Cakes and Ale

Harry Truman – another politician who corresponded with admirers long after he needed to win votes – was inaugurated 65 years ago January 20.

In January 1962 (or thereabouts) I wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt to interview her for “Smoke Signals,” the mimeographed student newspaper of Morrisville-Eaton Central School. I sent her seven questions and she responded in due time with seven typewritten answers. Historians say she typed her own correspondence on a typewriter now on display in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park. Note that she made a handwritten and typewritten correction to this document. Fifty-two years on, I am thunderstruck by the time she took to do this for a tiny school district (approximately 500 students K-12 in 1962), and awed by her carefully thought-out answers.
I didn’t keep a copy of the questions I sent her, but they would have resembled these:
1. As a lifelong Democrat, would you ever vote for a Republican you believed was a better candidate?
2. What are the chances the United States will have a war with the Soviet Union?
3. Do you think the United States is evolving into a social welfare state?
4. Is there any chance the people of the Soviet Union or Red China will rise up and demand their governments become democracies?
5. Do you find today’s youth to be self-absorbed and irresponsible?
6. Do you favor lowering the voting age to 18?
7. If the Soviet Union does not pay its dues to the United Nations, do you think they should be thrown out?

52-year-old New Years greetings from Eleanor Roosevelt, probably typed herself, 11 months before she died. It was a gracious endorsement of one of my more quixotic efforts. To get into the Congressional Page school, one needed passing grades in math and science, which I never did. Ever.

Fifteen years ago Martha M. Cruz and I were sitting in the hall when Nelson Mandela entered to address the 8th assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare. The delegates gave him a standing ovation. He was a little shaky when he was helped up the steps to the stage, but when he heard the rhythms of a Soweto choir he smiled with delight and danced vigorously. It was an unforgettable moment.

November 22, 1963. I am 17 years old and I am walking into my high school homeroom. Several students with stricken faces are gathered around the teacher, Mr. Nickel, who quietly repeats the same sentence every time someone else joins the huddle. “Yes, President Kennedy is dead. He was assassinated.” I am stunned. All the dead people I know lingered for weeks before they drew their final breaths. I can’t believe the President of the United States could be extinguished in an instant. In fact, I don’t believe it. I look down on my shirt and touch the Kennedy for President button I had been wearing since the 1960 campaign. I sit at my student desk fighting back tears. My father, a teacher whose homeroom is two doors down the hall, steps into Mr. Nickel’s room and looks at me silently. Mrs. Drake, the librarian across the hall, walks in several times to impart the latest rumor. “Johnson has had a heart attack.” “Jackie has fainted.” “The Russians are going to attack.”

None of my memories of that day are faded or hazy.

Veterans Day 2013. It intimidated the Baader Meinhof Complex when we dressed as Greyhound Bus Drivers.

I found this decaying clipping in the attic this afternoon and quickly scanned it before the paper flaked away. The clip is from the Mid-York Weekly, circa January 1964. Brother Larry Jenks and I are shown introducing snow to a 16-year-old from Colombia, a foreign exchange student at Morrisville-Eaton Central School. Enrique arrived in the U.S. late on the day after President Kennedy was assassinated and lived with our family during his stay in the U.S. The article, praising LBJ, the Alliance for Progress, and the friendliness of Morrisville, was the first of many unreserved public relations efforts over a long career. Believe it or not. (Originally posted in FaceBook on October 22, 2013.)

My summer reading has included several biographies of the Roosevelts, most recently No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin. These books show another side of the Greatest Generation: widespread racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, sexism, xenophobia, and other social blights that hindered recovery from the Depression and jeopardized national defense during WW II. More often than not, FDR remained expediently silent, declining to support anti-lynching legislation, ignoring opportunities to save millions of Jews from the Holocaust, and succumbing to the paranoia of his advisors to order millions of Japanese Americans into detention camps. Through it all, Eleanor Roosevelt rises far above her generation, a courageous champion for human and civil rights and a lonely advocate for making the post-war U.S. a true land of equality and freedom. Her birthday October 11 should be celebrated as a national holiday.

Not fully appreciating her greatness, I wrote to her several times when I was a kid. She always wrote back, and her thoughtful responses to a 15-year-old testify to her magnanimity. Here she responds to my inquiries about how to go into politics, and whether she thought 18 year olds should be allowed to vote.

Rep. William H. Gray III, August 20, 1941 – July 1, 2013. A memory: In 1987, Bill, a Philadelphia congressperson, was breakfasting with American Baptist sisters and brothers on Capitol Hill. Evangelist Oral Roberts had just announced he would die if his followers didn’t immediately contribute $8million to his ministry. Bill, who was also pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, was incredulous. “Doesn’t work that way in my church and it SURE doesn’t work that way here,” he said. “If I went to folks and said I’ll die if you don’t give me what I want, they’d shrug and wave, ‘Bye.’” He wiggled his fingers in the air and laughed loudly. Rest in Peace and rise in glory, Bill. Today you are missed. (Posted July 2, 2013, on FaceBook)

Why hoarding is good. I was leafing through some old books this afternoon and this half-century-old letter slid out. I was trying to get an interview with Ex-VP Richard Nixon for the high school newspaper and wasn’t surprised when his secretary sent regrets. But nearly 50 years later I noticed who wrote the letter — a woman destined to become a political celebrity in her own right. (Originally posted on FB June 20, 2013)