• Interviewee: Seward, Walter
  • PDF Interview: seward_walter.pdf
  • Date: December 30, 1996
  • Place: West Orange, New Jersey
  • Interviewers:
    • G. Kurt Piehler
    • Melanie Cooper
    • Sandra Stewart Holyoak
  • Transcript Production Team:
    • Melanie Cooper
    • Elise Krotiuk
    • G. Kurt Piehler
  • Recommended Citation: Seward, Walter Oral History Interview, December 30, 1996, by G. Kurt Piehler, Melanie Cooper and Sandra Stewart Holyoak, Page #, Rutgers Oral History Archives. Online: Insert URL (Last Accessed: Insert Date).
  • Permission:

    Permission to quote from this transcript must be obtained from the Rutgers Oral History Archives. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

KP:  This begins an interview with Walter Seward (RC '17) on December 30, 1996 at West Orange, New Jersey, with Kurt Piehler, and

MC:  Melanie Cooper,

SH:  Sandra Stewart Holyoak.

KP:  I guess I would like to begin by asking you a few questions about your parents, your mother and father.  We read in one of the Rutgers publications that your father was a church elder and also a civil engineer.

WS:  Right.

KP:  I was wondering what led him to come to New Jersey?

WS:  Well, ... that's simple enough.  My great-grandfather was a minister, and when he retired he moved from Middletown, New York down to Vineland, because it was what they called, at that time, a local option town.  And where he figured it would be better for his family to be in an area like that, rather than some other places.  And so he bought a farm of twenty acres, and retired down there.  ... When he died he left it to his son--and well, to his widow--and then the widow left it to their son, who would be my grandfather.  ... When he died, he left it to my father.  So we were living up at the time near Albany, a little town called Ravena, twelve miles south of Albany at the time my brother was born {6/10/1910}. ... In order to save the property and the interest in it, we moved to Vineland in {11-1910} the old house down there, and that's been our family home ever since.  My father rebuilt the house, so it's entirely different today from what it was originally.

KP:  For your grandfather, it sounds like temperance was a pretty important issue for him.

WS:  Well--my great-grandfather.

KP:  Great-grandfather.

WS:  Well, for the whole family for that matter, yeah.

KP:  That played a big hand in why he selected Vineland to live in.

WS:  Yes, right.  Yes.

SH:  Have you carried on with the Presbyterian faith?  Are you an elder in the church also?

WS:  No, I've never had that honor.  But my father was an elder in the Vineland church.  As a matter of fact, he helped to build the present church in 1913, he was on the building committee.  And much of the church structure is a result of his expertise.

KP:  Do you know how your parents met?

WS:  Well, all I can say is they met at the Congregational Church in Lansing, Michigan.

SH:  What was your father doing in Lansing, Michigan?

WS:  Well, he was living there as a young man, because on the maternal side, there was another prominent family, by the name of Bement who were manufacturers of machinery. ... He sort of had an inclination, and liked machinery, so he went to Lansing to see what he could earn, and that's how they happened to meet there.  Grandmother's family all lived in Lansing, and knew the Bements, of course, they all went to the same church.  So that's how my father and mother met each other.

KP:  And then they moved back to various locations over the years to ... and upstate New York, Ohio, Ontario.

WS:  My father was also an expert in conducting commercial lime operations.  There was an opening up there that they were trying to establish, so he went at that time to establish a business up there at a lime kiln.  We were only there a year when my grandfather died, and in order to save the property, my father decided that we should move to Vineland.  And that's where our family always [has] been ever since.

KP:  So your family home in Vineland, is it still in the family?

WS:  Yes.

KP:  Who is living there now?

WS:  Well, some rather unsatisfactory tenants who don't pay their rent.

Betty Seward:  Nobody in the family now.  Walter's sister lived in it for a number of years after their mother died.  And when she died, almost nine years ago, since then we've had various tenants.

KP:  Where did your father work when he moved to Vineland?

WS:  Well, he worked first at the old soldier's home.  Where he ran the electrical department.  They're weren't many opportunities, and so he took ... that job.  Then he established his own business as a civil engineer.  One of his big jobs which he undertook was to take over the making of the tax maps of Landis township.  And he died in an accident in October 1917, ... he left that unfinished.  I was just out of college, so I didn't know anything about it, so I took it over, and I made the map (1918-1919).

KP:  How did they ...

WS:  Took a couple of years to do it.

KP:  Had your father trained you how to do the work?

WS:  No, I had done some field work for him, but he hadn't trained me at all.  I ... didn't take an engineering course at college, so I didn't know much about it.  But I learned as we went along, and there was quite a lot to it, but we finally got it all done.  It was a map of a couple of hundred sheets, each two by three feet which fitted together, make one great big area ... about twice the size of this house.  It was made in accordance and approved of the State Engineering Department in Trenton.

KP:  Your mother, it sounds like she was fairly active in the church.

WS:  She was, yes.  She was one of the officers of the charities ladies' missionary society.

KP:  Was she involved in any other organizations besides the church?

WS:  No, I think not.  That seemed to take all the time she had.

KP:  After your father's death, did your mother work at all outside the home?

WS:  No, my mother always kept the family going.

SH:  How many siblings did you have?

WS:  Oh siblings?  I don't like that word. [laughter]

SH:  How many brothers and sisters?

WS:  I had two sisters and a brother.

SH:  Older or younger?

WS:  Younger.  He was the youngest of the family. ... We lost him.  ...

BS:  That was about the end of World War I, the flu epidemic.

KP:  Influenza.

BS:  Yeah, he was one of the first ones.

KP:  Did your parents expect you to go to college?  Was that always part of their plan for you, that you would go to college?

WS:  No.  Circumstances were not favorable.  Well, the way I got to college was this: when we moved from Ravena to Vineland, ... I had my first year of high school up in Ravena.  But I moved to Vineland, their school was a little more advanced than the Ravena High School.  And so I had to make up some work, and the only way to do it was to do it in the summertime.  So I went to the school principal in Vineland, to see what arrangements to make.  And he referred me to James Morrow, a young Rutgers man who was then attending Rutgers by the name of James Morrow, a very brilliant boy, and he tutored me during the summers with the makeup work and so forth.  And he told me about Rutgers scholarship exams which could be taken, and if you passed, and got one, they would pay your expenses at Rutgers.  Because, that's what he had done.  And so in my high school junior year, I took some exams, and took the rest of them at the end of my senior year at high school, and somehow or other they gave me a scholarship.  So that's how I got to Rutgers.  He took me to Rutgers and looked after me and found me a room, and a roommate, and so forth and so on, he got me started there.

KP:  So James Morrow was pretty important to you.

WS:  Yep.  He was very important.

KP:  What happened to him after college, what was his story?

WS:  From college--he graduated from college in 1914, he went on to Harvard Law School, and graduated there in 1917.  The year I graduated from college, he graduated from Harvard Law.

KP:  It sounds like he might have had an influence on your going to Harvard.

WS:  Well, yes, yes. ... That's true.

KP:  I assume he had a legal career, James Morrow.

WS:  Yes.  Yes, he did.  In New York City, Yep.

BS:  As far as your family was concerned, though, they valued education.  Had your mother gone to college?

WS:  No, mother was a schoolteacher, but she hadn't gone to college.

BS:  In those days one didn't need to.  But both your sisters went.

WS:  Yes.  They took college courses.

BS:  And both of them became teachers.

WS:  Yes.

BS:  It was a family that did value education, definitely.

KP:  Had you considered any other colleges besides Rutgers?

WS:  When I was quite young, I thought I was going to go to Cornell, when the boys were talking, you know, big talk, oh where they were going when they got through school.  The name Cornell fascinated me. [laughter]  I don't know why, because I didn't know anything about it.

KP:  Growing up in Vineland--to this day the area around Vineland is still very agricultural. ...

WS:  Pretty much, yes.  It's always been some industry there.  And I guess the first industry was the Welch Grape Juice Company.  Right next door to the high school.  The building almost burned down, or would have, except I was crossing the schoolyard while I was making the tax map, and one evening I saw a flame in the building in the back of it.  So I ran right over to the firehouse nearby.  Firemen came and put the fire out.  But by that time, in the years before it, Welch had moved up to Westfield, New York, where they've been established, oh, it'll be at least a hundred years, more than that.

KP:  What did you do for fun growing up in Vineland?

WS:  What did I do for fun?  Well, I have to put it this way.  I didn't have much time for fun except I would--we had a small truck farm, and I used to help plant and pick beans, sweet potatoes.  One year we had a big dahlia farm, and things like that.  Tomatoes, and we would ship to--by way of a broker there in Vineland at the station.  We would ship our products to New York by train, and we still have the wheelbarrow down in Vineland that I used to cart these big hampers full of beans and tomatoes, and goodness knows what, you know.  It was quite a job.

SH:  Did your sisters help with the farm at all?

WS:  My older sister did.  My younger sister was a little bit too young to do that kind of work.

KP:  You said you had a small farm, but how many acres was it?

WS:  Well, half of it was in woodland, and the other half was clear.

KP:  And it sounds like that kept your family very busy. Because your father had a regular job as an engineer.

WS:  Yes. ... Of course, at harvest time when we had to pick beans we had to hire, you know, pickers to come in day to day.  And, of course I, as I say, didn't live in Vineland very long, I was off to college in 1913, so it really only was about three years.  Then after I was out of college, I was home for a couple of years before I went to law school, and then after that, I came up to Newark, and I've been up here in North Jersey ever since {10/19/24}.

KP:  Having moved to Vineland, did you ever miss Ravena, and New York?  At first, did you miss it?

WS:  Yes, I did, because the people up in Ravena were very, very friendly, and in a short time we got to know everybody and it was a nice small town, you know.  Down in Vineland it was quite a different area--different class and type of people.  Foreigners, especially Italians.  We had never been mixed up with foreigners at all, up to that time.  It was quite a change for us.

KP:  So I imagine that you heard a lot of people speaking foreign languages, Italian and other languages are very common in Vineland.

WS:  Well, mostly Italian. ...  There, the Italians are good workers.  They're ... not afraid to work, and they have a job, they go ... right to it and get it done.  Born in them, I guess. ... They were very successful at farming.  And, of course, there was a big poultry center, too.  People from all over would come to Vineland to establish themselves in the poultry business.  And that lasted for quite a while, but eventually it petered out.  And there's still quite a bit of farming down there.

KP:  Did your family farm up in Ravena, New York?

WS:  No, no.

KP:  So really this is a new experience.

WS:  My father was busy with establishing this lime business up there.  And so we didn't have a big estate up there.

KP:  It sounds like your father was very successful. ...

WS:  He was a self-made man, and I wish I had his brains.

KP:  Going to Harvard Law School is a pretty impressive feat.

WS:  Well, they took me in.  I stopped on the way up, I stopped in New Brunswick at the college, because I couldn't find my college diploma which was needed as an entrance requirement at Harvard Law.  ...I stopped there, and I got a letter from Luther Martin who was the registrar, and ... that satisfied Dick (Ames?) the secretary of the Law School.

KP:  Did you ever find your diploma?

WS:  Oh, it's around somewhere.  I don't know where it is.  I got a lot of stuff down at the home yet that we never brought up.

KP:  When you came to Vineland, was there a movie theater in town?  Was there one Ravena?

WS:  They started one in Ravena while we were there, yes.  They charged fifteen cents, but I couldn't go there, I didn't have fifteen cents.

KP:  So when was your first movie did you take in?

WS:  Oh, I guess it was there.  And we could go to Albany, they had a good movie in Albany.  And whenever we went there, we could usually ... go to see a movie.  But in Vineland, they didn't have a movie for ... a few years after we got to Vineland.

KP:  Your parents, politically, in the early 1900s, who did they favor?  Did they favor Roosevelt or Taft or Wilson?

WS:  Well, all I can say is, as far as I know, our family has always been Republican.  ... When I was in school there in Toledo, ... they had a mock election for the children, you know.  And I voted for Taft, because he was the Republican nominee at that time.  But we always admired Teddy Roosevelt, he was a great man.  After we moved to Vineland, he was engineering the Bull-Moose Party, you know, and he came through, and gave us a talk from the platform at the rear end of the train right there at the station.  So I saw Teddy Roosevelt.

KP:  It sounds like your family were Bull-Moosers, that they favored Roosevelt over Taft in '12.

WS:  I think so, yes.

KP:  How did your mother and father feel about the vote for women?  Was your mother in support of suffrage or was she against it?  And how did your father feel?

WS:  The question never arose.  We never had any ...

KP:  Never had a discussion about it.

WS:  ... about that.  It wasn't an issue.

MC:  Did your mother vote once she was allowed to?

WS:  Oh yes, oh yes.

KP:  In coming to Rutgers, how difficult was Rutgers your first year?  A lot of people we've interviewed said their first year was a tough one, including Carl Heyer.  Although he even argues his sophomore year was his hardest year.

WS:  Well, I was pretty green.  I was just a small town country boy, you know, and I had never been away from home on my own, and Jimmy Morrow helped me out, and there was another fellow, Jim Hanford, Class of '15 who also filled in when Jimmy Morrow wasn't around.  So ... they helped me along, and eventually I got into things.  I had to wear a little black cap with a green button on top, you know, as a freshman.

KP:  And did you have to carry matches for the upperclassmen?

WS:  Oh, sure. ... Oh yes, we had to carry matches, yes.  And not only that, but ... one time as a freshman, when starting the football season, and Rutgers was going down to Princeton, I carried the suitcase of White, one of the Rutgers men down to the station for him.

KP:  We also came across, in one of the yearbooks, a description of your junior year that said, "You never think him an athlete, at 105 he tips the beam ..."

WS:  "... Yet all the same, he played a great game at right guard on the class football team."  I got in one play. [laughter]  And that earned me my numerals so I could wear a hat with my numerals on it.  I got it around here, once in a while I take it down, for reunion.  Betty usually wears it.

KP:  You did not make your mark as an athlete, except you did play one play.

WS:  I used to go up on the field every day and watch the ... varsity team practice.  ... Sandy--Sandford, you know, George Foster Sandford--was the new football coach who really established football as a real business, you know, at Rutgers.  And it was very interesting, of course, I didn't know anything about the fine points of the game, but I used to be right there to see the men in  practice, and I guess probably it was in my junior year, we had a younger man, lower classes had just come--Budge Garrett, he ... came up from Peddie. ... He was a real athlete and a football man.  I remember in practice he was carrying the ball, came around the end, almost as it-- turned to me as we are now, and ... one of the men on the scrub team tackled him and brought him down and when he hit the ground the ground shook.

KP:  It sounds like you enjoyed football a lot.

WS:  Yes, well, ... when we lived in Toledo-- ... of course, I was in the ... sixth, seventh and eighth grades there--the football field was only a block away from where we were living, and I used to go over there Saturdays and do chores and [things] like that, and they would then let us come to the game free. ... Sometimes, after our chores were done, we'd go home ... and the game would be in the afternoon, so we'd go back, and there'd be a different man at the gate who wouldn't let us in, so we had to climb a high wooden fence.

SH:  Do you still follow Rutgers football?

WS:  More or less.  Not as much, perhaps, as I used to.  But I'm always interested in it.

KP:  As a college student, what was your most memorable game that you remember watching?  Does any particular game stand out?

WS:  I think just offhand it would be the game with West Virginia when Rogers, I think was his name, he was a wonderful athlete. And ... for the first time--nobody had ever seen it before--he threw a forward pass half the length of the field and everybody just gasped.  They'd never seen a forward pass before.  That fellow Rogers played on the team, oh, two or three years while I was in college.  He afterwards became the head of the athletic department in West Virginia at Morgantown.  So offhand, that always stood out as one of the big times.

KP:  After graduating, do any of the games stick out in your mind?

WS:  Well, in ... 1969, the hundredth anniversary when we played Princeton and won that game. [laughter]

KP:  There was a big rivalry between Princeton and Rutgers particularly over football.

WS:  Yeah.

KP:  Do you remember, actually maybe I should have Melanie ask this question, about the cannon.

MC:  Were there any cannon wars while you were there?

WS:  No.  No, that was long, long since.

MC:  Well, they still do it today.  Nobody went down to paint the cannon or steal it?

WS:  ... No, nobody bothered about the cannons when I was in college.  There's that one in front of Queens that's always been there.  But that's the nearest we ever came to cannons.

KP:  What did you major in at college, at Rutgers?

WS:  I took what they call a classical course. ... We had to take Greek, that was the main distinction from any other course, we had to take Greek to be an A.B. ... Then, of course, I ... had Latin, continued my Latin at college.  Junior and senior year took Roman Law, and also Constitutional Law under (Scottie?) who had been president, and was an excellent teacher, and whose son proved to be an excellent teacher up at Harvard Law too. ... [Of] all the men up there, I liked Scottie's son, he was a great guy.  Just like his father.

KP:  So that professor sticks out.

WS:  Yeah.

KP:  Sticks out the most for you.

SH:  Did you have mandatory chapel?

WS:  Oh yes, oh yes.  All the time I was at college and for a few years afterwards, chapel attendance was required.  And the juniors sat on one side of the main aisle, seniors on the other.  The freshman way over on the far side and the sophomores way over on the other wall.  While I was in college, let's see, it would have been my sophomore year I think, they revamped the interior of Kirkpatrick Chapel and made it what it is today.  Before that, there was, where the front part, the organs and choir loft all that is ... there were two floors there, and the president had his office on the first floor, there was a large lecture room, and a small library on the second floor.  But, when we went back for our junior year, the chapel had all been done over to what it is today.  And made ... quite a change.  And it's a good thing too, because by that time, the enrollment had increased from around 400 to something like 600, and you got everybody in chapel at the same time required space, you know.

KP:  You mentioned one of your favorite professors, were there any professors who you did not care for?

WS:  Dutchie Davis. ... He taught French, and he, oh, he was a terror.  And he had his little book and if you didn't put the (scintillae?) in the right place, he'd mark you off a tenth of a point or something like that.  And ... I had to retake the course with him, I didn't like him and I guess he didn't like me, so he stuck me. ... The second year I had to take it with the Class of '18, and up to that time, the course for first year French always had been the same, ... but he changed the course on me, and we had ... to read a different book.  So it was ... entirely new, but I didn't get along with him in the second year at all, I didn't know what I was going to do.  And I was working in the library during the summertime, so I went to Dutchie Davis before the exam and-- this is all confidential--and I asked him if he'd be good enough to give me a list of books ... or French reading books that I could continue my interest, ... [of] course in French, you know.  Well that hit him in the right spot and he passed me.  That's the way I got through French. ...

KP:  Do you remember President Demarest?

WS:  Oh, of course I do.  Yes indeed, yes, very much.  ... He was a real college president.  He had the bearing, everything, you know.  And ... he was wonderful.  A lot of fellows didn't like him because he was austere in his manner, and all of that, but he was the head of things. ... Oh yes, ... he ran things ... with a firm hand, but I always admired him.  I liked him, because he was a real college person.  They've ... never had one like him since.

KP:  Really, in all the presidents after him.  One of the things that impresses my students to this day is the social life that the old Rutgers had before World War II.  That in fact, the Junior ball, and the Military Ball, and the Senior Ball, did you go to those events?

WS:  ... No, I wasn't qualified for things like that. ... Of course, more in the junior and senior year I got into a few things, but ... those affairs were for the fraternity boys.  But because the undergraduates of the college, in that respect, was all run by the fraternities.

KP:  You felt that not being part of the fraternities you were left out.  A lot of people have told us that the key offices on campus were taken by fraternity people.

WS:  Oh yes, oh yes.

KP:  Had you thought of joining a fraternity?

WS:  No, I wasn't in the position where I'd be able to handle it--I couldn't spend much time on social life like that.  I had odd jobs when I was in college. ... Oh!  We used to go up on Saturdays and rake leaves at what was known as the Parker House then. (Strombergs?) are living there now, at that time.  And we'd rake leaves and do things like that, you know. ... There'd be a group, oh, half a dozen of us.  And then I got a job down at the Daily Home News, when the office and plant was still down on Hiram Street, and taking papers off the press as they were printed, you know, the daily newspapers.  And then they gave me the job of being the messenger taking the news, New Brunswick news to the New York newspapers about three times a week.  So I'd take the news up to the Times, and the Tribune, and the World, and the Journal and so forth.  ... Of course, they paid my ... railroad fare and at each office where I delivered the news they paid me fifty cents.  So that was--I would study a little bit on the train as I could, you know. ... The paper was owned and run by the family of the Boyds at that time. ...

KP:  Had you thought about going to law school while you were in college?

WS:  Well, sort of, I guess. ... As you have said, I was influenced pretty much by Jimmy Morrow and so forth, and I figured I couldn't do any better.

KP:  Had you thought of the ministry at all?

WS:  Well, yes, but I didn't have enough imagination.  My father was an excellent speaker.  He was really good.  But I didn't inherit much of that.

KP:  Although it was listed in the yearbook that you were sophomore orator.

WS:  Well, you know, a few of the boys would sign up for it, and I got in on it, too.  But by the time the junior year came around, things were a little different.  By that time, the boys who had any ability ... would really come out on top, don't you know, to be chosen.  They'd always have preliminaries.

MC:  Where did you live when you went to school?

WS:  Oh, I lived in Winants all four years.  In the south end.

KP:  You were at school when Rutgers celebrated its 150th anniversary.

WS:  Yeah.

KP:  There was--I saw in the yearbook and read in the bicentennial history that there was a massive pageant put on to celebrate.  Do you remember that pageant?

WS:  Well, only in this way, from the outside.  I wouldn't go to it, because everybody else in the class, ... it seemed to me, was given a part to play, and I was overlooked completely.  And so I ... wouldn't go, I stayed on campus.  It was all held out at the college farm.  I didn't go to it.

KP:  Did other people not get a part?

WS:  I don't know.  It seemed to me the whole college was there, I think I was the only one left out. [laughter]

KP:  You were going to Rutgers at the time that World War I had broken out in Europe.  Do you remember there being a debate on campus what America's role should be?

WS:  Oh, I guess there was a lot of that talk going around.  I don't remember anything in particular, if sides were taken one way or another about it.  I think the whole college was very patriotic, and half of our class or more pulled out the senior year you know and never got back.

KP:  Had you thought of enlisting in World War I?  Either interrupting your college or enlisting after graduation?

WS:  Well, I had thought about it, and, but then, they had the ROTC and all of that regular course, but the ... men in the classical course were not required to take the ROTC, just those in the scientific courses.  But they did have a few opportunities for men who wanted to see what it was like wearing an armband, or carry a gun or something like that.  And that was run by the fraternities too. ... So it was--I might have gotten into it, but as I say, my father and I were in an automobile accident in October 1917, and I fractured my leg.  So I was out. ... I was on the list, called, you know, but they passed me up.

KP:  Because of your leg.

WS:  I suppose, I don't know.  I never ... was told.

BS:  Maybe also, because of your father's death.

WS:  But that was the main reason I ... never got in.  I wouldn't pass the muster.

KP:  Do you remember, you were at Rutgers, he was an underclassman, but do you remember Paul Robeson?

WS:  Oh sure, of course.  Everybody asks me that, everybody.  Sure I knew him.  I knew him very well--that is, I say very well, he was two years behind me, don't you know.  But in those days, everybody knew everybody on campus, and we always spoke as we passed.  And we always tipped our hats to the professors, and they in turn acknowledged.  And there was quite a lot of college spirit.

-------------------------END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE----------------

KP:  Go ahead, please.  In terms of college experience.

WS:  Well, the college was so small, that you know, everybody knew everybody and so forth.  You felt a part of something, and that I think makes a big difference.  Today a man goes to college, and I don't know whether there's much college spirit or not--maybe there is.  But I'm not around to find out really for sure.  But it's too big for that today.

KP:  When did you sense that it was getting too big, that the Rutgers you knew had slipped away?

WS:  Oh, of course that ... would be many years after I was out of college, when the new regime would be pushing, you know, for larger enrollments and all that kind of [things].  ...

KP:  It sounds like you thought small was better.

WS:  Oh yes.  Oh yes.  But now you take a man like Abraham Selman Waksman.  He was Class of '15, ... you never saw him around at anything.  You'd see him walking across the campus now and then, but he was never a part of anything that I know of.  But, of course, he took scientific courses anyway.  But he didn't seem to enter into any of the atmosphere that you expect from the other men.

KP:  Were there any other men who didn't get involved with the life of the college?

WS:  A lot of fellows who were commuters.  Oh, ... they were looked down upon, especially the fraternity men wouldn't have anything to do with the commuters, you know.  They were just coming in to grab what they could get and take it away.  [laughter]

KP:  One of the things that at least people I've interviewed from the 1930s and 1940s who went to Rutgers is they associate the fraternities with automobiles.  Did any of the fraternity men have automobiles in your time?

WS:  No, no.

SH:  There was a pecking order between the fraternities, and men such as yourself who lived on campus, and then the commuters.  Were there any other biases, or prejudices that were part of this pecking order?

WS:  Well, I could only answer that by referring to one particular situation.  We had a young fellow right off the farm who had matriculated with us as freshmen, and he didn't dress properly.  He was ... he just didn't want to be anywhere near ... he was right off the farm, and he didn't amount to anything so far as college was concerned.  I don't know what became of him.  Carl Ruh.  He might have been just as smart as ... all the rest of us, but he didn't associate himself, he didn't want to be associated with anyone like that, you know.  He ... couldn't be friendly.  Everybody dressed the way you're dressed today, you know, when I was in college.  You wore decent clothes, a tie, you know, and the fraternity boys all, of course, wore vests in those days, and they had to have a chain across from one pocket to the other, don't you know.  All that stuff.  That set the stage.

KP:  What about canes, were canes still a part of the outfit for someone from the fraternity?

WS:  Canes?

KP:  Yes.

WS:  No, no, no canes.  They were out by that time.  I have somewhere in the house, I don't know where it is now, but I have a cane and it was used by men back around the 1860s, and it has their names carved on it.

KP:  There was no Douglass College or New Jersey College for Women when you arrived at Rutgers.

WS:  No, that started the year after we graduated, in 1918.

KP:  Where did people find dates, because there was no NJC?

WS:  Well, ... there was a girl's school on Bayard Street. ...  I've forgotten the name of it now.  There were some nice young ladies who went there, and once in a while you'd have a dance in the gym and invite the girls over. ... Otherwise, I guess the men had to bring the girls from their hometown, as a lot of them did.  On special occasions.

KP:  You were at Rutgers when the war was actually declared.  Do you remember any activity at Camp Kilmer, and how that impacted the area?

WS:  Oh Camp Kilmer hadn't been established yet.

KP:  So it would be established after you had left.

WS:  There was no Camp Kilmer at that time, that there was established after I was out.

KP:  Is there anything we have forgotten to ask about your Rutgers- -being a Rutgers student?  Are there any other stories?

WS:  Any stories ...

KP:  Any stories or anything you think we have forgotten to ask you about?

WS:  Well, where in Winants Hall today, there is a little cafeteria, that was only the beginning of it. ... And it wasn't a cafeteria in those days.  The dining hall included that part and all the rest of the building all the way down to the north end.  And it was pretty well filled, all the college men and pretty much except those fraternities that had their own dining rooms and [things] like that, ate there.  One of the professors, DeRegt, a chemistry professor, lived on the third floor in the center of Winants Hall, and he and his wife would come down and sit over in the corner with some of the other boys. ... But it was a real dining hall.  The waiters--all the waiters were colored.  They dressed in full regalia, they had a towel over their arm, and they waited on you.  Four dollars a week.  That was another occasion when a good number of the college men got together, don't you know, at meal time.

KP:  So it sounds like you enjoyed living at Winants.

WS:  Well, it was convenient, and yes.  You see the men you knew, don't you know, all the time, and if you were a fraternity man, why of course, you'd live at the fraternity house.  If they had room for you. ... But otherwise, the friends of mine, they all lived in Winants.

SH:  Did the professors have their meals with you?

WS:  Just this one.

SH:  Just the one.

WS:  Just that one.  Because he and his wife lived on the third floor, right in the center, and none of the other professors ever showed up to eat there.

SH:  Was your graduation ceremony from Rutgers different from what they are today?

WS:  Well at that time, the graduation exercises were held at the Second Reformed Church at George and Albany Street where that little bit of a park is today.  I don't know what that signifies, but ... there was a big brick church there, the largest one in town.  And they used to parade from the campus down to that church and back.

SH:  Do you remember the speakers?  Did you have a speaker at your graduation?

WS:  Yes, but it would be pretty much a college affair.  The speaker would be chosen from the senior class, don't you know.  The valedictorian would really be the speaker.  And they'd have a local band come in and sit up in the balcony and play dirges and all stuff like that, you know.  It was pretty somber.

KP:  The Rutgers you went to in many ways was a Dutch Reformed School.

WS:  ... Oh yes.  And Demmie was a Dutch Reformed preacher, ... and he came down from Catskill. ... He's the only Rutgers man who has ever been president.

BS:  Did most of the students come from New Jersey?

WS:  Yes, yes.  There were a few who--like Graham Pelton, Class of '18 from Essex, Connecticut, you know.  And there were a few from out of state, but for the most part they were all New Jersey men.

MC:  And were a lot of them on scholarship also?

WS:  Yeah.

SH:  Did you feel terribly inferior to Princeton men?

WS:  Well, Princeton men at that time, maybe properly or not, looked down--or were supposed to look down upon us.  We felt as though we weren't quite on the same plane as Princeton men, and not quite in their class.

SH:  In looking back, do you think that was really true, or did you feel that your education was on par with the Princeton men?

WS:  Oh, so far as the education was concerned, we never doubted that we weren't getting a good education.  We had some good professors.  Scottie, who had been president, he taught economics, and constitutional law in our junior and senior year.  Poppy Kirk taught Latin, right up on the third floor of Queens, as you face the building on the left of the third floor.  And he sat in a swivel chair with a high back up on the platform about this high above the main floor, and there was a big hunk of plaster in the ceiling about to fall down and he'd always sit there with his legs crossed underneath that big piece of plaster.  It's a wonder it never fell. ... It didn't seem to bother him at all.  But the students would take a look at him, and a look at that, don't you know, and wonder when's it gonna happen?  But it never did, not while I was there. ... He was from Goucher, I think, if I'm not mistaken.  He was from Goucher, but ... he was along in years.  But he knew his stuff, and ... he was a fine teacher. ... Very considerate, very patient.  He would go to ... any trouble to correct your papers and so forth, you know.  He really worked at the job, he was very nice and kind.

KP:  Do you remember when you were in college, any reunion weekends?  Were you on campus for any of the reunion--alumni reunions.

WS:  Yes, well, you see, the reunion was held on commencement day.  There was a combination of commencement and reunion, and you couldn't tell one from the other, you know.  It was all one big time.

SH:  How much interaction between the Rutgers College students and the town of New Brunswick was there?

WS:  Oh, there wasn't any, there wasn't any interaction except when they had the parade down George Street and the men would get a little too excited, you know, and maybe raise a ruckus and they'd have to call the police out.  But that's about the only time that I know that there was any interaction between the college students and the town.

BS:  Well, you worked in the town.  Did other students have jobs out in the town?

WS:  Oh yes, sure, there were a lot of fellows, like Marcus Aurelius Canfield, don't you know, he had a job at the Jersey Lunch down on Albany Street.  And there were ... other men who had different jobs, some of them good, some of them not so good.  I tended furnace among other things, one year.  And go chop wood up for a man over in Highland Park in the mornings sometimes.  Things like that, you know.

KP:  After graduating you went back to Vineland, and your father unfortunately passed away, and it sounds like you finished his job ...

WS:  Yeah.

KP:  ... making the map.

WS:  Right.

KP:  It sounds like you learned a good bit about surveying and ...

WS:  Well, ... I had to do the surveying, yes, and I did.

KP:  And I read that later you, in the early 1920s you went to Asheville, North Carolina.

WS:  Yes, ... I was down in Asheville for nine months, and I worked for all the engineers in town, you know, odd jobs.  And that was very nice.  They were all nice men.  I've never met, or been associated with any men on the outside, you know, nicer than those surveyors and engineers.

KP:  What led you to North Carolina, why did you take this job?

WS:  Oh, I'd been working there in Vineland, I had a job over at the Kimball Glass Company, I had to raise a little money, don't you know, and I didn't know just what the future was going to be.  And I got--I worked for them for about a year or so.  And it was time to sort of branch out and try to find myself.  I'd been ... to college, you know, and I was at home while making the tax map.  And I wasn't sure that I was really qualified to ... compete with real engineers, 'cause I hadn't had that training.  And I wasn't--I've never been good at math, I can sit here in the evening late at night working on accounts, things like that, and I add a column of figures three or four times, you know up and down, and it always comes out different.  And finally I just have to give it up.  You've got to be a mathematician if you want to be an engineer, and I realized that--the competition--I wouldn't be able to meet the competition, the real engineers, you know.  I have friends who were like, I mentioned his name a while ago, Graham Pelton, Class of '18, he helped me ... on the math, but mostly in preparatory material, we had to go over to Bridgeton, the county clerk's office and take off descriptions from the records in order to know how to plot the various parcels.  Because we showed every parcel of land that joined each other ... on this big tax map.  But ... I went down there to see what it was like.  I'd heard it was a great place, so I ... because I had a little engineering work in connection with the tax map, I naturally looked for ... that type of work down there, and I liked it, enjoyed it.  And I got into--in later years I realized ... I could have been in some mix-ups.  Like, one of the engineers, took me with him and we went out, took a train to a station Marshall near Asheville, and then we--somebody led us ... in an old Ford car, took us way back up in the hills, and we stopped at the houses on the way to tell the people who we were and why we were there, for the benefit of the insurance companies who wanted us to locate a barn that somebody had burned down and shot somebody up and all stuff like that, you know. ... On one occasion, we were going out for a-- ... what are these animals, not raccoons, ... possums.

KP:  Possums?

WS:  Possums, yeah.  We were staying overnight, way out in the back country, ... and we got there late in the day, we had to locate a barn that somebody had burned down because they were having a fight.  And so they decided--we stayed with a native in his log cabin house, you know, and they decided that we'd all go out and have a possum hunt.  Well, I'd never been a possum hunter, I didn't know what a possum looked like.  But, it turned out, they weren't interested in possums, they were interested in establishing a plume, like putting up a post, or something, only it would be a pile of stones, on where the neighbors were fighting as to who owned a certain piece of land.  One man thought he owned it, and the other man put up a fence, you know, and so forth.  So we, instead of fighting possums, ... climbed a fence at night, and some of the men put up a stone where they thought the line ought to--the corner of the property ought to be.  But before they did that, they gave a random shot or two to notify the man who lived over there, on the other side of the fence, that there was somebody out around with a gun and he'd better stay home, because one of those bullets could accidentally find a stray place to go if somebody was in the way of it.  So, I had a few experiences like that, you know.

KP:  It sounds like it was a very different part of the country.

WS:  ... I went down there, and I, there was something in the back of my mind fascinating about a sheep farm, and I thought, oh, that sounds sort of interesting, I wonder what they do, you know, and what it would be like.  So I went down, and I went to see ... one of the men, he had an office, I guess he was a lawyer, and told him why I had come to town. ... He discouraged me from investigating it.  I was a northerner, you see, and the people out in the hills were very suspicious of any outsider who didn't live, you know, the way they do, or did up in the hills.  He discouraged me from even considering it for any reason at all, so of course, the next easiest thing was to tie it with some of the surveyors in town, so I would work for them, odd jobs, as occasion called for.  This one incident I speak of, is one of those.

KP:  The possum hunting.  Being in hill country, I imagine the music was very different.  Do you remember that at all?

WS:  No, I didn't see or hear much about that.

KP:  What about the food?

WS:  Well, the food was pretty much native food.  ... Of course, Asheville was a city, don't you know.  It was a big town. ... Just about like any other town.  I got along with the town people all right, didn't have any trouble there.

KP:  You did some surveying work, did you then go to Harvard after the surveying work, or did you work elsewhere?

WS:  No, I left Asheville in September, came back to Vineland and went right on up to law school.

KP:  And had you considered other law schools besides Harvard?

WS:  Well, I thought this. ... I've never seen a law school, I didn't know what it looks like, and so I--well, I had seen and investigated Columbia in New York, that's the only one.  And I thought, well, on the way up I'll stop in New Haven and see what Yale looks like.  I couldn't imagine anybody would want to go to Yale, although a Rutgers man had just graduated from there and made out very well, but I saw the room he lived in, ugh!

KP:  What was wrong with the room at Yale?

WS:  Huh?

KP:  What was wrong with it?

WS:  Oh, ... it was in a ... frame building, and hadn't been kept up, and it was dreary, and dirty, and uninviting. And I couldn't imagine myself having to live in a place like that, you know.  And I didn't like the looks of their ... classroom.  There wasn't anything inviting about it at all.  So I went ... on to ... see Harvard, and I told the secretary in the office Dick (Ames?) ... that I had been to Columbia and I had stopped to see Yale, and he sort of sneered at the idea that I would even stop in New Haven to see the place.  So I was quite satisfied to stay ... in Cambridge.  It was at night when I got there, and I had my suitcase, and Harvard, you know, Harvard Square is very busy.  You ever been there?

KP:  Oh yes.

WS:  Up in Cambridge?

KP:  Yes.

WS:  Well then you know what I mean.  It's even busier today, but it was a busy center.  I went into a restaurant and got something to eat, and I was standing outside wondering what I was going to do, where I was going to be for the night.  Some young fellow saw me standing there, and he came over and wanted to do what he could for me, standing out in front of this restaurant, so he said that ... he had a room in a house, but he had decided that he wasn't going to stay ... it didn't appeal to him, he was going somewhere else, and there would be a chance for me to have his room.  So what can you do, eight, nine o'clock at night, you know, not knowing where you're going or what to do.  So I picked up my suitcase and went with him, walking down one of the back streets, I stayed with him all night, and the next morning he left and took his things, and I left a note that I was willing to take over his room, it was in an apartment.  And the people who were living there had an extra room which they rented out. ... So when I went over to [the] law school, of course, busy all day long, I went back at night to the room and found they had taken all my stuff out and put it in the hallway and locked the door.  So, [laughter] I had ... another experience of trying to find a place to stay overnight.  But I found one somewhere.

KP:  Where did you eventually live after all these experiences?

WS:  I lived in various places ... not far from Harvard Square.  I eventually, my first year, found a room--we had two rooms, a study room and another room that we could use for a bedroom, for two of us.  And I put a notice on the ... bulletin board at the law school that I had a place for anybody who needed a room, and a fellow from Whitman College out in Washington showed up and answered my little note on the bulletin board, so we roomed together at number 12 Sumner Road.  And unless you're really familiar with Cambridge you wouldn't know where that was, but it was right near the yard, a couple of blocks away.  A nice place.

KP:  My wife is from the Boston area, so for example our wedding invitations came from the Harvard Coop.

WS:  Oh really.  Oh well, then you know all about it.

KP:  When I first went up to Harvard Square, I think I was still in college, I was surprised at how busy Harvard Square was.  I even thought to myself, how can anyone get any work done, because it's so busy.

WS:  I know, it's too busy.  Of course, there's a lot of local business there, even at that time, but they tore down some of the old buildings and put up big office buildings and stuff like that, you know.  And they were always making over the subway station.

KP:  They still are.

WS:  It was the end of the line, you know, and they were always making over, making changes there for years.  But they finally got it, now the subway is extended, you know way up to ...

KP:  Alewife.

WS:  What do they call it?

KP:  I think it's Alewife.

WS:  Yes, that's it.  Alewife.

KP:  How difficult was your first year at Harvard?

WS:  It was tough.

KP:  Because the first year of law curriculum is a pretty tough one for most.

WS:  Yeah, pretty tough.  I didn't like it. ... The first class on torts.  We went in a great big room, in a semi-circle, you know, continuous desks and chairs, and platform for the professor.  And it was in torts.  Of course, I didn't know what a tort was.  And here this professor was up there, ... he just ... shot off his mouth all the time, you didn't know ... what he was talking about or why. ... It was very discouraging.  Well, after a while of course you get used to those things, because you have to.  You'd better or else you don't stay.  As they told us at a reception at the beginning, he says, you men are here, but remember the door swings both ways.  Well that had nothing to do with Rutgers except one of the men was Scottie, Scottie's son who taught procedure.  And as one of the upper ... third year man would say, ... all the men would take any course that Scottie taught.  The first year men he taught procedure.  And ... he was good, we liked him.  Just like his father.

KP:  What was your most difficult course of your first year courses?  Because a lot of people have said it's property.

WS:  The first year of college?

KP:  No, at law school.  A lot of people have said property was their toughest course.

WS:  Well, ... in this way, the professor was Bull Warren, and he was a bull, too.  Oh, he had no regards for anybody and he let you know right off.  He said one day, ... there was a man from Iowa or somewhere up that way, Mr. Reeser, he was a little older than some of the men, and he was asking him a question about a case.  And Reeser wasn't quick enough, he wasn't much of a student anyway, and Bull says, "Well, we may as well draw the white sheet over Mr. Reeser and pass on."

KP:  Did Mr. Reeser make it through law school, or did they in fact draw the curtain?

WS:  He stuck it out.  His wife ran a dining room at Brattle Inn.  It was a big old house, and ... she ran a wonderful home-cooked meals there, but very, very business like, and a very nice person.  In fact she was--my third year there, I made arrangements that I would get a job during the summer and pay her my board bill, and so ... she was very, very nice.

KP:  Of the first year curriculum you had, were there any courses you particularly enjoyed?  Or in general any areas of law that you gravitated to, that you enjoyed?

WS:  Well, I enjoyed Bull Warren.  As a matter of fact, my first day or two they had assigned me a seat ... way up in the back, you know, the room holds about 300 men or more, and I had a seat at a bench way in the back, and there were some vacant spaces down in front.  So I was reassigned to the very first row bench, right under his nose, down in front.  Right in the center. ... There was room on this bench for eight or ten men at the most, well I was right ... right in the center, and like all the others I kept my nose down in the book, I hardly ever looked up.  One day, however, he was explaining--Bull Warren was explaining something, and I got my nerve up, and I said to him, "Would you repeat that please?"  And he looked at me, and he says, "I never give encores!" (laughter).  And he went right ahead, and he said it word for word right over again.  That's the type of man he was, but you had to hit him just right, you know.  But ... I enjoyed property under him, and I also enjoyed, we had another professor, Joey Beale.  My roommate called him "the little butcher boy!"  He wasn't very tall, and he was sort of rotund, and he didn't try to put anybody down, he was a good lecturer and he was nice.  You felt sort of at ease with him, but he was very profound.  I remember ... one day, in one class, we had a fellow, his name was Weissbord, and he was a sight, and he wanted to make his presence known, and pushy type.  And Joey Beale was talking one day, and finally this fellow put his hand up, and ... asked after Joey Beale ... had finished, ... he said, ... "Isn't that being technical?" to Joey Beale, you know.  You don't talk to Joey Beale like that, you know.  He's too nice a man for one thing.  And so everybody just let it go, ... nobody liked that ... interruption like that, you know.  So about a week later, Joey Beale was lecturing again, and he happened to get this man ... Weissbord, you know, a conversation with him, and he led him along, he led him along.  He knew what he was doing, ... and everybody listened.  ... And finally he asked Weissbord a question, he said, "Isn't that being technical?"  And the whole room just roared, oh immediately!  You know.  Oh, it was wonderful.  So what are you going to do.  It's tough.  Awfully tough.  But ...

KP:  At Harvard, what type of law did you think you'd specialize in, what did you hope?

WS:  I wasn't sure, but I rather thought possibly corporate law.  There seemed to be a lot of money in that.  And Bull Warren had taught corporate law, corporation, and I took that course.  But I wasn't ... quite sure.  But I finally wound up with mostly ... real estate law down in Newark.  ... I served my clerkship with the attorneys for the Fidelity Union Trust Company which at that time was the biggest bank in New Jersey, and these partners had been employees of the bank, but there was a rule that a corporation couldn't practice law, and they were practicing law as employees of the bank, you know.  So they had formed the firm that I was their first clerk.

KP:  How long did you stay with Hood and Lafferty?

WS:  I was with them, let's see, the better part of a couple of years.  And they didn't expand, there wasn't the opportunity to feel that you're getting anywhere.  So when I passed the bar I thought maybe I'd get a promotion or something like that but there wasn't anything coming.  So I went over to work in the title company, where ... their original offices had been when I first went to Newark in one of the Prudential buildings.  They all were very nice to me, they were very nice.

KP:  I have interviewed an attorney who I also worked for Hood and Lafferty, Alan Lowenstein.  Do you know Alan Lowenstein?

WS:  Just in a more or less.  Not too well. ...

KP:  One of the things he said about practicing law in New Jersey in the 1920s and 1930s up until the new constitution was that it was a very--law in itself can be very difficult, but that New Jersey sort of managed to make it even more difficult, even for an attorney who was just out of law school it took a while to figure things out.

WS:  Well, I guess it would be true anywhere.  When a man got through law school, he wasn't trained at law school to be a lawyer.  ...

--------------------END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO---------------------

KP:  This continues an interview with Mr. Walter Seward on December 30th, 1996 at West Orange, New Jersey, with Kurt Piehler

MC:  Melanie Cooper,

SH:  Sandra Stewart Holyoak.

KP:  And you were saying how law school trained you not to be a lawyer, but how to think like a lawyer.

WS:  That's what we decided because, you know, you graduate law school, you didn't know how to handle a client.  How to foreclose a mortgage or do anything practical.  But, it gave you a start, so that you had a basis for continuing to learn the mechanics of practice.  Now I think today ... they have courses on, you might say, the mechanics of practice.  I think ... they're more liberal in that respect today.  I've done a little research working and being a member of one of the law clubs which required a little research for them at law school, but ... I didn't like it very much because, well, it was too much of a drudge.  And they didn't teach you how to make use of the library.  Quote you something out of ... (Encyc 1), ... "What?  What is this man talking about?" (Encyc?) was the encyclopedia of law, and all the laws, you know.  Big thick book.  Who knows what that's like?  So when I served my clerkship, I had to teach myself how to use law books, and what law books were available, and what the procedure was.  And even though I didn't like some of it, I had to use it, and eventually I ... overcame the dislike of it.

KP:  Did you ever do any trial work in your career?

WS:  I wasn't a trial lawyer, no.

BS:  ... pro bono, is that what they call it?

WS:  Pro bono?

BS:  You were assigned cases ...

WS:  Oh, I was assigned a couple of criminal cases (laughter), but ... they weren't jury cases. ... I was ... too green about the practice and procedure when I got out of law school.  I expected to continue an education from the men I would be working with, you know.  I didn't know the first thing of what to do.

SH:  Where did you go from the title company?

WS:  Well, ... during the Depression, I went over to New York.  Because you couldn't get a job anywhere, and I figured that there's no better time than right now to get admitted in New York, and I figured I could get admitted on motion.  I had almost five years in New Jersey as a member of the bar, and in fact I had been admitted as an attorney, and then three years later it was (-------?) exams as counselor, so that I had almost five years of practice in New Jersey when the Depression came along.  I went over to New York ostensibly to be admitted on motion, because they would accept a man from another state if he had five years.  Well, my five years wasn't quite up yet when I went over to the first department, that's Manhattan.  And so they wouldn't let me register for the first department.  But they let me register over in Brooklyn, in the second department, because my admission to the bar with five years would accumulate during that period of time before the day for making the motion would come up.

Well ... I had to study New York law, and ... instead of being--I was admitted on motion, but in order to qualify to be admitted on motion, I had to take a private examination by the head of the committee who sat down at one end of the long table, and he had a stenographer from New York's district court right here taking every word down, and somebody else, I guess a policeman, sitting over there on the other side, and I was down at the other end of the table.  He asked me all kinds of crazy questions I never heard of: "Who was Hugo Grotius"  I asked one of the fellows here who went to Yale Law School, he'd never heard of Hugo Grotius.  Hugo Grotius was the man in the Dark Ages who invented the corporation.  But you don't need to know that to practice law today, don't you know?  He, for three hours!  I finally made it.  I don't know how, but I wasn't good for much more when that was all over. ...

So I got admitted in New York.  Well, while I was in New York, in Hoover's administration, they started up the HOLC.  Homeowner's Loan Corporation, to help out people who couldn't pay their mortgages, and ... try to make it easier for them, you know.  And so I got in the New Jersey office of the HOLC, a friend of mine really got the job for me.  I was in New York and things were still at a standstill, and there was no chance of making money anyway, at that time, and there was this HOLC which offered a little money.  Over in New York I was just an ordinary office boy.  I got fifteen dollars a week, and I lived over on Staten Island in a room with no heat.  That was one of the most severe winters they ever had. ... I used to take the ferry in, a couple of girls ... on the ferry, which was crowded, I'll always remember.  The bay was frozen over, and one of the girls said to the other, she says, "The ice is full of bay." (laughter)

So I come back to New Jersey, and they discovered down in Washington that I had been living in New York.  So I wasn't qualified to be employed at the New Jersey state office.  So what to do? ... I was qualified, however, to work in New York, so they transferred me over to the New York regional office, and made me the advisory attorney for New York, New Jersey, ... and Connecticut.  Of course, I didn't know too much New Jersey law, and I didn't know--and I knew some New York law, I didn't know anything much about Connecticut law.  But I had to handle problems in all three states.

KP:  What types of things did you handle?

WS:  Well, it would be legal problems were the questions that would arise, and in connection with a man owning property, and unable to make the mortgage payments, and how much time would be given them to try to work things out. ... All kinds of questions.  A lot of questions of estates, sometimes corporations. ... I had all that type of work to do.  To advise the attorney who was in charge as to what the outcome would be.

KP:  How did you get your job with the HOLC?  Did you have a friend?

WS:  A friend of mine had returned from the war, and had been associated with where I was working, and so he told the state council about me, and they looked me up in New York.  Because they had problems in New Jersey, and they wanted somebody who knew how to handle it.  So, that's the way it worked out.

SH:  How long did you stay with the HOLC?

WS:  Oh, let's see, how long was it all together?  Until after the war.  It--oh, I don't think I'll be there to see four years.  I forget even at that time ...  I hadn't, while I was in New York, I hadn't taken my vacation time, or sick leave or anything of that sort, and I needed some dental work done, so I took time off for that.  And because it was free time and my paycheck would come in anyway, when I came back they greeted me with the news that that was my last day.  So, the best I could do then was to come back to New Jersey and foreclose mortgages for the HOLC which I did for two or three years.  Things were easing up, you know, and still a lot of people couldn't meet the requirements and obligations.  Foreclosure was the ... only solution.  We tried to get what they called a voluntary deeds, if we could.  To save having litigation, but there was plenty of litigation involved.

SH:  Did that cover all of New Jersey?  Foreclosures all over New Jersey?

WS:  ... Oh yes.  I've passed on real estate titles all over the state and in every county.

KP:  How many foreclosures did you do on an average month?  Roughly?

WS:  Oh, maybe a dozen.

KP:  And of these how many would be voluntary, and how many would you have to litigate?

WS:  Oh, about half and half I would say probably.

SH:  Did you have a large staff working for you?

WS:  I had to do all the work myself.  I was office boy, I was everything.  I was stenographer, I was secretary, I was handyman.  That's the way it was, because actually that was the beginning of holding up, don't you know.  After the war we didn't need to carry out that system.

SH:  Did you at least have an office for files?

WS:  I had an office where I was living.  Down in the center of Newark.

SH:  What did you think of Newark coming from South Jersey, like Vineland?

WS:  Newark proved to be an entirely different place from what I expected. I don't know that I care to elaborate on that at all.

SH:  Why not?  Please.

WS:  Well, when you're going to college, and when you're going to law school, you can pick your friends.  But when you get out in the business world, you deal with people who may not be your friends.  And it may be so different--their answers are entirely different from yours, you know.  It's a different world.

SH:  Did you take part in any of the cultural activities that Newark was known for at that time?

WS:  I couldn't see much cultural activities. ... I thought it might be nice to be a member of the New Jersey Historical Society, to meet a nice class type of people, you know.  But they were ... like this ...

KP:  You found them very cliquey, cliquish.

WS:  Yeah, so that didn't amount to anything. ... So I got mixed up with some of the politicians, or tried to, and attended ... some of the local meetings.

KP:  Did you know Arthur Vanderbilt?

WS:  Well, I knew who he was, I never personally knew the man.  I hadn't much occasion to, as a matter of fact.  He was quite a man.  He was Dean of the New York Law School, and he was also the county counsel for Essex County.  I don't know how many jobs he had, but he was pulling it, raking in the money from all directions.  And he was a very, very smart, able man, and he had his ... own law practice besides all this.  I don't know how he was ... able to manage it all. ... I came back on the train with him one night from New York quite late, he and his wife with others had been going to the opera or something like that, I guess I had taken in a show.  He lived out on the Day Estate in Short Hills, near the Short Hills station. ... [They have] great big houses back, you know, set out by itself.  I guess it's a real estate development now.  He lived there.  I don't know whether he was related to the New York Vanderbilts or not, but he was a very, very able man.

SH:  What politicians were you involved with in Newark?

WS:  Oh just, the local men in particular area of the city, you know.  One of them was ... had a job, he was a foreman in the sewer department.  But he was the politician in that particular area.  So I did some work for him.  ... I even ... got my name on the ballot in one election for justice of the peace.  But in a city like ... Newark, the justice of the peace is nobody.  He has no authority to do anything, because there are other legal organizations that handle all that type of work that a justice of the peace out in the country, you know ... finds jurisdictional.

SH:  Were you running as a Republican?

WS:  Uh hum.

SH:  Pretty tight race!

WS:  I always say anyone with our name has to be a Republican.

KP:  How did World War II change your law practice?  Did you continue with the HOLC or did you ...

WS:  I got mixed up with title companies.

KP:  That's when you made the switch to titles.

WS:  Yeah.

SH:  Did your practice stay then in Newark?

WS:  Uh hum.

SH:  Where did you live, yourself in Newark?

WS:  Well, let's see.  I first lived in 487 Summer Avenue, North Newark.  In a boarding house run by a Mrs. Gibb.  And I had a very nice room.  It happened that when I came to Newark, I came on my birthday, 1924, October 13.  And I went to the law office which was on the third floor of the bank building, and it was a holiday because it was a Monday and they were celebrating Columbus' birthday on Monday.  I didn't know that, I wouldn't have come.  So I didn't know what to do, where I was gonna live.  I went to the Y, and they were all filled up.  And they said, "Here's a list of people out in the city who have rooms for rent in case you want to investigate."  So I looked at the list, and I didn't know Newark, one street or anything from another, and I got on a bus.  On the way going up towards North Newark to investigate two or three addresses, here's a fellow who came from the back of the bus up, and approached me, and it was a fella I had known in college, and who had waited tables at the place where I was employed getting people, college men, to come and eat, you know.  And he said, "Well, we've got a room up here in the place where I'm living."  So I stopped off with him, and it was a real nice room and I lived there for a while.

Then I moved to another building run by a couple of older ladies, a little farther up.  There I had a room about a quarter of the size of this one.  A tower room, you know, in an old Victorian house.  That was the only opening ... they had.  Windows all around, you know?  Well, it was sort of a lark. ... I moved in there, because they only charged me two dollars a week.  And I still wasn't making very much money.  I still was in that stage where ... you have to serve a clerkship, you know, and go through all that stuff. ... Oh, and the food there was wonderful. ... Aunt Ann was the cook, she and her sister.  Aunt Ann and Ma Kenny.  And they had come down from New York, western New York state, I don't know why or how--years before, but they were making their way running this boarding house.  They had school teachers, you know, they had a mechanic, they had some boys who ran a printing press, up at the (-----? company), that made cups, paper cups.

SH:  So after the war, where did you live in Newark?

WS:  Well, I, when I left the boarding house, I had to live over in Staten Island to qualify in the second department, as a New York resident, you know.  But that's the only way you can get in.  So, of course, I had to give up my room up there on Carteret Place in North Newark, and having moved over to Staten Island.  And when I came back I got a room right down the center of Newark near to the HOLC offices, so it was just a few minutes walking distance to carry on with the work I had to do on the outside for them.  And I got tired of that eventually, and I found a place over here on Central Avenue near ... the high school, and I was there for eighteen years.  I had a nice little apartment there.  I was there for eighteen years right next to the firehouse, but ... that didn't interfere, in any way, my room looked out on the yard in back and some ladies used to run the flower garden in the summertime.  All the time I lived there I never went down to the backyard.  My windows looked right out on it.  Then after Betty and I were married, we needed quarters a little bit larger than that, because she had been in an apartment, and we dumped everything that she had into what I had in this apartment.  We could ... hardly get around.  It was almost impossible. ... So we found--my sister saw a picture of this house in a real estate office over at Main and Scotland Road over where a bank is now--it's been there for years, it was originally a real estate office.  And she made inquiries about it, and it turned out to be this place in West Orange where we have lived for 35 years!

SH:  How did you meet Mrs. Seward?

WS:  Well I stumbled over her at church.  Or something like that. 
BS:  We went to the same church which was near where he lived, and across the street from where I lived.

WS:  Oh yes, I remember now.  We had a big snowstorm and the two of us, I guess were the only ones who showed up on a Sunday. ... They couldn't plow out the place for anybody to get in.  That was in February of 1958.

BS:  I couldn't justify not going to church when I lived right there.  But we both just happened to take cameras with us and so ... we were out there taking pictures of the church and all this snow.

KP:  So you have pictures from that--do you still have the pictures?

BS:  Probably.

WS:  And I was invited up to her apartment for a cup of coffee.

BS:  I didn't know he ... [he] didn't drink coffee.

WS:  I wasn't a coffee drinker.  What can you do under weather conditions like that?  Snow on the ground this high, you know.

BS:  You would have gotten lost walking ... the three blocks back to your place, you could have frozen to death!

SH:  So how long did it take you to propose from this February snowstorm?

WS:  I don't think I ever did propose, did I Betty?

BS:  Well, you must have.  (laughter)  We went down on Mother's Day weekend to tell your folks.  And then we got married the end of June.  We sort of pushed it.

SH:  Did you get married in Newark?

BS:  No.  At the church in Orange.

WS:  Congregational church, where the big snowstorm. ... They filled the church.  The church was not, well, not too big a congregation, a small congregation and so forth.  But we filled it that day.

KP:  Are you still members of that church?

WS:  Never was a member of that church.  I'm still a member of the church down in Vineland.  I was admitted as a member of the church out in Toledo when we lived there, and I figured I'd never be a member of any other church.  You know, one was enough because of family, our relatives all went there and so forth.  A nice big church.  When we moved to Vineland, of course, that changed things.  My father brought our letters ... [from Toledo] to the Presbyterian Church in Vineland.  And so I've been a member there ever since 1910 or 11. ... Now I go to the First Presbyterian Church over on Main Street and ... Scotland Road in Orange.

BS:  The church we were married in was a Congregational Church and it through the years got smaller and smaller.  Members retired, and members died--their families married and moved to the suburbs, and we did not succeed in drawing from the community.  So ultimately the church dissolved and sold to another church group, which ultimately sold it to still another one which now is going great guns there.  And as Walter said, he goes to the First Presbyterian in Orange, and meanwhile I was brought up Episcopalian although I have very warm feelings for the Congregational.  But we wanted one that had a good Sunday school for the children, so I ended up in a Episcopal church in Maplewood, where our daughter just clicked in immediately. ... It didn't work as well for Jonathan, but I still go there, and Walter goes with us once in a while.  He goes there for some of the functions that take place, but.

WS:  If there's anything to eat, I'll be there.

BS:  He's not as comfortable with the Episcopal service.  Often, I will take him to First Church and leave him, and I'll go to St. Georges and I'll come back for him.  His service begins half an hour later than mine, so it's just about getting over when I get back, so that works out.

SH:  How many children do you have?

BS:  Two.

WS:  A boy, and a girl.

SH:  And their names are?

WS:  Jonathan, the older, and Marymae, named after her two grandmas.

SH:  Their picture shows that they are handsome and beautiful children.

BS:  Thank you.  He's up in Boston and he's working as a liaison for communities up there with the Tunnel Authority.  To try to make sure that the land that's left after they build the tunnel is used in the most appropriate ways and doesn't just become another eyesore.  And he's loving it.  Marymae, meanwhile, came back from Los Angeles where she had been working in geriatrics to become executive director of an adult day care center up in Totowa.  And that has just gotten fabulous reviews.  We're quite excited.  And she lives just around the corner from us, which is marvelous!  She and her husband, of whom we're very fond. ...

KP:  Did any of your children attend Rutgers?

WS:  My daughter Marymae spent her junior year of college at Rutgers.  She went to Tufts, and seeing as the rule at Tufts is for your junior year you always go somewhere else, and then come back for your senior year, you know, to graduate.

BS:  ... [In] the second half of her sophomore year, she went to London, and studied there, and travelled in Europe.  Then Walter went over and joined her for a month, and at the end of that month, with one week overlapping, I went over--I was doing some supplemental teaching at that time, you couldn't leave until the school year ended, so she stayed on over through the summer, and she did England, and Wales, and Ireland, and Scotland.  Then she and I did part of the continent and England and Scotland and Ireland.  Then the following year she went down to Rutgers and got courses she would not have been able to get at Tufts, with some experiences she valued very much, and went on back to Tufts for her senior year.

WS:  While she was at Rutgers, she got a job at, what was she?  Something at St. Joseph's home over on ... Woodbridge. ...

BS:  I think she was program director or something. ...

WS:  Yes, ... she managed things for the people to do, don't you know.  And she enjoyed that very much.

BS:  Then she worked for a time in Boston at the hospital associated with Tufts, then went out to Los Angeles and studied at the University of Southern Cal, and after she had her masters, she saw a job notice for a job with the ... YMCA, I believe it was, or the YWCA, setting up a program for older adults.  She applied, she got the job, she worked there until funding didn't develop--you know, when all of a sudden funding was reduced for everybody, and hers was the last position.  So she got a job with a hospital out in Granada Hills where they had a program particularly for older adults, and they did a lot of Alzheimer's research there, and she worked there, through that hurricane ...

WS:  She was right in the center ... of the hurricane.

BS:  ... Earthquake.

WS:  ... A building about a hundred feet away, the whole side of it came down.

BS:  She did a lot of exploring (-----------?).  But after that, she and her husband decided, ... well both of them missed the change of seasons in the east, and they were ready to head back east, so they started looking into jobs, and looking into places to live, and ended up back here.  She's there, and he works out of Manhattan when he's not being shipped off to Minnesota.  They say they get a lot of frequent flier miles. [laughter].

KP:  How did it feel to have a daughter at Rutgers?  Because when you were at Rutgers, it was very much an all-male place.  How did you feel about coeducation?

WS:  Well, I was sorry that they did that.  I thought it--I liked it as ... all men.  And they had started, of course, the year after I graduated, they started Douglass, and that was just for the women, because they didn't want any women on the Rutgers campus, you know.  But they had to do something to satisfy some politicians, and they were looking for state money, and one thing and another.

KP:  I read in the Rutgers Alumni Magazine in 1956, you were very critical of the state takeover of Rutgers in 1956.

WS:  Was I?

KP:  Yeah, you had written ... I didn't copy the whole thing down, but one of the things you had written was you were opposed to the state takeover, it looks like a real giveaway, and you also argued, "No assurance money will come from politicians," and you argued that, "government in control of education means government controlled thought."

WS:  Did I say all that?  (laughter) ...  Hey, I'm glad you came!  ... Let's see, what will I do here?

KP:  It sounds like there was a lot of the old Rutgers you were sorry--you didn't want to see go.

WS:  ... Yes, there's too much of a change.  Yes.  And I think there were a lot of other people who realized that and that's how they came to establish Douglass. ... I guess they wanted a state college for women, and that was one way to work it out with the boys down in Trenton.

KP:  The Alumni Association very much wanted us to interview you partly because you have an incredible record of attendance at reunions.

WS:  Well, I had to miss some, of course.  I had to miss ... the first reunion I got back to was 1919.  I couldn't get back in 1918, because I was working on the tax map.  But except for that, I've come back every year except for the time I was up in Cambridge.  Because the exams up there would come just about at reunion time down at college.

KP:  So you, in a sense, have been going to reunions since the late 1920s.  Pretty regularly it sounds.

WS:  Yeah.

KP:  In fact, I think I was told you've been to 49 consecutive reunions.

WS:  Oh have I?  Yeah, well, I've been going regularly every year, yeah.  And in our fiftieth reunion I originated the alumni reunion chapel service, and I've been conducting that ever since.

SH:  Do you feel like an honorary Rutgers alumnus, Mrs. Seward?

BS:  Well, somewhat.  I've seen things change, because when I  first would go down for his alumni meetings, we were not permitted to go--women were not permitted to go to the luncheons.  And we were definitely (-----------?).  But then--and they would have their class dinner and the wives would be there, and then we would have to go out while they conducted business.  And then until they caught on to the fact that the business was probably stuff the wives already knew about, we would discuss it at home, so they quit that foolishness. ...

SH:  Where did you go to school?

BS:  I went to Piedmont College in Northeast Georgia.  A small church related college.  Coed. [laughter]  To me, anything other than coed seemed asinine!  I'd gone to coed schools all my life, and the state school was a little larger than I was interested in anyway.  But what is now Florida State University was Florida State College for Women, and you could go to Gainesville, which was a men's college if you were taking courses that they didn't offer in Tallahassee.  But when I suggested to my brother, "Well, maybe I'd like to go there and take forestry."  He in fact said, "Over my dead body!  I know what they think about the girls who go to their school!"

But Piedmont also cost less and almost all the students worked at least part of the way and it was just considered normal, so it was an ideal place.  And it was very, very small, and I had gone to a high school of 1800 and the college was 250.  So anything I tried out for I got into.  They were grateful!  The only thing I didn't get into was the Debate Club, because I didn't want anybody telling me which side to argue.  Well no, I also didn't get into the ministerial alliance.  But other than that.  And it was, it was a terrific place for me, and I was the fourth child in the family, and up there, they didn't know anyone else in my family.  When my sister came to visit me, she was my sister, instead of my being her sister.  And if you've been a younger sibling you know what this means.  And the relationship with the faculty was terrific, and you didn't have time to get homesick, because every time you saw anybody on campus you said hello, and you saw enough people you didn't have time to think about it.  In all sorts of ways it was great, but then ultimately, when I decided I wanted to do graduate work, I decided I wanted to go outside that section of the country and get a different perspective and also I wanted a school that people had heard of.  So I went to Teacher's College of Columbia and which had been heard of, and had some excellent teachers. ... Some of them weren't so good, but I really had some terrific ones.  Then I taught for four years in Massachusetts, and then I came to West Orange to teach.  And I've been here ever since.  As I said, I was living across the street from the church that Walter went to, and I remember thinking, well, I hope I like this church, because I'll probably end up going there.  And I did.  And I was not comfortable in the Episcopal churches that I tried, in that area and the Congregational Church was right for me.  All that worked out fine.

SH:  What subject did you teach here in West Orange?

BS:  Biology.  Since then I have been a substitute teaching for anything.  They no longer call me, thank goodness, for auto shop.  I don't think I've ever been called for boy's gym when they had them separated.  And they don't call me for phys. ed. anymore.  But I sub in the middle schools and the high schools.  There are only three schools in West Orange that I go to, it works out.  I started out in the high school, because that's where I taught.  And then I started in one of what were then junior high schools, because, I knew all the kids that went there, because I'd been active with Girl Scouts and with Boy Scouts.  And then I started going all over to these other junior highs.  Now I see kids, I probably had, or soon will have those whose grandparents I had in school.  [laughter] I have had some whose parents I had.  But it's interesting, because I get them in the sixth grade, and then I may get them again along the way, but also when they get to be seniors.  And its fun to see them as they go through.

SH:  So what changes have you seen in the Alumni Association at Rutgers?

BS:  Well, they're more open now.  And more interesting planning activities for families on reunion day.

KP:  So when the men had their meeting and the lunch where ...

-------------------------END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE----------------

SH:  You were saying where you went when the men began their meetings, then you had to retire to the ...

BS:  Yeah.  We all ate lunch together, or dinner, or whatever it was, but then they would be ready to call the meeting to order so the ladies would get up and walk out ... together.  It really seemed kind of stupid, but a lot of things in life do.  At one point I worked for the army and that prepared me for a lot of things that seemed stupid.

KP:  When did you work for the army?

BS:  After World War II, I worked in Germany for a year and a half as a civilian.

KP:  What did you do for the army?  When were you in Germany?

BS:  '46 to '48.  I worked in civilian personnel, and then I worked in transportation. ... It was, for me it was a marvelous opportunity, I would never have gone to ... Europe otherwise.  And they paid my way, and they paid most of my expenses while I was over there and paid me a salary in addition, so, you know.  And it was great, and I could do enough stenography to get by.  I had some interesting experiences of various sorts.

KP:  What part of Germany were you in?

BS:  Bad Nauheim and Bremerhaven.

KP:  And what office did you work in?  What department of the Army?

BS:  Continental Base Headquarters.  And then after that closed as such, and we went to Bremerhaven, I guess it was just Bremerhaven Port of Embarkation, that's when I was working for transportation.  Part of the time trying to find new jobs for men who had worked with the merchant marine through the war and were not interested in coming back to the states and working at stateside jobs.  They liked being on the water and doing that sort of thing, and there wasn't a need for them now, as there had been.  But it was ... you'd meet all sorts of people.  Some of them you'd really like, and some of them--you're glad you had met somebody like that, and hope not to again soon!  [laughter]  But it also meant that I got to London, and other parts of England, and I got to Paris, I got to Belgium, I got to Amsterdam, I got to Switzerland.  I got to Denmark.

SH:  Were you shocked at what you saw compared to the news and the information that had come back to the states during the war?

BS:  I don't know that I was shocked, I was distressed.  Because you'd go through these wastelands-- ... somebody had pointed out to me that they had not yet rebuilt certain areas, because they wanted to get reparations, and they figured they could present a better case if all the war damage was still there.  But I went to Bad Nauheim, one bomb had dropped on it by mistake during the war-- there was nothing to bomb.  It had been a resort town, and it was an ideal place for them to set up a headquarters, because there were lots of little hotels, and lots of little dining rooms, so they could accommodate this influx of people.  And I worked in the Grand Hotel [laughter]! ... No it was, Bad Nauheim didn't show the effects of the war much.  And actually when I first went over, you didn't do much travelling around.  There wasn't any way to do it.  You could take [the] train, and that was a (------?) as long as you stayed in Germany and sometimes when you went beyond, you weren't expected to pay a fare if you were travelling in uniform, and the headquarters I was at, civilians were required to wear uniforms for work.  And it was super to go ahead and wear it if you were travelling, because for the women, we had the slacks and the jacket and the skirts, and the whole works.  It was comfortable and convenient. ... So you went certain designated places, but we weren't supposed, really, to travel in Germany except to those designated places, because the people were having too many hardships.  They didn't have food for themselves, much less for anybody else.  So you stayed out and went to Garmisch, went to Munich, got into Frankfurt a time or two, got to Wiesbaden once.  I didn't do much travelling in Germany, but it did get me an opportunity to travel through Germany to other places, and that was wonderful for me.  My next trip was going to be to Italy, but then my father became critically ill, and my mother sent word so I came back to the states.  Had an ... emergency leave, but it ended as a termination, it just wasn't feasible for me to go back.

KP:  It sounds like you had a position that in the war had been a WAC position.

BS:  Probably.

KP:  Yes, especially having to wear uniforms on duty.

BS:  Well, the general was one of those.  He was an armchair general all through the war, and was throwing his power around after he got over there.  He was not too much respected by the men who actually served in the services--who now were coming back, as civilians and working for Judge Advocate General and positions of that sort. ... I didn't mind wearing a uniform, we didn't have to wear it after work.  So it meant I didn't have to put as much money into clothing, and I didn't have to think in the morning.  Even when you had an emergency--what did they call--air raid alert, or something like that, you just automatically put on your uniform, didn't have to think about it.

KP:  You were also in Germany, if I'm correct, during the Berlin Airlift?

BS:  Yeah.  That was scary.

KP:  You felt that ...

BS:  Well I went to Berlin twice.  Once by train and once by car.  And I can still remember how it felt.  You get to a checkpoint, you just didn't know what was gonna happen.  The time I went by car, before we got to the checkpoint, one of my friends said, "I'm gonna say you're my wife, and you're gonna be asleep in the backseat.  Because then, they're not going to ask you any questions."  So we did it that way, but we just weren't sure what they might do.  It was the lack of assurance.  And then in Bremen, they had a, well, civilians had junior officer privileges, which meant we could go to the officer's club.  And in Bremen, they had an officer's club for American, British, French, and Russian, I think it was just the four.  And the Americans, and the British, and the French were friendly to each other--they might not ever get to know each other, but they were friendly.  The Russians were so very stand-offish, you just didn't, you didn't know.  And you weren't sure, you never were sure, what might happen.  I wrote my parents back these letters and said, "Well, of course, I'm here at the border, and so if anything happens we'd be the first ones who'd be able to get on the boats."  Knowing fully well, that if anything happened, we'd be the last ones.  But then, they didn't tell me when I was working in Alabama about the German submarines that were coming up along the coast of Florida and letting saboteurs off.  There's no point in worrying people when they can't do anything about it.

SH:  Now when you were travelling into Berlin through the checkpoints were you in uniform, or were you dressed as a civilian?

BS:  Probably in uniform.  It was an officer's uniform, but it had a civilian insignia, so there was no question.  But at that point, I was wearing my hair in braids on the top of my head, and life was simpler if I was in uniform, because when I first went over it was strictly against regulations for army personnel to fraternize with German civilians.  And if I were in civilian clothes with my hair in braids like that, they took me for a German.  I remember being approached by somebody who spoke to me in German and I spoke back and said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand German."  And he looked furious!  After a while I realized he was trying for a pickup, and I hadn't been smart enough to know.  But at least I assumed that's what it was.  But we were stopped one time, one evening by an MP walking home from the club, and it was icy, and my date had given me his arm, and this MP drove up in a jeep and said something, and I said, "Oh, are you going to give us a ride back to our billets?"  And nobody could mistake that voice for a German.  So he said, "Well, get in." But then he said--and he asked us where we lived, and he said, "But you know, you really shouldn't have been ..."  But I was in civilian clothes, you see.  And the general was very strict about it.  He had no control over what we called American dependents--the wives, and the families of the American soldiers.  He practically required that all his officers at least, send for their wives and have them come over.  But if he couldn't have any control over them, he certainly had some control over the civilians working under him, and he was going to exercise every bit of control he had.

SH:  Do you remember this general's name?

BS:  Oh yes.  He has since died I understand.  An interesting experience.  He also was transferred from Bad Nauheim to Bremerhaven.  And I went to a dance at Christmas time, and I think, in all honesty, he was almost the only one I knew there, that I had known before except for my date, and I think I was one of the few people he had ever seen before, and he just beamed at me as if he was so glad to see me, whereas previously, in Bad Nauheim there had been the occasion at one of the dances we were doing the polka, and he had tripped me so that I almost fell.  And he glared at me as if to say, what are you doing in my way?  So it was interesting later for him to [look] so pleased to see me.  [laughter]  But in Bromerhaven too, he had less authority as far as uniforms are concerned, but I still wore a uniform, because it made life simpler.  And when he would come by the office and see me in uniform, it always made him feel very happy.  I didn't mind if it made him happy.

KP:  Is there anything we forgot to ask you about Rutgers, or your post-Rutgers experiences?

WS:  Well, you didn't ask me anything about the rushes.

KP:  I did not partly because you did not join a fraternity, but did you take part in rush week?

WS:  Is that what they call it now?

KP:  Yeah.

WS:  Well, the rushes I'm thinking of, you know, as you go, that main gate, I think it's the Class of '83, right down there, that big railroad bank, that used to be a spur of the railroad in there.  And the sophomores would be up at the top--this was, I don't know what they called it, the sophomore rush or the freshman rush, but anyway, the sophomores would be up at the top, and the freshmen would be down at the bottom.  It was the duty of a freshman to climb up this bank and throw the sophomores down.

KP:  You are the first to tell us this.

WS:  I wouldn't have survived anything like that, because it was really ferocious. ... That was the custom at that time.  The very first night before college opened, they'd have this big rush.  Then another time I can remember in particular, the chapel rush.  See these rushes were always between the sophomores and the freshmen.  And the chapel rush would be immediately after chapel was over, the service was over, you know.  And they would congregate right around in the front of the building, and let's see, oh, they called it the hat rush, that was it.  And a sophomore would wear a sophomore hat, and it was the job of the freshmen to try to get the hat off his head.  And, of course, the sophomores would try to keep the freshmen away.  Well, in this one particular instance as I recall, somebody, it must have been a freshman, went into the chapel and opened one of the windows and did it right there.  Because that's where the sophomore wearing the hat was standing.  And he just picked the hat off this fellow's head you know, and threw it out.

BS:  Higher education! ...

SH:  What was the purpose of this rush?  To establish territory for freshmen?

WS:  Oh yeah, it was just another one of the things that you were supposed to do.  For instance, the freshmen couldn't walk down Seminary Place where the old library was.  You couldn't walk on the sidewalk there, you had to walk on the other side of it to get to the engineering building.  And, you'd better wipe that smile off your face too.  Fast.  And I was walking down this-- ... we had math class, first class after lunch.  The first day I was walking to the engineering building, of course, it was a sidewalk, and these other fellows were over, standing outside New Jersey Hall on the other side.  And some of them said, "Hey, get off of there, you can't walk there." ... And another group of fellows would say, "Stay there.  Go ahead."  And I had a big smile on my face, you know, I was somebody to be able to get to college, you know, and be a part of it. ... Finally one of the juniors saw my predicament, I didn't know which way to move.  He came over and ... told me what the rules were in that respect.  But that's what they call hazing.

KP:  That class competition lasted into the 1940s.

WS:  Quite a quite a ways, quite a while.  I guess ... it can get pretty rough.

KP:  Yeah, there are some classes that still haven't forgotten it.  Some class members.  I think ...

WS:  Oh really?

KP:  I think ... I'm trying to think what two classes really don't get along too well.

MC:  '42 and '43.

KP:  Yeah '42 and

MC:  '43.

KP:  Yes, there's still people who remember.

WS:  Oh, they had ... one big fight one time at the Crosskeys Restaurant in Rahway.  Oh, it took years to--to put that one down.  ... It was terrible.

KP:  What year was that?

WS:  Oh, I don't remember what year it was.  It would be around that time. ... Probably in the forties.

KP:  No one's brought that one up.

MC:  No, we'll have to ask about that!

KP:  We'll have to do some research.  No one's brought up that restaurant.

WS:  Oh, they made a wreck of the place, you know.  Oh it got to be something.

KP:  It doesn't appear in the Targum either.

BS:  Did the hazing take place-- ... was there any relationship to the hazing to the frats, the fraternities?  Or was this just an all class thing?

WS:  ... All class.  It wasn't a fraternity affair.  Although the fraternities may have engineered it, you know, probably did.

KP:  Do you still practice any law?

WS:  I'm all tied up with family estate matters, so that it doesn't give me an opportunity to go out in general practice.

KP:  What have you liked about your legal career, and what would you have done differently?

WS:  ... Well what I would like to have done, but I wasn't qualified for it, was to get into the firm in New York that was founded by a member of our family, and it turned out it still is today a leading firm in the country.  And I went there one time, and learned that yes, they had, they still had the chair ... William Henry Seward used in the law office.  But I couldn't get them to ask me whether I'd like to sit in it.

SH:  What is the name of the company?

WS:  (Cravath?).  He was a later partner, around the turn of the century, and they've kept his name as the key name for the firm, it's been changed from year to year, as time does change.  Let's see, what is it now, (Cravath?), it was at one time, (Cravath), DeGeurs, Dorf, Swain, and Wood.  What is it now, I forget what it is today.  Here's a picture of the man out of law school who went to that firm.  He was magna cum laude at Harvard College and also at law school.  And he's head of the firm today, but, of course probably ... even the men of the firm don't know or care about it having been founded by William Henry Seward.

SH:  What did you enjoy most about practicing law?

WS:  Trying to help people out and doing the best thing to preserve their rights.  I might have been on the wrong side, but that's what a lawyer has to do if he wants to survive, he takes a case.  He doesn't have to believe in it necessarily, in what he's doing, but he's got to serve his client, and its hard for people in general to understand how a person can do that.  But a lawyer can do it, because he sees what the issues are, and there's always two sides to every question. ... So his job is to do the best he can for his client, but he doesn't have to take the case if he doesn't want it.  Of course, if he gets assigned by the court he doesn't then have any choice. ...

SH:  [to Mrs. Seward]  Is there a question you think we should ask him?

BS:  I haven't thought of any.  Maybe his most memorable moment was a year ago when he fell and broke his leg.

KP:  Actually, someone from the alumni office said when you broke your leg during the service you were determined to finish the service.  And everyone was very impressed with that.

WS:  Oh really?

MC:  Yes.

KP:  Yes.

MC:  Yes, that's the story we hear.

BS:  ... That year, he did not walk in the parade.  About halfway though the service he agreed that he'd be willing to ride in the car this year.  By the end of the service he agreed to be taken to the hospital and have it checked out.  To prove there was nothing really wrong.  But he stayed and he stood through the hymns.  Then this last year, he was there for the entire chapel service and he walked the length of the parade.  He did let Marymae carry his banner.

KP:  Well, we might be able to have someone carry your banner.  My interns love the parade.

MC:  I volunteer.

KP:  It was one of Melanie's highlights, she carried the Class of '42 banner.

MC:  Oh yeah, I loved it.  It was a lot of fun.  We went to the Old Guard dinner too.

WS:  Oh did you?

MC:  Yeah, we got a special preview ... of it, I guess.

WS:  Oh, that's always nice.

MC:  Yeah, it was very nice.  It was very nice.  It gives you a very different sense of Rutgers from what Sandra and I see day to day.

BS:  I'm sure it does.

MC:  Very different, you know, from the big ugly dining hall where I used to eat every day, to be transformed into, you know, a place where the president will actually go, and all these esteemed alumni will come back.  It was really nice.

BS:  Well, you should have come to the all-alumni punch bowl reception.  Last year, it was grand.  Because that also is quite a different feeling.  The president's dining room ...

MC:  Yeah, I'm sure, I think we'll be making appearances at everything we can, we really will.

WS:  That's nice, oh, it'll be nice to see you.

BS:  It fascinates me, his class has had a class dinner every year.  And he's the only one in his actual class who's there, but there are sons and daughters, and nephews, and cousins, and friends.  So we usually have about fifteen people there.

MC:  That's a good turnout.

KP:  No, that's better than some of the other groups.

BS:  There's not room for many more people in the President's dining room.  And for a number of years now that has been given to Walter.

KP: We all attend the Class of '42 meetings, so they don't make Melanie and Sandra sit out in the hallway.  [laughter]

MC:  We can stay in.  I also went to a reunion planning committee meeting, so, and I'm going to that one next month in January that they, I guess it's brunch.  I'm going to that, too.  So yeah, I'm trying to get involved in it.

KP:  My students have carried on some of the old Rutgers traditions, you can be sure that some of them, Melanie and Sandra and some of the others.

WS:  Good, good, good.

BS:  Well, it would be good if there were more ways that the current student body could try to touch onto some of what this is like now.  Last Spring, one of the Rutgers graduates that we know well went to reunion, first time I think she's been back, she was astounded at how much fun she had.  And now she plans to come back and have her family stay overnight so they can be there the night before and the next day, you know.  But I guess there's really no way that you know that until you've done it.  Of course, we have a real break, they let us stay in Stonier Hall, so that we just have to walk across to the Commons, and that's good.

MC:  For most of the students, though, they've moved out of the dorms already, so it's hard to get current students.  But the incoming freshmen are there for orientation that weekend.  So they really need to do something with that, because there's the freshmen just looking at the parade going, "What is going on?"  You know, they really--no one tells them what's going on.  Because Rutgers just has so much going on at one time, that nobody can know everything.  I mean, in my senior year, I've tried to go to, you know, Kirkpatrick services Sunday mornings, to the Holiday Concert, I try to go to shows at the Cabaret, I've tried to do everything.  And if I did everything I wanted to do, I would never go to class.  I would have no time to be a real student.  So it's just there's so much going on.

BS:  That is one of the problems about a really large school.

MC:  Yes, yes, it really is.

BS:  It can have real advantages, but there are two sides.

MC:  Yes, they really need to work on that though, getting students involved with the alumni.

KP:  Well, this, we actually do that.  This is probably one ...

MC:  Yes, this is the best way I've seen it done.  Because the alumni association does give effort especially in the senior year, they try to have sort of get togethers.  But they don't really work very well from what I've seen.  I don't know who's not ...

WS:  Well it's a little bit late.

MC:  By senior year.

WS:  I would say that last minute to create something like that ... it has to be done earlier.

SH:  Well we look forward to seeing you there in May.

WS:  Well I hope I will see you.

KP:  We'll be there so we expect you to be there [laughter].

WS:  Well that's real nice.

KP:  The highlight of my intern's social schedule.  [laughter].

MC:  Absolutely.  You should come to the dedication of our project.  That Friday, right before Old Guard.

KP:  Right before Old Guard, the oral history project will be dedicated.

WS:  The what?

KP:  The oral history project, this project will be dedicated at the library by the Class of '42.

WS:  Oh, the Class of '42 is financing this?

KP:  This, and some other classes.  Actually Carl Heyer also has helped us out, and the Class of '43 and the Class of '40.  But it was really '42 that started it.

WS:  Oh, well, are you continuing this every year?

KP:  I think, well, it's really up to the alumni and the Class of '42 and the other classes.  It's definitely going to continue, it looks like it's going to continue for another year after this.  And we've interviewed about two hundred alumni.  Well, no, I shouldn't say.  We're probably at 186 ...

MC:  Yeah, I just did the tally, it's about 186.

SH:  Don't forget the two I did ...

MC:  Oh yes, she just did two in Phoenix, Arizona.  We're very ... we cover the continent.

WS:  Oh, you go around the country?

KP:  When we can, yes.

WS:  Oh, how wonderful, how wonderful.

SH:  And we're so dedicated we take advantage of spring break, Christmas break. [laughter].  Yes.  Have tape recorder, will travel.

MC:  Because they are spread out, there's alumni everywhere, who, you know, who are participating in our project.  I've done one in Cleveland and in Tucson, Sandra's done Arizona, did you do Wyoming, Montana?

BS:  Let me ... if one of you locates Cliff Osborne, down in Tennessee, and does one of him, then we'd know that there were two members of Walter's class still alive.  Because we don't get any answer from him when we send him cards or notices or anything, and we just don't know.  But Cliff Osborne would be the only remaining other member.  He used to live up here and he moved down.  His daughter's down there, is that it Walter?

WS:  He has a relative, I think, maybe a cousin or something like that.  But he was getting on in years, and I guess his brother either used to live right up here at Liberty Corners, up near Dover you know, his father had been the minister of the church there.  He himself, got to be the head of the psychology department out at the University of Kansas before he retired.  A very bright fellow.  But I think that over the years his interests have changed more to University of Chicago where he got his Ph.D don't you know, that meant that much more to him.  Because you go back to the campus today, and nobody knows him.

BS:  They know you.  They say, he was the head of the parade.

KP:  But I have had 80 students who have taken this course so far, and about--Melanie and Sandra are about, actually next semester we will have five people working on the project who have had the course and then I'll have--be teaching a course.  Students actually will be using, are using the interviews in the classroom.

WS:  You mean all this stuff we've been saying today you're going to play for them ...

KP:  No, first you'll see it on paper before we give it to them.

WS:  Oh, it's going to be ...

KP:  Transcribed.

WS:  Yes?  And then given to ...

KP:  First it'll be given to you.  Then it'll be given to a class of students.  So we won't just give them raw material, you will get to see what you said.

WS:  You edit?

KP:  We do a little bit of editing, you are actually the editor ultimately, in what you want to keep in and what you want to take out.

WS:  Oh, I should have made a real story out of this.  [laughter]

MC:  That's what she said, go ahead whatever you want.

BS:  What is the purpose in giving this material to the students, and what do they do then?

KP:  Well, for example, one of the assignments they had to read an account by a sailor who was at Pearl Harbor.  And then they had to compare his experiences with those of three alumni who had been in World War II in the navy.  And compare and contrast their experiences.

WS:  Oh, that would really be something interesting.

KP:  And next semester, I'm teaching two classes.  In my course  1914-45, students for their final paper they are going to read a book about women factory workers in California and then compare their experiences with five people who went through Rutgers and Douglass during the 1930s and 1940s.

BS:  The Rutgers-Douglass people of that same period?

KP:  Same period, yes, the World War II period.  So there are various ways, and Melanie is in fact doing another project.  She's- -in another part of Rutgers history, she's studying coeducation, the coming of women to Rutgers.

MC:  Yes, that's my senior thesis, is on coeducation.  There's a real small oral history project that was done, there's about 35 oral histories of the women who were in that first class to spend four years at Rutgers.  So, we're also, in '97-98 through the Office of Student Life, we're having a celebration of 25 years of women at Rutgers.  So, I'm doing that, I've been doing that since the summer.  So I'm sort of doing, everything with alumni.  I really enjoy alumni weekend, I know people in that class, I know people in the 40s classes.  It really is, it really is.  And I have such a different impression of Rutgers College than my roommates do.  We all enjoy our school, we do not have any complaints, but ...

BS:  You have an entirely different perspective.

MC:  Yes, I feel like my experience has just been so much fuller, you know.

BS:  Very personal.

MC:  And very personal, really personal.  I mean, you know, to interview someone who graduated eighty years before me ... [laughter]

KP:  Plus Carl Heyer's given us a tour of ...

MC:  Oh, Carl Heyer ...

KP:  Has given Melanie and another intern as well as my wife and I, a tour of Mount Holly.  Have you ever taken a Carl Heyer tour of Mount Holly?

WS:  No, I've been of course through Mount Holly any number of times, but not, well, I guess for several years I haven't ...

KP:  You should visit Carl, have him take you through Mount Holly.  There's a whole day that he makes of it.  He really gives you a real tour of the town, which, we're going to send Sandra and her husband there, because he tells you how Mount Holly won the American Revolution.

MC:  He hikes you up the mountain.  He hikes you up the actual Mount Holly.

KP:  The tallest point in South Jersey.

MC:  Yes, he's great.

WS:  Is there a mountain in Mount Holly?

MC:  A little hill [laughter].

WS:  Is there really, I haven't really become acquainted with it.

KP:  Oh no, you should really call Carl up and go.  You would really enjoy it.

MC:  He wants everybody to come down.  He says, "Bring your parents, bring your grandparents."  He's a great tour guide, he really is.

WS:  Yes, I remember him quite well.

SH:  Well when we return the transcript to you for correction, if you would be lenient in your corrections.  Because so much of what you said we'd really like to have it stay within the transcript, but also add to it if there's memories that come back but we've forgotten to ask the question that jarred that memory, please feel free to add to it. 
 

WS:  I don't see that there's anything particular of value that we've covered today, is there?

KP:  Oh yes.

MC:  Yes, absolutely.  For people who--I study a lot of Rutgers history, and everything you've said has helped me.  It's a big supplement to reading Demarest's book and McCormick's book, Rutgers history books.  You know, it's a real benefit to get a personal history of Rutgers.  A lot of the men that we interview for the World War II experiences don't realize that I don't have a very personal interest in World War II, so when I interview them, my interests lie in what they did when they were at Rutgers.  You know, as a Rutgers student, I can relate to that much better than their military experiences.  So, your interview is, you know, perfect.  It's such a different side of Rutgers that we've never seen, you know, and we can't get from anybody but you, so, absolute value.  Definite value.  And it's almost a shame, a lot of the guys will edit a lot, too much, almost, just because they think it has no relevance.  But it really does.  Just because it's the Oral History Archives of World War II, it doesn't mean that it has to be all World War II.  You know, people will use it for different things, especially when we do a finding aid, and give little biographies of each gentleman that was interviewed--say one worked in some profession, and some scholar is coming in and wants to know about people who worked in the cork business in the 1950s, as one gentleman that I interviewed.  Well, his interview's perfect, and just because we interviewed him for his war experience, you know, he's helping someone else along without even knowing it.

SH:  Well, I think too, the war experience includes the homefront, and what people were going through, or without, or how they contributed.

WS:  Oh, yes, yes.  Betty and I went to the Glen Ridge High School where they've got some program going on, and they wanted us to tell what things were like at a certain time, you know, and so forth.  And--I was telling them about going to Glen Ridge High School.

BS:  Oh, good, because I was thinking about that.  I was going to tell you that was Jonathan and he's back in Boston.

WS:  Oh, that's nice.  He left this morning about eleven o'clock.

BS:  But that Glen Ridge High School thing I think was great.  You know, I grew up, and there were all these people around that could have told me so many things, only they didn't.  Because nobody tapped into it.  And I knew there were families in which family history is recounted, sometimes interminably, but there were others in which it isn't.  And there are people outside your immediate family that have so much they can tell you.  I think of a neighbor of ours, in fact I think of neighbors in both directions, but I wouldn't ask them.  You know.

KP:  Well, we're going to be interviewing Melanie's grandparents.

MC:  My grandparents.  They're having their fiftieth wedding anniversary in June, and you know, as a poor college student I couldn't think of anything to buy for their anniversary, and one day as I was editing or reviewing transcripts, I said to myself, it's really--I enjoy reading transcripts, learning, you know, people's family histories, but it's a shame that I don't know this much about my grandparents.  Because we don't have the kind of family where, you know, my grandfather will just sit down and tell me a story.  You know, and like you said, you don't think to ask them.  Especially me, who thinks she knows so much about the homefront and World War II, I'm not going to ask him.  But it's a shame.  So Kurt is going to interview my grandfather, Sandra will interview my grandmother, and I'll transcribe the tapes and give it to them for their anniversary.

BS:  Oh, nice!

MC:  Yeah ...

BS:  They'll be delighted.

MC:  Oh, they're already delighted.  Exactly.

WS:  Oh, that's very nice.

MC:  And I'll have them ready for their anniversary and instead of the typical photo collage that everyone does, that my mother will do also, you know, it won't go unnoticed, I'll have their life stories there too, so everyone can look through them.  So, yes, I've taken it definitely into my personal life.

BS:  I was real pleased with this Glen Ridge thing.  I mentioned it at West Orange High School ... maybe we ought to be doing something like that here!

SH:  And that's why, you know, in the essence of time, that when you have more time, that you can think about it, and when you get the transcript back, if you will add to it, we will be thrilled to have it, so please do.  You and Mrs. Seward together.

WS:  Wait a minute, do I, you want me to revise. ...

KP:  You do not have to revise, you can just leave the transcript.  It is up to you, what you do with the transcript in terms of revision.

WS:  Oh.

BS:  But if, when you get it, you recall things that you didn't think to mention this afternoon, what they're saying is, you are to feel free to add them to the transcript.

KP:  In addition would be more than welcome to return--you can always invite us to come back up.

MC:  We'll reinterview you.

KP:  We can always ask you more questions that we didn't cover in the first interview.

WS:  Oh, oh, I see.

SH:  That's true, if you find there's a lot more that you would like to share, you and Mrs. Seward call us up and we ...

KP:  We will come back up.

WS:  I don't know whether I'll be able to add anything or not.  I have what, I don't know what you'd call it, a picture mind.  I have in my mind, pictures of all of these years of events.  I think some of them don't amount to anything, you know. ...

SH:  I don't believe that. [laughter]

WS:  But I can see that rush on the railroad bank there, you know.  I can see Selman Waksman walking across the campus.  I can see somebody else going to the funeral service for Upson, who was the Registrar.  And in later years, one reunion, Demmie was there on the campus, he was an old man then, and he took my arm.  Somebody took a picture of that, but I never got it.  I think it was a man, Class of '24.  I wish I had a picture of that.  But he was so different at that time from what he was, boy.  When I was a freshman I went to see him. ... I remember things by pictures.

KP:  Maybe we should interview you during reunion weekend again because you will be on campus and things might come to mind.

SH:  Sounds like he's too busy.

BS:  He'll be busy, believe me.  He spends most of Saturday, after the luncheon, getting setting up for the reception and then the dinner.

WS:  We go down Friday afternoon, stay overnight and go to the Old Guard dinner.  You know that the Old Guard dinner started, I think it started as an outdoor reception. ... The dinner was held outdoors in back of the president's house.  His rose garden back there.  And there'd be about oh, 50 people or so there, you know.  But in no time at all, they got to be so many. ...

-----------------------END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO------------------

WS:  ... They debated and beat Princeton.

KP:  Do you remember what were the topics for debate that occurred in Kirkpatrick Chapel?

WS:  I don't, at the moment, no.

BS:  Were they participating-- ... the people who were taking either public speaking or oratory, or something or were they part of a debate club or something.  Or were they just people who felt strongly on their positions and wanted to present them?

WS:  Well, ... I think they were selected from applicants who ... [were] simply qualified to handle a problem.

BS:  Were they teaching courses on debating?

WS:  Well, no, there were ... no courses on debate.  They had what they called ...

BS:  Elocution?

WS:  Well, that's what it was, public speaking.  But, they had a real nice professor for that, that was his one big job, public speaking. ... We were all pretty green at it, you know.  I mean, he didn't make any public speakers out of us.  There were a few fellas who had the ability, there was one fella, went to college in my class from South Jersey, he ... graduated from the high school, and he was taking the Ag course, he was one of the best orators they had.  He really did a wonderful job. (Howard Eisenburg, '17).

BS:  ... good speakers in your favor.

KP:  Did you ever have any outside speakers at chapel or any other occasions--any governors, judges, or other prominent leaders.  Because one of the things that chapel had in the 1930s and 1940s was a lot of prominent speakers coming in.

WS:  Well, I think I'd have to say yes to that, but I can't remember really who they were, or what they were talking about.  I know one time before the chapel was remodeled, the interior, in that upper room that had been the old library, they had somebody there who was a labor advocate give a talk.  Well, we didn't know what he was going to talk about, it wasn't--but he would be, what would you call him today, a promoter, or something like that.  Trying to influence people's minds along a certain line of thought regarding labor problems.

SH:  One of our people that we have interviewed said that what he got the most out of chapel was the appreciation for the beautiful music.  Did you?

WS:  Well, I remember particularly when the organ, after the chapel was refurbished inside, they had a concert for a dedication of the new organ, and I never forgot one of the numbers which I'd never heard before, but it just struck me, as being so beautiful.  It was (Kamenoi-Ostrow?) I don't think anyone knows the music by that name and you don't hear it very often.  But they had the organ, and I think the violin, and they may have had some other instruments there at that time.  The music was always an attraction, even just the end.  And then, they tell the story, I don't know how true this was, because you sat in chapel according to what course you were taking, and the men taking the classical course were up front.  And I guess the Ag men would always be the last ones ... in the crowd.  Well, the fellas who would sit in the back, I heard this from one of the fellas who was in the scientific field there, one of the students told me afterwards when we were studying for the bar, that ... every morning they would, what do you call it, have a kitty where everybody would put in a penny ... to decide what the number of the hymn was going to be, and the one who selected the number nearest to the actual number would get the kitty.  I've never seen it, ... in the classical, we were up in the first half dozen rows of benches, don't you know, we didn't pull anything like that, it would be too evident what was going on.

BS:  Were your chapel services always real real chapel services?

WS:  Oh yes.

BS:  Because what they called chapel at Piedmont, more often than not, was not.  And this is one of the reasons ...

WS:  It was a regular religious service on a college level, you know.  Anything going on, important announcements like that would be made at the service.  Oh yes, it was a regular religious service.

SH:  Was it led by the professors or by ministers?

WS:  Usually by Demmie, the president.  But if he were away ... one of the professors would take over.

BS:  It was never led by a student?

WS:  No.  They allowed the students to address the assembly there on important college issues or anything like that, but the students didn't conduct the service.

SH:  Do you have any World War II memories that you would like to share?

WS:  Well I wasn't in it, you know, in the first place, so that I can't approach it from that angle. I can say this, when they ... declared war, I ... immediately went to ... I went to, I guess I went to the post office first thing to buy a war bond.  A war bond, they didn't have any war bonds, they'd never heard of it.  So ... I went to ... a bank, I wanted to buy a war bond. ... They'd never heard of it.  It took some time for all of that to get worked out, don't you know.  But, that's about the only thing that comes to mind at the moment, when you say in connection with the '42.

BS:  You weren't much affected by rations?

WS:  Oh yes, sure.  Oh yes.  Yes, we had those little slips.  Yes I remember, I wanted to get in on it some way, right off, but I knew I would never be accepted in active service.  Never did get a war bond.

SH:  Well, thank you for your time.

WS:  ... I'm honored that you should want to sit and listen to all this trivia.

MC:  Of course, definitely.

KP:  We're glad to come, and we appreciate your time.

WS:  Well, that's quite all right.  I'm glad to give it.  If it does you any good, or helps out in any way, I figure today if there's anything I can do for the college I'm only too glad to do it, because when I was there I didn't have the chance and ability.

KP:  This concludes an interview with Walter Seward on December 30, 1996 at his home in West Orange, New Jersey with Kurt Piehler,

MC:  Melanie Cooper

SH:  Sandra Stewart Holyoak

BS:  ... Oh and Betty Seward! 
 

-------------------------END OF INTERVIEW-------------------------- 
 

Reviewed:  5/13/97  by  G. Kurt Piehler 
Edited:    5/14/97  by Tara Kraenzlin 
Reviewed:  8/16/97  by Walter Seward 
Entered:   8/27/97  by Melanie Cooper 
Reviewed:  8/27/97  by G. Kurt Piehler