77 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e162d0976f2a44d20b79d13e6eb64bdd.mp3 ab0608b778bb679eb6a4bd72334ea5f6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2019-03-29 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Janice Quinter Year of Graduation 1973 Biographical Text Janice (Ebenstein) Quinter attended Harpur College from 1970-1973 and graduated with a Bachelors in Anthropology and a minor in Afro-American Studies. After working at the American Museum of Natural History she was awarded a Master's degree in Anthropology and Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in 1980. She spent her career as an archivist in research repositories in every borough in New York City, including 24 years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, of the New York Public Library. Janice is happy to have contributed to increasing human knowledge about many areas of study. 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Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Janice Quinter Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 29 March 2019 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) JQ: 00:08 My present name is Janice Quinter. That is QUINTER. My unmarried name is Ebenstein EBENSTEIN. I was at Harpur from 1970 to (19)73 for three years as a transfer student living in Jackson. And I am happy to be conducting the interview about my experiences in very fun kind of memories of Harpur College at Binghamton. IG: 00:39 Very good, very good. So maybe you could tell us where you grew up and what your family background was like, and whether education was encouraged and your family; what your parents did. JQ: 01:00 My parents were born in the 1910s in New York City. They were born of Jewish parents, my two brothers and myself are Jewish. I have two older brothers. My parents did not attend college. They graduated from high school in New York City, which at that time was like getting at least a community college degree, if not-not more advanced than that. My mother loved the English in English language in foreign languages. So, she learned to articulate the language very carefully and to spell and love literature. She- we lived in a housing project, which I am very proud of actually, in Rockaway Beach called the "Arverne Housing Project." Completed just a few months before I was born, I was born in 1951. My parents moved in-in late 1950. My father was a war veteran and was stationed in Europe and fought in Germany, Luxembourg, and France. My parents met here in New York City in Manhattan. And would married at 19- f- f- knowing to the for five years--my parents were married in 1942. My father sold housewares because his family had done similar kinds of things. And my parents, my father was in it was in the military for about five-five and a half years. He was drafted in 1942, served eleven months war broke out. He married my mother within a short period of time after that, and then went off to war for another four years. And my brother was born in 1943. So, my father so my brother, a short period of time my mother lived with her parents up in Harlem at that time. And my mother worked when she needed to work because we were in a housing project, which was a wonderful place to live in in Rockaway right next to the beach, with many interesting, very nicely behaved students, kids at the time and parents who most of them had had fathers who are war veterans. So, the housing project was built to accommodate the war veterans and their wives and children at the time. So many of the children were my age. My mother worked in a library for a number of years, for 14 years before she retired in 1986. My father retired the same year. We are Jewish, and it was just inculcated in us without ever I do not recall my parents ever telling us to do any homework, to do homework or read or have any particular things that we must we just knew that education is very important. You will wind up going to college and pursuing our interests. I, being the only girl and the kind of the oddball kid had all these unusual interests, like archaeology and anthropology, and American Indian Studies and travel to not the norm kinds of places. So, my parents did not encourage me per se, they just kind of enabled me to do these things. For example, I did not attend my high school graduation because in 1969 from Far Rockaway High School because I had applied for an archaeology field program in Pennsylvania. And as most students across the country complete their high school year in early June, this program was due to begin in late June. So, I opted to not attend the what was the gala for the students. IG: 04:54 The graduation ceremony. JQ: 04:56 The prom, end of June. And I had even gotten the dress and earrings and all the other paraphernalia. Nor did I go to my high school graduation my parents did not mind at all because they knew that this was-was that attending the field program in archaeology was far more important to me than going to exercises like that. IG: 05:15 You know, how did you develop these interests so early on that is quite remarkable. Usually it is, it is something that comes into one's life at a later, at a later point, right? Not-not in high school. JQ: 05:29 My earliest recollection of becoming interested in archaeology was when I was in grade school and the teacher--I must not could have been a third of fourth grade--the teacher read some story about cavemen and that just intrigued me. My mother bought a book for me. Later on, I guess I was already in junior high school by that time about geology or earth science. So, I devour that in and read the archaeology books that were available in the local library in Rockaway. And I got associated with somebody heading an archaeology program at the Brooklyn Museum in the late 1960s. So, I got involved in that kind of thing. So that by the time I was in junior high school, I already knew that I was going to study archaeology, and I never wavered from that it was my path was set. [laughs] By the time I was perhaps 14 or so. So, I wound up getting a bachelor's in anthropology from Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton. And then I had the opportunity when I was already at Harpur, to go to West Africa, between my junior and senior years. So, I wound up being able to minor, an Afro American Studies. IG: 06:49 Tremendous-tremendous. So why did you choose Harpur because of its art- you know, why-why- tell us. JQ: 06:57 I was graduated from high school in June 1969. I was not very good--I should say a competent student in algebra. So, my average was brought down my overall average was brought down because of that. This was before open admissions, which people my age who lived in New York City will know about, my average was half a point too low to be admitted to Hunter College, living in Rockaway Beach, all the colleges were quite far from me. So, Hunter College would have been the only college which I could have gotten to in about an hour or hour, about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half travel on the subway--all the other colleges would have been not possible to have reached. So, my average was 83.5, I needed 84. So, I was not admitted. I went to New York City Community College in Brooklyn on J Street for my freshman year. And I loved that college. The students were really interesting, involved in everything very open about their feelings and the world around them, the Civil Rights kinds of things going on and different kinds of music. And it was- I was completely happy at that school. But I knew I wanted to study anthropology. So, I took all the regular subjects but not anthropology at New York City Community College. So, I took a year of geology, I was not permitted to take geology in high school because I was not an advanced student what [inaudible] called SP, SP three or SP two. IG: 06:58 I remember. JQ: 07:42 So, I could not take most interesting subject of all so I took history and French and literature and a fantastic philosophy course, which still has an impact on me. And gym, which was great, athletic programs. But I knew I did not want to go to that school for two years because I wanted to have a college which had strong academics in my chosen field. So, I got- I knew I wanted to go to a four-year CUNY- SUNY Center, not-not one of the regular colleges. They were all only four because I wanted better academics of the four- IG: 09:14 What do you mean by SUNY Center? JQ: 09:17 I am not using the right term. The four major centers- IG: 09:22 Research centers, or...? JQ: 09:23 -like Stony Brook Albany, Buffalo, I am sorry, not yet but Buffalo, the four major- IG: 09:30 I mean, there are there are universities, their universities within the SUNY system, but- JQ: 09:36 Yes, but for example, not-not-not Geneseo, not Plattsburgh- IG: 09:40 Right-right. JQ: 09:40 -those [crosstalk] IG: 09:40 Because they are the major research universities. So- Right. JQ: 09:44 That a special term now I am not-not able to recall the term but there were four colleges within the SUNY system of New York State, which were better than the regular local colleges [crosstalk] are-are-are four of them. So, of those Buffalo was for me was-was too far away and too cold. Albany was in another city and I lived in a big city. And Albany was not an interesting city to me was just a government city. Stony Brook had a reputation for being very druggie, which was not my area of wanting to become like that. So left SUNY Binghamton. So, I did not visit SUNY Binghamton. I select, simply selected out of a catalog at from-from Binghamton catalog. The catalog discussed the kinds of professors and when I counted in compared the PhD professor that those professors had PhDs with the other schools, they were far greater number in SUNY Binghamton. So, I chose to go there. And they also had a large number of anthropology courses. So, I simply chose Binghamton out of out of the catalog. IG: 10:54 So, when you first arrived, what were- what-what year did you arrive in? JQ: 11:00 I arrived in mid-September 1970. My parents drove me, drove me up with my belongings. There was no- at that time, most of the students lived on campus. But there was no student housing for me. So, my parents and I found a place where I could live for which included three meals a day for seven days a week off campus in the City of Binghamton five miles from the campus for over $21 a week. And then I had a roommate from the Bronx from the high school of the Bronx High School of Science. IG: 11:32 Right. JQ: 11:34 So, we roomed together for the year when house it became available on campus. For me then I moved into Dickinson College. IG: 11:42 So, what were your first impressions of the university? JQ: 11:47 Lots of mud. [laughs] Construction going on nonstop until the day I left and I think construction is still continuing. IG: 11:58 Yes-yes, it is. JQ: 12:02 Very cloudy and rainy. Not very pleasant weather. Fantastic students, excellent professors. Growing up in Rockaway Beach, I saw only a few trees in my life. We were too far away to go into Central Park or other parks outside of Rockaway, although we had done some traveling across the country. So, the fact that I could go to the women's gym walking down a path and sit at a bench and write some letters and do some reading and collect these colorful leaves, which I never knew existed and put them in dictionary, flatten them out and send them to friends. My let- my letters about what I was doing at Harpur College was endearing. I really had never seen colorful trees before. So, all the colors of the reds and the browns and the goldens and just being able to kick the leaves and run around and be able to- be safe because in the, in the late 1960s, 1970 New York City was not safe. So, I could not go out in the evening just be able to see earthworms. I had never seen an earthworm before. Even though I am from-from the outer area. We did not have earthworms in Rockaway, we did not have any earth it was all sand--lots of woods. I think that was my first impression, just the beautiful countryside and with really interesting students and very highly trained, thoughtful, intelligent professors. IG: 13:41 Do any professors stand out in your mind that made that influenced you that made a particular impact? JQ: 13:54 Yes, there were a couple, most especially professor Percy Borde [Percival Sebastian Borde], who was involved in the theater department. He taught West African- he was originally from Trinidad and taught West African dance which I took in the-the fall semester of 1970, spring semester 1972. I had never taken or seen dance from any other country in the world. Growing up in Rockaway Beach, we just had one-one regular culture and then a couple of other-other things. So, the fact that I could have the opportunity to take a dance course, in a culture other than my own is what attracted me to the culture. It was not that I was particularly interested in African or Black culture, but it is just different from my own. And anthropologists are curious about people who are not like us. So, I was eager to take that. IG: 15:02 So, what did you learn about the culture through the dance? You remember? JQ: 15:07 Yes, I remember quite a bit. The fact that the culture is intrinsic to- that dance is intrinsic to the to the culture, and everything that is important to the West African people, especially the Yoruba, who we focused on and those people also in Liberia, was expressed through the dance. So, we learned many of the dances which Percy Borde and his wife, quite famous dancer, also from Trinidad, Pearl Primus [Pearl Eileen Primus] had collected these dancers who had studied the dances and learn them in West Africa and then brought them back and we were able to learn them. We also learned- we presented our dances at the end of the semester. So, our graduation, so to speak from the class was to cook a West African styled food, wear-wear African clothing to the dance, we learned some words, we learned a whole array of other kinds of things. And then we presented this to the other students on campus. IG: 16:15 I am very curious about the dances so though this kind of diverges from now a little bit of your recollection of the Harpur, of the Harpur Binghamton experience. But were they, were they in any way invoking deities? Do they have any kind of Shamanic-shamanic underpinning or, I mean, that is- do you remember that about them? JQ: 16:46 Yes, but-but the answer is negative. They were not shamanistic in that sense. Perhaps. Percy and his wife had not learned those dances, but we were not told about that. IG: 16:58 I see. JQ: 16:58 So, they were more involved into there was a welcome dance, which is quite famous at Pearl made [inaudible]. And we learned that, we learned work dances-dances that would have been done in the field. More everyday kind of dances but not-not the religious kinds of things. IG: 17:14 I see. I see. JQ: 17:15 We did have a drummer who played the bongo drum quite carefully because the rhythm is very important. So, he competed us in our classes and performances. IG: 17:25 I know that the drum also has a special role in these dances and it is almost a call and response. Does-does that have that function in the Yoruba dances? Do you remember? JQ: 17:37 I do not recollect that in the dances. I-I mean, I know about in the music, but I do not recall that in the dances. But I did- through Percy Borde--he did invite a number of students with- to accompany him to West Africa to study during the entire summer. IG: 17:59 Did you go? JQ: 18:00 I sure did. IG: 18:01 Oh, how was that? JQ: 18:02 So again, my- here I was 21 years old. IG: 18:05 How fantastic. JQ: 18:06 I was- all the other students were Black and male and Protestant or Catholic, Christian. So here I am- IG: 18:16 How wonderful. JQ: 18:16 -the only girl the only white and the only do little petite skinny-skinny 110-pound gal who went and I did not get sick. I was very proud of that. So, I not only did I see- we were actually there to study the cultures in 44 countries in West Africa, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, and Dahomey, which is now called Guinean. So, we spent eight and a half nine weeks there. Percy was there that the entire time we had an interview and then we were selected and I was- I had wanted to participate because I was an anthropology student over the years an opportunity to learn everything, I could possibly soak up with an extraordinary person along with the other students. So, we met and we-we encountered segments of society from every realm of every stratified society. From the Oba has the Kings, the president of Liberia, we-we met him, we met the villagers. The villagers went to a lot of the villages. Many of the people when we were traveling had never- in villages had never seen a white person before. So, they would point to me and say in their local language, white man, white man, so it was quite-quite extraordinary. We studied at two universities had food prepared-prepared specially for us. The professors were extraordinary. So, we had courses in linguistic sociology, art, appreciation, so to speak, then actually doing the art, music, dance, the hist-history, the various problems that-that the societies faced, especially with the populations moving into the cities from the countryside. So, it was all immersive and utterly fantastic. So, I wound up years later in the 1990s, being asked by the head of the archives of the Schomburg Center for Research and black culture, which is the black Research Library of New York Public Library in Harlem, to work in the archives, so wanted to do that for 24 years. And then I retired five years ago from that. So yes, there was a very direct impact upon my worldview, as well as my career. And my, I think my contributions to society because of having met Percy Borde. I also then went the next semester. He- the spring semester, the year I was graduating, so that would have been the spring semester of 1973. He was also teaching a course in Caribbean dance, West Indian dance, which I participated in as well. And he had hoped to have taken a contingent of us with him to Trinidad, where he was from to study Trinidad in culture, but he was not able to get the funding for that. So, it did not quite pan out, but did not stop me. I met several other students whom he had introduced me to, and we together went to Trinidad for carnival that year. So, we were all there for two weeks, between February and March. And I had told my professors in advance that I would be missing two weeks of school my graduating semester, they gave me permission. Then I took I made up the courses in the test when I returned and graduated, luckily successfully. Another professor, who wound up being very influential, and whom I adore as well, is named Owen Lynch, an anthropologist who was brought up here in Flushing, Queens, and taught anthropology, social anthropology and anthropology, about India, Asia-India. I had him for an anthropology religion class, also when I was an upperclassman, and he was quite extraordinary. He loves students. He was very funny, a fantastic professor. And more than that, just fantastic human being very giving very humble, found all kinds of creative, practical ways to help the Indians whom he studied. And he studied the untouchables in the 1960s, and early (19)70s, before they really had any kind of freedom. He left Harpur around the same time I was graduating, oh, I did not want to add in my compliments to him that he was the only professor of all those at Harpur College who actually went to the graduation exercise for us. So, I was able to introduce him to my parents. And I have always remembered that his that is extraordinary love of student- love and appreciation of students by actually going to the graduation exercise on our behalf. He then left Harpur College because he had gotten an invitation to have a chair at NYU anthropology, the anthropology department. After four years, I wound up going to NYU for-for graduate studies. And he became very-very dear friend. I mean, he had been a dear friend before but he became very important to me there especially. So, I was with him during both colleges that he taught and much to my benefit, and I think to his as well, he and I remained very close friends till his death some years ago, and I saw him just a couple of months before he died and- IG: 18:16 Right-right. JQ: 24:07 -he and I remained close friends. I mean, my whole family knew him, he came to my wedding. He knew my children, so it was very endearing for all of us. IG: 24:18 That is tremendous. I mean, that is, that is tremendous. So interesting. How-how, you know, how did your- I mean, you had such a really enlightened privileged view of the world at such an early age. How did that shape sort of your-your, you know, politics about the civil rights movement in the United States? JQ: 24:59 Well, I-I should add that I came from a very standard background at the time. Rockaway Beach had primarily Jewish working-class families and students. IG: 25:14 Right. JQ: 25:15 In both the primary schools as well as up through high school, we had a few black students, a few Black-Black families who lived who went to the same schools that I did. And they were no, and there were some, some Irish Catholic Irish. And that was all, there were no Latin Americans because the law had not changed at that point. So perhaps it was my interest in anthropology, which gave me a broader perspective, but not-not when I was living in Rockaway, because I was just a very normal, ordinary existence. Although I was interested in the Civil War, but that was about before I went to college, but I thought that was the extent of my having any understanding about any other people. And all we studied about other countries in high school was, we were, we were, the United States was in that country to prevent the spread of communism that was repeated in every single class. So, it was certainly not-not in high school. Um, I and I did not really have an interest in Black culture, aside from being able to take Percy Borde's class, but I was between my junior and senior years. So, it did not develop early. But I, but I did meet Africans, there were a couple of Africans who were friends with Percy Borde whom I met and became friends with, in my senior year, still at a college. So, I think having been to West Africa and being exposed to so much, I had no preconceived notions about Africa before I went there. I remember when I arrived, one of the college students in Africa college student who was there not-not one of us American, SUNY, Binghamton students, asked what my notions were about Africa. He asked that I think was like Tarzan people getting a golden round from tree to tree. And I had never thought that I had no thoughts. And I had no preconceived ideas at all, except what the respect that Percy Borde taught us, of Africans having toward other Africans, and especially toward elders, I remember when-when we were there, there were a small group, and there was an older African lady, market lady carrying merchandise in her head. And he made all of us stop, because his elder in society needed to pass so we had to stop so she could go before. So, I think the respect that the Africans have for each other had, especially the women had a very big impact on my being able to see the world in a different light, that American culture was not the only thing which existed and our standards of behavior were certainly not-not the ordinary, although at that time, there was a greater respect for elders and there are now. The- this whole young people generation came about in the mid (19)60s, I would say, yeah, so it was not like I was brought up with it from early childhood- IG: 28:56 I see. JQ: 28:57 -onward. But I think I did not quite answer your questions. [crosstalk] IG: 28:59 I was, I was grasping at something I do not know, I- JQ: 29:05 Civil rights. IG: 29:06 -civil rights, civil rights. But you in part, answered this, because you saw that there were a different, a different ways of being different ways of living outside of the United States. And maybe this is not the only viewpoint. I mean, it expanded your- it enlarged. It was an enlarging experience. So, but-but I do not, you know, I mean, did it make you feel more? I mean, were you involved in the Civil Rights movement at all? And did your experience in Africa kind of fuel your belief in the rightness of civil rights, you know in injustice and for African Americans you know, and making it more immediate. I do not I mean- JQ: 30:13 Okay. IG: 30:14 -my might have been something very different. JQ: 30:15 First of all, I was too young to have become actively involved in civil rights, because born in 1951, so it would have been, would have been born in the 1940s to have actively involved in it on a regular basis. So, I do not really know that I became actively involved in civil rights. When I was grad- during-during this time period, or when I was graduated. I think I was just; I-I did not know to become active. I think that that was a thing that I was thinking about this before your arrival--that Harpur College was extraordinary in the sense that it really broadened my perspective in a lot of ways that had never occurred to me before. I found the students at Far Rockaway High School. And we were all from Rockaway, pretty much the same. And I did not find that the conversations were enlightening or interesting at all, until I went to New York City Community College, where students were way ahead of my thinking in terms of just realizing things and understanding things. And then we talk and talk and talk. And then I could- my mind started to expand then. And it expanded a lot more, I think, at Harpur, and I was not ever involved politically, which I think is-is important, the reason I am having difficulty with your question. But at Harpur, in the student union, especially during lunch break, there were students who set up tables about various things, which they were particularly interested in. So, they were tables, and they were people who were belong to- who were communists and socialists. Capitalists did not need a table because most people were capitalist anyhow. So that would not be a new, new kind of conversation. People evolved in the women's movement, just the beginnings of gay and lesbian stuff, especially in dance classes and dance clubs, which I belong to there--not-not modern dance, not-not- IG: 30:55 Right. Interesting, yeah. JQ: 32:25 -different kinds of food and what I was, I was used to--American food, but I just, I never experienced it. So, I think that was my enlightenment. Not-not, so it was some of everything all at once. But it was not particularly civil rights. For example, there was, there was a male student who had been in Attica prison before in the 1960s, before my arrival, so like when the Attica riots occurred in 1970. He was then had a table of his own in the student center and handed out literature. So, I think the enlightenment came about all these things, which I had never thought about, because they just did not occur in Rockaway Beach, where I guess. IG: 33:09 I guess, you know, I would, you know, I, my assumption was that after having gone to Africa and seen the richness of this culture and the- you mentioned, you know, exposure to- to big intellectuals in, you know, academics, and then coming here and seeing how far we need to go, you know, to appreciate- that there was no question about, you know, how deserving African American people are, and-and after, after experiencing that, in Africa. I do not know what I am grasping toward, but it just, you know, because you see these people from a very different vantage point, you see their sort of ancestors and-and here, you know, the, the whole issue is the color of the skin, and you see people here and there, you know, who are accomplished and you know, it just like it becomes you know, I would think that you would, you know, that conclusion that you would draw eyes, what is the whole problem about, you know, why are we struggling? Why-why-why did this happen in the first place, you know, and- does that make sense? I think I took it as a given. That is a given. That is a given. JQ: 34:39 Right, given because not well- not only does this just make sense, because it is just obvious, very logical. You do not think I needed to realize that [crosstalk] save a copy, for example, in I also did take a course my last semester at Harpur College, Afro American history since 1877--1877 being a cut off with the Reconstruction. So, I wound up doing a term paper about the founding of the of the NAACP, and the Jewish involvement in those early years. IG: 35:26 I understand. I understand. JQ: 35:28 I think it-it was just so obvious to me what the solution is that I do not think it required-required [crosstalk] realization. IG: 35:37 I just remember the United States or I remember even New York, I am, I am a little bit younger than you were. But I remember a very different New York, and that there were racial divides and racial tensions. And so that is, you know, that-that is what I was exposed to. That is what I that is the New York, even the New York, the progressive New York that I grew up in. Um, so- JQ: 36:10 So, New York was difficult at the time when I was graduated in 1973. New York was a real problem to live in. I lived in Rockaway Beach. So, it was I worked at the American Museum of Natural History for four years right after graduation. So, it would take me between an hour and a quarter an hour and a half to get to work. But Rockway had become very dangerous. IG: 36:35 Yeah. JQ: 36:36 So, there was a policeman literally on every train, I had a self-imposed curfew of leaving Manhattan, no later than nine o'clock at night, or I would not get home and live. My father had to meet me at the subway station, my mother had to leave, he had to leave work early. My mother had he picked up my mother from her library job and in Far Rockaway. And then you would have to pick me up from the subway station because I could not walk those four blocks home without getting attacked, which I was with my mother once and then by myself once or at a friend's house in Brooklyn, or stay with my brother overnight. So, New York was-was very difficult at the time. So, I think I was just trying to keep alive, not worry about the civil rights movement, because- IG: 37:23 I understand I understand. JQ: 37:25 -it was just, really difficult. IG: 37:25 You know, I was- JQ: 37:26 Really difficult. IG: 37:27 Yeah. So, you know, you-you have this splendid education at Harpur College. You know, what, and you-you gave us a sense of the, actually the politicized and very intellectualized environment just by describing the cafeteria, and, you know, the-the different political groups that would form around tables. Was the Vietnam War, you know, how-how, you know, how dominant a topic, but was it in your life and in your circles at the time? JQ: 38:21 I recall one of the students who was worried about graduating 1973, because he was not going to be allowed himself to be drafted. So, and he did not want to run, a run up to Canada either. So, he knew that when he was graduated, no longer have a student deferment. And was drafted, he was just going to go to prison, and spend a year or two in prison just doing really donkey work there. So, I think that we were all very much concerned about Vietnam. But there were not a lot of as I recall, there were not a lot of protests about Vietnam there either. There was more involvement in abortion rights for women, and in the women's movement, from my recollection than-than Vietnam. I guess because the students, maybe because by the time (19)72-(19)73, rolled around, things look like there was going like, there was going to be a final an end to the war, which still took a couple of years, but perhaps because especially with the men, they maybe they felt that they were not going to be drafted, or they had this protection that I do not really recall a lot of demonstrations about that. I do recall a bus going to Washington DC to protest about women's rights. That would have been maybe (19)72 or so. (19)71-(19)72. IG: 39:53 So how was the women's-women's rights movement? Come How did it come into your consciousness? You know, how did it how did it- how did you begin to think about it? I mean, what-what were the first signs? You know, how did you perceive it at the time? What- how did you recognize that it was emerging as a movement? And how did you respond to it? I remember, you know, from a later time, the appearance of the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, and that, to me was kind of a symbol of the movement. JQ: 40:35 I remember the book Yeah. I was not a very politically active person. IG: 40:41 Yeah. JQ: 40:41 But other women and men students that that I knew were. So, I think I got the inklings and the-the thrust of all this from them, even though I did not participate actively myself. And I remember one of the, one of the other dancers turned out to be lesbian, although I do not think that she actually discussed that. So, she was involved in the women's movement from a different point of view. Not from the-the what the expected one. But I think there was more concerned about abortion. That is what I recollect. I said there was. And then I remember, one young student [inaudible] was explaining to a woman student, what abortion is, and the mechanics of all this stuff, and how all that it says, remove the DNC, something like that, I certainly did not know. So, this young fella knew it. So, my parents were not political, my two brothers really are not. So, I did not have politics, in my family, and in my blood, so to speak. So, I think I was a little bit on the periphery of that. I think I was involved in other activities at Harpur College. And that, really, the politics. And the American Indian Movement started around that same time a little bit later, though. But I do not think we had any American Indian students at the time. So that was not direct, as it was for the Attica prisoner, which was quite immediate and left a big impression on me. IG: 42:18 Why-why did it impress you, The Attica? JQ: 42:23 Because it was not just something that they were flyers about, or something in a paper, it was immediate, because one of our students was a former prisoner. So, he would present he would give us presentations and talk to us and, and present flyers, but it was more of a personal nature. So that was very impressive. IG: 42:43 I see. I see. I see. JQ: 42:45 So again, this was something which, just like I was saying, at Far Rockaway High School, I did not think about any of these things. But when-when you are confronted with a [crosstalk], then it becomes immediate, and then you understand the implications of it. IG: 42:59 Understand. JQ: 43:01 We were involved in other things at Harpur, which I knew nothing about. So that left a big impression on me. For example, when I grew up in Rockaway Beach, food was very simple and very much the same. If you wanted to buy tomatoes, for example, they were three little pinkish tomatoes in a piece of cardboard, thin cardboard, couple of cellophane, all the same size, they all were made to fit in that little thing. So, my only knowledge of food was iceberg lettuce, and these pinkish horrible tomatoes, and white bread, and maybe whole wheat bread. And a few other such things like that oatmeal. So, when I got to Harpur, there were so many students who were involved in, in cooking and protesting about other things, for example, in- I think, was 1970, or (19)71, there was the strike of the people who were picking the iceberg lettuce in California, as well as the grapes. So, we students said, “We are not eating that stuff.” So, you cannot serve it to us. And of course, the administration obliges them did not serve us that those kinds of things, students actually had quite a bit of power, which I was very proud of, not that I was instrumental in this, but I had never known that anybody could have power, let alone students gives the big administration. So, I learned about politics through direct action that way, so to speak, not celebrates but-but-but things that were more immediate and affected us on a daily basis. And then in terms of food, there were many kinds of diets which people students could enjoy at Harpur College, there was the-the kosher kitchen, there was a macrobiotic diet, which was all new to me. IG: 44:52 Oh, that is right. JQ: 44:53 There was healthful living. So, to my way of thinking, people who lived in the (19)60s and early (19)70s were split into two groups. You can either take the druggie kinds of things in the drop out kind of hippie type of thing. Or you can chop or you could choose the hippie kind of thing, but live healthfully. So, I chose the latter. IG: 45:15 Well, maybe-maybe, you know, the-the latter, the latter group is kind of the defectors from the druggie crowd because you know, a lot of the macrobiotic adherence were former druggies from-from you know, my knowledge and they came to macrobiotics as a way to get clean. But you know that that is not that is not your experience. But- JQ: 45:48 Right. I do not know if it Harpur College because the students would have been 18-19-20. So, I do not know if their background was-was drug related, or if they just selected because they had the opportunity to improve their diet yet, which would have been my own background. Since- IG: 46:09 Yeah. JQ: 46:09 -grains and non-meat things. IG: 46:13 Yeah-yeah-yeah. JQ: 46:13 And the whole wheat stuff was not anything I had ever known about. IG: 46:18 Right-right. JQ: 46:19 So that was rather enlightening to me. IG: 46:21 Yeah. JQ: 46:22 And be able- being able to have an input with the administration was also rather amazing to me. One of the things I found extraordinary at Harpur, which I am very proud about is that we students actually had a great amount of respect given to us by the administration, and the various academic departments, which enabled us to create courses and even majors, for example, my roommate wanted to- she was one year older than I, she wanted to have a Hebrew-Hebrew studies major. So, she actually put together courses and professors and created a major for herself, which she was the only one, the only Hebrew studies major at the school. So, the only one to have done this, the first one. Now, one could get a Hebrew studies major, but she was able to create this for herself. I actually created- That is remarkable. -two-two courses--one was in ceramics. And the other was in Hermann-Hermann Hesse as literature, I have actually found a professor who was one of my English professors. And I put together a course, years later I- IG: 47:34 How did you interest this professor to teach exclusively Hermann Hesse class and how did that come into being? How did you, you know, because I mean, administration is, you know, I could imagine so many roadblocks to getting a course approved, it takes forever. JQ: 47:51 I think he must have taught a course in Mark Twain or something, some-some individual writers’ course before I met him. I remember we read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, which from an academic perspective, and also Huckleberry Finn, with him and he said he was a great academician. I think he was just accustomed to looking at by biographies or single authors who had written a body of work and being able to teach it. And Hermann Hesse was pretty popular in the 1960s, early (19)70s. So, I do not recall any difficulty I just asked him when he said, "Okay." IG: 48:34 Okay. JQ: 48:37 And we did it up. [laughs] IG: 48:39 And so-so it was offered as a Hermann Hesse class. JQ: 48:43 Yes. Yes. IG: 48:44 So, there must have been very little red tape, you know, to get this course approved. You know, he just declared it a course. And it became a course. JQ: 48:54 Yes. Yes. [crosstalk] IG: 48:54 Is that the way that it worked? JQ: 48:55 That is my recollection, I do not recall having any red tape really to form--there have been a ceramics course before, but then it was dropped for a number of years. I reintroduced it and it was just do it. That is the Herman-Herman has course I just remember asking the professor and he said, "Alright." IG: 49:13 Did you put together now a syllabi? JQ: 49:15 I-I- no. That was- he had done that, then I realized that he was such an advanced professor, he was beyond my ability to be a good student in his- a great students in his course. I was like getting a B or C when I had always gotten the A's and literature in English. So, I realized I was just not an advanced enough student for him. IG: 49:40 Yeah. JQ: 49:41 So even though I-I created the course I wound up not taking it with him. I did take the ceramics course however. So, we were taught it was not just like a junior high school kind of shop class. We were actually taught a lot of techniques and it could be could pertain- related to-to archaeology with ceramics that way. IG: 50:00 And-and in different parts of the world, does it? JQ: 50:05 No, it was recently a hand on doing it. So, we learned that [crosstalk]. Years later, I spoke to a colleague at- archivist colleague, who worked for many years at Columbia University, this world-renowned university, she had worked there for years and never ever heard in the history of Columbia University, a student was putting together a major or a course. And something was just, we just do it at. It is just-just one of the things that we can do. When I first got there the first semester, so we students, and I was not the originator of this idea, but I certainly participated in it fully. We created a store--we got- we had somebody else had gotten the-the storefront, and we actually cleaned everything out painted it decorated it, created I remember- I used to make change purses and sell them for $1 or something dollar 25. I think I got I made 25 cents profit on it. So, we-we just quick created a store by- for and administered by [crosstalk]. I was as I was not the originator. I did not need to do any of the background work. But I do not I am sure that the administration would have supported it. If-if we had a number of students had also put together an ambulance program, not I- but I guess because of the drugs on campus. They actually put together an ambulance, which try to name [inaudible]. IG: 51:45 Yeah, I remember. It is- JQ: 51:47 It originated- IG: 51:48 -still exists. JQ: 51:49 It originated with us, right. And it still exists all these 50 years later or so. IG: 51:53 That is, that is, that is great that you know, someone was as respectful of-of your creativity of your ideas and supported you and help you implement these. How did that do you think that confidence in students- how do you think that that affected you in? JQ: 52:18 Well, I did want to add one thing before I tell you about that. We- there was a new dormitory at SUNY Binghamton called College in the Woods, which was built in about 1972. And they were- the administration initially was going to cut down more trees than we felt was necessary in order to build the dormitory buildings. So, we had one or two little protests, not anything, aggressive, or major. So, we request the administration not chop down as many trees as they did not, they chopped down only the number of trees that they needed to-to construct the buildings and to build the sidewalks. So, we got what we wanted to do. So, I think the way it affected me and I think this also took many years, including my work at the Schomburg Center, when one of my best friends was a communist from Haiti. And everybody endured the man. So, I think I learned a lot about activism from him. So, I, other people consider me an activist these days, I just consider myself just doing what I need to do to help improve society. So, I think having seen that students have a good deal of power. And I did not know anything about power, not power, because I was just a little protected kid from Rockaway that I realized that we could accomplish things, either individually, or as groups did not need to be violent, really, I did not see- they were very few demonstrations. as I recollect at Harpur College, politically. I was not there in May of 19, May of 1970. During the May activities--I was at my other-other college. And indeed, we did not attend class that day. But often, even though we had many students from New York City, who were very bright, it was a not a place where there were lots of demonstrations. So, I think somehow that the administration, I did not know any of the administrators did have a lot of respect for us. And that the ideas were good, solid, not-not negative ideas. They just went along with it also was a new school. I maybe that had something to do with it, that it was founded in the late 1950s. So, there was not a long history of having some kind of tradition or doing things in only one way and having the-the administration be very powerful. And the students, no doubt starting in the mid-1960s, were more active, that would have been the first time they would have been active. So, I think the administration just went along with us because the ideas were positive. And then it took me personally a number of years because I went to graduate school and did other things. It took me a number of years, until the 1990s, when I started to do things as well, not knowing that the ideas probably stemmed from Harpur College, because I had a colleague at the Schomburg Center who was very active politically. So, I think he kind of taught me how I could do things and make-make an impact. So, I am always are quite frequently at my local council men's office with an idea that I would like to see implemented, and some of them, to some extent, have been implemented, as just I do not know, the legislative process very well. So, people- other people have said, "Oh, Janice, you are a political activist. You just do not-do not recognize that in yourself." IG: 54:08 Right. JQ: 56:07 But I think it probably did come down that from Harpur, I think, I have been saying this for years, that the Harpur students were absolutely extraordinary, that they were the most selfless group of people I have ever met, that they had real, higher aspirations, to make a better society. And I think this was many students, not just a few of them. So, I think that was a real pattern, which I was able to follow in my own life and say, "Oh, that comes from Harpur," I could see it. I have a friend who is a Harpur student, who now lives in California, a musician. And I have said, "Boy, those Harpur students were just so amazing, they did this and this and this." So, I think, happily, that, not being able to compare it to just what I believe that Harpur students were better than other students in the sense of, of really trying to make a positive impact in the world. Even at years after they graduated, without going through the negativity of alienating their parents and-and doing a lot of things which would have been problematic in society the time for a young person or-or for the parents. So, I think Harpur students were just wonderful. I applaud for them. [laughs] IG: 56:07 Right-right. That is wonderful. I-I, you know, I think that is such a gift that you have been, that you had been given in really being given sort of a, a wide berth to express herself and to be taken seriously, because I think the, you know, the hardest thing for a young person as they are, you know, becoming an adult and is to have the-the courage of their convictions is to believe in you know, and what-what they are and, and here, you are actually encouraged to become that, JQ: 58:08 And also, by the professors. IG: 58:11 Yeah, of course, by the professors by the administration. That is wonderful. JQ: 58:15 Yeah. IG: 58:17 So just give us a- you know, an overview of your, you know, your career trajectory. JQ: 58:26 As mentioned, I was graduated in 1973. Something I do want to add, which was, which is a negative is that I majored in anthropology, just because I love that there was no other reason for it. But as-as I was due to graduate, I entered the office of the chair of the department, Dr. Horowitz [Michael Horowitz]--I do not recall his first name Horowitz. And I asked him his advice. "What do you think I could do with an anthropology degree? What kind of job shall I get? Now that I am graduating going back to New York City." He said, "Well, you always pump gas." And that is all he said. He offered nothing for me at all. I do not think anybody could get away with that these days, actually. IG: 59:14 No-no. JQ: 59:15 But it was, it was early 1970s. And I did not have- I had ideas but not a specific goal or how to achieve these. So, I went the route of applying for a job as a secretary. "Can you type?" repeatedly I cannot tell you how many hundreds of times I was asked about that. My first job actually was working in the world for World Trade Center building number one in 1973. Working for Japanese import export firm. I then was able to get a job again as a secretary, working at South Street Seaport Museum because by then I figured out I would like to work in a museum. And then I was very happy to have worked for four years at the American Museum of Natural History, which had nothing to do with my secretarial skills because I applied for several secretarial jobs. But the-the personnel woman who I still remember name Mrs. Lazada, from the Philippines was so taken with the fact that I really wanted to work the museum, I think I must have applied for three jobs there. And I wound up working for the Department of vertebrate paleontology. So that was my geology background came into use there for four years, and I had two fantastic curators so I was able to do a lot of things besides just working for- just typing manuscripts and letters, which are fascinating in the- in it in and of themselves. But I was able to work with a lot, a lot with the fossils, with moving cleaning and moving the Macedon bones and sorting the-the fossil mammals from Australia. And- IG: 1:00:54 Yeah, I love them- [crosstalk] So interesting. Yeah. JQ: 1:00:55 -how it helped me to go to use a caliper to measure them and be ascribed with my curator would give me the measurements and I got to know people from all the different scientific departments and a library. I decided I would like to work in a museum professionally. So, I left not quite happily, after four years. So, this was in 1977 and went to New York University where Owen Lynch was my friend and protector. It was a very difficult school because of the head of anthropology department at the time, just the opposite of-of Harpur college. I was graduated in 1980, with a master's in Anthropology and certification Museum Studies. Unfortunately, my- President Reagan had come into power at the time, even though he came from a cultural background being an actor. He did not care about the culturals. So, we cut- he slashed them financially. So, I wound up learning how to do archival work at a small museum on Staten Island, Staten Island, Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences. So, I learned how to become an archivist there. And even that he slashed by three months, that was a CETA program, a CETA training program, CETA and then I got to know people in the field, even though I had never heard of archives before I became one. So, I had to work in a number of research libraries in psychology work for John Jay College of Criminal Justice in its archives and a special program, the municipal archives here in New York City, New York Hospital Corner Medical Center. Psychology- IG: 1:01:03 Which did you enjoy? JQ: 1:01:15 And also, something called the historic documents inventory. Well, I love working on Staten Island still my favorite borough, I have never lived there. But I was just enamored of my colleagues and their-their great passion for Staten Island. And I was so enamored of archival work that I did not even know when it was time to go home, I did not know was time to eat lunch, I was just looking at learning from the documents. I worked for Cornell University, but here in New York City, on a statewide project, to survey all the repositories open to the public. All across, it was actually in every county of New York See, I worked in the New York City phase of the project. So, I worked at probably different probably around 200 depositories of all types here in New York City museums, historic societies, just neat places. And then I worked then I got a phone call from the curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem to ask me if I would work for her. IG: 1:03:40 How did it- how do they know of you? JQ: 1:03:42 Because I had sur-survey those archives [crosstalk] archives as well, because of my interest in Black Studies. IG: 1:03:48 I see, I see. JQ: 1:03:49 We all had it. There were five of us work working simultaneously in New York City. So, we had a choice of where we wanted to work. So, some people like banks and corporations, whatnot. I liked all the interesting ethnic place in museums. IG: 1:04:02 Right-right. JQ: 1:04:03 So, I worked at the Schomburg Center on this project for about four weeks or so. So, the curator in the archives department got to know me and then called me to ask about work for which I did. So, I spent that time I had two babies and could not afford to pay a babysitter for two, for two children. So, I worked the Schomburg Center from 1990 to 19- until I retired in 2014. Five years ago, three days a week. So, I worked there on hundreds of collections. When I went to the Schomburg Center a couple of months ago, probably in January or so there was an all-new staff in the archives. So, I never met them, but they all knew my name because my name was on hundreds of collections when I go to other repositories on Staten Island or-or have a history of psychiatry archive in New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center. So, Staff never saw me but they know my name because my name is-is on hundreds of collections there as well. So- IG: 1:05:07 That is wonderful. JQ: 1:05:07 I feel very proud of [crosstalk]- IG: 1:05:09 -your imprint. JQ: 1:05:11 I feel very proud that I, I believe that I have put here on earth to continue people's research to make-make research repositories available to increase human knowledge. So, I-I feel that I was able to do this through my archival work, because those collections are organized for all time process is what we call it for all time. And the reports, the finding aids are there to help researchers. So they are, they are a permanent contribution in many different repositories across the city. And I still continue to donate research-research materials to various libraries, I was just contributing a photo manual 50 years old to a photo photographic archive in Midtown yesterday. And I have got a number of other books and other photo, postcards and other-other research things lined up to me to deliver the next couple of weeks or so. IG: 1:06:16 What was, what was, you know, the most interesting involving archive, I know that it is an impossible question. JQ: 1:06:28 I love being on Staten Island. Because everything was brand new to me, all I knew was that there was a ferry and there was a bridge. So, I really loved being immersed in Staten Island history and natural history and learning about the bird count and seeing the journals of the founders from the repository from the 1870s. And learning to read the 19th century handwriting becoming- become quite adept at that just enchanted me. I loved working at the American Museum of Natural History, and then have the opportunity to return some years later. And being the only person who was trusted by the librarians there, as well as all the curators and all the scientific departments. So, they showed me their collect- their archival collections allowed me to write them up to me was really extraordinary. So mineral science, mammalogy and the paleontological collections, anthropology, so many collections took me three months, just to work up the descriptions in that one repository. And now that one repository has a guide of many hundreds of pages, which I completely organized myself. So, I am very proud of that. And I am glad to also be able to, even though I did not know I was going to end up doing this still five years after my retirement, I am still gathering material and-and I have contributed to almost 30 repositories, New York City, donating books in our current material to these various places. So, to me, that is a gift, so that I hope that I will leave the world in a better place of when the way I found it, which is what I think the whole legacy of people who attend or as children attended a wonderful campus my children did in Lake Placid or at Harpur College, that I think those fantastic students really were very serious about wanting to leave the world a better place. And Harpur College, I think, have made students have made tremendous contributions to the world. IG: 1:08:38 I think so too, I think so from-from those students that I have spoken to certainly, I think we are wrapping up and this fascinating interview. And what I would like to ask as sort of a concluding question is, what-what do you think- what lessons? What were the most important lessons from this period in your life and that you would like to impart to the- you know, the young people who may be listening to this tape, and what do you- what advice do you have to give to them, that has helped you succeed in your, in your chosen profession and in your life? JQ: 1:09:33 I think I can answer that. answer that in two ways. One is that, especially for liberal arts students, as so many of us were in the 1960s-1970s. We or at least I was able to benefit from Harpur from being a student at Harpur College, because I was, I allowed myself to be exposed in the classroom with adequate classroom in many things, which I never thought about before, or never done before, for example, I took modern dance, modern dance, I belong to the modern dance club. So, we performed at Harpur College and also for a school in Binghamton. So, I have never heard of jazz music before a lot of these things. So, I think to be able to, and I was just actually advising a young woman who just started Stony Brook University last semester about the same kind of thing that if you could just expand your mind, which is a very 1960s Psychedelic term, but one can use it in this way, as well. To allow yourself to take courses and think about things and speak to people about things which you never thought about before. And try not to associate only with the students, some of my fond memories are becoming friends with a man who was twice my age at the time who I worked for, in maintenance. So, I became friends with him and his wife off campus and invited me to their home, which was enchanting, because I probably get a little bit tired of seeing everybody who's exactly your age, that I became friends with a family who lived in the city of Binghamton, and they took me to their house and took me hiking with their children. So, it was very enchanting. So, I think that is important to maintain a perspective of not just everybody who is 21 as you are. But also, to try to take what you have learned at Harpur. And I think Harpur is a great place to be able to do and I hope it still is, of being able to implement programs does not have to be a course or a major, just doing something for somebody else, or something else or another country, which is a lot easier to do now than when I was at school when there were fewer international students. And then being able to take those that the lessons learned, learned there, how to do things, and bring it back to your own home and community and try to do things which will benefit a greater number of people or the earth. I mean, we had to Earth Day 1970. So, I was luckily, [inaudible] I was not there for that it started a few months before I- my arrival. To me, the most important thing that we should accomplish these days is taking care of the earth. There will always be people. IG: 1:12:35 Yeah. JQ: 1:12:37 If there are more or fewer people will still always have people, we have got only one Earth. So, to me, the most important thing that we should do is take care of, care of the earth in the best way possible. And get involved in ecological studies and efforts as best as possible. And take lessons from the elders of our native peoples in this hemisphere, not necessarily just in this country, because we have got native peoples all the way from tip of North America all the way to the southern part of South America- IG: 1:13:13 Yeah. JQ: 1:13:14 -Patagonia. So, I think we should take the lessons of-of being stewards of the earth, and doing everything we possibly can to embrace the earth not just in a scientific environmental way, which is really an environmental kind of almost like a non-passionate way or satire scientifically. But I feel that we need to embrace the earth. And it is lovely, and we should love it. And more of a poetic sense, not just in a scientific sense. And I think if we keep that kind of thing in mind, then we will make the right decisions. IG: 1:13:52 Thank you for a beautiful interview. Thank you. (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 Janice Quinter Subject The topic of the resource Nineteen sixties; Harpur College; Alumni and alumnae Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Quinter, Janice ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Janice (Ebenstein) Quinter attended Harpur College from 1970-1973 and graduated with a Bachelors in Anthropology and a minor in Afro-American Studies. After working at the American Museum of Natural History she was awarded a Master's degree in Anthropology and Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University in 1980. She spent her career as an archivist in research repositories in every borough in New York City, including 24 years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Janice is happy to have contributed to increasing human knowledge about many areas of study. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-03-29 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 Janice Quinter_1.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2019-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 73:58 minutes IIIF Item Metadata UUID 3ea0219e-b400-4e4d-b678-101e9a3b750e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1101a953fd5e698e3690c61fd46501f4.mp3 09234b1106b08dc37c58f39811a0f4d1 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 Boyd, Jeanette Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dobandi, Susan Date of Interview 1978-02-10 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 35:10 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55868">Interview with Jeanette Boyd</a> Subject LCSH Boyd, Jeanette -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Social workers -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.) Depressions -- 1929; Endicott Johnson Workers Medical Service; Tuberculosis; Girl Scouts of the United States of America; Boy Scouts of America; Medicaid; Clinics; Johnson, George F. (George Francis), 1857-1948; Castle; Conklin (N.Y.) 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: Jeanette Boyd Interviewed by: Susan Dobandi Date of interview: 10 February 1978 Susan: This is Susan Dobandi, interviewer, and I'm talking with Mrs. Jeanette Boyd, who lives at 2 Duffey Court, Binghamton, NY. The date is February 10, 1978. Mrs. Boyd, would you please tell us something about your early beginnings: where you were born, something about your parents, any of your recollections of your childhood? Jeanette: Well, I was born on Prospect Street in Binghamton in 1906, and ah, my father then was, ah, connected with the Broome County Humane Society and Welfare Association, and I went to Jarvis Street School, which is now closed of course, ah, and Laurel Avenue School and then to Helen Street School, which is now Thomas Jefferson. Graduated from high school in 1924 and—  We took street cars wherever we wanted to go, ah—to get to school I walked across, ah—ah, Glenwood Ave., where the trains would be stalled on the—on the crossings, and I would have to crawl through the trains to get to school on time and, ah, but we made it very nicely. I used to go skating down in Endicott. We had to walk to Main Street for a streetcar and go down to where Union Endicott School is now—we'd go skating and get all wet and come home on the streetcar and then walk home all the way in from Main Street. We had no cars then, and these days children would stay home and watch television rather than do all of that. And ah— When I graduated in ’24, ah, I went into the Humane Society and worked there for three or four years, and ah, my mother didn't think it was the place for an 18 year old, and I really had a very liberal education. I, ah—I learned much about the birds and the bees and how everything, ah, worked or didn't work, but I survived it, and I'm sure lots of other people would too, but ah, we ah, we housed at that time the Girls Club. Ah, in fact my father started the Girls Club in that building and, ah, bought a building on the same corner for the Boys Club, to house that, and ah, we had clinics in the building. We had the first eye, ear and nose clinic that Dr. Roe had there, and Dr. Bolt, and we had a tuberculosis clinic and a heart clinic, all kinds of clinics in—in that building, and doctors volunteered their time, they were not paid for it, and of course the welfare work was done by my father and with a lot of George F. Johnson's money. Susan: Give his name now. Jeanette: Ah, Sam Koerbel, and ah, we also had Children's Court in that building and on the top floor we had a children's detention. He would not put the children in the jail, so we made a jail up on the top floor and had delinquent children up there and we had a colored family, a negro couple who ah—who were the attendants up there and, ah, so that the children did not go into the big jails the way they do now with the adults or anything of this kind. They did not go into courts. They went into just their own small Children's Court and the welfare work, as I say, was done there, the ah—ah, people who—the separated couples, ah, the men had, ah, to come in and pay each week, and then the women would come in and get the checks and so that we could know that they were paying their alimony and the people, their families were not going hungry and— Down in the basement George F. Johnson had a—had a clothing bank, and the children came in after school with their sizes that the teachers had written, sizes of clothing, and ah, we would give them coats, underwear, at that time they were wearing long underwear, and they would come in so wet and bedraggled, but we'd fit shoes on them. Then at Christmas time, of course, the school sent in many lists of sizes and we would do them up in bundles and deliver them to the houses. We had an English investigator, a lady, Elizabeth, I don't know what her last—Anderson was her name, Andy, and ah, she would go out and check the families that wanted welfare and, ah, if they were dirty she wouldn't give them one thing. She'd come in storming and she'd say, "Don't give that family one thing. I gave them some soap powder and some soap. Those kids have got to be cleaned up, the house has got to be cleaned up. I'm going back tomorrow, and if they're clean they can have some food and clothing, otherwise they can't have a thing.” So, usually they were cleaned up, and I guess from that I say that families who are on welfare may not have much money, but they can be clean and I have not much use for—for dirty people, and I think maybe that Andy was at the bottom of that and, ah— Susan: I might say they need an Andy now. Jeanette: They do, oh, she was a little spitfire. She was English and she told those people what they could do and what they couldn't do, and they were scared to death of her.  [Telephone rings].  I, ah—I don't know just exactly what, ah—what, ah, you'd like to, ah, hear. We, ah, in the office we also did dog licenses. We had to go through the, ah—the books once a year and, ah, we had to send the men out. Of course we—we had the dogs under our jurisdiction too, dogs and cats, and my grandfather was dog catcher at one time. In fact the way my father got started in the Humane Society was to become the dog catcher, for the first time way, way back, and ah, he ran away from home when he was eleven years old in Waterville, NY, and ah, made his way to Binghamton and worked in a grocery store here, then became dog catcher and eventually was the Humane Officer here. [Telephone rings.] And another thing that might be interesting, ah, George F. Johnson had an office for my father down in the tannery office in Endicott, and out of that he worked welfare in Endicott. Or he would make arrangements for them to come to Binghamton for welfare work, then along in 1923 or ’24, I just don't remember, George F. Johnson had my father buy the Castle on the Conklin Road, and ah, at that time there was a lot of tuberculosis in the welfare families and, ah, July, for instance, they had girls and in August they had boys from these tubercular families, and ah, this was free, of course, and ah, in fact the first time that they had these, ah, little camps, my mother and an aunt had them right in our farmhouse there, where we used to go in the summertime, and ah, turned two or three rooms into dormitories—had the girls, ten or twelve, in July, and boys, and then out of these groups they, ah, had them stay all winter in this castle that they eventually bought, and the garage was made into a school and they had their own school teacher, and ah, there was an underground passage from the Castle to the garage that the children thought was wonderful, and of course the Castle has now been given by George F. Johnson to the Town of Conklin and it is town offices now, used for town parties and that kind of thing, but ah, it had, oh, a great big stove and, ah, of course they had a dining room with a lot of tables in there. It was a real school, and ah, one of the cooks used to bake angel food cakes on the ledge in the furnace and of course the children thought that that was wonderful. She said it was a nice, even heat, and she would put her cake tin right in there on that ledge and, ah, and then the—the, when the children were well and, ah, had been fed and fattened up a little bit, then they went home and the next summer another group would come in, and out of that they would choose the children that needed it the most and then they would stay a year, and this was all with George F. Johnson's money through the Humane Society and, ah, during the Depression. Oh, there, the Humane Society building was an old hotel and it had what used to be a ballroom and, ah, they had soup lines in there and we used to serve the people soup, mostly men as a rule would come, not families but men, and ah, then they—we would cook big—ah, big pots of pork and sauerkraut and, ah, then, of course as I said, they say, ah—they had the Girl Scouts there. They had showers for the girls, some of them never had baths any other time if they didn't take a shower then, and ah, the Humane Society originated, ah, in the City Hall, so I have been very interested in Alice Wales and her committee working to preserve the City Hall, because the policemen were on the first floor and I knew all of them by name when I was along, eight-nine-ten years old, and ah, the Humane Society offices were on the second floor and I used to stay there while my mother went shopping. I'd much prefer playing in that City Hall building so I have felt, ah, very interested in preserving that—that building, ’cause I think it's worth it regardless of the amount of money. I don't know if there is anything else that you'd like to know or not? Susan: Well, I think it would be interesting to compare how the people felt about receiving help in the old days? Jeanette: Well, of course they—they felt ashamed at that point to, ah—to have to go on welfare, although many of them had to during the Depression, but the men did work, uh, and were allowed to work even though they were receiving welfare. They were encouraged to work, which they are not, which doesn't happen these days. They don't encourage them to work at all. If they can get something for free, why, that's just great and, ah, but I think people have lost their—their sense of responsibility towards the public, to ah, they would rather go and collect their welfare checks and their food stamps and, ah, they have big cars and televisions, and in those days they were not allowed to drive up to get welfare with a car, neither did they come in taxis. They came on streetcars and they took their clothing home on the streetcars and, ah, they were given Christmas baskets from Volunteers and Salvation Army and the Humane Society, but they cooperated so that there were not duplicates and I—I think they try these days, but ah, not to have duplicates, but I think that the people are so grabby that they will take two or three baskets if it's handed to them, and I know I have taken, ah, families out just recently to buy things for Christmas, and it's amazing that some women are quite conscious of the price and what she buys for 50¢ or 75¢, while another woman, knowing that it's free, will ah, grab the highest price can of coffee off the shelf until I make her put it back. I don't buy that myself, but let’s buy something else instead of buying the best, you know, but they think they should have the best. Susan: So many of them buy so much junk food and do not cook good nourishing meals for their children. Jeanette: That's right, that's right. This family that I'm helping now is a family of twelve children. She never bakes her own cakes. She was getting a frozen pie and a frozen cake, and I said, "That's ridiculous, I don't buy those, they're too expensive. We'll buy a box cake,”—oh no, she wouldn't have anything to do with that, and I said, “Do you have a cake tin?” “No.” So I said, “Well let’s—let’s buy something cheaper, we'll buy cookies then,” and well, she didn't bake cookies either, and I—I just can't understand this. I—I never went hungry, but I always baked my own cookies and my own cakes and my own pies. Susan: Well nowadays the popular thing is to go to McDonalds as soon as they get their checks. Jeanette: Of course, of course. Susan: Burger King—yes—Kentucky Chicken. Jeanette: But I just couldn't believe it, that she didn't do any baking with twelve children. I said, “You can bake a cake for 50¢ plus two eggs.” Susan: Are you still active in—n some form of welfare? Jeanette: No. I just do—do some through the church. Susan: Oh, through the church. Jeanette: We have a used clothing bank there, and we send to four mission churches in the south regularly and help them at Christmastime, but it is also open to people on welfare in Binghamton, so that is, that's the way I became acquainted with this family of twelve children, that they had heard through the grapevine, I suppose, that we had clothing. Susan: Is she the one you were telling me about the birth control pill? Jeanette: Yes, yes, and she was quite upset—she wanted clothing too, and I offered her several coats but no, she wanted a short coat. She wanted a pants coat, you know, and I said, “Well, of course this is not a store, we have only, ah, what people bring in to us,” and I offered her some dresses and no, she, she'd rather have blue jeans, so she went away with nothing, and her husband did take some shirts and a coat, but ah, some of the things that I offered her, said, oh well, her children wouldn't like that, and I said, well, if it did keep her warm. Susan: They' re very choosy. Jeanette: I think that they should be very happy to have them, but I, they have a car and of course it's the only way that they can get around, I suppose, with twelve children. You do have to buy groceries. They live up on Front Street now, but they've moved four or five times in the two years that I've known them. Now I don't know whether they don't pay their rent or what happened to them. It’s most discouraging when you try to help somebody and, ah, then they—they turn you down with things that would keep them warm, at least. Susan: They're talking about welfare reform and we certainly need it. Jeanette: I'd like to sit on that committee, but I'm sure that I won't be asked, ha ha, but I—I do think that, ah—ah, maybe one with gray hair on that might do some good if they could go back to some principles, at least, and not feel that, well, these people have it due them—well, I don't think that they do if they don't work, I—I don't think that work ever hurt anyone, and I think that we should support ourselves as long as we can and as much as we can and, ah, these teenagers that get married and don't have jobs, I—I don’t think that they should be allowed to marry— Susan: —or live together. Jeanette: Ha. That's right, that's right, and ah, they go in with these food stamps ahead of me in line, college kids, and ah, I don"t think that's necessary, if ah—if they can't afford to go to college then there are loans, and I'm sure that some of their families, ah, are well to do, and yet the kids come up here and get food stamps, and I—I don't think that's right for our county or state to pay for this kind of thing. Susan: For out of state students. Jeanette: That's right, and ah, of course they go around looking like ragamuffins, so maybe that's the way they get their food stamps, but ah— Susan: I think it's a way of getting a little pocket money. Jeanette: It's a way of getting something, I'm just not sure what it is, but I—I think it annoys me because these college kids can get a job. They can work in the summertime, my grandchildren do and, ah, but why should they, when they can get food stamps and have it handed to them? Susan: Is there anything else that you would like to go back over? Jeanette: Well, I—I really can't think of anything else. Susan: Oh, they never gave any, ah, cash to the people when in the early days it was just food and clothing? Jeanette: That's right, we had—we had grocery stores that were available for this kind of thing, and of course they were independent grocery stores then, and food was, or we bought it, wholesale. There were wholesale, well, like Darling & Co., I don't know whether they were, I think they were still in business then, but at least we bought hams and turkeys and all of that kind of thing, wholesale potatoes, wholesale, and ah, then we would make up the baskets ourselves or, I mean at Christmastime, or we would just get an order at a store, and no, the people were not given cash and I don’t give cash to the people who help me—that I am helping. I go with them shopping, and I pay the bill, I—I don't trust them. I'm sorry but I, ha—I just don't. I—I think they would go out and buy beer and cigarettes, all that kind of thing. I don't think that's the way to help people. Susan: Well, the principle that the system is working under now is that they are trying to teach them how to manage their money, but they do not pay for the things that the money is given to them for. Jeanette: That's right. That’s right. Susan: And I would like to see some changes made there. Jeanette: Yeah. No. They won't, not the people these days.  Susan: The majority of them. Jeanette: I—I think before, we had a lot of foreigners, a lot of Slavić people over around the first ward, and I know when my husband died I—I sold real estate for a couple of years, and I went up on the hill, ah, back of Glenwood Ave., and there was an old German, I don't think she was German, at any rate she was foreign, and ah, the woman with me introduced me and she said, “I—I think you, ah, probably knew this woman's father, Sam Koerbel.” Oh, then the woman spoke very brokenly and, ah, she said, “Oh, Sam Koerbel, we just couldn't have lived through the Depression without him,” so you see, it was mostly first ward people that, ah, that we helped for some reason or another. We did others, too, but I—I think my memory is, is more of the foreign class that perhaps came over and couldn't get jobs, or couldn't get enough work for their big families, and ah, some of them were E-J workers and if they didn't have the work, why, then of course we helped them out, but ah, we were busy all day long with the people coming to the—to the, ah, windows there and taking their histories, and it would be all through a child's life until they were up to seventeen or eighteen years old. I know a lot of them now that we had on welfare, I see their names and they're in business and they've made names for themselves. Susan: Made names for themselves, not third and fourth generation welfare— Jeanette: That's right, that's right. Susan: —recipients. Jeanette: Yeah, they were willing to work, and I think, to go back to Andy, maybe her teaching of cleanliness— Susan: —cleanliness— Jeanette: You've got to be clean and you've got to help yourself or you don't have any welfare, and I think that just maybe, maybe they were taught the right way, I don't know, and being helped in the clinics and the delinquents. I know one, one in town who is in business now, was definitely a delinquent. He was on parole for, oh, two or three years. He'd come in every week to, ah—to sign in and tell us what he was doing, you know, but he learned his lesson the hard way. Yeah. Susan: Do you want to comment on the difference in the children in the old days as against the, ah, now generation? Jeanette: Oh, well, the children were disciplined, and they didn't find fault with their teachers and they didn't talk back to their teachers. If a teacher told you to do something, you did it. You, ah, you didn't question it, and it was the same with your—your parents, of course. The one reason that there was welfare, to talk about discipline, I—I think that the men would get their checks and they would go to the saloon and, ah, down on Glenwood Ave. there was a saloon that my father raided periodically and, ah, he would finally have the women come in, and the men would have to bring their checks in to us and then the women would come in to get them, but ah, the ah, I know my grandmother was helping a family right close to us, and they were Slavić and he was a drunk and didn't have any money for—for food, and my grandmother was so mad she went right down, and he was a little bit of a thing and she just shook him, she just shook him practically off—off the feet, ha ha. She came home laughing about it and she said, “Well, I don't think Pete's going to get drunk right away again because I shook so hard,” and he had been beating up his wife, and you know, I don't know whether it did any good, but I often think about seeing my grandmother shake this man, and you don't do that these days, if you went in and shook anybody and tried to make them behave you'd be taken into court. Susan: There are too many rights to be— Jeanette: That's right and that's too bad, that's too bad. I know one night my father had a telephone call around 10 o'clock and they said, “Sam, there is two or three young boys gone up into the cemetery in back of us and they've been trying to get into my house, but I saw them run up in the cemetery,” and my father just casually got out his gun and walked up the road and said, “You fellows come on out, I've got a gun on you,” and they walked out, and you know you wouldn't dare do that these days, you'd get the police force, the FBI, and everybody else out, but he just came down, he called the patrol and they came and got them and took them over to his—his, ah, detention, and the next day he had them in Children's Court. I—I believe they were scared to death of him. “I'm Sam Koerbel, come out, I've got a gun.” Everyone knew him. So they just, ah, they just did it as Sam Koerbel said, and even now my children will say, “Well, I'm sorry that those kids don't have a Sam Koerbel to put them right.” I—I just wish that he was around, I wonder what he'd do. Well, I think he'd put them to work first. I—I don't believe I have anything else. Susan: Well, I think it's been very enjoyable talking with you. We agree on a good many points, Mrs. Boyd. Thank you very much for the interview. Jeanette: You’re welcome, you’re welcome. Susan: Mrs. Boyd, could we go back a little bit and give us a little more information about, ah, after you left your father's office and went on with your own personal life? Jeanette: Well, I was married in 1927 to a man that I had, ah, grown up with from the sixth grade and, ah, they had been neighbors of ours, and ah, we had two children, ah, Richard and Shirley. Four years apart, and ah, shortly after we were married, six months, we discovered he was a diabetic, so for the thirty-five years that we were married, ah, we battled diabetes, but ah, he was the kind that said, “I've got it and we will not talk about it.” So, we never did, so we just lived with it, and of course we had our two children after that and we lived on Floral Ave. at that time, on the second floor of my father's house. During the Depression, ah, my husband was out of work so we went into the heating contracting business, and ah, we ah, eventually, well, he installed oil burners and stokers at that time, and ah, we eventually through the years had an oil fuel oil delivery service, and I did all of his office work and made all my children's clothes, of course. In those days you didn't go out to the store and buy things, and ah, he finally worked into just industrial work and school work within a hundred miles and, ah, in 1951 my mother sold that house, my father died in 1947 and in ’51 she sold the Floral Ave. house, and we built and we went over on Stone Road on the south side, we built a house and she had her apartment on the second floor, she became an invalid, and my children, ah, graduated from Central High and North High. Dick went on to RPI on a scholarship, and ah, he has been an electrical engineer for Stromberg Carlson in Rochester and, ah, for them went to Denver and worked on some government work and into California and back to Rochester, and then he went in with TRW Systems, and he has six children and he has moved ten times in twenty years and, ah, every time they move I go and babysit, since my husband died fourteen years ago. I go wherever they are and I babysit, and so that I've gotten around the country pretty well, and my daughter, ah, married a electrical engineer in Stromberg, went to Rochester and she still lives there and she has two children, and ah, they both have good jobs now, and he went into the printing business and lost a great deal of money, but we pulled out of there after three or four years, and I’ve—he’s had a sick mother, and I’ve gone up for a week or two at a time and helped take care of her and, ah, we are a very close family. Ah, if I hear of bad weather on the coast we call and if, Dick called me the other morning at a quarter after seven, his time, and of course my first question at that hour of the day is, “What’s wrong? When do you want me?” and ah, so that, ah, he's concerned about us too, and I have done Y.W. work. I was on the board with the, oh, Peg Prentiss, and oh, a lot of the women, you would know if I could name them, for twenty or twenty-five years, ah, on and off the board on all kinds of committees through reorganizations, ah, to conventions. I did Girl Scout work when Shirley was working—I, err, was growing up—I ah, had a Girl Scout troop, she didn't have a leader, so I went to their, ah, training sessions and had thirty-five girls for three or four years while she was growing up, and my husband and father-in-law were in Boy Scouts work, I, they made headdresses, and I had feathers all over my house because the boys would come there and work in the living room and in the kitchen and I, I just wondered if I'd turn into a Boy Scout myself, and of course they all went to Boy Scout and Girl Scout camp. Church work, I've done a little bit of everything in, in church work. I've been an elder and a deaconess in the Presbyterian Church and, ah, when Rick and his wife, ah, were in Rochester, they helped start a Presbyterian Church there in Kenfield and it’s still going, and Horky and I gave them their first Communion set, ah, for the church and ah, oh, I don’t know, we've done so many things and, ah, we did a lot of traveling after our children were grown up. We'd take the month of May and just travel, and then when my husband died I took a course in real estate and sold real estate for two years, but that was a little bit rough for me. I—I couldn't quite manage real estate and I answered an ad—a blind ad, of course, in the Press, and ah, got this job at the Herlihy Trucking Co., and I’ve been there now, well, it will be twelve years in September, and shortly after I was there, about a year after I was there, the only other woman in the office, the bookkeeper and everything, was found dead in bed, so I was sort of thrown into bookkeeping and I am still in it, only two and a half days a week, and I tell them I'm really not needed, but they say, “Who would boss us if you weren't here and who would keep us in line?” So I'm still going. Susan: At 72. Jeanette: At 72. Susan: You're going to be 72. Jeanette: I will be 72 next week, uh huh. Susan: Well that's wonderful. Jeanette: And I drive to Rochester, ah, when I feel like it, winter or summer, and people say, “You drove up?” and ah, when my son was in Virginia I drove down there, it was six hours and I’d just pack up and go. I—it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it. I'd always done it and it just never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it, and ah, I don't know that there is anything else—my daughter is a busy in church work and she, ah, often says in some of her problems and she’ll write or call up and she'll say, “Well, I pulled a Jeanette Boyd today, I just told them what they were going to do.” (Chuckle.) And so I have a real reputation, I guess, even with the bowlers, ah, we bowl on the grandmothers’ team and, ah, one girl that I—I didn't know that she ever paid any attention to me, and ah, we got up from our coffee break and I said, “All right, let’s get going here, let’s get going,” and she said, “There she goes again on her soap box,” so I—I guess I have a reputation of being a boss, but I—l don't mean to be that way. Susan: You're a very active person and you can be very, very proud of yourself, Mrs. Boyd. Jeanette: Well, thank you. Susan: Thanks again, this gives us a better idea of the kind of person I have been interviewing. Thank you. Bye bye. 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 Jeanette Boyd Subject The topic of the resource Boyd, Jeanette -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Social workers -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.) Depressions -- 1929; Endicott Johnson Workers Medical Service; Tuberculosis; Girl Scouts of the United States of America; Boy Scouts of America; Medicaid; Clinics; Johnson, George F. (George Francis), 1857-1948; Castle; Conklin (N.Y.) Description An account of the resource Jeanette Boyd talks about her life in Binghamton, NY as an active social worker for the Broome County Humane Society and Welfare Association. She discusses the current welfare system, and the first clinics for ear, nose, heart and tuberculosis. She discusses the "Castle" in the Town of Conklin and its purchase by George F. Johnson to be used as a camp for children of tubercular families. She talks about her family's involvement with the Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts organizations. 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 6 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boyd, Jeanette ; Dobandi, Susan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-02-10 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. 35:10 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b8d4eecae4e8c0714840e5b7e71c556f.MP3 8fc6cb137cbb93008cde48493c0b38a8 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1d92d3cfb98f09f611fcbdab1b619fa0.jpeg be408ffecdceb72dfbe5bb9fc78dd48f 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 Middle Eastern Oral History Description An account of the resource This collection includes interviews of Middle Eastern immigrants who settled in the Binghamton area. Since the rise of nationalism and the repression of minorities during the last phase of the Ottoman Empire, the ethnic groups in the Middle East have faced physical pressure and violence, cultural assimilation, and ethnic cleansing in the nation-states they lived in, which made them to leave their homeland behind and settle throughout the United States. This project looks at the details about the impact of diaspora. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright.  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Aynur de Rouen, Ph.D. Relation A related resource <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/oral-histories/index.html#sustainablecommunities">Sustainable Communities Oral History Collection</a> 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 July 15, 2019 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Joseph Seif Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jeanine and Jacques Saif Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Digital Format Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 63:07 minutes Biographical Text - Jeanine was born and raised in Ghazir, Lebanon. She grew up during the Lebanese Civil War but did not feel its effects until the last few years. She married Jacques and moved to the U.S. to continue her education. She was a teacher in a French school in Saudi Arabia.  - Jacques was born in Jdeidet Ghazir, which lies on the outskirts of Ghazir in the Mountains. He enlisted in the Lebanese Forces militia as the war broke out to defend his town from Palestinian insurgents. As the war was wrapping up, he received the opportunity to study at Binghamton University, where he studied computer science. He then received a job in Saudi Arabia and moved there with his family. - Today, both Jacques and Jeanine live in upstate New York with their kids and own a Lebanese restaurant. Keywords Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Binghamton University, Ghazir, Family Business, Family, Lebanese Civil War, 2006 Hizballah/Israeli war 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 Jeanine and Jacques Saif https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/46e2f9fc88d1f095400e2dd06cf7a51b.jpg aa896b499cd2beeff2d8ef1eae265966 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/461d2546ac495f5d907d73b3d63c4bff.mp3 55744c07e6a98e87fbce9eb41d7fe7c6 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 October 2011 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jeff Gibbs Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:09:19 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text Jeff Gibbs, born in Flint, Michigan, is a filmmaker, composer, scorer, film producer, and director. Gibbs has lived in Michigan all his life. He worked with Michael Moore on Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11. Gibbs released his own film, Planet of The Humans with the executive producer, Michael Moore in 2020. Gibbs' full length documentary is about the environmental movement’s battle against climate change and how some favored solutions come with their own set of problems. Keywords 1960s; Cold War; Boomers; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Anti-war movement; Protests; Ronald Reagan; Michael Moore; School shooting. 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: Jeff Gibbs Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: October 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:00): Testing 123. There you go. JG (00:00:05): You are in near Philly? SM (00:00:05): Pardon? JG (00:00:12): Where are you right now? Near Philly? SM (00:00:14): Yeah, Westchester, Pennsylvania. JG (00:00:17): Yeah. SM (00:00:17): Is where I live. Just a couple more questions and I will get right to the point of how you became a documentary person. JG (00:00:30): Okay. SM (00:00:30): One question I wanted to ask is, and actually this is just, these are major events from the period of the (19)60s, (19)70s and maybe the (19)80s too. This is just quick responses to when you hear these terms what is your first reaction. When you think of these events during the past 65 years what did they mean to you and possibly to your generation? And it does not have to be long, it is just real fast. The first one is the atomic bomb. JG (00:01:04): Just by radiation. SM (00:01:08): The Cold War. JG (00:01:11): Headache. SM (00:01:13): The election of Kennedy, 1960. JG (00:01:22): I... Oh. SM (00:01:29): Okay. JG (00:01:31): Confusion. My mother was a Republican, but I convinced she was Kennedy was a nice guy. I was little. SM (00:01:42): How about the assassination of JFK? JG (00:01:48): Heart-wrenching. What you mean? Just one word? SM (00:01:51): Give you heart-wrenching or just what do you think it meant to you plus the nation? JG (00:02:01): Loss of innocence, I think. It was like watching a funeral on television, but it was also a collective sense of we were out together too. SM (00:02:12): The Cuban Missile Crisis, I think you have already talked about that a little bit. JG (00:02:21): Yeah, just, sorry it was like the moment when you realized it could all actually end. SM (00:02:29): The rise of Barry Goldwater, which actually is the beginning of the conservative movement, really. JG (00:02:47): Barry Goldwater. That would be a nightmare. SM (00:02:54): Gulf of Tonkin, 1964. JG (00:03:03): See some of these things I only remember in retrospect because I was not that old, but there was a movie made about it. I remember watching that and think it was just very painful to think to such a small event supposedly led to all that. SM (00:03:27): Right. Led to 58,200 plus American dead. God knows, close to 2 million wounded, and the 3 million Vietnamese killed. The Vietnam War itself. JG (00:03:53): Apocalypse. Now, can I answer just in a sentence, what you had said earlier that I did not answer? SM (00:04:03): Yes. JG (00:04:04): Without interrupting you, is that the reason I do not really have an answer is could we have won or lost. We attack small nations as a great empire. We attacked them. It is not a war, called evil, and so how do we win? Do not win that. You win when somebody attacks you, so there is never a chance we could win because we were just decimating people that did not deserve it. SM (00:04:37): The year 1968, everything that took place that year. JG (00:04:44): Duck and too young to... And that is not an excuse, that is just I remember sitting there (19)68, (19)69 thinking stuff is happening that I cannot go. Too young. SM (00:05:03): 1970 Kent State and Jackson State. JG (00:05:06): Maybe jealous is the word. Some ways were a couple years older. They got the food for $5. I got the food for 50. Go ahead. What were you saying? SM (00:05:17): Kent State and Jackson State, 1970, May 4th. JG (00:05:33): Soldiers are gunning us down. SM (00:05:38): And then I just had a general one here called The Beatles coming to the United States in 1964. JG (00:05:52): Realizing I did not understand girls. Girl about them and I was like, "Okay, well they are all right." SM (00:05:59): Well, they were screaming for The Beatles. JG (00:06:03): Well, at that time, the music was not as what it is. SM (00:06:09): Right. Now, you were only one year old or three years old when I had this next one, but Sputnik in 1957, along with Elvis Presley in (19)57. Now obviously you would know what they were all about. JG (00:06:19): No, I remember that. See, I was an assigned [inaudible] from the day I was marked, I remember Sputnik. I remember all that getting going. I think it was, I usually all the stereotypical words, but it is true for a reason. It is just wonder. SM (00:06:44): I think personally, it played a role in the rise of higher education, and that was already rising from the GI Bill. JG (00:06:55): It was in a science fiction, but here is the dilemma. It is that the very, I have been thinking about this a lot. When you were a Roman citizen in Rome before the fall, you would be saying we have democracy at first, we have roads. We have sanitation, we have dust, we have fresh water. We have heated rooms. Charcoal was brought in from a deforested area to heat the rooms, heat the bath. We have culture, statues, theater, spectacle. Rome is a very good thing. How could anybody want Rome to fall? And so in Rome you were not aware of all the things that an empire amassed, and so for me is that we want to think of the empire being the corporation or push or breaking, but it is all of us. It is all of us together. Liberal offense. We make the system. It was actually help us out to compete with Soviets, right? SM (00:08:12): Yes. JG (00:08:13): They have an environmental movement so they fucked it up. They did not have the discourse that we have had, so they were less effective. Anyways, I do not know how that, but- SM (00:08:27): Earth Day 1970. Now obviously it has been celebrated every year since, but if you compare Earth Day 1970 and Earth Day 2010, we are talking 30, well 70. We are almost talking 41, 40 years. What is the difference? JG (00:08:49): Take care of them. I was at Earth Day 2010, and I would say Thursday 1970s was soulful. At least 2000. SM (00:09:10): What about in 2010, it is less soulful? Still there? JG (00:09:20): Yep. SM (00:09:21): Okay. JG (00:09:21): That was a scam. SM (00:09:28): Okay, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980? JG (00:09:32): You had is, what is his name? The Avatar director was in... James Cameron is a baby Boomer, right? SM (00:09:43): Yes. JG (00:09:44): He made the movie Avatar we are supposed to care about the trees and the blue native people? SM (00:09:48): Mm-hmm. JG (00:09:49): So yes, Earth Day 2010 was dominated by NASA and they were passing out tree seedlings. Passing out tree seedlings is what the company that chopped down all the forests of the world do to make it okay the damage that they did in destroying the planet. James Cameron sponsored the exhibit where they were passing out little tiny baby tree stumps. I cannot think of anything more symbolic of the sellout of the environmental movement than instead of somebody trying to save the forest, here they are passing out the seedlings to the sugar companies want you to pretend to plant, replace forest. SM (00:10:30): To replenish and of course, we all know how important the trees are for breathing every day air. JG (00:10:38): Maybe you are aware of this, when you cut down a forest, the forest you cut down never returns and planting seedlings, whatever comes up has nothing to do with the forest that was there before. It is like raising the prairie and finding corn and saying, "Hey look, something's growing." Well, it is not what was there before. Let us see, sorry. SM (00:11:03): The election of Ronald Reagan. JG (00:11:11): All right, you may hit the election of Ronald Reagan? SM (00:11:15): Mm-hmm. JG (00:11:18): We got the daddy we wanted. SM (00:11:19): You got the what? JG (00:11:24): The Reagan was the first new age president. SM (00:11:31): That is not really good. JG (00:11:34): No, that is terrible. You think about the confluence of these things is right in Reagan because, and instead of Carter's message of use last put on a sweater and turned down the heat, sorry to change his minds. If they, all right, never mind. We were going to send our army's resourceful. Reagan gave us the first new age lingo, "We are a shin city on a hill. It is morning in America." He was a new age president. SM (00:12:10): He kept saying, "We are back. We are back." JG (00:12:14): We are back and secretly we love hearing that. Now we did not like what he did in terms of El Salvador and politically and keep the empire going, but see that is how it always works, is that Cartalita does not like what Tony Soprano does. She is not going to give up the house and the nice things. Carmella, and that is who we are, we are Carmella. SM (00:12:44): He supposedly was one of the main reasons that the wall went down. Actually some people think it should have been Gorbachev. The last two of the Gulf War and 9/11, and I think actually in Watergate. Watergate was crucial too. JG (00:13:09): The Gulf War. That is when I was ashamed of myself because I too enjoyed watching King after that war and I realized how insidious the joy of empire was. I was enthralled by the senior recovery and it should have been the same. SM (00:13:30): And how about 9/11? 10th anniversary coming up. JG (00:13:34): Yeah, it is coming up. Missed opportunity. I understand why we are headed. SM (00:13:42): And then the other one is Watergate. JG (00:13:48): My political education watched it on TV. SM (00:13:53): And you already talked about Woodstock and Summer of Love. My last question before I get into really stuff about you, some more stuff on your career is, and I want to mention this too, because I asked you why we lost the war in Vietnam, but how important do you feel these groups were in ending the war? I am just going to read them off and I think they all played a role, but if there is one that you think stands out. College students, Vietnam veterans against the war, the failure of our military to go all out, bad military leadership, weak leadership in Vietnam, including the inability to, you get the ARVN, which is the South Vietnamese army to really do what we did. Congress ended all the funding and then the Paris Peace Courts and the ineptitude of our leaders, including Johnson and the misinformation that was given to him by McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and others. They all played a role here. Is there anyone that you feel played the biggest role? JG (00:15:02): Ending the war, you mean or up top winning it or? SM (00:15:05): Oh, in the poly groups for ending the war? JG (00:15:15): No, I do not think any of those did. I think the Vietnamese, north Vietnamese won. I think they defended, successfully defended their homeland. I am not sure what winning would have looked like. We won against the Native Americans, right? SM (00:15:32): Yes, we did. JG (00:15:32): Because we killed them all. Between killing and disease, they went down to 300,000. What does it mean for the whole paradigm? I do not know how we could possibly have we won Iraq. I do not think we have won. Have we won in Afghanistan? I do not think it is... We have the wrong paradigm. SM (00:15:53): I would agree. Yes. JG (00:15:55): And we are the aggressor and these guys are not going to beat us because they were willing to die for the last person does not have a- SM (00:16:05): Do you feel that one of the problems we have as a nation is the fact that the Boomer generation of 70 million may be going to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the tremendous divisions of divided America during the time they were young and growing up into adulthood. I would talk about the war between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, the environmental battles and certainly the war in Vietnam. Those who support the war, against it, those who served, those who did not. Do you think we as a nation, Jan Scruggs wrote to book the Vietnam, be it Vietnam War founder and it was called To Heal a Nation. It was geared toward healing the vets and their families and being non-political, but in a sense he hoped it helped a little bit with the healing of the nation too, from the tremendous divisions of those times. Do you feel that we as a nation and as a generation have a problem with the issue of healing? JG (00:17:11): No, I think we have a problem with the issue of narcissism. The opposite. Who are we to feel sorry for ourselves? Now I knew a World War II aged guy that had escaped. He and his family were taken to the concentration camp and he hid in a bus and was able to sneak out. It is weird the stories you hear, and he snuck back in because he was starving to death outside the concentration camp. He came here and opened up the laundromat, experiment with the disco laundromat and was a very nice guy. That guy has a right to ask the question to be healed from his problems. We have experienced more wealth and abundance privilege than other any ever, ever, ever and that is going away, and we have used it all up. Our responsibility is to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and before we die, to get back to our original values, which were the right ones, which is the military and industrial complex, expanding human population and pollution are means that the human race is soon going to go away because it is over, and we have pretty much blown the opportunity. Now in fairness, nobody else has done it either and in fairness, the very education that we had and the wealth that we had gave us the opportunity as 15-year-old and 25-year-old in the (19)60s to see the truth of what Eisenhower said. We knew that, but we too succumbed to this deduction of the abundance, but we have used the lie that we are sensitive, that we care about the planet. The generation, I cannot tell you the people we are talking about. We are the people that have been in the upper one 10th of 1 percent of humans in terms of our impact on the planet. Our tomatoes come in from Mexico and Israel, our lettuce comes from around the world. Our organic grains for our vegans come from peasants everywhere. Our shoes, our Nike shoes come from slave labor, oil that we fly around the world on to go see the Africans to give them arms comes from Africans that are dying in Black resources because our empire and empires around the world, America, Europe, Japan, Australia, take those resources to ourselves from those people through Shell oil and BP, fly to visit them, their environment decimated by the climate change we caused by burning the fossil fuels and we run around there thinking, "Oh, is not it nice the Black people are kissing our feet or we are building this school for them?" We are the most spoiled generation that is ever been and we have hid behind having good value system just like Christians do, do very narcissistic things. We have a chance, we still have a chance to change that. The only wounds that we have to heal are guilt over using more resources. We have used more resources than will be available for all generations at the human's future. SM (00:20:53): Wow. That is one of the best responses I have ever had to that question. JG (00:20:58): Well, I have been thinking about this for 10 years and including sitting there having worked on Fahrenheit and the boss was beaten up and having everybody cry for Clinton. I am like, "Why are you crying for Clinton? He opened up free trade to China. He signed the globalization stuff. All this stuff is happening now with the environment being decimated faster and free trade destroying peoples around the world. Clinton brought that in." You do not intend to play the weakest in New York, in Philadelphia and Traverse City and you have a nice party, pretend our wealth came from the magical place. Did not have to do with that. I will shut up, but that is just, I sat there and I am like, "Bush is evil, but you guys we are not getting the evil that is what we are doing as an empire." SM (00:21:50): As we are celebrating Dr. King's the opening of his memorial in Washington this week, 28th, and actually people are down there now for activities all week. He believed in the non-violent protest way and he also believed in paying a price for one's beliefs and he also agrees with you and you brought it up before about the willing to stand up and protest, be arrested and so forth for causes you feel that are unjust. Then we had this period in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s where in the anti-war movement or some of the other movements, they became much more confrontational and more violent. Not necessarily trying to kill people, but more violent, whether it be the weatherman, the weather underground. Some people question whether the Black Panthers were violent. I do not think. Some say they were not. And then even at the American Indian movement in (19)73 there was violence there. There was a lot of reasons for this, but there seemed to be a sense of frustration then because things were not happening or they were not being listened to, and for African Americans, Black Panthers was about, well, the only people that are going to protect us are ourselves. What was your thought of that whole change in philosophy from non-violent protests to more violent aspects? JG (00:23:16): I think we have a systemic problem as the country is that we are too big and geographically too big, and so in Egypt or in Libya, somewhat reasonable to put yourself on the line. In Egypt certainly it is not a done deal, but they could go home at night or run back home or run to their friends. It is hard to have a revolution, a non-viral revolution when we all come from places that we take six months to walk to, because in a day or a week to drive to. SM (00:23:57): Well it is- JG (00:23:59): It has been a real problem and what I am getting to is that I think the violence was a mistake, but I think we have a hard time being humans. I think that is what King had was vehement, relentless vehement. I think that is what we lack and that is where it is human nature. I know in some ways I am not blaming us, but we are narcissism. V for vendetta: A Revolution Without Dancing Isn't Worth Having. Well, revolution without... I think we were not clear that we all needed to do what Gandhi had done and sit there and until it changed non-violently. SM (00:24:49): One of the things too is that in 1970, I can remember seeing posters or signs from all the other movement groups, the Women's Movement, the certainly Civil Rights Movement and Chicano Movement, Native Americans. They were all there. Nowadays, it seems like all the movements are isolated. Am I wrong in this? They do not work together. They are all isolated in their own, they are more interested in their own issues and not combining issues. JG (00:25:19): I have thought about that, but I think you are right, but there was something weird and confusing about that. You are right. There was a protest anti-nuclear there would be everything there. I think it is a little, it was probably exposing an error in our thinking. I will not say it was a mistake because who is deciding? But in an error in our constitution that if you believe what Paul Ehrlich said in Population Bomb or what we were saying about nuclear and stuff. We are talking about the extinction of life on earth and perhaps the demise of the human race. To come and carry signs, however well-intentioned and important cause about social issues, those are relatively unimportant comparison to destroying the whole planet or our complicity in wars that are killing out the people. They are important. You see what I am saying? SM (00:26:29): Mm-hmm. JG (00:26:29): But my personal, that is why I was so happy in Fahrenheit. We did not really go over aboard with the Patriot Act. It is chilling and crucial evil, but in the end, it is all about us and the special media issue. I want to be free. The larger evil is that we are attacking these nations to try and dominate resources. SM (00:26:55): It is interesting that when I talked to a feminist leader and she said, "Steve, we are working together, except you do not see it. It is on legislation that is being proposed in Congress. Various organizations are working together, they are just not protesting in public together." Well, I do not know if that is true or not, but that was a comment. And also Gaylord Nelson, who I did know, founder of Earth Day, who I interviewed before he passed away for this book project and I worked with him on 10 leadership programs down in Washington, so he was a good man. Even he, when you read his statements on Earth Day, one of the things that he was proposing and talking about he does not seem like anybody is talking about anymore, and that is the population boom. That he talked about the fact that if we overpopulate the planet, we are not going to have enough food to feed everyone. Then of course then all the environmental issues come up. I often think of Gaylord because I think even when Earth Day 40 was happening in Wisconsin, there were people there saying they were co-founders of Earth Day. Well, Gaylord Nelson, that was his idea. He was the man that made that happen and he was also- JG (00:28:10): He was Republican. SM (00:28:10): Huh? JG (00:28:13): Was not he a Republican? SM (00:28:14): Oh no, he was a Democrat. He was a Lyndon LaRouche democrat, two term governor of Wisconsin and two term senator from Wisconsin, and of course he worked for the Wilderness Society until he died, but did not seem like people were even listening to his thoughts on population. I do not know if you sense that, but I do. All the other issues are being brought up about the environment, but they are not talking enough about overpopulation and that is an issue. JG (00:28:44): It is the story of our issues that I was just thinking about how open my thumb and the whole complex issue of humanity in the planet. Humans have two stories. Do we have a story that is scientific and technical and that gets us bows and arrows and gets us started, gets us tabs and cell phones. We also have a story that is cultural and social and comforts us against whether it is the leopard that might eat us or the infinity of outer space that is so huge and we are so small. That is religion or myth or culture. Both those stories go together and that is why right now we are in confusing time because people are not understanding everything is perfectly explained that is going on in the world by the predictions of the (19)60s. I just want to affirm we were very, very ripe, but we got away from it. We let the addiction that is this culture get to us and we cannot blame the corporation because I cannot sit here with the iPad and jet pick up my pocket and then cry about the corporations. It is like who is going to give me that stuff? The Amish? I do not think so. But the story were as a species is the story that we started to get and then we moved away from that and those Paul Lake, Gaylord Nelson, those people were in tune with that story. SM (00:30:25): Christopher Lash wrote that book, the Culture of Narcissism in (19)79. JG (00:30:29): I remember. SM (00:30:31): And that was a big seller, and of course he was basically saying that a lot of the Boomers had gone into becoming yuppies or what he making a lot of money and that kind of stuff in their late twenties and early thirties, but then he was also talking about the next generation too, which I believe is the Generation Xers, which were the sons and daughters of Boomers. In fact, today's colleges, 15 percent of the college students centering this year are from parents who are Boomers and 85 percent are the children of Generation X. Where did that... And I am going to get in your background, but where do these two succeeding generations fall in this guilt? In terms of Generation X, which was a generation that I feel had deep problems with the Boomer generation and they were being reared at the time that Reagan was president and many of them took his way of thinking that we did programs out of the university and the programs we did, two main themes came out of it. Number one Generation X was tired of the nostalgia, the thinking that many of the Boomers had about the going back to those times, they were thinking about their music and rock and roll and the protest and all the times. Those are great times and some of the students were tired of hearing about it from Boomers. Then there were those who envied Boomers because they had no causes like the Boomers had except they did have the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the (19)80s, which was a big one on college campuses, but there was really nothing after the (19)70s, late (19)70s and the (19)80s and the (19)90s, nothing. So gen- JG (00:32:19): I told her that. SM (00:32:21): Generation X has some responsibility here too and I think part of them, they wanted to make a lot of money early and I do not know if they ever had the concept of helping humanity. Then you got today's millennial students, which I think are fairly comparable in some respects to the Boomers in terms of they want to leave a legacy but they want to leave it later on in life and not, they want to get married, have families in their twenties and thirties, but they do care about the world and they want to leave a legacy, so they do have some of those same traits. I am studied to hire Ed a long time, and so I do not know if your thoughts on where these two succeeding generations fall and the guilt and the problems we face today. JG (00:33:08): Sure. Well, and in fairness, reason for invoking guilt is that we do believe we have free will. The earth of the material upon us of the human race is what undoes our efforts to be good is that it is so powerful and productive, that is why it works so well. In fairness to us, we just failed to perceive how deep we were into this game and it was like everybody else, but we had the greatest opportunity because we... I was working with young people right after college in social services, doing social work, doing alcohol and drug treatment, doing therapy, doing retreats, all those things. Then I started working at the university of Maryland. Employment was not like the early (19)80s and no, the mid (19)80s. I noticed something changed profoundly that in the (19)70s for eager for these personal growth activities and they eagerly did them and they revealed very important things. It was just a mind-blowing time with people opening up. Fast-forward to the (19)80s and that feeling gotten worse and worse. I remember going into a social work file. I had been doing teaching group process and social work classes for a long time, but just practicing social work students. I did the same activity that I have been doing for 15 years to share something. What was it like when somebody came home from work and five or six o'clock? If you cannot remember, it was a very piggyback exercise, but you were practicing listening too, so you did not care if somebody was listening. One of them was, what was it like at bath time? Did you have a rubber duck, [inaudible] stove? Did you have the bathtub, whatever? Well, so that was one of these different sharing things. When it came time of the bathtub thing, I remember this woman freaked out the social work file, got up and ran from the room and the discussion went around. It is like, "How dare he asked people to share something like that in a class." Wow. I was in some sort of trouble. Then I had a client who we were doing some visualization, relaxation stuff and he came home from his foster family and they were like, "Oh, you were doing devil worshiping." And I am like, "What the hell is going on out there?" But I do not see this and I do not know if you felt this way, but what we failed to recognize when I came to understand that this somewhat anything goes thing, structured thing that we all had flattened was a mistake. It was a mistake. Definitely it is a clear mistake, and what we failed to perceive is what my speech teacher told me, I was a freshman in college. I came in the speech class and I was like, "Oh, I am going to do all this, blah, blah, blah, blah." And he is like, "Okay, here is what we are going to do. I am going to teach you the right way to do a speech and then you can do it your way, but first thing I am going to teach you the right way. Oh, okay, I am going to teach you the structure first, classical speech, and then you decide how to bury it." We had an incredible education. Everybody I knew, most of the students were taking math, physics, everybody was reading. We had this fantastic structured education and then we arrived at the (19)60s and we are all creative. Now, why did we think that unstructured education and chaos, and we were raised by generation that made us feel good about ourselves by being organized and behaving, and then we rebelled when we were teenagers or in college. We misperceived where we came from. We thought it was because we were special and that had burst the balance of repression. No, we were so creative because we had a damn conservative upbringing and we learned the basic of geography, science, math, English, social studies. That makes any sense. I am rambling, so then we were shocked when this generation that we gave a somewhat much more unstructured upbringing to working pharmacist are not creative. SM (00:38:17): It is interesting. JG (00:38:21): All she had to do with the was understand what we were doing wrong was to go back and look. See, we did not want to admit that because we were like the guy that did not want to continue the interview, that did not want to admit there was something good about the business. SM (00:38:32): Well, a lot of students did not want to be carbon copies of the multi diversity that Clark Kert talked about in his book and right after the, just before the Free Speech Movement, he talked about that the university was a multi diversity that students come to a university, prepare for a career and this is the way you get to your career and this is the way it is. The students did not want to be carbon copies of what their parents were in the (19)50s. The IBM mentality, which is the husband leaving the front door, kissing his wife, putting his hat on with his suit, walk into the car and having two children by her side and going off to work. They did not want it, so they were really rebelling against the status quo. JG (00:39:24): We were well-prepared to decide that having had all the basics covered through a nice conservative education. We all knew math. We all knew how to divide and multiply. We all knew the planets and geography, and so does that make any sense or should we- SM (00:39:52): Yeah, and see right now- JG (00:39:53): We had prepared us to make more choices, but to then go to a kindergartner, what would you like to do today? What would you like to learn? That is ridiculous. It is not going to... They do not know that they need to do every day for about eight years. Learn a little math and that is the only way you can have advanced math skills is every day do a little bit of work. I was part of that too. I thought, "Yeah, if we only trust the kids, they will puzzle it out." Well no, that was wrong. SM (00:40:25): I want to get into your background now. From that point that you were, you have talked about those early years in high school and what you did after high school, then you were in college working for a while. How did you go from college work and student affairs to the rest of your career? JG (00:40:47): Yeah, so working on the, well you want me to just... I will just give you the summary of how I got to that. How I actually started the film career was I was working, I had three kids and got divorced and had this blog house in the woods and I was on the Hippy Dream Organic Gardens. We were home birthed. The whole had winded off, fell apart. Do know I had taught college. 21 I wound up having to just work jobs to both support the kids when they were with me and then send her money and to support them when they were with her. It is a nightmare, so I wound up doing just menial social work jobs in a way, because everybody else was getting degrees. Well, I was just working without a degree, so I was really behind the eight-ball. I was working, supervising foster homes and more doing direct [inaudible] like I had done in the (19)70s and for an agency that was getting more and more paperwork. I was always been a writer my whole life. I was trying to break back into writing on the side and written out a book and some articles and publishing some newspaper and stuff, but knew Michael was getting ready to work on Bowling for Columbine. We talked about it a little bit, but I asked if I could tag along with them. When they were filming in Flint, not realizing you could not tag along with the film crew. Again, I had never been around anything as far as movie credentials. I am sitting in Traverse City, and this some message just started and Michael comes on the computer, he is like, "What are you doing?" I am like, "Oh, I have a doctor's appointment. I took the day off." He is like, "Oh, well we are going up to St. Helen where Charlton Heston was born St. Helen, Michigan, about an hour north of Flint, hour and a half. You want to meet us there?" Like, "Sure." "Actually, you see if you can get there ahead of us and see if you can find out where the house he grew up in is." I am like, okay. "Oh, see if you can find out where the bug pole is." All right. "The school where he went to, see if you can find out where that is." Yeah. All right. "Oh, here is a list of some people. If you happen to find out where these people that knew him are, that is great." And it is like one this list of 12 things, "But if you cannot meet us there, that is fine." It is the opening day of hunting season, it is slush on the road. I am like, "Okay, all right. I cannot see what he does and join up with them." So I go from Traverse City through the slush, went into some store, "Does anybody know anything about Charlton Heston?" I did not know how to do this, so somebody said, "Oh, go to the library. There is a Charlton Heston thing there." So I went to the library and the librarian, it turns out later, did ask for money for their most famous citizen to help build the library and he had never given it, but he still has a display so I said, "Michael Moore sent me to Tommy wants all this stuff and I do not know what to do and can you tell me where the stuff is?' So she is like, "Sure." She went and got a township map, put a little mark on the map where all these things were. Right around that time they pull up in this big white van and I run out there and I hand in this map with all this stuff on it. Now if you know anything about producing, if you have a list of things like that, you might spend a lot of time researching that more than 10 minutes. They are like, "Oh, okay." Then Michael said, and again he had not really asked me to help, he just said can you meet us there? Then he says, "Oh that is great. Well, why do not you go up to Oscoda because we are going to be there later and see if you find anybody who knew Eric Carroll. One of the Columbine shoots who lived there for five years." I drove up to Oscoda, it was a couple hours away and nobody would talk. "No, no, we do not want to talk." I went into a gas station there was a guy that booked pretty young, so I said, "Did you know Eric Carroll?" Said, "Well, I did not know him." SM (00:45:45): Is he the baseball player? JG (00:45:47): Eric Car- SM (00:45:49): Eric Carroll. JG (00:45:49): Fine shooter. SM (00:45:50): Okay. JG (00:45:52): One of the kids did the Columbine Massacre was from Oscoda. SM (00:45:54): Oh, okay. JG (00:45:57): So this kid said, "Well no, I pulled a gun on somebody at school and got kicked out though." So I told Michael, I said, "Well, nobody will talk, but this one kid pulled a gun on somebody and do you want to interview him?" So they are like, "All right, we will come over there later." About 11 o'clock at night, they made it over there, got dinner, the kids get off work, he was working at a gas station. His relief comes on. I asked him, I said, "Did you happen to know Eric Carroll?" He said, "Well, yeah I went to school with him." I said, "Oh, well Michael Moore is coming over here." And so they set up the bowling alley next door, the two boys went over and one is, one is with the bandana you see in the film that sells guns up north and sells in Detroit. The other one was Bomb Boy who sets off bombs in his backyard, and so by the time of those interviews, it was about three in the morning and Michael, so he was riding with me now in my car, we were going to Flint and he is like, "Well, maybe you should stick around with us." I actually drew up my resignation, faxed it in to the social work job, I quit and the next day was leading the film crew around Flint to get there a lot of shots, see with the in Becher. You there in Flint? SM (00:47:17): Mm-hmm. JG (00:47:19): We filmed the next day. Me never having lead a film crew before, did not know what a DP was, did not know anything, but my heart was into it and I knew what to find differently. SM (00:47:40): You then... Yep. JG (00:47:41): Well, the bank thing I was involved with, setting that up, the Barber shop gives you bullets. The dog shoot hunter. I am sitting there watching the movie and I am going, "Michigan militia, James Nichols." I am like, "This is interesting. The first fifteens I either found or had something to do with." My first effort ever that is not too bad. SM (00:48:04): No. JG (00:48:06): Just before the movie was wrapped up, they lost their deal with their composer fell through and Michael knew that I played keyboard. They were like, "Can you come to New York and work on the music a little bit, see what you can come up with? And oh, by the way, we have only got about five days and we have to deliver for cans." All right, so I packed my keyboard in a box. Got my one little keyboard, flew to New York, and I was able to come up with about 15 of the music that they used. Never have not been to New York. SM (00:48:47): Wow. JG (00:48:47): So- SM (00:48:57): Still there? Still there? Hello? JG (00:49:06): Hello. I was scoring, doing most of the other score music for the film on five days and checking the sound mix. Tell me if it is too much detail, but I am sitting in the sound mix and everybody else left and I am the composer. I am sitting there, ask the guy, "Well, when was the last time you worked out?" He is like, "Oh, well Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." I am like, "Okay." I say, "Well, can you put a little bit more of this in the surround? And I cannot hear that." It is just this weird thing where I fell into it and everything seemed to work and I wound up being strangely comfortable with every part of it. I was in a technical screening I remember for Fahrenheit and there were 30 people there and they had done something in one line of resolution, was listening to the film and I was the only one that caught it. I do not know why I was so instantly tuned into this stuff except the writing background, the social work background, but like many of us, I do not know if you were, but when I was a kid, we went... Movies is what we did instead of sitting at home. SM (00:50:26): Every Saturday morning. Saturday morning was the cartoons normally where I grew up and then the afternoon was all the Cowboys and Indians and Army movies. JG (00:50:37): But even when I was into science fiction and I would wait, my dad was gone when I was little and was in the Big Brother program, and I remember how old was I must have been? Nine. My big brother from the Big Brother program said, "Well, what movie do you want to go to?" And I was like, "Doctors Club." SM (00:51:02): Yeah, it is interesting. There were a lot of dinosaur movies back then. JG (00:51:08): I liked real science fiction, I liked Kubrick first. I did not even realize who he was at that point and then 2001, I waited for that movie was like the second coming and I just- SM (00:51:22): Wow. Yeah. JG (00:51:25): I was in college. Michael and I took film appreciation courses. We never took film courses, but we would draw scripts in high school from Ann Arbor. We would dive in to Steve Moore movies and foreign films and that is what we did. Movies and music, and you know. SM (00:51:44): You have been doing it, how long now? Total of how many years? JG (00:51:47): Probably 10 years. SM (00:51:49): And you have been involved how many movies? JG (00:51:55): Bowling for Columbine was the first and then that turned out okay, so they asked me back to work on Fahrenheit and I was co-producer, the film's composer. In between we worked on Michael's Book, Stupid White Men in Due Place, my Country. Then I did the filming that was Foundation Fortune Workshop and saint. Me and Megan, my hero touring with The Dixie Chicks for a couple weeks. Shot the concert footage for that film in the protest footage, and then I worked on one on Paul Watson and Steve Shepard composer, producer, and then Capitalism. SM (00:52:39): Yeah, that was- JG (00:52:40): But not so many films, because I am in a weird zone where if somebody was asking me to put my name on a film, a friend of mine in New York could trying to get some money for, I am like, "It sounds good but I cannot really put my name on a film that is not in the zone of these other." SM (00:53:01): Yeah, definitely. You are working on, and now you are working on your own film and what is the name of this film? JG (00:53:12): Planet of the Human. SM (00:53:13): Wow. When do you hope to be done? JG (00:53:18): As soon as possible. This year, by the end of the year. SM (00:53:26): It is good. JG (00:53:26): About to do the last round of filming, but it is all connected. Well, some days somebody will have to do, my client has not done it yet. Maybe he will do it, but the inside, sorry, how films were made, but quite a great the teams of people to work with together and great journey. We had the sound mixers from Skywalker Ranch. SM (00:53:58): Wow. JG (00:53:59): Take a break from, in fact, when we were mixing Fahrenheit, we had to pack up all the drives. Sound mix was a huge deal and the end of the film is the most complex part of all. We had to pack up the drives and pack up everybody and fly off to San Francisco and then get in cars and drive up into the Skywalker Ranch because they had to start to mix to Polar Express and we were bumping into that schedule, so they had to do Polar Express by day and Fahrenheit by night for a couple of days. SM (00:54:39): Wow. Well, when you look at your life's journey, then from growing up in Michigan and a very poor family, but a very rich family because in terms of pride in your background and so forth, the experiences you have gone through throughout your life, leading up to being a movie producer, director, you name it. A lot of messages in your movies and a lot of messages that probably people do not want to hear but need to hear. JG (00:55:16): Is the place where you grew up still intact? SM (00:55:19): Pardon? JG (00:55:20): Is the place where you grew up still intact? SM (00:55:23): Oh yeah. Cortland, New York. I grew up in Cortland. I do not know if you have ever heard of it. JG (00:55:30): Oh. SM (00:55:30): Yeah, I grew up in Cortland. I lived there until 1959 and then my dad transferred and then we moved down toward Binghamton, New York. We lived in a small community called Lyle, which I went to Whitney Point High School and it was a small school. I was looking forward to going to Cortland High, which was a big school, but my dad transferred. He was Prudential Insurance. I went, that is my background. Cortland is an interesting story too, because in the 1950s, Cortland was a very successful community and they had a college there because State and Rever Cortland, which was a teacher's college, but a lot of businesses, the downtown was very successful. Brockway Trucks was from there, and then around late around 1960 Brockway left and a lot of businesses left and it really went downhill. It is recuperated quite a bit to this day, but that begets because the college is so big. College is about 14, 15,000 students. That is where the Jets practice now in the summer. They did not this year and brings about four to 7 million dollars in income. Just time there, but it is not the same. Nothing's just been the same since it was in the 1950s. JG (00:57:02): I think it is different about Michael grew up on the edge of all this, he imagined it, but I think for me, Bowling for Columbine, that is where that exact place that you see is where I grew up and I cried the first 30 times. We watched all the way through. Every time we would reach out somebody we had watched it through and I could not stop crying at the end. SM (00:57:27): How have you been- JG (00:57:31): I think the foundation that is different is when you come from a place is risen and fallen and it is basically been destroyed. You understand that it is not a given that the world that we live in, can you? And I think people do not, because we move away from the places that are falling apart and we do not really feel in our guts. We know in our heads population thing and all this stuff that I think the interest between Michael and I, most people is when you come from Flint, Detroit, some part of you knows, you know this deep in your bones all things can change and go away. SM (00:58:20): Yeah. Well it is interesting because even though when I moved from starting seventh grade in this new community, I never considered it my community. My best years were my elementary school years and my college years. I never could adjust really to the changes that took place because Cortland was a much bigger place than being in Whitney Point in that area. We had a nice home and everything, had a good job, but we had some tough times too throughout the time. It was part of America, you have your ups and downs and how you deal with roadblocks and life and everything. I have always seen, when my parents were alive, I would always drive with them back to 10 Hamlin Street, which is where I grew up, the home my parents bought in 1946 after my dad came home from the war and they renovated it and then all of a sudden, we moved. On that street, Hamlin Street is still the same as it was back in the 1950s. It is families raising kids and most of the community has gone downhill, but that street has stayed almost and the houses, actually, the people live in the house now were the children of the people that bought the house from my parents. When I drove up a couple years ago, I was in front of the house, I never stopped, but they were painting it and I thought they might have moved. I said, "Is this house for sale?" And they said, the lady came out and said, "Who are you?" Said, "I am Steven McKiernan and I grew up here." And he says, "Ah, you are one of the three kids that grew up in this house." "Well, do you know me?" And I said, "Yeah, my parents bought the house from your parents." And I noticed downstairs in the cellar, somebody had written it, we had a bathroom downstairs. Somebody had written in the cellar, Steven McKiernan, Christine McKiernan and James McKiernan, and that was me. I wrote it when I was going to the bathroom one time. She said, "We never painted over it because it always reminded us of the children that were in this house before we came here." And she said, "And I got to tell you something else." She took me upstairs and they were renovating the upstairs area because her father was ill and needed a place, but he said, "I and my sister grew up in this room and we knew this was you and Jim's room." I could not believe it. Here she was revealing this. 30 some years later, it is just so I am very pleased with that they have taken care of the house, but I have always gone back to Cortland when I visit my sister in Binghamton because it brings back great memories of my childhood. I loved it in Cortland, so anyway. JG (01:00:55): Whatever, much has to be evil to adjust to these social things, but not the baby with the best mother, but that continuous upbringing where you stand a chance to have a teacher that your parents had and that I could walk to school and require people around the corner store where we got our bread and candy and meat. They live two doors down and their daughter babysit us, and that connected community- SM (01:01:29): Is no more. JG (01:01:31): Is the foundation of and stable education with great stable teachers. That is what allowed us to be so amazing as young people, and we misunderstood and thought that it was us tossing off the oppression that made us so creative. No, it was the gift that we were given. SM (01:01:52): That is very good. JG (01:01:56): And Steven that gift still means that we have a responsibility to understand the story we are in. Maybe the thing I will close with if you want is to- SM (01:02:06): No, you want to keep... You can go ahead. JG (01:02:10): I will just say one thing. Woodstock, the part of Woodstock, and I am using this as a metaphor as much as the actual attempt. SM (01:02:26): You got your answer on healing should be, it is going to be a very important part of your interview. That was a great response. JG (01:02:35): Well, one of the things I have learned is you feel good about yourself through doing good things and good work, and not because I am a specialty. We have gotten too far with the... Are you still- SM (01:02:58): Yeah, I am taping. I am back. JG (01:03:01): The thing that I wanted to be clear about is that, and this is what my movie will be about as soon I can get it done, is that we almost had it right, but we were confused because we wanted to live simply, we want to toss out the military industrial complex and we want to grow our own food and have home birth and travel again many of us. That was the correct vision for how humans should be living. What we failed to understand is that we are in a mess. It has got to take many generations to get back to the point where humans can live simply like that. Our mission though is to hold that in mind, not for ourselves, for seven to 10 generations from now. When we have got our population under control, people can be living in harmony with nature again. We have that vision, and that is my hope we can return to that before we die. That clarity, humans have to get back and down to the planet, and it was not for us, or it is not even for these children now, someday if there are survivors who would be living like people at Woodstock, except very simply and maybe with a little technology. I think there is a lot of hope in what was talked then. It is just we did not understand that our whole doing of that was contained in those years too. The partying and the narcissism. SM (01:04:38): You write your movie, I cannot wait for it. If it comes to Philly, I hope you come there for the premiere, because at the Ritz Theater, they do a lot of premieres there and they have actually producers that come and talk. They had one last week for a movie that I went to, and I hope that the Boomer generation is reaching 65 and maybe they need to reflect more. If you are talking 13,500 a day turning 65 for the next, God, 19 years, or excuse me, 15 years, that is a lot of people. If they can be talking and asking these same questions, conservatives, liberals, independence, no matter where they stand politically, they still got one fourth of their life still ahead of them. Many are going to have to continue to work because unfortunately we are living in a tough economy, but that does not mean they cannot work on some of these issues. And certainly those that, I hope they change retirement because retirement really is not retirement anymore. I hope it is not just about rich people moving to Florida and Arizona and taking six trips a year around the world. I know I cannot do that and most of the people I know cannot do that, but that is the dream that you see on TV, but in reality, this same generation that we were talking about that had such promise in your words, still is alive, still has a chance to do something to help correct what you are talking about. JG (01:06:15): What happened, understanding that my, if I could afford a dream house somewhere and to cruise around the world in my senior years. You know what? When we were 18, did not we know that that meant that somebody else was not having the resources to even be comfortable? We have got to get back into balance and take control again, and I think we could do that. SM (01:06:42): Any final thoughts you have on anything like the final thought on the legacy of this generation called Boomer? Do not forget too, that one thing I have found through this project is the Boomers are between 1946 and (19)64, but those Boomers in the first 10 years are much closer to a lot of the older members of what I call the silent generation. Those born between (19)40 and (19)45. Many of them were mentors and role models and leaders of the Anti-War Movement and all kinds of movements. And Richie Havens told me, he said, "When you talk about the spirit of the (19)60s, I may not be a Boomer within the terms of that sociologists and higher ed people label them, but I am a Boomer in spirit." So I have learned, and even Todd Gitlin told me that he cannot stand generational terms, he cannot stand the word Boomer generation, the greatest generation, Generation X, millennials. He cannot stand all that because he said we need to be more reflective of the times we live in and the events that shaped our lives and we do not have to be put into a nutshell, and so in some respects- JG (01:07:58): Yeah, I do not- SM (01:07:59): In some respects the people that were born safe from (19)38 to (19)45, or even closer to those Boomers of who were born between (19)46 and say (19)56 than those within the generation who were born in the first 10 years in the second 10 years. JG (01:08:24): If we were to talk for a while, my perspective is so different than so many people. The reason we kept this versions of the (19)50s is that we were the first generation that had the material wealth. Some are our dudes instead of our elders. It is not because the (19)50s were so horrible that we rebelled it. It is because we lived in such luxury that we had the privilege to rebel it. SM (01:08:40): We had the time to do it too. JG (01:08:42): The time to do it. You could live on very, very little in (19)66 to (19)97. SM (01:08:47): Right. Well, I do not have any anymore questions unless you want to add one? Any final thoughts? JG (01:08:56): Yeah, no, I think you are right. You understand how much the gift the (19)60s was from those that mentor did and thought things like what you got for you. SM (01:09:13): Oh yes. JG (01:09:13): Take care and we will- SM (01:09:14): Yeah. What I will need from you, Jeff, I am going to need two pictures- (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 Jeff Gibbs https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/15057a3947002ec61179f98c1839a49e.jpg 4a7dd871597a272e2ba035d9eadb8726 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/cae473610bb89fc980edc36b3c7e9b27.mp3 11ce45edaad7b8df76413e9d91e538cc 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 Jeff White Date of Interview 1997-07-27 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan 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 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 83:54 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Kent State; Vietnam War rallies; Women's Rights Movement; Vietnam Veterans; Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; Peter Max poster; Activism."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Kent State; Vietnam War rallies; Women's Rights Movement; Vietnam Veterans; Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; Peter Max poster; Activism. Subject LCSH Civil rights workers; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; White, Jeff--Interviews Biographical Text Jeff White graduated from Villanova University in 1968. He joined the U.S.Army in 1969 as a Pioneer Combat Engineer. He served in Vietnam as a clerk from 1969 to 1970. Since then, White has been actively volunteering in veteran's causes including serving as past president of the Delaware County, PA Chapter 67 of Vietnam Veterans of America and serving as a delegate to the Pennsylvania State Council and Vietnam Veterans of America National Conventions. 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 Jeff White Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource White, Jeff ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights workers; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; White, Jeff--Interviews 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 1997-07-27 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.10.2016.171a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.171b 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. 83:54 Description An account of the resource Jeff White graduated from Villanova University in 1968. He joined the U.S.Army in 1969 as a Pioneer Combat Engineer. He served in Vietnam as a clerk from 1969 to 1970. Since then, White has been actively volunteering in veteran's causes including serving as past president of the Delaware County, PA Chapter 67 of Vietnam Veterans of America and serving as a delegate to the Pennsylvania State Council and Vietnam Veterans of America National Conventions. https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/0b036aa709027d62ffc94983e980e496.mp3 0a72b745cf136821f127f2341fc6852a 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 Gaidorus, Jenny Tokos Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Caganek, Anna Date of Interview 1978-03-03 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 24:02 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55919">Interview with Jenny Tokos Gaidorus</a> Subject LCSH Gaidorus, Jenny Tokos -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Cigar industry; Johnson City (N.Y.); Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Medical care 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: Jenny Tokos Gaidorus Interviewed by: Anna Caganek Date of interview: 3 March 1978 Jenny: I came here in 1914, I was about 12 years old and I came to Ellis Island. They kept me there for three days until my aunt put up a $500 bond for me— Anna: Go on. Jenny: —Then I came here, then I went to school for a while and I liked it, and I said, “I'm going to work for Endicott Johnson,” and I started working. I was 14 years old in E.J., then I went to the cigar factory for $2.00 a week, and I was doing a little housework for 50 cents a week and it was, kind of hard, so then—what do you want me to say? Anna: Where. Jenny: I worked in the shoe factory, then when the work was slow I went to the cigar factory. It wasn’t hard to get a job. When it was bad in the cigar factory we went back to the shoe factory and work like that, and I was young, I got married and then I had the children one after the other, but I was working in E.J. Anna: How many children did you have? Jenny: Four children, and well, we had to go to work for 8 and 9 dollars a week. That, and then my husband died, I was 28 years old and I had 4 small children, then I was working, and then I got so sick that the doctor put me out from the factory, and so I make a living home. I had baseball players, roomers, and took care of the kids on the street, and made a living like that, and everything. I was a widow for 14 years, and I got married again, and then I had operations, one after the other, and have half of my stomach out and all those things, and a Pacemaker, and now they took my both feet off, amputated, and I—one was maybe below the knee at two year ago. And a year ago they had to take the other one off, so I am in a nursing home paying $2500 a month. Is it going? Anna: Yes, go on. Jenny: It was kinda hard and it is hard now, I had one boy that was killed in 1942, in a car accident with another boy, and then my other son died, was 49 years old. I have one son in Arizona. A daughter is here living on Front Street, and she's not well either, she don’t come up to see me much, she can’t. And well, I'm in a bed most of the time, and in a wheelchair. They put me on about 1:30 and then I stay in the wheelchair about 2 hours or so, and then they put me back in bed, and so I'm in bed most of the time. Anna: You were saying that you liked sports. Jenny: Baseball. I used to have the baseball players living up to my house, and I used to cook for them and do their washing, and then they had a write-up about the baseball park, how they—once in a while I went to the ballgames, and they had fights there. And wrestling, I used to like to go and see that, and I play Bingo a lot. Even we play Bingo every Monday here. (Cough). Anna: And when you were young, what did you do for amusement? Jenny: I didn't have time, I had washing and then ironing to do all the time. Anna: Did you ever go dancing? Jenny: No, I didn’t. I would sneak out and I went to Bingo. Anna: Did you ever go to Ross Park, or to the band concert? Jenny: No, I didn't have time for that. I used to play Bingo. I used to take care of the children and the chickens, and garden and canning, all day. Anna: How much did you can every year? Jenny: About one thousand quarts, everything from the garden—pear trees, cherry trees. Anna: That’s the way people lived those days. Jenny: Yes, those days that’s the way you did. We didn't make much money. It was better for me to stay home than have somebody to take care of the children and I every way, different ways. Anna: Your children are all grown up, anyway. Jenny: Now, yes, one son is in Arizona, going to have open heart surgery, yes, and I don’t know when, maybe next week, someday. Anna: Could you remember, think of anything else? Jenny: No, was busy all the time with cooking and baking, and I worked in the Johnson City Legion for about seven years, had had charge of the kitchen there and I worked there for fifty cents an hour. Anna: Can you think of anything else? Jenny: No, that’s it. Anna: 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 Jenny Tokos Gaidorus Subject The topic of the resource Gaidorus, Jenny Tokos -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Cigar industry; Johnson City (N.Y.); Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Medical care Description An account of the resource Jenny Tokos Gaidorus talks about immigrating through Ellis Island and then moving to Johnson City, NY where she worked in a cigar factory and the Endicott Johnson Corporation. She discusses being a widow and raising her children alone. She supported herself by renting rooms in her house to baseball players. She discusses her medical conditions and operations she underwent, which resulted in moving into a nursing home. 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 25 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gaidorus, Jenny Tokos ; Caganek, Anna Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-03-03 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. 24:02 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3d78660e106c158e4677b1335904c681.mp3 a1c66cda7c27cb68c746094311a883d8 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/c3fec555f5ee8721334015f122f43b07.jpeg ceb7ee983e3d97f9e7de2dee15cb7031 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral Histories Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories from 1960s Binghamton Alumni Description An account of the resource In 2019, Binghamton University Libraries completed a mission to collect oral interviews from 1960s alumni as a means to preserve memories of campus life. The resulting 47 tales are a retrospective of social, professional and personal experiences with the commonality of Harpur College. Some stories tell of humble beginnings, others discuss the formation of friendships; each provides insight into a moment in our community's rich history. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Irene Gashurov Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-2018 Relation A related resource <a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/browse?collection=18">McKiernan Interviews : 60's collection of Oral Histories</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2018-11-16 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Irene Gashurov Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jesse Masyr Year of Graduation 1971 Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text Partner at Fox Rothschild in New York. He specializes in real estate law and is responsible for bringing legislation that permitted sidewalk cafes to Manhattan. Prior to joining the firm, Jesse was the founder of the Land Use Department and a named partner in the law firm of Wachtel Masyr & Missry LLP. He also previously served as Deputy Borough President of Manhattan, where for five years he represented the Borough President on the Board of Estimate. Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Subject LCSH Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Alumni Interviews Interview with: Jesse Masyr Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov Transcriber: Oral History Lab Date of interview: 16 November 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) JM: 00:03 My name is Jesse Masyr. We are currently in my law firm in midtown Manhattan at 101 Park Avenue, and apparently, we are going to attempt to extract, well, the memories I have left. IG: 00:20 Very good. And so, you graduated- JM: 00:24 I graduated in 1971, and I enrolled in 1967 so I was in the four-year program. IG: 00:34 So, tell us a little bit about your growing up. So where did you grow up? JM: 00:41 I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I was born in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn, and it was actually my intention to be educated in Brooklyn, but my parents felt strongly otherwise, and that is how I sort of wind up at Harpur College. Was not my desire. I really wanted to go to school in New York City at the time. To me, everybody I knew was going either to Brooklyn College or to Queens College and but my parents felt that my parents are first generation Americans, and they were sort of very liberal, but they were but they had come about, and the McCarthy era had really scarred them in a sense that they thought my radicalization at that time would somehow go on my permanent record, and I would, I was, I was involved in 1965 particularly with something called the New York City's high school Students for peace. And they thought that that would put an anvil around me. So, my father said to me, "No, you are not going to school in New York." And so that is that is why, to me, SUNY was an inferior brand to CUNY, and not knowing anything about SUNY, had helped out to make that judgment, by the way, and that that is how I wind up in Binghamton, because I did not want to go there. IG: 02:05 So, there was an element of fear ruling your- JM: 02:10 Yeah, my parents, my parents really felt that, you know that it would be go on my record, and at some time later on, when I was looking to join the professional ranks of the world, somebody will remember the hardest it is to imagine that in 1965 I was part of a number of peace demonstrations and walk outs and demonstrations against the Marines, all kinds of embarrassing things that I did as a youth. IG: 02:35 Where did you go to high school? JM: 02:39 Lafayette High School, which does not exist anymore. They closed it because it was, it was a substandard school when I went to it, and it got worse as the years went on. IG: 02:55 What were your-your parent’s expectations? JM: 02:59 Very simple. The you-you had you had a choice. Growing up in my family, you could become a doctor or a lawyer, and I failed at becoming a doctor, and therefore I defaulted in becoming a lawyer. My brother was successful. IG: 03:14 He is a doctor. JM: 03:16 Well, I do not think so. He is an oral surgeon, so they never counted to me, but, but he did go to Columbia Physicians and Surgeons for his dental degree. So that was winning. The odd thing is, my brother's five years older than I am, and he was still living at home, going to at that time, he was actually going to pharmacy school before he went to dental school, it was okay for him to go to school in New York because he was never political. Had no interest in anything of that nature, and so I did, and my parents said, you are out. So, it was weird that my brother was still there. But I have often said "My brother was an only child." IG: 03:52 [laughs] So they-they had the idea of Harpur College or? JM: 04:02 No, they- IG: 04:03 How did you come upon? JM: 04:04 Well, because my parents, I was in a lower middle-class family, so I was not going to be able to go to a private school. And so, the other thing to me was, was just state school, and I did all the research myself. So, it to me, it was the choices, not doing a lot of research, was either I was going to go to either Stony Brook, Albany or Binghamton. Buffalo, I never would have considered because it is in another country, as far as I could tell, and I did not want to go to Stony Brook. It was Long Island, and I had enough experience with kids from Long Island not realizing they were all going to Harpur. When I got to Harpur, I had complete culture shock, because I thought Binghamton, I would be meeting people, basically, who were more intimate with cows than anything else. And then I realized it was a New York City Long Island School. IG: 04:05 Yes. JM: 04:07 Although nobody from my high school went there, but virtually no one from my high school went to college. So, it was not the real issue. IG: 05:08 So, what was the reputation? You really did not have too much to go on if you thought it was a cow school. JM: 05:15 Yeah, I thought it was a cow school. I really did. IG: 05:17 So-so when you arrived. And so did you have an idea that you would want to be a lawyer when you- JM: 05:24 No-no, I know- no, because there really was not- the lawyer was sort of the failure. You were going to be a doctor because I was Jewish and that there was no other alternative, you know, that, or a rabbi. And I had gotten that. That had passed when I was 13. I did not do that anymore, and so I took two years of science. I was a science major my first two years, and by the end of my second year, I think I was on academic suspension or threatening suspension. I was I was a failure in science. I was complete, and I changed majors and graduated with a history degree and a GPA low well enough to get me into law school. I basically aced the last two years, but the last two years, it is interesting that you mentioned, it is 1970 1971 and there was a lot of disruption in the school at that point. 1970 in the spring semester, is Kent State. And the school shut down. And then in 19- in my senior year, I was involved in something called the college volunteer program to combat drug abuse, and was a founder of something I do not know if it still exists at Binghamton, called High Hopes, which was which was a drug. It was a crash pad, as far as I can tell. But at that in 1970 before he went totally [inaudible] crazy, Nelson Rockefeller was going to cure everybody before he decided in 1971 to put everybody in jail forever. And so, he funded something called the college volunteer program to combat drug abuse, and funded each of the universities, and I became one of the initial directors and founders, of which we named High Hope sarcastically, and set up the drug clinic, and then spent my life that my senior year, going around Broome County talking about the evils of drugs, which was about as ironic and sarcastic. IG: 07:33 So, what was this program? What did it promote? Was it abstinence? JM: 07:39 No-no-no, we drugs were still good then. IG: 07:44 Yeah. JM: 07:44 I mean, and it was really about people having bad LSD trips. IG: 07:50 Right. JM: 07:50 And so, we were behind. I do not even know if these structures, I have been back to school. Four years ago, there was a post office building near Student Center, and the back of that was given to us as basically a place where people were having a problem with the drugs, they took that we could sort of walk them through that and calm them down. IG: 08:13 So, you, but you, it was not like a methadone [crosstalk] JM: 08:16 No-no-no-no. We did not. We did not. That was not really- IG: 08:20 Medicinal. JM: 08:21 -a real problem that was, you know, in 1970 it was more about people taking Angel Dust and people taking LSD and then going, it was hard to get mushrooms, very hard. We could talk about that. It was always rumored that somebody had them. But it never was. They always had LSD, because it was very available, because the it was a real, able source near Binghamton for LSD, which was Cornell. Cornell graduate chemistry students were in the manufacturing business in the (19)70s, (19)60s and (19)70s. IG: 08:59 I am awestruck. That is related. JM: 09:05 That is why I made the reference to you better [crosstalk] yes. IG: 09:08 So- JM: 09:11 That is why there is such a great, famous, Grateful Dead concert that occurs- JM: 09:15 Yes JM: 09:16 -at Binghamton at that point. JM: 09:17 Yeah- IG: 09:17 In in 1968 or- IG: 09:17 Yeah, 1960 JM: 09:22 No. IG: 09:22 No? JM: 09:23 No. It was later. It was later. The famous Dick's picks concert, I think, is (19)70. IG: 09:30 I see. So, what was the apart from, you know, this kind of, I do not know. What was it, an anti-drug, drug culture, what were some of the topics of conversation among your friends and yourself? What-what did you I mean, apart from- JM: 09:57 Well, I mean- IG: 09:58 -the usual, you know, dating, what- JM: 10:00 Well- IG: 10:00 What are the political sort of you know- JM: 10:03 There was that huge cloud hanging over all of us, because all of us were now living under the yoke of that that our student deferments from the draft would expire upon graduation and going to graduate school, with the exception of going to medical school, you would lose your exemption. And so, the Vietnam War was hung over most of discussions, because it was not, it was not popular, as they make the hope that does not come as too much of a surprise. And so, remember this Kent State, so I was very political at the time. I do not think the school was very political. IG: 10:46 Really? JM: 10:47 I did not sense that. I mean, there were a lot of people there who were what I would call straight and were not involved in that, were not involved in the drug culture not involved in the anti-war movement at all. Kent State, I thought was-was surprising that galvanized the students to strike, although, if history, if I remember, by the time the students decided to strike, the faculty had already shut the school in protest. So, the faculty was probably more radical than the student body was. IG: 11:24 What you know- JM: 11:28 And (19)68 remember also is the year that a lot of us went and worked for Gene McCarthy. IG: 11:34 I did not know that. JM: 11:35 Yes, and it was to my parents love and joy. I actually cut off my hair in the famous go clean for Gene movement. IG: 11:47 That must have pleased them. JM: 11:49 Momentarily. IG: 11:50 Momentarily. How did you, I mean, how did you, you know, find that opportunity to work for Gene McCarthy? Is that something that I mean, you just said New Yorker, you probably- JM: 11:56 No-no. It was somebody on campus who was, who I remember, I think, who I know is no longer alive, who was politically active and much more attuned to being anti-war, and it was really an anti-Lyndon Johnson sentiment more than anything else, and enlisted a lot of us as volunteers to go work for Gene McCarthy. And I do remember the great celebration the night that Lyndon Johnson announced he was not running for reelection. It was an instant partner. IG: 12:40 Right. So, I mean, what was your platform? I mean, what was a platform that you supported essentially anti-war and- JM: 12:49 Not sending me to Vietnam? was my platform. I mean, I was, it was one of complete self-interest. IG: 12:57 But do you think that there was sort of, you know, pervasive era of anxiety that many of the male students experienced. JM: 13:09 I think there was, for a lot of reasons, there was anxiety. I think there was a feeling that the youth, our youth, was seen as threatening to social structure, that lot of people saw us as an enemy, in essence, disrespectful, disruptive. And I do remember—it is funny what memories you have, and maybe they get manufactured. But I do remember when-when Kent State occurred walking through the Student Center, and the song that was blasting over and over and over again was Jefferson airplanes, Volunteers of America, and we are all outlaws in the eyes of America. And I think that was a feeling that a lot of us, I certainly had, that feeling that we were seen as disrupting the social fabric that our parents and had sort of instructed us to obey, and we were being disobedient, and the rallies and the anti-war movement, the demonstration in Washington against the Pentagon. I mean, I think those were seen as us versus them kind of events. IG: 14:35 So it was, you know, a rebellion against your parents, you know ideals or value expectations. JM: 14:45 Not so much their ideals, but their but their social structure, their standards. This is how you behave, and you do not stick your head up that much above the fence post, because you make it slap down. IG: 14:58 That is. Very much an immigrant mentality. JM: 15:02 No, I understand you remember, they are first generation, and they are from, they are Jewish, and everybody who did not come over got exterminated. And so, there is sort of that I understood that growing up, and I grew up in a hard to believe in Orthodox Jewish community, and I did not. I really perceived that being Jewish began with the Holocaust. There was no history before the Holocaust. That is all I heard about; all I was taught about it. It permeated everything, including expectations of what your future could be. IG: 15:40 Right, and that and that, you know, that probably felt at some point as a burden as well. JM: 15:48 No question about it. IG: 15:49 Um, so you know what was the new order that you were hoping to bring about? JM: 15:58 You are giving us way more credit than we would ever have deserved. I do not think there was that I least could not articulate at that time, and I do not remember anybody articulating to me an alternative solution, other than Lyndon Johnson should not be president. I do not think there was I certainly as I evolved later on. But I do not think there was an anti-Nixon feeling before. It was just got Lyndon Johnson out of office. He was killing us. He was doing this war that was just taking us away and slaughtering us. IG: 16:35 So, you just wanted to be kind of unshackled from these figures and from your parental, you know, expectations, but you did not really, I mean, you did not sort of, you know, see what a future would be like. JM: 16:56 Certainly, was not that skilled or motivated, [crosstalk] to have those expectations, I mean. And frankly, the last thing, if I was given a list of things to check off, the last thing I would have been able to check off that I was going to be a lawyer really caught me by surprise. IG: 17:18 Before we talk about that. Who were some of the faculty that made an impression on you? Was there anybody who really stood out in your memory and then kind of determined you to- JM: 17:37 I cannot say that. I do call one history professor that I thought was one of the most brilliant people I had ever met. His name, his name was Africa [Thomas W. Africa]. He was an ancient history professor. But that is really do not have much more recollection than that. IG: 17:57 So, you do not, you know, you do not remember that your academics kind of really opened your eyes to seeing the world in a different way. JM: 18:06 No. [crosstalk] It was purely the social I grew up in, this sort of Brooklyn essence came up there and was extremely liberated, because I was first time, I did not have parental control, and I was with other people who similarly felt that way. And so, it was clearly the socialization that that molded changed me more than the academics. No, plus the fact I was not really particularly great at academics or science, for sure. IG: 18:41 But you became great at academics. JM: 18:44 I became great at succeeding at academics. IG: 18:47 I see. JM: 18:47 I think, I think there is a difference. IG: 18:50 There is a difference, there is a difference. There is a difference. But so, have you kept in touch with any of your fellow students? JM: 19:03 Only by coincidence. IG: 19:04 By coincidence. JM: 19:05 Yeah, that we sort of met later on, did not keep did not keep continual touch, and then somehow, professionally or socially, “You went to Harpur?" "Yes-yes, yeah." Do not even remember them and being at Harpur at the time I was at Harpur. They were not in the social scene I was in. So, I do have friends that are from Harpur in the same time I was there, but they were not friends of mine when I was at Harpur. And those people that I am was friendly with, unfortunately, are not alive. I was very friendly, extremely friendly with a guy who-who unfortunately has the same answer, the same ending, to the people I was to the people I was closest to. Both died from drug related deaths. One, his name was Rick Juan, who unfortunately made the Today Show, because right after graduation, literally right after graduation, he got on a plane, went to Amsterdam, and within 24 hours, had died of an overdose of heroin. And then the other was. The name was Alan Goldstein, who became a doctor, a surgeon, but had a lifelong addiction problem, and ultimately died of liver disease that was created by his lifelong drug addiction. And he had he was a drug addict while he was a doctor, which shows you how brilliant he must have been. IG: 20:39 No, well, I mean, it is an addiction. It is a disease. JM: 20:43 Then he had had a terrible car accident one night after leaving the hospital, because he was drugged up and got-got really badly hurt. And I think that ultimately was the cause, the predicate cause, of his death. So, the two people I were closest to no longer alive. IG: 21:04 Do you think the drug use back then was different than you know, people knew less probably about addiction? JM: 21:20 I think, I think I had a pretty I think I had a pretty good- IG: 21:23 No? JM: 21:24 No. I think I had a pretty good idea of the level of drugs that were being used at the time I was going to school, and I do not recall the heavy, dangerous drugs being used. There was a lot of not marijuana, believe it or not, there was a lot of hash. I never really understood that, but it was a hash school, and there was a lot of hallucinogenic. There- people were not going around with lots of barbiturates or heroin. There always is heroin, but it was not prevalent. And to the extent that there were amphetamines, they were more obviously, more valuable around finals than at any other time. IG: 22:16 I assume that they are still JM: 22:18 And-and people those days remember, amphetamines where-where you could get them legally. So, everyone was stealing their mother's extra drill and, you know, bringing it up to school. But I did not perceive drugs at that time to be there were- no opiates were not prevalent. There was the beginning of the synthetic drugs that were coming on the-the Angel Dust, the MDA, which was fucking people up quite-quite much, but it was just beginning. It was not as prevalent. IG: 22:55 when you know, did people talk about Timothy Leary, yeah. Were you interested in that kind of mind, expensiveness-? JM: 23:05 Very-very much- IG: 23:07 -experience. JM: 23:08 Very much so in 1969. No, the summer of 1970--Alan and Rick and myself went cross country to go out to San Francisco, to track down Owsley, who was the great manufacturer of LSD out in San Francisco. So, yeah, it was something I was, I was interested in. I was, by nature, though, too much of a chicken to ever develop a drug problem, IG: 23:41 Right-right-right. Well, you know, that is, that is very interesting. So, you know, but you, you were not a hippie, and because you aspired to this very kind of establishment, and uh- JM: 24:00 I think I would have wanted to be, yeah, but I could not, because of the, you know, from the time I was five years old, yeah, there was either become a professional or-or you would have to be somehow, put on a boat, set a fire. IG: 24:14 Exactly. JM: 24:16 Yeah. So yeah, I would have loved to be hippie. IG: 24:18 Yeah. You would have loved to yeah too, yeah, because you did not drop out, you just kind of dabbled. JM: 24:24 Yeah. IG: 24:24 Yeah, it was- JM: 24:25 Yeah. IG: 24:26 -dabbled. So how do you think your classmates would remember you from that from the years at Harpur College? JM: 24:39 Annoying. IG: 24:41 How so? JM: 24:47 I just-just use my general reaction. I think I was a little bit pushy, perhaps manipulative. You know, I mean, I manipulated myself into this directorship of this drug clinic as a means. The real reason I became director of drug clinic is it gave me an opportunity to come back to school in August. And at that point, staying at home in my house was intolerable. It was literally intolerable. My parents took one look at me. You know, my hair, which fortunately I had then, as opposed to this thing. But then it grew this way. It did not go that way. I mean, I never got it to be long, but it would go out and out and out, and so that would just drive them crazy. And from an early age, I from the time I was 13 years old, I was living in Greenwich Village. The music had caught me. The folk music era of that time had captured me. IG: 25:48 Where did you listen to? Where did you go? JM: 25:52 I went to you had delicate balance in the village then, because you could only go to a place that did not serve alcohol, because you are underage, significantly underage. So, there was the Gaslight Cafe, which was on McDougall Street, but it was until later that was able to go to the bitter end. And the village van, the Village Gate, which is no longer there. I actually have helped redevelop it so it was there, and it was the cafe walk across the street where you could go to so I could listen to Tom Paxton. I saw Bob Dylan, and I got addicted to that. I mean, I to the point that my father, I think, rightfully, felt like he wanted to kill me. Because how many times can you play that thing over and over and over and over and over again. And so that music really was the changing point for my enlightenment, and listening to Phil Ochs. And then when I was in high school, on the high school paper, I actually my next-door neighbor was an accountant for a guy named Grossman, who was manager of Dylan, Peter, Paul, Mary, number other people. So, he got me interviews with-with performers, Eric Anderson, Philip and I wrote these up for my high school newspaper. So, these were, you know, idols to me, but I was, that is where I was spending all my time. So, my parent’s joke, just really, and my brother was, you know, listening to, you know, 45 rock and roll, and that had no interest to me whatsoever. IG: 27:37 Right. Well, they, were, you know, the really, the- these Balladeers were the voice of change, you know, and, and also of kind of building, not camaraderie. What is this word that I am looking for among the young people, right? They- JM: 28:02 I think it is camaraderie. I think it is a shared purpose, or shared ideal, I mean, and also, really what it was-was a rejection of the status quo. And, you know, the gray flannel road was not, was not the road that you had to take. And they were talking about an alternative, and I was completely hooked on that idea. IG: 28:28 But that alternative was artistic-artistic. It was liberal. It was- JM: 28:35 Yeah, it was liberal, it was political. It was rejecting the past, that the norms of the past are not necessarily in concrete and they do not have to be adhered to. And you can change things. You have that ability, and therefore you do not have to subscribe to, eventually, the life I live, but nonetheless, you have to subscribe to go off and find a job and find your place in society. That is the norm. I say that in all due respect, sitting here in a law firm that I am a major partner in. IG: 29:19 Right-right-right. JM: 29:21 Well, you know, there was a point in my life when I found that you could buy things with money, and so it became somewhat more important. IG: 29:25 So, did that? You know, when did that point come? JM: 29:30 After law school. IG: 29:31 After Where did you go to law school? JM: 29:35 I went to law school Tulane in New Orleans. And so, you may ask, why does a nice Jewish boy who was, who was dumb enough to go to school in Binghamton, where the sun never shines, go to where the sun, unfortunately never, not does not shine. And- IG: 29:51 Maybe that is the reason. JM: 29:52 No that was not the reason. I went to Tulane to avoid going to the army. It is you- it is a short story, and I will make it as short as possible. As you probably have researched and noticed there was a lottery system, and I had not a particularly good number in the lottery. In fact, in May, no before May, in April of my last year, I got my letter from Selective Service telling me that I was about to be reclassified and I was going to be drafted, and I will save you all the details, unless you want them. The reason I picked New Orleans is new the way the draft worked was that every draft board had a number of people that had to supply. If your number, was you had to take a simple example. You had to supply 100 people. If 100 people enlisted, nobody got drafted out of that draft board, “Okay,” so I had done extensive research on how I was not going to go to the to the army, and Louisiana had a process which was subsequently declared illegal, but fortunately not at the time that first time, felony offenders in New Orleans were given the choice of enjoying the hospitality of the Louisiana penal system or enlisting. So, by the time I got down to New Orleans, I had already been drafted. I kept on bouncing them back and forth saying, I am in Binghamton. I was drafted out of Brooklyn. Oh, we will send it up to Binghamton. When I got to Binghamton, I was already back in New York, and send it back to New York. And then eventually I went down to New Orleans. I went to register you had to go when you changed jurisdiction, at the draft board. And I remember having all my documents because I had a second way I was going to get out of the draft if the first way did not work. And I went to register it in Louisiana and New Orleans at the draft board. And I think my number was 110 and the guy looked at me and he said, "Get out of here." Would not even take me said "Get out of here. We are not going to get to 60," and that is why [crosstalk] I had no [crosstalk] IG: 31:55 How did you feel? How did you feel when he said- JM: 31:58 I felt ecstatic because I did not have to use my backup, which was I also worked on extensively to have a backup. IG: 32:06 Which is a backup? JM: 32:07 There was a, there was a great doctor in New York called Alan Sorrell--long gone, who was a specialist, an allergist, a specialist in inducing asthma attacks to get you not out of the draft, but it would get you a deferment for six months. And so, he was able to induce in me a series of asthma attacks that I had to get certified by a hospital because they knew Sorrell was a no-good nick. IG: 32:35 How do you induce an asthma attack? JM: 32:37 He- I guess the same way in theory, how you build up resistance to an allergen. But he did it in the opposite. He broke down my resistance. And ultimately what he had determined I was most allergic to was cat dander. And if you are allergic to cat dander, you are particularly allergic to kittens who produce more dander. And so, he I do not through a series of shots. I have never asked him, never asked him why. He then said to me, I think you are ready. "Come in next Thursday." I came in next Thursday, and he had two Persian kitten, Persian kittens, and he locked me in the closet with the two kittens. And it was like when these senior once is opening up “You okay." I could feel myself drowning, literally drowning, and then when I could barely breathe, he said- he was on 30th and Second Avenue, and NYU hospital right across the street. He said, "Okay, you are ready go to the emergency room." And that is so I had my asthma attack. IG: 33:35 I see, I see, but it was temporary- JM: 33:37 Yeah. IG: 33:38 Any- JM: 33:39 Yeah. IG: 33:39 -lasting- JM: 33:40 But that is how I went too late. I had no expectation; I was going to be able to succeed at law school. Because I thought law school was going to be hard, and little did I know law school was at an intellectual level for me, at least of what I would call junior high school. IG: 33:58 Really? JM: 33:59 College was much, was much tougher to get through the courses at Binghamton than it was at law school. Law school was purely regurgitation. You just read it vomited right back at them. And, “Wow, you are brilliant." IG: 34:13 Right-right. And so, you did this right after college. JM: 34:16 I went directly I was- started too late in 1971 and graduated in (19)74. IG: 34:24 Your brother was no longer of draft age. JM: 34:27 Oh no, he was in medical school. He was dental school--got you, got you an exemption. IG: 34:34 Right-right-right-right. Did you share your strategy for avoiding the draft with any of your friends? JM: 34:42 Yes. IG: 34:43 Good. JM: 34:44 All of them. IG: 34:45 All of them. JM: 34:45 This was a team effort. I mean, everybody had a thing they were doing to get out of the track. Some of the people I remember going to school with went to dental school, although they did not really want to, because that was some. Went to podiatry school, which apparently got you eligible for not going to the draft. Those things did not really appeal to me. IG: 35:11 What you know, what role did- what were your I do not know women. They were part of, certainly your, you know, you know, rebellious, rebel, student rebellion. But how did you? Did you during that period when you know you wanted to see the world differently, and did you look at women differently? I mean, did you your expectations of what their role was, or did you still look at women and think, "Well, you know, this is going to be a girlfriend, and then eventually a wife or a partner?" JM: 35:54 Yeah. IG: 35:54 And then- JM: 35:55 I did not have- IG: 35:56 You did not have. JM: 35:57 -very progressive new vision of what women were. IG: 36:01 What- I had not asked you before, what did your parents do? JM: 36:06 My father was in the garment manufacturing business. My mother was a bookkeeper. IG: 36:12 I see. JM: 36:12 My father was sick my entire life. He had as a young child, develop scarlet fever before the invention of penicillin, and in those days, it could kill you, and if it did not kill you, it scarred your heart muscle. So, he had heart disease the entire time I knew him. He died at a very early age of congestive heart failure, just right after I graduated law school, he died. IG: 36:40 but he got to see you a lawyer. JM: 36:43 Not really by the time, by the time I came back to New York, which was a year after graduating law school, I disappeared for a year after graduating law school, because the idea of being a lawyer had no appeal to me whatsoever. I mean, I have to caution you by telling you-you have not asked me what I do as a lawyer. IG: 36:44 Oh, I have not [crosstalk] JM: 36:54 I was extremely, very different kind of practice, and I am one of those few lawyers you will ever meet who actually loves what he does. It is to me, it is a, it is a hoot, what I do for a living, and cannot believe I get paid to do it a lot of money too. But I did not want to be a lawyer after I graduated from law school, so I went to Europe for a year. JM: 37:30 Oh, where did you go? JM: 37:39 Mostly throughout France, and then stayed in Spain for about seven months, at a time when it was extremely cheap and Franco was still in charge of Spain, and so being an American was hardship. IG: 37:56 Yeah-yeah. This was in the mid– (19)70s. JM: 37:59 1974. I was- I only regret that I was in Paris when Nixon resigned. I think I would have enjoyed seeing that here, but I spent 1974 in Europe and came back in (19)75 and by that time, my father was really about to die. He was months away from death, and so he could not attend my swear. To my amazement, to my utter shock and amazement, I had passed the bar exam. I mean, I took the bar exam and figured this was bullshit. I was not passing this, and somehow, I passed it, and so I came back, got it, got admitted, which is a cute story, but and then my father was too ill to attend my swearing in, into the bar, and they never saw any of the early success I had, which I had a remarkable early success at the age of 29. IG: 39:00 What was a remarkable- I am so sorry? JM: 39:05 I was, I was appointed deputy borough president of Manhattan at age of 29 which was, and still is, the youngest person ever in the history city to be appointed to that position. And when I left it in 1983 at the age of 33 to this day, nobody, even at the age of 33 has ever been appointed to that position. IG: 39:26 What did you do in that position? What did it entail? JM: 39:29 The city of New York, back until 1986 was governed by a body called the board of estimate, which was made up of the five borough presidents, one from each borough. The mayor, the controller, is something called the City Council President, which does not exist anymore, and they govern the city of New York. The City Council of the City of New York had no authority at all, and so I represented the borough president on the board of estimate. He never went in all the years I was there, he never showed up once the principals did not really show up. It was run by staff, and so I was essentially the governing power of New York at the age of 29. IG: 40:09 What kind of decisions did you make? JM: 40:10 We decided all land use matters and all contracts, all land use matters development in the city, and all contracts greater than $10,000. We met every other Thursday in public session. We would start at 10am and it would run to about three o'clock in the morning. In 1986 the United States Supreme Court ruled the board of estimates unconstitutional because the borough president of Brooklyn had as much had the same vote as the borough president of Staten Island, despite having five times the population, and that violated the one person one vote law, and so the board was declared unconstitutional--was abolished, abolished 1986 but from 1979 to 1983 I sat on the board. IG: 40:58 What kind of things did you accomplish? JM: 41:02 We changed a lot about the way Manhattan is developed. We shifted development from the east side to the west side, part of recapturing 42nd street Times Square area from the sewer. It had become - And this was also a very heavy time, because New York had was emerging out of its bankruptcy. And so, it was coming back alive. And the it was just to be in that position at that time, was by grace. IG: 41:38 You loved it. It was- IG: 41:40 Right. JM: 41:40 And it is- IG: 41:40 Because New York City is so dynamic. JM: 41:40 And, yeah, and when you do it at my level, you are you have the great ego satisfaction of carving into the city of New York so I can show my fingerprints, which is kind of egocentric. JM: 41:40 It was fantastic. The only problem is, the person I worked for was a complete lunatic, and I needed to leave. I mean, the idea that I left, it was people, "What do you mean? You are leaving this job." I mean, the reason I have a beard, by the way, yeah, is I was 29 years old, and I had 109 or 113 staff, of which all but three were older than me. So, I needed to look older quicker. So, I grew a beard, which I kept. I left because I could not take the craziness any longer. He was just he was so irresponsible, and he had wanted nothing to do with the job. He loved running for office. He hated serving in office. Running is fun. Serving is-is not fun. I mean, actually, doing the job is work. And he did not come from the world of work. He came from the world of campaigning. And so, after a while, I just could not take it any longer. And this was just I wanted enough of it. But by that time, I had learned something which, because I had voice, I had not practiced law yet. It was 10 years after law school. I still had not been a lawyer, and I was a political hack and but I had learned the development world and the land use world of New York, and where I sit here today is one of the more prominent land use attorneys in New York City. So, buildings, shopping centers, apartment houses, radical changes in the infrastructure of the city I am a part of. And to me, I come to work every day, and I know what I am doing to do today is not what I am going to do yesterday, and it will not be what I am doing tomorrow. JM: 42:07 Wonderful. JM: 42:10 Yeah- IG: 43:35 It is wonderful. JM: 43:38 And- IG: 43:39 Have you- I am just curious, have you met Trump? And uh- JM: 43:43 I know I am in Donald, if you do the research, I am in Donald's first biography. IG: 43:48 Oh wow. JM: 43:48 I knew Donald well in the- when I was when I was the deputy borough president, because at the time, he was in a war with the Leona Helmsley, and we were also, now you have gone on this road. [crosstalk] You may end this, but my boss's father, lawyer, and confidant, and who I got to know fairly well was somebody I am sure you have never heard of Roy Cohn, so we knew Roy really well, and I spent a lot of time in Roy's office. As a result of that, Donald was Roy's client also. So, while we were never friends with the Helmsleys, we were by nature friendly with Donald. And when Donald tried to build a convention center on the west side for freak on the condition to be named after him, we were advocates of Donald's. And when he got into his spat with Leona, we sort of came out on his side. I. And then, when I eventually became a land use lawyer, I just recently had met up with a former associate of mine who worked for me at the time, and we remembered the story. We spent two and a half hours in Donald's office. He called me up one day because he knew me and I knew him. He said, "Come over the office. I want to hire you." In fact, he had no intention hiring me. He was, he was having a fee dispute on how surprising with his lifelong lawyer, and so he wanted to sort of let the word go out that he was maybe going to move his business to me. And we spent two and a half hours in his office, which I remember, we talked Deborah and I, who was my, she was my urban planner then; we talked about it, that we had the same memory, that it was an office filled with photographs of him, and he showed off to us for two and a half hours. Now, I am nobody, you know, we are two hairdressers that show up and wait a minute, I have to call Kathie Lee, because she just gave birth, and apparently, she had just given birth and in front of us, he was doing this, and I remember vividly, so now send me a retainer. I am going to build the world's largest building in downtown on the waterfront. There was a site called two bridges that the city was actually thinking of developing at the time. And I remember going down the infamous escalator in Trump Tower, and my associate turned to me and said, I will never forget she looked at me, said, "Not for you." And so, we never sent him the retainer, and that was probably the last time I spoke to him, because he called me up about a week later. He said, "Where is the retainer?" He said, "Retainer." I said, "I am sorry. I will get it out to you immediately." I lied, and that is last time I spoke to Donald. IG: 46:43 What do you I mean, that is really fascinating? I did not know this about your professional background. What do you think are, you know the qualities that owe to your great success? You know what-what is it a predisposition? Is it an ability to I mean, you have demonstrated this by how you found an out from the draft, um- JM: 47:19 Doing development in New York is difficult because it is supposed to be it should not be easy. I think I have an ability to do two things. One, I can see the finish line and figure out how to get there, how to how to navigate through the process, and the key to this is try to convince people that they want what you are suggesting and you want because nobody really wants change. IG: 47:56 I mean, how do you do that? How do you how do you convince people that they want what you are suggesting. JM: 48:03 Well, I mean, the first is an inherent idea in New York that we will constantly evolve and it could be worse. So, I am providing you something that could be better, and try to position that there is merit in what you are doing. And part of it, by the way, what is essential in, it is actually believing it. I do believe that it is better to do what I am proposing than not, that we are creating jobs. We create a place where people live. New York is not some Jeffersonian area where there be agriculture. We are a center of commerce, and we all have an opportunity here because of the commerce. And if you kill that, you there is no quality-of-life reason to live in New York. It is dirty, it is noisy, it is you go to sleep at night and you could read in your room without turning on the lights. There is so much ambient light here. IG: 48:59 Right-right-right. JM: 49:00 So, the only reason to be here, it is a place to-to be able to create enough economics to-to be able to support your life. And I think what I do furthers that, that ball, and all the years I was at deputy borough president, my position always was that, you know, that change, if managed correctly, is more beneficial than not that the that the alternative is not successful, and as God would only do because the Old Testament, God is one mean bastard. The irony of it is that hoisted on my own petard, that is how I met my-my wife of 37 years. IG: 49:52 How do you meet her? JM: 49:54 So, it was 1979; we were crawling out of the morass. We were still, we were still a punch line on Johnny Carson, you know the muggings. JM: 50:08 And you were, you were already working on- JM: 50:10 I am the deputy board president. IG: 50:15 You were already working. JM: 50:15 And-and one of the things that I was a big supporter of, and convinced my boss to be a big supporter of, which is going to sound crazy to you, was what was just beginning with sidewalk cafes and restaurants as a way of bringing people back to the street and increasing commerce. IG: 50:28 It is priceless. Yeah. JM: 50:29 And so, and we were, and I convinced him, and he even pay attention to shit. So, I was a huge supporter of sidewalk cafes, which was now becoming hard to tell you this controversial, because it was creating noise at night, which I thought was great and so but I basically had to screw you. This is how we come back from the morass. My boss, at that time, had a friendly relationship with a publisher named Ed Down, publisher McCall's magazine. He would visit him from time to time to pick up whatever you want to think he picked up. And like in every important man's office, the most important person is not the man, but his secretary, who was ever the gatekeeper is it turned out the secretary lived on West 69th Street on the west side, and she said to my boss, one day, "There is a terrible thing. There was a restaurant on the corner of 69th in Columbus called the Red Baron, and this bastard has an application for a sidewalk cafe, which will destroy life as we know it. So, can you kill it? Because we had the authority to kill it?" It was up to us. And so, he came back to see me, came back to the office. River dropping. And he said, was this cafe 69 she got to kill it, right? And I said, I asked them why? And he tells me “Head Down-Secretary, "Kill it. Kill it. Kid," I said to him, "Let us have some fun." The people on the Upper West Side did not vote for us. We, they were they. We got slaughtered upper west. I said, "Why do not we just fuck with them?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "The 69th Street block association is probably one of the strongest block associations. Why do not we go meet with them and we will play good cop, bad cop in front of them. You be sympathetic, and I will tell them what assholes they are." And he said, "That would never work." I said, "It is going to work". So, we go up there. They have 50 people. 50 people over a fucking sidewalk cafe. We come in there and Andrew, my boss, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, asked the question, which turned out to be brilliant. He said, "By a showing of hands, how many people here were born in New York?" There were two hands, Andrew and mine, right? So, this is the last one, and closed the door society, and they start to explain how this intrusion into the side street will just destroy life as we know it on Earth. And I go at them. I am very confrontational with that. And you people just the I mean, you all moved here. I mean, you destroyed it. On and on. We leave. Not to be surprising, on the Upper West Side, in a block Association, there is so many lawyers and so many psychiatrists. The psychiatrists decide that the borough president himself is a wonderful man. That short prick is the problem. Got to deal with the short prick. And they assign the Vice President to the block association to go lobby me, the woman who will become my wife. IG: 53:30 Oh! JM: 53:31 And I am as arrogant a prick as you are going to find. Get away from me. She keeps she comes see me. I think she is very attractive, obviously, I think she still is, and I am as cruel as humanly possible, because I know I am going to have to vote for them. I am going to have to do this because he is because they go back and report to the secretary. Next time he comes up to his office, she is her heads exploding. He comes back to me, goes, "What are you doing? [crosstalk] Stop it." "We will be fine. It will all be okay." And that is how I meet my wife. She comes to fight city hall, and eventually there, there is flirtation and there is friction, and then the night of the vote to every to her shock and surprise, it is like you son of a bitch, you did this to me this entire time, and from that date of the vote, we then were never apart afterwards, we got married a year later. IG: 54:37 So, tell me a little bit about her where, what was her background? Did she- JM: 54:42 She was- IG: 54:42 New Yorkers? JM: 54:43 Well, she was one of the people the room. She could not raise her hand. She was born on Long Island out near Suffolk County, and came to New York to find her way. She was in the catering business. IG: 54:56 I see. JM: 54:57 And she was struggling. IG: 54:58 Yeah. JM: 55:00 But she was having a great time living on the Upper West Side with all the other communists, Trotskyites, [inaudible] types, and she became very active in her Block Association, and that is who she was. And she had not been married. I had been married to a Harpur College, someone I met at Harpur. IG: 55:24 I did not know. Well, of course, I mean, I did not ask, I did not ask. JM: 55:28 She was a year behind me. We got married for no reason whatsoever, other than the fact that everyone in our social circle was getting married. IG: 55:42 Really? That is so interesting, because on the one hand, you are social progressives- JM: 55:46 Yeah. But-but- IG: 55:47 Yet you are embracing marriage. And- JM: 55:49 Yeah-yeah, I was- IG: 55:49 -an establishment career eventually- JM: 55:50 A complete one. IG: 55:52 Yeah. JM: 55:53 Complete wimp, and we got married. I have a suspicion that she, like me, never thought we should get married, but it was her family. She had come down to live with me after graduating from New Orleans, started working, helped support me in my last year in law school. And I think her parents were very-very conservative, Orthodox Jews. My current wife is Polish Catholic, and she was under enormous pressure from her parents and all my friends at that point in law school, all the social friends we had were now getting married that year. And everybody got married last year at Tulane. Because, if you were Tulane had, besides being, despite being a somewhat progressive school for southern school, had a particularly sexist point of view about scholarship money. If you were married, it was assumed that your spouse could go earn living, and therefore you were not entitled to any financial support, even if the woman you were marrying was a Tulane student, and so everybody got married in October, because financial aid had been set in September. And so similarly, we got married like everybody else in October. And six years later, we separated in New York after she graduated law school. IG: 57:21 You had seen each other through law school and well, beginnings of your career. JM: 57:26 Well, I did not so much see her through law school, as much as that was my justification that I could leave this relationship, that she had helped me through law school. So, I supported her through law school, and then got her a job by extortion of the using my authority I was still, I was deputy royal president when I was married to her, and I was divorced for about an hour and a half, and I was able to use my-my power to force the law department to hire which did not last, and she actually did not want to be a lawyer. IG: 58:11 What kind of cases are you- JM: 58:13 I am good on time. IG: 58:15 Okay, what kind of cases are you working on now? What are some of the- JM: 58:20 Okay. You want me to show up? IG: 58:21 Yes. JM: 58:24 Really, viciously honest. Probably the case of most visibility. I am going to tell you things you can all Google it. So that is-is something called Industry City, which is 30 acres of industrial property in the waterfront in Brooklyn, which is part of what we call the innovation economy, as artisanal manufacturing is flourishing in New York. And we are really the incubator there, and we are changing the land use there. To give you five seconds about American land uses. We are what I would call junkyard zoning. The idea was always to take the dirty uses and put them as far away from the residential uses, and then gradually the uses, the less and less intense, come to merge in the middle. What we have learned is we do not want to live that way anymore in the 21st century, our-our manufacturing is not as dirty as it once was, because we do not do dirty things anymore. In America, we do not manufacture foundries. So-so the idea that you have to separate that from where people live is not the same reason, and now people want to live closer to where they work now. And also, manufacturing is now part of academics. I mean technology, technology schools are, colleges are very much a part of the new innovation economy. And so, the zoning basically says, "Well, if you do heavy manufacturing, you cannot do any of these other uses nearby." And what we are doing at Industry City is saying, for the first time in New York, "No, we are going to change that." We are going to actually be able to bring academics into manufacturing so they can coexist. And so, the guy who is the, you know, the glass blower is our artisanal we are the largest maker of drones is there an Industry City? IG: 1:00:24 Where is industry city? JM: 1:00:26 Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is along the water. So- IG: 1:00:32 How interesting. And what are the schools involved in this? JM: 1:00:36 Well, we do not have one. IG: 1:00:36 You do not have one. JM: 1:00:36 We do not have one because we are not permitted. So, we believe, so far, the only Mellon has come into New York and gone into the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is a city owned site. We are privately owned. We are the largest privately owned industrial site in the city. We have had, we have had significant interest from engineering schools, saying, call us when we can do this. So, we think we will be able to bring in as much as 700,000 square feet of academic uses into the manufacturing world. So that is the most interesting thing I am doing now. I am also- IG: 1:01:20 That is fantastic. That is fantastic. JM: 1:01:20 I am representing Brooklyn Hospital, which is the last independent hospital in Brooklyn that has not been swallowed by Mount Sinai or Columbia Presbyterian. And what we are trying to do there is stay independent there. There is a rationale why independent is better than not being independent, because when you become affiliated, it is one shop for everybody. So, we have- we were saying it is part of our propaganda, but we think it is true that we are best able to treat our unique population needs because they are not the same everywhere. Populations predominantly black and brown, and there are certain unique medical issues, but we cannot afford to stay in business, because, frankly, we do not have the wealth that Mount Sinai has and Northwell has. So, we are saying to the city of New York, look, we have this beautiful campus in Fort Greene, right next to Fort Greene Park, which is beautiful park. Let us significantly increase the permitted density on our site, and let us monetize that by selling it to developers, so we will have this pot of money that will allow us to stay alive as an independent institution. So, I have just begun that process. IG: 1:01:22 What do you mean increased density? JM: 1:01:22 In other words, when you own this piece of property in New York, depending on what zoning district you are in, you can build x. So, we are saying, “Let us build x up here, and we can sell this and create our own endowment without any government subsidy of cash.” So, we are doing that in Queens. I am currently working for Kauffman Astoria Studios and rezoning five blocks around them to create in Queens the first mixed use arts district that will include housing. IG: 1:01:22 How fantastic. JM: 1:01:22 I tell you. [crosstalk] And then I do normal shit--apartment houses in Manhattan, which, yeah, I have done, in my opinion, some of the most attractive buildings in New York, and also have been responsible for some of the ugliest things that have ever been built. And I take my daughters around and show them that. IG: 1:01:22 Are they both lawyers? JM: 1:01:22 No, neither one. My-my oldest daughter is a teacher, and my youngest daughter is a hippie. She is living the life that I thought I aspire to, but having seen it, I do not, do not want it, but they were great. They were both happy, and they had, you know, they were fortunate enough not to know what a college loan looked like, and I was never happier than writing tuition checks. I said to both of my kids, go to school for as long as you want. They both went to private schools, the idea they would go to SUNY was they would burn their hair first. So, my older daughter went to Hobart, which is uniquely situated between Rochester and Syracuse, a pit, and my younger daughter went to Hartwick in Oneonta. And then she did not my younger daughter did not go to any graduate school. My older daughter went to Philadelphia School of Fine Arts to get a Master's in Fine Arts and in something that I believe has not been economics since Gutenberg printmaking and. Then, fortunately, she then found what she wanted to do, came back to New York, which pleased us to no end, and went to Fordham to get her master's in education. And as I said, we have said to we always said to our kids, go to school. Not a problem. We will pay tuition and support you to go to school forever and as long as you want. And we always were sad that my younger daughter did not want to go to graduate school and still finding her way. But they both live in New York. IG: 1:01:22 That is- you are very lucky. JM: 1:02:05 Yeah, I am very lucky, but except for one thing, which I am extremely lucky about. So, in 1992 I was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. I had developed a stuffed nose, and I went to see an ear, nose and throat doctor who looked up my beak, and he said, you have a polyp that is huge. And he said, we have to cut it out. And at that time, I was doing this was land use lawyer, and I said, I cannot do it. Next week. I have a hearing. He said, "Not a problem. It is a polyp. It is a polyp." And he said, "We got to take a small piece of it first." And I said to him, "What is the chance it is cancer." He looked at me like there is no chance where you would need it. You are a moron. And literally, that was on a Thursday, and on Monday I got to Houston, we have a problem. Phone call. It came back hot. Is a renal clear cell carcinoma in the nth point sinus, which is a pocket of air that sits right here, where your brain sits on. And had it been benign, it would be just as dangerous, because it could grow and break something called the cribriform bone, which your brain sits on top of. And I went to three doctors, three surgeons, who said to me, the last guy gave me my check back. I will never forget that gave me my check back. And I finally found the guy at Sloan Kettering who became, ultimately the head of head and neck, John Shah. And he said, "I have never done it." He said, “Frankly, there is probably never” he said, “Nobody gets cancer there.” The first thought was, this cannot be so you must have it someplace else. So, I went through a series of tests of find that cancer, you know, and they could not find it anywhere else, and it was nowhere else because, and they said, "Okay." He said, "In theory, I should be able to do this, but it is going to take two surgical teams. We need to bring in a neurological team and-and I am the head and neck guy." Because they are going to have to flip your lid and take your body apart like you missed the potato head. 15 hours of surgery, two surgical teams, and they were able to so I have a scar that goes from here to here, oh, my God. And I have one that goes on the side of my nose. As you can see- IG: 1:03:14 It is inconspicuous. JM: 1:03:14 I had- I was such an arrogant prick that I said to Shah, "Do we need a plastic surgeon?" And he looked at me like, "Son, what do you think I am?" [laughs] IG: 1:03:14 Yeah, exactly. JM: 1:03:14 "You want a plastic surgeon." And-and I had the operation, and what it resulted in is I am somebody who has zero sense of smell, because they had to sever the olfactory nerve. And so that is, that is what that is that was the only price I paid. His brilliant surgery was able to take the tumor out. It was encapsulated, had metastasized, and I was [crosstalk] IG: 1:08:57 Saved your life. JM: 1:08:58 [crosstalk] saved my life. I was back at work in 30 days. IG: 1:09:06 And that changed- JM: 1:09:07 Nothing. IG: 1:09:08 Nothing. JM: 1:09:14 Because I was never sick. I mean, I have stuffed nose, I mean, I did not have, you know, cancer, the jaw. IG: 1:09:21 You are afraid that you might die. JM: 1:09:23 I could not believe I was going to die. What I was most afraid of, you said, because this is, you know, Jewish whining piece of shit. I was afraid of disfigurement and pain because I have zero tolerance for discomfort. And so, but I just could not get you, I mean, I was otherwise healthy. Again, I am going to die, right? Made no sense. And so, I guess I never thought I would die. IG: 1:09:55 And you were, you were young, you were young. JM: 1:09:57 I was 42 years old--it occurred- IG: 1:10:00 Yeah. JM: 1:10:00 The operation occurred to my 42nd birthday, and I lost one day of my life. I mean, I was gone for an entire day, and-and then, you know, I got punished for being the arrogant schmuck I am anyway. So-so when you have brain surgery because he had to take this bone away and drain my brain. So, the first problem they always have is that, did they put everything back correctly? And so, until-until you are, you are stable, you are under the control of the neurological team. And I, they would not, they do not hand me back to my real doctor. They had a neck doctor. So, they come in every day, [inaudible] Sloan Kettering. There is no- I am on painkiller because face, but there is nothing they do because they are just worried you are going to get an infection if you have brain surgery. And so, it is every day take a temperature, and every day they want to see if you are confused. So, what is your name? Why-why are you here? So, on the fourth day, they came in to see me, and at this point, I am fine, I am off the pain killer, and they say to me, why are you here? And I said, I just killed the Archduke Ferdinand [Irene laughs] worldwide anarchist movement. They do not say, stop it. IG: 1:11:31 Because they lef.t JM: 1:11:32 They back up. And next thing is, you hear footsteps. My wife is sitting there looking at me like and then you hear people running full speed into the room. So, the doctors, guys and my surgeon, the head neck guy, came to see me that night, and he looked at me, said, "You are really a jerk." He said, "You are being punished now they are not turning you over for another day". I am one of the few people you know that got expelled from Sloan Kettering. I was supposed to be there for-for three weeks, and after two weeks, they asked me to leave. IG: 1:12:10 That is the point of honor. JM: 1:12:11 Because there is nothing wrong with me. I do not look disfigured, right? And I am on the head and neck floor, which looks like a Fellini nightmare, yeah, people and every day you line up for treatment. It is a gulag, and there are people there that are so horribly maimed and destroyed by a hospital. Mr. So and so you look carefully, look terribly dead. You are going home, and I am there with the New York Times reading it with a cup of coffee, and they told me, we will see you tomorrow. There is nothing they could do for me. So, I started getting stoned and so and great thing is Sloane, which is on York Avenue, the people will be lined up at night, 11 o'clock at night, smoking cigarettes through the trade. And I am the last one on the line smoking a joint. They bust me in the patience lounge on the 15th floor, outside with the head of terrorists. But I am smoking a joint that point. They said, "We think you should leave the hospital." Okay? And I was dismissed a week early. IG: 1:13:11 And you did this deliberately to get- JM: 1:13:14 No. I was so bored. IG: 1:13:15 You were bored. JM: 1:13:16 I was bored beyond belief. I had visitors. The people were amazed. It was coming to visit me. The Queens borough president was seeing came to see me, the Bronx borough president. I knew all these people. They are my friends from the days working in government, and they would say to me, "What are you doing here?" I said, I have no idea. I have no tubes in me. Can you imagine being in a hospital for two weeks and they do not take blood? I think it violates a law or something. IG: 1:13:39 Yeah, and especially when, when people are significantly- JM: 1:13:43 But blood would not indicate. All they did was take my temperature to see if I spiked my fever. And that was, I mean, that is so I am bored to death. And every day I am walking to the Gulag, you know, for the treatment. And I there is no treatment to give me. There is nothing to do. It is done. I had a nose job, basically, the mother of all nose jobs, nonetheless. But it was a nose job. That is what I had. They took out my septum, and you boom, and I have a sinus here, that is, you know, unencumbered by chambers. And then they had a gross but they had pulled tissue, so things up, but it all was inside. And, you know, there was no post operative treatment. And walked away, and came back only a few times to the hospital because Shah was no longer interested in me. It was clear that I had survived. And so he is, he is a scientist. I am of no interest to him. So, after my second return visit, he said, "We will let the resident look at you. I would not let him operate, at least. Why am I going to let him look at me? We are done." He said, "Okay, we are done." IG: 1:14:55 Yeah. I mean, we could talk about this. [crosstalk] JM: 1:15:07 You graduated from Harpur things like this. IG: 1:15:10 But that is so interesting, so interesting. And you are, you know, natural storyteller. JM: 1:15:18 Yes, which is the ability to be a [inaudible] so I have to be I do not do this as much anymore, but I used to stand up in front of hostile communities and get them to first see that I was a human. So, it is hard to hate you. I have always told clients the magic in doing these projects is you got to keep showing up. So, the first day you show up, everyone hates you, and the second day, they still hate you. By the fourth or fifth time you are a person now, and so you got a cold, you okay, you feel all right, right, because all of a sudden you are humanized. Now, once I am humanized, I can start to tell you about my project. IG: 1:15:59 That is actually very excellent advice to you know, young people listening to this tape, and- JM: 1:16:10 You promised me, no one is going to listen to this tape. IG: 1:16:12 No one is going to listen to this tape, we are going to excerpt. And you know I am thinking like, what section? JM: 1:16:20 About Harpur and plus, I have a huge complaint you do not make Harpur paraphernalia. You only make SUNY Binghamton paraphernalia. Those of us who graduated, when we graduated, do not really tell people we went to SUNY Binghamton. It was not SUNY Binghamton when I was there. IG: 1:16:46 No. JM: 1:16:46 Actually, that is not true. It became SUNY Bingham while I was there. But I did not get admitted to SUNY Binghamton. And my diploma says Harpur College. I mean, so, but you do not have any paraphernalia. IG: 1:17:01 Meaning? JM: 1:17:03 T shirts, hats. IG: 1:17:05 I see, I see, okay, so that that is something that we can work on. JM: 1:17:09 The number of us who are Harpur graduates, every year or less, we like World War One veterans. IG: 1:17:16 Yeah, I know, I know, but, but I mean that this is the way of life. But, yeah, there quite a number of you still very active. These are the people that I spoke to and-and they share your sentiment that they really identify as Harpur graduate rather than Binghamton. JM: 1:17:33 Yeah. IG: 1:17:35 So, you know, maybe as a concluding you-you, you certainly can conclude with any thoughts that you- JM: 1:17:45 I have no closing statement. IG: 1:17:47 You know, so, so what-what lessons did you learn from this period in your life that- JM: 1:17:53 I grew up. IG: 1:17:54 You grew up. JM: 1:17:55 I mean, yeah. I mean it-it made me be responsible for me, yeah, which I was never before, and it was a great environment, it was safe, it was secure, and maybe it was none of that, but I certainly felt it, I did not feel I was I was so amazed that I was now responsible for going to school, and nobody was there to tell me to go to school. I mean, it sounds kind of dumb, but wow. I mean, if I do not go, no one is going to call me up and say where I was. And somehow it made me an adult. Began it began to make me adult. I do not know if I am there yet, but, but it was- I was not a child, at least anymore, and I was somewhat responsible, or at least I thought I was going to become responsible for me. And I then made my own choice without consultation with anyone that where I was going to law school, you went through the application process by so without talking to any my parents, my family, my brother, and I think I was on my way to being on my own, and I owe that to Harpur [crosstalk] and the music was good. IG: 1:19:27 And the music was good. JM: 1:19:28 Paul Butterfield would perform there, the Turtles. I saw the Turtles there. Saw the Grateful Dead, and then also went to Ithaca to see the Who, when they just started doing Tommy and I am old. IG: 1:19:43 Well, you share this love with the Dean of Libraries, because I think he, he is, he is a bit younger than you. JM: 1:19:53 So is most of the western world. IG: 1:19:56 No, do not say that. No, and, and so he went to see the Grateful Dead. That was a very highlight of his young life. Any concluding remarks? JM: 1:20:10 Thank you, Irene. IG: 1:20:11 Thank you very much. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Jesse Masyr Subject The topic of the resource Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Masyr, Jesse ; Gashurov, Irene Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource Partner at Fox Rothschild in New York. He specializes in real estate law and is responsible for bringing legislation that permitted sidewalk cafes to Manhattan. Prior to joining the firm, Jesse was the founder of the Land Use Department and a named partner in the law firm of Wachtel Masyr & Missry LLP. He also previously served as Deputy Borough President of Manhattan, where for five years he represented the Borough President on the Board of Estimate. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-11-16 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 Jesse Masyr, '73.mp3 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-11-28 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80:12 minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/6bb4a72a74d55f888448491872766b8c.jpg 166c9b4a3addc899fe2650582315c9ca https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/eba6b20100b0b3295511a96b460dcc8e.mp3 b9e17a219011bfe65d2195e978db761e 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 2010-12-03 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jo Freeman Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Jo Freeman is an American feminist, political scientist, writer, and attorney. She attended the University of California at Berkeley and she became active in an organization involving the civil rights movement. In addition, she authored feminist articles and papers on social movements."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13057,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Jo Freeman is an American feminist, political scientist, writer, an attorney. She attended the University of California at Berkeley and she became active in an organization involving the civil rights movement. In addition, she authored feminist articles and papers on social movements. 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 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 211:56 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"University of California, Berkeley; Liberalism; Radicals; San Francisco; Students for a Democratic Society; Sexism; Ronald Reagan; Free speech protesters; Women's Rights Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">University of California, Berkeley; Liberalism; Radicals; San Francisco; Students for a Democratic Society; Sexism; Ronald Reagan; Free speech protesters; Women's Rights Movement. Subject LCSH Feminists—United States; Political scientists; Authors; Lawyers; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Freeman, Jo--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 Jo Freeman Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Freeman, Jo ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Feminists—United States; Political scientists; Authors; Lawyers; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Freeman, Jo--Interviews Description An account of the resource Jo Freeman is an American feminist, political scientist, writer, and attorney. She attended the University of California at Berkeley and she became active in an organization involving the civil rights movement. In addition, she authored feminist articles and papers on social movements. 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 2010-12-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.102a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.102b 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. 211:56 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/669a47054fde83aa900d3d8045b2c49b.mp3 777d85c2963cd6e029a9f93e038d12cb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dcae8cb5a12052e457724e4d47cad181.mp3 a05fd0ec38da06260cbeecc347133da5 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 Polansky, Joe Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Neil, Dan Date of Interview 1978-05-30 Subject LCSH New York State Athletic Commission; Jack O'Brien; Jack Sharkey; Johnson Field; Kalurah Temple. Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:14 Minutes ; 5:31 Minutes Collection Broome County Oral History Project Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56087">Interview with Joe Polansky</a> 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: Joe Polansky Interviewed by: Dan O’Neil Date of interview: 22 February 1978 Dan: This is Dan O’Neil, and I’m speaking to Joe Sheppe Polansky. 54 Glenwood Avenue, Binghamton, New York. The date is February 22, 1978. Okay, ah, Joe, would you, ah, relate to me your life and working experiences in the community with emphasis on your affiliation with the boxing profession? Joe: Well, the boxing profession? Dan: Yeah, you can start out with that. [Referring to outline that he had been given earlier] Joe: Well, first I want to say that I was born June 18, 1902 in Coaldale, Pennsylvania in Schuylkill County in the coal mining fields and, ah…at the age of 16 my Father died and being the first - the oldest - boy of the family, nine, I went to work in the mines. And, eh, my education consisted of first year High School and then I had to go into the mines. I worked in the mines for one year and during that time I was boxing as an amateur, and boxing as an amateur at that time was 1918, during the War, and we had amateur fights all throughout the coal regions and I participated in all of them. They had, ah, community sings which consisted of boys being draft- eh, asked to get into the service, and they had boxing bouts at all those meetings, and I participated in every one. And I was very successful in the amateur ranks, knocking out a number of  boys, and, ah, at one time, I had two fights in one night. The first fight and the last fight. Because winning them both - knocking both boys out and, ah, my employment at that time? Well, I worked sporadically, learning the barber trade which I worked at time and time again because I was busily training for the fights, and I started my career in Tunakwa, Pennsylvania Hall. I scored four knockouts in a row then I, at that time, I met a lot of tough coal region boys. I was trained by the Chief of Police of my home town Coaldale, P.A. His name was James Foagallagher. He took great interest in me and at one of the fights I knocked out a soldier boy, and the soldier boy was very popular at that time so I wasn't so popular myself by knocking him out, however, that night Tiny Maxwell was the principle speaker at the banquet and Tiny Maxwell was a great sportswriter of the Philadelphia newspaper, and after I knocked both those boys out, the following week I was in the Philadelphia - Jack O’Brien’s gymnasium in Philadephia - training. I stayed there for 10 days, taking my training course from the great Philadelphia Jack O'Brien. And, ah, after I got through there, I boxed in Allentown, Pottsville, Lansford, Flagstaff, P.A., Nesquehoning, P.A., and a number of others - Reading and on to Philadelphia. Again, to box. Ah…that was what I called my employment at that time, was boxing and ah…(will ya shut that off now?). After I got through boxing in Philadelphia, I came to Binghamton for a 10 day vacation and, ah, I was working out at the YMCA and Smut Smith, who was Sports Editor of the Binghamton Sun, came over to the YMCA to watch me work out and he told, after watching me work out he says to me, he says, "What do you weigh?" I said, "135 pounds." He says, "Would you like to fight next Friday?" Here I'm in town only 5 days and Friday night was the big Binghamton Sun Community, ah, Contest that was run every year by the Sun Bulletin for, ah, some charitable affair and, ah, he says, "You're on to fight next Friday night." I said, "OK." So, Friday night came and there’s, the Kalurah Temple was packed to the hilt and that night I knocked out a young fellow - a very popular Binghamton boy by the name of Billy Kinney - and that night was one of the most notable nights in my career because I met George F. Johnson. I met Mayor Tom Wilson and that time Senator Billy Hill - those were the three men I met that night I was in my, my first night in town. I, ah, and it was a great entry for me into the City of Binghamton. [inaudible] And, ah, at that time, I was living in Johnson Field right across from the ballpark and every morning I used to run around the ballpark to get my exercise and, ah…from then on, I kept boxing here in the City of Binghamton; Endicott; Johnson City; Syracuse; Rochester; Buffalo. And that was the start of my, my, ah, entry into Binghamton. Talking about George F. Johnson, I met George F. Johnson a week later. And, ah, I says to Mr. Johnson that I would like to buy one of the E.J. homes. Mr. Johnson answered me, and he says, "Joe, the only one man, people can buy an E.J. home, are people who work for Endicott Johnson." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson," but I said, "I'm thinking I know a man who wants to sell me their home and, ah, on Carlton Street, and I'd like to buy it." Three days later, Mr. Johnson called me to his office and he says, "Joe." He says, "You asked me about buying the E.J. home." I says, "Yes, I'd like to get my Mother up here and my family." "Well,” he says, "you have a sister working for me, haven't you?" I says, "Yeah, she's been working for ya for the past 20 years." He says, "Well, have her sign on the Deed and you can buy the home." And that’s how I bought the home at 40 Carlton Street, Johnson City - where we lived for many, many years. [inaudible] Dan: Ah, what year did you come to Binghamton, Joe? Joe: May 16, 1921. Dan: Okay…and, ah, the reason was to, to…what was the reason you came to Binghamton, was for vacation, and you came to visit your sister? Joe: That’s right. [inaudible] Her name is Mrs. Anna Gavula. Dan: Gavula? Okay. Joe: She lived on Broad Street, right across from the ballpark. Dan: Okay, so you bought the house on Carlton Street? Joe: That’s right. Dan: Okay, and then from where then, then what did you do? After you bought the house - I mean, did you continue boxing? Joe: Yes. Oh, I continued boxing until, uh…until 1929. Dan: Until 1929. And that’s when you retired from actually, from actually- Joe: That's right. That’s right. Dan: Uh-huh. And then, wha - and then what? Joe: I retired from boxing, and then I became the boxing instructor of the YMCA. Dan: I see. Uh-huh. Joe: And after - during that time, though, I was a boxing commissioner - ah, no, a boxing commissioner, ah…the boxing commissioner at that time was, um…Tom Farley. Dan: Tom Farley? Joe: Jim Farley. Dan: Oh, the Postmaster? Joe: Brother of the Postmaster General. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And I was interested in getting on the boxing commission, however it didn't get on there for awhile. But from 1930 until 1933, I was a New York State referee of boxing and wrestling, and after 1933…in 1937…I was, ah, boxing instructor at the old Binghamton Police gymnasium. Then Senator Lehman appointed me as Boxing Commissioner, ah, Inspector of the State Athletic Commission. Dan: That was in 1937? Joe: That - 1937. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And I was on it, nine - from 1937 until 1972. Dan: Mm-hm. As a boxing commissioner - er, boxing instructor, rather? Joe: That’s right. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: That’s what I think is 35 years altogether. Dan: Mm-hm. Now Joe, as a boxing referee, were the bouts that you refereed locally or were they all over? Joe: All over New York State. Dan: And, and what, eh-? Joe: Buffalo, Utica, ah…Auburn, Elmira, Binghamton, and all the other cities that had boxing bouts at that time. Dan: Mm-hm. And, uh, in your travels, did you, ah, meet any, ah, notables? Joe: Well, the most notable was the, the boxing bouts that I had was some of Carmen Basilio's Championship fights in Syracuse. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And, ah…what'd I say? Well, Jack Sharkey was my famous, my favorite, ah, ah, man that I met in New York City at all the fights ‘cause he came down from his, ah, place in Boston, and I met him at all the fights in New York. And, ah, we always went out together, and we've been wonderful friends ever since. And, ah…Sharkey, to me, was a great fighter. He should, uh, when he was boxing Jack Dempsey, he was beating Jack Dempsey until Jack Dempsey really fouled him, and the he looked away and the first thing you know, Jack Dempsey hit him on the chin and knocked him out. Dan: In what year was that, Joe? Joe: 1928 or -29, I'm, uh… Dan: Uh-huh. Joe:I’m not sure. Dan: Yeah. Joe: I can't tell. Dan: Now, now Jack Sharkey's given name was, what? Joe: Za k- Z-A-U-K-A-U-S-K-A-S.[sic] Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: Zukauskas. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: Joe Zukauskas. Dan: And they lived on the lower end of Clinton Street. Down, ah, where…where that shop is now. I can't think of the name of it. Dan: And how did, did, Joe happen to, ah, or Jack happen to get into the boxing, ah, profession? How did Jack Sharkey happen-? Joe: Jack Sharkey was in the Navy. And that’s where he learned to box. And, uh…after he got out of the Navy, he, he was one of the first boxers to box Harry Wills. Jack Dempsey was Champion at the time and the color line was drawn pretty close, and Jack Dempsey would not fight Harry Wills. Dan: In what year was this, Joe? Joe: In, uh, the early - the late 20s. Dan: Late 20s. Joe: And, ah, Jack Sharkey fought Harry Wills despite the color line and beat Harry Wills at the time, and that made him very popular because Jack Dempsey wouldn't fight Harry Wills, yet Sharkey did and beat him. It wasn't whether Dempsey was afraid of him or what, but Sharkey fought him and beat him. And that's what made him a very popular fighter at that time. And, ah…Jack Sharkey visited here immediately after he got out of the Navy in 1924, I believe, -25, and he was my guest at, uh, the Carlton Hotel at that time and, ah…we went out on dates together at the time. And, ah, he was boxing under the name of…well, I think it was “Jack Sharkey” at that time, too. And, ah, he fought in Syracuse. He fought in Syracuse, eh, I don't know, I think it was -26, -27 in 1927. And, ah…Sharkey was not the most popular guy in Binghamton at that time because of something that happened previous to when he went into the Navy, which I don't know anything about. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And, ah… Dan: Now, was - wasn’t he known, eh, as the Boston Gob? Joe: That’s right. that’s right. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Yeah. Yes, he was. Dan: And he retired in what year? Do you remember…Joe? Joe: After the, in the…late 30s, I think. Dan: In the late 30s? Joe: Sometime after  the - after 1930. Dan: Uh-huh. And what do you recall of, uh - the Max Schmeling training here for his fight with Jack Sharkey? Joe: Well, at that time he, uh, uh, as I just said, he wasn't the most popular, and that’s why George F. Johnson invited Max Schmeling to train in Endicott, and he trained at the old dance hall in Endicott. And, ah, I went down there quite often to watch him train because, ah, I knew his manager and some of his trainers through, ah, being on, ah…in boxing in New York. And, ah…I already knew him pretty well. I…I didn't get to meet, ah, Schmeling very often, but I met him a number of times down there and we talked. But the greatest athlete I think I ever met was a football player, and a baseball player, and a great Indian. And you know who he is? Dan: Jim Thorpe. Joe: Jim Thorpe. I met Jim Thorpe in Kalurah Temple. He came here with a wrestler by the name of Indian, Indian…Stock, I think his name was. and Bill Irving, who was one of the fi - allplayers here at that time…ah, was an old friend of Jim Thorpe. And we three of us sat in Kalurah Temple for two hours in the, the, ah…in the dressing room talking about old times, when Jim Thorpe played with the, with the baseball team in, in Ohio with Bill Irving. Ah…his early, ah, training in…at the…ah, University he attended at that time. And, ah, he was telling us about coming to Philadelphia for the ge - for the, eh, All-Star track events in Philadelphia, which was a yearly, was one of the, the biggest attractions throughout all, uh, colleges. And they waited, waited for the team to come in with Jim Thorpe from, uh, his university. It was an Indian School. Dan: Yeah. Joe: And, ah, I just can't think of the name- Dan: Carlisle? Joe: Carlisle College. And they waited for Carlisle College to come in on the train, and Erie, the Princeton team come in - they had 24, ah, runners. The Yale team come in, they had about 36 participants. And when the Carlisle team come off the, off the train, there was just 4 Indian runners and Jim Thorpe was one of ‘em. And he, that day, at the Philadelphia races, he won all the track events. And here they waited for ah ah the teams to come in and this team come in with only 4 men on it: Jim Thorpe and three other Indians - but Jim Thorpe was the main one that won most the race - all the races - all the track events that, that afternoon. So, it was a great day for me because I knew Tiny Maxwell - Tiny Maxwell was a sports editor of the Philadelphia Ledger, I believe it was at that time. And he was a personal friend of my manager's. My manager was a, a man who run a restaurant in Philadelphia and ah, and ah, him and Tiny Maxwell were very close friends, and that’s how I, I happen to…happen to know him.  Dan: Mm-hm. Now, who were some of the, ah, ah…fighters that you instructed here, locally? Joe: Well, Joe Banovic was one of my, my boys that I worked with, Johnny Haystack, Joe Zinck and, ah, and I- Dan: Ya have anything to do with Phil Shay - Phil Vanderbeck? Joe: Vanderbeck, I was his trainer when he went to, to, ah…New York to fight in the Golden Gloves. Tommy Curry was one of the trainers and I was the other trainer. And, ah…we stayed in New York that, that night, and Vanderbeck boxed the next day. And, ah… some of the other participants were, were, ah…well, I got a picture of ‘em there but I just can't think of any of them, but Vanderbeck was the outstanding one at the, Joe - I think Joe Matisi boxed in that- Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: -tournament, too. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Although, he didn't do too good at the time, but he showed up very well. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: But he didn't win any championship. Dan: Mm-hm. Did ya - how ‘bout, di - Joe Taylor? Did you have anything to do with him? Joe: Joe Taylor? No, I never - I refereed his bouts after I got through boxing, but I never had much to do with Joe Taylor outside of him being a, a member of our old-time boxers association - of which I was Secretary - and that was the only contact I had with Joe Taylor. Dan: Mm-hm. Ah, outside of Jack Sharkey, Joe, uh, who would you say would be the best, ah, fighter to come out of this area? Joe: Out of this area? Dan: Yeah, outside of Jack Sharkey. Joe: I would say Joe Banovic; Joe Matisi. Between those two… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: I would say. I, ah, go ahe - the reason that I picked them was because, because they were heavyweights, more or less. Dan: Yeah. Joe: Or in that heavyweight class, which is one of the most popular classes. Tommy Curry, myself - we were of the lightweights - the lightweights were not too popular at the time… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Because a heavyweight is always…a heavyweight match is always… Dan: Now, from the time up until you retired in 1929, most of the boxing matches locally were down at the Kalurah Temple, right? Joe: No, Johnson Field. Dan: Johnson Field? Joe: Johnson Field is where most of mine were and, eh, and Kalurah Temple. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: But, ah, during the summer, there was always 5 or 6 fights during the, uh, summer at the Johnson Field. Dan: Mm-hm. I recall one fight in particular, ah, involving a local boxer - I believe it was in Johnson Field. Did Jake LaMotta fight here at one time? Joe: Yes he did, yes he did. But I really can't think of who he boxed. Dan: I was under the impression that it was Joe Taylor. Joe: No, Jake LaMotta never boxed in Binghamton - he boxed in Syracuse. Dan: Oh, in Syracuse. Joe: And he boxed Joey Taylor. Dan: Oh, I see. Joe: Joey Taylor put up a wonderful- Dan: Yeah. Joe: -fight against Jake LaMotta. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: I was at the fight - I worked there as an Inspector at the time. Dan: I see. Joe: For the New York State Athletic Commission. Dan: Uh-huh. So, uh, outside of Jack Sharley and, ah, who else did you, uh, who, who of the other heavyweights did you know?  Joe: Well, Jim Braddock was one of my great friends and everybody knows his history of how he became Champion. And, ah, Mickey Walker was, was another great, ah, friend of mine, and Mickey Walker came here the night I boxed Billy Kinney. And thats how I happened to go back to Newark, New Jersey with Mickey Walker. And I trained in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and, ah I boxed in Newark twice at the old Newark Airdrome, I believe they call it, or an Airdrome…and, ah, Mickey Walker's manager at that time was Jim Bulger (B-U-L-G-E-R), and he’s the man that took me to Newark and trained me there. But at that time, I broke my hand and I had to come back to Binghamton. Dan: Mm. Joe: A year later, I went, went out to Cleveland, Ohio, and I boxed in Cleveland, Akron and Mansfield. And at that time I was under the na - management of a, of a Cleveland man. And, eh… Dan: The [inaudible]. Joe:That’s where I met…can’t think of, uh…another great fighter. A heavyweight out there in Cleveland and I can't just think of his name. And I stayed out in Cleveland for a year. For a whole year. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And I boxed in those different… and I, I boxed in a place called Highland Park. Highland Park was a, was a racehor - racetrack, and they had a big gymnasium there, and they held bouts there at that time. Dan: Mm-hm. Now, you started to, to box when you were in the coal mines, um- Joe: That’s right. Dan: - in Pennsylvania. Now, when did you turn professional, Joe? Joe: Oh, I had about…56 amateur fights… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Before I turned professional. And then, I believe I had about 55 professional fights after that. So- Dan: You don't know what that year was that you turned professional. Joe: Around -20. Around 1920. Dan: Around 1920. Joe: Because I, I boxed amateur. But I had more, more 56 amateur fights and only 55 professional fights, so- Dan: Yeah-huh. Joe: I had more experience as an amateur that I did as a professional. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: But that’s what helped me out because I was a good puncher. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Had a good right hand and I scored a lot of knockouts. Dan : Mm-hm. And out of the 55 professional fights, how many did you win? Joe: Well, I only lost two. Dan: Only lost two. Joe: Yeah. Only lost two. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: But, the others, uh, at that time there was a lot of no-decision fights. So. if you were on your feet at the end of 10 rounds, there was no decision. You either won or you…either knocked your man out or you beat him very bad, at, or you win…but, uh, most, uh, in those days, there were no Boxing Commissions. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: in the early 20s. Ah, no boxing, ah, commissions to, uh, say that you had to make a decision, so there was no-decisions on many occasions. Dan: Mm-hm. Now, have you pursued the, ah, your barbering trade at all, Joe? Joe: Pardon? Dan: Have you pursued your barbering trade at all? Joe: Not much after, after, I just…sporadically. Dan: Just sporadically. Joe: Yeah. Dan: Most of your life has been spent, been spent in the boxing profession? Joe: With the Boxing Commission. Dan: Right. Mm-hm. Now, you, when you bought your house on Carlton Street in Johnson City, I mean, what disposition was made of that, I mean how, how did you happen to move from there to here? Joe: There to here? Dan: Yeah. You say you bought the house from George F. Johnson through your sister, right? Joe: Ye-yes. Dan: And, ah, I was just wondering, you sold that, did you, eventually? Joe: Well, after my Mother died. Dan: After your Mother died. Joe: After my Mother died, then we, we sold the house… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And the children each went their own way… Dan: Yeah. Joe: And that’s how I happened to, I got in business with ah John Cupina, who was First Ward Councilman… Dan: Oh, yes. Joe: Here in the City of Binghamton. Dan: Oh, yes. Joe: I was his partner in the liquor store at 54 Glenwood Avenue for 18 years, where I, we are right now… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: With the liquor store downstairs. And after he died, we got, we…the liquor store was sold to someone else. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And, ah, I was still with the Boxing Commission at the time, so I was kept busy doing my work there. Dan: Mm-hm. So, are you more or less retired as far as the Boxing- Joe: Yeah. Dan: -Commission is concerned? Joe: Well, I still go there on a…I'm still, uh, associated with the Commission - but the trouble is, when you go there, everybody's new, nobody knows ya. Dan: Yeah. Joe: All the ones that I, all the people that I know, I'm 76 years old. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And all the people that I knew are either dead or gone. Dan: [light laughter] Joe: Or not working. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: And that’s quite a thing when you go to New York now and, ah, find one of the people that you know and that's about it. Dan: Uh-huh; uh-huh. Joe: That’s why it's always a pleasure to meet Jack Sharkey down there. Dan: Yeah. Joe: That’s why we always go out together. Dan: Uh-huh. Now, of course you have a banquet every year, don't you, for the old-timers? Joe: Yeah, we have a banquet every year for the old timers, and our next banquet is, is, uh…May 13, 1978 at Johnson City, American Legion. And, ah, at that time, we honor so many fighters who have paid, ah, their dues and, ah, have-did their boxing from the old-timers. They've got to be over 50 years old before we, before we, ah, honor anybody. Dan: I see. Joe: In other words, they, tha…that’s the age limit. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: And, ah, so we honor so many people every year, and it’s interesting. The next one is May 13th in Johnson Field or Johnson American Legion. Dan: Mm-hm. Well, is there anything else you would like to add, Joe? Joe: Well, I, the only thing is, I say I belong to the Holy Spirit Church here in Binghamton, New York. And, ah…as far as club membership is concerned, I belong to the different, ah, memberships in the church, and that’s about all. I, uh, I used to belong to a number of clubs, but I just, uh, got away from it all. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And, ah, I want to say one thing that, one of the main things of my, ah, career was as Scout commissioner - Boy Scout Commissioner here in the First Ward during my boxing days because I was popular at the time and I was able to be a Commissioner, and at that time we had 7 Boy Scout Troops in the First Ward. It took a lot of work it took a lot of time of mine to be the Commissioner and meet each and every one of those seven Troops during the weeks that I was on the Board. And I'm very proud of that because today there is only one Boy Scout Troop in the First Ward. Which means that the work isn't being done. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And that’s why the interest isn't being taken care of as it should be. There should be more Boy Scout Troops because a lot of the boys are being, getting in trouble… Dan: Right. Joe:...they have nothing to do… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe:...and that’s why the interest should be in scouting. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And that’s why I am very proud of what I had done at that time, having, boy, ah…Boy Scout Commissionership. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And, uh, leading and raising a lot of the boys that I meet today are, ah, successful business men that were in my Boy Scout Troop. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: That time. Dan: Mm-hm. Ah, Joe, what, ah…just as an afterthought, going back to when you first started fighting, what did you usually get for a fight? Joe: Oh, $150.00… Dan: A hundreh… Joe: …two-hundreh… Dan: $250.00? Joe:...300. The best, the most money I ever made was $1,650.00. Dan: Is that right? Joe: For a 12-round bout. Dan: And that was at the height of your career? Joe: That’s right. Dan: As a professional? Joe: That was in 1923 - 24. Although $1,600.00 at that time was a lot of money. Dan: That’s right. Joe: If I had only invested it properly… Dan: [light laughter] Joe:...in E.J. or IBM stock… Dan: Right, right… Joe:...I'd a been alright today. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: But, I, as a young fella, you don't think of those things. Dan: Joe: And that’s about the size of it. Dan: Uh-huh. Joe: Or if something come up like some stock that, ah, went world wild, why...I sure remember the 1929 crash here in the First Ward when Horvatt's Bank went up. And all the poor people of the First Ward lost their money. I, ah, I saw people crying down there at the bank. And those, those are things that a lot of the young people today don't, don’t remember because they, they naturally weren't born at the time. Dan: Right. Dan: Even born at the time. But, ah, when you see the way some of them are spending money today, it’s, ah, interesting to me because I've seen the hardships that people went through at that time. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Especially during the, the, crash… Dan: Mm-hm. Joe:...in 1929 and 1930. Dan: Yeah…when you were working in the coal mines, what were you getting a day? Joe: Well, it was, I think it was a dollar, an…close to two dollars a day. That’s about it. Dan: Mm-hm. Yeah. Joe: Yeah. Dan: You went to work at 16? Joe: That was in 19, uh…1918 or 19…1918. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Yeah. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: Right during the war. Dan: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, because I was only 16 years old at the time. Dan: Mm-hm. Joe: And it was quite…when you think of the wages today… Dan: [light chuckle] Well, inflation’s, er, inflation is eating that up. Joe: It’s hard to believe. Dan: It is, it is. Well Joe, I certainly thank you very much for your cooperation and, ah, ah…if there's anything that you couldn’t remember or anything that should come to mind after I leave, why, don't hesitate to call me - I will be glad to return. Joe: I’ll be glad to do it. Dan: Okay, I’ll… Joe: Thank you. Dan: I'll turn this off here.  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 Joe Polansky Subject The topic of the resource Polansky, Joe -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Coaldale (Schuylkill County, Pa.); Binghamton (N.Y.); Boxing; Boxing matches; Boxer; Boxing referees; Schmeling, Max, 1905-2005; Thorpe, Jim; Boy Scouts. Description An account of the resource Joe Polansky speaks about leaving high school to go and work in the coal mine in Coaldale, (Schuylkill County), PA after his father died. He stayed there for one year. During that year he became an amateur boxer and then attended a training course in Philadelphia under Jack O'Brien. He then had traveled thoughout PA for boxing matches. He moved to Binghamton and began participating in boxing matches in this region. The matches were held at Johnson Field and the Kalurah Temple. He boxed throughout New York, New Jersey and Ohio. He later became a professional boxer and retired from boxing in 1929. He discusses his boxing matches. He served as a referee for boxing and wrestling and was a boxing instructor. He was also associated with the New York State Athletic Commission. He recollects knowing notable boxers such as local boxer, Jack Sharkey, and Max Schmeling. He talks of meeting Jim Thorpe. He was a Boy Scout Commissioner in Binghamton's First Ward. 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 72 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8616eef36db566904fc46f8971bd2ad1.jpg f1d0a292fb2e6c073ce64d5338610411 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e6c579bc725bd9467d59b577e42b0058.mp3 ac349d42128c3a9a41c8a57755dd1f70 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 2010-08-04 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John B. Anderson, 1922-2017 Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. John Anderson (1922 - 2017) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a Law degree from the University of Illinois."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">John Anderson (1922 - 2017) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a Law degree from the University of Illinois. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Baby boom generation; Harry S. Truman; Foreign Service; Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Woodstock; Nineteen sixties; Generation Gap; Watergate; Kent State; Jackson State; Vietnam Memorial; Affirmative Action; Chicago 1968; American Foreign Policy."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Vietnam; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Baby boom generation; Harry S. Truman; Foreign Service; Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Woodstock; Nineteen sixties; Generation Gap; Watergate; Kent State; Jackson State; Vietnam Memorial; Affirmative Action; Chicago 1968; American Foreign Policy. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 108:03 Subject LCSH Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: John Anderson Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Kimberly F Mourao Date of interview: 3 August 2010 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:03 SM: Anderson, John Anderson, August 3, 19- not 19. Quick question, so here we go. And I am going to read them to make sure I get these correct. When you sat in that cold weather on January 20, 1961, in front of the Capitol as a new congressman listening to a new president, what was going through your mind when you heard these words: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” from President-elect Kennedy, did you know that he would be an inspiration to a whole new generation of Americans born after World War II? And of course, he ended up being assassinated, but what was it like being there being brand new yourself, and then he was brand new? 00:56 JA: Well, I was going to say, obviously, my feelings involved, my own sense of pride, and accomplishment, and having won the race, and I had been elected to my first of what would become ten terms in the US House. So, I had my own thoughts and what I wanted to do, but it, I have a very distinct memory of being thrilled by what the new president had to say. Even though I was obviously of the opposite party. He struck for me the kind of note that I wanted to hear from, from a new president promising a change. And I have to roll back the tides a little bit. And try to think if there was anything other than the fact that it was fifty years ago. 02:19 SM: Yes. 02:21 JA: And I still, still recall quite vividly the sense of pride that I felt that being a part of the scene, being, being there on the porch, then they, in those days, it was on the east front of the Capitol. Last inaugural, of course, that I attended was Barrack, Barack Obama's and they have long been held on the west front. Not long, but for quite quite a number of inaugurations now, as I recall it. But looking as you do up for the Supreme Court, being a lawyer and having respect for that institution, it was totally a memorable experience. And as I say, it filled me with a sense of genuine excitement and hope that I could be part of the new wave of progress. He was, he was assuring us that he would try to achieve. 03:37 SM: When he gave that speech, when you were listening, did that line, did those two lines of that one line really stand out? Or did, or did you read it? 03:48 JA: Yes, I think it did. Even, even at the time, it resonated very clearly, with the thought that, well, here was a new era that was opening up and a new and young and dynamic president with a real gift, as we all know, to speak and write with eloquence. And feel like he struck, struck a real note of optimism. That was memorable. 04:21 SM: The other lines that come out of there, there are many, but “we will pay any price or bear any burden to guarantee Liberty around the world,” of course a lot of people linked into Vietnam. 04:33 JA: I think. I do not, I do not, of course, that could not foretell the fact that he would turn out to be the first president that would really very appreciably enlarge our presence in Southeast Asia by sending a force of more than battalion strength as I recall it, to South Vietnam, and it was a war that I, like many others finally turned against belatedly when I made a speech during my primary campaign, I think it was a nationally devised, televised debate that was sponsored by the League of Women Voters, which not all but I think, four or five of the people who were contesting as I was for the Republican nomination in 1980. I said that one great-. She asked me: “What mistake have you made years that you serve in Congress and in my 10th term,” of course, and I said, “Well, the worst mistake was to vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964,” which was, of course, after Kennedy's death, and Lyndon Johnson had assumed the mantle and had decided, you know, that he had to get the public to be supportive of the effort. And some people indeed suggest that the whole thing that happened there in the Gulf of Tonkin was purposely staged as an incident that would arouse public passion and attract public interest. In any of that I said that the worst mistake I made was to go along. Well, it was virtually a unanimous vote, to go along with the crowd and vote, for what turned out to be a misbegotten campaign to assert our presence in Southeast Asia and ended the ignominious incident of Ellsworth Bunker, the American ambassador, the last American ambassador had to be airlifted off the roof. He was in there in Saigon, along with members of his staff, successful North Vietnamese were storming the gates, and about to take the city. So, I have a very distinct memory of that. 07:41 SM: How would you describe the boomer generation? A lot of people do not like terms, like, I found this out through the process of doing this book, is they do not like terms for generations. Higher education always uses terms because that is how they define groups. Sociologists often defined the same way; boomer generation is those born between (19)46 and 1964. And then, but a lot of the people more in between (19)40 and (19)46 really feel closely associated with that group, because many of them were the leaders and the activists of the era. And so, and of course, those students has experienced in the first wave of the boomers compared to the second wave was totally different the second ten years, because they were so much younger. But my question is, when you look at the time that boomers have been alive, which is has been from 1946, right now to 2010, the oldest Boomer is now sixty-four, and the youngest is now forty-eight. Going on forty-nine is amazing how time flies. And so, I have asked each of the individuals in my last one third of my interviews to define the, the years and what those years meant to each individual, in terms of what was America like. 09:04 JA: The years between 1946 and 1954? 09:06 SM: Yeah, no, yeah. No, (19)64 is the boomers. 09:12 JA: I am sorry, (19)46 to (19)64. 09:15 SM: Is what they call the boomer generation. So, I am asking to you, when you look at these periods, what does it mean? What are these periods mean to you? 1946 to 1960. 09:29 JA: Well, Harry Truman started that period, I guess. Not, he did not start it, but he was a president during that period, I was newly emerged. After the war, I went back and finished my law school education. I was discharged in November, as I recall it of 1945 and then went back for the spring semester in 1946. And got my LLB or JD whatever it was they called it in those days. Somebody told me the other day I have always said I had a Juris Doctor degree and they said, “No, it was really a Bachelor of Laws.” Anyway, it was a law degree, I suppose it is not terribly important, what you call it. So, the period began with my emerging from law school. And being picked up by a law firm, and going to work in Rockford, Illinois, in my hometown, and Boulos. And then by 1948, I had decided that the private practice of law was maybe not really what I wanted to do, I would like to teach. And to do that, I would need a graduate degree. So, I looked around and finally was able to secure a fellowship to attend Harvard Law School and went out to Cambridge and spent (19)48 to (19)49 acquiring my degree, and the only really good offer that I received to teach when I graduated was, I remember out of the University of Montana. And I think the law school was located in Missoula. And it just was not a part of the country that I was attracted to. Particularly. So, I declined that offer. And then I decided to go into private practice, I would try the law again, as a private practitioner, and I had made a living and it was fairly interesting. But in any event, it was kind of the springboard, really for a political career. In my case, I became very friendly with the people in the courthouse. And they included two people that were very dominant. In the Republican Party, the county treasurer and the county assessor. The Norland L. Anderson guys. So, remember their names. And they took me around to the various political functions of the republican party held in that area, and I became friendly with the people in the party. So, when the current man who had been State's Attorney, Matt Weston, decided not to run for reelection, he was involved in some scandal, here and there. But in any event, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. And there were five candidates in the race and really the leading candidate was the first assistant State's Attorney, Jack Buynon, his name was. And when and he had been quite a local hero, he had a winning football team of the State University, University of Illinois, which I had also graduated. But I campaigned hard and shoe leather campaign of going door to door and handing out my literature. And I had a small group of friends that obviously assisted and in a fairly close race, I emerged the winner. And that was really then my springboard again into politics. I served for four years as a state's attorney, and I think I achieved a fairly commendable record of convictions and enforcing the law. And so, when I guess I left something out here, something out here because that was, my term was (19)60. (19)60 to (19)80 and I was state's attorney from (19)56 to (19)60. I left out, I left out the fact that I had a stint in the in the Foreign Service. I took the competitive exams for the Foreign Service, and was offered a foreign service officer post, which was in West Berlin, I did go to West Berlin as a Foreign Service officer, and served for about two and a half years, which is the tour of duty got married. During that time to my wife whose still my wife. Our first child was born in Berlin. Eleanor who now resides abroad, married a man from Holland that she met in New York and has lived for many years, twenty, more than twenty years in the Netherlands, had her over a year ago, this past summer, with her four children who were grown up. But it was after that. That time in Europe that I came back and got into politics. I kind of left that. Oh, I should have mentioned that. And- 16:44 SM: How would you describe the America? When you look at that period (19)46 to- 16:48 JA: I kind of got off your question? 16:51 SM: It is just in a few words; how would you describe the America of (19)46 and 1960? Because that is important. But tell me about you. 16:59 JA: The period between (19)46- 17:01 SM: And 19-, in the period that President Kennedy was elected and how was? What was America like in your thoughts? 17:14 JA: Well, Eisenhower was elected president (19)52. And I remember the celebrated campaign where Harry Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey. That was (19)48, (19)48 to (19)52. Harry Truman who had succeeded when the presidency when Roosevelt died. Well, it was a, (19)46 to (19)60, (19)52. 18:27 SM: I have not broken down here I have, what was the like to be, live in American (19)46 to (19)60, and then (19)61 to (19)70, (19)71 to (19)80, (19)81 to (19)90, (19)91 to 2000, 2001 to 2010, and these are like periods that boomers have been alive. What would, how would you describe the America in a few words what it was like then? 18:51 JA: Well, it was a time of sort of recovering from the events that preceded that period, namely World War II, returning veterans finding their way again in society, in my case, coming out of the army and going right back to school to finish the one semester that I had to complete, to get my degree and take the bar examination. I am kind of groping around trying to think of how I would describe the period, I was pretty busy building my own life, I think those of us who came out of the army and been away from civilian life or interested in getting back into the flow of normal life. It was during that period that I was really trying to find myself, in a sense, because after a brief period, in the law office, as I have just described for you, I decided to try something else. Try teaching rather than, than the practice of law, as a way of using my legal education as a foundation for a career. Then politics took over with my election. That's that was in (19)56. And you wanted me to spell- 21:20 SM: Well you were fine because you were, you describe the year for you right up until the time you were elected to Congress. 21:26 JA: During that time I was trying to reintegrate with my normal pattern of American life that we had left behind when we went off to the army, and had experiences that would live with us forever, but would be totally different alien from the culture that we were accustomed to, and trying to find our way into another veteran style of living, where we can both enjoy life and at the same time, managed to make a living and create a career that would sustain us. And- 22:16 SM: That was typical what was happening in America that time and- 22:20 JA: Maybe, maybe it was the kind of wandering that I was doing between the law and Foreign Service and politics, process of trying to reintegrate in society and American life that caused me to make some rather abrupt [inaudible] and sharp changes in what I was doing, from being at a law office one evening, one day and then being out, back in the classroom again, and then leaving that to go back into private practice with a partner, whom I had met during my law school days, and then leaving that for a career, which began with the election of State's Attorney, and then to Congress in 1968. 23:21 SM: Most of these- 23:25 JA: Well, it was kind of a, we were trying to find ourselves, find our way. 23:31 SM: Most of these other periods are going to be in part of these other questions that I asked because the periods from the time you were in Congress, what does the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King say about the America of the 1960s? 23:48 JA: Well, I remember vividly, where I was at the moment that the word arrived of the assassination. We were just assembling to conduct a committee hearing of the government operations committee chaired by an African American congressman from Chicago, Bill Dawson, his name was, and the news filtered over the transom somehow that the President had been shot and the committee, adjourned for the day. And I can remember that I wept I literally, he was a president of another party, but he was the young, youthful, vibrant hope that many of us had for the future. So, it was a searing, searing moment, etched into my memory in a way that I can, I can still remember how wretched I felt that this awful thing, it was a blot on the country's [inaudible] the President had been killed, been assassinated, even though it had happened to several others before him, but to me it was, it was a shocking, shocking- 25:23 SM: Was there a fear? Did you, you and your peers, have a fear that it was the unknown? He, you knew he had been killed, and that President Johnson had been protected, so that he would succeed, but the not knowing of why this happened, and it could it be something bigger than just- 25:44 JA: No, I do not think, I do not think I succumb to any deep conspiracy theory other than feeling the same sense of disbelief and wonderment that anyone could commit such a vile act. But I did not really, there were those who subscribe to a more conspiratorial view of the event. I just thought it was one of those tragic events in history that you cannot explain why it happened or how it happened. But you have to accept and somehow pick yourself up and move on as we did. When Johnson came in, and to his credit, it was he launched the civil rights revolution, which to me was the most important part of my congressional career being a part of the Congress that enacted the Civil Rights Act or- 26:51 SM: Fair housing. Yeah, and- 26:53 JA: Fair Housing Rights Act of (19)65. And I was the deciding vote in the rules committee that brought out the Open Housing Act. 27:01 SM: Yeah, I read that your book. And that was historic. 27:05 JA: I am prouder of that vote than any other action that I took, during the twenty years that I was in Congress, because as I think I probably indicated there, you do not very often in the body of 435 members feel that your vote has been of singular importance and it could not have happened without it. And that bill had to get my vote, the only Republican voting for it, and the rules committee needed to come out so that the floor could then vote on it. And that was the thing that really attracted national attention to me, just one at 435 in that large body, and from then on, the press began to cover me a little bit more intensively. And it probably was responsible for the fact that later I would take the bold step of saying I will leave the Congress, retire after ten terms and run first as a Republican and failing that, then as an independent. 28:20 SM: How about the 1968, which was a terrible year, you wrote about it in your book, but the assassinations of two leaders? What they two months exactly between. 28:33 JA: Martin Luther King. 28:35 SM: In April, April 5. 28:38 JA: Yes, yes. Well, yeah. And as someone who had come to really realize that civil rights had to be the dominant issue of that period, that we had to overcome the legacy of indifference and intolerance, that had locked us in from 1896 and the Supreme Court decision that decided it was perfectly alright to segregate people on a railroad train, and require them, blacks to ride in one car. That separate but equal doctrine which came about that bad decision in 1896 and lasted until the civil rights revolution of the (19)60s. well over a half century later. So, you are right, those two assassinations I think gripped me with a feeling that I wanted to be remembered, if I was to be remembered at all, as having played some part and some role and had a hand in bringing about a reversal of that whole doctrine and pattern of separate but equal and integrating American society basis where you did not draw the color line. 30:36 SM: One of the things here that I have is you served in Congress from (19)61 to (19)80. During these twenty years, the boomer generation went to high school, college, began their careers, many became involved in multiple movements which was really big in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. Many protests and many went on with their careers, in short, the question I am getting at here is what legislation Congress has passed that had a direct- 31:03 JA: I did not get the rest of that sentence. 31:07 SM: Well, no, in short what legislation in Congress was passed, that had a direct bearing on the boomer generation. And I say this that things that I remember, it was the draft, voting age at eighteen, the Civil Rights Act and voting rights act that you talked about the Open Housing Act- 31:26 JA: Well for me the overriding issue was the civil rights issue, but those other things were important, of course, the eighteen-year-old vote- 31:36 SM: Right, and Roe v. Wade, in (19)73. And the Bakke decision, which was a decision that when I lived in California, that made [inaudible] news so big. And so those are some of the things that happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s. That- 31:53 JA: Well, that was a big issue in and in my life as well, because one of the things that I remember most vividly in one debate that I had, a national debate that I had with Ronald Reagan before League lost sponsorship or was afraid, they would lose sponsorship unless they acceded to the demand of Jimmy Carter, who would not get into a debate with Ronald Reagan and me. He said he would only debate Reagan, he would not, he would not debate with an independent candidate, namely my, myself. And, but in the one debate that I did have with Ronald Reagan, the thing that made headlines, of course, was that I flatly came out in strong favor of a woman's right to choose and indicated my belief that the decisions of the court prior thereto that denied that right were totally wrong. So, the women's movement, particularly to achieve the right that we are describing, the right to choose whether or not to have a child. That was one of the really significant features of that era. 33:38 SM: When you think of the politicians between (19)60 and (19)80. In the Senate and Congress, some of them stood out because of courageous acts. The two senators are against the Vietnam War at the beginning were Wayne Morse of Oregon, and I believe, Senator from Alaska, Ruska? The two of them. But they were, they were way ahead of their time in terms of being against the Vietnam War. And they were criticized heavily for it. I got to know Senator Nelson quite well. And because we brought them to our campus, the founder of Earth Day several times, and we organize the Leadership on the Road program. So, we saw eleven, United States senators. And he talked about the courage of those two, they were kind of ostracized, because they were the only ones for a long time. And then, then you had finally Gaylord Nelson and Fulbright and others going against it. But it is kind of a two-part question. What are yours? What were your thoughts then when those very few politicians were the way ahead of the others in terms of being against this war? And then in 1980, the price that was paid by many of the United States senators by losing their senatorial positions because of their anti-war stand when Ronald Reagan- 34:54 JA: Because of what? You have to speak up a little bit, my hearing is not good. 34:59 SM: In 1980, several senators lost their positions because of their anti-war stand and when President Reagan was elected, and of course, we are talking Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh, George McGovern, I think McCarthy was just going to retire, right. But they said he was not going to be able to win. Fulbright was on his way out. So, the major people were kind of out because of their stand against the Vietnam War, because America was changing toward Ronald Reagan. So, your thoughts on the politics in 1980 at that time, and also the courageous stands that these early senators took? 35:41 JA: Well, my thoughts today, obviously, are to salute the memory of all of those men that you have mentioned, for the courage and the foresight and the prescience that they had, that we were in an era where the United States should not be fighting that kind of war. To leap ahead, the one thing that troubles me about the present administration, which I voted for, and totally support, is that I have not agreed with a war in Afghanistan- 36:29 SM: Neither have I. 36:31 JA: And I feel that it is unfortunate that the President made the commitment that he did, to continue, I think that we should be trying to turn that over to an international body like United Nations, I do not think the United States should be fighting that war. Well, I guess I pretty well, given you a clue as to what my thoughts are I, I, in very recent times, I have invited people like McGovern, to come to the campus of the law school, or I have taught for twenty years to come speak to the students, in part because of the admiration I had for them on the stand courageous stands that they took with respect to the war in Vietnam. And I do not want to get away from your topic. I mean, I guess maybe it is because of my feeling that Vietnam should have engrained itself so thoroughly into our minds and our thought processes about the danger of becoming involved in the kind of struggle involved there, that I have carried that over to why I feel strongly as I do, that, our, our idea of trying to build a nation, despite recent statements where I think Obama himself has backed away from the idea of nation building, that that his predecessor, George Bush, Herbert Walker, George W. Bush had, he was really drumming a way out, that we were going to build a new nation and, and Iraq in the process of punishing al Qaeda. There was also nation building. And I do not think that is our task. To just totally believe that we ought to have the kind of global democracy represented by a body like the United Nations that will be in charge of building democracy around the world that ought to be an international cooperative effort. It should not be the job of one single nation, albeit my own country and the most powerful country in the world, to take on its shoulders, the idea of building democracy. I think that ought to be an international project. Well- 39:48 SM: It is almost you know, it's almost as I just wish Eleanor Roosevelt saw it even though she passed away in (19)62. But I wish she, she could have lived another ten, fifteen years because her Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what she first saw as the, is the role the United Nations. I still am a believer in the United Nations. But I think they do an awful lot of dialogue. And they do not do a whole lot of action beyond it. And the last great moment, I think was when Stevenson’s “wait till Hell freezes over.” That was a memory I will never forget because that is when the United Nations was working. I think, even though there were confrontations, the confrontation are in the United Nations. And it is, and that is, I think, what Eleanor Roosevelt dreamed of. I, your book is unbelievable. I, I read it in the past three weeks. And, and I had this book for a long time. You were, you were so right on with about the boomer generation and about the young people I think a lot because you had kids of the age. I love the explanation there when you took your daughter to see a concert, I think it was Arlo Guthrie concert, or you finally went with your daughter, the one that lives in Europe. And it was a great description, because the description you have the experience with your daughter was exactly the (19)60s. It was exactly. And so, I am going to start out by question number one. Here is a quote that you said, and I am going to put these quotes in the book. “What impressed me, however, was that the young man who denounced my views, at Elmer-,” this is at Elmhurst college, this is about generation gap. “What impressed me, however, was that the young man who denounced my views did so without even knowing what they were. If I needed any proof of the generation gap. I found it that day at Elmhurst College,” when that person was shouting you down. See, that is what we always teach young people do not speak unless you have some knowledge. And this is a tremendous quote to me. Could you explain what it was like going on college campuses back then? And whether Elmhurst was fairly typical, or was that just a unique? 42:02 JA: No, I think it was a fairly, a rather unusual incident really. I forget the exact date. 42:13 SM: It was, I think it was, not even sure. But it was in the (19)60s. It was right around the time that the Vietnam War was, probably mid (19)60s, (19)65, (19)66, somewhere around there. 42:29 JA: I remember, just got another little bit hazy about dates around that period. But- 42:39 SM: What was it like going to college campuses though, because you went to a lot of them. Speaking in the (19)60s, what kind of, what kind of, what did you think of that generation you had kids that were that age. 42:52 JA: You are talking about the mid (19)60s? 42:54 SM: Mid (19)60s or all the (19)60s, basically, mid to late (19)60s, early (19)70s? What did you think of those young people that listen to you? Were they listeners? 43:08 JA: Well, when was the, when was the great event up in New York? When they, all the young people got together? 43:23 SM: Woodstock? 1969. 43:26 JA: Yeah, that was toward the end of the decade. I know my own daughter; my own daughter went to Woodstock. 43:35 SM: She did? She admits it. 43:39 JA: Well, I find it hard to really tell you now. How to assess that period. 44:03 SM: You say it here the generation gap, your definition you stated- 44:07 JA: I guess there was a gap between generations. Yes, yes. I found it. I found it a difficult, even though I like to believe that I was a person of progressive views who was capable of changing as the times changed, not in just an accommodative sense but in the sense that I was putting my ear to the ground and could understand and empathize with the feelings of young people who were trying to express themselves and how they felt. But I guess I was just one of many somewhat puzzled parents, when it comes to trying to explain Woodstock. 45:00 SM: Let me refresh, you were writing here that, that you had reasons for the generation gap, and you broke them down. And they were very well thought out. And I have just mentioned them if you want to, let me make sure though this is still going here. You mentioned that one of the things is the change was American religion at that time, change was big. You said that hypocrisy, there was hypocrisy of the older generation. Alienation of the young due to the fact that there, there was so much- 45:35 JA: Yeah, I guess. Yeah. As you read those words, and, and refresh my recollection, I suppose I did. I did feel that young people were rebelling and throwing off the teachings of their elders, and yet they had not put in place of that. Anything to really fill the vacuum that they had created, other than to engage in their kind of fantasy that Woodstock represented. It was it was a puzzling time then. And I guess it still puzzles me, I really do not have a good answer. 46:26 SM: Well, in the in the book, you describe pretty well, the, the generation gap, the heroes were different, there was a decline in adult authority, decline in church authority, there was a decline in a lot of different things. And it certainly were challenging. How important do you feel, you have already mentioned the civil rights movement. But how important was the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and the women's movement, in shaping this generation and in shaping America, the America not only of then, but now, those are three major movements. 47:03 JA: I think, enormously, enormously important. All of those things that you mentioned, were really, enormously important, in causing us to the kind of country we are today. 47:30 SM: Another quote, again, I am going to read these quotes, just see if you can respond to them. This is a quote on the bitterness of many of the people of that era toward the Vietnam War. “The bitterness and intransigence that we see in so many of our young people today reflects, I believe, the fact that unlike the civil rights movement, the Vietnam peace movement showed no early successors.” And then you also thought that the reason why the young people went toward violence, which is the Weathermen, and maybe the Black Panthers and other groups is that “The lessons seem to be no,” I cannot even read my reading here. “The lesson seemed to be no matter how hard they tried, nothing slowed down the war, so they turned to mobs.” So, they turned to mobs- 48:33 JA: Well, there was a feeling of deepening frustration that events simply plotted on. And one tragedy succeeded another because of their inability to affect the kind of change in policies that would have ended that seemingly endless conflict in Vietnam. And you are right. There were some singular victories in the civil rights struggle, like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of (19)64. And the Voting Rights Act and the Open Housing Act. There was nothing similar to deal with the problems that were engendered by the fact that our politicians and our political leaders with a few exceptions, were we were simply kind of caught in the tide and swept along endlessly in this involvement. Not to get off the track completely. That is why feelings like that are why I feel the way I do about the situation today in in Afghanistan, and our involvement in this war against terror, that lives are being lost. In the papers just a day or two ago, another long, well you were not here, you do not read the Post, the voter drafts of all the young men who have been killed in Vietnam, not in Vietnam, but in- 50:33 SM: Afghanistan. 50:35 JA: And it, it does start memories of the frustration that young people must have felt back in that earlier period that you are addressing. 50:49 SM: President Bush. The first President Bush said that the Vietnam syndrome was over, I, I say no, it is not over. I have always felt that way. There seems to be a sensitivity that whenever you bring up the word Vietnam, or the term quagmire, you get out “Oh, do not go back to that again. I mean, you are all you are doing is bringing up past” or “you are nostalgic for the past. It has no relevance to today.” That is frustration on the part of maybe some boomers who have lived through the period and have, they say they moved on, why do not you? But your thoughts on when you bring up Vietnam quagmire, it is, it creates a stir. You sense that still today? Do you do believe the Vietnam syndrome is over? 51:49 JA: Hard question to answer definitively. I- 52:03 SM: We will finish in thirty minutes. You do not ponder anymore on that particular one. But he just said, what did the following events mean to you individually? What does Watergate mean to you? 52:38 JA: Well, it led to the resignation of a president which was a traumatic effect. And yet I think Watergate in a sense had had a purgative and a cleansing effect. That was beneficial, highly, highly beneficial, as far as politics were concerned. And they showed that, it showed the recuperative power of American democracy. I mean, even though we suffered the ignominy and the disgrace really of seeing an elected the highest elected official, forced to resign for all of the reasons that they have gone into by many others and do not need to be repeated. It shows the, the recuperative strength of American democracy that this could survive all of that, and to bring about some of the changes that were clearly necessary. 54:17 SM: What did you think of Nixon's enemies list? 54:21 JA: Did I think what? 54:21 SM: What did you think of Nixon's enemies list? 54:25 JA: Well, it was shocking, was a shocking thing. Really. I was horror-struck. 54:34 SM: Were you on it? 54:36 JA: Well, I do not know whether I was on his list or not. I, I may well have been for the reason that I will always remember a long letter that I wrote to John Ehrlichman, who of course, I will ultimately paid the price of going to jail and being penalized for the role that he played, urging, urging that he counsel the president to come before the American people, this was before the complete denouement occurred about Watergate, and speak honestly and, frankly, and tell everything that he knew. Well, now, in retrospect, Nixon knew that he would be putting his neck in a noose, the fact that I wrote Ehrlichman and told him that that is what he should advise the president to do to come before a joint session of the Congress and honestly, honestly, lay out the facts and his role and the role of his administration, in what had happened. And I never even got an answer to my letter from Ehrlichman, who later went to jail himself, but I have the feeling that maybe Nixon knew the letter had been sent, and Ehrlichman may well have told him about it. And if so, he would have put a check by my name on that, on that list, and he kept of people to watch out for. 56:32 SM: I noticed that Daniel Schorr who just passed away, that he was, he was number four on the list. If he was invited to your, there is a story that he was invited to a White House function, and at the same time, he was number four on the enemies list, so there must be some communication around. What did you think of when Nixon said “peace with honor” in 1973? We, as we were leaving Vietnam, the Paris Peace Talks, “peace with honor,” that upset a lot of Vietnam vets. But your thoughts on when Nixon said, “peace with honor?” We had just, we had just killed almost 3 million Vietnamese. Do you think that was a little- 57:16 JA: Not only that but fought an illegal war in Cambodia. 57:18 SM: Yeah. 57:20 JA: Where no war had ever been declared. Well- 57:28 SM: I am going to turn the-, here we go. 57:33 JA: It was just another cynical effort by Nixon to put a favorable gloss on what had been this continuing tragedy of sending troops and money and incurring a loss of life in Vietnam that we did. It was his, it was the arrogance of power. It was really and others have used that term. It was an expression of the arrogance of power. 58:09 SM: What did you think of the Pentagon Papers? Just Daniel Ellsberg doing what he did? 58:15 JA: Well, I hailed the ultimate resolution of that dispute. And the Supreme Court decision that went with it. Again, I did not, I will always remember whether I put this in the book or not- 58:47 SM: Oh Jesus, it is ok, it is a cell phone, it is my cell phone, it will turn off. 58:53 JA: When Nixon tried to make his comeback in 1968. Well, he did. And- 59:06 SM: Can you hold on one second? We are talking about Pentagon Papers, I think you maybe, you might have finished your-. 59:10 JA: Well, it was just another glaring example, and then of evidence of the kind of intolerance that Nixon displayed toward those who disagreed with him, and his capacity to seek vengeance, and to get even, and all of the things that led to what we just finished discussing before ultimate disgrace. Watergate was of a piece with that kind of mentality that he brought to the presidency. 59:58 SM: What did Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? Obviously, you were, you were halfway through your time in the Congress. And obviously it was on the fourth of May 1970. Right after Nixon gave his nine o'clock speech on the invasion of Cambodia the night before on the 30th. Just your thoughts on that tragedy, and- 1:00:22 JA: Well, it was a shocking, it was a shocking thing, to say the least. And I felt a great deal of personal pain. At the thought, you know, that I had, in a sense, been a part of the scene that that brought about the incident that you just described. It was a, it was a very painful reminder of the fact that we had caused those students in the first place to feel the way they did and the incident that developed, I felt some sense of personal, personal responsibility. 1:01:28 SM: This leads me right into the Wall, which is the Vietnam Memorial. Were you there at the opening in 1982? When they opened the memorial with all the- 1:01:37 JA: No, I was not actually, I was not actually there. I visited the Wall, of course, and I, I do think sometimes since I have been down there. But thinking back to when, when, I went the first time, it was just a very painful reminder of what an awful waste of resources and human life can result from wrong decisions being taken, and what our role in the world should be. And- 1:02:25 SM: Do you think the Wall has done a good job with, for healing the nation on the Vietnam War or is that going too far? Jan Scruggs wrote a book called “To Heal a Nation”- 1:02:35 JA: I think it was belated recognition of it was an effort really to try to, to ease the national conscience over the debt that we owe to those that had to give their lives for what was really a misbegotten enterprise, one that they were forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. And we who were left behind bear some responsibility for what happened. 1:03:15 SM: What is amazing, when you think about of course Mỹ Lai and there were other very bad experiences over in Vietnam, but upon their return, you know, the government had to actually put Vietnam veterans in the affirmative action policy because they were being discriminated against, they could not get jobs. And so, I do not know- 1:03:38 JA: It was a dark, it was a very dark chapter in our national history. Your question, about and the fact you know, that it even came up in that celebrated episode in the campaign against John Kerry- 1:03:56 SM: That is right, in 2004. 1:03:59 JA: To punish him for the fact that he had spoken out against the war. 1:04:09 SM: And then, of course, there is the Vietnam Veterans against the War that became a very strong anti-war group in the early (19)70s. And there was also very strong anti-war movement during the war within the military, that we do not talk about, you know, the alternative newspapers that were at a lot of the bases. What did the Iran hostage crisis in (19)79 mean to you? 1:04:38 JA: That my phone? Well, let me think. 1:04:48 SM: Really cost Jimmy Carter his presidency. 1:04:51 JA: Well, yeah. Ordered desert raid to, you know, rescue the hostages. Well, it was it was just a very early signal, we did not really recognize as such at the time of how vulnerable we were, as far as energy supplies were concerned. And it was the beginning of the end of any hopes that he had of being reelected since- 1:05:40 SM: Then the Berlin Wall coming down because that was a major happening when we consider the Cold War. 1:05:49 JA: Well, I have been, I went to the Berlin Wall, while it was still there on a trip to Europe, particularly having served in the State Department in Berlin, for that period that I mentioned between 1953. A grim reminder of how political division can lead to a kind of obscenity that that wall did to literally divide the city, shut people from one sector off from another sector. 1:06:35 SM: And then Chicago, 1968, you write in depth about- 1:06:39 JA: Chicago in 1968? 1:06:41 SM: Yes, the convention, the Democratic Convention, and the fighting between the police and- 1:06:50 JA: Oh, yes, yes. 1:06:58 SM: I got three quotes here that I want you to respond to. These are quotes from you. And these are, to me they say a lot about America. “The real tragedy of Chicago was not the violence done to bodies in the streets. But the violence done to the hopes and minds of the young people. I speak as an American who, who cherishes the value of participation in American politics.” 1:07:27 JA: I cannot say it any better today than I did then I guess. 1:07:31 SM: Yeah. And then you say in quote, number two, “the lesson of Chicago seems to be: Do not get involved for the system will beat you in the end.” 1:07:42 JA: Or the system will beat you in the end? Is that the way I put it? Well, I think I think if I had some words to take back, I might be, I might modify that. To some extent. It was a little too pessimistic about the permanence that that event had on affecting people's attitudes about participating in democracy and in government, I probably was a bit of an overstatement. 1:08:18 SM: And the third one was “five years ago, in 1965, the response to, to the failures of the American institution was to get in and change it, change it. In 1970, many today are selling out, dropping out. It is not cool to be in that kind of thing.” So, you, were your thoughts on that? You went into the whole description of selling out, throwing out, and dropping out, which really worry you. 1:08:51 JA: Yeah, well maybe I was a little too pessimistic. At the time. I think, frankly, I was in the sense that the election of Obama now in. 1:09:17 SM: 2008. The reason I, early on after reading this book, decided that he was the one that I would like to support and did support in his campaign shows that we, history does have a way of reversing itself and of changing. And some of the deep pessimism that I expressed at that time, I think have been replaced by, were replaced by a renewed hope and belief that government could be truly responsive to the needs of the people. My one, I do not want to be tiresome on the subject, my one fear is that we have not done enough to build. Not democracy in Afghanistan, which I do not think is going to be a successful effort, to build an international institution, which we started to do. And we signed the charter, establishing United Nations, we have not gone far enough and had presidents or sufficiently dedicated to putting the United Nations in a better position to express the will of the world community. And leave it to individual nations to try to build democracy, as we say we are going to try to do in Afghanistan. That ought to be a global effort led by a global institution, not just one nation. 1:11:29 SM: You state something, I will get that. But there is a quote we use here. John Gardner is one of my favorite people. And you actually quote him in your book on page sixty-seven, who at that time, he was chairman of the Urban Coalition. And, and you, you wrote down what he wrote, and I think it is very important here. He had observed that “an important segment of young people has accepted the view that man is naturally good, humane, decent, just and honorable. But that corrupt and wicked institutions have transformed trends transformed the Noble Savage, into a civilized monster, destroy the corrupt institutions, they say, and man's native goodness will flower. There is not anything in history or anthropology to confirm the thesis, though, it survives through the generations.” Any thoughts on that? 1:12:31 JA: Again, I think I would modify what I said then, with the further, that with the further thought that where we have really singularly failed, is to strive with might and main to create an international institution that would be democratic, and would enable us to explicate American foreign policy in a way where it became an international responsibility to bring democracy in nations of the world that are troubled and being beset by civil strife and all that we, we still have too much “go it alone” attitude, with respect to world affairs, have not really yet yielded to the strong impulse, that our principle effort has got to go into building world institutions that will be capable of governing ungovernable areas of the world like Afghanistan, where the Taliban are free to roam and commit their degradations and commit their crimes. We finally signed reluctantly, the World Court treaty, you know, but we have done we have done nothing really, to make that body given the credibility and the enforcement power that would enable a truly World Court to take the place of making the judgments that we want to make unilaterally about how nations should conduct themselves. It ought to be that sense of international responsibility that gets more support from our leaders. Even Obama has not come up to the mark, as far as I am concerned. Yet, he has time. He is only halfway through one term. I hope maybe he will see the virtue of doing that. 1:15:12 SM: He has got the timeline to get out of Afghanistan, but now he was getting the pressures from the military and others. McChrystal- 1:15:21 JA: So many people have to resist those pressures. 1:15:24 SM: McChrystal was one of the main persons that, Petraeus may be the next person who knows, because they believe we cannot leave. I am going to just finish this little segment by saying that, even though you have changed since 1978, you state in your book, and I think it is very important, that you fear the new culture in 1970, due to its effect on participants in social and political life, you felt apathy is more of a threat than revolution, which I think is important point. Because if you know, well who knows, there is always this philosophy, I think Benjamin Barber are very good at this, the former guy, the Walt Whitman Center for Leadership at Rutgers is that the stronger the citizenship, the stronger the nation, when we constantly look to have a strong leader. That is, oftentimes we have weak citizens, it should be the other extreme, we do want a strong leader, but we want strong citizens. And I think this is what you are saying here. And the other final quote on this is something a beautiful quote that you put in here, “I believe our youth would rise to the challenge, for it seems to me that they understand intuitively perhaps better than some of their elders, that they will be, they will find their meaning only through constructive involvement in the problems, needs, hopes and joys of other people.” And I think that is exactly what you just been telling me. And it is very well said in that time going, you took your daughter to an Arlo Guthrie conference or concert, I remember, you mentioned that in this book, I think she was 16 years old. And even though you had a hard time with some of the long hair, and you had a quote in there saying, you know, “barbers have to make a living too.” Yeah, when you put that in there, that is beautiful, because it shows you have a sense of humor. But this quote’s important too. This is a quote from a song that you took from Arlo Guthrie, “it is only by having no self-sat-, status, satisfying grati-,” excuse me, “it’s only by having no self-gratifying goal that you can ever really fulfill yourself.” And that's Arlo Guthrie. So, the message in the music sometimes is very important. Couple questions I have here. When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And when did it end? 1:18:00 JA: When did the (19)60s begin? 1:18:02 SM: Yes. And when did it end? 1:18:05 JA: Well, they really began I think with the election of john F. Kennedy that we have already talked about. It seems to me that that, that it ended the Eisenhower era. And definitely, even though his life was tragically cut short, launched us on, on a new phase, period of American culture, political culture. And when did they end? Was that- 1:18:40 SM: Yeah, what do you think the (19)60s end? 1:18:59 JA: Well, probably, probably with the election of Nixon. 1:19:09 SM: (19)68. 1:19:12 JA: That, that, I think, brought about kind of a different approach. Yeah, I guess I would, I would tie it off with, with the election of Nixon. 1:19:33 SM: Is there a watershed moment during this time that stands out above every other? 1:19:38 JA: Well, for me, it was the civil rights revolution. Yeah, it was the mid (19)60s when we finally, sixty-four and sixty-five. And Open Housing (19)68, that, that to me was the great defining moment of that decade. 1:19:58 SM: Did you ever have a chance to meet and talk to the Big Four, which is Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer- Did you have an opportunity to talk to the Big Four, Dr. King, James Farmer- 1:20:13 JA: No, no I never actually had a personal meeting with him much as I admired him. 1:20:20 SM: Any other civil rights leaders that you talked with in any? 1:20:24 JA: Well, our great civil rights leader of my personal circle of friends was the former lead counsel to the civil rights movement, Joseph Rauh. 1:20:42 SM: Oh, yeah. 1:20:45 JA: He was, he was, he became a dear friend of mine. And I revered, there is a Joe Rauh Memorial Lecture Series. Every year someone coming from the DC law school. And I missed the last lecture. Sorry to say, Eric Holder, the new Attorney General delivered the lecture. But Joe Rauh should be remembered in any book that is written about civil rights, and the true meaning of the important events of the decade of the (19)60s. 1:21:30 SM: I am going to put down my batteries might seem to be low here. So let me just turn my, put my batteries in here. Bear with me. I can see you doing okay. It was a gentleman who never got a whole lot of praise. But he is always behind the scenes and he was African American. He worked with in Congress. And he was not a congressman. But he was certainly in- 1:22:04 JA: I cannot think of him either, of course, Joe Rauh was not an African American. To me he was one of motive forces behind the accomplishments in that field that took place in the decade of the (19)60s. 1:22:23 SM: You said one of the problems of the (19)60s was what you call massification. What do you mean by that? 1:22:30 JA: Massification? 1:22:32 SM: Massification. 1:22:33 JA: I am not sure I remember what I had in mind. 1:22:35 SM: That is a whole, you have a whole chapter I do not know what to tell you. 1:22:39 JA: No, that is faded into the ether, I am not sure why. 1:22:47 SM: I know that. That is when you talked about Riesman’s book lonely, the lonely crowd-. Riesman’s book, The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman. And it was part of that feeling that America just was not talking to itself, they were walking by each other. And that was that was part of the massification that there was so much technology and so many new things that because of all these new things, there was no communication. You are just, you are walking by someone on the street. And that is what David Riesman said in his book, The Lonely Crowd, because- 1:23:22 JA: Well probably I just, it goes back to my real preoccupation with the fact that it was not until, toward the end of that decade that we finally completed the trilogy of congressional enactments that we refer to as the civil rights revolution, that we were walking down the street and we did not see people as we should have seen them, suffering from, from prejudice and bias and indignity of that separate but equal doctrine. 1:24:09 JA: Yeah, you talked a little bit about Woodstock and the moratorium also, the moratorium was in (19)69 and Woodstock was (19)69. So, these are two happenings and you felt that Woodstock was not so much to express to decent as to draw human and personal meaning from each other, of being around someone that you- 1:24:32 JA: Yeah, yeah, recall the old saying people like company. They like to know that there are others that share their thoughts and dreams. I think there was that feeling on the part of many young people that they wanted the comfort and the assurance that came from knowing that there were others like them that were grappling with the same kind of uncertainty and indecision and problems that they had. They wanted the, the proof, of the comfort that comes from association with other like-minded persons. 1:25:18 SM: You also said that was similar to what happened the moratorium in (19)69. Where something like four hundred. There is a lot of people there, 400,000 or whatever, at the moratorium and you said it was more commercial than political. It was a coming together out of a deep sense of, I cannot read my writing here. But deep sense of feeling about issues and that was (19)69. And my last quote that I have here, that I am going to incorporate within the rest of the straight questions is your discussion of Vietnam. And because I know this, Vietnam really upset you immensely. And bear with me because I want this in the record too that you wrote this. “We are guilty, not of intentional evil, but of blindness, and specifically of an inability to perceive the difference between a situation such as World War Two, in which American security itself required a foreign military effort, and a situation such as Vietnam, in which a threat to our security was indirect at first, and in which our power should have been employed in an entirely different manner, if at all. 1:26:39 JA: Yeah, well, it goes back to what I have been drawing away at that we should have internationalize that problem, it should not have become a concern. If there were problems in Vietnam, they were the concerns of the world community. They were not simply American concerns that we would deal with unilaterally. There ought to be, the world ought to take responsibility, the world community and we should be a leader in the effort to transcend the idea that every problem around the world is an American problem and is somehow run a militate against our best interests unless we promptly solve a particular nations problems. It goes back to my intensified feeling today. And I had it back as long ago as when those words were written that we have got to become much more globally conscious. And if we do, then we will see that purely national interests have to be submerged in an effort to find international solutions, problems that are not simply our problems, but the problems of humanity and the rest of the world. 1:28:09 SM: Let me- 1:28:09 JA: -walking today. 1:28:12 SM: It is not very nice out there. One person running. And that is about it. In the end, why did we lose the Vietnam War In your opinion? 1:28:27 JA: We lost the Vietnam War. Because we failed to understand that the government that we chose to support, namely, the government of South Vietnam, what it was not representative of the aspirations of the Vietnamese people themselves. It was a construct that favored a few who held positions of power and influence, but it did not look to the national needs of that area, known as Vietnam. And we should have seen that it was not, it was not an appropriate venue for us to try to transport American democracy to a part of the world that clearly preferred the leadership that was provided by another system altogether. And even though they were communists, today, we were living peacefully with Vietnam. I have clothing in my closet that when I turn over the label it is made in Vietnam, we are importing and exporting, carrying on trade and commerce with Vietnam. And we just totally misconceived, what the appropriate role for American policy, foreign policy, should be. We took upon our shoulders, something that did not belong there. And if the world community through a world body, like the United Nations did not want to take over and administer the affairs of those people, that it was not up to us to interfere in the internal decisions that were made by the Vietnamese. 1:30:48 SM: When you, you have kids that are boomers. And when you I have asked this question to everyone, but you cannot generalize an entire generation of seventy-four million people's, which the boomers and actually only between 5 and 10 percent. were involved in any kind of activism within the generation, which is still a couple million, but that means 85 to 90 percent were just went on with their lives, although they were affected psychologically, obviously. What, what are some of the positive qualities or negative qualities you look at the generation? That includes everybody, when we are talking, we are not only talking white, we are talking African American, we are talking Latina, we are talking what generation? Are you talking about? 1:31:34 JA: What generation are you talking about? 1:31:37 SM: Boomer generation. Yeah, just some of the positive qualities and some of the negative qualities that you see. 1:31:47 JA: Oh, I do not know whether I am wise enough to give you a good answer to your question. I suppose the positive qualities of that generation, are that they picked up their lives, those of us like myself, who had fought in a war and gone on and picked up the pieces of their lives and put them back together. I do not know. I do not I do not have a good answer. 1:32:30 SM: How about your kids, your kid’s generation? What do you think about their generation? 1:32:37 JA: Of which generation? 1:32:38 SM: The boomers, the kids that were born after World War II. 1:32:41 JA: that were born after World War II? 1:32:44 SM: Yeah, what are their strengths and weaknesses? As a group? You saw them in so many different ways? And then you raised boomers. 1:33:18 JA: It is almost an impossible question to answer. I really defer to others. I personally do not know. 1:33:27 SM: How do you, 1984 when Newt Gingrich came into power, and actually George Will oftentimes does this in some of his writings, and we see it when Glen, Glenn Beck often times on his TV show and Mike Huckabee on his TV show, they'll blame a lot of the problems we have in our society today on the generation and the era of the (19)60s and (19)70s by saying that the breakdown of the American family, the lack of moral values, the drug culture, the, the divorce rate, the not going to church, you know, the family, stable family unit we saw in the (19)50s, the welfare state, all special interest groups. They only think about themselves and not about others. What do you think of when people make those general attack? 1:34:29 JA: I have a very minimum high regard for people like Glenn Beck, who set themselves up as philosophers who have the capacity and the wisdom to assess any generation. There is anybody that causes me to turn the dial immediately its somebody like that comes on. Their pontifications where they blame one group or another group for the problems of society do not impress me as being very analytical. Their post proper, post hoc, propter hoc kind of reasoning, after the fact, they are trying to tell us. This is what, why things happened as they did. And I do not think their analysis is very credible. 1:35:49 SM: Have we healed as a nation? I am going to get to some, we took a group of students to see-. The question I am asking is regarding the issue of healing, healing. We took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995, to meet Senator Muskie. And the students came up with this question because none of them were alive in 1968. But they had seen the divisions that were happening in America in the (19)60s. And since he was the nominee, they wanted to, the vice-presidential nominee, they wanted to see his thoughts on this question. And the question was due to the divisions in America, in the (19)60s, do you, which was the divisions between black and white, between male and female, between gay and straight, between those who supported the war and those who were against the war, between those who supported the troops and were against the troops. They have seen the bombings, the fires within the cities and the assassinations. Do you think that the boomer generation that was born after World War II was going to go to their grave similar to the Civil War generation not healing? No, 1:36:58 JA: No, I do not think so. I think that is, that is kind of overdrawing that picture, to, to make that kind of blanket condemnation. I do not give it as much basis, much justification. I do not think the people that say things like that are not terribly credible. 1:37:25 SM: The Senator Muskie responded in this way. He said, he did not even respond to 1968. He responded by saying we have not healed since the Civil War, over the issue of race. And that is how he responded to it. And then he went on to talk about people that had died, he had seen the Ken Burns series and all the people that died. So, the students were a little surprised by his commentary, but then he made a lot of sense because he was talking about that ongoing issue of, of race. Trust, you bring up the issue of trust in your book, too. But trust seems to be a quality that or lack of trust, that many of the boomers had toward leaders in any capacity, whether it be a Congressman, lack of trust, whether it be a congressman, a senator or president, president of a university, a head of a corporation, even ministers and rabbis or anybody in position of responsibility they did not trust because they have seen so many of the leaders lie to them? And of course, we are talking Watergate, we are talking golf with Tom McNamara. 1:38:32 JA: That begs the question, what events like Watergate do play on the national conscience, and can be influential, and affect the thinking and self-assessment that people make of their own lives and the lives of the people that they associate with? I am not suggesting that we live in some kind of a vacuum, all of these forces have some interplay, with how we emerge as, as a people as a nation. I am just very hopeful. I am optimistic about the future, even though I get a little bit discouraged. As I already indicated things like the continuing war in Vietnam and our failure to construct international institutions and build respect for the rule of law. So that we do not have to take on tasks that are beyond our capacity as a nation to really assume. I am still an optimist. 1:40:10 SM: How have you changed since writing this book? This book was written in 1970. Yep, it came out in 1970. And it is a really important book of the times it really. 1:40:30 JA: I do not know whether I have become, I become older, have I become wiser? I am not sure. Well, it is hard for me to give you an intelligent assessment of how I have changed, I hope I have become more tolerant of other people and opposing views. And even when I very much disagree, as I frequently do with things that happen. I, I have kind of an optimism that we are going to get over this, and eventually we will find the right path. We will find the right way. So, I still put myself in that category. 1:41:23 SM: When you were very young. We are not we are not talking about your college years. And we are talking about when you were growing up in elementary school, in high school. Who was the greatest influence in your life? 1:41:38 JA: A great influence in my life? 1:41:40 SM: Yeah, who helped shape the person you became? 1:41:44 JA: Oh, my father, I think I admired my father intensely. He was a Swedish immigrant boy who came in (19)15. Lived a very useful life as a, as a merchant, raised a family. Was a good Christian. I guess I can hope for nothing more than that my children would one day look up to me the way I look up to my father. He was he was a great overriding influence in my life. 1:42:28 SM: What are the qualities of leadership that you most admire in a person? 1:42:32 JA: The qualities of leadership? 1:42:34 SM: That you think are important to be a leader. 1:42:36 JA: Well, you have to be able to break from the pack, you have to be able sometimes to disregard conventional thinking. And to know I was put on earth in this time, in this era, given the present circumstances, and it is for me, not simply to accept it, as wrote, the opinions of other people, but to examine them carefully and choose for myself. Whether this is the course that we should now follow. So, it is that independence of thought and action, I think I treasure the most. 1:43:20 SM: One more question here, and then we will be done. Some of the personalities that kind of stand out from the (19)60s, the personalities that stand out from the (19)60s, we often tell young people that if you stand up and speak up, there is a price one pays for that. You do not get assassinated, mostly like you do in other countries or be put in jail. But what were your thoughts on? 1:43:55 JA: I think that’s my phone. My wife got it. We have one down here somewhere. 1:44:05 SM: What did you think of people who believe they stood up for something, but they had a lot of people that did not like them, and I am just going to list them. And then you can just give your thoughts. The Tom Haines’ of the world, the Jane Fonda’s, the Rennie Davis’, the Abbie Hoffman’s, the Jerry Rubin’s, the Angela Davis’, the Benjamin Spock’s. You know, the- 1:44:34 JA: That is a rather mixed breed. I mean, going to the last name first, Dr. Spock. I thought was a rather opinionated person that probably was a little bit, demonstrated our quality of a little too much self-assurance. He has the right answers and the right remedy and the right prescription. The world is constantly changing. And people have become rigid in their thinking. And think that, well, this is the way we do it. This is the way we have always done it. This is the way we should always do it in the future. I kind of drawback, a little wary of people who dispense that kind of advice. I think people have to realize that different voices are needed in different periods of history. And the same message that may ring true today may not be appropriate in the message, depending on changed circumstances tomorrow. That is not to say that there are certain eternal verities, I believe in the Ten Commandments after all. And as a Christian, I accept the Gospels as the translation of your kind of religious faith and doctrine that I should continue to have, no matter what happens. But that aside, I think the capacity of the greatness of this country has resided in its capacity for change, to realize that what may have been an appropriate thing to do, and an appropriate approach in this era is not necessarily the key to open the door to tomorrow. Where different circumstances may require an entirely different approach. I hope that does not sound wishy washy, I do not think it is, it is just the changing times, and changing circumstances can and should lead to changed attitudes. That is progress. Without that you are stuck on a treadmill, and just kind of going around and around and around. And nothing ever does change. I do not believe in that limited view of our capacity, either individually or as a nation to deal with our problem. We ought to be constantly willing to turn over new ideas, examine new approaches. And if there is one problem the Republican party has today, I think it is extreme conservatism is, they claim to have views that might have been appropriate some prior period, but certainly are not an adequate prescription for tomorrow. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 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. 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 John Anderson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017 ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. John Anderson (1922 - 2017 ) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a law degree from the University of Illinois. 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 2010-08-04 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.10.2016.15 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. 108:03