he should have been the manager or owner of an inn before he went to the Senate. SM (01:49:48): How about Humphrey? MO (01:49:57): Again here, here is a guy who had a lot of benevolent impulses, certainly his... In 1948 I think he was mayor of Minneapolis and standing up against the state's rioters and the Democratic Party, Strom Thurmond at the time, and others. I think he was useful in promoting racial integration at that point. Certainly, a happy warrior, was not real nasty on the campaign trail. Kind of a bridge between the old Democratic Party and the McGovern Democratic Party in a way. So, I do not know, this is interesting. I mean, I have not thought about these people for a long time, but it is hard for me to think ill of some of them, unless they were really diametrically tearing down some good institutions, unless they were very deliberately attacking God. It is hard for me to think negatively of them because I think back to them though as well, this is part of the... These are interesting characters SM (01:51:09): That gets into Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger. MO (01:51:14): Yeah, well, Kissinger I have a hard time distinguishing from Dr. Strangelove. So kind of a mad genius in his way. The advice he gave concerning Vietnam, I do not think was all that good, and in other areas as well. McNamara, seems to me in fighting war it's good to take into account the experience of those who had their boots on the ground. SM (01:51:52): How about Ed Musky and Spiro Agnew? MO (01:52:00): Yeah, none of them made a huge impact on me. Spiro Agnew I once I remember talking with a speech writer who had the enjoyable task of throwing out some alliteration. I cannot remember one. I mean talking about the press and so forth. So Spiro Agnew it seems to me like a little kid who was spitting at his opponents all the time, but then not to think all that benevolently of him, and then he seemed somewhat corrupt, as I recall. That must be a Democratic politician. No, I do not know anything about him personally really. I do not remember anything about him personally, but not a person I remember as either particularly heroic or particularly nasty. He represented the Democratic Party at the time, which some good things, some bad things. SM (01:53:02): Daniel Ellsberg and Gloria Steinhem. MO (01:53:10): Well, Ellsberg I think was one of the heroes for my roommates and myself at the time. Beyond that, he has faded from my memory. Gloria Steinem, I mean, the feminist movement took a wrong turn when it became pro-abortion. And I tend to think of feminists like Susan B. Anthony in the 19th century who I think were doing the right thing and fighting for women's rights in a way that did not kill babies in the process. I mean, Susan B. Anthony was very pro-life. So yeah, I am all in favor of women being able to be in good jobs and to have equal treatment and so forth, but when Gloria Steinhem tries to advance women on the corpses of unborn children, I cannot think very benevolently of her. SM (01:54:27): Along this line, where would you put people like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan and Geraldine Ferraro? MO (01:54:36): Again, Betty Friedan, I just remember her original book and I thought her complaint had a lot of merit to it. But all of them, again, this is a great sadness in American life, when they embraced abortion at that point, I just think this is something that is so evil and so much against the good parts of liberalism. I mean, liberalism was always... Hubert Humphrey would say some more nice things [inaudible] he was always talking about how we treat people at the dawn of life, at the end of life. He was a compassionate liberal. I do not think the big government strategies were effective, but I can certainly honor his goals. And in the Democratic Party, led by some of the feminists you just mentioned, turned pro-abortion. I mean, that to me was a killer for the Democratic Party. And if Democrats have managed to resist that, they would have been much more virtuous and also more successful politically over the years. SM (01:55:45): The most recent boomers that are very influential certainly are Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. Any thoughts on those two? MO (01:55:57): Not particularly. I mean, Condoleezza Rice, I mean very smart and a good musician, and also knowledgeable about football. These are not bad things. And from what I understand, she was a good advisor to President Bush, a good Secretary of State. So I tend to think positively of her. Hillary Clinton, I cannot, again, the abortion part of her agenda and so forth. Therefore, I have a hard time getting mad at her personally. Bill put her through a lot and no, she hasn't been as bad a Secretary of State as a lot of people would have expected. SM (01:56:53): Go right ahead. MO (01:56:55): No, I mean, she seems to have been a good mother to Chelsea, and I do not know the details of her personal life. I imagine it must have been very, very hard over the years. And whether she should have stayed with Bill or not, that is not a judgment for me to make. So yeah, I just cannot get as mad at Hillary as some people do. SM (01:57:21): How about Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh? MO (01:57:27): Again, I see all these, I mean, they are just astounding characters. I mean, Newt, actually, I got to know a little bit. I remember in 1995, and again, I am very grateful to him, and that he made The Tragedy of American Compassion well known. So, I am very grateful to him for doing that. And I think he had a genuine concern for poor people and a genuine concern about welfare. I think it was hugely reckless what he did in having his affair, I mean, number one, wrong. Number two, when political leaders have affairs like that, it's not fair to the thousands of people who work for them, and many kids dedicated their lives, because they just have thrown it all the away. I remember sitting in a restaurant late one night, it was almost midnight in Washington near the White House, and I asked Newt, well, how could I pray for him? And he said, he thought for a little, and he says, "Well, the physical things." And I thought he meant by that, well, he was on the go 20 hours a day and with reporters ready to take any slip of the tongue and amplify it. I thought that was what he was talking about mean, but he may have been talking about his adultery at the time. And I had lunch once with his wife, she seemed like a very nice person, but she did not deserve to be treated the way he treated her. So, I tend to, as I think about various people, if they are pro-abortion that gets me angry and if they have not been faithful to their wives, that irritates me. So, in WORLD, back in 2007, actually, we had a good interview with Newt and we had a profile of him that I wrote and we put on the cover basically, "Newt do not run." And I feel the same way now. He just has not proven himself as a trustworthy leader, and in part because of the way he treated his first two wives. I am glad now that he seems to have settle down and if it came to voting for him or Obama, I would vote for him on policy issues. MO (02:00:02): I would vote for him on policy issues, but Obama seems to be personally leading a more virtuous life. SM (02:00:10): And Rush? MO (02:00:12): Rush, I think he performs a useful function in American life. Given the ardent liberalism and sometimes radicalism of the big television networks, with the exception of Fox, and the big newspapers, I am glad that talk radio is there, and Rush has been a pioneer in it. Some of the things he says I do not like, but overall, I think he's performed a positive function in American life. SM (02:00:51): Just a few more names, and then, my final two questions. William Fulbright and Gaylord Nelson? MO (02:00:59): I do not remember any of them, either. Fulbright, I remember as a smart guy from Arkansas, the Fulbright program and so forth. I just remember him as a very well-spoken person who turned against the Vietnam War, and maybe he was right in doing so at the time. Gaylord Nelson, I just do not remember very well at all. Just a name from Wisconsin, that is about it. SM (02:01:26): Yeah, he is the founder of Earth Day. Rachel Carson. MO (02:01:29): Right. SM (02:01:30): Rachel Carson, who wrote "Silent Spring." MO (02:01:34): Rachel Carson, I wrote an article a few years ago about the growth of malaria and other diseases in Africa because of the bans on spraying and so forth, and bed nets just do not keep out the mosquitoes all that well. As a result of Rachel Carson and her good intentions, there are a lot of people who have come down with malaria who otherwise would not have. That, to me, is a great tragedy. I just think of her and the association with that. Again, I am sure there are many other things she did, the book and so forth, but thinking about malaria, you have got to kill mosquitoes before they ruin the lives of people. Protecting, preserving human life, to me, is a priority. I am sure there were some good things she accomplished, but perhaps going too far. It is just been destructive of millions of lives. SM (02:02:50): Tommy Smith and Stokely Carmichael? MO (02:02:54): I just remember Tommy Smith from the 1968 Olympics, that is about it. At the time, I applauded it. Looking back, that is not something I think he should have done. Stokely Carmichael, I think, is very destructive. "Burn, baby burn," that was not helpful to anyone, and particularly the people who did the burning. SM (02:03:20): How about John Lewis? MO (02:03:24): Very limited memory of him. SM (02:03:27): He is the congressman from Georgia. MO (02:03:30): Yeah, that is about all I know about him. SM (02:03:32): And then, the Black Panthers, which is basically seven different people: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Dave Hilliard, Elaine Brown, and Kathleen Cleaver. MO (02:03:51): I remember at Yale, Bobby Seale came to speak, and I wrote an article about his speech, and just the reaction of Yale students. This was playing, basically, and again, this is why in some ways, when people saw it getting serious, with Penn State and so forth, the playing stopped. This is playing. Here, you basically had bullies, and loud mouths, and criminals essentially, and honoring them. This was playing, and I played, other people played, but it just was not a mature way to respond to them. SM (02:04:37): The two well-known Weathermen, Mark Rudd and Bernadine Dohrn. MO (02:04:45): Again, largely destructive, and sometimes ending up some of their associates, when bombs blew up in New York and so forth. I just see them as destructive in American life, and in so far as they're still around, and they have not changed their thinking, probably still destructive, although not in as direct way as they aspired to be in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. SM (02:05:12): Of course, Vietnam, Colin Powell and William Westmoreland. MO (02:05:16): Again, I never had any personal involvement with them. They both seem to be honorable people. Colin Powell, I wish he had been pro-life. Had he been, I certainly would have wanted to support him for the president. Westmoreland, I do not know, had he had a free hand, it would have turned out better. It seems to me to be a miserable position to be a general, asked to just do a strategy, be micromanaged by Lyndon Johnson. SM (02:06:06): Okay, that was my last... the Vietnam Memorial, just your thoughts. My next to last question is the issue of healing. We did take a group of students from Westchester University to Washington DC in 1995. The students, none of them were born at the time of the (19)60s, they had looked at the entire year of 1968, and they wanted to ask Senator Muskie this question. Do you feel that- MO (02:06:39): Can you hold on just one moment please? SM (02:06:40): Yes, it's okay. The question they asked Senator Muskie in (19)95 was this: due to the divisions that were so strong in the 1960s, particularly in (19)68, with the divisions between Black and White, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war or against the war, or supported the troops and were against the troops, do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its graves like the Civil War generation, not healing, still bitter, still divided? That was the question they asked Senator Muskie, and they were hoping he was going to talk about the (19)68 convention, and all the other stuff. I will tell you what he said after I hear your response. Do you think healing is an issue in this country, that people are still bitter about what happened back then? Or, do you think it is not an issue? MO (02:07:43): I do not know, I cannot generalize. I think some people are and some people are not. I do not know what the percentages are. I know a lot of my former colleagues at the University of Texas, some of them are still bitter, but whether it is old grievances or new grievances, I do not know. SM (02:08:17): Do you think the wall has done a good job? Jan Scruggs wrote the book "To Heal A Nation," and of course, it was geared toward healing the families of those who lost loved ones in the war, and also, all the Vietnam vets who served in that war, to heal them. I think he wanted to go beyond that, to try to heal the nation, as his book said. Do you think the wall has healed the nation in any way? MO (02:08:41): I am sorry, the Vietnam Memorial? SM (02:08:44): The Vietnam Memorial, yes. MO (02:08:48): No, I do not think something like that can heal a nation. That would be an overreach. Does it help individuals? Yeah, I have been there and seen the way people react to it. I think it is actually pretty effective. I would hope there has been healing there, because that is not going on. In other words, the abortion war is still very much with us, so I do not think there is going to be any healing until finally, we come to some reconciliation. SM (02:09:35): That is Roe v Wade, the Roe v Wade decision. MO (02:09:39): Yeah, exactly. In a sense, that is a gift from the Supreme Court that keeps on giving in a very negative way. As far as the Vietnam War, that is long ago at this point. It depends. I have seen reconciliation between, for example, Japanese Christians and Christians who dropped bombs on them, similar in Vietnam. I think the reconciliation tends to come when people realize that we're all sinners. We have all, in various ways, hated, and done destructive things. We cannot compliment ourselves, and lord it over anyone else. That generally comes with, at least in this country, most often a Christian understanding. I have seen that reconciliation between former enemies through Christ. I have not seen it very often through politics, or anything else. SM (02:11:08): Yes, Senator Muskie's response was that he did not even mention 1968, or any of the problems in America in the (19)60s. He said, "We have not healed since the Civil War over the area of race." He talked about racism in our society that was ongoing. That is the way he responded. The issue of trust is also a quality that is often given, a lack of trust is often given to many people in the boomer generation, for good reason, because they saw so many leaders lie to them. Do you think it is good to be a generation that is labeled as not a trusting generation? Is that good or bad? MO (02:11:58): I do not think it much matters. SM (02:12:03): Do you believe, like a lot of people who are majors in political science in college, that the first thing they learn in political science is, the stronger democracy is the democracy where the citizens are constantly not trusting their government and their leaders, because that is what a democracy is about? It keeps people on their toes. MO (02:12:30): Certainly, there is an old hymn, "Do not put your trust in princes," and so forth. A certain amount of distrust is very healthy. Does it come to the point where one assumes that everyone is always lying all the time? You cannot live in a society that way. Distrust of people in power is very useful, but the assumption that they are all out to get you, that they're all thieves, where does useful distrust end and paranoia begin? That is a difficult charting sometimes. It seems to be useful that people are distrustful of politicians, because then, you're going to be in favor of decentralized government, less centralized power, that is very helpful. Taken to an extreme, you have a society that just tears itself apart. SM (02:13:42): What do you think the lasting legacy will be? Usually, the best history books, or books in sociology, political books are written 50 years after something ends, whether it be a war or talking about a generation. What do you think historians and writers will say about this boomer generation once the last boomer has passed? What do you think their evaluation will be of it? Of course, it is hard to say it now, because the boomers are just entering old age, and they have still got 20 years of life, most of them. MO (02:14:20): Yeah, that is a good question. I am just trying to think, if I were around in 50 years, and trying to write a history of this period, this has been an extraordinarily blessed generation. Only a small percentage have had to face war, or natural disaster, or hunger, or any of the things that were the common lot of mankind since the beginning, or close to the beginning. It's been a very blessed generation, and what have we done with those blessings? I think some people have acquitted themselves well, and others not. I do not know if there will be a lot of generalization. It strikes me that I would hope that future historians will look back at abortion the way historians today tend to look back at slavery, as something abhorrent. In so far as this generation has really pushed abortion in lots of ways, I think that would be certainly an indictment of this generation. We saw lots of positive as well. I suspect people looking back will see that we were very occupied with some bread, and lots of circuses. Hard to say. SM (02:17:05): I am going to end everything here, but if you would listen to what I have to say here, and did not just respond to it, it deals with the issue of poverty that you have talked about in several of your books. I am just going to read something I have written here, and your thoughts. "An activist is often defined as a person who believes in what is in it for us, not what is in it for me. As Dr. King used to often say, "It is about we, not me," so, activists should fit your definition of compassion." But, in "Compassionate Conservatism," you put political labels on a quality that both liberals and conservatives should have. I know you say compassionate conservatism, but maybe compassionate liberalism, too. We all want to end poverty, but when we have a society that oftentimes emphasizes what is in it for me, do you fear that our society cares more about personal survival over group survival? I conclude by saying, "In short, understanding our past is important, as you state in your books. But, we oftentimes accept that we will always have poor people. Is not this part of the problem? Why must we always indoctrinate our youth that there has always been poor people, and there always will. How about believing that one day, there will be no poor people?" Am I being realistic or utopian? When you talk about compassionate conservatism, I think it's very important to have it, but I also believe in compassionate liberalism, and something that crosses over to all of our society. I have always thought, as a young man who was in sociology classes in my early years, professors saying, "We always have poor people. History has always shown us we are going to pay poor people." Why cannot we believe one day there will not be any? That is part of compassion and conservatism, that everybody... I do not believe in handouts, either, but everybody will be able to live a productive life, and everybody will have a legacy. I believe we are brought onto this planet, because I am a deeply religious person, too, that if we are born on this planet, we all have a right to have a legacy on this planet. Just your final thoughts. MO (02:19:43): No, I agree. I think the critical few words you just said were, "I do not believe in handouts." Where programs go wrong is when they become handout programs, and that is been the problem with a lot of governmental programs. Not all, but a lot of them. You can actually make things worse in the process of wanting to make things better. I think we should aspire to a time when there's no poverty. There will be some people who are poor by choice. I do not think we have to force-feed people. There are going to be some people who believe, like Buddhist monks, it is good to be poor, and you will have that. As far as people who are working, who are striving, who are aspiring, I do not think any of them should be poor, and I do not think any of them have to be poor. This is a rich enough society where that should not be necessary at all. But if you start having handouts, then you're actually likely to have most of those people remain poor, and probably their children will grow up poor also, because their children will not see where it is to work. That is a problem. You can do great harm if you try to do good in an unwise way. I agree with you, we should certainly aspire to a society where there will not be any poor. SM (02:21:27): I remember during the Clinton Administration, when somebody was working at a McDonald's in one of the inner cities, I remember Bill Clinton had just given a great speech, and he is a pretty compassionate guy. Increasing jobs was part of it, but a lot of criticism that these are just not very good jobs, they did not pay a lot. I can remember one person saying, "Well, geez, I have been working at McDonald's, and now I can make a little bit more by going on welfare rather than going to work at McDonald's," that it would be about the same amount of money. MO (02:22:06): Yeah. SM (02:22:06): That is a terrible attitude to have, because that takes the work ethic out, and that means that is a handout. "I will not work because I do not have an incentive." MO (02:22:19): The government program that I am very comfortable with is EITC, earned income tax credit, and so forth, because that actually is designed to make working at McDonald's better than anything you're going to get from the government. You need something like that. The problem is, when you set up a program to try to help people who desperately need help, because we really do not want government officials to be sometimes arbitrarily deciding who gets help and who does not, we have to extend it across the board. The people then who do not really need the help, it actually leads them not to work. Governmental programs are a very blunt instrument. They're hard to do right, and we have seen them do wrong. That is my basic critique of them. Programs that are much more flexible tend to be much better, and we do not associate government bureaucracy with flexibility. SM (02:23:34): Do you think that most of these programs that are really hurting the poor have really come through the time that boomers have evolved as adults? MO (02:23:47): Yeah, they started in the (19)60s, and you cannot blame the boomer generation for that at that point, they were not in. Certainly the way it's continued, it is hard for someone whose needs have always been satisfied, and not more than needs, whose wants, whose desires have been satisfied, to say no to other people, even when it might be important to say no at times. I have had people who had poverty programs, church programs, who grew up poor themselves. They have a much easier time saying no than upper middle class folks, because they themselves have seen the destructiveness of what happens when you just start passing out stuff. You know this, this has been going on for a long time, but you have certainly helped me go down memory lane. SM (02:24:45): Thank you very much, I am done. I do not know if you have any final comments, but I think you have said it all. I truly appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. MO (02:24:58): You are welcome. You say you type up these transcripts, or you have them typed up? SM (02:25:02): No, I am going to do them myself. Peter Golm and others, some other people who have written books, have had horror stories about people who have been transcribing for them. I am going to be transcribing all of them myself over a six-month period. Everybody will see their transcript, too, and when they see their transcript, it is the final "Okay" to be able to publish it within this book. MO (02:25:27): Oh, good. SM (02:25:27): I will be keeping in touch with you. I am going to come into New York sometime in early January to take your picture. I will just let you know that. I want to wish you happy holidays. MO (02:25:40): You too. This is a great project you are involved in, and I hope you are enjoying it. You sound like you are having fun with it. SM (02:25:46): I am. I am learning a lot, but I want to make sure that students learn from this as well. My whole life is devoted to students in higher ed, so I want to make sure I have a product that students can read, so that they can understand. You cannot live in the shoes of someone, but do not judge people by what other people say about them. Just listen to them, and learn. MO (02:26:10): Yeah. SM (02:26:11): Okay. MO (02:26:12): Okay, thanks. SM (02:26:13): Thanks. Have a great day. MO (02:26:15): Thank you. SM (02:26:15): Bye. (End of Interview) Description 2 Microcassettes 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 Dr. Marvin Olasky Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Olasky, Marvin N. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Editors; Authors, American; College teachers; Patrick Henry College (Purcellville, Va.); Olasky, Marvin N.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Marvin Olasky is an editor, an author of more than 20 books and a distinguished chair in Journalism and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College. He received his Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Yale University and his Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. Olasky left his position of provost of the King's College to focus on his position of editor-in-chief of WORLD 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 2010-11-23 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.146a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.146b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 146:19