Home Front Girl

This past week we have read a lot about the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  The coverage on the BBC is well worth visiting.

Commemorative flights.

On June 6, 1944, Allied troops began the invasion of continental Europe on the beaches of Normandy.

British veteran at a British cemetery.

So many killed.

6 years before D-Day, Joan wrote about the prospect of war and the fate of so many boys she knew.  Here is her diary entry from when she was only 15 years old.

Sunday, February 13, 1938

. . . The United States (mine), England and France—the three great democracies as the paper glaringly puts it—sent a note to Japan last week demanding that she cut down on her navies—and yesterday the note came back with an answer—“Go to it—let’s have a naval race”—or to the point. And then Thursday night they had a program on the radio discussing the next war in confident tones. Somehow everything seems to point to 1940 as the turning point—as the time when the climax is reached. Everyone seems sure that there will be a war soon. I was talking to a boy in school Friday about war and death. He seemed sure that there’d be another war (another, oh!) and he said he’d probably be killed in it. All the boys I know will be old enough to die in a war in 1940. When I said, “And afterwards—?”, he said, “Well, if there’s anything to see—afterwards—I’ll see it, and if not, well, I won’t know about it.” Which is, after all, the only thing to say. But think 1940—death—war—oh, why must it be?

The boys she knew did enter the war. Some returned.

Operation Overlord, now known as D-Day.

But many boys didn’t come back, caught up in battles in the Atlantic, the Pacific, on islands, on the European and North African continents.

Joan wrote a poem when she 18, before the U.S. was even officially at war.  She imagines the death of someone she knew.  The anguish is as fresh now as it was then.

May 6 – 1941

            On reading the papers                                  

                 I never thought that you could die

                 I always thought you were

                 Invincible.

                 Even in war, I pictured you

                 Eating bread and cheese in a mud hole

                 And talking about girls and Plato

                 With one of the friends you always seemed to find.

                 I never took war seriously for you;

                 You never took anything seriously.

                 Sometimes I fancied you drinking beer

                 And singing in some canteen; you had a loud voice

                 And always smiling with the world, or laughing at it.

                 I don’t know; I never thought you’d die.

                 You were the kind to take so much the easy way.

                 I could see you getting acquainted with 20 pretty girls

                 In 20 tiny provinces.

                 And though I sent you some badly knitted socks

                 And one scarf I spent months on (I’m sure

                 You gave them all away), I didn’t think much of you

                 While you were gone. But now today

                 Reading the papers, I see you are dead

                 And suddenly I realize more than history in war.

                 I know this one is real.

I see Joan’s diaries as her oral history from the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Her interviewing career started when she was a teenager.

Once she starts at sophisticated U-High (connected to the University of Chicago), interviewing is not exactly what she expected.

Joan’s interviewing a callow youth.

Wednesday, November 9, 1938

I got to school early this morning. . . . I planted myself in front hall and pounced on everyone who came in saying, “Describe your ideal U-High girl” . . . One of them wanted a “glamorous blonde with a slinky walk.” Hmmmm.

I think my mom found that boy quite amusing!

She became an well-respected oral historian with two books.  She was the co-author of American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1980), recognized as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Dramatic readings from the book have been performed on Ellis Island, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and in an “In Performance at the White House” program broadcast nationally on PBS. Her second book, From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It (1987), became the basis for a popular course on the 1960’s at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

One of her most famous interviews was with Pauline Newman, the labor activist who lost many fellow workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, March 25, 1911

She worked with Frances Perkins, who later become Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, to improve conditions for laborers.  She ultimately took the role of educational director for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Health Center, knew Eleanor Roosevelt, and consulted with the U.S. Public Health Service.

Pauline Newman

One family joke is that my mom interviewed Pauline Newman twenty times in NYC, when in reality it must have only been twice.  Why this overblown reckoning?

My children chastise me that I never went to high school. That isn’t true. What is true is that during my high school years, Joan had to go to New York periodically to interview various people, not just Pauline Newman. We lived in Morristown, NJ, about one hour from New York.  So my dad and mom and I would drive in about 1:00 in the afternoon to “the city.” While my mom conducted her interviews, Daddy and I would indulge in our favorite: double features of old movies at various movie houses in Manhattan.

Carnegie Hall Cinema

Then we’d meet Mom for dinner (the Copehagen, anyone?) and drive home.

But to get to New York in time for the cinema and interviews, I had to miss school.  My parents would shamelessly write letters excusing me from school to see the “dentist.”  I must have gone to the “dentist” more than anyone else at Morristown High School in the mid-1970s.  I’m not sure the administrators caught on. And I did fine in school despite my dental “woes” (aka cinematic delights).  Surely only one or two of my illicit trips to NYC with my parents involved the notorious Pauline Newman interview!

Recently, I found Pauline Newman’s voice.  Imagine how shocked I was to find…my mother’s voice too.  My dead mother suddenly speaking there.  It was so eerie–and beautiful.  Here is Joan’s interview with Pauline, made in the late 1970s.

Mom’s interview with Pauline Newman, Joan’ s voice.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today is International Workers’ Day.  I always celebrate it, even though it isn’t a big holiday in the United States.  I wish it were.

Joan’s father was a socialist.  The son of a farmer and an immigrant from Sweden, Werner Wehlen came to Canada and then the United States to make a better life from himself.

Joan’s father, Werner Wehlen, at age 87 after his first ride in an airplane to San Diego, California.

He didn’t want to remain beholden to the lord who owned the land his father worked on.  “I remember my grandfather, and even my father, having to [work for a feudal baron] every year on the private domain where the lord of our land lived.” [1]

Werner certainly exposed Joan to his socialist leanings which were especially pronounced during the hard times of the Depression.  One Saturday, he took her to Bughouse Square. [2]

Tuesday, June 7, 1938, Age 15

. . . Sunday night Daddy and I went to Bughouse Square. Not many talkers there and those not as good as they could have been. One of them was talking anti-everything and while he talked, I saw Venus shining over his shoulder. They say she is blue, but that night she was quite golden. And the man talked, sharply silhouetted against the street lamp, standing on his soapbox, the crowd like some dark elemental mass crowded below him and the great golden orb of Venus over his shoulder. The church spire in the East pierced the sky like a black rapier and the Newberry Library was a gloomy disapproving bulb in the night. It was a picture to take with you, unreal with the insects buzzing in the light and the trees moving like shadows in the warm night. Rain fell for a minute like a canvas over an unreal picture. Grant that I may know more unreal nights like that, when one can half-close one’s eyes and seem not to exist at all save as a watcher. Home and the sky was purple.

Joan even jokes about being mistaken for a radical.

Monday, April 19, 1937, Age 14

Mr. Lucas thinks I’m a communist. Today in Study, you see, Ruth and I were—well—you know—doing Latin together. Which isn’t approved of. Then Alice asked me what onomatopoeia is and, while I was explaining, Mr. L. came over and said, “Can’t you work by yourself?” to me. “Are you helping these girls or are they helping you?” And I said, “Well, it’s sort of community work, you see.” And he said, “Well, you know we can’t have a lot of little communities in study hall.” And I said, thinking of Latin, “No, but why not one big community.” I guess he must have thought I was a communist then, ’cause he looked sort of frightened and said we’d better work alone. And I said, “Uh-huh.” And that was that. Once before he made me (and Ruth) stand in the corner for community work—me the socialist! And I had my red sweater on, too!

Maybe Mr. Lucas thought she was going to break out into singing the “Internationale,” the unofficial hymn of workers the world over.

The lyrics are:

Arise, the workers of all nations!
Arise, oppressed of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us,
Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth will rise on new foundations:
We, who were nothing, shall be all!
Forward, brothers and sisters,
And the last fight let us face;
The Internationale
Unites the human race!
Forward, brothers and sisters,
And the last fight let us face;
The Internationale
Unites the human race!

Here is Arturo Toscanini conducting a banned version of the “Internationale.”

Joan later enacted her socialist beliefs by becoming an oral historian who records the voices of real, everyday people.  I’ll write about that more on Mother’s Day this year.

The tradition of oral history lives on.  My son, John, had a project in school involving oral history.  They had to read, edit, and perform an interview undertaken by Studs Terkel, the great oral historian. He was a trailblazer in the field and a great inspiration to Joan in her work.

John chose to perform the story of Florence Reese, an old, tough-talking grandma.

Florence Reese

She was also a trailblazer for workers’ rights.

She was an amazing woman whose family of miners suffered from the cruelties inflicted by the mining companies and the U.S. government in the 1930s.  But she is famous for having written a song, “Which Side are you on?”, that became a rallying cry for oppressed workers everywhere.  Here it is sung by Pete Seeger.

And here is Florence herself singing the song.

We should all reflect on this in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and great economic disparity that exists today.

[1] Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox Zabusky.  American Mosaic:  The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It.  Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Press, 1980/1993, 3.

[2] A nickname for Washington Square Park. Anyone could speak to crowds there, generally on soap boxes.

Joan and her pal Dorothy used to make up poetry together.  Here’s one of their less successful but more amusing efforts.

Joan on March 1, 1939. Doesn’t she look swanky?

Monday March 12, 1939, Age 16

            …. [A]s Dorothy was at typewriter and wanted to write, I decided to make up a super-modern poem  so we did…Dorothy types by the hand-finger-search-method, much as I think and so we got along fine—for a while…it was super modern and I dictated lots of dots and no capitals…here is how it went….

tests…..

i hate them…

brutal, inhuman, repulsive, lowly…

my soul shrieks discreetly….

RELEASE…RELEASE

i am a goldfish in a deep grey ocean

tests are quicksand..they are eating away my soul…

horrible, ghoulish, suffocating…

….confidentially….they

….STINK.

Isn’t it beautiful….I think so. When we were done, Fraser sang out Iliadically, “Sing, Goddess,etc.” and I got up on a table to enunciate. When Barbara shouts joyfully, “Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Jacobsen” and I leapt unagilely down. Bang…and read it from the floor…to much applause.

I wanted to call it a poem in very blank verse but Fraser said then it would have to be in unrhymed iambic pentameter so I didn’t…Anyhow, it was well received and we put it up on the bulletin board entitled “Poem in the Very Modern Manner.” Rick didn’t quite understand the “goldfish” line:

Says he: “But goldfish don’t live in the ocean—“

Says I: “Well, that’s the idea—I’m out of my element.”

He: “O you’re marvelous …You ought to do something about that.”

Me: “I shall…”

Oh, but that was cute. Me standing on the table sprouting poetry.

Joan spouting poetry

Much fun was had by all.

Now, I’m sure Joan would be the first to agree that this poem is not, shall we say, of Shakespearean quality.  But she and Dorothy had a fine collaboration and enjoyed themselves.  Plus gave joy to others.  Women in cahoots with each other–a theme in so many women’s lives.

Women helping women was the theme recently for me at the Story Circle Network Conference, a wonderful event that occurs every two years.  Women writing life stories and memoirs gather, sharing their stories and techniques for producing heart-felt, passionate, funny, and moving stories from their lives and the lives of women they know.

Perhaps the most moving moment for me was when young Joan was honored by one of the presenters as her mentor in the field of oral history.  Carole Garibaldi Rogers, the journalist, oral historian, and poet — and an old friend of my family — presented on From Census to Story: Bringing a Family Tree to Life. 

Carole Garibaldi Rogers, a dear friend and Joan’s wonderful writing colleague

As she introduced her material, she explained how  my mother Joan, a long-time member of the same writing group with Carole, had been a nurturing mentor in the field of oral history.

Susie with Carole Rogers. Photo by Laura Cottam Sajbel.

Women helping women– over the decades and over millennia.

At the conference, I presented on From Family Documents to Published Book and shared tips from my learning process for Home Front Girl.  One student had masses of oral history material.  How to cut it down?

I cited, as always, my mom.  Joan had said concerning her oral history interviews that there is always a story in the transcript.   You have to create a short story out of that material and make it glow.  Sometimes the person telling the story does not realize what the narrative arc of her own life is until she starts telling her tale.  Maybe it is only the editor who polishes it into a coherent narrative.  As I said, “I always listen to my mother.”

Susie teaching a workshop at the Story Circle conference. Thanks to Sallie Moffat for taking photos.

I’ve been blessed with many mentors–at Story Circle, Susan Wittig Albert, the amazing creator of the group, generous with wisdom and warm support.

Susan Wittig Albert, generous dynamo and writer extraordinaire

And my pal, Laura Cottam Sajbel, who joins me in various writing gigs.

Laura Sajbel, writing pal and co-conspirator

But most of all and always–Joan.

Recently, the New York Times reported about a couple who collect memorabilia from the 1939 New York World Fair. You can read the entire article here.

Dr. Roy Goldberg at left and Keith Sherman at the right next to their plaster model of a statue from the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times.

Dr. Roy Goldberg and Keith Sherman collect everything from menus to scrapbooks to posters.  Even a plaster model of a statue shown at the Fair!  The original, full-sized statue, “Riders of the Elements,” stood on the Avenue of Transportation.

“Riders of the Elements” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

The Times quotes Louise Weinberg, the manager of the archives at the Queens Museum concerning the style of such sculptures.  “It was of its time and, I think, futuristic….It was in the genre of many of the other sculptures that were done at the time. They grew out of futurism and Art Deco and a streamlined style. They were rooted in traditional sculptural ideas, but they were far-reaching in their aspirations. It was all about building the world of tomorrow, which was the theme of the fair.”

Poster advertising the Fair

The Fair opened 0n April 30, 1939.  In this video clip, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opens the Fair, aware of the world’s political tensions.

Unlike the eyewitness in that clip, Joan clearly saw how the war influenced the New York World’s Fair in 1939 which she visited the week World War II began in Europe.  She had spent the summer at camp. The  Fair was advertised to young people as an especially appealing way to learn.

Joan would graduate from high school in 1940.

This photo was taken the day the Germans crossed into Poland–only when the photo was snapped, no one in the countryside of Michigan was aware that the violence had begun.

Joan at summer camp on September 1, 1939. You can she wrote exclamation marks after the date.

She writes in her diary that night.

Age 16, Friday, September 1, 1939[1]

I have been reading about the [World War I] dead and am thinking how awful it must be for a mother—or a father—to know their grown son dead. After bearing and bringing through childhood to the prime of his life a son—to find that all this is futile, that all this is ended—all vain. That he died before he began to be himself. To lose a child must be in a deep sense far worse than to lose a husband. It must make one lose the sense of continuity. . . . A husband dead means that you are, in a way, dead—but to lose a child means you lose immortality—that you shall not go on. . . .

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[1] Ironically, Joan wrote this entry before she knew World War II had begun on this day.

The futuristic style of the Fair is reminiscent of another 1939 classic: The Wizard of Oz.

Then she and her mother take the train to New York to visit the World’s Fair.  This Fair Newspaper from Monday, September 4, 1939 tells what happened at the fair on the day Joan writes the poem below.  If you look at the articles in that link, you can see that museums like the Louvre in Paris, National Gallery in London, and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam ask the Fair to keep the treasures lent for the duration of the Fair until further instruction.  The museums fear for the safety of their treasures should they be returned to a Europe at war.  To read much more about how the Fair became politicized, read this fascinating piece here.

Article from the first week of World War II, showing how the Fair reflected the world’s turmoil.

While at the World’ s Fair, Joan writes this poem, reflecting on the conflagration begun in Europe.

Age 16, September 4, 1939[i]                                                                                          

                                         New York World’s Fair 1939

We shall remember this peace –

This caught moment of half-night beauty

Music – and a night bird blinded by the spotlight

That same light which has just flashed

Following it as it moves.  On a white cloud

Music – the last rose of summer chimes so sweet

I am afraid I shall have to forget it

Or die, not hearing it again.

The pylon gleams and the sphere is pale blue in the night

White shall be this memory forever, I think.

The last rose of summer is too beautiful, I fear.

Even the wind is white.

Some day they shall dig up this circle

Row upon stone row of seats  —

And the molded screen and the broken figure

Atop this tower will be half-gone — or all

And the lights ungleaming

But they shall know we passed.

They will wonder perhaps who sat here

What motley crowd idled — it is we here

In our colorful rest that they shall wonder if

The red flag flying and the stalwart figure atop

May still remain in tatters.

But I — this girl in the blue dress and Juliet cap —

I will be utterly disappeared.

Uncurled from the stone seat and unlistening then –

To any music – even this last rose chiming

Even then, though even then, when they ponder these ruins

And this place is ivy-grown and mossy,

Even then, though,

I think we shall remember this peace.

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[i] “8:25 P.M. Written while listening to music in the outdoor amphitheatre of the Russian exhibit.”

Newspaper article from the time Joan was at the Fair.