Chloe Garrell interviewed by Caitlin Haskett, July 7, 2019

The following interview with Chloe Garrell was conducted by Caitlin Haskett on

behalf of Bryn Mawr College as part of the project, Mid Century Jewish Martyrs:

A collection of oral histories. It took place on July 11th, at Chloe's home,

[redacted].

I'm going to start out as a follow up to the introduction--

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

My real name is Charlotte.

Oh.

And so, I was Charlotte Drabkin, in those days gone by.

The Chloe came,

I think it was freshman week, and has stayed. Someone asked,

"Don't you have a nickname? Charlotte is so formal.

Are you Charlie?" And I said, "No." "Are you Lottie?" And I said,

"No." Well you know,

"Don't you have a nickname?" And I said, "No,

I'm Charlotte." And then someone said Chloe, and it stuck.

So I have a dichotomy, because any Bryn Mawr friends,

I'm Chloe, the rest of the world, I'm Charlotte.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Just a little bit of background, just to who I am, very mixed up,

that's who I am.

Yeah. All right.

How about we get started talking a little bit about your childhood and growing

up. Where did you grow up?

I am first-generation.

My mother came to this country when she was 12 years old, uh,

from Russia. I'm not sure how old my father was.

My father was about 10 years older than my mother.

I grew up in many places when I was very little.

We lived in the Bronx in New York, where most of the family lived.

My family, the part of the family that immigrated,

never lived on the Lower East Side,

which I guess was a big thing that you went right to the Bronx instead of the

Lower East Side, in those days.

And then we lived in New Rochelle,

and that I have no real memory of.

The place I have the greatest memory of is a town called Port

Chester, New York, which is in Westchester,

nobody ever says they're from Port Chester,

they say they grew up between Rye and Greenwich.

We moved there when I was 9.

My father died when I was 10,

but we stayed there, and that's where I went to school.

My parents bought a, they called

it a stationary store but it was really a candy store,

because my father knew he was very ill and dying and he felt he needed

to leave something where my mother could support us.

And that's what happened, she worked 18 hour days,

because the store was open from 6 in the morning until 11

o'clock at night. Very un-Bryn Mawr background.

It was a small town and people had enormous respect for

my mother and what she was doing. And my brother who is,

who died a few years ago, was 3 and a half years older than I,

so he proceeded me in school,

and we were expected to do well. I mean, it was never said,

but it was just assumed you would do well in school.

And we did, however it was not a very good school system,

as I found out when I got to Bryn Mawr and realized how unprepared I was.

Is that, you want more of my childhood?

Yeah.

I did live for a year, the year that my father died,

in June and in September I was sent to live back in

New Rochelle with my aunt and her daughter,

because the family felt it would be easier for my mother.

And I went to school there for one year, and my mother would come and visit,

and I would go home on weekends.

I had no great memory of that year. I don't have a memory of a lot of this,

and I've often thought I should go dig it out, and then I thought, why?

I've been okay without digging it out, so why bother.

Okay.

The, I went to Port Chester High School, where

I did not get a very good education, but I was very active.

I was editor of the newspaper,

I was president of the history club, you did all these things.

I was annoyed because I couldn't be editor of the yearbook,

because I was told I couldn't be editor of the paper and the yearbook.

And my brother had been editor of the yearbook,

so there was a little competition there. So that's basically

my growing up years, with an amazing mother...

who, I was supposed to turn the light out,

she got home after I was supposed to be asleep, and of course I never did,

I read,

and she never said that she could see the light on as she was walking home,

she never said it, because she felt badly that I was home alone.

But she was really quite something, and very supportive.

She would come home from work, exhausted and ask me my Latin vocabulary.

She had no idea of Latin,

but she sat there eyes closing, and would ask me my Latin.

I look back on it, as a mother and grandmother now,

I look back on what she did, I don't think I could have done what she did.

She sounds like an amazing woman.

I once said something that, "can you imagine what grandma," to my daughter,

"What grandma would have been like if she had an education,

there'd be no stopping her." And my daughter, or my cousin,

I can't remember who it was, said, "There was no stopping her anyway."

Tell me a little bit about your religious upbringing.

I came from an Orthodox family,

my grandmother was Orthodox for her entire life,

until she died at 96 or 7 which was quite remarkable when you think about it.

She would have been born at the time of the Civil War in this country,

of course she wasn't in this country. And she was observant.

We were not.

I think we might have been more observant had my father

not gotten ill when we were all so young. It was a survival thing.

And I would say that in many ways,

like so many Jews, we were more cultural than religious,

and the holidays were important. Of course, in my generation,

girls were not bat mitzvahed, that came later. So,

the fact that I wasn't didn't matter.

I did go to Hebrew school for one year,

because my father believed that girls should be educated as well.

So he too was ahead of his time.

I went to Hebrew school for one year when I was

nine and a half or so, it was just before he died, a year.

And I hated it, because,

first of all, I was the only girl. Second of all,

the teacher could not control the class,

and the boys didn't want to be there either, but they had no choice.

That was the only time I went because my mother knew how much I

disliked it and was not going to force me to go back after--my father died,

actually the last day of Hebrew school. So it was ironic.

So I have been,

we did not belong to a synagogue,

my brother was bar mitzvahed in a very,

just a religious service and that was it.

It was no big event.

When

I was bringing up my family, we did belong to a synagogue.

The kids went to Sunday school, they were bar and bat mitzvahed.

I felt it was important.

We did not observe the rules of Kashrut or Sabbath,

which is not untypical. But we did the holidays,

we did the holidays,

and to this day I love going to synagogue with my daughter,

because she knows, she reads, she knows,

she'll point out to me where I've lost my place.

But I'm proud of the fact that she has continued it with her

kids. I have two sons and one of whom had done nothing,

and the other one who cares,

he's not doing much, but he does care. So that's sort of my,

is that enough, want more?

That's plenty. Where did you go to Hebrew school?

The one year in Port Chester at the Jewish community center they had it,

that's where Hebrew school was, because there was only one synagogue,

it was an orthodox synagogue, excuse me, in town.

What can you tell me about the decision for you to attend Bryn Mawr and how

that happened?

That's an interesting question, I had never heard of Bryn Mawr.

My high school was absolutely terrible in terms of

guidance, nothing. I knew about Vassar, I knew about Radcliffe,

because it was Harvard, but of course I was a woman, I couldn't go to Harvard.

My brother said,

"Have you thought about Bryn Mawr?" And I said sort of,

"What is Bryn Mawr?" And then we talked, he was in college at the time,

we talked and I did some research and I said,

"Oh." So I applied to three schools,

because in those days you didn't apply to 10 or 12. And you had

to list your choice in order, which was not a good thing in many ways.

So Radcliffe was my first choice, Bryn Mawr was my second choice,

Vassar was my third choice. I did not want to go to Vassar,

but Vassar had a very large Westchester County Vassar

club scholarship.

So I thought, well if I get the scholarship, I may not want to go to Vassar,

but I would do that. I did

not get into Radcliffe, which was, in retrospect a really,

really good thing that I did not get into Radcliffe.

And there was another person in my class who did not get into Radcliffe,

so we bonded over not getting into Radcliffe.

And she went on to go to Yale Law School and she said had she gone to Radcliffe,

she doesn't think she would have gone to law school.

We were both political science majors and there was one professor who had

an influence on all of us,

it's that professor who influenced her in her decision.

I went down to interview with the then dean

of admissions, Annie Leigh Broughton, had a wonderful interview.

Had a horrible interview at Radcliffe, which I'm not,

which my friend who didn't get in said the same thing.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

But they had never heard of my high school,

had no idea what my grades from high school meant,

because they had no comparison of any other students,

we did have New York State regions, so they had those grades.

And I got in.

I don't know how, but I got in. So then the question was,

was I going to get financial aid, as they now call it,

we used to call it scholarship, because I couldn't go without it.

The one thing that the guidance counselor in my high school said is,

"What if you don't get into any of these? Or don't get the scholarship?" I said,

"I'll go to Hunter, New York." Of course, I couldn't go to Hunter,

because I didn't live in the city, but I said, offhand, I was a little arrogant,

I think. Anyway, in those days,

the mail came several times a day.

So I waited in the morning the day that it was supposed to come,

because it was before it came online.

And I had gotten my admission to Bryn Mawr and

I went to school, and during the course of the day,

I got called to the dean's office,

my mother had called to say I had gotten a scholarship.

I still remember my scholarship interview, by the way,

they used to have something called regional scholarships.

Somebody, an alum from the regional scholarship committee,

which I subsequently served on, interviewed you.

I came into New York and I'm convinced my mother got the

scholarship, because she asked about my family.

Now when you ask about my family,

you were told all about my mother.

And I am convinced that it was hearing about my mother that did

it. So, that's how I got to Bryn Mawr.

You mentioned before we turned the recorder on that you were the first woman in

your family to go away to college-.

Correct. Yes. Um,

My cousins all grew up in New York city and New York City you had, Hunter,

which was where the girls went, and City College, which is where the boys went.

Girls could go to City, but hardly anybody did.

And Hunter was basically a teacher training place.

That's why New York city has the Hunter schools,

which is an exam school, which is a whole other story,

but because they had to have a place to train their teachers.

So I had cousins who went to Hunter,

but we no longer lived in the city.

If we lived in the city I might not have had a choice of where to

go, because of finances.

But I was the first one to go away,

I thought it was pretty exciting, my mother was very supportive of it.

I think I mentioned to you before we really started recording,

that I think, although no one told me,

I think that there was some of my aunts, particularly my

mother's sisters thought it was terrible that I was leaving my mother home

alone, because my brother had finished, was graduating,

had just graduated from college and was starting law school, so none of,

neither of us was going to be around. But my mother never said a thing,

other than being supportive of it.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

It's funny, a mother story relating to all this,

she was, I was in college, my brother was in law school,

and she went to Florida for a week

or so vacation. And she was sitting with a bunch of other women,

all of whom were talking about their kids, of course,

and where their kids were going to college, and my mother didn't say anything.

They turned to her and said, "Don't you have children in college?" And she said,

"Yes." And they said, "Well, where are they?" And she said,

"Bryn Mawr and Harvard." And she didn't push it, she just quietly said it.

So yes, that's ... okay, what next?

Tell me about what your expectations for Bryn Mawr were.

That's a question that I'm finding difficult to answer.

I knew it was going to be academically rigorous.

I didn't realize I was much less prepared than I

was. In those days, there were many more girls from

prep schools and their education

was so much better than mine.

It was incredible the things that they just took for granted that I had never

heard of. So I really kind of felt behind to begin

with, and I struggled, I did struggle academically,

there's no question about it.

My expectations were that I was going to get a really,

really good education. I had not decided what I would do with it,

in those years you either became a teacher or a nurse,

and I wasn't going to do either one of those. And I was going to see,

as time went on, what I was going to actually do with it.

Law school was a maybe, although again,

there weren't that many then,

unlike now where more than half the classes in

law schools are women. My classmate who went to Yale Law School,

there were just a handful there then.

My expectations were not solidified at that point,

actually.

What was it like coming to campus and your first year at Bryn Mawr?

I knew that was going to come up.

Bryn Mawr was very different than the Bryn Mawr you know.

For one thing, you selected a dorm,

and a lot of people knew the dorm, so they knew where they wanted to go.

I had no clue. It turns out,

and most people stay in their same dorm for

the duration of their stay at Bryn Mawr. Unlike now,

you didn't go into a draw every year, if you wanted to keep your room,

that was fine. The, there

seemed to be a cluster of the more society,

if you will, women, girls. In,

I will say Pembroke East, and Pembroke West, they cleared

out almost every weekend. I was in Pem East,

the reason I think I asked for Pembroke is,

because there was a party for accepted students and the girl whose mother was

doing the party was in Pembroke, so I put that,

because I didn't know. I'm not sure it was the right place for

me, but I stayed. I stayed because I'd made friends.

I have a really funny story that I can tell.

The third floor of Pembroke, which is different now than when I was there.

There were fewer rooms,

There were three freshmen on the third floor of Pembroke,

Roosevelt, Hopkins, and Drabkin.

And that was the big joke, because Roosevelt was the president's granddaughter.

Diana Hopkins was Harry Hopkins daughter,

Harry Hopkins was a very close aid of president Roosevelt's, and me.

So you know, it's interesting what can happen in life.

Yeah.

So that was always a, I always laughed about that. I said, you know,

as my mother, father, that generation would have said,

"Only in America.",Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which, is true.

Speaking of being Jewish there,

I never felt discrimination for being Jewish.

I think I didn't have enough, I wasn't smart enough. Because,

I'm sure it was there.

I always felt that the differential was more social and economic,

than religious. I mean,

I made good friends there,

not necessarily among the social and affluent. I

see it more today than I would have

then, which is kind of funny in a way. So,

I did live off campus one year,

which was not allowed in those days, supposedly.

I was not coming back my junior year.

I did not have the money to return. And I had a call,

I used to be, I worked on campus all the time.

I worked in what was known as the deanery, which is the alumni house.

I waited tables, I babysat, I did whatever I could to earn some money,

which in some ways took away from spending more time

studying that I should have. I didn't know how to study,

that was the other thing. I did not have to study in high school,

it just was too easy. So it was hard to learn to study.

But anyway, I was not coming back my junior year.

And I had a call from the woman who ran the office where you got your

babysitting jobs and such, saying,

"Would you like to live off campus with a family and be the live-in babysitter?"

I said,

"Sure." So two of us were interviewed by this lovely

family who lived adjacent to the campus and they had a child

who was not even a year old, and my job would be to babysit.

So two of us were interviewed and I got the job,

and it was great. I had, not only my own room, I had my own bath.

And very little to do, because it was a very easy child.

I would sometimes put her in the carriage and walk around campus with her.

It was a unique

experience in that, this is not something they did,

and I don't know why they did it for me.

I really don't, because I was certainly not an outstanding student,

I was not active on campus, because I didn't have time. But they did it,

and for which I am eternally grateful.

My current involvement over the many years at Bryn Mawr is because of what they

did, and I feel I owe,

I owe the next generation, the next generations,

if you will.

I did realize how different it is because my daughter went there many

years later. Different in the

way people live. Because you went into

the draw, you did not stay in the same, it was great,

we could leave everything over the summer. In your room,

you would keep in your room. Well,

now of course they have programs going on in the summer.

What was the question about?

About your freshman year.

Oh, my freshman year.

Yeah.

My freshman year was hard, it was a hard adjustment,

but I got through it.

Was it hard socially or academically or both?

It was both, but it was harder academically than socially.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

There were several people who, we became good friends,

we remained good friends forever.

They came from very different places than I did. There were four of us,

two of them were daughters of alums.

One was the daughter of a college present in another community.

But we remain friends, today.

Of the four of us, three are still alive.

One was back at reunion last month,

the other one we email from time to time.

And then after freshman year,

oh I had made other friends as well. One of the

things, and this has nothing to do with freshman year, but one of the things is,

that even if you weren't friendly in college,

when you meet afterwards there's something there.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. The shared experiences.

A shared experience, shared values to a large extent,

a caring about college, because if you didn't care about your college,

you didn't get involved in alumni stuff.

Yeah. Tell me about that group of friends that you mentioned.

What are their names, what were they like at Bryn Mawr?

Quiet, more or less. I mean we would have tea together.

I mean, we had other friends, too, but we lived near each other in the dorm. And

one of

them went on to get her doctorate at Johns Hopkins and then went on

to be renowned in

her field.

She married a Haverford

guy who I knew in college,

that she didn't know until after

college, because they met in England.

He was a Rhodes Scholar and she was a Marshall,

and they had the Bryn Mawr Haverford commonality and that's really where they

met, and they got married, they had two kids.

He taught at, they were in Washington,

he taught at American University,

she went back to school to get her PHD,

they got divorced, he moved away. Not an untypical story.

The other two,

it's interesting because of the four of us,

only she and I had children. One of

them married somebody who had been married before and had grown children,

they didn't have children. And the other one married,

actually married twice did not have ... so,

we were the only ones of the four of us. You know, we stayed in touch,

but not closely in touch, we lived in different places.

What kind of things, you mentioned drinking tea together,

but what kind of things did you do when you were friends at Bryn Mawr?

Oh we talked, we did some things on campus together,

they did more on campus than I did, again,

because I was the only one really working,

of the four of us.

I think we were thrown together partly because we were not part of the social

set, I think.

And because our rooms were near each other.

Yeah.

I think that's how we got, and you know, we liked each other. But then

there were other friends,

people you met in your major and spent time in classes with.

I had friends because we waited tables together.

Tell me a little bit more about working while you were a student at Bryn Mawr.

Well, it took time, you had to be at work, just because you were serving meals.

I did learn to, we laugh

about it, I learned to make meringues there,

which many years later when we would have,

after I was married,

we would have company I would very often haves meringues with ice cream for

dessert, that's where I ...

"What did you learn at Bryn Mawr?" "I learned to make meringues." You know,

you talk a little bit

between running between the kitchen and the dining room.

And then you'd go about your business,

which was to go to class or go study, or go hang out

and talk. And that was part of it too,

was hanging out talking, and you learn a lot.

You learn a lot about people and coming from different places.

Did you make any connections with the full-time staff that you worked with,

or was it more just the other students you worked with?

No, you didn't make real connections, there was a difference, there was,

but there were people you felt closer to. A

woman, whose name I don't remember, who ran the kitchen,

you got to know her well,

and she got to know you and kind of looked after you in some ways.

And then of course, in the halls,

we had a dining room in every hall, there was maid service.

So you did get to,

and you had maid service in the rooms, you did get to know the maids.

Some better than others,

some were easier to talk to and others were strictly business.

I do still remember Louise, who was the head maid in the dining room,

and the year, that first year I lived off campus,

I would sometimes have lunch with my friends in the dining

room. I wasn't supposed to do that, but I did, and I still,

see Louise knew everything about everybody.

And I still remember her saying to me one day, not looking at me just saying,

"Ms. Dramkin,

I won't give you a slip unless I have to." Meaning she wouldn't give me a thing

to pay for lunch unless someone got on her case about it.

That I still remember, her just saying very quietly,

nobody else could hear it, "Ms. Dramkin, I won't" ...

She took, she knew, she obviously knew why I wasn't there.

So that, you know, it was those things that you remember,

when people were very kind to you.

Mm-hmm

(affirmative). All right.

As far as the Jewishness goes, which is, I know this is in large part about...

I never, I know there were people who were anti-Semitic,

there's no doubt in my mind. I never felt it. If I

wasn't included in something, I probably didn't know it was even going on.

And I think

also having grown up with very mixed friends,

I was less self-conscious about it,

because I had all these friends,

had friends of all faiths. Growing up,

it was a very Catholic community, so I had a lot of Catholic friends.

And in high school, our class,

and I've talked to people who were in other classes, years, in our high school,

we had a very mixed group of friends in high school,

it was the kids who were in the academic classes, the higher academic classes,

and it was all kinds.

But I recently was talking to somebody who was two years ahead of

me in high school, and her life revolved around the Jewish community center.

I said,

"I never went to the JCC." Except that one year I went to religious school,

to Hebrew school. I went to my mothers store after school and helped.

So I never had that clannishness about me.

As I say, I know it's there,

I know that anti-Semitism is rampant, I know,

But either I was too insensitive to feel it,

or it wasn't there. I'm sure it was there.

Did you have other Jewish friends on campus?

Yeah. Yes, I did actually. I did,

nobody lived in Pem East, or Pem West. Yes, I did,

in fact one year I thought of transferring to another,

moving to another dorm the following year and then I said, "No,

I'm comfortable here." But yes, yes I did.

What dorm did you think about moving to?

I was thinking about moving to Rhodes, because I did have friends there,

and they were Jewish friends there.

One of whom became a close friend long after graduation.

We only knew each other very casually,

and she isn't one of the ones I was interested in moving because she was

there, but we became good friends for many years, until she

died. And it wasn't because we were Jewish, although that seemed

to, I don't know.

I think it's because her husband and my husband had hit it off,

that makes the difference. They vacationed with us for years.

How did you meet up with the other Jewish students,

if you weren't living in the dorm with them? Did you have classes with them?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think so, or we would talk.

Whether we would talk because we had this commonality,

I don't know. It just, it was small,

so you talked, you met up with a lot of people.

It was much smaller than it is now.

What about organized religion on campus?

Did you go to any religious services either on or off campus?

No. Nope.

Did you know other people who did?

Other Jewish people who did?

Any people.

Yes, sure. I had friends who went to church. But I

wouldn't have even known where there was a synagogue. And as

you know, Hillel didn't exist,

and I don't know how active I would have been in Hillel. You know,

it's hard to predict because it's a different time. But no,

and I didn't go home for the holidays.

Did the other Jewish students you know go home?

Probably, but I don't know. I don't know.

But there's certain things in your religious life that stays with you

forever, I never ate bread during passover. I just, to this day,

I just can't eat bread during passover. You know,

that's part of the whole cultural thing.

So I'm not sure if wanting to know how Jewish students felt on campus in my day,

I'm not sure I'm quite the person who can tell you.

I think some of the others might be able to tell you more.

Yeah. It's still important to hear that, you know,

it was more of a cultural thing and you mixed with everybody.

Yeah. My whole life.

Did you mark the holidays in any other way?

Aside from not eating bread during Passover.

No.

No.

Not really, not when I was in school. Afterwards I did, I mean,

after I got married I did, in spite of my husband.

He didn't care, and still doesn't care,

but he went along with it, because it was important to me.

In spite of the way I was just talking about the way I was and the way

I grew up, it was important to me,

and it was important to me that my kids had a

religion background.

Shifting gears a little bit.

What about academics at Bryn Mawr?

They were really hard. For me. As I said before,

I did not know how to study, because I had never studied.

I did not have enough of the background that a lot of the

other kids did and I struggled. I wasn't sure I was going to graduate,

I thought it was quite a miracle that I did. I never did well,

but I bumbled my way through.

I was a political science major and I really liked a

lot of those classes, because that was my interest, it's still my interest.

We had requirements that are different now than they were then.

I thought some of the requirements were foolish, for example,

we had to pass two language proficiencies,

and they couldn't both be romance languages.

In other words you couldn't do French and Spanish.

Almost everybody in my class passed

a language proficiency.

As as we got there they had had all these years of language, I had not.

The way my school system I went to worked, we didn't start high school,

the high school building, until 10th grade.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

So I couldn't start languages until 10th grade,

so I had two years of French and two years of Latin.

Two years of French wasn't enough to pass the proficiency.

These kids grew up with it. So to me,

it was kind of a waste of time that I had to take more French,

when I'd rather take something else. And then I did take Russian,

because I needed to have another language. I would rather ...

I mean the Russian I didn't mind taking,

but there were things that I would rather have done.

They didn't have a math requirement, thank goodness.

So I think, and requirements have changed.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

And I wish they had not, I wish they had been different.

Given me more of an opportunity to explore other things,

where I didn't have because of requirements that I had to do,

because of what I had been missing when I got there.

What classes would you have rather been taking, aside from languages?

I think I might have, even though I majored in political science,

I think there were other classes I would have liked to take,

that I didn't have time to take. And I might have, hopefully,

at least in retrospect,

I like to look back and think I might have

taken anthropology or you know,

I might have broadened my perspective.

But I had very little time for electives other than those that pertained to my

major, or to requirements.

I see.

So that was to me, a, more in retrospect than at the time,

because at the time I was just trying to swim upstream, so to speak,

that was an unfortunate thing about the requirements.

Yeah. Tell me about being a political science major.

My favorite, well of course, it

was a mixed bag of courses that you had to take,

but of course I think everybody's favorite course was taught by a professor by

the name of Peter Bachrach. We, your senior

year you had ... I can't remember what

they're called, you know, where you just met in small groups in your major.

And one of the final exams,

which of course you couldn't graduate unless you ...

I have to tell this story because I love it.

Was constitutional law.

I really liked the constitutional law class,

interestingly we used the same books in undergraduate constitutional law

as they used at Harvard law school.

And the only reason I know that is because my brother said,

"What are you taking next year?" And I told him, and he said,

"Well what are you using for books?" And I told him, he said,

"Oh here." And he gave me his books.

So we walk into the final exam,

it was comprehensives. One question. Now,

remember this is May 1954.

How will the supreme court decide Brown versus Board of Education? That was it,

that was the question. Whole thing,

if you didn't get it, you didn't graduate.

What did you say?

I have no idea.

But I think what he was looking for was the philosophies of the

various justices. I have no idea what I said.

But you come out of the exam,

and May 17th 1954 the decision in Brown versus Board of Education.

Yeah.

Nobody, I guarantee you that nobody had it right,

because whoever expected a unanimous decision?

<v 2>So that's one of the things that has remained, I mean it's a stupid thing,

but wow. I've always wondered if he ever bothered to read the exams.

But I just, I've always been interested in politics. When I was in high school,

in 1948, presidential election,

Truman, Truman who?

I can't even remember, wasn't Eisenhower,

Truman Eisenhower? It was Truman Eisenhower, no, that was later.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Truman somebody, who I can't, I stayed up waiting for the results.

My mother didn't say,

"You have to go to bed now." I stayed up with the radio listening to the

results, and the results ... Truman Dewey-.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

And the results didn't come out until the next day,

because it was a really tight election.

And I remember groggily going off to school, still not knowing.

So that interest has been with me,

all the way through, it still is.

And I won't get into that, right now about what it is,

but I did hold elective office in town, many years later.

So.

Yeah. Well let's stick with Bryn Mawr-.

Yes.

Right now.

Yeah.

We've already talked a little bit about your social life,

but I wonder if you were involved in any organizations or would

remember any events on campus that your participated in?

I don't remember being involved in any organizations, I did do sets,

you know for productions,

because we did a lot of productions and I did work on sets for that.

Painting and hammering and that kind of thing. Other than that,

I did not take advantage of what there was. Because there were things,

I didn't do the newspaper, I didn't do self government, I just didn't.

Did you ever go off campus for,

to just hang out with some friends?

Well, we'd go into the village, but basically I

stayed on campus.

Except sometimes we would just walk into the village for something to do,

or go for a hamburger or that kind of thing. But no,

I really didn't, I wasn't shopping, people would go in to shop,

they'd go to Ardmore where there were stores. I didn't do that,

because I wasn't shopping.

Makes sense.

So I didn't go home that often, except for the major vacations,

once in a while I would go for the weekend.

What was it like when you came home?

Like it had always been, nothing special. You

Know, I'd come home to,

I didn't really stick with my high school friends that

much. We all went our separate ways, pretty much.

Except I married somebody I went to high school with, so other than that,

which I'm not going to get into right this minute, other than that,

I didn't really,

he's the only one from high school I really remained friends with. So,

next question.

Yes. So, in your senior year, and approaching graduation,

what were your expectations for what you would do after Bryn Mawr?

Like so many of my generation, I got married,

but I had to go to work.

They were doing some interviewing on campus for jobs,

and I did get a job on,

through one of these interviews.

It was with an insurance company in New

York, because I knew we were going to be living in New York.

And it was a terrible job, and one

of my classmates was there with me and we didn't know we were each doing this,

but we both hated it and we sort of were a little rebellious.

It was really boring,

and I didn't really look for

anything else, because I knew we were leaving,

because my husband had to go to the air force.

So I figured I would try to stay there

until we left.

And then we were gone for 26 months, four days and seven hours.

And if you've ever been to Panama City, Florida,

you would know why you knew exactly why you were there,

especially in the '50s when segregation

was still, probably still is, I mean still rampant.

Then we came back, and I went to work.

I worked for a magazine in the business end of it.

I worked at something called Commentary Magazine, which is small,

it still exists. I don't think it is anymore,

but at one time it was owned by American Jewish Committee,

I think owned it.

But I'm not sure they still do, but it still exists, I worked there.

I never had a job that was terribly fulfilling.

The first year we were married,

we lived in Brooklyn and I decided that I would go,

I never really wanted to teach,

but I would go and get my certification because it seemed like a sensible thing

to do. So I went to Brooklyn college at night,

and I went for maybe six weeks,

and I couldn't stand it because the instructor's grammar was so bad that

I couldn't sit through the class. And I don't regret not continuing,

because I would be a terrible teacher, terrible teacher.

Job I really liked best was when he was in the air force and

I worked in the library.

I started their music collection,

I really had fun in the library. I was a civil servant,

I had to take the civil service exam. I was a GS2,

which is second lowest to what you can get.

You're gonna be a one, I guess. And that's a clerk,

and I ended up running the library because the librarian left and they didn't

replace her until I left. But I loved it,

I really, really did,

and it was just being surrounded by the books and

people coming and looking for things.

We had airmen who were assigned there,

and they were barely reading.

I tried to work with some of them, there wasn't a great deal of interest.

My husband was in charge of enlisted men personnel,

and I said, "Why do you send category fours?" They were known,

"Why do you send them to the library? They're not interested in books." He said,

"You want me to send them-" I said, "They can barely read." And he said,

"You want me to send them to the flight line?" I said, "Nevermind,

they're not going to hurt anybody at the library."

But that was probably a job that I had that I liked best.

I was annoyed that I was a GS2,

because classmates who went into civil service were eights, nines, tens,

elevens, I was a two. So my work life was never really very exciting.

What about family life?

Well, we came back and he finished law school,

we lived in New York for a year after he finished law school, he hated it,

hated practicing here. We moved to Connecticut,

and that's where family life was. And my mother had re-married after,

she would never consider

it while we were home, but she re-married, long after I was married.

So we would see her, and my mother-in-law.We spent

almost every Christmas school break after we had kids, in Washington,

which was great. My brother lived there,

and day after schools got out for vacation, we were in the car,

on the way to Washington, and it was great. The kids learned Washington.

They lived with my brother during their college years, they lived,

they would live in Washington,

because it was more fun and more interesting than being in Fairfield,

Connecticut, and they were right. Actually,

I was offered a job, before we moved to Connecticut,

I was offered a job in Washington to work for a senator,

and I wanted that job so badly. But,

to illustrate the difference in times and generations,

my husband did not want to go to Washington. He wanted to go to Connecticut,

I didn't want to go to Connecticut, I wanted to go to Washington.

So where did we go?

Connecticut.

Right. Which was fine, I mean, it was fine. I really wanted that job,

which would have been the best job I'd ever had, but no.

And once we moved up there I did not work. We had kids,

I was very involved in the community,

I was on the board of education for a long time,

I was chair of the library trustees,

I did that sort of thing.

Some of which I might have done differently,

but that's true with a lot of things in life.

Yeah. You mentioned that you ran,

you held office.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tell me about that.

Well, Well,

in Connecticut you are elected to the board of education on a party ticket,

it's I think one of two states where you're on a party ticket,