70 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ae9d2523e20822f41d9ce6801059fc20.jpg 5040c3664b2082ca0f379d96cd80e1bb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/582f0dc1dfb9726946ed05ea82ddc3ea.mp3 6b22a061da4dc2e6b9b58ae70f29dfba 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 2003-08-07 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Edwin J. Feulner 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 Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Edwin John Feulner is an author, journalist,administrator, educator, political scientist, government official, and the founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation. He was the president from 1977-2013 and from 2017-2018. Feulner received his Bachelor's degree in English from Regis College, his Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,4884200],"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}]},"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}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Edwin John Feulner is an author, journalist, administrator, educator, political scientist, government official, and the founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation. He was the president from 1977-2013 and from 2017-2018. Feulner received his Bachelor's degree in English from Regis College, his Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Anti-war Movement; Vietnam; lack of trust; Baby boom generation; Richard Nixon; Lyndon Johnson; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Democratic Convention of 1968"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Anti-war Movement; Vietnam; lack of trust; Baby boom generation; Richard Nixon; Lyndon Johnson; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Democratic Convention of 1968 Subject LCSH Authors; Journalists; Political scientists; Public officers; Feulner, Edwin J.--Interviews Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 65:28 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: Ed Feulner Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 7 August 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): No, not at all. EF (00:00:06): So I think with those you have got to make some differentiations there. In the sense poor Wes Marlin was given an impossible task because his commander in chief was micromanaging the war. Key, and who was the other one you mentioned? SM (00:00:25): General Cao Ky and General... President Thieu. EF (00:00:29): Why do not you just hang on the second because he has come back a couple of times. I want you to kill the interview. SM (00:00:33): Yeah. Okay, all right. There you go. EF (00:00:43): Ky and Thieu, well, patriots, anti-communists, working with a powerful ally again, which was restricting what they could do or what they wanted to do. Playing probably what was essentially a losing game all the way, but tragic basically, the word which comes to my mind for those two. SM (00:01:08): And then I have got two more names here and then we are basically done with one final question. Your thoughts on Ralph Nader. And I do not know if you know too much about Noam Chomsky. What do you think about the Noam Chomsky's of the world because he has been consistent? EF (00:01:26): Yeah right. Well, in a sense you have to admire Nader for sticking to his principles all of these years. Of course, I think he is totally wrongheaded in what he is trying to do. And maybe the word totally is too wrong, too strong rather. What I do not like about Nader is he tends to look always to the government to solve the problem. And I would like to be able to make it a more balanced approach to problem solving and not always look to the government first but look to government, if not last, at least next to last. Chomsky is an ideologue, of course. A man of the left who I think probably would not, even if you presented him with all the evidence in the world, would not change his position if it conflicted with one of his pet ideas and theories. Case in point, Alger Hiss, I am not sure whether he yet still admits that Alger Hiss was guilty of espionage. SM (00:02:53): The Berrigan brothers. EF (00:02:57): Yeah, sort of. Again, minor figures of the day, important at the time, believing they were doing the right thing. But I think probably in the greater scheme of things, I think someone like Thomas Merton is more important than the Berrigan brothers in terms of looking to Catholic models of the (19)60s. SM (00:03:36): And Benjamin Spock, Dr. Spock. EF (00:03:40): Right. Should have stuck to his babies. SM (00:03:48): I never asked about Norman Mailer. I will turn this off now. I am here with two questions. I know I said I am almost done but when the best history books are written, oftentimes the best history books are 50 years after the event. Some of the best books of World War II are now. When the best history books are written, say 25 years from now because we are halfway there on the boomer generation, what will their lasting legacy be in the history books? What will they be saying about that? EF (00:04:20): Well, I think they will be saying that it is one of the most influential generations of the 20th century and 21st century. Sometimes for good, but I think more often for ill. SM (00:04:45): And the very last question is this, and it was the last one I asked Dr. [inaudible]. The two events, the impact that these two events had on the psyche of all boomers, whether they were protestors or non-protestors, the events of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 and the deaths of the four students at Kent State in 1970. EF (00:05:11): Well, as I have already indicated, I think you are absolutely right, that became this period of a psychological of depression. This was the beginning of a trauma with the American psyche, with the boomers and with every other American, starting with the assassination. The famous thing that you ask people of a certain age, where were they at 1:30 on Friday on November 22nd, 1963, they will be able to tell you very precisely. So that will always remain with them and it certainly was the most important event. I do not know that the Kent State murders... SM (00:06:03): And I say Jackson State included in there a couple of weeks later too, six students. EF (00:06:07): I do not know that that was the second most important and defining moment of the (19)60s for the boomers. I do not know. I have to think about that. I might be more inclined to say, for example, just for political impact, the Chicago (19)68 convention. Maybe Dr. King's murder earlier that year. I do not know that that Kent State was that... I would not put it up that high. Certainly, if you want to talk about it being in the top 10 events, but not as number two. Certainly I think the Kennedy assassination was the preeminent event and trauma. SM (00:06:55): Is there a person that you thought I might ask about that I did not ask about that may surprise you? I had Barry Goldwater, conservative, I did not mention any other conservatives so to speak. Nelson Rockefeller, obviously, he is another person. He was my governor. Because that convention itself was something in (19)64. I thought that was an unbelievable convention. I will never forget it because Rocky was our governor and then Governor Scranton. That was one heck of a convention. EF (00:07:29): Surely was. Yeah. Well, I just think you probably could give some thought to maybe some other conservative figures of that time although not necessarily were boomers. But after all, you have to keep in mind Ronald Reagan did begin his political career in that decade. If you are looking for somebody who balanced off Herbert [inaudible] and you did not mention would be [inaudible]. Certainly Bill Buckley, that was the decade in which he began both his newspaper column and also his television program, Firing Line, both of which had major impacts of course in [inaudible] everything else that he was doing. SM (00:08:29): Has been on our campus too. I am a big Everett Dirksen fan so when I think of... And Hughes Scott, because Hugh Scott was from Pennsylvania. In fact we had a professor who was writing a... I do not know why he did not finish it. Dr. Meiswinkel was writing a biography on Hugh Scott and was actually going down visiting him when he was very sick. And then he died and he could not finish it. He did not get enough... Do you know if there has ever been a biography done? EF (00:08:55): I do not think everybody has ever written one on him. There have been a couple on Dirksen but I do not know. It seems to me there has been something on Scott but I could be wrong. Could be wrong. SM (00:09:07): He was on there a long time, distinguished senator. EF (00:09:10): There would not have been any Civil Rights Act in 1964 without Everett Dirksen, by the way. He was key to getting the Republicans support in the Senate for that act. SM (00:09:23): His daughter was married to Senator Baker I believe, and she died now he is married to Nancy [inaudible]. And now he is the ambassador to Japan. What a life he has lived. Well, I am basically done, I want to thank you very much. It has been an honor. EF (00:09:36): Very interesting and... EF (00:09:40): [inaudible] that there is a problem, a discussion and a solution all in a 30 second or a 30 minute, back then, time block on television. Now it is down to about two minutes on CNN or Fox News or whatever your choice is. And that is not necessarily the way the world works. I keep telling kids that instant gratification is not necessarily going to happen on your behest. So on the positive side, still a generation, I saw this both when I was in the Pentagon and subsequently on Capitol Hill and even now, young men and women willing to give their all for their country just as the world's greatest generation did in World War II. To use that [inaudible] phrase. And I am not sure it was, but anyway, that is a different question. Anyway, the point is, statistically [inaudible] to prove it but a willingness on the part of the majority, many people to really commit themselves and do what it takes to help others. Again, whether you are looking at the back end in terms of Vietnam or you are looking at the most recent end in terms of Afghanistan, Iraq or as I was two months ago up at the DMZ in Korea. So it is mixed like every generation is. SM (00:12:00): The anti-war movement, those who were involved, I have done a lot of studying of it and I am reading a lot of sociology books and the common term or number used is 15 percent of the boomers were probably involved in some sort of activism. 85 percent were not. And they were talking about civil rights and the women's movement, the anti-war movement and all the other movements that took place in that period. EF (00:12:23): Where do you put the conservative movement? Is that part of it? SM (00:12:27): Yes. I think yes it is because activism, as I define it, and if we try to do this at the university, that it is everyone. It is people who want to make a difference in this world. And that is how I define activism. I like your thoughts on the fact that when you study the (19)60s, the Young Americans Foundation was also an anti-war group and a recent book has been written on the fact that they were involved in the anti-war movement. And some conservatives were very upset that they were kind of excluded from books on the (19)60s talking about the anti-war movement. Your thoughts on the anti-war movement itself and the impact it had on ending the war and also the conservative students and adults who were involved in politics were also involved and very important involvement in the ending of the war. EF (00:13:26): By (19)69 I was working for [inaudible] the then secretary of [inaudible] and there was no question that the Nixon administration was trying to figure a way out of what they had inherited from LBJ in terms of the problems of Vietnam. The whole defense department program toward Vietnamization. The decision by Nixon after long and intense discussion both at the cabinet level and primarily under his I guess domestic policy advisor Martin Anderson at Hoover. SM (00:14:21): Oh yeah. I got his book. EF (00:14:23): In terms of ending the draft was certainly as much a concession to answering the objection that you were sending the children of working men and women to fight a rich man's war in Southeast Asia through the draft. Clearly, you cannot say that if people are there because it was an all-volunteer army. And it was as much, I hate to say it, Ernie and I would probably have a long debate about this, but he would say it was done for philosophical and principled reasons about objections to servitude or something. Well, maybe, but it was also an answer to a political problem that was out there. And so clearly the Nixon administration, both in those tactical responses to Vietnam and Southeast Asia, as well as more strategic, longer range... Changing the draft was certainly [inaudible] answers like opening to China. In effect, changing the subject. Putting America's policy into a broader kind of context. Even Kissinger, in his memoirs, talks about during the peace process, trying to find areas of agreement with the then Soviet Union to move ahead on because... I have to find a specific citation, but I am sure you can. Because of domestic political pressures. So there were certainly pressures there as from my perspective as a conservative, it was tough because again, I needed it from a question more of principle. Did I like the draft? No. Why did not I like the draft? Because I was a male age 27. No I did not like the draft because the draft in fact was based on a faulty premise. That the only way that a free society would defend itself is through conscription. I did not believe that. And so you go from that to a belief based on my first trip to Vietnam, advancing one of the early [inaudible] trips other than Secretary of Defense in 1969 to Vietnam. And seeing the situation and saying, well we got it right. Either Vietnam's got to be given the tools to do the job successfully on its own, or we got to go in there and do a lot more and do it a lot more quickly and a lot more effectively than we have been. Well the second option was instantly precluded by the politics back home. And it turned out that the first option started out and then Cooper Church and the other resolutions that went through the Congress eventually cut the money off so that you could not do it the other way in terms of Vietnamization effectively either. So then you ended up with, I saw on the history channel the other night, replaying the video tape of the helicopters taking the people off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon. SM (00:18:27): April 30th, 1975. Itis interesting when you look at the two dates, April 30th of 1970 was when the Cambodia invasion took place, when the President gave his speech at nine o'clock. And then interesting that five years later, that is to the day. And I do not know if... That was not planned. And the irony, I look at the irony in that and I think about it an awful lot because I was a senior in 1970 and our speaker was representing the United Nations. I was at State University of New York at Binghamton, and of course we had protests all the time. It was a liberal campus. But it was very hard to going into class that year because there was protests constantly and we had a lot of speakers on campus. When you look at the boomer generation, again, getting back to this whole business, the anniversary of Watergate is right now. And then you get the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and young people at that time. And history has shown that that may have been not a real deal there. That may have been made up. Just the thoughts about the whole issue of leaders and trust and the lack thereof. You are in a very important position here with the Heritage Foundation and you work with conservative leaders all the time. I really would respect your point of views on the impact that you feel that President Johnson and President Nixon had in terms of what they did in America and the lack of trust that so many of the boomers had as they grew up and gone on to different kinds of positions and responsibility. Just the whole issue of trust in America. And have they passed this on, this lack of trust to their kids. And by lack of trust I mean trust in all leaders. EF (00:20:25): The complex question so the answer is not simple. Number one, it is always easier to Monday morning quarterback. But based on the knowledge, again, looked at from a low level political appointee inside the Pentagon, when we were talking about Vietnam under Nixon and I was out by the time Cambodia was back on Capitol Hill. We were certainly making decisions and explaining/justifying our actions based on the best knowledge we had. And if somebody was doing it to cover something up or to hide something, it was done at a lot higher pay grade than I had then. And when you talk about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or even some of the later justifications from the Nixon White House itself on Vietnam, I suppose it is easy today to look back and say, "Hey, how could they have been so wrong? Or how could they have been so deceitful?" Maybe. But I suppose I could also ask the same question about FDR and Pearl Harbor or going back through history at other examples that as a representative democracy we always assume people we elect have got a certain knowledge base that is more than what we have. So you have got to translate that. SM (00:22:31): Right. EF (00:22:34): Anyway, where was I? SM (00:22:38): Talking about trust. Talking about Nixon. Some of the things happening in the Nixon administration. EF (00:22:47): Looked at again, Monday morning quarterback, and you will get this, I think especially from a professional historian like Lee Edwards, the current generation that makes these sweeping criticisms and generalizations probably have read less history than just about anybody, any prior, whoever has in our country's history. And at the same time, because of TV and the internet now, know a little bit about a lot of things, a lot more things than you or I did when we were 20 or 25 years old. So it is kind of dangerous almost, I think to take some of these criticisms of earlier generations completely... Take them without a grain of salt. SM (00:23:58): I think when I refer to the lack of trust it is in reference truly to the boomers who are of college age or maybe just a spec older in the (19)60s and I would say through the mid-(19)70s. Because when you look at the numbers that were given by the Johnson administration and you read history books now and you read what was actually done there, I have a massive collection and I have done a lot of studying on it, but the more I know, the less I know. And that is so true. And the thing is here that I think you are right on track here with some people doing generalizations, but there definitely is a feeling from the peers that I grew up with, went to school with and actually worked with in a university environment, a lack of trust in anyone who was in a position responsibility. And I am wondering, and I say this only because I worry about the young people of today who are being given this information by their parents, whatever background they are, the boomer parents. And in this world, if you cannot trust someone, I know this some psychology. If you cannot trust somebody, you may not be a success in life. You have to trust people. And I worry, I see somebody's lack of trust of... It was very common, and this is not my interview, this is your interview, but it was very common on university campuses in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s that students did not trust university presidents. Did not trust their ministers. Did not trust corporate leaders. Did not trust anyone in a position of responsibility. And the excuse that was given as to the reason why they did not trust anyone, they would go back to Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Watergate. But much more than that, other political leaders too and things that university presidents did. So it is just your overall thoughts on that, the whole issue of trust, because I do not know if this is still happening in America today, but I sense it still is. EF (00:26:02): I do not know. You have a better handle on it in your day to day dealings with young people. We have obviously here, [inaudible] very active interns but they are a self-selecting group in terms that they tend to be right or at least center right and more traditionalist. So we are probably not as exposed to it as you are. What does concern me whenever I run into it is that as I look at the development of society and of both the social order and foundation, the most fundamental underpinning that I have been able to come up with is basically the rule of law. Which means every individual treated the same under the rule of law. And this goes directly to your point in terms of trust. If a large part of the upcoming generation does not trust the older ones, then they probably tend to think they are getting the short end of it. And if they are getting the short end of it, they might as well go for as much as they can for themselves because otherwise somebody is going to screw them down the road. Pardon, vernacular. So if what you are saying is really a generalized truth, then yeah, we got some real serious problems. But again, I do not see it reflected. Adam Smith said in the Wealth of Nations, it is one of my... I am a congenital optimistic in Washington. But he said in the Wealth of Nations there is a lot of ruin in a nation. And when you think about going back to the days of the founding fathers, down through our history of the heartbreak of the Civil War, the losses sustained in the First World War, the depression, we built up a hell of a lot of capital that I would worry that, to a certain extent, we have run down in the last generation. That concerns me. How generalized it is, I just do not know. SM (00:28:48): And that refers back to the boomers then. EF (00:28:49): Yeah. Back to whether the boomers trust or not and whether they have then conveyed a lack of trust to a subsequent generation. As I say, I worry about it if it is as generalized as you might portray it as or as other people might think it is. SM (00:29:08): When you look at the (19)60s and early (19)70s and the boomer generation of all the movements that took place, whether it be civil rights, anti-war, if you were to write a book or write a chapter or an essay to write a movement or an event that really defined the period, what would that be? There is many things, but one that just stood out. EF (00:29:34): I suppose the Democratic Convention in (19)68. That political dimension, a protesting dimension in terms of the anti-war, it was wrapped up to a certain extent, at least in the reaction from Mayor Daley and the police in terms of civil rights. Certainly as a conservative at the time, I remember thinking to myself, the Democrats sowed the wind and now they are reaping the rewards. But the ramifications of course were far beyond the Democratic Party. SM (00:30:29): I remember that so clearly. I remember buying My Life magazine and it was that picture of Hubert Humphrey and Ed Musky. And I have Barry Goldwater when he was with a horse wearing a hat. And I have both of them framed in my office because I am all about the (19)60s no matter who was involved in the (19)60s. You want to go on the other [inaudible] the Vietnam War really did a lot to divide our nation. Some of the people that I have interviewed really felt that outside of the Civil War, which is obviously one of the greatest strategies ever in our country, that we were pretty close to another civil war breakup of our nation back in the (19)60s. And so I would like your thoughts on that particular feeling and whether we as a nation have really healed since that time. I remember I interviewed Gaylord Nelson quite a few years ago one of my first interviews. And he said, Steve, I do not see anyone walking around Washington DC with healing, lack of healing on their sleeve or something like that. And people are... He was making a general comment. But then he said to me, the body politic will never be the same. And I would just like your thoughts on the divisions were so... Have they healed? Is Vietnam still, just the word, the mention of the word Vietnam brings all kinds of feelings to people. And it is not just thinking about the nation, it is what it meant to our country. Have we healed? EF (00:32:22): Yes. I think we have fundamentally healed, partly at least because the scar tissue is both thicker and because again, going back to the point where with the short time horizons of individuals, whether it is... I was talking to a conservative journalist this morning who said, I am so glad Schwartz never vote in the race. And I said, why? He said, because I do not have to hear about that damn Kobe Bryant every day. Until a week ago I did not even know who the devil Kobe Bryant is. And now he is every minute 200 news guys in some place [inaudible] Colorado or Esquire, Colorado, whatever it is called. What kind of trivialization of what is going on is this? And so you get the new cycle, et cetera, you got to fill it. And either you fill it the way CNN did until recently. Every Saturday afternoon, if you turned on CNN to find out what is going on in the world, you get 45 minutes on the latest French fashions or something like that because there just is not enough there, there is always news. So you get Kobe Bryant given this kind of prominence and in effect the same level of prominence as Colin Powell giving a major foreign policy speech to the UN or something. And if they both get 30 minutes of prime time over three consecutive days... Or more likely Kobe Bryant will get it and Colin Powell will not. Things are getting distorted and they are off kilter. And so I think that it is a couple of things. You get trivialization at that level. Then you got a shallow understanding what history is about. So a lot of people talk about Vietnam and well, that is a war that happened a long time ago. There is another place in Asia there too. What was that one called? Korea or something. And they are all kind of about the same time. So yeah, in terms of kind of looked at today, it is all... It is healed, but part of the reason that it is healed is because again, I said it about 15 minutes ago, I think that this generation just does not know as much history and has not read as much history as they should have. This same journalist, the guy we are buying the house from, was giving away a bunch of books and a bunch of college students... He brought them into his office and a bunch of college students they started pouring through them. And one of them came on a book called The Real Anita Hill. And she looked at them and said, who was Anita Hill? This is only 10 years ago. This is not ancient history like Vietnam or Korea. This is 10 years ago. Who is Anita Hill? SM (00:35:52): Unbelievable. I interviewed Dr. Hilty, he is head of the history department at Temple and he was really strong against the boomer. He is a liberal. Big Kennedy liberal. But very condemning against the boomers because he feels that the boomers were the generation that got the greatest education, Master's, but they do not have a whole lot of knowledge. And I never thought of that. I said their lack of understanding... They may be getting the degrees, but their depth of analysis, I am just like, how do you teach today? I am reading books on education, the proper way of teaching. It is not just always getting the high SAT scores and getting your school scores up. How do students think and analyze these things. When you are working with young people and they are reading things, how are they interpreting it and analyzing it? It is not just a score on an SAT question. And so there are some interesting things here and your observation is very good. Your thoughts on the Vietnam Memorial? I think it is one of the greatest things ever. How the Vietnam Memorial, when it was built in (19)82 and the effect this had on veterans and on the nation. Just your thought on the wall. EF (00:37:04): Very moving. Interesting that by the time it was really finished, in place and people saw it-it did what scrubs and everybody else wanted it to do in terms of healing. But during the whole course of it, when whatever her name was [inaudible] divisive, a stab through the heart of America with this black slab and all that. The rhetoric that went up about what it was. But today, to go there and to see some of my friends and contemporaries' names on the list as I have and to think about what it represents. Very moving. So it worked. SM (00:38:11): What would your thoughts be if you were sitting in a room with boomers and they were to say to you, we were the most unique generation in American history? EF (00:38:18): Bullshit. SM (00:38:19): Okay, because a lot of boomers felt that way when they were young. EF (00:38:26): Yeah. They were certainly the most pampered. After all our parents, and here I guess I would put myself in the boomer generation, they had gone through the depression. They vowed basically that we would be able to have more than they had. And this goes to Hilty's point at Temple. In terms of the best education possible. My father barely got himself through high school with a family, then went to college and almost got a law degree at night school. You will not have to do that. He said to me and my three sisters. None of us did. We were well-educated and that was very-very important. And then to have the earlier generation be basically so disappointed, I guess in their offspring as to have them copping out or doing drugs, to whatever extent that happened [inaudible]. That is disillusioning. And to have them just not appreciate what happened and then assume that because they got that again, that the notion of instant gratification is going to work for them and their kids. SM (00:39:54): Your thoughts, you have some fine, outstanding, young conservative youth here that work in the internship program. The sense that I have had and my peers is that when you look at the boomer generation, they again talk about the most unique generation of American history. Also, there is an attitude that we are going to change the world. We are going to make society better for everyone. We are going to end racism, sexism, or homophobia, everything they were going to end at all because they were the most unique generation. And they were also a very involved generation in the vote. But now we see a group of young people today that do not vote. And this is something I just wanted... I do not know if you have thought about this at times, I just sometimes sit in a park and why do today's young people and the boomers themselves, the parents, they do not vote. What is going on here? What have they transferred on to their kids with respect to the sense of empowerment? Their voice counts. They need to be heard. It worries me as a person. I have come up with several worries here in our interview, and that is another worry that I have because I want young people to know that they are empowered, that they do have a say, that their voice does count. So what happened to the boomer parents who were involved in these protests and activism changing things. And a lot of them did good things and some were just in it for themselves, but what have they done to their kids? Just your thoughts on that. EF (00:41:27): Well, you are better off asking them, I guess because our family, at least our nuclear family, in terms of my wife, myself, my kids and their spouses are very much involved politically and I think it has been transmitted. I suppose part of it is that frustration you talked about earlier from the earlier generation, from the boomers, that either they were not heard in terms of their cause. Maybe even it is a little bit embarrassing if anybody ever dares use that word anymore. Some of the excesses going way back when. In terms of the new generation, I would have to look at polls. I know what the broad numbers are in terms of the voter participation, but I would want to look at cross tabs in terms of the ones who are most committed to either a political party or a philosophy or an ideology of government, if you will, in terms of whether those who are most committed are more politically active. I have a good libertarian friend who has a bumper sticker that says, do not vote, it only encourages them. Well, this is a guy who comes at that decision from basically a philosophical perspective and managed to put it on a bumper sticker and you can understand that. That is not the way conservatives think, I do not think, but some libertarians do. And so it is not a case of just disinterest on the first Tuesday of November it is a case of... (00:43:35): In that case it is a conscious decision but I suppose again, you have the usual frustration or I am only one, why does it matter? Well, after Florida I think that is a non-argument anymore. Clearly everybody ought to know that their participation does matter. You can see that in the California recall that happened in October [inaudible] and you end up with whoever it was, Schwarzenegger on one side or the lieutenant governor on the other side [inaudible] being elected with 10 percent of the eligibles or something like that. In the fifth largest economy in the world, the largest state in the nation et cetera, et cetera, being elected by 1 percent of the eligible population. That is not exactly a mandate to go in there and straighten things out, whoever you are. I am not saying that is what happened [inaudible]. So does it worry me? Yeah, because again, and this go back to your earlier point in terms of trust and confidence in our systems. If there is not confidence in the political system, then confidence, again, the most fundamental thing in terms of the rule of law breaks down. Because if there is no legitimacy for the politicians, then there is no legitimacy in terms of what they are doing. Which means that people do not want to be governed by whatever laws they are passing. And that is not good for long term. SM (00:45:20): This is my last question before I get into personalities and that is, what do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation? When the best history books are written, and we are only 25 years out now from the Vietnam War and the best history books are often 50 years later, after an event. What do you think? How will history interpret this generation, this boomer generation? EF (00:45:41): Now a group of... On the one hand it could be a group of spoiled adolescents trying to feel their way out of a complicated situation by self-gratification. On the other hand, in a deeper sense, the people who did think they could change the world and do it... Every generation thinks it can change the world but here, I think you are on to something. The boomer generation thought it could change the world almost by themselves. Whereas in World War II you did it as part of the army, part of the Navy, you worked for big Bill Donovan at the OSS and later the CIA. Man, you were part of a team. But by the time of the boomers, you were kind of in a do it on your own more or less. So an individualistic way of expressing generally some high moral concerns. For that I recognize my colleagues on the other side of the political arena, but I also recognize my friends on our side who kind of came of political age and said, Hey, there has to be a better way to answer these social problems than the LBJ SDR big government one. SM (00:47:49): I at least remember a poster that I had on my door at Ohio State University when I was in grad school. Peter Max was very popular back then. And I will never forget it. I wish I would kept it, but it stuck in my mind. It basically said, you do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should get together. It will be beautiful. If by chance... EF (00:48:14): We get together. SM (00:48:16): Because it is interesting if by chance. And as a young person, as a boomer, that is sounded great for the time. But when you reflect on it, if by chance you have to work together in this world not hope that we just come together by circumstance. So anyway, I have a list of names here. I would just like some brief comments. These are all people from the period, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. EF (00:48:50): What do you want, one-word reaction? SM (00:48:53): Yeah, just your thoughts on the... EF (00:48:54): Traitors. SM (00:48:57): Lyndon Johnson. EF (00:49:03): Manipulative, clever and self-righteous. SM (00:49:16): Bobby Kennedy. EF (00:49:25): Cynical with a tinge of idealism. Cynical, going back to his days with Joe McCarthy, the senator. SM (00:49:35): John Kennedy. EF (00:49:39): Idealistic, almost naive... Idealistic, almost naive with a silver spoon, maybe brought on further and faster certainly than he otherwise would have, but maybe even further and faster than he should have. SM (00:50:15): Huey Newton, Bobby Seal on the Black Panthers. EF (00:50:19): In the overall scheme of things, irrelevant. At the time, strange and so far outside the mainstream it was hard to... SM (00:50:32): Go right into the Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. EF (00:50:41): Flash in the pans. SM (00:50:49): Barry Goldwater. EF (00:50:50): An idealistic trendsetter who never admitted to the limitations of politics. Certainly had an impact beyond his electoral politics. SM (00:51:18): Richard Nixon. EF (00:51:24): Deep global strategist with the fatal flaw that prevented him from really effectively doing what he was elected to do. He did not trust the people. Never did. SM (00:51:49): Your thoughts on his enemy's list. EF (00:51:53): Everybody has one, whether they write it down or they just keep it mentally. And his more graphic and in a way, almost more simplistic. SM (00:52:07): [inaudible] EF (00:52:22): A competent administrator of Baltimore County who then was rapidly beyond his level of competence. SM (00:52:31): Timothy Leary. EF (00:52:40): A person whose influence was far beyond what it should have been but who... At the same time, I guess if his intended audience had been better grounded, he would have been as irrelevant as he should have been but he was not always. SM (00:53:13): Martin Luther King. EF (00:53:21): A visionary dreamer who apparently had some personal flaws. But guess we all do. But who also had a big picture in terms of solving some very real problems in a non-violent way. SM (00:53:47): Malcolm X. EF (00:53:54): Malcolm X... Hello. Okay, be with him in a minute. Bye. (00:53:57): Malcolm X. The wrong kind of role model. Malcolm X [inaudible] of Chicago. SM (00:54:10): George McGovern. EF (00:54:18): A man who believed deeply and compassionately about a lot of things but alas, was wrong. But who certainly built a dedicated cadre of followers no unlike [inaudible] George Goldwater. SM (00:54:50): Robert McNamara. EF (00:54:52): A technocrat who never understood that people are not cogs and a big machine. SM (00:55:01): George Wallace. EF (00:55:06): A nasty piece of work without principles or morals. SM (00:55:11): Daniel Elsberg. EF (00:55:11): A man who deserted the truth that he should have known for lesser political interest. SM (00:55:34): Jerry Ford. EF (00:55:38): A great congressman from the district of Michigan, who by accident ended up where he was and tried to do a job that even today is... He was fundamentally decent to people I know. He got thrown a delta, a rough deck when he got to the top. SM (00:56:06): Hubert Humphrey. EF (00:56:09): Idealistic and intellectual, but unrealistic in terms of what human response would be to [inaudible]. SM (00:56:29): Muhammad Ali. EF (00:56:30): [inaudible]. SM (00:56:44): Gloria Steinem and Betty Fordan, and the women's movement leaders. EF (00:56:55): Inconsistent, hypocritical and not clearly thought through in terms of what their real objectives were. SM (00:57:18): I got four more here and that is Ralph Nader. EF (00:57:25): A man who tried to do some effective things but always pushed too far in terms of using coercion to achieve his objectives. So when he got to the point of curbs and things like that and compulsory student fees, instead of battling reasonable things like... SM (00:57:54): Down to our last three. EF (00:57:57): [inaudible] bumpers, et cetera. Yes... I want to apply for a city [inaudible]. I think I told Kathy, anybody from any bank that calls or anything with my mortgage is coming up she better put them through. SM (00:58:14): This is just a generalization now, but the music of the (19)60s. The Jimmy Hendrix, the Janice Joplins, the Beatles, the music, the influence that that music had on this generation as opposed to any other. EF (00:58:26): I do not know if it is the Beach Boys, I like it. If it is the Beatles, I do not understand it. So yeah, it is kind of mixed. I guess it is like all music. But if, like you were saying about history before, let us look back on it in 50 years and see what is still there. SM (00:58:47): Yeah. Cause you got Janet Joplin, when you think of the (19)60s, you think of Joplin, Hendricks and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and the list goes on and on. EF (00:58:54): Yeah, [inaudible] trio. SM (00:58:57): John Dean. EF (00:59:00): A man uncertain loyalty to... Well, just stop there. I never understood him. SM (00:59:08): And I am going to conclude with this. These are just terms of the period and just quick, SDS. Quick response. EF (00:59:26): Yeah. Perverted political agenda, trying to be imposed by compulsory means, which went against what their principles were supposed to be. Never quite understood how they got there. SM (00:59:48): Counterculture. EF (00:59:53): Sad because our traditional culture has got so much to offer why do you need one. SM (01:00:01): The Pentagon papers. EF (01:00:05): So what. SM (01:00:06): The Chicago Eight. EF (01:00:16): Representative of, as I said earlier, that incredible incident in the middle of that time period that tried to unhinge or destabilize a lot of what... A lot of our whole society, so not much sympathy. I do not know what they think their justification was. SM (01:00:47): And the last one is kind of a combination of three people. It is if you can put William Westmorland, President Thieu and General Cao Ky because Ky and Thieu were the leaders of Vietnam and Westmorland was [inaudible] Maxwell Taylor. EF (01:01:10): Man who tried to accomplish a mission without appropriate political backing from the United States' top officials in government. Therefore, without the backing of the US people he tried to carry out their orders as best he could. SM (01:01:34): I want to conclude on... First, I want to thank you very much. I admire what you do. I admire your organization. I am going to see Mr. Edwards next and we will hopefully continue to bring our students down here. The last question... There we go. EF (01:01:53): The Kennedy assassination did not start the (19)60s. The (19)60 election really did because JFK proved that the accepted order of vice president succeeding president was not necessarily the way things are going to go. And I think in retrospect that was almost more profound than the fact that Kennedy was a Catholic and proved that a Catholic could be elected. So I think that was a real turning point. But what the Kennedy assassination did for those of us who were around and affected by it was, it was a shock to the moral order of things that something like this could happen in this day and age. It meant that in effect nothing was sacred. That the highest elected person in the country could be zapped by a crazy guy down in Dallas. It was a shock to the body, I do not know about the body politic, but to the whole American society that had its reverberations for a long time. And I guess probably, in some respects foresaw then what was going to happen with Martin Luther King, with Bobby Kennedy and on and on. Attempted assassination on Reagan [inaudible]. Even I suppose you could, in that respect, almost link it to 9/11 and real traumas to the American system. And in that respect, it shook things up and helped... It made things unglue and we lost our compass for a while. And that one lasted longer than most. Kent State, I guess was I would describe as more a tragedy than a shock because Americans shooting Americans not in terms of stopping a prison outbreak or in terms of going back a hundred years plus then to the Civil War, but in basically a much more peaceful environment that just never should have happened. And I guess my problem to the whole reaction of the Kent State thing is that men are not angels and so we are not going to always do... Men who are in authority. Men who are in authority are not always going to do the right thing. Hopefully most of the time, under most circumstances they will, but not always. And so how do you make it happen more often rather than less often? At Kent State it sure did not. (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 Ed Feulner Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Feulner, Edwin J. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Journalists; Political scientists; Public officers; Feulner, Edwin J.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Edwin John Feulner is an author, journalist, administrator, educator, political scientist, government official, and the founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation. He was the president from 1977-2013 and from 2017-2018. Feulner received his Bachelor's degree in English from Regis College, his Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. 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 2003-08-07 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.10.2016.188a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.188b 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. 65:51 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d90828742579d480a2b7bdbe1d19befe.jpeg f33f71e1495a1488d7ab8330ddc9755b https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e6fdac44d65a00295974d55cd9892c4c.mp3 bd6dd6af5e8993d65789f36180dfdb35 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 6 February 1998 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ed Rendell Biographical Text Ed Rendell is a politician, and a member of Democratic Party. Rendell served as the Governor of Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2011, as chair of the national Democratic Party, and as the Mayor of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2000. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1968 to 1974. Rendell received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and a Juris Doctor from Villanova Law School in 1968. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 20:49 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 Boomer generation; Revolution; Lyndon Johnson; Vietnam War; Vietnam veterans; Society; Trust; Government; College students. Description This interview was conducted in a public place. We apologise for the background noise. 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 Ed Rendell https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/efb84b136d8c0b7a18619a5064b67a1b.jpg 8ee4fff5e8c89121a26e72e0aebba09f https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/de8f3becaa0742ac004963425c1ae962.mp3 b412091c52063b8781534edf748d5ea9 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 ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ed Sanders Language English Biographical Text Ed Sanders is a poet, author, musician, and activist who grew up in the state of Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri and New York University where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek. After college, he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore in New York City and started Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas were all early influences as Sanders tried to bridge the concerns of Beat Poetry and the counterculture of the 1960s. He is the author of many collections of poetry where he received several honors including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Sanders has written many books of prose, a non-fiction book, The Family, and published a bi-weekly newspaper, the Woodstock Journal. He is the founding member of the satirical and subversive folk-rock music group, The Fugs. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 77:17 Keywords Cuban Missile Crisis; WWII; Beatnik fashion; Beatnik; Beats; Allen Ginsberg; Jack Kerouac; Gregory Corso; William Burrough; Herbert Huncke; Ferlinghetti; Gary Snyder; Irving Howe; Watergate ; Curtis LeMay; Lyndon Johnson; Gulf of Tonkin; Eisenhower; U2 incident; President Kennedy; Robert Kennedy; Coup of Diem; Tom Hayden; Jimi Hendrix; Ann Waldman; Amiri Baraka; Ken Kesey; John D. Rockefeller; Vietnam Draft; Manhattan Project; Activism; 1960s music; Howl; Naked Lunch; William Buckley; The Fugs; freakout tent; Woodstock; Wavy Gravy; Medicare; Boomer Generation; Peter Max; Samuel Beckett. Roosevelt Era; Baby boom generation; Red Scare; Activism; Vietnam War; Universal Health Care; Senator Edmund Muskie; Slavery; Beat generation; John Coltrane; Lester Young; Jazz; Neal Cassady; Silent Generation. Subject LCSH Poets, American, Singers--United States; Human rights workers; Environmentalists—United States; Authors; Publishers; Sanders, Ed--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Ed Sanders Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: ND -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:04 ED: Get ready to go. 0:07 SM: Still there? Okay. When you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? 0:15 ED: Liberation and the utilization of the Bill of Rights. 0:24 SM: Is there one specific event in your life that shaped you when you were much younger? One specific happening in our world or society? 0:33 ED: Um, I do not think so. I suppose, you know, the death of loved ones is always a pounding from the universe. My mother died when I was in high school in 1957. Others are, the most formative one in the (19)60s for me, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people really did think that our eyeballs might melt in a nuclear confrontation. 1:11 SM: Um hmm 1:12 ED: I went to bed that night in October thinking that might be curtains for ̶ 1:22 SM: So you were probably watching that black and white TV set too when Kennedy came on? 1:27 ED: I did not have one but nobody in my nascent beatnik crowd had a telephone much less a television. No, we watched it at Stanley's Bar. It is depicted in my short story [inaudible] from Volume One of Tales of Beatnik Glory. 1:49 SM: Mm hmm. 1:49 ED: It tells it like it is, like it really happened. So I would say that the Cuban Missile Crisis and then to get out of class at NYU and all of the phones were dead because Kennedy had just been shot. I mean, we tend to be [inaudible] as we measure out our lives in [inaudible] in the (19)60's we measured on our life in assassinations and government ̶ 2:23 SM: One of the things in recent years, particularly in the 1990s, and into the first couple of years of this century, there was a lot of criticism of the boomer generation as to the reason to why we have a breakdown in American society. The breakdown of the family, the drug culture, lack of respect for authority; really attaching most of the negatives we have in our society on that particular group of young people, which was about seventy million. Do you think that's fair? Or is it just blowing air? 3:03 ED: I think it is bullshit. The boomers are not to be marked out as betraying their nation any more than any other generation: the lost generation of twenties, the Dadaists of Zurich any art generation the [inaudible], the beatniks, the hippies, the neo-realists. I mean, in all these movements, in other words, that what it is life is it really truly a fabric in a very complicated, weave. The boomers are just part of the overall weave. You know, some of the great things are still being done in the society by the remnants of the Roosevelt era in the (19)30s. The boomers began in this horrible scams, that used Red Scares (that started in 1948) just to prop up the defense contractors. And through Truman and McCarthy and the Korean War, which really did not have to happen, so boomers were given a loaded deck from the civilization and I thought they did pretty well. Especially beginning in the late Eisenhower era, around (19)58 (19)59 when they began to sniff that there was a lot of freedom guaranteed by the constitution that was not used. 4:32 SM: Mm Hmm. 4:32 ED: The generation of the late fifties and the early sixties started using that freedom and as a result, the content of television programs is much more freedom based than it was in say 1939 when the producers of Gone with the Wind had to pay a $5,000.00 fine because Clark Gable uttered the word "damn." 5:03 SM: I did not know that. Oh, wow. 5:05 ED: So flash forward to the early (19)60s when say Lenny Bruce was persecuted in the city. And they tried to ban Howl, Allen Ginsberg's poem in 1958 and there were others, there was William Burroughs Junky hug, William Burroughs Naked Lunch, they tried to ban. But anyway, one after another, these are artificial bans on artistic freedoms were translated to the society as a whole. I do not think there is a breakdown of the family at all, I think there is a definition of family has expanded vastly in our era, so that there are different modes of raising children. The issue is raising sane and honest and ethical and energetic and useful children who grow up to fill the various niches that society needs, from digging ditches, to flying airplanes, to being scientists, inventors, being singers and musicians. All the different spots to get people to fill those then. So there are different combinations of human beings that are raising children now. I think there is not a background, there is not a ̶ the code of Hammurabi type of ethics and the strict reading of the ten commandments is, except for things like: Thou shall not kill, which is of course, never followed by the government, especially one that has force. But anyways, I think all those rules from ancient civilization have been reassessed in a very widespread way. Now the boomer generation that you are writing about, I guess they are getting, they are not quite geezers yet. What are they forty-eight? They are about sixty-one now? 7:08 SM: Sixty-two. 7:08 ED: Yeah, so they are getting ready. They can have early Social Security, some of them if they need it. And in another three years they will be getting Medicare, hopefully, Obama will have adjusted Medicare so it actually pays for things like dentistry, eye glasses and long term health care, long term nursing care. If that happens they will have a good road to the Happy Hunting Ground. Of course, longevity is going to increase the First World War vet just passed away. I mean, the remaining the First World War vet there are very few if any, and others not in England, but maybe there is a few in the United States. So the boomer vet, the boomer gen, veterans of the boomer generation will live on and on and on, thanks to modern healthcare. 7:49 SM: Right. 7:58 ED: The revolution, they may last to, maybe 120 or 130 years old. I think certainly their great grandchildren will have long, long lives. 8:19 SM: If you were to put some just real quick adjectives, some strengths and weaknesses of that generation, what would you put down? 8:33 ED: Um? Strengths and weaknesses? 8:40 SM: Yeah. 8:41 ED: I do not really think like that. 8:43 SM: But it is okay. 8:44 ED: Because it is not really one homogenous generation, many, many different types of people. You can lump them all together because they grew out of the victory over Hitler and Mussolini in the energy of the post-atomic era, they exploded out. You know, they were not making cars in the years before that generation so there was this huge need for automobiles and baby clothes and new houses and jobs. An explosion in the economy in the (19)40s and (19)50s based on all this kind of energy and hunger from the generation that defeated Hitler and the others. 9:38 SM: I asked you earlier about, youth. 9:40 ED: No, no. It is like. The answer to your question is that, it is like, you cannot really say there are blue states and red states because within each state like very right wing states, I have very, very good liberal progressive friends in Texas. 9:59 SM: Mm Hmm. 9:59 ED: Or Arkansas and in Georgia for instance, they are more center left more center left than I am! But they are in these states that are judged to be red states. So it is the same way with the boomer generation it is a wide and diverse tapestry of people that have, through no fault of their own, been brought together as this entity, as they approach old age. So they are like a huge scientific experiment, I guess. And guys like you or, or the scientists that are analyzing them. Anyway, do you have another question? 10:42 SM: Yeah, it was a question about when do you think the (19)60s began? What do you think was the watershed moment? Now, you mentioned your watershed moment in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis, but for the generation, what do you think? 10:57 ED: That was personal but generational? Well, there were many good things, I would think the invention of the wah, wah pedal in 1966, which gave Jimi Hendrix some of his most beautiful songs. In general the rise of technology to support the arts in the (19)60s. New types of paints and acrylics and techniques, such as the [inaudible] painting hybrid that was used by Andy Warhol or the montage collage carpentry of Robert Rauschenberg. And then in music, the rise of technology. The Beatles recorded many of their early tunes on four tracks, and then all of a sudden they had eight track and then finally twelve and sixteen tracks, and the same and so the recording technology, the ability to do overdub, to perform in public, they had to build new sound systems so that Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones could play baseball stadiums and not blow out speakers. And there was a huge rise in an artistic technology in the movies. The invention of the video camera around 1967, which allowed Roman Polanski and others to film, their daily rushes in video and then run them right away and see how it was going. So there was all of this technology I think, starred in the mix of the best part of the early years of the boomers. 12:52 SM: When boomers used to say and many still do think that they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society in so many ways. How do you respond to boomers who think that way? Not only then but now? 13:11 ED: Put up or shut up. 13:13 SM: Good point. That, that was all I needed to hear. That was excellent. Because one of the concerns I have had and we've talked about this at our university in certain programs, even Jennie Skerl has been bothering him before she retired is you know, some people copped out and some people continued to go on and on fight for issues. So how important were college students in ending the Vietnam War? 13:48 ED: Well, because they are part of that species known as young people, and young people they can extend, they often have others who are supporting them or helping support them so they could take time out they could go to freedom summers, they could go down to Selma to march. They could go sit-in against nuclear testing in Nevada. They could go to a commune learn how you know, life is. They could take time off to write a book that might not make them a lot of money, so they have time. You know, and they have, the college kids are part of that. Certainly one of the key things that these college kids did was to end the draft which finally ended in 1971. So, it was a huge effort to end that draft. I think ending the draft has prevented a whole bunch of wars that could have happened that now cannot happen because they never have enough troops. Really the Vietnam War had to start winding down because in like 1968, the military realized they did not have enough soldiers to fight in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Thailand, all the other bigger wars. As well as to protect the homeland. The military has a default charge, and that is one which is foreign protection, foreign interest foreign wars, and then to protect the homeland. And after the riots in (19)67, and after the riots that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April of (19)68. The military had to start pulling back because they did not have enough soldiers to deal with all that. Ending the draft really prevented the military from expanding wars excessively throughout the world. So I think that the long answer to a short question is that it was a great gift of the young people and college kids, to end the draft. 16:17 SM: Do you think they have done a good job? Some are grandparents now the boomers and some are still having, are still parents, and grandparents. Do you think that they have been passing on some of their activism down to their kids and grandkids? Or? 16:33 ED: Well, you do that by two ways. One is by example that your children can easily observe and understand and appreciate. Or two, by teaching, reading and making sure your kids are exposed to the right music, the right songs, the right books, the right and take them out to protest demonstrations and show them what it is it to be against the war. Take them to meetings so that they can understand how grassroots activism is conducted. That is another method too. Many parents do not pass on the torch which is one of the tragedies of that era is that the torch was extinguished. And then now grandchildren. I do not know, it is a difficult thing because you never, suddenly a grandchild can take an issue, take an interest in issue and become very involved, it is really hard to predict. The fact that we do not have universal health care. The fact that we are in two or three or four maybe more wars right now, that you have things like Somalia, in the jungles of the Philippines, as well as Iran and Iraq. We, the boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, the (19)50s generation, the last three or four generations have failed to turn the United States civilization into a more humane, caring society in general, although we have a lot of freedom. We are really like the civilization depicted in Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany. Everything is possible, everything is allowed, as long as you have money. 18:28 SM: This is a question and I want to read this because this has to do with the issue of healing. We had a chance I took a group of students down to see Ed Muskie, former senator before he passed away. He had just gotten out of the hospital and we took our students there. And I read him this question. 18:43 ED: Oh did he have cancer? 18:44 SM: Yeah, yeah, he died. I think he died of cancer. But he was in remission for a short time before he came back and it did him in. Do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? 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 has the wall played in healing these divisions or was this primarily a healing for veterans? Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has forty years made the statement "Time heals all wounds," a truth? And I want to just finish by saying that when I asked Ed Muskie, that question, he had just gotten out of the hospital and he had been watching Ken Burns' Civil War series when he was in the hospital. And so he and he did not answer the question right away. He waited about a minute. And then he had tears in his eyes. And then he we had fourteen students there and they were all kind of looking at each other what is going on here. And he basically said, we have not healed since the Civil War, and then he went on to be talking about you know, the all the loss of life from that particular war and the loss of generations of kids that would have been born because the population during that war was a lot smaller than it is here so the proportion of men in America and the number of kids they could have had was astounding. But just your thoughts on, you know, whether healing should be an issue here within the generation. Ed, could you speak up just a little bit too? 20:31 ED: It used to be that the Swedes, rode out and sailed out of Sweden for instance or from Denmark, the Danes, toward England and landed and then slaughtered everybody they could find. Steal the women and the food and the jewelry and the people [inaudible] Fast forward four or five centuries and you know, Denmark and Sweden are [inaudible] pretty advanced [inaudible] marvelous health system and pretty advanced systems besides those, Denmark but it takes four or five hundred years often for a society to reveal its moral identity [inaudible]. However, with respect to the Civil War, I agree with Ulysses Grant, who said that the civil war could have been God's punishment for America undertaking the Mexican War, evil and the injustices, and slaughter, in the Mexican War and the karma of that, oozed forward into the karma of the Civil War. I think the Civil War leads directly back to greedy English planters in Jamestown, and from say, after the founding, in 1607 up to say, 1690 those first eighty years, deliberately bringing in more and more and more and more and more slaves from the dungeons of no return in Africa to do long term damage to the soil through first growing tobacco, this nasty tobacco from the Indies and then cotton. Those lines of slavery and the terrible exploitation of blacks [inaudible] Virginia in South Carolina down in the south, the karma of that leap forward to the Civil War and beyond. And then, you know there was plenty of people that were raised as racists even, especially among the boomer generation, and anti-Semites, there is plenty of anti-Semites, anti-black, and there is plenty of anti-Portuguese. The Italians put down the Irish and Irish sometimes sneer at the Italians. The Germans called Swedes stupid and the Swedes called the Germans cruel and barbaric and the Norwegians could not stand above them all the Scotch-Irish have carried their mean streak forward in America ever since they were shoved out of Ireland and Scotland you know, after the triumph of 1649 to 1660, after the Protestants took over. Who is that guy? 23:47 SM: Martin Luther? 23:48 ED: No, no, no. This is 1649. 23:50 SM: Oh 1649. 23:51 ED: 1660, he was the Protestant head of England and then after he died, his son tried to rule and then they brought back Charles the second. 24:02 SM: Cromwell? 24:03 ED: Cromwell. Ollie baby! So, you know, the, Cromwell was so mean to the Irish and then there was all this division of land and pushing out and they, they stole all the, all the common lands. There were these ancient common lands in England and all through the seventeenth century they closed off the commons and drove everybody out and some of them came to America and they were you know, bitter and angry kept those mean streaks going right up to now, some of these. I mean, I am Scotch-Irish. I am part Scotch-Irish anyway. 24:44 SM: That is what I am. 25:00 ED: Well, anyway, everybody brought their, their racial characteristics and their karmic characteristics into the boomer genesis, post-Second World War boomer generation. And they, people submerge their personal problems, they submerge their idiosyncrasies, and they submerge their mean streaks at least for a while into the general flow of getting up, getting to a job, having children, getting married, you know, eek out a living, set a little aside for when they are old, and just to get by as Americans. So but they cannot escape those plantations of a Jamestown and they cannot escape the evil of the Mexican War that [inaudible] protests against and what Ulysses S. Grant wrote about, and then the horrible slaughter of Antietam. 26:01 SM: Oh yeah. 26:02 ED: And all throughout Gettysburg and oy Shiloh. Oy! Oy! Oy! 26:09 SM: Mm Hmm. 26:10 ED: But then it goes back also to George Washington's surge in the late eighteenth century against the natives, the Indians of Western New York, just to clear land really and for further development by the Europeans who were surging to the west. Now that the English were defeated more or less in the Revolutionary War. So all this karmic gnarl cannot be separated if you know anything about history from this generation. This generation the boomer generation did not spring like dragon's teeth from the soil of America. They have karmic knots that go way back but they did good, it was an inventive era you know, the transistor and I do not know, they did interesting things and also the American culture. Jazz! Jazz poetry. Modern painting. Inventions and movies. There is science discoveries, longevity, cancer cures you know, we do not all eventually die of breast cancer thank god anymore, or some people are even starting to survive with pancreatic cancer for much longer. And so there is a, it is all a big fight against the Grim Reaper. 27:30 SM: Right. 27:31 ED: And also a fight for human dignity and freedom. And sharing really, people do not like to use the word sharing but it is to spread the wealth around to everybody. There is a decent drive, the baby boomers, a good portion of them to do just that. 27:49 SM: Um hmm. And I wanted to ask this, do you feel the Beats had a direct influence on the (19)60s and (19)70s, even though they were often identified with the (19)50s? 28:00 ED: Sure, because a lot of them live on and on and on. Kerouac died in 1969. Gregory Corso lived until (19)91. Ginsberg died in (19)90, no excuse me, Corso lasted until 2001, Ginsberg died in (19)97, and Burroughs also (19)97 but they were very active culturally. And this Beat generation was like a deliberate plan, they got together you know, they were going to call themselves a generation and they knew they had really smart men and women aboard that generation so they floated it and it worked. 28:38 SM: How did you become a Beat? 28:41 ED: Well, when I was when I was in high school, it is in my short stories, my book: Tales of Beatnik Glory. The story, one of, where I describe reading Howl when I was in high school. 28:59 SM: Okay. 29:00 ED: And I memorized it. I used to recite when me and my friends drove around drinking beer around the county courthouse, I would scream out Howl and I memorized it. It sort of saved my life. I always tell audiences I might have been an Eskimo Pie driver if it had not been for Howl. 29:21 SM: [laughs] 29:23 ED: So Howl. And then Allen became one of my best friends. And I knew all of them. Corso, Gary, Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs was a friend, Corso was a friend, Gary Snyder's a good friend. I wrote a book about Allen Ginsberg: Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg, so I was very tuned in to him. 29:44 SM: You know, the beats are often defined as rebels and do you think this mentality through their writings and lifestyle subconsciously filter into the boomer generation in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s? Were the feelings like it is okay to be different? And not be silent. 30:01 ED: That is true. It is okay to be different than they were perceived as being different. The girls wore a lot of Egyptian eye makeup modeled on Jean Paul Sartre's girlfriend Juliette Greco and they would wear sheer-toed high heels and mesh stockings, maybe a leather vest and very daring not to wear a brassiere back in (19)58 or (19)59 or they would wear these [inaudible] beatnik sandals. The guys for their part might sport a Florida maritime turtleneck sweater and a black jacket and sandals themselves. So it was a visual thing in part. And berets. Men wearing berets. Then of course when the hip you know they would never beatniks would have never have worn necklaces, it was not a few years later when the sixties hit that men started wearing necklaces, wore their hair long, and they wore robes and silk gowns and that was different. But the Beats were, came out of Second World War so they were, their dress was pretty dark and somber. Very existential. And they were, I guess you could call them rebels. You know, they smoked pot. They, they all of them knew John Coltrane riffs or knew Charlie Parker riffs. There was Lester Young. Went to Lester Young performances and knew a lot about jazz and picked up from the jazz singers use of marijuana and of course people like Neal Cassidy were; took a lot of uppers. But when I was in school in the (19)50s everybody took Benzedrine. The whole boomer generation. You know, in my opinion, the whole boomer generation got through college on coca cola and a few uppers to help them pass the test. They would never admit it but, uh. 32:27 SM: It is interesting that when I interviewed Hettie, I asked her this question, and she really well, she had some interesting comments, and that is why did the Beats want to be different in the first place? And secondly, obviously they challenged the norm during a time few people spoke up. This is kind of what the boomers did during their college age, some of them, maybe 15 percent of them because we were only talking about a percentage of the boomers, and describe you there is a link here to me between the silent generation and the boomer generation. 33:02 ED: Maybe there is always they always say that young people are more willing to shake the wall and make some changes. The older people who have been through a lot been through scrapes and through illnesses, and one or two marriages and worried about paying their bills that they have a different attitude. Many people tend to lose their youthful arrogance or their youthful; some young people can be a real pain, you know, they, they have this attitude of a, you know, I have, we have received the knowledge and 'go fuck yourself' so you know, I do not know, that's not a lot of kids but there are. I remember the socialist Irving Howe he was at a meeting and being harangued by studying was not sufficiently of the left was not enough for the people. Howe said something like this you know where you are going to be doing in a few years young man? You are going to be a dentist, so I always think of that. Sometimes I get a little static. I do a lot of college gigs and I answer their questions all of the time after my readings or lectures, there is a faction out there, very rarely, but they think they know it all without having read too many books. 34:52 SM: Yeah, that is what we try to always tell students, you know. Emotion is important. You got to have emotion when you believe in something, a passion but you also got to have knowledge. And when you have the combination of knowledge and emotion, it is hard to beat. Just all these movements took place during that period, too, because I have interviewed a lot of people and they know that the civil rights movement was kind of a model for the, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Native American, Chicano, environmental movement, a lot of different movements of that particular time that continued through today and have evolved. Were those Boomer, do you give that all credit to the boomer generation for those movements after the civil rights movement? 35:38 ED: I do not know. I think what the civil rights movement was, was a double empowerment, it was an empowerment of young blacks and also religious blacks. And also young whites, and then of course more established whites who formed bonds to decide that their goals on the surface of it were not that bad. They wanted the right to vote. They wanted an end to poll taxes and they wanted to drink water at fountains and ride buses, wherever they wanted and to use public bathrooms and restaurants. You know, and then, of course, Martin Luther King and [inaudible] brought the additional factor of, they want jobs. Jobs and economic interest between blacks and whites. So demand for economic equity, and these other, other civil rights things were I guess you can say that some of them, many of the participants were of the boomer generation. But I do not think, I do not know who invented the word Boomer, but I do not I do not think it was invented by the time of the great, by the lunch counter sit-ins or the freedom riots in (19)61. 36:17 SM: Right. 37:10 ED: The pool integration in (19)62. The commercial worship in (19)53. Selma in (19)65, voter registration and John Lewis; (19)56, (19)57, leading to the portion of (19)64 and Voting Rights Act in (19)68, the Great Society Acts. The real big cram with the boomer generation, was the Great Society legislation where basically a white congress voted in place beginning in the four ̶ 38:03 SM: Uh huh. 38:03 ED: A law, the Medicare, all the other karmic acts, all the great, great society cats ̶ 38:16 SM: Did you come in this is an area that, you know, you end the year with the Fugs and all the music? How important? Obviously we know it is but I like your thoughts on the music of that of the boomer generation, the music of the (19)60s in the (19)70s. And I talk about the music, it is not it is not just all the great bands and performers, the folk musicians, Motown. Just your comment and how important that was for this seventy million people. And second part of this question is, when I talked to Pete Seeger this past weekend, he talked about that, you know, he was always raised with the belief based on how his father raised him that that music was it's the words is what's important. It is not so much the musicians as it is the words of the young people will take the social messages and people take the social messages, and they will always remember them and pass them on. And there seem to be a lot of messages in the music of this particular time, just your thoughts and how important music was to the 70 million boomer generation. And I am going to change my tape here one second. Certainly you are involved in this. If you could speak up just a little louder too, thanks. 39:48 ED: Well of course, music is always important to every nation in every civilization. What was different about the music of the (19)60s into the (19)70s was that as I mentioned, there was a huge rise of recording technology so that you could do multitrack recording and then overdub and add vocals. Up till the early (19)60s the recording was done of like ten generation mono to mono. In other words, the orchestra would play on a mono between two fancy tape recorders then Frank Sinatra would lay down his vocals. And then they would run the same tape over, and then they would add the harmony singers and maybe some strings and other instruments. So it was very labor intensive. The beginning was the Beatles in (19)64 or (19)65, with the Fugs and other bands this new technology was suddenly there. And there were all these marvelous amplifiers. And more importantly, the music could be heard because they were out there, the sound systems that evolved even in little clubs but also in big places such as baseball stadiums, bigger venues so that the word could star in the mix. And that words, assumed great importance, because of the impact of people like Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith's anthology of American folk music, and the other Folkways albums. 41:38 SM: Mmm hmm. 41:38 ED: They would listen to it and then things like Pete Seeger who adopted a song he learned from a woman I think in North Carolina, and it became We Shall Overcome. 41:49 SM: Right. 41:50 ED: And then all the religious songs came about: Ain't Going to Study War No More and everybody was adopting these religious tunes Down by the River Side and We Shall Overcome. I have Been Buked and I have Been Scorned from the great March on Washington: Mahalia Jackson and Peter, Paul and Mary adopting folk music, folk songs, simple American folk songs, or European folk songs, adopting them. Putting secret messages in them, you know. Folk music, it often exists, like the Bible and has layers of meanings We Shall Overcome can be just as much of "we'll have a good life" but it also can mean we'll end slavery or we'll end racism or we'll win social equity. All these great songs evolved and they were singable, and of course music is more memorable. All ̶ We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance, that John Lennon wrote in 1969. You know, that, that did more to in the war in Vietnam, than any street demonstration. 43:15 SM: If you were to pinpoint, I know, there is so many of them, and it's not fair to others to exclude them but if you were to pick three, four or five of the top entertainers from that era, that really were the top echelon of that kind of music, who would they be? 43:34 ED: What were you talking about? 43:35 The musicians that influenced the boomers, whether they be folk musicians, rock bands, or Motown singers. 43:45 ED: Well who knows you know, you could start out with popular singers, some more scholarly and get into other things you could hear. You could hear Elvis Presley and then say, well what is this rockabilly stuff maybe I should look more into it ̶ 44:11 SM: Mm Hmm. 44:11 ED: You know, you start with Elvis or you might start with Mac the Knife by Bobby Darin and then go discover Bertolt Brecht that way. So you know, there are the obvious great musicians, Elvis, the Beatles, of course Bob Dylan, Joan Baez who had this huge impact on the generation with Hush Little Children Do not You Cry all that first album All My Trials. But somehow (Bob) Stravinski had a big influence on the avant-garde and people who wanted to change the world. 44:58 SM: Mm Hmm. 45:02 ED: I knew [inaudible] Stravinski and Joan Baez personally [inaudible] but then you go back into Bill Haley and the Fleshtones and Mickey and Sylvia: Love is Strange. Mr. Earl, that song. I do not know there was a lot of rock and roll that people were exposed to that, it truly was the harbinger of racial mingling. 45:31 SM: Mm Hmm. 45:31 ED: It was obviously a black phenomenon as was jazz. I grew up in Kansas City, I was exposed to a lot of jazz when I was a kid, but just I thought it was just regular music. I did not realize that when I was very young [inaudible] it was just good dance music. 46:03 SM: You mentioned that you thought John Lennon's music or song had a lot to do with ending the war as anything. What, why? Why did the war in Vietnam end in your opinion? 46:19 ED: Well, yes. Well, you know, it takes a long time, they started it basically, they started doing the defoliation in 1962 [inaudible] in (19)63, the supposition of the end and then, it did not really begin until (19)65 and then (19)66 through [inaudible] (19)68 I think because of all the scholar activists, all the people that were studying what was going on while raising their voices against it. And then the huge anti-draft movement. 47:09 SM: Uh huh. 47:10 ED: It took, people had to spend their whole lives every day protesting and raising money to stop this war. And the whole; it was: you know, they wanted to just like MacArthur wanted to drop H-bombs on North Vietnam, North Korea, or China on the border between North Korea and China. So too did people like General LeMay wanted to drop nuclear weapons on China. 47:41 SM: Yes. Yup. 47:39 ED: So it was what we prevented, more than anything. It was written that Nixon was thinking of using nuclear weapons in 1969. And so they sang John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance at the mobilization rally in DC in the fall of 1969 and Nixon was aware of that demonstration and said he realized [inaudible] and demonstrations all over America that they could not increase the war in Vietnam and they had to start pulling it back. A long, long I mean it was (19)75, six years and then hounded him out of office. I mean you know, it was so evil and such an injustice. However, they can build walls, honoring the dead, and I am sorry, there were any dead there and veterans, you can build a wall between here and the moon, but you are not going to do away with the evil of the Vietnam War. Never. 48:49 SM: What, in your opinion, were the best books that were that the boomers read in their growing up years that may have had an influence on them? 48:58 ED: I have no idea. I had my own life by then. I was reading my own classics. I have a question here and then; I just cannot figure out figure out what; you know, they start out reading books you know, Catcher in the Rye and branch out into you know different uh; they might have read, read Che Guevara's diary as part of a college class. They might have; who knows what avenues to read lead. 49:33 SM: I know that a lot of people with Mao's book. Chairman Mao's book. 49:39 ED: Yeah, because the, I forget what group was Maoist but they printed a lot of those. I had a bookstore. I had a bookstore for a number of years on the lower east side and somehow I would get these little red books and they were like free, they would get dropped off. 49:58 SM: [laughs] 49:58 ED: And they would urge me to sell them. 50:01 SM: Right. I have a question here on trust. Um, one of the things that this is this is definitely part of the boomer generation is a lot of the leaders lying to, lying to them and lying to the American public. Because you saw that was what Watergate was all about and certainly, Lyndon Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin, Eisenhower in the U2 incident, even in recent years, President Kennedy and his linkage to the Coup of Diem and knew and of course, Ronald Reagan. It seems like at that particular period, I can remember when I was in college, and I went to SUNY Binghamton, a lot of students did not trust anybody. They did not trust the president, they did not trust anybody in any leadership role, whether it be vice president of Student Affairs, they did not trust the minister in the church, the rabbi, the head of a corporation, they did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility. And, and I have seen, I do not know if that has been passed down to their kids. But my question is basically this, I was in a Psychology 101 class in my first year of college and I remember the psychology professors telling the students that if you cannot trust in your life, then you will not be a success in life. That trust is a very important quality and I am just want your ̶ 51:24 ED: Tell that to John D. Rockefeller who you know, used distrust to take over all of the oil in America. I do not know it is a terrible thing to have. On one level, it's the Beavis and Butthead isolation of American civilization where there is a culture of impoliteness that spreads which is not that good ̶ you see it at events and public all over the place, sort of against general rudeness that's one thing. Another thing is, you grow up and every ̶ everything is a lie so you can either isolate yourself from everything and we were told basically to be existentialists, to be alien; and be alienated by the fifties. Being alienated [inaudible] say James Dean or Marlon Brando that was a public icon to be alienated. So, but if you take it to the extreme and feel alienated from all this, then you can become isolated or you become a pawn of the military industrial complex or a right wing capitalist who will take advantage of that alienation. You have great authoritarian control, and you have you know, the situation of 1984, where everybody is suspicious and there is rule and neo-fascism. So it is a difficult situation because especially when the government has shown for so many decades to have lied so much about many things. Even some of our elections like the 2000 election. So, the idea of having stolen elections [inaudible] computer voting, wars you do not know what they really mean. Can you really count on the government? And so you say fuck it I am just going to drink beer, play a little golf and head off into the sunset. 53:46 SM: What does that mean to activism though? 53:49 ED: Well, some people have it in their blood, you know, they vow to go out in a blaze of leaflets. My vow was to always stay very active in local politics. I stay active and I think a lot of people in our generation too, I mean, I admired people like Tom Hayden for instance. 54:07 SM: I interviewed him for this project. 54:10 ED: I stayed pretty active. 54:15 SM: When the best history books are written, you know they are usually written fifty years after a period. What do you think they will be saying about the boomer generation? 54:27 ED: I do not know. They may not even use the word boomer generation. 54:31 SM: Hmm. 54:31 ED: They may put, they may decide that the generation began with the first experiment in the Manhattan Project in 1939 or (19)40. They may begin it with Einstein's letter to Roosevelt to build the bomb. They may begin it at some date that Marian Anderson's concert at the ̶ 54:58 SM: Sure. 55:01 ED: I do not know. Or they may be accepted as the bona fide movement that lead to maybe something wonderful happening in the next twenty or thirty years, I do not know [inaudible] the spirit to America that will transform. 55:20 SM: The last part of the interview is just quick responses to just some terms or names. 55:25 ED: I am not going to be able to talk anymore. I got to get to a meeting. You should take your email you were supposed to call me at one. You are welcome to call another day. And I can conclude. 55:36 SM: Okay. 55:37 ED: I got to run and get to a meeting. 55:40 SM: All right. 55:40 ED: But you can call, you know what day you want to call? 55:44 SM: Well. I am going back and forth between New York, somebody just had open heart surgery up there. 55:51 ED: Who did? 55:52 SM: One of my relatives. 55:53 ED: Oh well, sometime within the next few days, I do not care. Call any time after noon, after like one and I am available. I just got to run to a meeting that I forgot about. 56:05 SM: All right, well, I only have about fifteen more. I think this, when we left the last time, I think I only have about twenty – twenty-five minutes and that will be it. 56:15 ED: Ok. 56:16 SM: Because it is basically there is just one little section left. But I want to ask a couple questions before I get into you responding to some of the personalities and the terms from that era. Could you go a little bit more into how the Beats, how important the Beats were in shaping the boomer generation, just for their attitudes and the way they lived. 56:46 ED: Um, well, define these people: Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Huncke. In certain ways Charlie Parker and Diane Di Prima, in other ways Gary Snyder. They came out of the World War II generation out of the (19)40s and out of the post war boom, the thought boom of the release in the United States after World War II the created abstract expressionism, detective novels. And both from the synthesis of the east and west coast. The Beat generation who flourished with the beginning with the publication of Howl and they flourished as a kind of statement against the McCarthy era and against the squareness and the constrained culture of the 1950s and caused the generation of the boomers, so-called boomers to relax a little bit and not to be afraid to be more individualistic and follow their own life. America always has had a streak of individualism and people who do not motivate it but the Beats helped push the generation along the so-called boomer generation and also by demanding more freedom under the Bill of Rights. The battle of William Burroughs over publication of Naked Lunch and the battle around his thirst for sexual freedom and for acceptance of overt homosexuality and for the fight, the struggles, you know, the Feds tried to stomp down Howl when it came out and so he helped prevail on that and Allen also helped a lot in the trial, the court case where they tried to squash Naked Lunch. So they helped create a greater sense of freedom so that in our own time shows like The Sopranos even or some of these shows that use language and overt gayness on television and movies. The Beats helped liberate the personal freedom areas and art forms. They had a big hand in helping to set the new freedoms. 59:45 SM: Hmm. Through the years as some of the Beats are getting older, whether it be Burrows, Ginsberg or Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ann Waldman, who was one of the younger ones, Snyder, Amiri Baraka and Ken Kesey, yourself. What did you think of this boomer generation? They were, you were a little older. And what was the feeling when some of these things were happening? Because obviously, the Beats in the (19)50s were pretty tight knit group. And, and there is a lot of camaraderie there. And then this new generation is happening with all these issues and whether it be drugs, the music, the dress codes, and everything, just your thoughts on how, what they thought of this generation when you were around them. 1:00:45 ED: I did not even realize anything about this thing called boomer generation until a few years ago, I mean, it did not occur to me. I mean it is obvious that when you have a literary generation, or a musical generation or a painting generation that there will come along, another generation nipping at the heels. And as you walk off the plank of life, they will emerge on the deck of the ship and say, it's all ours! So I do not know, I did not really think about them. I knew that there were always going to be younger, emerging art forms and artists but I did not think of it in terms of a general huge mass of people called the boomer generation. Again, what is the designation? They were born after the atomic bomb was dropped? 1:01:36 SM: Yeah, in 1946 to (19)64 that was the years they put down for them. 1:01:43 ED: They are all spoiled brats! 1:01:46 SM: [laughs] 1:01:46 ED: They swelled in on an empire that was not yet beginning to fade. So they, they were kind of spoiled little [inaudible] thinking everybody would cow tow to the United States. The battles seemed to be over. 1:02:08 SM: What is really interesting is that of all the Beats that I remember, and it is the Allen Ginsberg seemed to be around everywhere. Uh, and uh 1:02:20 ED: He had the metabolism of a chipmunk. He had a high metabolism. And if you look at history, I mean look, I wrote a book on Allen Ginsberg's life called The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg. And in research and I knew him intimately for, oh from 1964 till he died in the spring of (19)97, so thirty-three years. 1:02:42 SM: Mm hmm. 1:02:43 ED: We were in almost daily contact so I realized what fanatic, fantastic energy, the guy had, he never really had to sleep. Sometimes I stayed at his house when I was in New York on business and he would be up in the middle of night doing work. I do not know if he ever really slept. He had a high metabolism and he was always in motion, he did more benefits than anybody in world culture. He must have done thousands of benefits for a wide variety of causes. But also, personal appearances at colleges here, in China, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Europe, all over Europe and India. He was always giving readings. And so I was always amazed at the huge numbers wide the wide cultural swath he made. People were coming from India from China from Japan. I mean, he was famous in Japan from Italy from Germany from France from England, from Scotland, from Wales. The guy at cultural connections to a huge plethora of countries. Pretty amazing. 1:03:58 SM: I just remember that time that he was on TV with William Buckley. Do you remember that? 1:04:02 ED: I did not see that show but I heard about it. 1:04:07 SM: Yeah, it was amazing because Buckley of course, being the conservative that he was, was fascinated by him. Literally fascinated. 1:04:15 ED: Well, they were friends. One good thing about Buckley, of course, not my cup of tea, but nevertheless, you know, took the stance against the far right. The anti-Semitic right and also was capable of having friends among liberals. He was a friend of Howard Lowenstein and in a way was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. 1:04:42 SM: You were in a band called the Fugs. How did the boomers look to that group? 1:04:51 ED: Oh, I do not know. We still get fan mail some younger people. I do not know. I am not sure how they? (19)46? Well, there was one born in the late (19)40s and early (19)50s would have been, could have been Fugs fans, [inaudible] around (19)67 or (19)68. 1:05:13 SM: Right. 1:05:13 ED: I remember they were always hiding Fugs records from their parents. 1:05:01 SM: [laughs] 1:05:10 ED: They would write in and complain that their Fugs records, that their parents had broken a Fugs record across their father's knee or something. They were indignant. If the definition is (19)46 and onwards then many of them, heck, probably our whole fan base was boomers. 1:05:38 SM: If you were described the Fugs' music, how would you put it in a few words or a few sentences? 1:05:50 ED: Well, it grew. It started out as a kind of primitive, acoustical folk music. We did not go to Juilliard School, so we taught ourselves. We grew up in the great school of American Jazz, American folk music and American civil rights songs and American rock and roll. Everything from, and also Country and Western and Hasidic. You know, we brought a lot of Jewish melodies to our music. I grew up in the happening, movement. So we were a happening. We were spontaneous. We were like action painting but for music. But over the years, our music, and a mixture through what was artful and experimentations that our music grew and grew in skill and quality. So by the time we did our final records for Warner Brothers, it evolved into [inaudible]. We rose up and did a major album. So our music always grew. We started out primitive. Got less primitive. Got into different types of music. So now like forty-five years after our founding, I have had a band together for twenty-five years and they are very, very, very accomplished. So, how to describe it? They have to listen to us. The Fugs are not a visual thing. We are all we are our songs. All The Fugs ever will be even apart from the stage remains the recording studio and live. We are the ̶ our stage. 1:07:32 SM: When we just had the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, in fact, I think the last when I spoke to you the first time it was a couple of weeks before the big happening was going to take place and Richie was going to open, Richie Havens. I think you had a concert there in fact. What when you look at that Woodstock, do you think that that was more about fun, more about culture? More about issues? What, how would you describe it? 1:08:06 ED: Well, it was an act, part activism and part planning. I mean I guess 300,000 young people pushed out to Sullivan County you know and many of them were against the war in Vietnam, many of them wanting a new, a new living arrangement. Living outdoors so it was kind of a good commune. The food was free cooked by Wavy Gravy and the hog farm. Wavy Gravy you know, into the microphone, at I think it was on the first night, or? First morning or second morning of Woodstock? Said, "What I have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000 people." And then it also had the kind of medical system that we need in the United States, free medical care. I have a good I have a doctor friend who's now an eminent neurologist, who was a volunteer at the freak-out tent at Woodstock, so people who were having medical problems that got free medical attention from volunteer doctors/ Plus free food. The ticket system broke down so there was free music. There was a celebration of beautiful farmland it was on a huge I think 50 or 60 acre farm; a dairy farm. Celebrate the beautiful American out of doors. Then celebrate also the kind of music that was rising up at that time with Jimi Hendrix and his great National Anthem which was performed at dawn on the final day with this new miraculous instrument in the United States called the wah, wah pedal and his active patriotism. In its own way. It was very patriotic. He set the tone for the (19)60s with that one National Anthem. All the other singing? I do not know, it was also a triumph of technology because it was not until a year or so before that you could play the music through speakers that can be heard by 400,000 people so the technology rose very quickly. With Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the others. So it was good. Technology, sharing, free medical care, all the outdoors. And then of course, a lot of pot and I guess there was acid there. Mainly pot I think. And beer. Pot, beer, acid, rock and roll, technology, love of the out of doors and having a good time. 1:10:59 SM: Who did you personally look up to? Who were your ̶ Well, I am not going to overstate this thing. Who are your heroes? Or who were the role models that inspired you? 1:11:12 ED: From those days? 1:11:13 SM: From those days or anytime? How did you become who you became? 1:11:21 ED: I do not know. I had heroes. It's like when they asked Michael Dukakis who were his heroes from the (19)88 election. You find heroes in your life from you know, Sunday school all the way up to performers and writers of course, teachers, I had a bunch of teachers [inaudible] like Sappho [inaudible] here other musicians that I admired [inaudible] when I was a kid. And also, rock and roll stars you know that rose later. I do not know. When I became an adult, Allen Ginsberg became my mentor. Carl Wilson before he was my mentor. [inaudible] friend, early on was one of my mentors. I looked to people for advice. You know, I am reading [inaudible] normally every week I read his stories for a while. I do not know, Norman Thomas was a mentor. Ghandi was a mentor. John Paul Sarte was big in my mind, and Samuel Beckett was an early hero as a writer and then somebody to emulate, at least in his persistence and overcoming his really [inaudible] world worldview with great art. 1:13:03 SM: How would you like to be remembered? What would? When you are gone what do you would, would you would like people to say about you? Or hope that people would say about you and secondly your writing. Your gift to people? 1:13:23 ED: Well, I hope with respect to my writings that they will, find, poems inside the body of my writing or short stories or other kinds of [inaudible] for 300 years from now. 1:13:43 SM: It in that this is very general and, and maybe impossible to answer but if you were to, if we were to ever bury seventy million people in one grave, which is the boomer generation and we put a tombstone on there, what do you think the, the epithet was say? The epitaph? 1:14:16 ED: [singing voice] Things go better with Coca Cola. 1:14:24 SM: Laughs. 1:14:25 ED: [singing voice] Better with Coke. Or we came, we saw. The word is not conquered. We came, we saw, we completed, man. I mean, you know, it is a generation. They come, they go. They are doomed. We used a plank image before. I mean, you know, you get born. What is it that Samuel Beckett said? You part with your? [inaudible] other ways to stride the grave really, it is not sing-song all the way but the idea is to have fun. One thing about the boomer generation is that their parents, having lived through World War II and all the, which really was a great triumph of American civilization. You know America defeated the militaristic Japanese which really is a wonderful thing. And so that generation told their kids, you know, have a little fun. You know? So I think the boomer generation was not afraid to have fun. [inaudible] now they are getting old. 1:15:50 SM: Let us hope that they are still having fun. 1:15:51 ED: Oh, well their arthritis causes them to not have as much fun. 1:15:55 SM: Yeah. Two quotes that come out of this era. One was one that Bobby Kennedy used a lot and another one was a Peter Max one. And, and the question is, which one better defined the boomer generation. And of course, the Bobby Kennedy one is, some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not? And the other one is Peter Max, You do your thing, and I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful. Those are two extremes. 1:16:32 ED: The quotes a little hippie dippy. I mean, you know [inaudible] that is the whole problem with 'do your own thing'. You know, I mean, that is what Hitler would say. Doing your thing is always um, problematic. But Robert Kennedy, Robert's, really, now that I am getting on in years, Robert Kennedy is emerging as a personal hero. I writing a book about him but it I do not know if it will take long enough to; if I figure out how many books to write, maybe I'll finally write my book about Robert Kennedy. 1:16:32 SM: Let me switch deep here and then we will get into these questions on the people hold on a second. (Only tape one of the interview is available) 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 1 Microcassette 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. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ed Sanders Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sanders, Ed ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Poets, American, Singers--United States; Human rights workers; Environmentalists—United States; Authors; Publishers; Sanders, Ed--Interviews Description An account of the resource Ed Sanders is a poet, author, musician, and activist who grew up in the state of Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri and New York University where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek. After college, he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore in New York City and started Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas were all early influences as Sanders tried to bridge the concerns of Beat Poetry and the counterculture of the 1960s. He is the author of many collections of poetry where he received several honors including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Sanders has written many books of prose, a non-fiction book, The Family, and published a bi-weekly newspaper, the Woodstock Journal. He is the founding member of the satirical and subversive folk-rock music group, The Fugs. 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.10.2016.107 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. 77:17 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e591e68f3017126d87d97fd04f89121a.jpg 97fde756dd09051e58bc61e66f9f49e4 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e22d01c3f515b0dc64b19daec0b0c4ac.MP3 26c0ce5b3a38949cee3ec62fe2c8eda8 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 8/7/2019 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Edie Meeks Biographical Text Edie Meeks grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota along with an older sister and two younger brothers. She joined the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) in early 1968 and enlisted as a nurse in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Meeks left the ANC in 1970 and began her work in the operating room, which she continues to this day in the Northern Westchester Hospital of Mt. Kisco, New York. She graduated from St. Mary's school of nursing in Rochester, Minnesota. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:58:02 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 Digital file Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Nursing; Vietnam War; Anti War Movement; Saigon; Women's Memorial; 1960s; 1970s; Boomer generation Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Edie Meeks Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Shah Islam Date of interview: 7 August 2019 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: 00:01 Yep, we are all set. EM: 00:04 Okay. SM: 00:05 All right. First of all, thank you very much for agreeing to do this. This is oral history with Edie Meeks. Edie, the first question I want to ask you is, could you tell us about your background, where you grew up? Some of the early influences in your life, your family background, your schooling and high school, college before you became a nurse? EM: 00:27 Okay, I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I am one of four children. My other— older sister and two younger brothers. And I went to Catholic schools for 15 years. For grade school, high school and nursing school, which was St. Mary's School of Nursing in Rochester, Minnesota. SM: 00:51 Okay. Wow. And how did you choose nursing? For your career? Is there a family history of nursing? EM: 01:00 There is actually no medical family history at all. But I knew from the littlest of girls that I was going to be a nurse. And I always asked for the nurse’s kit in our Christmas from Santa. SM: 01:15 Yes. EM: 01:16 And for the doc— not even the doctor’s kits, just the nurse’s kits. But I always knew— it was either that or a roller derby star. And I figured probably I would not do that. So, I became a nurse instead. I have always wanted to be a nurse and I still love nursing. SM: 01:34 Are you still nursing? EM: 01:36 Yes, I am two days a week in the operating room. SM: 01:38 Wow. That is amazing. Yeah. EM: 01:40 And mainly because I love it. You know, it is really, you… stay current with everything that is going on. Now they have robots and all these other things, and it keeps your sharp. SM: 01:52 Yeah, very good. How did you end up as a nurse in Vietnam? Did you volunteer? Did you, did they send you, was your commitment to serve for so many years? And did you have any say where you were shipped once you got there? EM: 02:09 I was… I enlisted. And I did that because my brother Tom had been drafted. And it was the beginning of… March beginning. But there was rumblings about antiwar and all that. And I did not know whether it was good or bad. So, I just decided that, you know, if my brother Tom got hurt, I wanted to be sure somebody was over there that wanted to be over there. And so, I enlisted, but then he said, because he was a Marine, he said, Edie, the Navy takes care of the Marines. And I had enlisted in the Army. So, forget that. I think he was relieved, though, that he were not his sister would not be, you know, offering the same type of service that he was. And so— and when you enlisted, because all of the nurses did. And at the time that I went over all of the nurses volunteered. So, we were just, you know, got— we were going to do our part. SM: 03:17 So, all the nurses when they got there did not exactly know where they were going to end up. In terms of the medical facility— EM: 03:25 No, no when you got— when you got there, you were assigned to where you were going. SM: 03:29 Okay, very good. EM: 03:30 And the— when I arrived, I had been dating a guy at Fort Ord. And he, he had asked the Chief Nurse if I can be stationed in Saigon where he was. And so, when he— when I arrived, he said oh, you are going to be in Saigon, because Captain Meeks was. And I thought, what? Yeah, I was kind of forward, but anyway. And when I stayed in Saigon at Third Field Hospital, for six months, in the intensive care unit. And then I found that, actually, I broke up with Bill because, Bill Meeks, because it was too schizophrenic. I mean, you work 12 hours a day, six days a week. And you were taking care of these really horribly injured guys. And then you were supposed to go out to dinner and have small talk. And at the time, Saigon still had four-star hospitals. I mean, [inaudible] restaurant. So, you could go to the top of, you know, the Continental Hotel and, and all of these fancy restaurants. And it was like, I cannot do that after 12 hours of taking care of these guys, you know, from the field. So, I just told him, I could not see him anymore, that you became so tight with the unit that you worked with. But it just seemed bizarre going out. SM: 05:07 Right. One of the things I have always thought about for any soldier or nurse or anyone that went to Vietnam and came back, could you— could you describe your weeks leading up to your travel to Vietnam? What was going through your mind? Were you aware of the conditions that you might be facing once you arrived there? EM: 05:29 I do not think anyone was aware of the conditions you would be facing. Or the injuries. I mean, I had done… that I— did not go right out of nursing school, I had gone to North Central British Columbia to a 46-bed hospital there and worked for a little over a year. And then I went down to California and worked there for a few months. And that was when I decided I was going to join the army. And so, I had worked emergency rooms, and, you know, serious stuff. And I thought I could handle anything. But when I got over there, these guys were so young. And they were just blown to bits. SM: 06:16 Right. EM: 06:18 And it took me years to figure out what, what was out of kilter. It was, because when, in the emergency room, everything makes sense. You know, a big fat guy comes in with a heart attack or kid without a helmet has a head injury and, you know, falling out of a tree to have a broken bone. All of these things made sense. Whereas over there, these were perfectly healthy guys that were being loaned the best. And it just did not make sense at all. SM: 06:51 When you arrived— EM: 06:53 [inaudible] coming— but go ahead. SM: 06:55 When you arrived in Vietnam, you are not— you have seen in women, probably in movies, and I have read in books about what it was like when you first got off the plane. First time ever in Vietnam, the… the environment, the heat, did you feel that? EM: 07:14 Actually, no, it just may not seem strange, but I just talked to a lot of people. But in getting off the plane, the only thing I can say is that the Earth felt so negative, so injured. Just, just the ground under which everybody was walking. And I bet that was exactly what I felt. Was that the earth was hurting over there. And, but I— and I really had no idea what I was getting into. And I said yes, I will do intensive care. And they said, great. And you— really none of the nurses really knew what they were getting into over there. SM: 08:04 What kind of medical unit or hospital did you work in. Real emergency room only? Or were— and were their several— EM: 08:12 So, I did intensive… intensive care, that is what I did, which is different from emergency room SM: 08:16 Right. EM: 08:18 That is after they go to surgery. And they come back, and we have to stabilize them, and then either they are sent to a ward, or they are sent to Japan. And… sometimes we would have to stabilize them before they went to surgery, if they came in, really a wreck. So, it just depended on what we got. You know? SM: 08:41 The— when did you meet Diane Carlson Evans? Who became your hooch mate? And was that rate early on or halfway through your time there how— EM: 08:55 It was first week through. And what I found was that you did not go over as a unit, a hospital unit. People were inserted, you know, people would come and go, and you form these bonds with people and then maybe four months into your being there, they would leave. And I found that several of the people that I was closest with, were going to leave about, the seventh month that I was there, but see, I am going to leave first. You go someplace else, maybe it will be better someplace else. So, I said to them, I do not care where I go, I will just go someplace. And so, they sent me to play coup, which is in the central highlands. And Diane actually had been in country six months also and she was making a switch and we arrived on the same day as the 71st evac and play coup, and both being from Minnesota we formed a wonderful bonds right away. So that was nice and lived in the same home which— SM: 10:00 And your basically— your responsibilities were the same as nurses. EM: 10:08 What do you mean by that? We are nurses. SM: 10:10 Yeah. But I mean that emerg— not emergency room nurses, but the ones that are really— EM: 10:16 Oh, you mean that? Yeah, I did intensive care there. SM: 10:20 Yes-yes. That is what I was— What— this is kind of a general question. But people that will be listening to these things or, you know, learning about the war. And so, could you describe what a typical day would have been for a nurse in Vietnam? Number of hours you worked, you know, was it consistent wound— heavily wounded people? Just a typical day. EM: 10:50 We worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, and then— these— it was from seven in the morning till seven at night or seven at night till seven in the morning. And your workload varied. For instance, one night I worked, and the other gal who was supposed to be there, they usually had two RMS on its night, had not come back from R&R yet. I guess the plane got delayed or something. And so, we could manage the amount that we had in one side of intensive care. The other side was the recovery room. With the corpsman that I had; we could handle that. But then we heard that we were getting six guys. And they were all pretty severely wounded. So, we, you know, got ready. And I had to tell one corpsman that he had to take care of everybody over on the intensive care side, let me know if anything was going on that I needed to know about, that— that I was going to have to be available for the troops coming in. And so, we received four of those six. And one of them was the captain. And he had such severe abdominal pain that he just could not, we were trying to stabilize him before he went to surgery. And he just could not make it. He went into cardiac arrest and died. But what was interesting about that was the— as the evening went on, because we heard about this, maybe eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night, you know, one— every once in a while, the corpsman that worked there with Scott [inaudible]. How is it going? [inaudible] Oh, let me help out! Priests, and almost all of them were there working. Now a lot of them had worked before, you know. And here they were putting in until everything became stabilized enough, which was maybe one or two o'clock in the morning. And then he had to come to work the next morning. But this is what everybody did. We just did the most you could for these guys who were injured. SM: 13:13 The— how many nurses overall served in Vietnam between, when the whole period was that we were over there? EM: 13:21 I think it was between eight— eight— seven and eight— and eight thousand. I do not think the thing is that they did not keep track of them. Diane, you know, ask the Pentagon for the names of the nurses who served at— the Pentagon told her no women were over there. SM: 13:41 Oh my god. EM: 13:44 Right. So, they did not keep track of the women at all. I mean, our names might have been on the list, but we were not looked at as women. SM: 13:53 Oh, my goodness now. EM: 13:55 So, there were I think between, I think around 8000 who served in the war zone? In the army anyway. Yeah. SM: 14:06 We know that— I think there is there were nine that were killed that were— their names are on the wall. And did they keep track of safe for— nurses that were injured? You know, we talked about the 58,200 and some that had died in Vietnam that are on the wall. But there is no known really record of the number of people that were injured in the war with lifelong injuries, mental hit situations and so forth. Did they keep track of any of that with the nurses? EM: 14:38 No, I do not think many nurses were injured. I know that one of the nurses was killed when they were attacked, you know, with rockets. And I think her ward was hit directly and she was killed. SM: 14:56 That was Sharon Lane, I think. EM: 14:59 Yes, yeah. SM: 15:00 Yeah. EM: 15:00 Yeah. And— but the other— it was, you know, circumstances, like one of them was on a helicopter going someplace and it got caught in wire, and the helicopter crashed. And so— and-and for injuries, I have not really heard of any nurses that were injured, the keeping track of what happened to the nurses after, they [inaudible] did not even know what to do with the females that came back. I know that there were several who went in the (19)80s, early (19)80s, for help from the VA, and there was just no help to be had. So, they put them in men's group. And the women started taking care of the man, because that is what we do. And the women got sicker and sicker. Because they were not really taking care of themselves at all. Then they started being alerted that the woman— and the woman demanded too that they receive, you know, the same good services that the men got, and slowly to me has really turned around, especially now that there are so many female soldiers that are going to need help. Because the female is going to react differently no matter what you do, than the male. I mean, the two of them can shoot the same person. And inside, they are both going to react differently. So, they really need females to just females. Females talking to males does not do it. SM: 16:43 It leads right into my next question and why Diane created or worked hard to make sure the Women's Memorial became a reality. Why did it take so long for nurses to be recognized in the war? And I interviewed Diane a long time ago, and she came to our campus and her stories were unbelievable. But Diane's effort to create the Women's Memorial where she had to go before hearings in Washington and I heard some Congresswomen or people in politics, were saying kind of bad things to her. I mean, just your thoughts— you-you have known Diane, just the whole process of how long it took for nurses to be recognized. EM: 17:25 Right, and luckily enough, they had Diane as the, you know, leader, because she is just tenacious, I mean, she will not give up. And if you cannot get it this way, she will go around another way. You know and try that way. And she, I mean, I would not have had the patience that she did, but she just kept going forward and forward and forward. And slowly and slowly. And the thing is that the man raised, you know, millions for the wall in three years. And the women it took 10 years and a lot of that had to do with the fact that Jan Scruggs fought us tooth and nail. He did not want that Women's Memorial on the Mall at all. And so, he if he had given us any kind of a plus, you know, then I think it would have helped a lot. But he was so anti that memorial. And even after it was built, he was anti that memorial. SM: 18:36 Was it just him or the people that worked with him too? EM: 18:40 I think he surrounded himself with people that were like minded. SM: 18:44 Because I know there was Jack Wheeler, who was a power broker too. He raised funds. Sadly, he was murdered in Wilmington, Delaware about 10 years ago, but— EM: 18:56 Oh my gosh! SM: 18:57 But he— I do not know if you knew that. EM: 18:59 No! SM: 19:00 Yeah, he is passed. He was— it is a long story. But, you know, he was the guy that raised a lot of the funds for the Vietnam Memorial, and, and he was really close to Jan. So, I do not know if he was that-that way as well. You know, you have known Diane, did she ever tell you the stories about her going before [inaudible] committees? EM: 19:24 Oh, yes. SM: 19:25 Yeah, I cannot believe— I saw one of them on YouTube. I could not believe how— I could not believe how they talked to her! EM: 19:32 I know. SM: 19:33 Could you— you-you have— you know, could you explain that? What was going on and how difficult it was for, not only to get the Women's Memorial off the ground and there might be the Jan Scruggs of the world that are against it, but what about those congress people? You know. EM: 19:51 Well, you know, it is interesting because back in the ‘80s, things were not different than they are now. And it was almost as if, this is-this is how I perceived what was going on, was that men were the heroes, and women just cleaned up the men. And men always got the medals and always, you know, statues of heroes, heroes, heroes, heroes. And it was not until the Women's Memorial that I think fee— people really felt— the women themselves felt that they might be heroes. Because women have never been thought of like that in the United States. As heroes they might have been thought of as exceptional or— but not heroic. And the women who went over there were pretty heroic. Because they were not made to go over, they volunteered to go over. And they put up with a lot of stuff. And they did a lot of hard work, you know, seven days a week sometimes. And for me, I never felt— thought of myself as a hero until after the Women's Memorial. And my kids were saying— my-my daughter has, you know, when-when I went to Mount Holyoke to speak, it was the first time I had ever spoken about it. My daughter was going to Mount Holyoke and there was a fellow there who taught a course on Vietnam. And he would start his course by saying you women will never know what it is like to be a poor. Well, of course, my daughter is a little feminist, called me up. And he was-he was taking a course on the (19)60s. And she asked her professor, because they had eight hours on Vietnam, he— she asked her professor if I could come and speak. And the guy must have been really brave, because he said yes. And so, it was the first time I had ever spoken about it. And I went up, and my daughter said that there were maybe 70 young women there. My daughter stands up and she says, I want to introduce my mother Edie, me. She was a nurse in Vietnam, and I am so proud of her. And— well, of course, I almost collapsed. But to me, that was the first time anybody had said that. And it was later, is— the young woman came up. You are my hero. Mrs. Meeks. I was so surprised! Because my generation did not think of women as heroes. But her generation does. SM: 23:13 Yeah, that is, well that— EM: 23:14 That is what is good about the whole thing. SM: 23:17 Yeah, what you are saying really is the boomer generation did not look at women as heroes. EM: 23:22 Right! SM: 23:23 Yeah, and it is interesting, because it was the-the women's movement was happening during the time that— yeah well at least the boomers were very young at that age. But still, it is still well, that is-that is a tremendous revelation. And you know, I have been to the Women's Memorial so many times over the years. And I have heard all the testimonies from many of the soldiers who served over there and-and I— and I have heard the constant revelation that you are heroes. You are heroes to them. And it is-and it is, you know, why were not they saying that before the Women's Memorial was built? EM: 24:04 I think they did not know to say it. Again, the women were just supposed to clean up the mess. That is what they have done in every war. SM: 24:14 Right. EM: 24:15 The nurse [inaudible] the guys back to health or whatever, you know, whether it was the revolution or whatever it was. You know. SM: 24:23 Did you— EM: 24:24 And- SM: 24:25 Go ahead EM: 24:26 Go ahead! SM: 24:27 No, you go ahead, you can finish. EM: 24:30 But to me that-that is really what it was about was that they did not think of these women as being heroic. And the women did not think of themselves as being heroic. They just thought, oh this is my job. You know, I consider a lot of women heroes, who take care of the guys who come back from war. That is difficult. These guys have changed. They are not the same people who left. Just to deal with everything is really tough. SM: 25:08 When both you and Diane came home, even before the-the idea of a wall or a memorial being built, did you and Diane talk a lot after you returned from Vietnam about how all Vietnam vets, including the nurses who served in Vietnam were treated on your return by the American public and then we Diana's is set up many times you have to about you are not welcomed home, as well as most of the people who served on the battlefields is— what was hap— EM: 25:40 We never discussed it at all. In fact, it was interesting, because after I spoke at Mount Holyoke, I called Diane and I said, oh, I did this and this and this, and the other thing. She said, do you know— realize Edie that we have known each other 23 years, and we have never discussed Vietnam? And I said, oh my God, you are right! But we never did. SM: 26:07 Did-did was Diana, and— both you and Diane feeling that you were not welcomed home? Which was very common, right up till about— EM: 26:15 Oh yes, yeah. I mean you never told anyone that you-that you were in Vietnam. In fact, when the Women's Memorial was going to be dedicated, somebody newfound out that I was a Vietnam vet and put a blurb in the newspaper, the little local newspaper. And people would stop me in the Grand Union, which was the grocery store, the local grocery store where everybody meets. And— my God, Edie, I have known you for 20 years. I never knew you were a nurse over there! SM: 26:42 Oh, my God. EM: 26:43 So, you never told anybody. And one of the reasons was— I can remember, I was in the hospital working. And this patient said to me, I heard you were in Vietnam. What was it like? And I just had to turn around and leave. I mean, there is no sound, like, that tells anyone what it was like. So, it is almost impossible to explain in 30 seconds. So, you just did not talk about it at all. SM: 27:18 Did you feel that— you know this, that post-traumatic stress disorder was pretty common among nurses just like it was among the rest of the troops? EM: 27:28 Oh, absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. SM: 27:30 Yeah, and— EM: 27:33 They were seeing things that they never would have seen in the States. And they were-they were working with people, you know. And-and hours, and seeing wounds and being rocketed, and you know, just doing things that they never would do in the United States. SM: 27:55 Why was it so difficult for many of the people who claim they had it, to keep trying to prove it to Veterans Affairs that they had at— let me mention though, I go to the wall every year, as you well know, Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I have been going since (19)93. Have not missed— I have only missed one. That was President Barack Obama's visit, because they forced everybody to the back. I did not like all that. By the way, what did you think, I am diverting here, but what did you think of that memorial, or the Remembrance Day when President Obama was there? And I remember Diane had to walk from the back to go to the stage. Do you remember that? It was a very— EM: 28:42 I guess I do not. SM: 28:43 Yeah, that is only one I could not come because you had that— the security was so tight. And all the people that were— EM: 28:47 Oh yes, I can! She was not allowed to sit close. Right-right. SM: 28:50 Yeah, no, none of the vets were— EM: 28:51 The guy [inaudible] SM: 28:52 The vets were in the back and all the politicians were up in the front! EM: 28:56 I know. I know. That is what it is all about. SM: 29:00 Yeah. And it really got to me. But post-traumatic stress disorder, why did it take so long for the Veterans Affairs to recognize the validity of the claims made by our service— people who served in Vietnam, and I sat next to a person five years ago who came from Wash— state of Washington, and he said he is still trying to get— he is still trying to get claims because he has post-traumatic stress disorder, but he does not have the right numbers. They would go by certain numbers, and he says— and here it is— and some are still battling to be recognized that they have it. EM: 29:39 Yep. Yep. I think it is money. 100 percent of its money. It also has to do with— I can remember when I first sent in, because Diane was the one that taught me into sending in for disability. So, I sent in, and they gave me 10 percent for hearing or something like that. She said now you go for 30 percent, because you have to keep going, you have to keep going. So, the 30 percent, you have to write up this whole thing. And I get back, denied. [inaudible] you just poured your heart out, you know, about what happened over there. And you are sitting here thinking I bet whoever read this, or did not read, it, never served. You know, some civilian who has never served, is making a judgment about whether you deserve disability or not. And the thing about disability is, you just have to be tenacious, you have to keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. Which is too bad because it is— not only do you feel that you have PTSD from the war, but after that whole thing, you feel like you have PTSD because of the VA. SM: 31:03 Oh my gosh. EM: 31:06 Because you are so angry at those people, for not trusting you and believing you. SM: 31:14 Yeah, I remember going to a hearing when I first moved from California, and Bob Edgar, the former congressman, was-was he was only a two-term congressman. But the fact is that he was really involved in this particular issue. And I got to know the Vietnam vets from Penn's Landing here in Philadelphia, they are building the wall. He said, go to the meetings, I just went to the meetings. And he was pleading the case that he was trying to make a pass some sort of resolution in Washington, making sure that anybody who makes a claim for post-traumatic stress disorder gets medical coverage. And so, I heard the horror stories that all these veterans are telling about, you know, having it, claiming it and then having to prove that they had and so it is a-it is a long, long story. And I want to go into here something about that I think you have talked about many times, in— and those people who were very seriously wounded and many who were dying in the war nurses were right with them, in fact, in their arms many times and that you became— nurses oftentimes became the substitute moms. Because-because they have that here is a 19, 20-year-old male dying and… and he— they— they are talking— they want to see their mom and all this other stuff, could you talk about some a few of those experiences where that might have happened with you? EM: 32:43 I do not think it has so much happened with me, but by the time they got to the intensive care unit, they had been pre stabilized. Some of them did die, because their infections were so great, or the wounds were so great. And I can-I can remember them asking for mom, or— and you would just be there. You know. And you really tell them whatever they wanted to hear. You know. I am here, I love you. The whole thing. Because you figure, you know, if that was my son, or if it was my brother, that is what I would want. I can remember, at one point, this gal called me up and she said, I am a Vietnam veteran. I was a nurse over there. And I am doing my PhD on post-traumatic stress with women veterans. Would you be one of the people I interviewed? I said, Sure. So, she came up to my house. She lives in this city, New York City. And she came up to my house, in Garretson, a couple of times. And then the third time she came with the final thesis. And that was the time when she started talking about herself. She never talked about herself before. And I said is there anyone that you remember that you cannot get out of your head? And she said, I remember during test. This one young man who had been— they said that he was just so injured, they did not… could not waste the time operated on him, you know, would have taken too long, and they had too many other urgent cases to do. So, they pushed him to the side. And every time she passed him, he would say, is it my turn next? And she [inaudible] to take out, it will be just— not too long now. Not too long. And every time, she said, I always wondered if in doing that I prolonged his life. Because I gave him hope, because he did die. And I said to her, your mother, what would you want for your kid? You would want somebody to recognize them. And to be kind to them. And to love them by saying, your next, your next. And then he can just go to sleep quietly. So, it is that famous thing that-that stayed with you. SM: 35:43 Yeah, you spoke at the Vietnam Memorial this past Memorial Day. It was a fantastic presentation, number one. And number two, I think you mentioned about one particular soldier that had died, are there— you— that you had connected with some of them who had passed away? Could you-could you talk a little bit about maybe one or two of the-the soldiers that you will never forget? EM: 36:09 The one that-that kept bothering me when I was not paying attention to PS— PTSD or anything, but that would pop up in my head was this young man from Kansas, from a farm in Kansas. And he had a really bad abdominal wall that had a terrible infection, and we just could not get ahead of that infection. We did not have the antibiotics that we have today, for one thing. And you— If I remember really, he was nineteen. And he got a letter from his mom, and he asked me to read it. So, I did. And his mom was telling about his dad coming in from— it was in October. Hunting, [inaudible] cornfield with the family dog and… and I used to do that with my family down in my Uncle Albert’s farm in Southern Minnesota. And then the mom told me a little bit about what was happening in the community. And at the very end, she said, besides that she loved him, we are so proud of you, son. And like, three days later, he died. And the thing was that you could not tell the parents anything. You know, I would have loved to have written letters to some of these parents, and say your son was so heroic in the way he died. And, you know, such a good kid. But you could not write anybody. You were not allowed. SM: 37:44 Wow. When you returned home, did any of the… soldiers that you had help save or in intensive care, did they ever try to contact you to thank you for helping them? EM: 38:02 No, and I have a feeling that it is because most of them were pretty out of it when they were with us in the intensive care unit. You know, we were not a stabilizing force. And if you were really, really bad we would— you had your surgery, we stabilize you until you could be shipped to Japan. And then they would form relationships with those gals. You know that? The only one that I really remember that we heard from actually that wrote us a letter was a young man who came into the emergency area. And his heart had been nicked with a boarder shrapnel or something. And they often did ‘EM: up right there and fixed it and… then he came to us. He was with us for about two weeks. And he was there over Christmas. And then he was shipped to Japan. And he wrote us back from Walter Reed and he said I am doing fine. But that was the only one we ever heard from. I do not think a lot of them knew where they were, you know, because they were either, if they were really bad off, they had a lot of narcotics to keep the pain down. Or just— SM: 39:19 Well, that is kind of what— that is kind of what the Women's Memorial has done. Because it is brought many people to verify the experiences they had with nurses and to thank them. I have seen, you know, the programs you have in the morning and the afternoon, and it is… Over the years, there is just so many, and you see the connection between the nurse and the person that they have served, they waited on, helped. EM: 39:48 Right. SM: 39:49 And that-that— EM: 39:50 It also— It also helped me quite a bit. I remember one time I was down there, because I used to go every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and I was down there to answer questions or talk to people. And [inaudible] had a patch over one arm. And it was his first time down at the wall and on this memorial, and… So, we started chatting, and he was from New Jersey and… and I— he said, well, where were you stationed? I said Third Field Hospital, he said, I went through there! Now, we did not have a neurosurgeon. So, if you had a head injury, you were shipped out right away. But they stabilized him in the emergency area, and then shipped him out to Japan, because he did have a head injury. And with a lot of head injuries, when you saw these guys, you think, I do not know if we are doing them a favor. But here was this fellow, he had lost his eye. But he had his own business, he has three girls, three daughters. You know, he lived a good life. And I said, thank you for being here. Because some of the patients that we had, I used to think, are we doing them a favor? And it is nice to see that those you know, we worked so hard for actually did have a good life. SM: 41:17 Good. Very good. That is, that is unbelievable. That is a great story. And I honestly, you were working these unbelievable hours, six days a week, 12, 12 hours? Where did you go for rest and relaxation? Did you have opportunities for— what was R&R to you? And how often were you allowed to have it. EM: 41:42 We had art, we were allowed two [inaudible]. And the first one I took with my roommate from Saigon. And we went to Hong Kong. Now this was toward the end of— I think it was the beginning of December that we went. And, you have to remember this is like five months with no shopping. SM: 42:09 Ha-ha, oh no! EM: 42:10 Honestly, you felt like throwing your money on the street and saying give me anything! 42:15 [laughter] EM: 42:25 [inaudible] really interesting. We had our hair done, you know, [inaudible], and bought presents for home, that kind of thing. The better one I took with Diane, and we went to Thailand, to Bangkok. And that was interesting because you take a boat up the river and see the— but again, it was so surreal that you would leave these guys who kept coming in and kept coming in, whether I was there or not, you know? And you go and vacation! And then you back! And I thought it must be even more bizarre for these guys who are in the field, who leave for R&R and then come back and then they are in the field again. You know, it is, it is such— it was such a bizarre thing. But interesting. I got to go to Hong Kong and Bangkok! So… SM: 43:22 Those are— with— now— remember I asked you a question how you felt that first time you got off the plane when you landed in Vietnam. And I am now asking the question of when you are leaving. When did you return— when-when did you return home? And could you describe your last few days what you were thinking in your final day, getting on the plane, and flying back? What were you thinking about? And how did it differ from your feelings when you arrived in Vietnam? EM: 43:56 Planning to leave, you almost felt like you needed to re-up for another year. Because you felt like you had not finished. I mean, you could not finish, you know. And you— I really had to make myself go home. But, in just in this last July, because I went home in July. And it was the 50th anniversary of the person landing on the moon. The night before I left Vietnam, they landed on the moon. And I happened to be in I think it was Cameron Bay waiting for the flight the next morning. Or wherever it was, I cannot even remember where it was that I flew out, but it was not the hospital. And somebody came out of the officer's mess and said oh, come you have to see this! They are landing on the moon! And I said why would I want to see that? That is nothing. Guys are dying over here. Why aren't people paying attention? To me, the landing on the Moon was nothing. And for years, I could not watch that. There was nothing. People should have been paying attention to all those young men that were dying. SM: 45:21 Yeah, that was 19— EM: 45:22 That was how I felt about it. SM: 45:24 That was 1969! EM: 45:26 Yeah, yeah, that is when I left. SM: 45:30 Wow. How long did it take for you to adjust back into society after you returned home? And I am not talking about— I am not going to the general perception that everybody was not welcomed home. But did your family and friends react differently and welcome you home? Or were you welcome home by people that you knew before you left? Or was there kind of, a kind of a silence from them? Or a fear— EM: 45:56 Well, you were welcomed home as if you did not wait to come. You know, you were— because they knew— did not have any idea what you have just gone through. Say, you know, oh, this is wonderful, you are home! And you know, everybody comes and gives you a gift. But it is like a welcome home like you were away any place, for any reason. So, it really did not have anything to do with being in Vietnam. It had to do with this— oh, and then they would never ask! SM: 46:38 How long— EM: 46:39 They-they— SM: 46:40 Go ahead. No, you go ahead. You can finish up. EM: 46:42 So, they— they, they had no idea what it was like and in a way, it was easier that way because there is no way to explain it to them. How horrible it was. SM: 46:56 Were there movies that that you have seen since you came home that said this is really what happened over there? I know that one movie that touched a lot of people was Coming Home, the one with Jon Voight and Jane Fonda. EM: 47:15 Oh, yes. Yeah. I saw that, and it was a wonderful movie. The movie that impressed me the most and— and I did not see any of the other war movies [inaudible] from Vietnam. The only one I did see, and it was years later, was Apocalypse Now. SM: 47:32 Yeah. EM: 47:34 And I said, I do not know, you know, somebody asked me about it, I said, I do not know if, you know, what happened. Really happened. But I am telling you that the feeling of insanity and weirdness and craziness and other worlds was absolutely right. SM: 47:58 Yes. EM: 47:59 They got the feeling of [inaudible], perfectly. And that war. SM: 48:04 Francis Ford Coppola was the producer of that movie. EM: 48:09 Right. SM: 48:10 Yeah. And I agree. I know one person that I interviewed, I re-interviewed Bobby Mueller this past Monday. And he, he had mentioned to me that the movie that he thought was really— [inaudible] was really like over there was Full Metal Jacket? EM: 48:30 Ah, yeah-yeah, I have heard that. SM: 48:32 So that is the one that he said, if you want to really understand about what happened to the guys over there, you watch that movie. When you came home, did you go right back as a nurse, or did you have a break in between before you went back to being a nurse? EM: 48:49 Well actually, talk about insanity, the guy that I told I could not date anymore, when I went to play coup. He started calling me. He was still in Saigon. But he started calling me. And we talked every night. Because of the job that he did, he had the ability to get a telephone and use it anytime he wanted, I guess. And so, as if in talking to him, it kind of saved my sanity. I did not have to date him. I did not have to go anywhere. But we just talked. And when I got back— he got out of the service before I did. I still had six months actually after I got out, after I came back. And I had a month off and then I went to Madigan General at— in Tacoma, Washington. And that was… the hospital for Fort Lewis, which was a huge basic training fort. And it was not until years and years later, that it dawned on me— you know, I thought, oh, well, of course, I will do intensive care nursing! I am used to that! That is the thing, you see I must have been crazy! But [inaudible] so you get there, and you are dealing with things that are totally different. But, to me, just as horrifying, and I did not realize that until later. Some of the things that were horrifying was that kids would come in with meningitis and die. They would die. And he had just been into basic training! And the parents would come. And they are saying to themselves, we just set this kid off to basic training. But because there was no vaccine or anything back then. You know, you just had to hope that the sergeant would pick up on it and send the kid to, you know, to get help. But sometimes the charities would say, just suck it up. [inaudible], you know, and by that time, they would come to us, the meningitis was so bad that we could not get ahead of it. SM: 51:06 Well, after Vietnam, of course, you got involved with Diane and the creation of the Women's Vietnam memorial that opened tonight and opened in 1993. And I know you have been involved in so many other projects, like the one you are involved in now with a purple heart. And could you describe those years? I know you were on the board, too, with Diane, I believe, could you describe those years of being with Diane and the battles in— kind of put it all together in terms of the initial first meetings to in the opening of the memorial in (19)93. I mean, just from your perspective, because you were on the board, and you were a close friend of Diane's. So, because people who are people who are going to be listening to this will probably many of them will have already visited the Vietnam Memorial and making sure that they visit the Women's Memorial as well. And it was not easy getting it. And that, that the only reason it is there is because of the tenacity, and the drive of people like Diane and yourself that makes sure that women were presented. So just your thoughts. EM: 52:16 Well, Diane was persistent. I did not— she would call me, and she would say we need somebody on the East Coast. Then I would say call somebody else, I do not-I do not know how you can talk about this. I cannot talk about it then. And it was not until up maybe a year and a half before— the dedication, that she called me she said, we really need people on the East Coast to talk about this, would you, do it? And I thought about it, I said, I will do it under one condition that I can stop anytime I want. Or if he asked me a question that I do not like, I do not have to answer it. And she said, great. So, I started talking to people. And the first time again that I talked in front of-in front of a group of people was Mount Holyoke. And what really happened with me being on the board was after the dedication of the memorial, I decided that I was going to go every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day to see Diane. And the second time we were there, I think it was second or third year. There were some people who were pretty rude to her. And she told me about it later. And I said, well, that is it. Diane, I am going to be there every time with you and just follow you around and watch your back. And nobody is going to speak to you like that ever again. Okay, so that is really what I did. We were just— we stuck together. And I was not going to let anybody abuse her ever again. And one year, I went down there, and she came in, she said, well, you are on the board. And I said I am? She said, yeah, I figured it was coming down, you might as well be on the board anyway. So, I said, okay, whatever you want. I also backed her up on the board because sometimes we would have problems with people who have their own agenda. And so, I would just backer with whatever Diane felt was right. SM: 54:47 Do you ever yourself have flashbacks, remembering those times in Vietnam. You could be in a mall or you are at-you are up at a fairground and you hear a helicopter flying in or— EM: 55:03 Oh, yeah, those are—or fireworks. Forget it, you know? I remember when I was asked to speak at the dedication of the Huey helicopter at the Smithsonian. SM: 55:22 Oh, wow. EM: 55:23 And it was the first time that any aircraft had flown over the mall since 9/11. So, I said, oh, sure! You know, you are gawking this thing like an idiot. And I— actually in my speech, I talked about the sound. But then, the helicopter comes, we are all standing outside. The helicopter comes in, it flies by. And it is not supposed to fly over the Vietnam Memorial, because they said so, well, of course, being Vietnam vets, all those guys did, you know. So, they flew down to the Vietnam Memorial, flew over it, and then flew back. And again, it was that hearing it before you saw it. And you could hear that. And then it slowly came into view, and then it landed and all these guys in fatigues got out. And I thought, I mean, I was like in shock. And then I had to speak. So, I spoke, and after the captain came up to me up the helicopter, and he said, have you been inside a Huey in Vietnam? I said, no. He said, would you like to? I said, no, I do not even want to get near it! He said, okay, sorry. So, he just tuck my hand, my arm under his. And we slowly were chatting, he was chatting with this person and that person, and he slowly walks to the door of the Smithsonian and then we walk through the door. Slowly we walk towards the helicopter. And we walked up to it. And he said, would you like to touch it? And he gave me the right to say no. Which I love. But I did. I touched it. And it was, it was extremely moving. I was supposed to be at a reception that night. And I said to them, I have to go home. I have to leave. So, I got my turn. I drove back to New York. It was really overwhelming. SM: 57:56 I never served in Vietnam yet when I come there every year to Memorial Day and Veterans Day as they are clearing out the area making sure there is no bombs, you know, the dogs that they bring down in there. They have this help. They have this helicopter flying overhead during that 12 to one o'clock timeframe, you know, when they are making sure everything is okay from before the ceremony starts. To me, I am not a Vietnam veteran, but that bugs the heck out of me, wondering if that is bugging of the veterans themselves, because of that-that sound, it is that sound— EM: 58:33 If it was a Huey helicopter, it would because it has— the Huey has a distinctive sound. SM: 58:39 Okay. EM: 58:40 A very distinctive sound. And so that would trigger a lot, I think. SM: 58:46 Yeah. EM: 58:47 You say helicopter, helicopter. You know, not so much. SM: 58:50 Yes, you know it is a— EM: 58:51 The thing that I thought was odd was I went to the dedication of the South Dakota Vietnam memorial. They asked someone to come from the Women's Memorial to be present. I said, okay. And after the ceremony, they had all these fireworks in the middle of the day. I thought, are these people insane? SM: 59:16 My gosh. EM: 59:17 Who thought of fireworks? I mean, I cannot stand fireworks to this day, SM: 59:21 Right. What do all Vietnam nurses have in common in your view, and at the same time, where do they most differ? When relating to the time they were in Vietnam? EM: 59:43 Oh, well, you know what I could say about having in common because everybody's experience is different. If you are on a malaria ward, you are experienced would be different from mine in an intensive care unit, or triage, or-or, or… And also, the war was different in different times. I remember a friend of my daughter’s; he is a dentist. And he went to Vietnam, I think it was 1966. It was early anyway. And he said, oh, would you like to come over and see the pictures that I took over there? I asked how on earth can he, you know, see more pictures of this? But they went as a unit to set up a hospital, which was fine. Nobody else did that after that. And the war was not really raging. (19)68, (19)69 there was a lot of fighting. (19)70 to (19)71, not so much fighting, but a lot of drugs. And the guys would come in with drug overdoses. So, it was different kinds of nursing at different times. Over there. SM: 1:01:19 Right. If you had to do it all over again, would you go back? If you were younger? EM: 1:01:26 Oh yeah. SM: 1:01:27 You would? EM: 1:01:28 Yeah. SM: 1:01:29 Have you returned— EM: 1:01:31 In fact, every nurse, I have talked to has said, in a minute. You know, if it all happened again, and would you say yes, and everyone said, yes, I would go. SM: 1:01:43 Have you returned— EM: 1:01:44 And even thought it was traumatizing and life changing, it was worth it. SM: 1:01:48 Right. Have you returned to Vietnam? EM: 1:01:52 No, and I will never go. And that is just me. You know, I remember when my daughter came to me, she said, mom I am going to Vietnam for vacations! I was like what!? A friend of hers was working over in Hanoi. And so, she is like, come on over! You know, go around. And she said, is there any place, you know, that is special that you want me to stop, and see? I said, no, just bring back new memories. SM: 1:02:27 Yeah, I think it is one of the number— one of the top honeymoon places in the world. EM: 1:02:34 Well, it is less expensive than a lot of places. I know that. So, I think that— SM: 1:02:37 Right. Yeah, I know somebody who went on their honeymoon over there. And they said it was it was unbelievable how beautiful the country is. EM: 1:02:46 Yes, yeah. That is what my daughter said too. That it is really [inaudible]. She said also, now this was, oh, gosh. Late (19)90s, I think that she went, and she said, and everybody was so friendly. But she said, but 50 percent of the population was not born— SM: 1:03:08 Yeah, that is true. EM: 1:03:09 —you know, then. So, none of them know what they have— what everybody went through. SM: 1:03:16 This— I am going into a section here now where I am just asking questions about the war. Your thoughts on the war? Did you support America’s involvement in the war as a nurse? And how about right after you returned home from the war? It has been many years later, do you support the war effort? And was it— or do you feel it was a mistake overall? You know, I have also wondered, when I see veterans, you know, their thoughts on the antiwar movement and those who were protesting at home, whether they— you were aware that what was going on at home with on the campuses and in the streets of America, all the protests. I know I threw out a lot there, but just your thoughts on the war overall. EM: 1:04:00 Well, first of all, my brother Charles, the youngest brother, he was arrested for protesting. And somebody said to me, well, how did you feel about that? And I said, well, I knew that my brother loves me, but he hated the war. And he was draft eligible, and he said, if he had been drafted, he would have gone. But he really felt that his duty was to protest the war. Personally, I feel that if the war had not been protested, we would still be there fighting and wasting lives. And I when I went over, I had no feeling one way or another about the war. You know I was just there to help. But I— and I went— the end of July, by the end— by October, I was so filled with rage and anger against our government and against the army, that I just had to really stomp it down. That was part of that— just kind of, you had to do away with your emotions, you know. I mean, we were not allowed to mourn the guys that we lost. Because we did not have time for one thing. You know, you were not allowed to say how angry you were at the army for wasting these guys. Because they felt like you were just sending them out there, only out there who cares? You know, let us send more numbers out there, and then we will win. Well, that is not how it works. And because we were the nurses that took care of them, we knew that these were not just numbers. These were sons, somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's, you know, lover, somebody's husband, somebody's father. And that is why when the Iraq war started, my PTSD went wild. And I was talking to my psychiatrist about it. And he said, the reason why it is affecting you so much because— channel 15, the public station that we have, would show pictures of each of the guys that was— or girls, that were killed. And he said, people look at those, and they are just faces and they are numbers. You look at them and you know, they are people because you have seen that before. So, for you, they are all very personal. And that is why it is so difficult for you. SM: 1:06:44 Were you, you know, not only were you having emotional issues with the men and who are dying in the battles, are dying in the hospitals. But how about the citizenry of Vietnam, a lot of the antiwar movement was involved in wanting to bring the boys home, so that they— we would not have any more death. And secondly, against all the massive killing of the Vietnamese citizens. With saturated bombing all over the place, the numbers game, you know, killing, they were even keeping track of the amount of animals that they were killing. They are, they are doing anything to build up numbers. And at least we do not do that today, at least I hope we do not in the saturated bombings when we are in the Middle East. But your— did— were you-were you sensitive enough to know what was going on to the Vietnamese people, too? EM: 1:07:45 I think at the time, you are so concerned about your own people, that you could care less. Whether they are Vietnamese, whether they were suffering [inaudible], you could care less about, you know, because you are caring for your guys. And the fact that these poor guys should not be here in the first place. And it was— one of the things that I became very cynical when I was over there was the fact that when there is war, and this has proved out to be true in Iraq, the first thing you should look at is who is making the money. And the problem: with that is that you are making the money on the lives of citizens. You know, these are not hired thugs that you hired for your army. These are citizen soldiers. That have gone because their country has asked them to. And to use them up so somebody can make money, to me, is the most appalling thing in the world. SM: 1:09:02 That is prophetic. Prophetic, not pathetic, prophetic. Because I think, because I think Bobby has said that— Bobby Mueller has said the same thing. In some of his deep thoughts about war. EM: 1:09:19 Yeah. Follow the money. SM: 10:09:21 Yeah. And yep, he is always following the money. When John Kerry went before the Fulbright Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee. A lot of people— Vietnam Veterans Against the War he represented, and in the description of the atrocities that took place in Vietnam, not only the atrocities that were being committed by our troops, but some of the descriptions of what was actually happening in there. Were you aware of that? Were you aware of some of these— EM: 1:09:56 You know, it is kind of like with My Lai. When My Lai happened, and they publicized it, I thought to myself, I can totally understand why that happened. These guys were all young, really young. They were not like— I guess the average age during World War Two was 26. These guys were 18 and 19! And they were marked by somebody who was 21! And they did not have much leadership over there. Everybody was passing the buck. And to me, to be put out in the field, to be afraid, day after day after day, for your life. To not trust anyone. You never do. I mean, that was true, in Saigon they told us do not kick the cans, when you are walking down the street, you see a can, do not kick it. Could have an explosive in it. And you never knew. Because they did not wear uniforms. It was not like, oh, here is the enemy and there is not. You know, we had— I remember we had a desk clerk who worked with us in the intensive care unit. And one morning, he was not there. And I said, well, what happened to so and so? Oh, he was killed last night, he was VC. We never knew that! SM: 1:11:31 Oh, my gosh. Sheesh. EM: 1:11:35 And so, you just did not know who your enemy was. And you could get crazy up there. It is kind of like when my daughter went with me for the dedication. And she came back to the room. She said, Mom, your guys down at the [inaudible] wearing their uniforms. What is with that? And I said, Gwyneth, your brother is now 19. The most he has ever done, in the wild, is to float down the Delaware with the Boy Scout troop. Think of him being put into basic training, and then dropped in the middle of the jungle, and living in fear, for a year. He would come back a different person. SM: 1:12:26 When the Vietnam Veterans formed that organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, I think it was around the time you came home, although they were at the 1970 Republican convention. I know Bobby was in that group. What did you think of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War because they were throwing their— this is right about the time that John Kerry did the presentation before the Foreign Relations Committee. They threw their-their medals away. EM: 1:12:59 Yeah. SM: 1:13:00 What did you think of— what do you think the majority of the Vietnam Veterans thought of this group in the beginning, even though that more and more were joining as the years went on, and what did the nurses think? You in particular? EM: 1:13:15 I do not— for me, I was all for it. Because I was totally against that war. I thought it was a useless war, that we were just throwing our young men away. For no reason. Because they were not allowing them to win the war. I mean, we had rules. And the Viet— they— Vietcong had no rules. They could do whatever they want. And so, we were— they said to us, and if you break those rules, it is against the law, you know, and you will be prosecuted. Well, none of the North Vietnamese were prosecuted for any of those things. And they did whatever they needed to do to win. I think that is just sad as it is, I did not— the only episode I have watched of the Ken Burns Vietnam thing with the first one, because I knew it would be about history. And the sad thing to me is that we turned Ho Chi Minh away when he came for help. SM: 1:14:27 That is right. EM: 1:14:28 He came to us first and said, we want to have a united country. SM: 1:14:37 Yes, I— EM: 1:14:38 And what a sad thing that is, you know? SM: 1:14:41 He was just a figurehead really. At the end of the war, he-he really had no impact. He was just a figurehead and of course eventually died before the war ended. But, that whole thing about Harry Truman had got a letter after World War II from Ho Chi Minh saying how much he admired Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence and then the story was we just gotten over a terrible war and Truman did not want to [inaudible] linked with another conflict someplace else. So, he just kind of avoided Ho Chi Minh. Boy, if Harry Truman had responded in friendship to Ho Chi Minh my golly— EM: 1:15:19 I know. SM: 1:15:20 I mean this never would have happened. History is amazing. When you are— when you think about Diane— we brought up Jan Scruggs and Jack Wheeler were— and I think, Bob Lubeck, or Dewback. Were the three men that were— really created the Vietnam Memorial, as an idea. Were you at the 1982 opening of the wall? EM: 1:15:39 No, I would not have gone for anything. I was still, for me, it was still too, too raw. I was [inaudible] SM: 1:15:53 Because it, you know, they got the documentary on that, that particular day. And oh, my golly, it is like everything changed on that day in terms of the views toward Vietnam veterans. The feeling of that they felt proud of what, you know, the brotherhood was amazing. And I am sure the sisterhood with nurses was amazing. It was just like a coming together, and kind of changed, for the better, the views of America and towards those who served in Vietnam, and in the remembrance, events have been there ever since I believe I know. Jan was the moderator for many years. Diane, in the Women's Memorial, she represented for quite a few years, your thoughts on the Vietnam Memorial, the battle to get the memorial in the first place? And then finally, here with Jan wrote his first book was the— To Heal a Nation. And we know that the effort was to heal the families of Vietnam vets and those who died and so forth. But it is a lot— it is a big question here. But your thoughts on that whole battle too, which eventually led to the Women's Memorial, being on the wall, even Jan [inaudible] may have opposed it. I mean, everything comes with a battle. EM: 1:17:10 Right, right, right. Well, everything does come, you know, with a battle. And I think— I bet the battle people never served. And that is the key is that these people never served. Those are the ones that are saying no. And that is why I think somebody mentioned the other day, everybody should do some kind of service. You know, whether it is in country or, you know, no matter what it is, you could do some kind of service for their country for a year or two. And I totally believe that. SM: 1:17:57 I do too. And— EM: 1:18:01 And then when the veterans calm, they would have some kind of— I mean, here are people who— their big thing in Congress or the Senate has been making money. And they just consider veterans parasites. You know, they use them when they want to make more money with a war. But then after they are parasites. SM: 1:18:32 Did the wall help heal our nation from that war? And because I still, I guess, I guess me, some people say I am obsessed with Vietnam and just move on. We are in 2019 now, but I see so many from lessons that we learn and then lessons that we have learned and lost. And I think it is healed a lot of the Vietnam vets. But— EM: 1:19:00 Yes, yeah. SM: 1:19:01 How about the need— how about the nation? Those are— because the divisions were so intense back then. EM: 1:19:11 And actually, for my generation, sometimes it still is. There is still some people that I cannot discuss it with. You know, that, and that is okay. As long as I know that I just will not discuss it with them. But I know what I know. And, but the thing is about that war, and the healing to me would be if they have learned something, right. And when the first George Bush said, oh, we are going into Kuwait to help the people. I said, they are lying to us again, they are going in there for the oil! If you just tell us the truth, and that was the biggest thing for me was that they lied all the time, about Vietnam. All the time. They lied why we are there. They lied, you know, about the numbers. They lied about getting out. SM: 1:20:12 Yeah, it was George Bush. It was George Bush who said the Vietnam syndrome is over. Remember, he said that in 1989? And I thought that I do not think he knows what he is talking about. EM: 1:20:25 Right? He does not. Yeah. SM: 1:20:27 Yeah. So, this— you— what you just said, there it goes right into this next question is, as time goes on, why must we must, why must we never forget the Vietnam War? And the lessons learned or lost from that war? Why is it important to remember rather than being, just then being a lost footnote in history, which seems to be all events had happened in history. 120 years should now like we are talking about the Civil War and reading all the books, while we are doing the same thing about the Vietnam War. But— EM: 1:21:03 I think the biggest thing that the American people, at least some of them, learned from the Vietnam War was to question the government. And to say, wait a second, is this really real? You know, because the government, again, is going to do whatever it wants. But it is actually the people that say, I beg your pardon? You know, and that is one of the reasons, for me, sending people over there. 345 tours over to Iraq, and Afghanistan is cruel and unusual punishment. If you do that, you should be giving them $100,000 a year when they retire. And every medical benefits they need, but they do not. They give them a hard time. And if you are injured, sick, they give them a hard time. And to me the torture that these people have had to go through. I mean, we had to go for a year. It is true, now their tour, I think is six months or something. But we have to go for a year. And what happens is… your mind gets twisted, but then you go back a second time. Pretty soon, it feels comfortable. Because you are used to the adrenaline and the camaraderie and all that— when you come home, it is even harder. And then you come back, and you are supposed to be normal! That is the thing. They are going to expect you to be normal. Nobody is normal! I think that the biggest thing about Vietnam is, question the government, always question the government, because there are people in the government who are not there for the good of the people. SM: 1:23:00 Do you consider— EM: 1:23:02 They are there for good of themselves. SM: 1:23:05 Yeah, I always say that the people that serve this nation, in the military, are our heroes, because they put their lives on the line. And I will always believe that. There is a bad, but there is bad within every group. But the majority of them are heroes. But I go a step further here. I also feel that those who are in the anti-war movement in the United States, and then even other parts of the world too that were genuinely, I mean, genuine, honestly, not to just create, you know, controversy and problems and everything. The [inaudible] were generally against the war because they wanted to bring our troops home, so no more of them would be killed, and certainly to say the Vietnamese citizens, I consider them heroes too. EM: 1:23:48 Right. Oh absolutely, absolutely. SM: 1:23:51 Yeah, and so— and I have said this to Randy Davis, who I have gotten to know quite well, who was one of the biggest activists in America at that time. He did— he was the organizer of the moratorium. And, and he says, well, thanks, Steve. But I really believe that because they— a lot of them were arrested, they were spied on they have, you know, there is just, it is just a case that if they were genuinely caring about the lives of our troops, and the people of Vietnam, and that is what— but if they are only doing it to raise hell. I am not speaking of them. So, do you feel the same way too? EM: 1:24:28 Oh, absolutely. In fact, the money that I send these days is to Veterans for Peace. SM: 1:24:35 Oh, yes. EM: 1:24:36 And to vote vets, who— finance veterans who are running for office SM: 1:24:46 Yeah, I kind of wish John McCain was still with us. Because no matter what you thought about him, I do not care whether he is Republican or Democrat man. He was outspoken, and we miss him in Congress, believe me, we miss him? EM: 1:25:01 Yeah, I know. SM: 1:25:02 When you— I am— EM: 1:25:04 It is really— it is such a shame because you are looking at the-the Republicans in Congress and you say to yourself, none of them speak up, what is wrong with them? You know, when verbal abuse is happening or bullying is happening or whatever, I cannot get over that, but none of them speak up. SM: 1:25:25 Yeah, it is you know, that whole term when we call about a politician or a statesman or stateswoman, we do not have, we do not have enough of them. And today— EM: 1:25:37 I know. SM: 1:25:38 And that bugs me. When I think of the (19)60s, I think of, you know, whether you liked the senators or not, I think of Edwin Muskie, I think of Gaylord Nelson. I know, William Fulbright, early in his years was a bigot. We know that when he was in Arkansas, but he was a hell of a senator. I am talking about statesman now, even the Kennedys, and Dr. King who was a— it is just a different— it is just something— there is something missing. When you when you think of the 1960s and (19)70s. What is the first thing that comes to your mind? EM: 1:26:14 Oh, boy. I think Vietnam. It was [inaudible], it was interesting, because when my daughter had asked me to speak, and she said she was taking a course on the (19)60s and I said, is that history already? I could not believe it! She said, mom, that was one of the most amazing decades in the history of the United States. And I never thought of it that way. But it is true. You know, with Martin Luther King and Kennedy and all of these people. So many changes, you know, even just women's [inaudible] coming true You know, and then the early (19)70s, then they finally made birth control legal. Which, I am sure that the young people today are just amazed that it ever was illegal. SM: 1:27:19 Yeah, is there one particular event in the (19)60s and (19)70s, that stands out above all the others in your view? EM: 1:27:35 There were just so many of them. The one that popped into my head, I do not think this was the most, you know, traumatic one, but was the one where the Russian ships were going to deliver something to Cuba. I was in nursing school at the time. And they put everyone on alert. And that if something happened, everybody would be high stepping notch in what they would have to do. Because they would have— who knows what would happen? You know if we had to go to war with Cuba or Russia. You know that to me was a real surprise. That— SM: 1:28:25 That was that was the (19)62, yeah that was the (19)62 Cuban Missile Crisis. EM: 1:28:32 Right-right. SM: 1:28:35 And now history has shown we were lucky to have JFK is our president. No question about it. EM: 1:28:41 Yes, yeah. SM: 1:28:44 It has been said that what made the (19)60s and (19)70s was the spirit of the times of feeling that everything was possible about the about once future that we were going to end the war, bring peace to the world. And racism, sexism, homophobia. There was it was just a feeling. Your thoughts on the concept that the (19)60s was about spirit? And please do not— my phone is ringing. Do not worry about that. EM: 1:29:24 I think it has to do with a lot of different things. The (19)50s were what I would call very controlled. You know, being a Catholic in the (19)50s its church was extremely controlling then. Really, you know, I— it is the kind of thing where I tell people when I was in grade school and they taught about, you know, “Thou shalt not steal,” they told us that if you steal $7 or more, it is a mortal sin. If you steal less than that it is a menial sin. So, it was that kind of thing where everybody needed to know what the rule was. And I said, but nobody ever said, you do not steal because it is not nice, and it hurts people. And it does not belong to you. Nobody ever said that. It was about the punishment. I told that to somebody who was there when I went to New York. She said, oh my God in New York was $12! SM: 1:30:28 I never heard this! Wow that is... EM: 1:30:31 Yeah. But I think it is because we were so controlled. Remember, Donna Reed? SM: 1:30:39 Oh, yeah, The Donna Reed Show. Yes. EM: 1:30:40 Perfect housewife, the perfect this, the perfect that. And then the (19)60s came and it was like, you know, we do not want this. We want real, not perfect. I [inaudible] now I do not remember this too much. But I remember going through that whole era where they persecuted Hollywood, you know, communists. What was his name? SM: 1:31:15 McCarthy era? EM: 1:31:16 Yes. The McCarthy era. I think that-that really wrapped around somebody— some people's heads too, you know, that this was not what we want in our country. We want freedom, we want openness. And I think that is really what, you know, the people were saying that this— because I can remember I was in California 1967. Everybody was doing everything. And the thought process was anything you believe is fine. Which for me was great, because it really opened a lot of doors as to what I wanted. And a God and what I wanted in a belief, which really held me through Vietnam. SM: 1:32:05 Right. You know, we— took mentioned The Donna Reed Show, there was Father Knows Best too that was, that was very popular— The Danny Thomas show and all those shows about families that went right into the early (19)60s as well. And then began the early (19)70s with All in the Family. Archie Bunker and oh, wow. Anyways, what was the watershed event in the (19)60s in your view? Might be repeated the further earlier question, but I hear from a lot of people that— might remember Paul Critchlow? You know, Paul, I interviewed as well, he is unbelievable. And he said he went into the service to go to Vietnam because he felt I had to be involved in the watershed event of my generation, which was the Vietnam War, and, you know, Paul could have gone on to grad school, you know. And they came in he, he was at Nebraska and, and of course, he was treated poorly when he returned home to Nebraska too. So, yeah, and a watershed is something that I have always heard as a history major is it is what is the event that really that stands out in the (19)60s and (19)70s. It can be something that happened one day, or it could be what you just described your— earlier the Vietnam War too EM: 1:33:50 I do not think that there was a watershed thing for me. I think that— because there just kept being one huge thing after another, you know, a death here and then another death, and then another death. You know, people kept selling off the good guys. And you are saying to yourself, how come nobody ever shoots the bad guys? But— and then Vietnam, and I think the whole, that whole decade is, especially the second half of that decade, was huge for me. SM: 1:34:35 At here at Binghamton University, I have tried to persuade the people I work with here on the new center, that when we talk about the (19)60s we are talking really up to 1973. I— you know, what happened from 1960 to (19)73. You had the Kennedy assassination, obviously, ending— although really the beginning of the first half of the (19)60s. And then you have got, as some people have said, all hell broke loose after (19)63 Right through (19)73. Because you know what happened in (19)70. And then (19)71, and (19)72, and (19)73 was really almost again, part of the (19)60s. And then all of a sudden things change. And by (19)75, it was no more because the commune movement and everything, the rise of the radical right in the religious community, and there is a whole lot happening. But anyways. EM: 1:35:35 But also, Nixon was— Nixon left. And then after he left, war was finally ended. He was elected to end the war. But he liked Johnson. Why? Because I can remember Jackson was saying, oh, no, we are not going to—this was during the election kind of thing—we are not going to spend any more troops over there. And then of course, he did. SM: 1:36:08 Yeah, it was, it was just so many different lies. I remember the first lie to me, and I was very young, was the U-2 crisis with Eisenhower, where he went on national— when he went on the national television in 1959, and said the guy was not a spy over Russia. Very obvious he was lying. And, you know, I do not— I am not going to, you know, that is the one time I disliked him. But, you know, I remember that as a specific lie in front of the American public about it about the U-2, Gary Powers. And then we start the whole thing going into Vietnam. So, it is kind of— the Boomers were kind of— saw it over and over again, if you could describe the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s. What would be the qualities you admire or and the qualities you least admire? The Boomer generation? EM: 1:37:05 Well, the best quality was that a lot of them thought outside the box, which had not been done before. And the boxes usually had been built by people who wanted to control people. And so now these guys and gals were thinking outside the boxes. It scared the, you know, the box builders. But for humankind, I think it was a great thing. You know that they were thinking, wait a second. And the biggest thing, again, that I think— one of the biggest things that the Vietnam War did for the people of the United States was, taught them not to trust the government, and to think for themselves. And to question. SM: 1:38:02 Well, that is something that is continuing because we are seeing so much questioning today. It is amazing. EM: 1:38:07 Right. SM: 1:38:08 Yeah, the question though— question we ask, though, is how many of those people who are questioning are really part of that Boomer generation or generations that follow? Like the millennials, and Generation Y and so forth. 1:38:23 But— actually, the boomer generation has really been a disappointment, I think, in that they did not follow up on a lot of what they hoped would happen, SM: 1:38:35 Right. Yeah— EM: 1:38:39 I think that a lot of the generations, like my daughter's generation, my daughter and son, are— is very proactive. My daughter is gay. And so, she is very proactive. You know, never before would you have been able to. SM: 1:38:58 Yeah, I think there is some very clear of strengths that came out. And there is some clear weaknesses as well. And the one thing that that I think is to me, and I just want your thoughts on this, and this was for— I am not paraphrasing Bobby Muller, but you know, he says, as the (19)60s move on, you know, we need to move on. But he did say one thing. And that was the lack of trust in our leaders, that seems to be common among the boomers. And the boomers because of the lies, the continuing of lies, lack of trust. And if you can recall, this was across the board. It was not only lack of trust in our president, but lack of trust in the head of the Board of Supervisors, the head of the like a president of the college and a university, the minister or priest or anybody in positions of authority or responsibility, anyone who was supposedly the head of a manager of a bank, they were all bad because you could not trust them because they were leaders. And that seems to have been across the board. And when you have Vietnam and Watergate and some of the other things… I— do you agree— EM: 1:40:19 But it turned out to be right. I mean, look at the Catholic Church. You know, you could not trust them because they were not trustworthy with your kids. SM: 1:40:27 Right, yeah so— EM: 1:40:31 The lack of trust was right! SM: 1:40:36 You have those, though, that this is a real— this is a— would be a great classroom discussion. Because philosophy, because the people that believe that— people that do not— are constantly— do not trust others, cannot be a leader. Because you have got to be able to understand— you got to be able to be trusted to be a leader, number one. And you have got to be able to do things that make people believe in you. So, if you are constantly not trusting others, who is going to trust you? So— EM: 1:41:06 I do not think it is that, that trusting others. I think it is, certain people in authority that are not trusted. You know, if you, say, running for office, you should trust the people that are helping you out. And you should trust what you believe in. But I certainly would not trust any big government people. And I would think, you know, I would be suspicious if some big company came and said, we really want to back you. Because what do they want? Nobody does it for free? So, there are a lot of people who are not trustworthy. SM: 1:42:00 Well, I know the— EM: 1:42:02 I do not think being suspicious and being careful is a bad thing. You know, if somebody comes to me, and I am a senator and says, oh, this is really— it would be great, it would be great. Why? Is it great for you? Or is it great for my people? SM: 1:42:27 Getting back to Vietnam, you know, they always I work in a university for many years, and universities are supposed to be a microcosm: of society. They always say that. Now, when you look at the Vietnam War, and you even mentioned it that, that the drugs kind of become very prevalent in the (19)69-(19)73, or whatever, period in Vietnam. And we all hear about the music that was being played over in Vietnam, just like the music being played in America at the time. What— you know, and the whole racism: issue between Black and white soldiers and troops, was what was happening in Vietnam, the same thing that was happening in America in the social scene? Where the tensions between people of color and people who were white, was prevalent, but of course, we all know that when you are in a war zone, you believe you work as a unit. So that kind of goes away when you are in battle. But it is when you are not in battle. Your thoughts on— was Vietnam a microcosm of what was happening in America? EM: 1:43:35 And I have no idea. The only thing I know is, it did not matter what color you were, if you were one of my corpsmen, you were part of the team. And it did not matter what color you were, if you came in as a patient, you were a patient. And that is all I really knew about any kind of, you know, it was not so— where I was, there was no conflict because we needed everybody. And you did depend on them. And they did work as a team. So, really was not a question for me, but I was not, you know— SM: 1:44:13 Did the increase in drug usage over there really hurt the war effort and in terms of— degrade our military preparedness? EM: 1:44:26 I do not think it hurt the war effort. Because from what I understand, a lot of the drugs taken over there were taken because they kind of let up. And were not really planning on winning the war. They were just kind of in a waiting. SM: 1:44:45 Yes. Okay. That is, it is a good description. EM: 1:44:49 And so, if you are bored, what do you do? And they were so readily available. That I am sure that people just said, well, let me try it, let me see what. If you are really busy shooting people, you do not take drugs. Or if you are busy just trying to stay alive, you do not take drugs. SM: 1:45:14 Or if you are concentrating to get the job done, you do not take drugs. Did you— EM: 1:45:17 Right. And if you have time on your hands in the middle of a jungle or whatever, or in the middle of Saigon or in the middle of whatever, then you might take drugs if they are available. Because who wants to be over there anyway? SM: 1:45:31 Yeah, the boomer generation when they were young, lot of them thought felt that they were the most unique generation in history, because of all the things we talked about earlier, they are going to make the world better for everyone. And they were not going to end things that have been here forever on planet Earth, like racism, sexism, so forth. Your thoughts, the boomer generation, were they the most unique group, ever? And secondly, have you changed— how did you feel about it when you were young? Being a part of it. And secondly, how do you feel now that you are a lot older? EM: 1:46:09 I think, as a group… What happened was a lot of stuff happened. It was not just civil rights. It was civil rights and women's rights, and, you know, on and on and on, about opening a lot of ideas. And it did not all get taken care of. But all of the ideas came out. And I think that-that was important, because so many they have been worked on, you know, one of the things that was allowed was all this fight about women's rights. Now, that is kind of, to me, a no brainer. But men seem to fight it like cats and dogs. And it is a power thing. You know, it is the same with just my kids. But the same with abortion. It is fine. If you do not believe in abortion, then do not have one. But if somebody else believes something totally different than you, what makes them wrong? You know, you are saying that what you believe is right, well, that fits right for you. But it is like kind of like religions, religions are all different. So, if you believe that life starts at the instant at conception, God bless you, do not have an abortion. But if somebody else actually believed, because of her whole, you know, that life happens at the moment of birth, then she has the right to do whatever she wants with her body. And yet, there are people who want to force their beliefs on other people. SM: 1:48:10 When you look at the (19)60s and (19)70s, I always say early (19)70s, not all (19)70s I should say. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Who are the good girls or the bad women, the good women, I mean, it can be a group, or it could be an individual. EM: 1:48:36 I cannot think of any bad. The groups just were. And they all were for a different reason. You know, some-some of the African American people became more militant, because they felt that the peace thing did not work. I do not think that is necessarily bad. I think it is just that they were so frustrated they could hardly see straight, and they had been waiting for 100 years. That is a long time. You know, since the Civil War. And same with women's rights. Some woman was strident. And some women were, you know, wrap yourself in cellophane when your husband comes home. So— I think all of the ideas need to be out there. And all of them need to be looked at. And hopefully sanity overtakes. SM: 1:49:49 Right. And I guess— I am going to end right here because I have gone back to the Women's Memorial and the Three-Man statue and the Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. When you enter that sacred ground, every time you go there, and you look at the wall, and you kind of— I do this even though I did not serve Vietnam, but Vietnam had such an influence on my life, and my peers’ lives. I like to be there alone sometimes. So, I will walk on the side where the Washington Monument is monument is where it is not as crowded. And I will just stand there for 30, 20-30 minutes. And I go back to when I was young, college, and all the things, watching the TV, like we all did during the war, the first war that was shown to the American public. And all these flashes go through my head, memories of back, what goes through your mind? When if when you go back there and look at the wall? I know you see the names there. But do you see— EM: 1:51:04 Actually, it is interesting, because one of the things that you said was sacred ground, and I do not consider— for me, It is not sacred ground. This is like home. And when I go there, and I have done this before, I have talked to my boys. I go to the area on the wall where I know my guys are, and I just talked to them. And I am glad that those memorials are there because that wall really shows what war is. Not just a guy on a horse, you know, with a sword. It is individual people. And it has been a meeting place of healing for Vietnam vets, where they can come, meet each other. They may never have known each other before, but because they are Vietnam vets, they communicate and it is a healing process. The same with the Women's Memorial. And the memorial next to the statue of the three guys, which is, you know, the memorial remembering all those who died because of the war. SM: 1:52:22 Yes-yes. They just redid that one. EM: 1:52:25 Yeah. That, to me is most important. Because there were so many who died because of that war. From Agent Orange or suicide or whatever it might be. SM: 1:52:40 Yeah, when I when I see that whole area there, I think of that word, context. Context being defined as a word that means everybody's feelings, thoughts, reflections, memories, matter. So that— what you are telling me today, the feelings that I have as a non-veteran, but who is a big supporter of veterans And what, you know, whether a person's anti-war supported the war, or, you know, I have spoken to a lot of conservatives, as well as liberals and the conservatives are, you are really asking us to be involved in this, you know? Yes, I am. It is the— it is context about— everybody's views matter. If you want to understand this very complex, decade or decade and a half from— I consider from 1960 to 1976, when we have celebrated our 200th anniversary, and of course, Jimmy Carter comes in as president, but it is that whole era. And there is so much. So, are there any other— I am done with questions. Are there any other questions you thought I might ask you or any final thoughts you want to add to the conversation? EM: 1:54:03 I do not think so. Whatever things you— when you mentioned the statue of the three guys what I remember was, when Diane and I had first went up and— we were together and we went up to the statue of those three guys, and I said to Diane, okay, when you look at the statue, what do you think first? She looked at and she said, those guys have great veins, for starting an IV. I said they do! That is the first thing I looked at, the veins on there, wow. That would be easy! SM: 1:54:37 Wow. EM: 1:54:41 We do things a little differently. SM: 1:54:44 Yeah, well, you know, just recently, you know, Ross Perot passed away and of course, he was a big critic of the wall. And originally, he was going to give a lot—give a lot of money. I think, I heard $171,000. he was going to give to Jim Scruggs and the people involved. But then when he saw the design of the— by Maya Lin, he wanted to take the money back. I do not know, I do not think he eventually did, but no matter what, whether it be the Vietnam Memorial, the— even the three man statue and the Woman's Memorial, the battles to have them even there is another story! It is another war! In respect, the war to get them— Yeah, so, anyways… EM: 1:55:26 But you know I actually tell you, looking at those three guys, one of the works of art that has meant the most to me, I found in South Dakota when I went through that. And it was a print made by a Vietnam vet out in Washington State. And it was the heads of three young guys, they had these helmets on, they looked like they just came out of the bush. And each face has the 1000-yard stare. But they also their faces have these splinters, you know, like a fractured piece of glass. With just cracks little teeny-teeny grips, but they are all cracked differently. Each face is cracked in a different place. And at the bottom, a dog tag that says PTSD. SM: 1:56:24 Wow. That is a drawing? EM: 1:56:27 And I gave— It is a- it is a— I can send it to you, if you have— SM: 1:56:32 Yeah, if you could send it on my— I am not here, I am up in Binghamton, I will not be able to get to it until I get home. But you have my email. I will give it— [inaudible]. EM: 1:56:42 I could use your phone number too; I could just take a picture and— SM: 1:56:44 Yes, that would be fine. Yep. EM: 1:56:49 Okay. But that to me was—said it all. And I gave it to my psychiatrist, one of the— I had a couple of friends. And I gave one to my psychiatrist. And he is no longer my psychiatrist, I have a female now, but he said— I saw him in the hall the other day. And he said, that is the first thing the guys noticed when they come in. And they said that is it. SM: 1:57:08 Wow. Yeah, I got to see that for sure. All right. Well, Edie, thank you very much. We almost did two hours here on what we are going to do is I will—Binghamton University will send you the tape to your email. EM: 1:57:24 Oh, great. Okay. SM: 1:57:25 It will be— I do not know how one is— how long it is going to take, but it will be a digital recording. And then you can watch it and then finally approve it so can be used for research and scholarship with all the other interviews here at Binghamton. EM: 1:57:39 Okay, great. Perfect. SM: 1:57:41 Well thank you very much, Edie, you have a great day, and I will be seeing you. Are you going to be out there at Veterans Day. EM: 1:57:46 No, I was there for Memorial Day. So that is it for me this year. SM: 1:57:50 All right. Well, I will see you next Memorial Day. EM: 1:57:52 Okay, saints alive! SM: 1:57:54 We will be in touch before then you take care! Thank you! EM: 1:57:57 Okay, you too! SM: 1:57:58 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>. 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 Edie Meeks https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/37c297add8ee6bbdd949c88198d0a495.jpeg 3c84f13f51873827db7b78e44772958f https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5c8e97cb4a32125dbc47d150d0718fed.mp3 ebd3b69e47b2f416ce935181080a7fbc 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 2022-10-26 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Edith Lederer Biographical Text Edith Lederer is a war journalist and author. She was the first female resident correspondent in Vietnam and the first woman to head a foreign bureau for the Associated Press. She covered wars, famines, nuclear issues, and political upheavals during her four-decade career with the AP. She co-authored War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Who Covered Vietnam. Lederer has a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and a Master's degree in communications from Stanford University. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:08:23 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 Digital file Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Vietnam war; Story; Women; Saigon; Associated Press; San Francisco; People; Bureau chief; Helicopters; Writing, Cornell University; Editor; Vietnam memorial; Journalist; Interview; News. 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: Edith Lederer Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 26 October 2022 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: 00:04 Edith, I want to thank you for agreeing to do the interview. EL: 00:06 My pleasure, thank you. SM: 00:10 And I love reading your section in the book, War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam. The first question I would like to ask is could you describe where what your growing up years were like your parents, where you grew up in elementary and high school and certainly your college years. EL: 00:34 I was born in Manhattan, at Beth Israel Hospital. My grandparents emigrated to the United States to escape pogroms in the late 1800s. My parents were both first generation Americans. My mother became a kindergarten teacher. My father was a pediatrician. Unfortunately, he got Hodgkin's disease then this was in the (19)40s in the early 1940s, which was incurable at the time. And he passed away when I was a year and a half old. My mother remarried when I was about six, and I grew up on Long Island. I graduated from Valley Stream, North High School, which was a new school at the time, we were the third graduating class. My parents did not have a lot of money. So, I definitely could not go to a private college or university. When my father died, my great aunt and uncle moved in to take care of my older sister and me. And I was lucky enough to apply to one of these state colleges that Cornell University, which was then called the College of home economics, and is now called the College of Human Ecology. And I got in and I graduated from Cornell in three years. It was partially me being a young woman in a hurry, but also finances. And I, I had not been on my high school newspaper, I was news editor. And when I went to Cornell, I thought I might go into the women's and journalism. I graduated from high school in 1960. And, you know, that was really just the dawn of the Women's Liberation Movement. SM: 04:01 Mm-Hmm. EL: 04:04 When I was at Cornell, I decided so I would rather go into Harvard news journalism. And I knew that as a woman, I would never get a job unless I got, I went to graduate school. So, I applied to all the major graduate schools in journalism. I got into all of them except Columbia, because they did not consider that I had an academic degree. Even though I had a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell. They did not like the College of home economics. And it ended up being a pissing match between the presidents of Cornell and Columbia, because James Perkins, who was then president, and the dean of the home at school were both outraged. Anyway, I did not care because I got into Stanford, and I got a resident assistantship, which pay my room board and two thirds of my tuition. So that was a huge, huge bonus for me. And in addition, it was a one-year master's program. So, it was terrific, in in many more ways than just financially because California opened my eyes to a whole different world. And I did my master's project on press coverage, the Democratic and Republican conventions. In 1964, I got to work as a messenger, a photo messenger for United Press International, which was amazing, because as a photo messenger at that time, you actually have access all over the floor of the convention. And I got I had a contact at editor and publisher, which was then a very influential magazine for jobs at cetera, and coverage of the news industry. And the editor writes My master's project, which was a series of articles. So much that editor and publisher published it. SM: 07:35 Wow. Very good. EL: 07:38 And this editor, saboteur who was what was Rick's last name, anyway, he, he told me to put an ad in and say you apply for jobs because I did not have any real contacts. And they made a mistake in the head. And instead of saying that I had a background in psychology, they said, physics. As a result of that, physics. I actually got an answer from a Scripps Howard news and called Science Service. SM: 08:29 Hmm. EL: 08:31 Which published a weekly newsletter printed, like sort of a skinny Time Magazine for sci fi on science based in Washington, and even though they were told immediately that I had no background in physics, but I did not know the social sciences, they hired me. And I had a fascinating year and they were writing back up on medical stories and also covering like the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, a lot of very interesting stuff. I had never traveled out of the country and my uncle, as a graduation gift had given me a plane ticket to Europe. And I asked for a leave. So, I could go to Europe, because at that time, he only got like two or two weeks of vacation or less, and they would not give it to me. So, I quit. And I went to Europe and hitchhiked around Europe with one of my Cornell girlfriends for three months. And when I tell people that today they are shocked, but in those days, everybody hitchhiked in your I came back. And I then took out all of the early rejection letters that I had, because I did not have any experience because then I had all my clips from site service. And I was a finalist for a job at the Washington Post and lost out to a guy. But I was hired by the AP's New York Bureau Chief, Doug Lovelace to fill in on what was called AP local, which was a city news service that the AP ran. Wow, certainly in the (19)60s and early are for the many, and I am talking about a dozen, at least New York City newspapers, plus dozens of radio stations. And then, you know, television, I guess, been in New York City plus the surrounding area, which is of course, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And I, I worked on AP local. It was quite an incredible time. And I got to cover some amazing things. I mean, I-I covered Martin Luther King. I think in the first three days I was there, I covered Britain's Prince Philip, going to a toy fair, I covered student riots at Columbia University. And at that time, you know, I would not go I often worked nights, I would work from 3 to 11. And I do not the rubber, the rubber chicken circuit, I covered Bobby Kennedy Senate campaign and travel with him. And in 1968, I got asked if I wanted to go transferred to San Francisco, I got offered that and I said yes. And I arrived in San Francisco in June of 1968 on the day that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. In Los Angeles. It was a time of incredible ferment between student unrest, the Black Power movement, the end of the hippie movement. There was a tremendous amount going on in California at that time. And, you know, I got to cover lots of it. And that was quite amazing. Every, every year, AP would send you sort of, like a form that we all nicknamed, you know, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I always said that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. Because after-after going to Europe I was I was not, you know, seeing the rest of the world. But it was sort of a joke because the AP had a foreign editor at the time named Ben Bassett, who refused to have a woman on-on the foreign desk and you had to work on the foreign desk in order to become a foreign correspondent, he did not think that women had what it took to cover more disasters crews, big international stories. So, I was quite shocked. One day in the summer of 1972, to get a phone call from the president of the AP West Gallagher asking if I wanted to go to Vietnam. I have to add that while I was in California in San Francisco, I also would go to Sacramento to cover the California Assembly whenever it met. This was the era when Ronald Reagan was governor. And yes, there was a big jar of jelly beans on his desk. And it is quite amazing that the young, the young assembly men that I am and women that I met Ben, quite a number of them went on to great, you know, future jobs. I mean, of course, Reagan went on to be the governor went on to the president, but Pete Wilson, whom I sat next to in the assembly chamber became governor, Willie Brown became speaker of the assembly and Mayor of San Francisco. So anyway, it was it was, it was a fascinating time. In retrospect, SM: 17:08 When you look at the yet when you look at it- EL: 17:10 Go ahead. SM: 17:11 Go ahead. EL: 17:12 No, go ahead. SM: 17:13 Yeah. When you look at that period of time, when you were in San Francisco, there were so many things happening. Of course, the Black Panthers became a reality. There- I think there was the-the Angela Davis trial, the- EL: 17:26 I cov- I covered the Angela Davis tri- trial with my colleague from Los Angeles, Linda Deutsch, who became one of my best friends. And we are still great friends today. And she went on to an illustrious career as a trial correspondent. I mean, she covered everybody from Manson, Ellsberg. Michael Jackson, is OJ Simpson. He covered all those trials. SM: 17:59 Did you cover the counterculture too and Haight Ashbury and Golden Gate Park and all those things are happening there? EL: 18:05 A little a little bit of it. Yes. And, you know, that was I do not know whether you remember there was a professor who became president of San Francisco State S. I. Hayakawa [Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa] SM: 18:22 Yes. I know him real well. Yep. EL: 18:24 I covered I helped cover. You know him for sure. SM: 18:29 Yeah, remember, there is a lot of protests in San Juan in San Francisco. EL: 18:33 That is cor- That is correct. Lots of protests. SM: 18:36 He went on to become senator. I think Patricia Hearst was also the happened to be- EL: 18:43 Yeah, that is, that is funny, because I came back from Vietnam. In like September, October of 1973. Or maybe August, September. I am trying to remember when Patty Hearst got kidnapped. SM: 19:13 That was around (19)74, I think. EL: 19:18 Was it (19)74? While I was back in San Francisco, and the day she got kidnapped, was also the day that Angela, Angela, Angela, Mia Alioto [Angela Mia Alioto Veronese], the mayor of San Francisco's wife reappeared. Camping disappeared for, I do not know, two weeks. Nobody knew where she was. So, I ended up other-other colleagues covered the day of the kidnapping. I covered Angela Mia Alioto's return. And I mean, her story was quite crazy also. I guess she and Joe were not getting along too well. And she decided to go on a tour of all the California missions- SM: 20:17 Was in the capital of California at that time, I know the Black Panthers had a went to the capitol and surrounded it. And they were had their guns. And were you covering all that as well? EL: 20:29 No-no-no, I was not there when they did that at the Capitol? Definitely not. I mean, I, you know, there was Huey Newton, the Huey Newton trial. So-so, that is what I know. From that, from that Black Panther part, I certainly did cover the Angela Davis trial and all the fallout from that. And that was an amazing trial also. SM: 21:15 When you when you compare the journalism that you became a part of back in the San Francisco, and we were going to go to Vietnam in a couple minutes. How do you compare that today? But what I am trying to get at, I know you are a great journalist. And the thing is, what does it take for young people to take your life and to become a great journalist too what are the qualities necessary to be a good, a really good journalist that covers a story, and as you say, in your book, or in the thing, to be very responsible and doing it? EL: 21:54 Well, one of the things that I think has changed dramatically, is the arrival of the Internet for good and for bad. When I was growing up, newspapers had news on the front and nose sections of newspapers and opinions in the opinion section. And what I think has changed dramatically is the idea of balanced, well edited news. And I think that what the internet has done is that it has reinforced views that any individual may have, without exposing them to the idea of three, hard news that has reporting on both-both sides of an issue. And so, my message, my-my message to young people would be, quit your own political and social views in a box while you are working. And try and see both sides of whatever story you are covering, and try and report on the fact. And I know how hard that is to do. SM: 24:28 You got to Vietnam. Can you explain that? That time when you found out that you were going to be assigned there? And I know that you talked about that you are going you always dreamed of being a foreign correspondent, but then you ended up becoming a war correspondent. Could you talk about that? Just that very beginning phase, and those very first days in Vietnam, your first impressions of the country? EL: 24:55 Well, I was shocked, as I said, too when I got this call from West Gallagher and Penn, I did ask him whether I was going to New York to work on the foreign desk and he said, no, I was going to, I would go to Vietnam without working on the foreign desk, because do not forget Ben Bassett, the foreign editor anyway, I said that I had to talk to my parents, but I of course, knew that I was going to go. And I, I had actually been to Vietnam. In 1971, I had gone around the world with one of my [inaudible] Francisco roommate, who was a teacher. And we got on one of those panim around, we got pan ham around the world tickets. I had saved up a lot of AP vacation. And we had most been to Europe, but we never been to Asia. So we went to Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and-and you can stop anywhere that Pan-am 101 stopped as long as you are going in the same direction. And it has stopped in Saigon. And so, we decided to go to see the war that while certainly was on the front pages every day and that I had been writing about certainly on the protest side. And so, I going back to Saigon was not a shock to me. And on that first trip in 1971, we were you know, we, we were sort of taken under the wing of the AP office because I was working for the AP in San Francisco. And I actually found out in at the end of the first Gulf War that the AP bureau chief in Saigon at the time, Richard Pyle had wanted to have a woman in the AP bureau. And after he met me on that trip, he asked was Gallagher to send me to Vietnam, but I did not find that out until over 20 years later. So, I-I-I showed up but of course, very different going as a tourist and you know, than getting on a plane and going to Bangkok and then and then going as a war correspondent, and I-I was very young and ambitious. And I wanted to prove that a woman could do that job. And Gallagher had told everybody want me to go out in the field. Well, actually, the big stories that the time that I was there were-were not really it was sort of the end of the combat phase although I, [inaudible] were that was the major story. Because I was there before, during and after the pullout of the last American combat troops- SM: 29:46 Right. EL: 29:47 That is not saying that the war did not go on because it was going on and I covered some of it. But the big story was what was, what-what was going to happen and we all know that two years later on April 30, 1975, basically, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong marched into Saigon and that was the end of the war and North Vietnam and South Vietnam became one Vietnam under a communist government. SM: 30:32 Yeah. Can you describe you do really good in the interview, in the book, War Torn about your perceptions of walking down the street and or going out in an assignment into the countryside? What it was like to be in Vietnam, looking at the faces of the people that lived there the country itself? Could you kind of describe that? EL: 30:57 Um, I have to say that the, you know, the AP Bureau was in an aging French colonial edifice called the Eden Building. And when you walked outside, you would see immediately the impact of the war on the Vietnamese people. There were Vietnamese of all ages, who had been crippled in various ways, sitting on the pavement trying to sell things. There were lots of military activity in in the streets. And there was a whole war culture of limb, limb for today. Because you do not know whether you are going to be around tomorrow. SM: 32:43 Did you fear your life? EL: 32:48 I-I am a fatalist. And I have in in Vietnam, starting in Vietnam, and then then all the other wars and conflict that I covered. Have I have been frightened sometimes. Certainly. Have I been worried that I might be cold? Certainly. But it is not something that was always in the front of my mind. It was certainly in the front of my mind in Afghanistan when whenever pro Soviet supporter was holding a pistol to my temple. Yes. SM: 33:50 Wow. If you talked, you mentioned the big story in Vietnam was a big story. EL: 33:56 It was a huge story. SM: 33:58 It is how you describe it in the inner- in war torn it because I want to bring up that word responsibility as a journalist because you link it-it is important to tell history the way it really is. Could you talk about that? Because that is really important. When you talk about reporting. I want to be honest, and truthful. And I have a responsibility because it is linked to history. Could you talk about that? EL: 34:26 Well, there was always every-every day in Vietnam, the US military did, Matt V did a briefing called which was nicknamed the five o'clock Follies. And it was called The Five o'clock follies because of the view that the lack of reality on what was being present into two journalists. And what was really happening out in the field. And the great thing about the Vietnam War was that there were almost no restrictions on where members of the media could go. If you went down to one of the air bases, and there was helicopters going off to some combat zone, and there was empty seat, you were a journalist, you could get off or a photographer or a TV camera. You know, and, and so my AP colleagues, and I could actually go and see for ourselves what was really happening. We did not have to take the US military's often skewed view of what was happening. And, you know, the media in some animals was blamed for the US losses of the Vietnam War. But frankly, it was the media that told the truth about what was happening. SM: 36:53 There was no censorship then. EL: 36:56 There was no censorship. And as someone who covered the first Gulf War, which was the first major US military involvement, post, Vietnam, the situation changed dramatically, dramatically. So maybe it could never go anywhere on its own and there will always minders. I still remember doing an interview with a general at that, during, in the run up to the war. And think about this, I am facing him asking questions. And behind me, was sitting, his PR guy shaking his head, yes or no on whether the general should answer the question. SM: 38:16 Man, either it is just a lie in your book against again, describing the scene in Vietnam with some of the people live there. I think it is, I just want to record it for record. The end, this is your words. "During my six years as a reporter, I had covered murders and seen plenty of dead people are dead bodies, but coming face to face with Vietnamese kids and adults in the prime of their life, who would be forever scarred by war, far, far harder on the emotions." So that is a beautiful quote. And it is that it is really about humanity and caring about humanity. So, it is almost the sense that you go to a foreign war area there you see kids, whether it be in Afghanistan, or Vietnam, or anywhere, these kids and children, and they deserve a legacy like all of us do. So that very well said. You also covered that period of time during the Paris Peace Talks, whether you are taking place with Kissinger going to Paris, and- EL: 39:23 Right. SM: 39:24 Could you talk about that? You know, I think it was on and off and on and off. You give really a description of that too. And then finally, when it did happen, and then people started leaving Vietnam, talking about that, too. EL: 39:37 Sure. You know, let me let me go back for a second to the victims of war. I- One of the things that always struck me was that every American soldier’s death was written about and honored. And rightly so. But the same was not the case with the deaths of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. And I had wanted to write a story about the impact of the war on Vietnamese families. And in order to, to get a green light to write it, I-I had to find a family that where the mother has lost, I cannot remember, but it was like four or five sons, she had one son left. She lived in basically what would be a shack with the roof that went over the walls of the two shacks next to hers. And, you know, her, her life had been turned totally upside down. And she was only hoping that her last some that have come she had not heard from, we were still alive. These-these are the real stories about the impact of war. The peace talks that were going on in Paris, were of course, incredibly closely watched in Vietnam. And there was all sorts of betting of what was going to happen. And there, there was, yes, there was an agreement finally reached. What, you know, first, the Paris Peace Talks collapsed in mid-December. And the US. This was 1972, when the US then launched this huge Christmas bombing campaign against Hanoi and North Vietnam. And when that ended, the peace talks resumed. And then the bearing on a ceasefire also resumed. And it was the ceasefire was finally agreed on, I do not know, late January 1973. And the question was, what would happen next? And that was we knew that the Americans were going to leave. And I think one of the most one of the stories I wrote that I know God, the best play was writing about the impact of the war on the bar girls. SM: 44:33 Yes. EL: 44:38 You know, they-they were the girlfriends of thousands of American GI. And I went and did this story going to a whole bunch of bars and-and that was so interesting, because I had expected them to be really angry. But you know, they were really quiet [inaudible]. But I, I wondered, even then how these young women, many of whom had children who were half American, would not survive. And I know for a fact that a lot of them had a very, very tough time, because in 2000, which was the 25th anniversary of the end of the war, the AP did a whole package. And I went back and interviewed. I did a story on the impact of the war on women in the north in the south, and I actually did get to talk to-to really interview one former bar girls, and find out what happened to quite a number of them. But the, you know, once, once this, this peace agreement was signed, there were all sorts of political and diplomatic games that were not going on. And there was a four-party commission that was coming into Saigon, I was covering a lot of that. And it was fascinating. And I also got to cover the arrival of the first American prisoners of war who had been held by the Vietcong in South Vietnam. And- SM: 47:31 You [inaudible]. EL: 47:32 That was incredibly moving. SM: 47:35 Could you describe that because I think there is two scenes in your in the book, when you talk about you the first time you saw the POWs and then [inaudible] time, and then there was the other time where the very last POW they got I think you also witnessed that. EL: 47:49 Okay. Right-right-right. Well, there we-we had waited four hours for, for this prisoner release. And then all of a sudden, there were six helicopters circling overhead. And, you know, I kept trying to imagine what those guys were thinking. You know, they, they had been picked up in a jungle clearing and they were about to take their first steps on friendly soil in years. Some of them had been prisoners for eight years. And it was very emotional. When the helicopter landed, the some of them were peering through the windows waving at us while others were not. And the first prisoner off was a young blond man on a stretcher, who was given a big chair. And when he heard that noise, he sat up and actually waved his good hand. And then his both his hands and he broke into a smile. But then, you know, all the rest of the prisoners got off some of them were emaciated. They all looked haggard. And they walked across the tarmac [inaudible] to a US military hospital plane. And the other thing that was sort of horrifying in retrospect was they each had a big-name tag hung around their neck. You know, it was, it sorts of reminded me as if, you know, they were packages going to be delivered. Not people who have suffered so much. And many of them were carrying white plastic bags, which, I guess, contained, the only belongings that they were taking from captivity? SM: 51:05 Yep. One of the another quote from you is a quote from I think it is General Wyant. And this is your quote, "General Wyant said the United States accomplished purpose. But to me, the North Vietnamese and its Vietcong soldiers were the winners, seeing off their defeated enemies." And then I go to this next thing, and you might not have been in Vietnam, but in this time in 1975, when the helicopters on the Embassy in Saigon, and coming back and forth and taking everybody away, and all the people wanting to go and leave the leave of Vietnam. EL: 51:54 Right. SM: 51:54 But what, you know, the peace agreement, peace agreement in 1973. And then you see, we are getting the heck out of there real fast, and people are struggling to survive. You know, what to get out of there? What are your What are your thoughts with the helicopter? EL: 52:14 Well, I think that after the peace agreement, you may not remember this, but President Johnson, President Johnson was in office and as I recall, Congress refused to fund anything in Vietnam anymore. So, all of the fighting was turned over to the South Vietnamese. SM: 52:50 Right. EL: 52:51 There was an American, you know, small military advisory group there. And, and that was the beginning of the end of the wars. So, the fact that the South fell, was not shocking how fast that happened was surprising to me. But then, you know, look at what happened in Afghanistan last year. SM: 53:30 Mm-Hmm. Yep. [crosstalk] When? When you go to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, in fact, this year is the 40th anniversary of the opening of the wall. And on November 11, of 1982. I will be down there reading 15 names, like probably hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other people are going to be but your thoughts? First, I would like your thoughts the first time you visited it. And then what do you think every time you go there? I do not what do you see on that wall when you go there? EL: 54:08 Um, I am glad that all of those almost all men thousands and thousands, who died are memorialized. And I think to myself, as I did from the beginning of my tried in Vietnam and they need to die in that war. What was the end United States fighting for? I remember growing up when there was this whole idea of dominoes in Southeast Asia, countries that were going to collapse one by one. And I think that that underlying concern, perhaps is not written about often enough, but I still ask myself, and because there are people, I know on that wall also. And also starting in 1995, my AP colleague, Horst Faas, who has won the Pulitzer in the photography in Vietnam, and I started doing reunions for the journalists who covered the war. And another one of our colleagues did help started doing it also. And we did the 20th, the 25th 30th 35th 40th 45th. SM: 56:36 Wow. EL: 56:36 We did not do the 45th, because it was the middle of COVID. That was 2020. But we are planning to do a 50th years for sure. SM: 56:52 That is very important. I want you-you have read reference to how difficult it was for you as a woman to finally get to a position where you were a foreign correspondent or a war correspondent, as a female. You know, I find it interesting that it took a while for the women's memorial at the in Washington to also be built. And we know the story of Diane Carlson Evans and the battles she had to go through in Congress just even, I have seen some of her interviews and so forth. And so, it took a while for that to happen. And I know there was always some opinions of eve that why is a woman always on the stage at the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day or Veterans Day. No one ever told me it. But I heard some veterans tell me some behind the scenes stories. I do not know if they are true. But I think there is a perception there. It took a while for women to be recognized too at the Vietnam Memorial. And- EL: 57:46 Oh, yeah. SM: 57:47 And if you study the whole history of the civil rights movement, and the talk about the anti-war movement, women were in secondary roles. And part of the reason why the feminist movement became so major and important is because many of them left on their own to create it be a part of a leadership role in these movements. Why is it taken so- I think a lot of people have answered this, but I am still questioning why has it taken so long for women like you, I mean, you have already proven you are a great writer, to get into leadership roles that you should have been 50 and 100 years ago. EL: 58:21 Well, do not forget that after Vietnam. I did not become a piece first female bureau chief overseas. I was bureau chief for Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. And then that is a very long story. But I was kicked out of Peru for a story that I wrote, which was true. But I then was AP's bureau chief in the Caribbean, and I had, you know, more than a dozen countries. But I realized that that job I spent more than half my time collecting bad debts from Puerto Rican radio subscribers. And I really wanted to write so it was my decision to go back to writing and reporting. I probably could have risen to be, you know, a more senior editor at AP but I still I still loved writing and reporting. SM: 59:55 I know you went off to Cambodia to and we all know what happened there with a killing fields and Pol Pot. And you saw that you saw the beginning of that. And of course, the killings at Kent State in 1970 are directly related to Richard Nixon going into Cambodia on the 30th of April of 1970. That is what erected the campuses all over the country and so forth. But we had been there for a long time. EL: 1:00:23 Absolutely. SM: 1:00:25 I just-just some general questions here. What are the lessons learned from the war? And what are the lessons lost from the war? EL: 1:00:36 Well, that is a very long and difficult question. Certainly. Certainly, one of the things, learned from, I think, from Vietnam was to make, to hopefully to, you know, make sure that Americans know what, what they are fighting for in these countries. And certainly, I think that that was an issue in Vietnam. Maybe, maybe I am wrong, and I do not remember so well, but I think that that was an issue. And in terms, one of the bad things that came out of it was the blaming the media and the repression of the media in covering future actions where the US military was involved. And that is, that is pretty, that is pretty horrifying. And, and that goes on until today. And I can only say, that was one of the things that war correspondents of my generation, they were not war correspondents in foreign correspondents of my generation, say is that we have lived through the golden age of covering, big stories, including mores and conflict. And the reason we say that is that we had more time, more freedom. Because communications were not instantaneous. No cell phones, no satellite phones. And, and we-we were trusted more by our editors. Yes, if we did things that they did not like, we heard about it, but it was not like having somebody pick up a phone every 10 minutes. And say, where is this? When is this coming? And that puts a lot of pressure on, on journalists, photographers. Is anybody in the media today to speed things up and not be as careful as they should or could be. SM: 1:04:41 Alright, I think two more questions, and then we will be done. EL: 1:04:47 I hope they are short because it is 2:56 that I have to go cover this [inaudible] SM: 1:04:52 That is okay. Yep. But would you consider Vietnam the watershed event of the (19)60s even though we know civil rights was also would you consider Vietnam, the watershed event. EL: 1:05:04 So, I would certainly consider it one of the (19)60s. SM: 1:05:09 Yes. (19)60s and early (19)70s? EL: 1:05:11 Probably, yes. Yes. Because of the global impact, although I understand why you saying the civil rights movement, and but that that kept going for- that is kept going for decades. It still, it is still an unfinished piece of business. SM: 1:05:41 Have we healed? Has the nation healed from this war? Your thoughts? No- EL: 1:05:52 I do not. I do not think anybody under 50 pays much attention to Vietnam at all now. I mean, the saddest thing to me is finding Vietnam veterans out begging on street corners- SM: 1:06:15 Right. EL: 1:06:17 -in New York. And I, you know, if I see one, and they are really suffering, you know, give them some money. But it is, it is not, it is not right. And I think a lot of them feel forgotten. That, you know, the world has gone on to so many other issues, and so many other concerns and conflicts. And that is what I can say. SM: 1:06:54 And then, any words of advice, they asked us to everybody want to end the interview? What words of advice would you give to people, young people, older people, 50 years from now that are listening to your interviewer? What words of advice would you give them? EL: 1:07:12 My advice would be, first and foremost, be honest with yourself. And try to be as honest and balanced in whatever work you choose to do. And to young people, I would say, try and live your dream when you are young. And if you do not succeed, hopefully, it will put you on the path that will lead you to something that will end in a happy life for you. SM: 1:07:55 Edith Lederer thank you very much for this interview, and, and also for being in the book, which I encourage everyone to read War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam. And of course, the introduction just from Gloria Emerson, the late Gloria Emerson who wrote the great book, Winners and Losers. Edith, thank you very much. EL: 1:08:18 You are welcome. (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 Edith Lederer https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/23842505feefe51458d3dce4f3d537d9.mp3 9079349578dde0823149fc7574b3ff10 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d40ccc2a4e5cf0143d1136749f4b477c.mp3 2c7a09830f8fdfb27e02507cd08f78b7 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/76b3edbaf863909cb6f59e259ec9cc69.mp3 6a9bf4b3e39f278bc1ba461dcd923665 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a423f2f60a67f06de5336aa1819db4c8.mp3 02418e6b9cfccb47f506f28ab133cf82 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Link, Edwin A. (Edwin Albert), 1904-1981 ; Link, Marion Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Wood, Wanda Date of Interview 1978-09-18 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:35 Minutes ; 33:15 Minutes ; 16:07 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55970">Interview with Edwin and Marion Link</a> Subject LCSH Link, Edwin A. (Edwin Albert), 1904-1981 -- Interviews; Link, Marion -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Cortland (N.Y.); Aeronautics; Airplanes; Air pilots -- Interviews; Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1902-1974; Earhart, Amelia, 1897-1937; Link Aviation; Cortland Airport; Billy Brock; Clarence Chamberlain 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: Edwin and Marion Link Interviewed by: Wanda Wood Date of interview: 18 September 1978 Wanda: This is Wanda Wood interviewing Mr. Edwin Link at 10 Avon Rd., Binghamton, NY. The date is the eighteenth of September, 1978. Mr. Link, we'd like to—a have you tell us some of your recollections of early aviation in Broome County, if you would. Mr. Link: All right. I first started to fly down at the old Bennett's Field off DeForest St., which isn't a field anymore. And—a I soloed in 1926 and been flying ever since. There were previous flyers here in Binghamton that might been interesting to have on record, for instance Basil Rowe, Pan-American's first pilot, flew here of of Bennett Field years ago. Another very well-known pilot that's been in this vicinity and, and recently died in Waverly was Earl Southee. They were both ahead of me and—a then there was Dick Bennett, of course, as he was pretty well-known after those two. Wanda: And he was the one the field was named for, right? Mr. Link: Ahh—Dick Bennett—a probably gave me most of my instruction though I'd had some previous instruction in California by—a Sidney Chaplin, who was Charlie Chaplin's brother, back in—in 1919 and 1920, but I didn't complete it. I was just going to high school then. I didn't have enough money to continue, and besides my father forbade me to fly at that time. So… Wanda: But that was your first experience in flying—was in California? Mr. Link: Yes. Wanda: Do you remember what sort of plane you learned in? Mr. Link: Well my first plane that I flew in was the old Curtis Jenny. It was a World War I training plane and—a the second plane I was training in—I had to get it at various places and this was at Binghamton—was a Curtis Oriole. It was really a, a newly-designed Jenny. It was like it but really a new one to take place. It was designed new in 1919, that was our Curtis Oriole plane. I took some instruction in that in California also in 1919. Now what more can I say? Wanda: Well it takes a lot of imagination to—a try to think what it was like when you started flying. What was it like when you actually got into a cockpit in a plane? What did it look like? Mr. Link: Well it didn't look like much. There was only a tachometer in the cockpit. That was the only instrument we had. It tells the revolutions of the engine.  Mrs. Link: No compass? Mr. Link: Ahh—we didn't have a compass in some of 'em. Compass was a new-fangled—a idea. But—a that—an air speed and a compass were usually added. But the original planes first, only had a, they had the engine instruments—tachometer, oil gauge, oil pressure and—a oil temperature and water temperature because they were a water-cooled airplane then. And that was a out all and they were all at that time stick-controlled, not with the little wheel like most of the planes use today. Wanda: And your two foot controls...? Mr. Link: What? Wanda: ...your two foot pedals? Mr. Link: Two foot pedals. That's all they used to have—or rudder bar, actually they weren't pedals then. They had just a stick across and you could put your feet on each end of that. We called it a rudder bar—so that was all there was in an airplane in those earliest days. And then—a later when some of the other instruments were invented they were added, but it came along 19—a 30 before the other instruments, or instrument flying had even a remote start, that is, flying without vision. Mrs. Link: Well in 1930 you had to have, by that time, you had to have an altimeter and a compass. Mr. Link: I had a turn and bank indicator and that was just invented about then, the turn and bank indicator. Mrs. Link: When you equipped the first trainer… Mr. Link: What? Mrs. Link: When you equipped the first trainer it had those instruments in it. Mr. Link: It had a... the first trainers had the essential instruments in of the day, which was the turn and bank indicator, the compass, the air speed and a rate of climb indicator. That was all of the instruments in the first… That was considered a well-equipped instrument flying airplane. And the first trainers had those instruments in it to teach them how to use them because there was quite a lot said in the day that you...didn't need instruments to fly. Most of those pilots died shortly. They said they could fly by the feel of the airplane better. As I say, most of them didn' live very long if they did that. As a matter of fact, before I invented the trainer a man out in Wright Field—this somewhat gave me some of the ideas to invent the trainer—a Major Ocker took a seat and put it on a stool that would revolve, and then he'd blindfold the people and twist them around in this seat a few times, then ask them which way they were turning. And they invariably said the wrong way. And that was one of the things that gave me the idea that you could make a whole airplane to train a pilot to do everything. He was merely demonstrating just what I repeated: that you couldn't tell where you were going by sight or feel. You had to have an instrument that told you where you were turning and whether you were flying straight or level and so forth, that we had no natural ability like a bird, to do so. And even birds haven't, it's been proved later, 'cause they sometimes fly right into a building and things by accident or at night when they scatter. So they don't have much either. That was the way the early flying was. And then, along in the thirties came in these instruments and—a people were beginning to learn how to use them, including myself, and then I thought that—a you could build a machine that would… a trainer that would teach you, rather than going out in the air which was expensive, and slow, and you had to have the weather to do it in—that you could learn most of it on the ground, which some…which most people wouldn't buy at that time. They just thought that was silly, but—a time has proved differently. Wanda: It certainly has. Mrs. Link: It might be interesting, Ed, if you'd tell about how flying was taught back when you learned to fly, and how much longer it took, and—a how much more difficult it was. Mr. Link: Well it was taught, and of course it's still taught that way to a limited extent—but it's a very expensive way—is to get in a… Now they get into a small airplane with a pilot and—a try to fly the airplane…and fly it with the pilot until he—a takes it away from you for reasons of mistakes and so forth. And you can… They still don't know how to fly. And primary flying is learned that way. But there's very little flying, instrument flying, learned in the air nowadays, because you can't simulate the…some of the conditions of instrument flight which is done in bad weather and you've either gotta fly instruments or else. So that's why a trainer proved to be valuable—because you could fly anytime you wanted and the weather didn't have to be bad to get instrument training. It could be simulated in a trainer. That’s—a the main thing, in that I, of course, after we built the first trainer—which was built almost simultaneous to the time I was, had learned, after I'd learned to fly—'29, wasn't it? Or ’28-'29. Mrs. Link: '29. Mr. Link: And that was built at the old Endicott airport where I was flying—a commercially. Most of the money that I made flying, I used to help develop the trainer. Mrs. Link: You built the first one down in the Link Piano Company on Water St. Mr. Link: That was not an instrument-flying trainer. Mrs. Link: Oh, you're talking about the instrument trainer. Mr. Link: The first instrument, the first instrument-flying trainer we built in Endicott. The first primary-flight trainers were built in the old Link Piano Company factory on Water St., which has now been torn down. Wanda: That's gone. Mr. Link: It's interesting to note that the, that I've got one thing in common with IBM. Bundy Time Recorder Company started in the same factory that I started in—in the same building, which later turned out to be IBM, as you know. Wanda: Well you both accomplished your purpose very well, didn't you? Mr. Link: What? Wanda: You both accomplished your purpose… Mr. Link: Yeah. We were both, we both started in the same building anyway, which is interesting. Mrs. Link: You know, it's the fiftieth anniversary next year of the Link instrument trainer and—a they will be celebrating next year. Wanda: Good. Good. That's good to know. You had a sign, a plane that carried a sign for night flying, didn't you? Mr. Link: Yes, I had several planes that—the main thing in the early thirties was to try to make a living to eat, because that was the time of the big crash of money and everything. So—a there wasn't any jobs of any other type and I was—the only thing I knew, other than piano and organ building which I'd learned in my father's factory, which was down there on Water St., was—a flying an airplane. So I—a used an airplane to earn a living with because that was one thing you could still—a sell, was rides in an airplane, what we called barnstorming in those days—go around to small towns in various places and fly over the town at about fifty feet and get everybody out. And then they'd come out to the field and then you'd sell 'em rides in the airplane. Most of 'em were…just cow pastures, ordinary cow pastures and—a… Wanda: So you'd get your crowd that way and then… Mr. Link: ...started that way, yes. Then the sign that Marion was speaking of—I thought there, there was coming along things that—a needed advertising. Advertising, there were still companies trying to sell products like Enna Jettick shoes, Dunn-McCarthy, and I sold them a… Mrs. Link: Spaulding Bread and Utica Beer—Utica Club Beer— Mr. Link: ...and so I constructed a sign that had—a what you'd call universal letters under the wings on an airplane. And I used a roll like a piano roll to—we'd call it a programmer nowadays, but we just called it a, a roll—that would form the different letters under the wings of the airplane and say, "Drink Utica Club Beer," or, "Enna Jettick Shoes are the most comfortable," and various things like that, short messages. Then I would fly it over town at night and earn better rates of pay than I could get riding a student around all the time. I put the students in the trainers and I took to the air, to teach them. Mrs. Link: Well in those days they didn't have lighted airports and—a they had to put out these little pots along the runways that they put on areas of the road, you know, when there's a hole? Mr. Link: Just open-flame pots, to mark it. Mrs. Link: And that was all they had to take off and land. Mr. Link: Well they were called cow pastures, practically, and you couldn't call Bennett Field more than a cow pasture. You couldn't call the old Endicott Airport—a, which is now built up completely with houses—previous to the field that they have there now—more than a, a cow pasture either. 'Course Broome County Airport wasn't built. Tri-Cities Airport wasn't built and Binghamton Airport—which is still in existence—is out in Chenango Bridge and that was actually a cow pasture. It belonged to a farmer by the name of Haskell. Mrs. Link: Wanda took some flying lessons there, she said. Mr. Link: Did you? Wanda: Yes. Mr. Link: Oh, from the Johnson brothers? Wanda: The Johnson boys, yes. Mr. Link: From the Johnson brothers, did you? Wanda: Yes. Mrs. Link: She said she lives just in back of Pete and Mildred Dougherty, out there. Mr. Link: Oh. Oh. Well, we lived there, too, for a little while on the river bank, but our house floated away one time. Wanda: Is that a fact? In the '35 flood, or the ’36? Mrs. Link: Yes. Let's see...well we lived there in '31. That's the first year we were married and Ed was flying out of there. And—a, but the flood came after this, we weren't living there when the flood came. Wanda: Oh, fortunate for you. Mrs. Link: But it was a little cottage there on the Haskell farm that was on the river bank—lovely spot. And Ed had his—a, used to take up parachute jumpers there on that field and they'd put on the night shows. Wanda: Well they had some marvelous air shows around here in that age, didn't, weren't there? Big—a… Mrs. Link: They did a lot of things. Mr. Link: Well, air shows were always an idea to make a little money flying, when you could get a crowd out, but Marion made more money selling hot dogs than I did flying airplanes…to the crowd. Mrs. Link: That was when we were up in Cortland. Ed was renting the Cortland airport, after they closed the Endicott one. Wanda: Well there were a number of small airfields around here, weren't there? Wasn't there one at Conklin when... people first started really getting— Mr. Link: Oh, they were, they were, you couldn't call them an airport. They were really just cow pastures that they chased the cows off from. Mrs. Link: Little strips, landing strips. Mr. Link: But—a they were used as airports. We called them an airport. Wanda: I suppose any place that you could sell gas from you could use. Mr. Link: Yeah. Yeah, it was just a question of having it big enough to take off from. Those old airplanes didn't need very much room because there weren't airports. Aircraft were made to take off in short, small spaces. And of course they wouldn't go very fast either. If you had an airplane that went…80 or 90 mile an hour, that was quite a fast airplane. Wanda: Well it must have been interesting taking cross-country flights in those times, too—when you first started out. Mr. Link: Well there wasn't very much cross-country done for passenger work. There was a—start of the first airline in Binghamton was called the Martz Airline and they were, they started, it was by the Martz Bus people that started it. And they were flying from Bufflo to New York in an eight passenger airplane. And—a they were really the first airline there in New York. Mrs. Link: Did they have to have intermediate stops? Did they stop here? Mr. Link: Oh yeah, they stopped at Elmira, Corning, and… Mrs. Link: I don't remember that, even. Mr. Link: Oh—it was before your day, I guess. Mrs. Link: Oh—they really had an airline going that far back? Mr. Link: Yeah...it was ticked as an airline. Mrs. Link: That would have been in the twenties. Wanda: Do you remember what kind of planes they were? Mr. Link: Well, they were Bellanca, the same type that—a Clarence Chamberlain and Ruth Elder tried to fly across the ocean in. They were—when they didn't have…full of gasoline, you could carry eight passengers for a couple hundred miles before you had to get gas again. Wanda: No overnight flights, I don't suppose, either. Mr. Link: Oh no. No night flying at all 'cause there were no lighted fields. And then the government, to help these—there were a number of 'em started all over the United States—to help them find their way at night, to start at night, put in a system of beacon lights in between airports. So that's all you had to guide you from one airport or another, was a beacon light every twenty miles. If you couldn't see 'em you couldn't get there. So it was all...visual flying…with these beacon lights. So that's early aviation in Broome County. Wanda: What—a, what about this—a Endicott Aero Club? Mr. Link: Well it was the… Wanda: Was that the first such thing around here? Mr. Link: It was the first aero club formed in Broome County, which I was a member of and—a it was just a group of people that were interested in flying and probably a good share of the Aero Club was made up of my students that were...and it was just like any other club. It was because they were interested in flying. They'd meet once a month or something like that—what we would call “hangar fly.” They would talk things over, their flying and so forth. Wanda: And that field was across from where the Enjoie Country Club was? Mr. Link: What? Wanda: Was that across from where Enjoie Country Club is now? Somewhere down in there? Mr. Link: Well the original Endicott Airport was right across from the golf club there. It's built up now with houses. It was along the railroad tracks there. That was the...there were only two fields. The first two fields was that field and the Bennett Airport field—a down by DeForest St. Then a man by the name of Rowe started the, what he called the Binghamton Airport, and that was at Chenango Bridge. And later—while I flew out of all of them extensively, 'cause we were right around here for one reason or the other—later I based at the Binghamton Airport and then after that I based at the Endicott Airport, the original one, not the present one, and continued the work of developing the trainer there. I'd use my students, sorta, as guinea pigs on the trainer. Wanda: Was that part of your flying—a lesson? Mr. Link: What? Wanda: Was the use of the trainer part of your course in flying? Mr. Link: Yes. Yes. Actually one of the reasons I was so interested in teaching flying was because I felt that I, it was a good proving ground more to learn how to build a trainer, than teach, because I could teach them on the ground and then I took 'em up in the air and found out what they didn't learn and then maybe improve the trainer to take its place, make it better. Wanda: Iron out the problems that way. Mr. Link. Uh huh. Mrs. Link: Well Ed had the whole school set-up and the whole course, including solo, for $85. Wanda: Amazing! Mrs. Link: And it was $35 for the ground school and the trainer. Mr. Link: And $50… Mrs. Link: And then when they had suffcient training time and he felt they were qualified to go in the air, then the other fifty dollars applied to the air time until they soloed. And it didn't make any difference how many hours it took them. $85 covered the whole thing, through solo. Mr. Link: I'd guarantee to teach them to fly for $85 then. If they didn't, I'd refund their money. That's the deal I put on. Mrs. Link: And he had one class a week at night in, in ground school, and they had to pass that before they qualified to go in the air. Mr. Link: And I used the trainer in the class to, to find out. The reason I didn't have very many refunds is, I discovered when they cou—that they weren't able to fly in the trainer, so I'd kick them out of the school, I'd flunk 'em out. So if I hadn't… Mrs. Link: Well, they were pretty, most of them qualified, though. It took a different… Mr. Link: Well most any normal person can qualify to fly. It isn't… Mrs. Link: —it might have taken them a longer time. Mr. Link: —walking or riding a bicycle or driving an automobile. Wanda: I think that's true. Mr. Link: Sometimes we'd have—a people that are a little mixed up and they can't drive a car either. So, if they drove a car pretty well they could learn to fly an airplane. Wanda: That's a wise way to do it. Umm... What else do we have down here? Mr. Link: Is your recording machine working all right? Wanda: Seems to be going. Mr. Link: Let's don't do a lot of talking if it isn't. Wanda: No. It's doing fine. I just wondered if there's anything you could think of that I didn't have down here on the, on the list. Mr. Link: Well, let's see what you have here. Wanda: Mrs. Link, you were part of this, all through the career—his flying career? Mrs. Link: Well actually I met Edwin, I came to Binghamton in 1929. That was the year that the trainer was first completed. And—a, and I met him soon after that. We were married in 1931, and as he said, it was during the Depression years, so we, I worked with him all through those years. And I took care of the office work, and the typing and the, all the background things. [Telephone rings.] Excuse me. Mr. Link: She learned to fly also. Wanda: And she learned to fly? Mr. Link: Yes. At that time, she learned to fly up there. Wanda: She mentioned that she does the, the navigating, or did the navigating quite often for you. Mr. Link: Yes. 'Course we didn't have regular air maps as they have—then. We just had an ordinary map, where now they have air maps, you know. Wanda: You mean you, when you first started, you used like a road map? Mr. Link: That's all. Yeah. [He is called to the telephone.] Trainer I mentioned is the Jenny. That's the JN-4. That was the World War I training plane. And then I flew a Sikorsky wing Jenny, which Igor Sikorsky—the inventor of the helicopter—decided that to make a training plane he could put a more modern wing on the, on the airplane. And so I flew that some. And then I flew OX-4 Waco, which was a biplane of early days. And then I flew the OX-10 Waco, which was a newer one that was brought out in about '35, considered a very wonderful airplane. It was…quite a laugh when you think of it now, but it was a biplane. And then I bought the Number'Cessna, the first Cessna that Cessna ever built that was eligible, that he could sell. He'd built a...couple of haywire models before, but this was the first one that was ever built that he, that would really...was engineered through. Number 1. Mrs. Link: I said I thought it was one of the very first cabin-type monoplanes. Mr. Link: Cantilever? Mrs. Link: Ca—cabin-type. Mr. Link: It wasn't the first, no. Mrs. Link: One of the first then. Mr. Link: One of the early, first. Mrs. Link: And a monoplane. Mr. Link: But it was Number One Cessna that—a flew, other than, you might say he built some rough, crude models of airplanes before that, but this was the first one that was really—of his airplanes—that was a complete airplane. And—a of course the Cessna company has been a very successful company and they've built thousands and thousands of airplanes since then. I went out in Wichita with Dick Bennett, who was flying here at Bennett Field, and we flew it back to Binghamton. Wanda: Oh...that must have been an adventure. Mr. Link: That was quite a long trip in those days. And—a then I had the OX—Travel—the OX is the old war-type motor that they used at that time mostly—Travelaire, and then later I got a Sieman's Halske, which was a German motor. We didn't build a suitable motor in this country at that time. Wanda: What was the name of that? Mr. Link: Sieman's Halske, it's the German electric… Mrs. Link: H-a-l-s-k-e, S-i-e-m-a-n. Mr. Link: Well there were no small engines built in this country at that time for us, suitable for us. Wanda: Is that a fact? Mr. Link: So we had, my Number'Cessna had an Anzani, which was a French engine, in it. And the OX5, it was an American-built engine, but it was built during the war, and it was not a modern engine as of...that day. Mrs. Link: You said, when you were talking about the OX10 and you said 1935, you meant 1925, didn't you? Didn't you say there were two OXes? Mr. Link: Well the Waco-9, OX5 engine, Waco-9 was built in about '25. And then afterwards Waco brought out a later model, which they called the OX10. Mrs. Link: Mmm, but that was in the '20's, not in the '30's, wasn't it? Mr. Link: In the late '20's, that was, yes. Wanda: Well, how about this old Ford Tri-motor that you had? Mr. Link: Then I had various other—I can show you a picture of it back here. Mrs. Link: You had an Eaglet and you had a Curtis Pusher. Mr. Link: Had—a various other planes, all kinds of planes in between. Wanda: That Curtis Pusher, was it open, open cockpit? Mr. Link: That was what they called the Curtis Jr. Mrs. Link: Yes. Mr. Link: Wacos, Travelaires— Mrs. Link: —Stinsons. Mr. Link: Swallows, Stinsons. Those were all early airplanes that I owned at one time and flew or—owned several because I was running a flying service then, and a school and I had—a more than one airplane. Wanda: Now this Tin Goose that you owned, it, what was that used for? Passengers, mail? Mr. Link: Passengers, yes and then I put a sky sign underneath it. Wanda: Oh, that was one of 'em. Mr. Link: One of 'em that I put the sign under. I'm trying to [leafing through a book on the Johnson Flying Service] Johnson book—82, I guess it is. I sold it to the Johnson Flying Service, that's how I happen to be looking up one, and then somebody got a picture of it in… Wanda: And it's still being flown? Mr. Link: So far as I know it's still being flown. The account of the Johnson Flying Service is here in this book. Wanda: Must have quite a few hours on it. Well, this was one of the first… Mr. Link: Here it is right here. Wanda: ...passenger planes as such, wasn't it? Oh, my. [looking at the photo in the book] Mrs. Link: Yes, for its size. The Tri-motor was a very unusual airplane. Mr. Link: Afterwards I sold it to the Johnson Flying Service. I carried thousands of passengers in that plane. Wanda: And where did you… Mr. Link: It carried eighteen people, if you wanted it—sixteen to eighteen. We could crib a little bit and carry eighteen. Wanda: Well, where did you fly that, out of Binghamton? Mr. Link: Out of Binghamton, yes. And then I flew it, I barnstormed it around the country, too, taking it… They were a very high performance airplane. We call them STOL airplanes now, an airplane of that type, but—short take-off and landing airplane. They were sort of redesigned then. Mrs. Link: And people got a real thrill out of flying in one of those big tri-motors. Mr. Link: That was the biggest airplane of its day, the—a Tri-motor Ford. That was considered a huge airplane. It was an all metal airplane, too, one of the first. Wanda: Oh, it was? Mr. Link: Yes, one of the first. Wanda: Did you have a regular route that you took passengers on? Mr. Link: No, I didn't carry passengers then. Later I, because… Mrs. Link: You had a pilot, too, that did a lot of the flying. Mr. Link: I had a pilot working for me then. I had a whole flying service, too. I had four or five airplanes, including the Tri-motor Ford. Then I had mechanics working for me rebuilding aircraft and keeping my airplane up, or our airplanes up. I probably had as many as ten or twelve people, total, out in, in—a…that was at Tri-Cities Airport. Wanda: Oh yes. Mr. Link: The building's still there that—a I used. Mrs. Link: That was after Cortland, that was after Cortland, wasn't it? Wanda: You operated out of Cortland for quite a while, didn't you, too? Mr. Link: Yeah, well they had, I was in at the Tri-Cities first. It wasn't Tri-Cities called then. It was called Endicott Airport. In a little wooden building, and that's the place where the houses are all built up now. And then because Cortland built a better airport and they had a, a hangar that you could even put a Tri-Ci, or a Tri-motor Ford in, I went there because I needed the hangar and I didn't have the money to build one. I built— Mrs. Link: Oh, Edwin, remember the... that was when George F. decided he didn't want an airport there any longer, in Endicott. Mr. Link: Well, we… Mrs. Link: That's a good story for these Binghamton records. Mr. Link: Well, what—we were flying there and George F. didn't believe in flying. Wanda: Is that a fact! Mr. Link: And George F. was—word was law around here at the time. But—a Charlie Johnson and—a— Mrs. Link: George W. Mr. Link: —George W. Johnson both liked to fly and they would—a usually sneak down in the, to the airport in the morning and fly with me. They were always good for an airplane ride and I was, I needed the money and they'd take a flight with me. And then George F. heard about this and he says, "You're not, my sons aren't going to fly and you're not going to fly out of Endicott—our field. I'm going to close it down." And I went to see Mr. Johnson to, I said, "Well, one of the difficulties is I've got about ten or twelve men working out there and if you close the field down it puts me out of business and it puts about ten or twelve people out of business." And I said, "There is a possibility I could move to Cortland but,” I said, “that's going to cost me—a some money, five or six hundred dollars that I don't have and can't afford to bear it.” He says, "How much is it gonna cost you?" And I said, "Five hundred dollars." And he sat down and wrote me a check and gave me five hundred dollars to move. Wanda: Oh, that's rare! Mrs. Link: So then in the years— Mr. Link: So I went to Cortland. Mrs. Link: In the intervening years while he was in Cortland, then the Tri-Cities Airport got its start, because the other flying that was occurring in this area had to have a place to go, too. And—a so they finally started the other airport. Wanda: Well, but he didn't actually close the field, did he? Mrs. Link: Yes. Wanda: He really did. Mr. Link: Yes he did—it's never been flown off since. Later they built the Tri-Cities, the village built the Tri-Cities Airport, but the field originally was his...property. Wanda: Oh, I see. Mr. Link: It was right alongside of the road across from the golf club. Oh yes, he closed the field and it's never opened, it's always been closed. But then later, they built the field—a the Tri-Cities Airport which is there now, but the original field— Wanda: Well, it's probably just as well, this would have been… Mr. Link: —but the original field, usually Chambers of Commerce pay people to come to town, but this, this time I was paid to get out of town. And I took most of my employees with me. Mrs. Link: Well in Cortland, in Cortland they got a real start for the—a trainer, with the Army and all. And then when he came back here, the airport had been built down there at Tri-Cities, so he had a place to come to. And—a then he started manufacturing the trainer here because the war years were about to start, you know, and there was a lot of interest in training, training airplanes at that time. But not with the United States so much. It started in Japan and in Russia and in other outside countries. And it wasn't until after we got back here and settled on Gaines St. that they— Mr. Link: Well the first six… Mrs. Link: —started to have an interest in—a… Wanda: That's where the first factory was for the trainer? Mrs. Link: Mmm, Gaines St. Wanda: Gaines St. You had a number of moves, too, didn't you? Mrs. Link: Mmhmm. Wanda: As the business expanded? Mr. Link: Yes. And of course, we kept growing and we outgrew our buildings almost before we could move in. Mrs. Link: There while we were on Gaines St., that flood of—was that 1936? I guess it was. Wanda: The big one? Yes. Mrs. Link: Yeah, that wiped us out there again. Mr. Link: And fire, with it. Mrs. Link: And what? Mr. Link: And a fire occurred in it. That whole block burned up there. Mrs. Link: So then we moved over to—a, what's the name of that—a? Mr. Link: Montgomery St. Mrs. Link: Montgomery St. Over there on, in back of the highway. Mr. Link: And that was a big building for us then, but we outgrew that in a short time. Then we went up to Hillcrest, which was, had been the old Larrabee-Deyo Truck place, originally built by Nestle's during the war. Then Larrabee-Deyo took over the building, and then later we took it over and we still own it. We still build trainers there. But we have another factory, of course, in—a, up at—a Mrs. Link: Conklin area. Mr. Link: And another one in England, too. Wanda: Mrs. Link said—a, while you were out, that you might have something to say about some of the old pilots that came around here, a—landed around in these airports and that you knew. Mr. Link: Well, of course I being the principal aviator around this area at the time, any new people that came to—a town, I would meet and all, and some of them were well-known people of the day. Clarence Chamberlain was one of the first to fly the Atlantic; Billy Brock who was the first one to fly around the world in a land plane; and—a I also met Lindbergh at that time, when he landed down here in Choconut. And there were numerous other of those. Wanda: He was forced down, wasn't he? Mr. Link: What? Wanda: He was forced down? Mr. Link: Yeah—bad weather. He landed in a field down here, like we always did in those days. And he couldn't get his airplane started the next morning to get out, he and Major Lanphier. So I flew down with Dick Bennett to help him get it started, which we did. They got started eventually and left. There's a picture of, of that was in the paper with Lindbergh and myself. Wanda: Yes. Mr. Link: There’s also one over in the gallery of—a— Mrs. Link: Scotch ‘n Sirloin. Mr. Link: Scotch ‘n Sirloin, downstairs there they’ve got one someplace. Mrs. Link: I also mentioned the women pilots, Ruth Elder and Amelia Earhart. Mr. Link: Ruth Law was one of, was one of the first pilots here, and she came here before I was flying. And it must have been... oh, I can’t say, around 19—a ‘16, ‘18, and landed out here on what was Kilmer’s place there, then, the horse-training track. And she was one of the first pilots to—a ever fly out of Binghamton. [Tape'ends.] [Tape 2] Mr. Link: They put up a prize for the first airplane to fly from New York to Chicago, or Chicago to New York, I forget which way, and she flew an old Curtis Pusher there, where you sat out in front. There wasn’t any cockpit around it, but she and Lincoln Beachey were the first two pilots—Lincoln Beachey was the first one I know about. A—Ruth Law would be the second and then after that came Basil Rowe and those that I’ve ment—already mentioned, Earl Southee, you know. There was also Catherine Stinson. She landed someplace out in Chenango, not Chenango Bridge, but Hillcrest. And she cracked up three times tryin’ to, or while she was here—was here about two months rebuilding the airplane and then she’d crack it up again. Wanda: Typical woman driver, right? Mr. Link: Well it was the airplane’s fault, I think. She was pretty good to fly it. Mrs. Link: What about Amelia Earhart? You came up from Washington, she came up with you, didn’t she? Mr. Link: Yes. Amelia Earhart was just, recently had learned to fly and she was, wanted to learn to fly instruments. And I had one of the early instrument-equipped planes. I was down in Washington and some way or other I got connected, I don’t know, and she flew from… Mrs. Link: I was thinking that it was—a, that it was Captain Weems. That she was down there getting some navigation instruction. Mr. Link: No, that was another woman. I don’t remember just how I got connected there, but I was flying from Washington to New York City and she wanted to go up, and I said, “Well, come ahead and get in and I'll show you what l know about instrument pilots and instrument planes, what you need.” And so she did. And then she went out later, to Paul Mantz out on the west coast who—in the meantime these trainers were taking hold and people were buying trainers—and took instrument flying time to fly the instruments, from Paul Mantz in a Link trainer, to start with. Wanda: Oh. So she originally had her instrument training from the… Mr. Link: Well, I didn't, I couldn't exactly say I taught her anything about instrument flying, but I did show her how it was done. Wanda: Yeah. What—a, what was she like? Mr. Link: She was a very nice person. I was well-impressed with her. She was one of the most retiring of the women aviators. Others that came along afterwards, they were somewhat—a— Mrs. Link: Careful. Mr. Link: —noisier and so forth. Like there was this woman that… Mrs. Link: Never mind. Mr. Link: OK. Let's get off the women pilots. But I didn't have too much respect for most women pilots, at the time. Wanda: Well, they were… Mr. Link: But I did Amelia Earhart. She was a very nice woman, very modest, very quiet and very able. Wanda: I always got the impression that she really loved flying. Mr. Link: And she really loved flying, yeah. Wanda: What was it fascinated you about flying? Do you remember your first incident with an airplane? Do you remember the first time you saw one, or… Mr. Link: Well the first time I flew was out in California. I was out there—a and I flew and then started taking lessons with Sidney Chaplin, who was Charlie Chaplin's brother. Then I couldn't continue that because I didn't have money to and my family stopped me, when they heard about it, but I—a always enjoyed flying. I felt there was a future in it. Wanda: And you were right. Mr. Link: At that time there were no airlines, no—hardly anything for flying schools except something like Charlie [sic] Chaplin. He established it out there where the Ambassador Hotel is now, in California. Wanda: Is that right? Mr. Link: And—a the movie actors and actresses had more money than anybody else and they were a little more interested in learning to fly, so he started an aviation school out there. And that was the first flying lessons I took, was in 1920, but it was 1926 before I really got into flying and seriously went through it and soloed an airplane. Wanda: Well, can you think of anything else you'd like to put on here for… Mr. Link: I don't think of anything. Wanda: I think I've taken up quite a bit of your time. Mr. Link: And that was a long time ago. Mrs. Link: You've got a lot of—record there. Wanda: Yes, and I certainly want to thank you for all of your time and our recollections, both of you. 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. 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 Edwin and Marion Link Subject The topic of the resource Link, Edwin A. (Edwin Albert), 1904-1981 -- Interviews; Link, Marion -- Interview; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Cortland (N.Y.); Aeronautics; Airplanes; Air pilots -- Interviews; Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1902-1974; Earhart, Amelia, 1897-1937; Link Aviation; Cortland Airport; Billy Brock; Clarence Chamberlain Description An account of the resource Edwin Link talks about pilots in Binghamton before and during the time when he learned to fly, flight instruction under Sidney Chaplin and Dick Bennet. He details the beginnings of instrument flying, his invention and development of the instrument-flight trainer, and the invention and use of the sky sign.. He talks about night flying, early years of aviation, the beginning of airlines in the 1920s, and the many airplanes he has flown over his lifetime. He also discusses his reasoning for initially  basing himself at the Cortland Airport and recounts stories of male and female pilots who came to work in the area, including Billy Brock, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 41A ; Recording 41B ; Recording 41C ; Recording 41D Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Link, Edwin A. (Edwin Albert), 1904-1981 ; Link, Marion ; Wood, Wanda Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-09-18 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 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. 0:35 Minutes ; 33:15 Minutes ; 16:07 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b4a39b6ab42e4ce7bd39a2932454e995.jpg 83b615680d3329309789e16c0bb7c289 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/bc9ed303608c04b20c61d2f85c166148.mp3 bc526d22b9f9febdf5aae322d77e0427 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 2010-08-14 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Edwin Meese Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Edwin Meece is an attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Regan's counsellor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15107,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Edwin Meese is an attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Reagan's counselor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 62:19 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Nineteen sixties; Activism; Free Speech Movement; Women's Rights Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Nineteen sixties; Activism; Free Speech Movement; Women's Rights Movement. Subject LCSH Lawyers; College teachers; Authors; Attorneys general--United States; Meece, Edwin--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 Edwin Meece Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Meece, Edwin ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Lawyers; College teachers; Authors; Attorneys general--United States; Meece, Edwin--Interviews Description An account of the resource Edwin Meese is an attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Reagan's counselor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. 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 2010-08-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.87 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 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. 62:19 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1aeb294c91bee71a0ca670da812d0913.mp3 afae3c031339f9f4a3ca708a4be26075 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Hladik, Elizabeth Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Caganek, Anna Date of Interview 1978-02-27 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 25:59 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55944">Interview with Elizabeth Hladik</a> Subject LCSH Hladik, Elizabeth -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Children of immigrants -- Interviews; Household employees -- Interviews; Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Cigar industry 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: Elizabeth Hladik Interviewed by: Anna Caganek Date of interview: 27 February 1978 Anna: I am Anna Caganek: the interviewer. I am talking to Betty Hladik. 24 Isabel Street, Binghamton, New York. The date is February 27, 1978. Elizabeth: Take your boots off. Anna: Tell me, tell me about your experiences. Elizabeth: Yes. Anna: Uh, Betty…in the community. Elizabeth: Okay, is it here? Is it started? I don’t know. I’m Elizabeth Hladik. Eh, born in 1910 of immigrant parents, Frank and Mary Konecny. They came here from Gbely, Czechoslovakia, in 1904 to Ellis Island in America, bought a home on Berlin Street in the First Ward and lived, uh…let’s see, lived there all their lives. They bought it for $2400 in 1912. And I lived there most of my life…ah, ha-married, had two children and two grandchildren. My father at 15 [years] was an apprentice to a shoe cobbler, and lived in Vienna two years. So he naturally went to Endicott-Johnson area here to find work after trying out in the coal mines in Lansford, Pennsylvania, he decided he wouldn't spend his life underground even if the pay was higher. He was content with making shoes and raising a family of six children. Yeah. He inspired me to do domestic work for good families, which he claimed would be more rewarding than to take a homemaking course in high school. I never went to school higher than the 8th grade, and I was quite content, but at times frustrated. The pay wasn't ideal at the time. At least I got around and got an insight of how people of worth live. Why did you have that around? Oh, I see. So at least I got around. At 15 and a half, I started as a domestic with Mrs. Murray, 206 Main Street in Binghamton. She was the widow of an Admiral, and she entertained elegantly, having a Swedish cook, and I learned a lot early in life. Also worked for the Chamberlains of Lathrop Avenue—he was an editor of Binghamton Press—and the Gails—butter and egg people, and meat. Then a Mr. Clement Bowers, dad who was an inventor, lived on Main Street—I worked for them. Mrs. Daniel Dickinson of South Mountain—her husband was an ambassador of United States to Turkey. Then for a while I worked for a Mrs Frank Harris, he was in the extract business and also the 5-cent doughnut shop on Court Street. And the Edwin Link family, the inventor. And also for a time did restaurant work: the G & H Diner, helping with many chores: the dishes, counter work, and also the diet kitchen in the old Broome County Infirmary on Front Street, and Vail-Ballou book bindery. Then I worked in E.J.’s in the very early years in the Jigger Factory on Willow Street making tennis shoes. And also in Dunn McCarthy Factory as [chuckles] fancy stitcher. Then for a time I went to New York, worked on 5th Avenue and Park Avenue. I didn’t like the cockroaches. Even in wealthy homes, the bugs appeared now and then in old buildings. I had $75.00 a month pay and room and board. That was in 1939, about. I always liked Binghamton—I think it’s nice to travel around, but here is where I like to hang my coat. Especially [laughing] I’ll always remember our great neighbors. Minnie and John Murphy of 3 Berlin Street, who helped mold my childhood. Actually, Mrs. Murphy, who had no children, was a great help to my mother. She taught my mother the American way of life and came over to show her how to make pumpkin pie, custard puddings, and beef vegetable style, and corned beef and cabbage, and doughnuts. She had been a cook in the Waterfleet New York Hotel in her days, and she was quite a cook. And of course my mother exchanged apple strudel and kolachky for some of her cooking. She used to bring over, to us kids when we came home at lunchtime, some hot meals. Not many people do that today to help out. She was a great neighbor. My mother worked in the cigar factory, couldn't be home to get our lunches. Mrs. Murphy brought over many times, how I remember. Baked potatoes, especially, and creamed cod fish—I loved that. Anna: What did your mother do in the cigar factory? Elizabeth: She was a bunch maker, and she rolled cigars—that’s what she did, and sometimes she made more than my father did in the shoe factory [laughs]. And Mrs. Murphy made real molasses cookies, and mince pie with beef in it, and she inspired my parents to go to night school, and both my parents learned to read. Mrs. Murphy was not a habitual churchgoer, but she was a respected individual and will always live in the hearts of all who knew her, because to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die, and God will always bless America as long as there are people like the Murphys and the Konecnys that can help each other and set a good example for generations to come. And in the face of the high cost of living today, a good word and a helping hand will create the necessary boost we need to encourage us to go on, no matter what life holds. Anna: Did you ever, what did you do for amusement? Elizabeth: Oh, well. When I was very young I used to go out to pick berries up in Ely Park, that was our favorite pastime—when we were kids, that is. And, ah, after I grew up to be a teenager, I did a little dancing in the Pavilion, and met—and saw some of the great band leaders and all. Anna: What were some of the—could you remember some of the band leaders? Elizabeth: Well, of course Benny Goodman, and all those. I didn’t I go too much but I saw some of the greats: Johnny, Johnny Greene, and his band, and—oh dear, who is it? Now that I can’t think. Anna: Did you ever go to the Woodrow Wilson alumni— Elizabeth: Yes, I went to the Woodrow Wilson School here in Binghamton, up to the 8th grade, and we had wonderful teachers there as I remember. Miss, ah—Miss, ah…she taught us English—oh dear, she’s dead now. Mrs., Miss Stone was the principal, of course. Anna: Miss Berzel? Elizabeth: No, Miss Merzel was in Jarvis Street School. I went part-time to Jarvis Street School too. And Woodrow was very nice but we had to come home from school every lunchtime. It took us an hour, I mean, to get back home and eat and do the dishes up and then go back to school. We had an hour to walk all that distance and then go back again. Snow, raining, or shine, no buses, no cafeterias, but we made out [laughs] because as I say, Mrs. Murphy always gave us a lift there—she had no children. Her husband was a blacksmith here on Hawley Street where the old police station used to be—yes. He was one of the last of the, ah, last of the blacksmiths in town, and he died in 1930. So he was a great man. He also bought an old Ford, old Tin Lizzie [laughs]. He never had electricity in his house, he didn't believe in it—they used kerosene oil. Although we had electricity in our house next door to him. And, ah, our childhood was much different than today, yes it was, and we did more chores around the house than kids think of today. We had all the chores to do because our parents worked—we had to scrub clothes on a washboard, and I remember standing on a little stool just so I could reach the washboard and do my stuff, because my older sister did housework outside. And I had to carry on and do the cooking at 12—I was quite a cook—so I learned, because our parents were both working. That’s how it is today too, both parents are working, but the children, I guess, do not do much cooking. aside from (laughs) hamburgers they can get around the corner, and potato chips and Coca-Cola. I was raised up on different type of food and I'm glad I have that to remember, and I try to keep up as much as I can. Maybe that’s what keeps people young in their outlook on life, and what they've had in the past makes up for a good life. You have to eat good, sensible food in order to live a long life and be healthy—and do your share of work. It’s all fun in the long run. But it can’t be all play in life, you can’t expect to be loafing around and playing games or cards—I wasn't much for card games, it’s a waste of time, or bingo [laughs]. I suppose that’s all amusement, but I have a simple way of life, and I like to walk an awful lot and see nature. That’s my amusement–and my grandchildren now. Anna: Do you like to do anything by hand? Elizabeth: Oh, I used to do a little crocheting and patchwork and embroidery, and some painting pictures on the side. That was my hobby. Oh, but I have not been so interested in it lately, it’s too much hard work. I don’t like the idea of being gummed up with paint and get my house all plastered up, I just don’t care for it anymore. But it’s a great hobby; they told me I did well. I have a few pictures I did, but I don’t expect to sell them for a great deal, so I [laughs] keep them. And don’t have them hanging on the walls, either. But someday, I’ll get back to it and enjoy painting once again. Because—maybe when I get older [laughs]—I’m too young—I’m too young to get old. Anna: You’re retired now? Elizabeth: Now I’m retired, I’m 67, yes. And I expect I’ll like to live to be 85, at least. And if I keep going the way I have and no setbacks, no real ill health, why, then I’ll probably make it and try to help other people that are in worse condition than I am, or—here in the building where I live, there’s some that need help and don’t have too much money to pay for a nurse. Why, you could give a little of your time, but don’t be taken advantage of to the full length. Just a little here and a little there, it’s good to help people along the way, and that’ll make your day. So I am glad to have had this opportunity to talk and tell a little about my life. But at any rate—well, I think I missed out on saying all of the places I worked at. I worked in E.J. Jigger factory and in Dunn McCarthy, I said that before, and the Links—oh—Broome County Infirmary, did I mention that? And Vail Ballou in the book bindery, and—I think I mentioned that, yes. But anyhow, it pays—my father gave me a good example in life, always not to be money mad but to do a job where your heart is in it and to like your work, no matter how much you got paid. Of course, my trouble was I never got much money, but I think I was happy in life, and that’s the main thing. Thank you. Anna: Oh, thank you, Betty. Thank you. 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. 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 Elizabeth Hladik Subject The topic of the resource Hladik, Elizabeth -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Children of immigrants -- Interviews; Household employees -- Interviews; Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Cigar industry Description An account of the resource Elizabeth Hladik talks about her parents' emigration from Czechoslovakia and being the only one of six siblings to attend school, up until the 8th grade, after which point she was employed as a domestic. She worked at Vale Ballou, Dunn McCarthy, Endicott Johnson, and in New York City. She speaks of a Mrs. Murphy who was very helpful to her mother in adapting to the American lifestyle. She also discusses how her parents attended night school to learn the language, her mother's employment at the Cigar Factory, and her father's employment at the Endicott Johnson Corporation. 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8160b2853b77ab8fe8c1a2e312ee622c.jpg f1aee1af07ba7a940b77e8b8fe60ce6f https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/05ae878377bee832e53426cdfb479636.mp3 9dabf112f00cd7ae4b8d245cdec1e259 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Elizabeth Holtzman Date of Interview 2011-06-27 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 79:14 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 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Ausio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Elizabeth Holtzman is an American politician and former member of the United States House of Representatives. She is a Democrat and was the first woman to hold office as the New York City Comptroller and the District Attorney of Kings County, New York. Holtzman graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the New York State Democratic Committee, and Democratic Committee leader for the New York State Assembly district."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,4884200],"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}]},"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}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Elizabeth Holtzman is an American politician and former member of the United States House of Representatives. She is a Democrat and was the first woman to hold office as the New York City Comptroller and the District Attorney of Kings County, New York. Holtzman graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the New York State Democratic Committee, and Democratic Committee leader for the New York State Assembly district. Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Women's Rights Movement; political activism; equality in law school; Discrimination; Nineteen fifties; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Civil Rights Movement; Thurgood Marshall; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Women's Rights Movement; political activism; equality in law school; Discrimination; Nineteen fifties; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; Civil Rights Movement; Thurgood Marshall; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Subject LCSH Legislators—United States; United States.--Congress.--House; Holtzman, Elizabeth--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 Elizabeth Holtzman Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Holtzman, Elizabeth ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Legislators—United States; United States.--Congress.--House; Holtzman, Elizabeth--Interviews Description An account of the resource Elizabeth Holtzman is an American politician and former member of the United States House of Representatives. She is a Democrat and was the first woman to hold office as the New York City Comptroller and the District Attorney of Kings County, New York. Holtzman graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the New York State Democratic Committee, and Democratic Committee leader for the New York State Assembly district. 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 2011-06-27 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 McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.177 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. 79:14 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b3336f4938180807ae9c64c0d86a4409.jpg db71c37dd0abb33cdb4900125134675e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/cb6d2f99a0ffe00e6f9bb2fe56ea0e8d.mp3 d1ef073e5c3eb237bebcccb924ca32bc 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 2010-12-22 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ellis Cose Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Ellis Cose, a native of Chicago, is a columnist and editor for Newsweek. He is the author of a dozen books including the best-selling \"The Rage of a Privileged Class\". He became a columnist at the age of 19 and he became a contributor for the Times Magazine. Cose appeared on several shows and he has been interviewed frequently around the world. Ellis earned his Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Illinois and a Master’s degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University."}">Ellis Cose, a native of Chicago, is a columnist and editor for Newsweek. He is the author of a dozen books including the best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class. He became a columnist at the age of 19 and he became a contributor for the Times Magazine. Cose appeared on several shows and he has been interviewed frequently around the world. Ellis earned his Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Illinois and a Master’s degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University. 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-userformat="{"2":6979,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"9":0,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Verdana"}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; divisions; Healing; Vietnam War; Generations; Segregation; Media; Racial conflict; Riot, Journalist; Inner-city school; African American; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Panthers; Criminal justice system; Jim Crow."}">Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties; Nineteen seventies; divisions; Healing; Vietnam War; Generations; Segregation; Media; Racial conflict; Riot, Journalist; Inner-city school; African American; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Panthers; Criminal justice system; Jim Crow. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 178:08 Subject LCSH African American editors; African American Authors; Cose, Ellis--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: Ellis Cose Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 22 December 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:05): Testing one, two. One of the questions that I have asked everybody in the interview process, I normally ask it toward the end of the interview, but I am going to ask it in the beginning this time, is that do you believe, as a boomer, that the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the divisions that took place in the (19)60s and (19)70s, the intense divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the Vietnam War and against it? I ask this question because I took a group of students to see Edmond Muskie in 1995, and we asked that same question to him, and the students felt that he was going to respond based on what happened at the convention in (19)68. And, of course, (19)68 was an unbelievable year with a lot of tragedy. And so, they thought he was going to talk about the 1968 conventions and the tremendous divisions in the country. I will let you know what he said, but what are your thoughts? EC (00:01:18): Well, I guess my thought is that I am not sure that I agree the whole concept of healing to begin with. I think that we are all shaped by our times in a huge way. We are shaped by the things that are important to us in a huge way. And if by healing we mean that as we approach old age, we resolve those issues and we agree about those conflicts and we reach a state of harmony with one another, I am not sure that that happened. I think that we have certainly put the Vietnam War collectively as a nation behind us, and I think that the emotions that were invested in that once upon the time are not nearly what they were, even among people who were directly involved with exception here or there. I also think that if we look at the question of race, clearly, we have come a huge distance in this country when it comes to the ability of white to see African Americans as [inaudible] beings. Though, interestingly enough, I mean, I just finished turning in the manuscript for a book that looks at generations, including the boomers, those who are treat boomers, the silence, so calls and also the millennials. And one thing that is very clear to me is that in terms of how capable different generations of races are of seeing each other as human beings, a lot of that has to do with the generation in which they were shaped. Not so much with the conflict of the generations, but just the ethos of a particular generation. People who grew up in segregated setting have an awfully difficult time getting beyond that, it is not a question of healing, it is just that their entire experience growing up was of believing that people were destined to be separate. People who came up right after segregation have a different way of looking at things, but they were still raised in society where it was a big deal for blacks and whites to marry each other for blacks and whites, to be close friends with one another. And those people in large measure never get to a point where they get beyond that. It is not a question for me of conflicts, it is not an issue of, " I was a segregationist or an integrationist," and therefore we heal somehow, there is a language of healing, and I am very familiar with it. I hear it a lot. There are different groups which come together to do what they call healing. That whole idea implies that once upon a time people were whole. Somehow in the course of event, they develop a wound and then they are going to go and somehow heal this wound. I just think it misconstrues human relationship. So I guess my answer to that is that yes, I think that to some extent we get over the conflicts of the past, but I just do not really accept the language of healing that... SM (00:04:50): Yeah, when Senator Musky responded, the students again that came with me, none of them were alive during the Vietnam War. They had all seen these on videos and so forth, and they were surprised that Senator Musky did not even comment on the (19)60s or anything to do with (19)68. He basically commented that we have not healed since the Civil War over the issue of race, and that he went into detail talking about it. And another thing too, when you think of healing, a lot of people from the Vietnam War think of Kim Phuc because she has come, the girl in the picture from the Vietnam War. I interviewed her and the whole interview with her was, she is a very forgiving and healing person, and we must move on. And one other comment before getting the next question is when I interviewed the late Gaylord Nelson at his office at the Wilderness Society, I knew him quite well. And he said, he was struck by the question, he says, nobody is walking around Washington DC talking about not healing from the Vietnam War or the divisions that took place at that time. They do not wear it on their sleeve, but he said it is permanently in the body politic. And that is where the impact really is in the politics itself. Just a little side light of this question now, do you feel that the Vietnam Memorial itself has helped the nation heal? EC (00:06:17): Well, it runs into the same issue. I do not believe in this concept of healing. I just do not. I mean, think it is great, and I think it has acknowledged the contributions of people who through no fault of their own, got involved in the conflict that the nation collectively ended up repudiating. And so I think that is a good thing. But I think healing is almost clinical therapeutic concept that does not really apply to what happens in the context of a national conflicts, except for people who were very much on the front lines of those and did suffer some sort of clinical result as a consequence of that. And in those cases, I think it goes individual to individual. Some individuals are capable of healing, some are not. But I do not think that nation heal in that way. I think that is something that individuals do within themselves. SM (00:07:23): I have done a lot of reading on your background. You have got your website's great, by the way. EC (00:07:26): Thank you. SM (00:07:27): I think you have a great website and there is some great biographies of you, just small biographies of your background and your books and the themes of your books, and certainly your growing up years. But I always ask this because the people that are going to be reading these interviews will not have read your books and will certainly will hope they will after the interviews. But how did you become who you are? What was it like growing up in Chicago as a teenager? What were your college years? Was there activism on your campus when you were an undergraduate student? And were you involved in any of the organizations at your college? EC (00:08:11): I came to writing for a very simple reason, and then I have written about this before. But basically the reason I became a writer was because of riots in my community. I came up on the west side of Chicago, and I was a kid in high school when Martin Luther King was fascinated in 1968. And my community literally went up in flames. And the same thing had happened to that same community on the west side of Chicago in 1966. It went up in flames in that instance because of a police conflict, which is actually what led a lot to the riot of the (19)60s of a conflict between a citizen and the cops. And that caused an uprising. It took indeed, of course, it came just the King. But in both instances, there were fires, there were tanked, the community, and there was pretty significant violence. And as a kid, we were watching that and then reading the press reports at the time, I realized that the press reports that I was reading about bore no resemblance community about my community, bore no resemblance to community that I was living in. And this gets, actually into your previous question about healing. And my point about generation, if we go back to the late (19)60s, this was the time when the major newspapers, firstly had no black reporters at all. There were an exceptions here and there, but the so-called major media simply saw no reason back then to hire blacks. And so when they covered something like a racial conflict or a riot, they covered it as if they were covering a third world community they did not understand, full of people who were irrational and who were not full human being. And you can see this very clearly in any of the coverage of those days, if you go back and read some of the accounts, the riots from back then. And I made the decision, even though I was not terribly interested initially in being a writer, that someone needed to write about these kinds of things that had some understanding of these communities. And it happened to coincide with an ongoing conflict I had was with an English teacher over doing assignments because I was a bright kid and the assignments in my way of thinking or mind numbingly stupid. I got her to agree that my assignment would be to write a paper on riot and why they occur in the communities [inaudible] have them. And she ended up agreeing to this for my assignment for English for that year. And for the first time, I got excited about writing and ended up turning in a manuscript of somewhere between 130 and 200 pages as I recall, which she received, took home, read, came back and told me, I am going to give you an A for the course, but I am not really capable of grading this, judging this, you need to send it to a professional." I had no idea what a professional writer was really. She advised me to send it to Gwendolyn Brooks. Because Gwendolyn Brooks was a poor [inaudible] Illinois. Gwendolyn Brooks read it, got in touch with me, essentially told me I needed to think about becoming a writer as the profession. And that launched me into becoming a writer. I also happened to get a job as a columnist for the Chicago Sun Time when, well, when I was 18 as a columnist for their school supplement publication, but I was 19, became a columnist for their actual newspaper. So all of that obviously influenced heavily my decision to become a journalist, to become a writer. SM (00:12:40): Was that experience in Chicago when you were young, how did that affect your psyche? You were having the experience of someone who was saying you were a really good writer. Can you hold on a second? My cell phones? Hold on one second. Hold on one second. Hello? Yes-yes. No-no-no-no. I am ready to head off. Yeah, well, I cannot get any over there any earlier though. Okay. Okay. Oh, just get me a couple hamburgers. That is it. Okay. Yep, that is it. I am actually on the phone with my landlord. Upper window. Okay. All right. Thanks, Jim. Bye. Ellis, you still there? EC (00:14:06): Yes. SM (00:14:06): My brother has gone because he is getting an eye appointment today. That is why I am leaving early. EC (00:14:13): Well, you asking. SM (00:14:13): Yeah, I was asking about the psyche. EC (00:14:14): Psyche. SM (00:14:15): What was it about you personally that even though these very terrible things were happening in this country, that you felt within yourself that you were going to be a success as a writer? It was a kind of, nothing was going to stop you. EC (00:14:31): Well, I never thought, even as a very, very young man, that I was not going to be a success at whatever it was that I decided to do. Why did I feel that way? Well, it certainly was not the result of coming up in the projects. There were not a whole lot of folks who were particular successes in the projects. But I think it was my psychology, and my psychology was shaped, I am sure by some measure, by the fact that I knew I was a very bright kid. Despite the fact that I went to terrible inner-city schools, which had all the terrible things happening to them that you read about, and that the teachers, at least many of them were very uninterested in teaching much of anything. And despite the fact that the schools at least found that I went to did not but they were fairly violent. I was always acknowledged as a bright kid. I always tested off the charts. When time came for me to go to high school, I got into a high school out of my neighborhood, which was when high school considered, it was at the time the fitted the best public school in the city because I tested well and always tested well. And so I knew I was a bright kid, and so I knew I had potential, at least mental potential. I also knew that I was a hard worker. So despite the fact that there were lots of messages that came to kids in my community here, "You are never going to be anything. You are going to be a failure. You are never going to amount too much in life." I just found it very easy to tune that out because it is, from my perspective has just been a part of me. SM (00:16:31): I was talking at some of the major events when you were young, even very young. How did the following event shape your consciousness as a young African-American teenager and young adult, and obviously some of these things, you were born in (19)51, so you were very young, nine or 10, I am not sure if you were aware of all of them, but as you aged, I broke down in some of these events. You were 12, 13, 14, 18, 20. But I am just going to list some of the key events that in the civil rights movement that were part of that 20-year period, and just any brief comment you can and how important you felt it was not only for you personally, but for our nation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott. EC (00:17:21): Well, the Montgomery Bus boycott. I was barrel as an infant pretty much at that point. I read about it as an adult or as a young man I suppose. But we are talking in about (19)50s now. I would have been three or four years old. And so in terms of my having any consciousness of that happening at the time, I had absolutely none. I was just way too young for that. SM (00:17:51): And that would include also the Brown versus Board of Education decision, and- EC (00:17:54): Well, same thing. SM (00:17:55): Little Rock Nine. EC (00:17:55): Yeah. I was a bit older when Little Rock Nine occurred, of course, but still, I was the age of six, seven, eight, nine, not really consistently reading the newspaper at that time. We would probably have to get out of the (19)50s. SM (00:18:16): Yeah, they- EC (00:18:17): Get to a point where I would be aware of the conflict that is swirled around the whole issue of civil rights. SM (00:18:26): The other ones are when you were 13 and up, and that is the March on Washington (19)63, Freedom Summer in (19)64. And certainly the terrible tragedy of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman being killed. Were you aware of those events as of 13, 14-year-old? EC (00:18:45): That is interesting. I am sure I was aware in some vague way, and clearly the March Washington was a huge event and I would have been, what? 12 at the time that took place. I am sure I was aware of it, but looking back, I cannot say I have a cautious memory of what I was thinking at that time. I am certain I was not aware of. I am certain it was part of a lot of things I was beginning to be aware of that were happening around me. I remember realizing somewhere along the way, or at least concluding somewhere along the way, that the South was a very ugly place full of ugly, bigoted people. And I think really that was an opinion that was shaped by the news event at the time. But I cannot say if you go incident by incident, I did not know anybody who went down to Washington, yeah for the march on Washington. I did not know anybody who was involved with the with freedom rights, I mean, was a poor kid from a poor community on the west side of Chicago. The people I know were not doing those things. They were basically just trying to make it. And so I cannot say that any of those events shaped me in the way that they would have shaped me if I was five or 10 years older. I cannot say that any of those had a huge impression on me. The first discreet event of the (19)60s that I can remember making a huge impression on me other than the riots themselves, which had a huge impact on me because that was my community that was being torn apart. Other than that, the first event of the (19)60s was as you can say really, really shook me was Martin Luther King's assassination. SM (00:20:47): Yeah, that is on my- EC (00:20:47): - [inaudible] of (19)68. SM (00:20:52): And certainly MLK's assassination, certainly the over representation of African Americans who served in the Vietnam War was well documented at that time. And then Dr. King's Vietnam speech back in 1967, and then of course, the rise of the Black Panthers. Your thoughts on those? EC (00:21:16): Well, the Black Panthers I was aware of, and because they were in the west side of Chicago that was and my introduction to them was that all of a sudden these people appeared. And again, I do not remember exactly what level of how intimate my knowledge was, but I do remember being told, I think by friends of mine, that there was this conflict between the gangs on the south side and what I was coming, the big gang on the south side was something called August of the Black Peace Stone Nation, which is started off as, there is a Blackstone Rangers. And this may be apocryphal or may not be, but I do. But I do remember being told as a teenager that the Black Panthers were planning to set up shop on the South side, and that the Black Peace Stone Nation told them, no, that was their turf, that was their territory, and they were not going to make way for another gang. So I remember that dispute, at least as I understood it at the time, having taken place. And the rise of the Black Panthers happened to coincide with a time when I was starting college. And so I was very much aware of them by that time. And there were people I knew who had links to the Black Panthers, and so I was aware of them. I admired them in a certain way. I felt they certainly dressed again pretty cool, their leather jackets and whatnot. I liked their attitude in terms of their being a standup group who were going to not take much of anything from anybody. I remember when we're talking about early college years by this point, and at that point, I was very much aware of all these things that were going on. And I do remember of reading Eldridge Cleavers. Was it Soul on Ice? SM (00:23:30): Yep. Soul on Ice. EC (00:23:32): Somewhere back then. And being disappointed in Eldridge Cleaver, because I realized that not only was he a rapist, which I knew that he was a rapist, but I had assumed he had sufficient political consciousness that he had transcended that. And at some point, Soul on Ice becomes a defend of rape as a political act, which I thought was just absurd. So reading that affected the way that I felt about the Panthers, I had no respect for him after reading that and began to think maybe the Panthers were not this noble organization that I had assumed they were. SM (00:24:23): What is amazing about the Black Panthers, and when I have talked about and interviewed other people, they say, you are dealing with some major personalities here that are different. You have got Elders Cleaver, you have got Kathleen Cleaver, you have got Bobby Seal, you have got Huey Newton, you have got Stokely Carmichael, you have got H. Rep Brown. You have got, I got Elaine Brown. EC (00:24:45): Yeah, Elaine- SM (00:24:46): Dave Hilliard. And you see, you are dealing with a lot of different- EC (00:24:49): I am not sure Stokely Carmichael was, there were actually a number of the Panthers. Certainly it was not temporary. SM (00:24:57): Right. I think he did become a panther. EC (00:24:58): It is possible. You obviously studying this, I am not, but I do not remember him being very prominent with the Panthers because he became prominent as another kind of character. But yeah, and certainly Huey Newton was a totally different character than Eldridge Cleaver mean, then they ended up having a huge dispute at the end of the day. And by this time, we were getting into the years. So I was a journalist, and so I have never really covered the Panthers as a story, but I did know some of the characters. At one point, I interviewed Bobby Seal at another point, Kathleen Cleaver I interviewed. So I knew some of these people were at least in passing as a journalist and had impressions of them and was certainly around at the time when the big split occurred between the so-called East Coast and West Coast Panthers, and the Eldridge faction and the Huey Newton faction. And remember, they were saying very ugly things about one another. So that was also part of my reassessment of who and what the Panthers were. But I remember initially just being one, attracted to them and thinking that they were very interesting. Two, respecting the fact they were willing to stand up to police violence, things of that nature. Three, respecting the fact that they were not at this time a sort of black militancy. They were a group that was not racist in the sense that they were willing to embrace various races as long as you agree with their program. But three, think that there were some individuals who were truly screwed up, who were involved with them. And Eldridge Cleavers being first on that list of people who thought were totally screwed up clearly if the history of Houston Newton, there was a history of somebody who was not terribly well adjusted either, and who did all kinds of things. So at the end of the day, I had a mixed assessment of the Black Panthers, but I was certainly aware by that time being a 16, 17, 18, 19, when they were in their heyday, being very much aware of them, there was a sense among a lot of people, and it was, that included, I passaged, but a whole lot of folks who were activists at that time. There was a sense that we were in throes of revolution, that something huge was on the verge of happening in the United States, that we were about to overthrow one system and have it replaced by another. And I remember lots of people getting swept up in that sense. I was not one of them. I just never thought that [inaudible] analysis made a whole lot of sense. It was on target, but I certainly recall it. SM (00:28:19): Well, one of the things that also was taking place at this time was what was happening in the prisons. We all know what happened with Angela Davis and the murder, I guess at George Jackson in San Quentin. So that was a big issue. I know on college campuses, we were talking about that all the time. And because when I was in graduate school, I actually went to Mansfield Reformatory and was there for two semesters and could not believe how prisoners are being treated. It was a maximum-security facility in Ohio. EC (00:28:51): Well, there were a lot of issues. There were not simply the prisons, it was the politicization in a way, and then the incarceration of people. Or in effect political crime. And it was (19)69. I recall very clearly when you had the murders of Mark Clark, that Hampton in Chicago and was at that point, I was very active in those student politics and was one of the leaders of the protests that we had at the University of Illinois Chicago at the time, which stem from that shooting. Which seems to us then, and actually being now looking back, have been a political assassination. So there was a lot of, among folks I knew, including myself, a lot of anger and outrage and those kinds of things happening. And certainly as we look back, we did not know through the extent of the time how involved the FBI was in monitoring these groups and provocateur times in these groups and even... EC (00:30:03): ... and been a provocateur at times in these groups. And even, obviously, been a provocateur in times of his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. All of that was going on. So it was much broader than just prisons I think. It was the youth of the arms of the criminal justice system to attempt to repress this movement in many respects. And I remember being aware of that. I remember being angry about that. I think I was much less aware of what was going on in prisons in general. SM (00:30:41): I know that Attica was one of the biggest events. I think it was in (19)71. And of course, that was a tragedy from the get-go, and that was a follow-up to what was happening at San Quentin with Angela Davis and so forth with George Jackson. But I find it interesting that there is a book out now, and you have probably written about this many times, about the fact that the Jim Crow of 2010 is actually what is happening with the African-American male in our prisons. EC (00:31:15): Well, I do not accept the term because I think Jim Crow was very different than what is happening with prisons. But I do think that is a national tragedy. And I do think that, in many ways, our criminal justice system is racialized. Why do not I think it is Jim Crow? Because Jim Crow, you had everybody who was black in a community who was made to act in a certain way because of laws that mandated made certain behaviors. That is not what is happening with the prisons. But I think we do have a huge percentage issue now of African-American males, and also a very large percentage of Latino males for that matter, whose life options are totally destroyed having to do with their involvement in the criminal justice system. So I think it is criminal. But I think that one of the problems with just the way that people in general tend to look at things is that we tend to want to always compare one event to another event that we are familiar with as if they are the same thing. I think that the over incarceration of people of color and people in general in this country is a national tragedy. I do not think it is Jim Crow, and I do not think it particularly adds to the analysis to call it Jim Crow. SM (00:32:41): Right. You are aware of that book that is out now? EC (00:32:47): Yes. SM (00:32:47): Yeah. It is... EC (00:32:47): [inaudible] it is fascinating, yeah. SM (00:32:49): Yeah. It is doing quite well. EC (00:32:50): Yeah. SM (00:32:50): You are a gifted writer, and you already mentioned the fact that [inaudible] you read when you were in college. What are the books and writers who influenced you as a young man? Not only as a journalist, but as a person who covered some of these issues in the United States? Did you read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison? EC (00:33:13): Well, you named the two that had the most impact on me when I was coming up and discovering my voice as a writer. I was a big admirer of Baldwin in particular. I mean, he wrote clearly more than Ellison did, but I was a huge admirer of his and read everything of his I could find. And I remember it was probably The Fire Next Time, I think may be the first thing of his that I read, which explained what was going on in the streets. And in a way that, for the first time, made sense to me. Certainly, a Black Boy... Not a Black Boy, a Native Son rather. When I read that, I was just blown away by how beautiful of a writer Ralph Ellison was. By his ability to sort of capture that story, that voice, that time. So both of those were... I mean, I also in that era remember being very impressed by Hermann Hesse, who I just thought was a very interesting writer. But it was really Baldwin was number one. So much so that initially I remember thinking that maybe I did not need to go to college because Baldwin did not go to college. And he did very well as a writer, so why should I waste my time going to college. I remember thinking about that at the time. SM (00:34:50): Did you ever have a chance to read Harry Edwards' book, Black Students? EC (00:34:55): I do not think I have read that book, no. SM (00:34:59): Yeah, because that was very popular back in (19)71. Of course, Harry's the one that encouraged the students- EC (00:35:08): [inaudible] I know who he is. But I do not remember reading that book, so I do not think it was from the books that I read. SM (00:35:09): Yeah. The other ones were, well, I do not know if [inaudible] was Michael Harrington, The Other America. EC (00:35:15): Oh, yeah. No, I read that at some point, but I cannot say that it was a huge... SM (00:35:22): Of course. EC (00:35:22): ... an influence on me in terms of journalism or any other way. I just thought that he was doing important work, and was one of those things that I read. SM (00:35:32): The other one that seemed to have an influence on some boomers is LeRoi Jones because he was a beat writer and... EC (00:35:40): I mean, I have read LeRoi Jones and I read some of his things- SM (00:35:43): Amiri Baraka. EC (00:35:45): I mean, for my taste, at the time at least, he was a bit more avant-garde than I was. And he just did not grab me in the same way. And then I remember also... Yeah, so I just did not have the same sense of Jones or Amiri Baraka as he later became. I mean, I was influenced by some of the Chicago set of writers. Don Lee, who later became Haki Madhubuti, I remember being impressed by. And some of the other writers who I got to know in Chicago as a young man. But as I said, I mean, for me by far in terms of convincing me that I could become a writer, I think it was Baldwin. I mean, and reading him that, okay, this guy is doing something I think I can do. SM (00:36:42): Do you like the term boomer? EC (00:36:47): I mean, it is obviously a term that is been coined and accepted widely for people in a certain demographic, so I do not have a particular problem with it, but yeah. SM (00:37:01): What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear someone talk about the boomer generation? EC (00:37:07): I do not think that certain traits come to my mind. What comes to mind is the post-World War II generation and the 20 to 25 years beyond that. And just because of the fact that so many of these people peaked... Well, peaked is not the right word, but came of age in the (19)60s and in that era. It certainly evokes thoughts of the (19)60s and the cultural transformation in the country that occurred then. SM (00:37:46): The next few questions deal with the Moynihan Report from (19)65. And then recently, Rich Lowry from the... EC (00:37:57): The New York Times. SM (00:38:00): Yeah, the National Review commented on, actually, only three months ago on the Moynihan Report. But I want this in the record, so if you would bear with me, I just want to read this and get your comments on it. And that is that when the Moynihan Report came out, these are very important things it says here. "In the decade they began with school desegregations, decision of the Supreme Court, and ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of (19)64. The demand of Negro Americans for full recognition of their civil rights was finally met. In this new period, the expectations of Negro Americans will go beyond civil rights. Being Americans, they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen, nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made." And there were two reasons that Moynihan wrote for putting this report together. First, the racist virus in the American bloodstream still afflicts us in (19)65. And then second, three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment have taken their toll on the Negro people. Then that says here what is an interesting is the report that Lowry says that Moynihan was basically shut out. At some point, the report was being listened to, but then as the war in Vietnam was raging on and on and there were disagreements over policy and so forth, the Moynihan Report went to the back burner. And this is what I would like you to respond to from the original report, if that was written by Moynihan. "The gap between Negro and most other groups in American society is widening. Is that the Negro family and the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of unskilled, poorly educated city working class, the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself." And then he ends in this section by saying, "A national effort is required that will give unity of purpose to the many activities of the federal government in this area directed to a new kind of national goal, the establishment of a stable negro family structure. This would be a new departure for federal policy. But almost certainly offers the only possibility of resolving in our time what is after all the nation's oldest, and most intransigent, and now its most dangerous social problem." And then he ends by saying, "What Gunnar Myrdal said in An American Dilemma remains true today. America's free to choose whether the Negro shall remain her liability or become her opportunity." And- EC (00:41:12): I mean, I think what is interesting about the Moynihan Report, there are two things. I mean, one is that it became this political hot potato in the sense that progressive social scientists, African-American activists, and other people attacked it because they thought it was blaming the victim. They thought it was an attack and some sort of... And he used the word mythology in it, though you did not read that part. They thought it was an attack on the black community just because of the language that he used because [inaudible] the things that he described. I mean, I think the other thing that is interesting is that the trends that he was worried about. Two things about those. I mean, one is his idea of the rate of children being born out of wedlock, et cetera. If you look at the numbers he was reporting at the time for African-Americans, they are pretty close to what the numbers are for white now. So what he was really giving voice too, even though he did not know it himself, was an emerging trend in society, not just in African-American communities. But what's also interesting about that report is that in some ways it was prescient. I mean, he did in fact put his finger on some real problems. And I think that because of the language that he used, because of the times that he wrote this report in. Having less to do actually with the Vietnam War, I suspect, than with domestic politics. The message was never really paid attention to. I am not sure if it had been paid attention to, that the tools were in place to do anything about it at any rate. But I think if you set aside just some of the rhetoric of the time, which is difficult to do, and just look at what he was trying to do, it was actually an impressive work of scholarship. SM (00:43:11): Yeah, he wrote that. It is interesting. I was reading background. He was sitting downstairs and he did it on a typewriter. EC (00:43:21): Well, everybody wrote on a typewriter back then. SM (00:43:21): Yeah. And only 100 of the reports actually were ever handed out. It was not widely distributed. This is how Lowry, Lowry wrote this three months ago, and this is his commentary on what he considers the failure of the African-American community. He said, "Moynihan had talked about and he believed that the richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life. He wanted to create a sense of urgency about the fact that black children were disproportionately denied this inheritance." And then the black out of wedlock births had increased from 18 percent in 1950 to 22, 23.6 percent in (19)63. And he saw that as a weakness of the family structure. And he also linked it up as unemployment fell, out of wedlock births continued to rise, illegitimacy had developed a dynamic of its own. Then the Johnson administration- EC (00:44:17): Right, right. So what is Lowry's bottom line? SM (00:44:20): The bottom line is that he feels that the African-American family has... The illegitimacy rate is skyrocketing today in America. He says here, "The black out of wedlock birth rate is-" EC (00:44:35): I mean, it means two things. I mean, one, just as a matter of statistics, clearly, we have had a huge rise in the out of wedlock births. Particularly in the black community, but also in the white community. I mean, my problem with an analysis from someone like Lowry is [inaudible]. First of all, he is an ideologue. So I do not take anything [inaudible] someone like that says seriously because he is an ideologue trying to make an ideological point. So as a scholar, I just have no respect for that. But it is true that even ideologues make isolated facts that are true. And it is true that there has been a huge increase in out of wedlock births. That is occurred for a whole set of reasons. But the problem of the right-wing ideological analysis, the problem I have with that, aside from the fact that it is based in ideology, which means that it is not a thoughtful analysis. Is essentially that it comes from a place where people think there is a white community and a black community that are totally separate from one another, that have no impact on one another. And that there are these trends that spring up just out of the blue that take place in this so-called different black community. And that is just absurd. We have in America, we have trends that occur and they are certainly more prominent in poor communities and communities of color in some cases, in other communities in other cases. But something that begins with an idea that the black community did this, the black community did that, the black community ought to do this, is so racist and stupid that it is not worth responding to. SM (00:46:28): Yeah. It is interesting because of the right wing or the conservatives have also said that talking about the entire generation, all the boomer generation, the breakdown of the American society, most of our problems today center around the generation that came of age after World War II in the (19)60s and (19)70s. The drug- EC (00:46:49): Well, again, I mean, I am not terribly inclined to engage stupid analysis. Because at the end of the day, this is just stupid stuff. It comes out of ideologues who sort of have some idea that they could go back to some kind of society they imagined happened. Or what would have occurred if there had not been the so-called cultural revolution. That is just dumb. SM (00:47:15): Why do you feel that the right or conservatives continue today to always, what I call a... There is a backlash. The constant backlash against any progress that was seen to be made in the (19)60s and (19)70s. It is ever present. You hear it today on Fox constantly. EC (00:47:38): I think people are... And you have to ask these people too. SM (00:47:43): And I have. EC (00:47:45): And I doubt that they really know because I doubt they have that ability to reflect on their own psychology that clearly. But my suspicion is that you have a lot of people who were in effect very comfortable with the way that things used to be. And do not like the fact that they got shaken up. And in addition to that, you have a lot of people who have a point of ideology, do not like the fact that government got into the role of trying to help poor people. That government got into the business of trying to integrate society. That government got into the business of doing things that they would prefer the government have not done. And I think a lot of it stems from there. I mean, I think that Barack Obama is right when he makes the analysis that there are a lot of people still fighting the war, so the 1960s. But that sort of coincides with my point, which is that we are shaped by the era that in which we were raised. And I think that a lot of folks who came of age at a certain time, they have a certain analysis of that and they just did not like what was happening to their society. And I think you see echoes of that in a sense in the Tea Party movement now where their whole model is we are going to take back America. Well, take it back to what? Thing is there is never a clear answer about that. SM (00:49:19): Yes. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what was the watershed- EC (00:49:25): [inaudible] SM (00:49:25): What was the watershed moment of that whole era? EC (00:49:32): I think there were lots of moments there. And again, and not to be difficult, but I am just not sure that I can frame it that way. I mean, there were fairly lots of things that happened. I mean, there was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The decision of Johnson to resign. The Black Sunday event in Selma, the passage of the Voting Rights, the Civil Rights Act. The so-called Summer of Love. I mean, there were all these huge events that took place in the (19)60s. And then there were the riots. There was the Watts riots in (19)65. There were the huge riots that broke out in the wake of the assassination of King. There was the [inaudible] commission and his report, which for the first time ever pointed at white racism as a cause of a problem of a serious nature in the black community. You have a government entity sort of making that analysis. I am not sure, and I know historians love to do this and journalists love to do this, love to pick one point and one thing and say it was this, this, this and that. There were lots of things. But I think they also built on things that happened in the (19)60s. I mean, you would not have had the segregation banish we had in the (19)60s had it not been for the decision in (19)54 with Brown v. Board. You would not have had that if you had not had the cases that were originally brought in... that were the predecessor cases they had brought in the (19)40s. So there is a lot of stuff sort of leading into the (19)60s. And there was a, in that sense, sort of continuum. I think they just sort of peaked in the (19)60s in some way. And you had what seemed to be just one huge change after another taking place, which hit people in a huge way. And dependent upon what your interests were at the time, I think the (19)60s event that shook you is different. I mean, for some people it is obviously a lot of the stuff around the Vietnam War. For other people, it is a lot of stuff around civil rights. For other people, it is a lot of stuff around the rise of the hippies and the Summer of Love and things that went on of that nature. I think it just depends. I do not think there is an answer for that that sort of applies to everything and everybody. SM (00:52:22): Do you feel the Beats had any role at all in the anti-authoritarian attitudes that many boomers had when they started going to high school and college in the (19)60s? Because the Beats were members of the Silent Generation. And their writings, even though they were not large in number, their books were well read and they were anti-authoritarian in just about every way. EC (00:52:50): Well, I mean, there were certainly the Beats, the hipsters. I mean, they were certainly a sort of precursor to the hippies. And did they create this set of movements in the (19)60s? No, I do not think so. I mean, I think the movements of the (19)60s were [inaudible]. I mean, I think they gave some kind of intellectual context for them. I mean, I do not think what happened was that you had a generation that all of a sudden became anti-establishment and then started acting out. I think you had huge events that had an impact on people. I mean, you did have these huge battles taking place over civil rights. You did have the Vietnam War, which was directly affecting lots of young men who were not all that crazy about going to fight in a war in a country that they had no problem with. You also had the introduction of birth control, at least a new kind of birth control. And therefore a sort of sense of sexual liberation that had not existed before. So all of these things sort of took place. And I think that at the end of the day had more impact than the published writings of a few writers. SM (00:54:34): I think you have already answered my next question too because it was really getting into some of the things that well-known people had said. Quotes that are linked to people. I will mention these. Malcolm X, "By any means necessary." John Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Robert Kennedy, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not." Then you have the, "We shall overcome," which was the civil rights feelings of the South. And you had the Timothy Leary, "Tune on, turn on, dropout," kind of attitude. And then you had what Muhammad Ali said, which I think was a very important influence on many, many boomers when he said, "I am not going to Vietnam to kill little yellow babies when we are not taking care of little black babies at home." And then Bobby Muller, when he came back from Vietnam saying, "I learned that America is not always the good guy." So would you say that all these kinds of quotes are really... Just to what you were saying, it is part of our very being. They influenced a lot of different people in different ways. EC (00:55:49): Well, I mean, I think the quotes came out of the times. I do not think the times came out of the quote is basically my point. I think the reason these quotes resonated with people were because you did have a huge war in Vietnam. I mean, obviously, if it had not been, Muhammad Ali would never have said what he said. The reason Malcolm X's quote resonated was because you had a huge battle going on over basic rights for African-Americans at the time. Otherwise, what he said would have made no sense. So I think that that... And the same thing with, "We shall overcome." I mean, I think that these sorts of things stem out of huge sort of social events that were occurring. So as I was saying in an answer to your previous question, I do not think that the words were the things that drove the event. I think the events drove the words. SM (00:56:50): Very good. I am going to change my tape here. EC (00:56:58): [inaudible] might be a little bit of snow, but I do not think it is going to affect anything serious. SM (00:57:04): Could you discuss, this is very important, when you look at college campuses in the 1960s, late (19)60s and certainly early (19)70s, the term Black Power was everywhere. And it was all over the country too. And we saw it. I remember seeing a clip recently, Kathleen Cleaver explaining why she had an afro on a college campus. And it is tremendous, it is only 15 seconds. But what was the purpose of Black Power? What were its goals and the ultimate impact that it had on people at that time? Because it was a little bit beyond what Dr. King and Bayard Rustin were thinking about when they were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. What was Black Power? EC (00:57:51): I think, well, Black Power meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But I mean, I think at its essence, it was an articulation of a desire of to take control of their own destiny. To not be reliant on either the goodwill or the bad intention of white Americans. And to strike out an individual... Not individual, but a collective political path that could lead to empowerment of black people. I mean, that in its essence was what the idea of Black Power was about. Now people have very, very different ideas of what that meant. You have the Nation of Islam, the black Muslims, who thought that it basically meant having an independent nation totally separate from White America. You had other folks, some who were involved in movement politics, who thought that what that meant was black people taking charge of all leadership roles and movement activities, and moving white people aside. You had the other folks who thought it meant something else. So I am not sure you can look beyond the general sort of ideas of it, say it meant one thing. But I think what it came out of was this sense of... I think it was very much a generational sense. It came out of this sense that white people basically could not be trusted. And that the destiny of African-America, of African-Americans needed to be an African-American path. SM (00:59:43): It's interesting because I was at Ohio State in (19)71 and that was very powerful on our campus. And in the Ohio Union, African-American students and white students were having separate dances, and they could not even go to the section of the union where the dances were. There were a lot of issues there at the time. And some of the students- SM (01:00:02): ... issues there at the time, and some of the students went off to Linda McKinley High School to get guards for their dances without consulting the campus. What is interesting here is if you look at the study of Kent State University, you do not see any African American students protesting there. You read some of the books on Kent State, and there was a split happening between African American students and white students, particularly in the anti- war movement, that... EC (01:00:30): Well, there was not a split that happened. SM (01:00:30): Well, so... EC (01:00:36): I think that reflected a society that was intensely segregated, where African Americans... And we are still dealing with this. We are still dealing with this. It's not as if, prior to the eruption of the so-called Black Power Movement, you had an integrated society of Blacks and whites and they were doing lots of things together. That was never the case. So, it is hardly surprising that when you had a movement to bring up, they reflected the segregated nature of society. So, of course, we had white leaders; you had Black leaders, you had white activism and Black activism, and even around civil rights. Yes, they did come together and there was a huge effort to form some sort of multiracial coalition. But this, again, goes back to where we began this discussion, which is I think we are very much creatures of what shapes us. There were very few white Americans at that time, and also not that many Black Americans, who came up in anything remotely resembling an integrated setting or integrated society. There was this very strong sense that there were just two communities, and I think for many people, it was just impossible to bridge that gap, even among many people who considered themselves [inaudible]. SM (01:01:59): I think you are right because when you talk about activism of the (19)60s, you are only talking 5 percent, possibly, of the entire generation of 74 million that were even activists. EC (01:02:09): Yeah. And even among the activists, I think they carried a lot of the racial baggage of their generation. SM (01:02:19): If you look at the studies, though, of the (19)60s, you see that when the African American students protested the lunch counters in the South, many white students all over the country empathized and protested in various cities that same situation. Then you had a Freedom Summer where quite a few white students went South and risked their lives, and you had the many of them coming back to Berkeley at the free speech movement. So, there was that linkage between... EC (01:02:50): No, I am not saying there was not a linkage. I think there had to be a linkage. I mean, my God, you have people fighting for civil rights. How could they not consciously try to make some linkage? But I am saying that despite that, what I would call a real sort of beyond race, post-racial set of conditions never existed even within the movement. SM (01:03:16): Good point. Could you describe Boomer Generation now, born between (19)46 and (19)64, the oldest is 64 this year, and the youngest is 49. Could you describe, in your own words, the America of the following periods that Boomers have been alive? Just general comments about the periods, for all Americans and then secondly, were African Americans might think of this period as well, the period 1946 to 1960. EC (01:03:53): I guess the question is just too broad for me to get my head around. It's just too broad. I mean, I am not sure what you are looking for. SM (01:04:03): Well, when you think of that period in America, (19)46 to (19)60, just a couple of words that to describe it. EC (01:04:10): Well, I do not think of that as one period because if you think of (19)46, you are thinking, at least what I am thinking of, is post-war: The nation is still sort of putting itself together after that. You are thinking civil rights is very few people's agenda at that time. You are thinking of an era where, by and large, segregation is accepted as the way of life. If you go and move up into the (19)50s, and then you are obviously talking about an awakening that occurred at some point, driven largely by the events in Montgomery and elsewhere in the South, where all of a sudden, the country begins to question collectively what in the hell they were doing and what should be the status quo? Again, driven by... And your cutoff date was the early (19)60s? SM (01:05:27): Yeah. I had the (19)61 to (19)70 period. EC (01:05:31): Yeah. I think it was a different period. I think that post-war, and I was not around then, but I have read about that period. I think we were adjusting to being in a post-war situation. There was a certain celebration of having made the world safe for democracy. I think there was a huge unawareness of what was going on in our own backyard. There was a backlash against many of the Black troops who came back and were expecting to be treated as equals or at least hoped they would be, and were relegated immediately to the back of the bus. There were, in some cases, violence against the Black soldiers who had the temerity to demand to be treated as equal human beings. You had just a sense of incomprehension among white Americans that Black folk would be interested or entitled to any treatment other than the sort of treatment that had been meted out for years and years. Then you had, as I said, the awakening of the beginning in the middle (19)50s when there were all these huge protests and the rise of the civil rights movement, when at least thinking Americans, and in this instance, I am thinking of white thinking Americans, had to say, "My, God. Something is wrong here. Let us take a look at this and see if we can do something about that." Then the (19)60s is very different. I mean, being in the (19)60s, you had a country that had been wrestling for some years with the demand for equality, but you also had an international community that was taking interest at that point. That was, in various sectors, condemning the United States for articulating a concept of equality, but yet not being able to live up to that itself. SM (01:07:54): Yeah. That period, (19)61 to (19)70 and then (19)71 to (19)80, I guess some people think there is a linkage between those two, that the early (19)70s was basically a continuation of the (19)60s. EC (01:08:08): Well, as you probably could surmise from what I have said all along, I think everything is a continuation of something else. My mind does not work that way that it was this discrete little period that was not connected to the period before that. I just do not think history works that way. I do not think people work that way. I think that we are always sort of building on what came before. SM (01:08:33): Would you say, though, that when you start getting into the 1980s and Ronald Reagan, that is the period of backlash? EC (01:08:41): Well, there were periods of backlash all along the way. I mean, when whites effectively marched out of the Democratic Party after the Johnson years, that was a backlash. That was a huge backlash, certainly against civil rights. I do not think you had any period of struggle where there was not backlash, but certainly I think that by the time Reagan got into office, you had, I guess, a national mandate for a certain bit of politics. SM (01:09:29): Yeah. Of course, we talk about the culture wars. We have seen them on university campuses, at least I have seen them my whole life, for over 30 years. That certainly is a quality that defines what America's all about in that period. As a journalist, you mentioned it early on, but have you seen a racism and prejudice during your years in the profession? You told me about the early years when very few African Americans, but now as... And I know Asso Moore real well. I have known Asso for 30 years, and he shared so many things about what happened with him when he came up. But once the African American journalists were a very important part of the scene, you still see the subtleness? Basically, what I am saying, as a journalist, have you seen racism or prejudice during your years in the profession? Just your thoughts on that. EC (01:10:28): Well, I think anybody who is honest would have to answer of course you have. But again, that goes back [inaudible] to my personal experience. But I think that Americans have this dopey idea that people are raised with a certain set of beliefs, and they come up holding to these things, and all of a sudden they get enlightenment and, boom, they go from being racist to not racist. That is not any equivalent human being that I know of. I think that if people are brought up and they always keep a lot of the beliefs that people are brought up with unless they are some extraordinary kind of person. So, it is impossible for me, just intellectually to conceive of a profession where Blacks were totally excluded; it was considered natural to do interviews about communities but not interview anybody Black; where the Black community was looked at as some foreign and hostile place; but then, boom, you get the civil rights and all these people suddenly start seeing things totally differently. No, of course not. Has racism become unacceptable in society? Yes, it has. Has it become a much more subtle... Of course it has. Personally, I think things have reached the point where there is really little to be gained by calling people racist because nobody in this country considers themselves racist anymore. Everybody considers themselves enlightened, even if they do not happen to have any Black friends, even if they do not happen to believe that Black people are capable of doing certain things. They still do not think they are racist. So, I think the whole idea of calling people racist does not make a whole lot of sense. But do you see things happen all the time in society that are rooted in people's racial preconceptions? Yes, of course you do, and of course I have. SM (01:12:35): It is interesting, Elvis, that the subtleness is the adjective that now describes racism or sexism or homo... There is a subtleness, supposedly, in our society. It is what really Dr. King, if you read his writings, that he feared the most. He feared the fence-sitter he did, where people, I do not know where you stand at an issue. He could deal with a bigot because he knew who they were. Obviously, his supporters. But the fence-sitter was the one that he was most afraid of. And that is always stuck with me. So, in my years in higher ed, when I see people that just say nothing, I think of Dr. King, and they're a bunch of fence-sitters. You got to say something. EC (01:13:20): Well, I am aware of that, and I think you're right in your interpretation of what King said, but I am making a different point, which is this: Even people who declare themselves not racist and who therefore would not consider themselves fence-sitters are not necessarily free of racial prejudice. I do not know how many social events I have gone to organized by white journalists, some of them terribly important, where it becomes very clear that they do not have any Black people in their lives. They just do not invite people. I remember years ago... What was it? Maybe 10, 15 years ago, when Paul Delaney left the New York Times. He was the senior-ranking Black journalist at the time. There was a party given for him by one of the top editors there. I remember being struck with the fact that the only Black people at that party were the three of us who Paul had invited. Now, from my way of thinking, it is not possible to operate in a world where you do not have any Black friends, do not see any Black people, do not think you have anything in common with Black people, and yet at the same time, to think that you are totally free of racial prejudice and preconceptions. I just do not think that is possible. SM (01:14:54): Remember when we invited you to West Chester, you had written your book Nation of Strangers, which, a great book. EC (01:15:00): Thank you. SM (01:15:02): I passed it on to my niece to read a couple years ago, and she read it. She liked it, too. I am just using this: Do you think we are still a nation of strangers, here in the year 2010, with the divisiveness between groups and so forth? EC (01:15:22): I think we are becoming less so generationally. I think that the analyses that I would have made, certainly when it comes to racism and ethnic groups and the estrangement that I would have made 20 years ago is not quite the one I would make today. I think that people, and particularly younger people, are becoming much more comfortable than folks in the Boomer Generation and certainly the folks in the Silent Generation with reaching across the so-called racial divide. So, I think we're evolving, and I think a lot of it has to do with the transformation in generations. SM (01:16:12): Do you feel the media has done a good job over the years covering the events that shaped the Boomers? I say this because there is a recent book out by Professor Young at Lehigh University, I am just starting to read it, which basically says that the media has portrayed the (19)60s and (19)70s in more of a sensationalistic way, concentrating oftentimes on the bad or the highly controversial over the serious and highly analytical substance types of approach. What are your thoughts on how it has been covered? EC (01:16:47): Well, I think the reality is that that is just a consequence of the media doing what it always does, which is to try to sum up things, which is to try to point to what it considers something that is most significant, which is the focus on something that is attention-grabbing, which is another word for sensational, and which is to try to find trends whether or not they're there. That is sort of the conventional approach to journalism in this country. So, of course, I think it is going to not be a balanced or fair view because that would be sort of saying that you expect to see a portrayal of an average, ordinary sort of society by reading the front page. Well, the front page is full of people who get shot, full of people who do awful things, is full of people who are engaged in great political battles. That is not what most people's normal life is like. SM (01:18:01): Yeah. One of the things of the (19)60s, and again, well, I want to make sure it crossed every ethnic group, and that was the generation gap. Did you have a generation gap in your family, between you and your parents on the issue of the war or on any of the social issues that you got involved in as a young person? EC (01:18:21): Well, I am not sure I would call it a generation gap, but yeah, my parents and I saw things quite differently. But I am not sure that... I think the events were more colorful back then, in some ways, than they are for some generations. But I am hard-pressed to think of a generation that does not see things differently than their parents in some way. I think my parents did not understand how I could admire at least some things about a group like the Black Panthers, who they thought were just sort of thugs. But I think the first time I brought a white friend home, actually, well, a white friend home who was female, at least, my mother just thought this was crazy because she was a product of the segregated South and did not understand how it was even conceivable to have a white friend who was female without being worried about terrible consequences. And so, her reality was a different reality. So, there is a generation gap, but certainly we looked at things different because of our generation. SM (01:19:47): Yeah. You remember that Life Magazine cover that had the young man with the long hair with his father pointing a finger at the sun? EC (01:19:55): Yeah. SM (01:19:55): They are talking about the generation gap. Then the book, The Wounded Generation, Jim Webb brings up in a conversation with James Fallows and Bobby Mueller and Phil Caputo, that the real gap, yeah, it was between parents and their kids, but the real gap was between those who went to war and served their country in Vietnam and those who did not, what he called the intragenerational gap. Do you agree with that? EC (01:20:26): You are going to get the same answer from me on a lot of these questions, which is those kinds of analyses is just way too pat. SM (01:20:36): That came right out of a transcript from a... EC (01:20:37): Right. Right. I mean, as I said, yeah, there were differences obviously. I know people who went to Vietnam; I know people who did not, and in some cases, there was not any sort of gap at all in any meaningful sense. But sure, the guys who went to Vietnam had a very different experience than the ones who did not. Part of the reason a lot of people did not go to Vietnam, it depends on what year you're talking about, the younger folks because they got better lottery numbers; the older folks, because they were better at playing the system. So, yeah, sure. There was a gap there, but it started off with a gap, particularly if you had people who were gaming the system to stay away from the war and people who decided to go. So, you had a gap before they even went. SM (01:21:29): Right. I know we are getting almost to the end of our time here. I got just two questions left. One of them is dealing with the women's movement. The women's movement evolved out of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, and there's been at least a lot written about the apparent sexism that took place in both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, which pushed women into their own movement. Are you in agreement with that? EC (01:21:58): Well, yes and no. I think that more out of the civil rights movement than the anti-war movement, in a sense that A Feminine Mistake was written in (19)63, as I recall. That was before the anti-war movement had really picked up any steam. That is, for me, where I would sort of put as the marker for the beginning of the modern feminist movement. I think it is as good a place as any. But I think clearly, when you had all of this talk about equality and you had all this movement for social equality, you were going to have women who looked at that and said, "My, goodness. Some of this applies to us, too." So, I would say much more out of the civil rights movement, which was in full-force by the time the women's movement began to take off, than the anti-war movement, which came a little bit later. SM (01:22:57): As a take-off of this question, do any of these movements of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, and I am talking about the environmental movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano, Native American, women's movement, do any of these mean something in 2011? Because others have commented, they are all kind of separate; they are all kind of into their own world now, and they seem like in the (19)60s and (19)70s they were together on many issues. EC (01:23:30): Well, I am not sure I would agree with that either. I mean, if you look at the very fact that the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund and the Puerto Rico Legal Defense Education Fund and American Legal Defense Fund, I mean they named themselves after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I mean, that was a very conscious decision. They were, in effect, copying what the NAACP had done in a very conscious way. Well, all these groups still exist. Some of them are still very prominently fighting. And there is a... What is it? The Conference for Civil Rights out of DC, which still is an umbrella group which tries to hold them all together. I do not think they have gone their separate ways. I think they are probably as much together in a sense as they ever were. Now, I think the larger question is whether the groups rooted in that time, and those groups are all rooted in that time; they were sort of formed around the civil rights era or shortly after it, how relevant they are to today's time, I think is the larger question, not whether they are still in cooperation. I think they still are. SM (01:24:52): Actually, this is a two-part question, and this is it. One of the things I have heard and read about over the years, and you have seen it on the news, is critical of the African American leadership today in America. How can you try to compare it with the era of the (19)50s and the (19)60s and the (19)70s, when you had Dr. King and Bayard Rustin and James Farmer, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. I mean, John Lewis, even though he is still very important today as a congressman, but you have these very powerful, visible, respected, although some people did not like them that were racist, and trying to compare... There has been articles written that, "Where is the African American leadership today?" Have you thought about that or written about it? EC (01:25:45): Well, again, I think that is sort of a stupid place to begin in terms of the people who write that sort of stuff because, again, it has to do with my way of looking at the world. Martin Luther King did not just one fine day sort of spring out of nowhere and lead a movement. Martin Luther King was recruited for a movement that was already in process. The idea that a great man came along and totally changed everything that is happened before is so ahistorical, I do not know where to begin. The reason you had these larger-than-life figures is because there were larger-than-life issues that they were dealing with that were very clear, and they demanded the appearance of larger-than-life issues, so [inaudible] larger-than-life people who could embody them. You had certainly some very-very gifted people. I think the other thing you have to realize is that if you were an African American who was supremely talented and a great public speaker and had certain sort of skills in that era, you did not have a whole lot of options. So, you had a huge number of these people who were being, first of all, going into the church, and then you had the church funneling them into the movement. Not all of them. But a lot of these people sort of came that route. They did not have the option of becoming a lawyer on Wall Street. No big law firm was going to hire them. They did not have the option of working for some big corporation and becoming anything important. No corporation was going to have anything in a position. So, I think a few things you have to sort of just acknowledge: One is that if you were going to really shine, there were a limited number of areas wherein which you could shine. If you had talent, one of those areas was going to be the big movement of the day. I think the other thing though, as I was saying, is that times shape the people more than people shape the times as far as individuals go. Yes, all those people you name were supremely gifted individuals. And yes, they were courageous and they were insightful and they helped move us to a place where we needed to be moved. But the fact of the matter is if they had not, somebody else would have, because the times demanded that. SM (01:28:27): And in studying Bayard Rustin, we all know there would have been no Bayard Rustin without A. Philip Randolph. EC (01:28:32): Yeah. [inaudible]. Yeah. I would agree. SM (01:28:34): And what a great man he was. My last question is legacy. The best history books are often written 50 years after an era or an event. I know it is hard for you to probably to answer this, too, or to speculate, but what do you think historians and sociologists and writers will be saying about this generation, and I mean an all-inclusive generation, Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, every ethnic background you can imagine. What do you think they are going to say about the Boomer Generation once the last Boomer's passed? EC (01:29:10): Well, I think they will say that it was a generation that happened to be in America at a time when some huge events took place and, really, in terms of demographics, it was a huge generation, which is why one of the reasons it is called the Boomer Generation. In terms of events, it sort of bore witness to some of the defining events of that century. So, what would they say about it? I think they would say that a lot of big things happened during the era of the Boomers. SM (01:29:48): Okay. Is there any question that I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? EC (01:29:56): I had no idea what you were going to ask, so... SM (01:30:00): One final thing, and thank you very much, Elvis, for... SM (01:30:03): One final thing, and thank you very much, Ellis, for... And I owe you lunch. EC (01:30:06): Oh, sure. Well, we can [inaudible] SM (01:30:07): I am going to do that because I come to New York. I have got about nine people. I got to take their pictures that I have interviewed on the phone, and I will be in communication with you. But do you think one of the qualities that probably is a good quality, but some people say is bad, is that this is a generation that really does not trust because they had so many leaders lie to them while they were growing up, whether it be Watergate or the lies about Vietnam, or even Eisenhower's U2 lie. They saw so many leaders lying to them that trust is, they're not a very trusting generation. EC (01:30:46): Well, that is a psychological question. I would not characterize the generation that way. I mean, there was certainly the phrase of the time, do not trust anyone over 30. SM (01:30:58): But Jerry Rubin changed that to 40 when he realized he was turning 30. EC (01:31:06): Oh hell, over 30 I mean, so of course. I do not think you can pick a psychological trait and use it to define an entire generation. I just do not. I think there are people with that generation who are... But to me that is much more, that is asking what analysis of personal psychology, which goes beyond, well beyond my expertise. But I just do not think those kinds of terms apply to an entire generation. SM (01:31:37): Very good. Well, thank you very... (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 Ellis Cose Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cose, Ellis ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource African American editors; African American Authors; Cose, Ellis--Interviews Description An account of the resource Ellis Cose, a native of Chicago, is a columnist and editor for Newsweek. He is the author of a dozen of books including the best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class. He became a columnist at the age of 19 and he became a contributor for the Times Magazine. Cose appeared on several shows and he has been interviewed frequently around the world. Ellis earned his B.A. degree in Psychology from the University of Illinois and a Master’s degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington 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 2010-12-22 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.10.2016.41a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.41b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 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. 178:08