Kurt Piehler: This begins an interview with Clark J. Gutman on January 7, 1995 in Chicago, Illinois at the Palmer House. ... I guess I would like to begin by asking a few questions about your parents and the fact that you grew up in the Midwest, which makes you somewhat exceptional for the Rutgers students of the late 1930s and 1940s. Your father came here from Germany.
Clark Gutman: At age thirteen.
KP: And what prompted his family to come over?
CG: Beats me. Probably because this was the "land of opportunity" and there was that movie they did about America where the guy was the wallpaper hanger, remember? That same thing. There was a mentality among the Germans, which you may have picked up from Ralph Schmidt, that this was the land, and they became very strong Americans when they got here. My father did. And I think he had [a] sister and brother that were here, so that's why he came.
KP: Did your father speak German throughout his life?
CG: Not around our house. In Hitler's time when German relatives, when he helped bring them over, he had to struggle ... with his German ... because my mother's family were in this country from way back, way back. Her mother, her grandmother, her great grandmother were all born here. So ... we lived in Evanston and so it was a very American- oriented family life.
KP: Your mother has strong roots in the Midwest then.
CG: Yeah. ... Her background is, I would guess that her grandfather was in, somehow or other, in the clothing business or a clothing salesman or whatever. And in those days those kinds of guys got stores like in Morrison, Illinois, or Mendota, ... wherever there was a railroad. And they ended up with Evanston, and he had about three stores. So she was born in ... Warren, Illinois and lived in Mendota, Morrison and Evanston when she was a little girl. And then she went to Northwestern. So they were "Yankee-Doodle Dandies."
KP: Your mother taught school. Where did she teach school?
CG: She taught school in Evanston. ... She was a phys. ed. major and she also taught Sunday school-- ... we're Jewish--at the Reformed Temple in Chicago at the time. She was a confirmation teacher.
KP: Were both your mother and father in the reform tradition?
CG: Very reformed. They wouldn't understand what the hell's going on now if they went to a reformed service, and I really don't either. Very, very reformed. As a matter of fact we celebrated Hanukkah, because my mother was an educator, and we lit the candles every night, but we also had a Christmas tree, and when the candles would burn down each night, my grandmother would say, "Okay, turn on the Christmas tree lights." So we were ambidextrous. And, in those days Evanston had a Jewish population of practically nil; also no Democrats around. I think my ... grandmother was the first Democrat there. And it was the era of the extended family where we had my grandmother living with us, my mother's brother, the bachelor uncle. And my grandmother had health problems, so we had the nurse plus the cook downstairs ... and my sister. It was the typical extended family of those days; that's what I grew up in.
KP: What did it feel like to be one of the only Jewish families and even one of the few Democrats?
CG: In Evanston? Didn't notice it really at all. ... Growing up you really didn't notice it, as we were so much in the minority ... that there was no problem. There might have been a problem for my sister on the dating scene, but she's older than I, so I didn't understand what that was. I had no problem dating or anything. So ... it was strange, ... but there was really no problem.
KP: You never had any ugly incidents?
CG: Never any ugly incidents and one of the reasons, I think, was because Evanston was a relatively high income area, suburb. And people were smart enough and had the wherewithal not to stoop to that kind of thing. It was there, but as long as you weren't bothering them, there was no reason to be that way. My best friend, who I still see on a regular basis, used to say, "Who me? Why one of my best friends is Jewish." You know, ... all that. When I was confirmed ... all of my gentile friends came to my confirmation and all that. There ... was really ... no problems. I never even had any slurs even made at me ... or any of those kinds of things you hear about. Never had that problem.
KP: Your mother, was she active in any voluntary organizations, any women's organizations?
CG: She was a doer, ... she always had something going on. Either she was busy as president of the Temple Sisterhood, and then ... at Northwestern, she somehow or other got involved with the A-E-Phi sorority who were in the process of talking about building a new sorority house. And she was the guiding light. And, I mean, women that I have never known before that knew my mother, and they had trophies and all that in her name. She was the one that railroaded the new sorority house through and that was her project. So she was the one of these women that always had to have a project, one of the first women to drive a car, you know, that type. She was a go-er.
KP: Was she active in the suffrage movement at all?
CG: That's funny. Not to my knowledge, and Evanston is the home of women's suffrage, Frances Willard and all that. Maybe she wasn't accepted because she was Jewish, I don't know. ... She was not active in that. I'm not sure why. Again, she was a doer, ... she could have been, but not to my knowledge. I'm sure she supported it.
KP: And your father, what did he do for a living?
CG: He was in the restaurant equipment business. He sold ... booths and chairs and tables to restaurants, ... bars, and taverns, and he had ... his showroom and his warehouse in Chicago here. Matter of fact right up the street on Monroe from the Palmer House, about fourteen blocks.
KP: Is the building still there?
CG: No, ... a superhighway goes through, but it's a half a block west of there. So that was his business. ... He sort of specialized in restaurants ... and bakeries. ... You know, sold all the fixtures, designed the place for them, that kind of stuff.
KP: How many people did he employ?
CG: ... He had a payroll of maybe twenty people. I used to work there in the summers and when I was in high school and college. Those were the days when his top salesman made 50 bucks a week, a shipping clerk made $37.50, the one who made the most money was his chief carpenter who made 55 bucks a week. ... Imagine a shipping clerk, ... which was a good job, $37.50 a week.
KP: Why was the carpenter so much more than the shipping clerk?
CG: Union.
KP: So some of your father's workers were unionized?
CG: The carpenter ... was, yeah. ... But in those days, the whole place wasn't.
KP: How did the Great Depression affect your family, particularly your father's business?
CG: It was murder. My father claimed that he did not lose any money in the stock market crash, but his customers did. And I can well remember in the summers that I worked there, I can well remember what it was like to meet the payroll. And there would be a lineup of five, six, suppliers-- the guy that made the bar that my father had sold, the guy that had the chairs. And they were lining up on a Friday around one o'clock, ... four, five, of them, while my father had [to] decide who was going to get paid, how much he owed them, and these guys were there so they could go back to their place and meet their payroll. That's how rough it was in those days. It also was the thing that forced him out of business. He had an eyesight problem. But, in those days, he was like a wholesaler in many ways, and the door was open for an individual who was a good designer and architect to operate practically out of his home and buy from these same suppliers who were so hungry. Before the crash they wouldn't think of selling an independent. So the whole business changed, and he wasn't able to keep pace with it. ... He was 40 when I was born, so he was not a young father. My mother was 30, but he was 40. So ... it had a lasting impression on me because I saw what was going on, ... I'd see this lineup of people, which was fascinating.
KP: Did the business improve at all during the late 1930s or was it still tough when you were ready to go off to college?
CG: I think one of the great impacts of World War II is that what happened in my family from the time I went in the service to the time I got out is just a big blank. ... I don't know if this is true of everyone, but in my case, I became totally self-involved, and I was really concerned mainly about myself and there was nothing I could do about it. My father died while I was overseas. ... My mother and sister moved to California while I was still overseas, sold the house. I had gotten back once, ... and my grandmother died, and my grandmother had moved out of the house. There were all these incidents, but when you're way over there and there's not a God damn thing you can do about it, so you get very self- involved, and it hardens you to a degree.
KP: Did your mother teach while you were growing up?
CG: No. She may have before my sister was born, but she didn't after I arrived.
KP: When your father had died, did she reenter teaching? Did she work during World War II?
CG: ... Again I say a lot of this is a void. She and my sister ... left. My sister was not happy in Evanston; she was teaching dancing. She had classes at the house, and they moved to Beverly Hills because my mother had a cousin there who my sister used to go visit and stay [with] during the summer. which was fine with me. And she talked my mother into starting a new life out there. Why or how, again, these are things when the war is over you don't even ask what's going on. These things just ... happened. And, I don't know if this was true of other people or not, but it sure was with me, because it's a total void. If you ask me about my father's illness, how long did it last and everything, I can't tell you because my sister doesn't want to talk about it very much. I thought it was tough for me overseas and really, in many ways, I enjoyed being in the navy. So it wasn't that I had such a terrible life, but it was still, you were in that vacuum over there and my sister went, obviously through a lot, and ... she's willing to talk about anything, but ... for whatever reason, she doesn't talk about that very much. And so I don't push it because what the hell difference is it going to make now anyway? And when you get out of the service, you're so involved with trying to get some sort of business career going, that again, you don't dwell on the past because what the hell good does it do?
KP: Your sister, did she go to college?
CG: Yeah, she went to Bradford Junior College in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
KP: And studied dance?
CG: I don't know. Who knows what the hell they teach in college. I didn't learn much at Rutgers. ... She was involved in all that, yeah.
KP: But it sounds like, from what you said, that she developed a career in teaching dance.
CG: Yeah.
KP: You mentioned over the telephone about your coming to Rutgers, but I want to follow up on one thing you said earlier, and that was that you said you had relatives in Germany in the 1930s.
CG: Oh yeah, sure.
KP: And were you able to bring them to the United States?
CG: My father was the ringleader in bringing a lot of them over. He had to blackmail a few of his richer relatives here to get them to commit money and jobs for the refugees. In those days you had to underwrite them and guarantee them a job. And I know he had a nephew. ... He probably brought over a lot of people. ... It was being done all around. To me, for whatever reason, I wasn't involved. We're in the Palmer House here. We're in the middle of Chicago. ... Most of the German relatives that came over after him--which my father had nothing to do with--all lived on the South Side like 5500 South, which is 50 blocks from here. We were out in Evanston. ... They did not Americanize, and you know this is very true of all kinds of ethnic groups. There are Italian groups who don't Americanize. These were Germans who don't readily Americanize. I think ten-twelve years ago I went to a reunion of that part of the family. It's amazing how many of them have not Americanized at this day and age. I have a first cousin that my father brought over who I never really cared for, but you know it's one of those things. And my father was to be admired for what he did. He was really a wonderful guy the way he got them jobs, ... see that's the difference ... [from] today's problem. In those days when you brought someone over you had responsibility for them. And they went to work, and ... they got jobs, or you got them jobs, and they kept them. And you were responsible. Today, you know, "Sayonara, buddy. We've come over the border. We're in America. Now feed us." And it didn't work that way in those days.
KP: When did your father become aware of what was going on in Germany? When did you realize how severe the problem was?
CG: ... It's a good question. I would guess around '36, '37 ... probably before the time I went to Rutgers. My sister ... puts it very well. ... She came home the year I left. ... She said, "My brother left home in 1938, and he never really came back." Which is really true. ... I was a homebody, but, you know, you're away four years, and she would go to California in the summer {when I was home} to visit the cousin and live with them. ... So I guess I was aware of all this somewhere around '36, or whenever it started because I knew what my father was doing. And I knew Hitler was bad and all that sort of thing, but like most Americans, you know, we didn't really understand. My father did, but I didn't. And then, in the war, because I was in the Japanese theater, I was totally uninvolved with what was going on over there, because, to me, the bad guys were the Japs, you know. It's a natural thing.
KP: Chicago was really one of the centers of American neutrality during World War II. What would you say would be the attitude of people you grew up with regarding Europe and the war, and I guess even at Rutgers? For those who gave it thought, what did they think?
CG: Not too much. We were all into our own security. My Dad knew, so some of it rubbed off on me. That's what I like about the Holocaust Museum and Shindler's List. It has made all of us aware-- Jews and Gentiles.
KP: You talked to me over the telephone about your coming to Rutgers and maybe you could recount how you found Rutgers. Coming from the Midwest and growing up in Evanston, where you might have gone to the University of Chicago or Northwestern or ...
CG: The game plan-- my mother was hung up on Eastern schools, and I wasn't that great a student to go to Yale or Harvard, nor did I necessarily want to. So it was sort of a given that I was going to go East somewhere and my sister, I told you, had ... [gone] to Bradford in Haverhill. When she graduated, we went up and saw Dartmouth, which I fell in love with because of the skiing potential. ... I loved to ice skate, and I had never skied in my life. So I wanted to go to Dartmouth. And ... Dartmouth was only going to take one from our high school and one from New Trier. Any rate, I was rejected, so I went with a friend of mine who subsequently went to Harvard, and said, "Well I gotta find another school." We went to the high school library, where we had all the catalogs, and as I told you on the phone, Bob reaches up, and he says, "Oh let's see, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, Colgate is a good toothpaste. Columbia has got a good football team, Lou Little coaches there. Ozzie Nelson went to Rutgers." Now the Rutgers catalog is in my hand. So I went home with those four and a few more, and ... I applied to Colgate. I applied to Rutgers, and you know we talked about anti-Semitism ... I was interviewed by an alumnus of Colgate; there I felt anti-Semitism. He was in the one neighborhood in Evanston where you could expect it from. And it was as cold an interview as you could have, and I was sort of dumb. I didn't understand what it was cold about. Then my mother and my father, one of them told me what it probably was. So I was never accepted at Colgate, and I know ... two classmates who were, whose grades weren't as good as mine. I was about a B plus average, and Rutgers accepted me. ... My mother knew Dean Olsen of the Medill School at Northwestern, and he had apparently either been at Rutgers or taught there, and he gave her a big pitch and the next thing you know I'm going to Rutgers. I'd never seen the place, ... you know, I was going. What the hell did I know?
KP: How did you come to the campus? How did you arrive?
CG: They put me on the train, and I'll always remember getting off the train and transferring at North Philadelphia. ... When it got to Trenton the train stopped, and there was that sign, "Trenton makes, the world takes." New Jersey is not a pretty place. That time of the year it looks so forlorn, and I showed up at Rutgers and went, "What in the hell have I gotten myself into?" But I guess I ride with the punches, and it really never bothered me. I liked the place. The game plan was for me to only go for two years, and the squeeze was really starting on my father's finances, and they hit you hard. I think my tuition was like $432 which is a joke today, but ...
KP: In 1938 ...
CG: Yeah, the rest of these guys are paying a hundred bucks, but I was out of state. But, you know, it was a funny feeling. ... You go there all alone and here are these families with all the luggage and this and that from New Jersey, moving their kids into college, and I'm sitting there all alone. But, so what?
KP: Did your mother or father ever come to see you at Rutgers?
CG: I know they were there at graduation, yeah.
KP: But other than that you were on your own.
CG: That's right. ... I tell you one thing, ... all the Eastern guys missed the long train rides home. ... It was the time of the all coach train, and all the college students took it, and those were a ball. That was fun, and I would go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we would all have a ball on those trains.
KP: Had you been East at all before you had gone to Rutgers?
CG: Just one family trip when I was a little kid at Atlantic City and to Gloversville where my mother had relatives. And, as I said, I went East when my sister graduated from Bradford. So I really didn't know from nothing. And the reason I continued on was, that the squeeze started on my father, so I got a job in the alumni office. ... I used to enter on the cardex--whatever they call that flip-thing--you know, what people would donate ... toward the Rutgers alumni fund, and that's where I met McCartney, and I worked for Kitty Mulligan and Stan March who was totally enamored with the idea of a Midwesterner. That was the start of it, because I was working, by accident, for the alumni office, and they wanted me to continue, because they figured maybe they could get more people out of Evanston and the Chicago area. So they arranged for me to be a preceptor in a dorm. They got me a partial scholarship, which paid for most of my tuition. So it was really very worth my while ... not to transfer to Northwestern and ... that's how that happened, and I enjoyed that whole thing.
KP: I recently had a residence life position and a directed a dorm. How did you enjoy being a preceptor?
CG: They weren't freshmen. I would have hated to have freshmen, and I would never have wanted to have the wild group we had in Pell Hall, I think it was, when I was a freshmen. ... The kids were monsters. But I was a preceptor in, what was it, Ford? Yeah, ... most of them were sophomores and juniors and ... they weren't crazy. It was a piece of cake; it was actually a joke. But it was nice, and I really enjoyed my work with the guys in the alumni office.
KP: Did it teach you more about Rutgers than you might have known just as a regular student?
CG: Oh yeah. ... I was sort of in the inner sanctum because I worked in Queens, got to know the alumni heads. I think one of my favorite stories is, Harvey Harman was the football coach. No genius at all. And ... Evanston High School had a kid who was a halfback, nice student. His mother was a widow, all he needed was a scholarship-- ... a guy named Bill Wheeler. And I had Bill all lined up to go to Rutgers, and Harvey Harman interviewed him and said, "He's too small." He was so small that Cornell accepted him, and he became captain of their football team and All-East halfback. ... His best friend he grew up with was Bob Galvin, like in Motorola. Galvin, and he spent a career working for Motorola. Now he's a rich retired guy in Arizona. So my efforts to recruit were not that great.
KP: You knew the people in the alumni office. Did you know any other people at Old Queens? ... Any observations?
CG: Well, this guy, Ernie McMahon, was very nice to me. He got the scholarship for me. Earle Reed Silvers was there, Stan March, and then Johnny Kirkwood after him. And, of course, the Durham girls. Did you interview, well, you've heard somewhere of Vinnie Utz?
KP: Yes.
CG: Vinnie's wife, Dottie, ... was a secretary there, and subsequently--then he started going with her--and subsequently they got married, and I've read about his whole story of the fire and the arm. ...
KP: Did you know Vinnie Utz when you were at Rutgers?
CG: Oh yeah, I knew Vinnie very well. ... As a matter of fact, I wasn't going with anyone at one of the school dances when we were juniors, and he asked me would I take Dottie? ... They had a game coming up, and he couldn't go. Yeah, I knew him. He was a good guy. He was very rough on the edges when he came to school, but he was a real good guy.
KP: A lot of people have said that. A lot of people have also said he was quite a character.
CG: He was good guy.
CG: Did you play any sports or think of playing any sports?
CG: ... I was too small. ... I was a gym rat of sorts. ... They had intramural football, tackle, which I played, but I really was not good [at] that. ... My senior year, a bunch of us formed a basketball team. And we got all the ringers. A guy named Jim Perkins, who was a pitcher on the baseball team, he made it to the Red Sox. Jim and I recruited a couple guys ... that were a couple of independents, and we were beating the bejesus out of all the fraternities. And my favorite story is there was a graduate student, a kid that I was shooting baskets with who never missed, so I introduced myself, his name was Hull. I said, "Did you go to Ohio State?" He says, "Yeah. I'm a graduate student." And he was captain all Big Ten. So we get to the finals, and the fraternity we were going to play rang in one of their football players which was against the rules, because he was a graduate student. So I called up Hull and lined him up, and we won the championship that year. All we had to do was give him the ball. And I used to referee some of the intramural games, but I was not a varsity sport guy.
KP: You lived in a dormitory. How did you see the divisions on the campus? A lot of people have seen the fraternity/dorm as split.
CG: I didn't see it as a problem.
KP: You did not see there was this big gap between the two?
CG: ... There was a gap, but ...I had friends ... all in various places. ... As they get older, even in college age, they mature, and you didn't think twice to walk into a fraternity house where you had friends. ... The other preceptors and I, ... they were a year ahead of me, but they were both football co-captains. But, you know, we all just sort of ... went on our own thing.
KP: What about the commuters? Did you get to know any commuters? Because that seems to have been a very different experience.
CG: Yeah, and I can see where they would totally be felt left out. It's different when you see, ... yeah, commuters; I can see where they were left out, which is one of the reasons my mother wanted me not to go to Northwestern. Remember, I lived in Evanston and there's Northwestern and unless you're in a fraternity there you could forget it as far as having any ... social contacts with other people. I think the thing that I missed, and I was not a lady's man, but it would have been nice to meet some gals. But the New Jersey College for Women were without a doubt the most unattractive group of women I've ever laid my eyes on in my entire life. And so, that was a zero. The only dates I had were for the big dances. Some New Jersey friend would fix me up with a girl from his hometown or I would go with one of the girls who I had met on the all-coach train ride home.
KP: On these train rides?
CG: Yeah, on those train rides to and from Chicago. ... [They] were girls going to school around New York City somewhere. ... But it was, otherwise, a zero. But I had a girlfriend back home off and on, so my summers were fine, but I just said, "Well, this is just the way it's going to be." ...
KP: You majored in business. What led you to select that major? Did you know what you wanted to do?
CG: Hell, no. I knew I didn't want to go in my father's business because I saw it changing. And ... I have a big thing against colleges. ... I took three years of French in high school and I had four years of English in Evanston High School, [it] was a top-rated high school. What in the hell do they want me to take French for ... at Rutgers? ... We all know now everyone should have been taking Spanish, and speaking Spanish. And you know, [the] liberal arts course is a joke. I've always felt that way. ... What do you get out of college? You get accounting, you get political science. I never understood Money and Banking really too well, but it was a good course. Business Administration was a wonderful course there. ... I took ... the drama class on a dare. I was guaranteed I'd get a B if I attended all the classes, so I did that. But I had no idea what I was going to do when I got out of school, none.
KP: You had mentioned that Professor George was one of your favorite professors. You have very fond memories of his classes. You mentioned that he would often use you as a foil in the class.
CG: Oh yeah. He used me as a foil all the time because, ... he played and tweaked all the New York and New Jersey students, ... telling them they didn't know what was going on in the rest of the world, and he would tweak them because he would say, "Now Mr. Gutman, they don't understand this, but we know." And he would always bring this into the conversation. The funny thing is none of the guys ever ... [took] any exception to me because he would do that, because the guy was such a character he would make good points. And he was always playing the Tribune versus the New York Times in editorial content and the Post and politics. He'd talk about politics in Chicago, with the Kelly administration, versus New York. ... He had a way of which, he would wake them up by talking about other parts of the country, and he'd usually use me as his tool. But ... he was very entertaining and everyone got good grades in his class because they listened.
KP: Yes, I have also been told that he emphasized the practical nature of what he was teaching.
CG: That's right.
KP: Which made him very exceptional.
CG: That's right. ... He was also a staunch Democrat. Remember, I said that ... my family were Democrats, my mother and grandmother.
KP: Did you find, coming from the Midwest, that many Rutgers students had a parochial background, or really did not have a sense of the rest of the country?
CG: Oh yeah, I felt that ... they were very narrow in their scope. They really didn't understand anything about California. ... Yeah, I'd say they were very provincial and this is what went on. And remember those were the days Rutgers was really a state university pretending they were independent. And Roosevelt was bailing them out by building them a new stadium and that whole-- it was a change that I thought was hurting Rutgers, but there wasn't much they could do about it. ... On one side of the coin they're talking about 1766 and on the other side of the coin is they are a state university. ... I thought they were ruining the image of Rutgers, but that's life, you know, things change.
KP: Did you sense that from working in the alumni office? Did you see that tension there?
CG: I think that the alumni office, basically all those people in Queens really and truly, today you and I can say, they were living in the past. I think ... they wanted to sweep under the rug what was really happening. They thought it was great they were having a new stadium, but they were still thinking "Colonel Winant" or "Colonel Rutgers" and all this business of the "good ole days" of colonial college and that whole bit. And it was changing right under their very eyes, ... and I don't blame them. I can see their position because that's what they were marketing and merchandising.
KP: Do you think that marketing was successful in getting you to come to Rutgers?
CG: I think it was more that mother said I'd go East. And I really didn't care. It made sense because I didn't want to go to Northwestern. I just felt very funny about going to Northwestern at that time. Maybe it's because as a kid I would, ... in all kinds of weather, go to their gym and watch their teams work out or go to the football field and watch their practices. And I was a Boy Scout usher for years at Northwestern, and I just felt too close to them.
KP: So you were a Boy Scout?
CG: Oh yeah.
KP: What rank did you make?
CG: I broke the track record. I was an Eagle Scout at thirteen.
KP: There are not many Eagle Scouts at that age.
CG: There were very few of them. I was a jerk. They told me they'd kick me out of the troop if I didn't make ... [Eagle Scout] by [the time] I was thirteen, and I believed them. A real jerk. But, ... I was very active in the Scouts.
CG: We had a wonderful Boy Scout Commissioner who told my mother that Cub Scouting would be the ruination of the Boy Scouts and how true he was, because Cub Scouts get the boys too early and have den mothers not scoutmasters, they move the time table up, and as a result the Boy Scouts are really old hat when the kids hit twelve and are ... not a major factor in a lot of places today.
KP: I was not a Cub Scout, but I was a Boy Scout.
CG: Yeah.
KP: When you were at Rutgers, what was your sense of the war of Europe? Did you follow it at all?
CG: It sure doesn't stand out in my mind. We were not as a country directly involved.
KP: No, in fact, in 1939 President Clothier urged the country to stay out, and hoped we would stay out of this European conflict.
CG: I do remember; I think it was my senior year. Here I'd been a Roosevelt man. Wendell Willkie came and talked to the Convocation, and I and everyone else that I knew was sold 100 percent that this guy was really good. The businessman was going to take over. ... No, to me the war in Europe was foreign, [as] you know, this was an era where if Armstrong Cork would come and interview seniors, they were going to get the football players who had high grades, you know. There was what, maybe ... three companies that were going to come and interview, and there was nothing else for the rest of us. So again, you were forced into self-involvement. As for Europe, it sure doesn't stand out to me what was going on there.
KP: No, you are not the first person to say that. In fact, somebody made a very interesting point that they never read the newspaper when they were going to college.
CG: So we are leading up to where was I on December 7?
KP: That was actually one of my questions.
CG: I went to chapel. Imagine, in those days you had to have compulsory chapel? Jeepers. Went to chapel, and I went downtown to have some breakfast, and then I went to [a] movie. And I came out of the movie and went next door to a little [place] there, to get a pack of cigarettes. And there ... [were] about four guys huddled around the radio, and they had the Giants-Dodgers football game on and Ward Cutt, who had gone to Marquette, who I'd seen play, was about to kick a field goal, and they cut in. And I let out a warhoop, "What the hell are they cutting in for now?" And all these guys looked at me, and that's when they were ... giving a later report on what was going on at Pearl Harbor. So apparently, it all happened when I got into the movie and that's when I found out. ... And as a sidelight, a very dear friend of mine that's in my golf foursome, where do you think he was at that time? At that football game.
KP: I think I interviewed someone who was in fact at the game ....
CG: It was a big game. ...
KP: Before going into the war, I did want to ask one question I have asked a lot of people. How did you feel about chaplains at the compulsory chapel?
CG: I probably didn't feel like some of them did. Especially being Jewish, because I remember Boy Scouts, Evanston. My troop was at the Saint Luke's Episcopal Church. And we used to have to go on Boy Scout Sunday. ... Besides I won a lot of awards at a troop banquet, and they had the bishop giving the awards. ... My mother was called up, and he looked at her and said, "Rosalie, your son doesn't go to church here." He laughed in kidding her, because the Jewish boy won all the awards, and he had gone to school with my mother ... so he knew her. ... But any rate, having spent a lot of time around Saint Luke's Church, this was not foreign ground to me to go to chapel. So I just took it as one of those things. ... To me, the R.O.T.C. was ... worse than chapel. I thought that was really dumb. And I had to go into that, but that was easy for me because our Boy Scout troop could drill; as little kids we could drill better than their R.O.T.C., so it was easy for me to get on the drill team which made R.O.T.C. a little more palatable.
KP: When you say that R.O.T.C. was worse, why do you say that?
CG: Because ... it was just such a dumb program. You got zero out of it.
KP: You did not feel it helped you prepare at all for the war?
CG: Nah. No way.
KP: Is that one of the reasons you decided not to apply for the advanced course?
CG: ... I just wanted no part of it. I wanted out, so I did my two years and then, that was it. ... Well you know better than I. We were all in our senior years then ....
--------------------- END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE ------------------------------
KP: I have seen in your alumni file that when you came back to Chicago in December you applied for the Midshipmen school. What led you to decide to join the navy?
CG: Well, I didn't want to go into a trench. ... I was basically a coward. ... We're talking December 7. We had a couple of weeks to think this thing through, all of us. Everybody talked about, "What are you going to do?" And the V-7 program was ... announced, and that seemed to me to be the best thing. I didn't want to be a marine, that's for sure. And I'm one of those people that missed registering [for] the draft because [the] last draft, registration was like, give or take, July 15, 1941. At that time, I was still 20. I was 21 on the 28th of July. So I didn't register on the 15th. So, I knew there'd be a registration. So I came home for Christmas vacation, and I'd made up my mind to try to get in V-7. And I may have told you this on the phone, they were lined up everywhere around here, Navy Pier, naval recruiting station, you name it. A line around the block, no way. My father, like any father said, "Oh, you don't want to, don't rush, don't rush." But I was ... determined. And a friend of mine said, "Why don't you call Great Lakes?" I called there. The bottom line was, yeah, I could sign up there. ... They, didn't have any waiting line. I took the physical with a chief petty officer who was going for warrant office. The officer in charge ... swore me in. He says, "You're in the navy. And your orders are go back to Rutgers and graduate. We'll call you if we need you." So I said, ... "What if they have a draft?" He says, "Tell them to go to hell. You're a sailor now." So I ... got back to college, and sure as hell, they had a draft like, late January or something. And part of the preceptor's job was to make sure that everyone that should register registered. I got a call from Ed Curtin, I remember that name, who worked for Dean Metzger. "What the hell's going on? You're the only person that hasn't registered." I said, "You're talking to a member of the United States Navy." So ... to this day, I've never registered.
KP: When you said you did not want to serve in a trench, had you seen All Quiet on the Western Front?
CG: You know, that whole syndrome, that's right.
KP: And it sounds like R.O.T.C. only sort of reinforced that.
CG: R.O.T.C., I just felt was dumb. Did anyone ever tell you about, in the class there, when they had Major Malone?
KP: Mortar Malone?
CG: Yeah, I was in the class in fact when he shot a mortar shell into the gym ceiling.
KP: Were you?
CG: He was holding the shell in the mortar. I think I said, "I don't see how it works," but if I didn't say it, one of the other guys did. He had the shell right there, and he let it go into the trench mortar and bingo, it's up on the ceiling.
KP: Ralph Schmidt was the first to tell me about Mortar Malone.
CG: Yeah, Ralph was in the R.O.T.C.
KP: Yes, he was.
CG: Imagine a football player being in the R.O.T.C. Jesus! Today they wouldn't put up with that.
KP: When did you report to the navy? When did the navy finally call you?
CG: Well, ... through the alumni office, and unbeknownst to me, they touted me on to a guy named Bill Simpson who was the office manager of a Connecticut Mutual Agency here. So, now we started the memory void. Why I didn't go to work for my father? I don't know. Maybe he was closing up. I don't know. But anyway, I sold insurance. I went to work for them in like May, or the end of May-June. So I spent the summer selling insurance the navy called me--like around August 15th. ... And I went to Notre Dame ... for the basic training. The reason I know it was like August 15th is because Leahy had his football team already set there. He took all the professional players that we had in our group to practice against his team. And one of the great speeches I've heard of all time, he invited our whole-- whatever they called this [group]-- ... you know the whole ... apprentice seamen is what we were, we weren't even Midshipmen then, into the stadium to show us the stadium. [He] had his team behind him, and [he] proceeded to tell us what a lousy team they were, that they would probably be a disgrace to Notre Dame, but in ... this stadium there had been great players, and hopefully they won't lose. He really, he really worked his team over. He, in short, used the whole apprentice seamen group as a means of firing up his team, who went on to be undefeated.
KP: Enjoy might not be the right word, but what were some thoughts you have about your training at Notre? Was it effective, in terms of turning you into a 90-day wonder?
CG: Yeah. ... It was Boy Scout camp and all that all that, all over again. ... I remember, when I came back for my ... second half of my last semester, after I'd signed up, I switched and took trigonometry, because someone ... had told me that way it would help you, ... in navigating. And I was so frightened, I got an A in the course. That's how hard I worked. And I never could use it, and I never could navigate anyway. ... I think, in all these things, either you play the game or you don't play the game. And if you'd been in the Boy Scouts, you've been to camp, and you've done these things. It's the same old crap, all over again. And you either make the best of it and have fun doing it, or you sit, eat your heart out. And the guys were all terrific. We were all dealing with our peers in those 90-day wonders because we were all in the same ... boat together. So, we made wonderful contacts. We all knew someone. There was a friend of mine in the Boy Scouts. ... And his name was Gehr. Everyone was alphabetical. Gehr, Gutman, Bill Gutter from Rutgers was in my group.
KP: I have been trying to get a hold of him to interview him.
CG: Yeah, he was in ... the class. Now there was a guy I hadn't seen from college. And just being in classes, he and I weren't that friendly. But we were always tossed together a little in college, because of the GUT's, working there together. Notre Dame was sort of exciting because ... we were able, on the weekend, to come home. We were in South Bend, and to go from South Bend to Chicago. And I had gals I was dating here, and I knew I was going to come to Tower Hall, which was, I wasn't going to go to Columbia.
KP: What type of ship did you want? Did you want a destroyer?
CG: No, ... I just wanted to stay here. I didn't want any part of going overseas. I put in for [an] aircraft carrier, Atlantic, which there were none. So, but you know, what the hell do they [care], ... they don't pay any attention. So I was assigned, when I got my commission, to go to destroyer school in San Diego. ... There I learned about torpedoes, to be a torpedo officer, and they had such a gang-up at this point. They had more 90-day wonders then they had ships. We had to take the course twice, and I never did understand how to take the torpedo apart and put it together again. But then I got assigned to a destroyer.
KP: What year were you assigned to a destroyer?
CG: Well, let's see, I got the commission in '42, so I would guess around May of '43. April or May of '43 I started overseas.
KP: And aboard the Woodworth, you were commanded by William P. Mack.
CG: He was our third skipper.
KP: Your third skipper?
CG: Yeah.
KP: And did you know the first two skippers? Were you on board with the first two skippers?
CG: Well, when I got there, I was the 13th officer on ship, and six of them were Academy and three from the reserve. So you know what it is to be one of four. It was bad enough to be one of four, to be Jewish and one of four, it was lovely. But, I didn't feel anti-Semitism there. I felt just the fact that I was a 90-day wonder.
KP: Because almost everyone I have talked to from Rutgers, because no one from Rutgers will have a brass ring from Rutgers, that there was a real chasm in the navy between those with the brass ring and those who do not have one. Did you find that the case?
CG: Oh yeah, it was terrible then. I'll tell you what was just as bad, was the Naval R.O.T.C. guys. ... [They] were, actually one of them was an R.O.T.C., wasn't Academy. They were just taught to be superior. What did we know about? And they did a lot. It was obvious, if you had anything to do, ... some of the good things you got in business administration ... is you realize, you know, what goes on in this world, and they were doing a lot of things wrong. You couldn't argue with them. But, bit by bit, as the war went on, you could see changes the navy made. The things where they threw out a lot of the dumb traditions that they ... had going. But our ... first captain ... was more interested in what they were going to have for dinner. When I got aboard our ship in the South Pacific, they had steaks, shrimp cocktail, the whole works. I said, "What is this?" But, ... he was a professional who really just wanted to get off the ship and get back where it was safe. Which was okay with me. ... He was succeeded by the Captain Queeg type, complete moron. And that's where I learned that common hate bonds people together.
KP: Just like in the movie The Caine Mutiny where all the junior officers bonded together.
CG: They bond together in the common hate. And when we were finally fortunate enough to really get a good captain, this Captain Mack, who later became head of the Academy, he was a navy junior. But he was very qualified and easy going guy. And I found, because we all liked him so much, I found little rifts starting among the officers. Now maybe it was battle fatigue and all. What year did the Japanese surrender?
KP: 1945. August 1945.
CG: So I was on that ship from '43 to ... ['45]. ... I always said 33 months, by God it is about 33.
KP: Yeah, that's a long, long stint.
CG: Yeah, because I didn't get off it until after Christmas. Really in '46, I got off. ... We did get back to the states once. But again, you get so involved in what's going on. ... The nice thing about the navy is when all the shooting is over, if your ship didn't get hit, you go back as an officer, you go back to your clean sheets, and your wardroom. And that wasn't true in the army.
KP: It sounds like, especially with the first captain, you ate very well.
CG: Oh yeah, you always ate well.
KP: You had mentioned that the navy jettisoned some of the traditions that just did not make sense, or changes were forced upon the navy. Do any stick in your mind? When you got there, did you think to yourself, "This is really ridiculous, the way they're doing this?"
CG: The procedures ... of passing a person, or ice cream, or whatever from a carrier, from one ship to a destroyer. Where they had their old-fashioned way, that you had to coil their line that they sent over on your deck, which is stupid, because if the ships ever pull apart, you have a loose line racing around there, and ... we used to attach a thing and tell them that we were going to throw them their line back, and if they wouldn't take it, we'd threaten to cut it because we didn't want it on our ship; it was dumb. ... There was a way that you throw a line over to another ship that, you're practically a discus thrower, and it's not accurate. And we had a couple of guys, as did the other ships, who were cowboys. They called it "monkey fist." It was like having a billiard ball. They'd swing it around their head, they could aim that thing and hit ... exactly where they wanted to. And it was, it was safer than a gun line, which was firing ... like a projectile over there. Just dumb things like that, ... that they balked and so on. And not, certainly no understanding of how to treat the enlisted men. Some of them had [to be] ... treated some ways, others had to be treated other ways. I found the unsung heroes, as far as I was concerned, were men with previous navy experience, you never hear about them, but I sure noticed it. When Roosevelt came in, and started the WPA and the CCC, a lot of guys went into the navy and the army, instead of going into the CCC. They couldn't get a job. And they served two, three, four years, whatever it was, and then they went back to whatever they were doing, whether they were a postman, or a fireman, or a business guy. Those guys were called back immediately. They were all enlisted men. Those were the guys that made the ships go. Because you had knowledgeable guys who had three years working guns or controls.
KP: They had maturity too.
CG: They were mature guys, exactly. They were older than we were. They ... knew how to handle and be handled by the reserve officers. They knew that they had to depend on us. We knew their value. ... They really made ... life very pleasant because ... you could count on them; they were good. They weren't navy regulars, they were guys who had gone into the navy because what the hell else are you going to do if you can't get a job. You never hear about them, never hear about them. You hear about ... the 90-day wonders. You hear about the young kids enlisting. You hear about the fly boys, but you never hear about these guys who really were Depression guys and were in their mid-30s I suppose by that time.
KP: One of the things--your comment about enlisted men--because I've noticed there's a real difference between the way the services treat their enlisted people. I have interviewed Bill Bauer and he thought the air force treated its enlisted men much better, probably because you're so dependent on them. Other people have commented that the navy often did not treat its enlisted men very well. In the navy, they had probably the sharpest division between officer[s] and men.
CG: I think that's true. Remember, I said, that there were thirteen officers. I was the thirteenth. When I left there were 20, and we had, I think, ... three Academy guys, counting the captain, and one was fresh out of the Academy. And so you started to get different kinds of people. One of my dearest friends was a hot-shot football player from [the] University of North Carolina, another guy from Stanford. ... These guys were ... all matured, and ... they had been broadened in their college experience, and they seemed to know who they could count on and who they couldn't, who had to be treated what way, and who had to be treated the other. So yeah, I think there was a big disparity between enlisted men and officers at the beginning of the war, but as the war went on, I think that changed. I think that was where the 90-day wonders came in.
KP: You were on a small ship, and people interviewed who were on small ships have said that you have a lot more responsibilities as a junior officer on a smaller ship than on a bigger ship. Did you find that was the case?
CG: Oh sure, sure, you had to do everything. You know, you stood watches, ... you did everything if you were an officer on a destroyer.
KP: What was the scariest experience you had while on board? Or in the war, for that matter?
CG: ... I haven't yet figured out why I wasn't really scared, but the first time we got into a real air attack and a Japanese Mitsubishi torpedo bomber was making a run on us and I could actually see the pilot and our guys shot the plane down. And there's bullets going around and all that. Why I didn't choke, I don't know, but ... it was like in a movie. It was like in a movie, ... I found it so hard ... to believe that this was really happening. ... You get, you become very disconnected. Remember, I said, the nice thing about it is if your ship doesn't get hit. We did lose one guy on a shrapnel wound, and I never really did see him. I saw the burial at sea, ... and I've seen ships go up, but you're not there touching the blood. I think the most scared, I don't know. As I said, I'm basically a coward.
I think the most scared I was is the thought of, in a typhoon, the ship turning over, which our class destroyer ... was very capable of doing, capsizing. I think some of those things. When it happens, ... I was the damage control officer and thank God we never ... had much damage. ... We were hit by one of our own ships, once. But my guys sort of took care of it. I [was] sort of standing around. So I didn't see the gore; I didn't see the blood. And when it happens, ... it's so unreal that, for whatever reason, you're not that scared. And that doesn't mean, because you're brave. It's the whole thing is so unreal. The older you get, the more you just hate the whole thought of all this. It's so dumb, wars, it's unbelievable. When I'm elected president, you know, I'm going to have ... fake wars every year to stimulate the economy. Like Hussein does. I'd pay Hussein to make a move so we can generate some action in the plants, move some troops around, get the economy moving again, then have him back off, and then we got economical advantages, but no one gets hurt.
But so, ... I didn't have, thank God, the experiences of swimming around in the water or seeing the blood or this and that, and I saw plenty of action. We took soldiers and had them on a destroyer no less, putting them in the boats, and you know, kids didn't want to go over the side and land on Bougainville. And I've got to take a .45, which I no more would have shot him with, and say, "C'mon Charlie, you gotta go," but it's, it's a land of never-never. ... You don't have time to really think about it. So, I just was lucky. Just like I'm lucky that I'm here now.
KP: When did you think you were lucky to have this assignment, because some people in the navy had terrible experiences. Or did you get into such a rhythm with the ship that you did not give it much thought once you were in the navy, once you were on the ship?
CG: You mean, when did I ...
KP: It sounds like you really adapted well to the navy system and to your ship.
CG: Oh yeah, yeah, because we were lucky. ... We saw action, but we got into a lot of little no-Jap islands and there was a little recreation. You know they had ... the little officers' clubs, quonset hut things wherever you went. ... We had softball games with the other destroyers, you know, in the middle of the South Pacific. ... One guy, ... you got two guys standing watch, the other guys are, there was a lot of fun involved. A lot of fun. I remember one night in Ulithi, ... we were one of the first ships in there. That was going to be the big place that they were going to keep the fleet, you know, to get ready for the bombings of Japan. And we were watching a movie, and I thought something had happened, but what it was was a boat had hit our anchor buoy, and it was the admiral. And he was drunk. This was the famous Admiral Oldendorf who later on crossed the T on the Japs in the Philippines. ... A couple of my guys and I had to take his boat back and report on it. That's where I found out this was a different little island. This was where the really big shots were, and the navy nurses with grass stains on their skirts, very interesting. ... But there were a lot of fun things you did. You either played the game or you didn't, ... that's the way it was. ... It was Boy Scout camp all over, as I say, and I saw a lot of action.
I guess when you ask the most scared we were was, you heard of Rabaul in New Guinea? Okay, our squadron of three destroyers was sent up there to go up--like, to me it sounded like the river leading to Rabaul, and bombard Rabaul. To quote Mr. Halsey, "To thumb our nose at Tojo," which I thought was very dangerous. And we're firing our guns and all this and that. ... I ... thought we were going up the Chicago River; it was like that. That was scary, wondering what the hell was going to happen. We got out, nobody ever returned a shot. We got back; we were heroes. At Guadalcanal they got the band out on a cruiser that was there. ... That was frightening because, again, it was the unknown. But I have often thought in horror of what some guys actually saw. And what it was like. ... That was my biggest fear. ... And I've thought a lot about guys. What about these guys who wake up with nightmares, and I'm sure you've heard plenty of that?
KP: No, there are in fact people who still get upset about things that happened to them 50 years ago.
CG: I'm sure.
KP: It still affects them.
CG: Well, the brain does go from the top down. ... Ed Curtin, boom, I haven't said that name in how long? Probably can't tell you the name of the guy I saw yesterday, you know, that's ... the way it is. ... And I think in our spare time, I know, a lot of us used to talk about, well now what are we going to do when we get out of here, if we ever get out of here. So you thought about your career, and what were you going to do? ... I was wrestling with myself about, I was getting tremendous pressure to go back to the insurance company. Oh, and the guy that was the head of the agency, had received a commission as commander in the navy and in charge of all naval bond sales. Obviously a hell of a salesman. Later became president of Connecticut Mutual. And Charlie was going to try and get me transferred off the ship, after I was on there like two years, and he told me, ... he wrote me a letter after the atom bomb and told me ... he had me 90 percent off, but then he decided the best thing is let it ride because the war was over anyway. But there were a lot of reasons why I didn't want to go into insurance. ... So I think a lot of us spent our time worrying about that.
KP: Did you expect there to be a depression after the war? At the time, I mean we now know there wasn't one, but did you have that fear?
CG: No, no. ... Again, I think we all, at least in my case, I was self-involved. How was this going to affect me? It's like the young guy today, who's 32 years old, {and I was one of them} who was making a damn good salary, and you spent it all. You don't go into debt, but you spent it all because I'll always have a job, you know.
KP: So you thought that at the time, when you were in the service, that you would have a job when you got out?
CG: No, I didn't know what it was going to be, but I figured it would be something, yeah.
KP: You have touched on several things that other people have mentioned and one was typhoons. For many navy people who never saw a shot fired in anger, they were scared to death in typhoons. And those who even, those who saw combat, they were often even more scared during typhoons than in combat. Did you experience any typhoons?
CG: ... I saw very rough weather. I saw us turn back from a typhoon area. A cruiser got hit and had to go back to one of the bases for some minor repairs. We were assigned, along with another destroyer, to take them back. The reason we were assigned was our class destroyer, the Bristol, were considered a little top heavy, and we had been banged up, so we weren't that great at high speed so we took them back. And ... the group we were with was heading into typhoon territory, and I think they lost a ship to it. And we all lived in fear of that. Because the seas can get very angry and, ... the thought, if you take yourself through the mechanics of a ship rolling over, is very frightening.
KP: But you never experienced a typhoon?
CG: No, we were on the edges but not, we were never in any big trouble.
KP: But you saw your share of rough weather, too.
CG: Yeah, ... we knew what it was going to be like. ... That was the talk that went around.
KP: Yes, Joe McCartney was in a smaller vessel. He went through two typhoons. He said that was his scariest moment aboard ships. Especially, I think, he rode through one storm where larger ships had gotten sunk.
CG: Yeah, ... it was a thing we all worried about.
KP: You are also not the first, in terms of the navy, in terms of describing some of the fun that could be had in the Pacific. And a lot of veterans, a lot of people I have talked to, Rutgers veterans, have mentioned, for example, Hawaii. But also the beer parties on islands, that ...
CG: Oh yeah.
KP: So your vessel also had their share of beer parties?
CG: ... We'd go into these places where there would be parties going on. ... Again, you were, you were in with your peers. ... It was not unlike college ... because they did have officers' clubs. ... So you go to ... these quonset hut things, and ... there were your peers. Because ... that's ... where they all were. .... That's why guys swap war stories about that sort of thing. I was surprised-- I went to the barber the other day, and I never knew he'd been on a destroyer. What do you think he was talking about? A typhoon.
KP: He had gone through a typhoon?
CG: Yeah. ...I've always said, ... if you can come out in one piece, and you don't see any horror, the navy was a great experience. It really was, and we were totally involved in our war, ... could care less about what was going on in Germany. ... So it was not the bad experience that many people paint, albeit, as I say, any guy who doesn't come out hating war, when you really look at the big picture. When you look from your own cocoon, as they say, the ground rules are, that you're comfortable, and all hell break[s] around you, but you didn't get hurt nor your friends, you didn't see it. ... A lot of it was fun stuff. ... Bailing pilots out of the water that missed their carrier, that was fun. We used to have contests with the other destroyers, who could do it the fastest.
KP: Which naval actions did you do that for?
CG: Oh, they didn't have to be major actions. They could just be a guy getting shot up by another plane and coming back and not being able to land, or a guy just goofing up on the landing. That was interesting as hell. Beginning when I was first on a ship, you'd see guys splash taking off. As you know, the technologies got better, and the pilots were better trained. You never saw that, ever, toward the end of the war. They'd miss and stuff like that coming back.
KP: But never taking off.
CG: That's right, never taking off. Did see a guy drown, a pilot. We never knew what happened. He waved to us, he was in the water, and we go up, to go alongside of him. He went under once, and he never came up. That was a very frightening feeling, very frightening. But again, ... you didn't see him splattered all over, I guess. In the liberties, you know, the Aucklands, the New Zealands, and the Sydneys, and a few of those things, I'll go back to what I said, you either play the game or you don't play the game.
KP: What did you think of the various places you'd stopped at? For example, New Zealand, but also some of the islands. Did you encounter people who lived there?
CG: Yeah, but really not that much, not that much. We did make a very interesting spin ... from Hawaii up to Alaska, to Juneau. Because Roosevelt, I think, was going to meet with Churchill or someone up there. And we were part of that bodyguard. And one of my friends got to go over to the cruiser Roosevelt was on. He came back telling me about the sailor who had barked at Fala. The secret service guy says, "Easy fella." If Fala had fallen overboard, it would have been a ... national calamity. ... But that's really, ... I think most guys were like that. ... I don't think I was beyond the norm. I think you, I think that's the advantage of giving commissions with a certain amount of training to college graduates; ... they have been around a little. As naive as we were, we all had had some training, and we were able to acclimate to things. Since we had all seen the Depression, we knew what that was all about. So I think that helped us an awful lot, all of us.
KP: You were both a non-Annapolis, but also Jewish. Did you ever experience any anti-Semitism in the navy?
CG: No, not really. ... No, because we were all in the same boat. I sensed it from a couple of the Academy guys, but I figured they don't know any better. But from the other reserve officers, not at all. Not at all.
KP: What about your men? What part of the country were most of them from?
CG: All around, they were from all around. I think one of the more interesting things really happened after the war when you finally get into a job. The amount of people that were available, I ... ended up with a big company Toni. We were bought by Gillette. And we had as division managers in the sales force, and as advertising guys, PR guys, product manager guys, sales promotion guys, all really talented guys all who have done well, all because the employers, I don't even know if they knew it, that here is this whole warehouse full of, or inventory of, very capable guys who aren't like a college guy because they ha[ve] ... three years of the service behind them, so they were more mature. Only wanting to do one thing, go [to] work and make some money and live the great American dream. And companies that attracted guys like that ... must have really, I know ours did, prospered and benefitted from it.
KP: It struck me. I interviewed John Melrose from your class, and he had made the point that he was nineteen, and he was officer of the deck of a destroyer, and when you are officer of the deck you have all this responsibility that you would never give, in most normal circumstances, to a nineteen year old, except in wartime. Did you have that sense that you benefitted from your navy training in your business career?
CG: I was officer of the deck an awful lot. You start out as a glorified look-out.
KP: Yes.
CG: And I'll never forget where a very bright guy from Minnesota, one of our officers, said to our Academy executive officer, "Where are we Mr. Howe?" And he said, "At sea, Peterson, at sea." ... I once reported ... that I thought I saw something out there through the binoculars and the Academy captain said to his exec, "Go check it. We can't trust a reserve's eyes." You know, all those little crazy things. But, being officer of the deck was, again, it was a game. And I was very careful, because I was looking out for my own ass. But I'll tell you what's really--I'll never forget it--it was either the Iowa or the New Jersey, one of the big battleships. Battleships do not look like, when you see them from the side, they don't look like what they show you in the navy, this big, broad beamed thing. They just don't look like that. They look long, and just like any other ship, except they're longer. Well, I was going to cut across the bow of either the Iowa or New Jersey. It was the Iowa. And it wasn't even a close call, I did it perfect. But I looked back and saw that broad beam, and I could see the headlines of the Evanston Review, saying, "Evanston boy's ship cut in two by the world's largest battleship." It is a frightening sight to see one of those mothers head on. But again, as I say, it was a game. It wasn't a game, but you had to play it or else you were in trouble.
KP: Did you know people who did not play the game and ran into trouble in the navy? Any officer or enlisted man who just didn't ...
CG: Oh yeah. ... You had some enlisted men that couldn't ... handle ... the routine. And a couple of officers started out that way, but you know, they realized, because they had been in fraternities, they had been in dormitories. These guys knew that you had to coexist. So, they played the game, too. You know, you were depending on one another so, it's--how many guys do you really know that were in a dorm, that were truly away from home, not living in Bound Brook or someplace like that, that don't have to come around and be one of the guys? You have to in this world. And there's no place any of these guys could go, so the guys that we thought were shits turned out to be not bad guys because, I guess, they joined. And there was a lot of fun that we ... used to have. ... My friend from North Carolina, the football guy, ... he would talk in his sleep. We found out he must have been a ball hog. ... We'd start talking, and we'd pretend we were in a huddle, and start to talk, and he'd be asleep, and, you know, he would join in and say, "Give me the ball, ... pass to me." ... And [he] never even knew it. But you know, you did crazy stuff like that because, while you were supposedly officers and gentlemen in your own wardroom, while you didn't have food fights, you know, or any of that foolishness, there was a lot of kidding, good natured kidding that went around. And ... that levity is what ... the reserves really brought to the United States Navy. ... They made these guys who thought they should be different, join the party, because, in the long run, we were the ones that were in the majority. And all these guys were very responsible guys. They did their job as best they could. ... And I think the regular navy guys finally learned.
I know that toward the very end we got a new officer. I think he was a gymnast. He might have been in the finals, a gymnast from the Naval Academy. And he ends up on our ship, a real little shit. And he tried to put a couple of my guys on report because, he said, they were gambling, they had cards out. ... This was a ship fitter and a carpenter's mate, who were really good guys, that did their work. ... I did the thing that I'd heard the Academy guys [do]. I said, ... "You can't put them on report." He says, "I'm going to." And I said, "Mr." I forgot his name. "How many bars do you have on your collar?" "One." "How many do I have?" "Two," he said. "They won't go on report." Well that's the Academy trick they used to pull, you know. They'd pull rank on you. ... I really enjoyed doing it to him. And you know what? He became not too bad a guy. He was always a little pompous, but he started to get the message. But the other officers were good guys.
KP: Did you have any stewards on your ship?
CG: Yeah, Filipinos.
KP: So you had Filipino stewards and not black stewards?
CG: We had a black cook and ... oh yeah, we had black stewards. One of the black stewards shot himself with my .45.
KP: What had happened?
CG: ... We all had .45s and, ... I'm a coward like I told you. So my way, which is not good for a .45 is, after I had put ... the thing that holds the bullets ...
KP: The clip.
CG: The clip in, I would always fire the trigger into the bunk. ... I knew there wasn't a shell. That way I knew there was nothing in the chamber so it's impossible to fire it or pull the trigger now, and I put the safety on. That's just the way I wanted it to be. But our .45s were lying around. This guy shot himself with my .45. I was officer of the deck at the time. ... He said, it was an accident ... that it went off. Well, I know he had the wrong guy to say that to because I know that you had to really crank the thing up to shoot it. And ... he was a really dumb kid. And you know, dumb kids are lucky. ... We were practically alongside a cruiser who had a doctor where they could operate. We had a doctor, but we couldn't operate. He ended up back on our ship.
CG: Stewards, yeah. ... There were not a lot of blacks in the navy. Oh, we had a black chief steward who was in charge of all that, guy named Bridgewater. He was at the reunion which I told you I missed. Again, that was something that you weren't conscious of. There was no black, white, or whatever. I think the Filipino stewards, I think, had a chip on their shoulder with the rest of the crew that they didn't think they were well liked. But, I wasn't aware of any of that ethnic sort of stuff going on.
---------------------END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO-------------------------
KP: I would like to repeat my question that I wanted to ask about the navy.
CG: Go ahead, go ahead
KP: Had you thought of making the Navy a career?
CG: [laughter] ... No, but ... I wanted the fringes, and I thought seriously of staying active in the reserve--and this is the truth--I was going like gangbusters with Gillette, and I was still in the reserve, but I didn't meet with them. I was just sort of lying in wait. And Korea came along. And they called Ted Williams up. Ted Williams, and I don't know if you know this or not, but he really flew planes in ... the navy air corps during the war. ... When they called Ted Williams back, I said, "Jesus Christ, if they can call Williams, I'm next!" And I wrote my letter of resignation that day. And I still have recurring dreams of being called back into the navy.
KP: So you did not want to go to Korea?
CG: No, no. ... Nope, no way.
KP: Is there anything else about the navy that, that comes to mind in terms of your experiences in the war? One question I also had forgotten to ask earlier is, did your ship ever experience a kamikaze attack?
CG: We were probably one of the last ships to get away with it. We were out screening at the head of the task force, the task force was behind us, and here come three planes, low. Japanese planes. We shot down all three of them, and neither one of the three turned to even attack us. They just were passing by; idiots let themselves get shot down. The next day, they changed the game plan. And that's when the kamikazes started. But, boy, we were plenty afraid of that, yeah. We were scared stiff of that. And maybe some of the guys who told you, were in the navy. One of the interesting things, again, if you don't get hit is when they would come in low. They would come in very low and try and hop over a destroyer. And then they would get at the task force. And if you saw them ... hop another ship, if you turned and looked around, you saw the amount of gunfire coming from the carriers and battleships and all, you wonder how can anyone get through that and the poor destroyers were in the line of fire. So they would have to turn quick if they had been jumped over. But that's tremendous, just when you used to see the amount of bullets they put up.
KP: So you would be on a destroyer that would turn in, in this action?
CG: Well, if they were coming at us, why we would try and shoot them down.
KP: Yeah.
CG: But then, if you saw them hop over a guy, you know, 90 degrees out on the screen from you, and then you looked from the sidelines and saw all these tracers and what the hell these big ships were throwing up, once they hopped the destroyer. ... Unbelievable how they got through. Kamikaze stuff was ... really rough. We talked to several officers who had been on ships that had been hit by them. Bad stuff.
KP: What did they say at the time?
CG: Well, ... you know, there was nothing they could do about it. There was one guy named Daniel who went to prep school with our football playing ... guy, and he had a bad knee because ... the kamikaze hit his ship, and he was a big 200 plus pounder, and it flipped him up in the air, and he came down on his knee. He said, "That's it." He says, "I'm gonna get out of this outfit, and be playing with the Bears next year." You know what? He was! ... But, ... that was frightening stuff for the guys who were in it. We were again, lucky. We had different duty at the time, because they were now replacing--this is towards the end of the war--they had two new styles over our old-fashioned destroyers. So we weren't getting some of the up-front stuff, which was fine with me.
KP: You had also landed troops on I believe you said it was ...
CG: Bougainville.
KP: Bougainville. You had army people aboard your ship. What was that like? Did you have any problems with the army people in terms of ...
CG: They were like, put on at, three o'clock in the afternoon and left off at ten. So ....
KP: Oh, so they were not even on for a full day.
CG: ... They were landing somewhere ... probably get wiped out, because they were going to try to block off something that was going on. And we missed Iwo Jima, which was good. ... When I went over, I went overseas on a liberty ship. Took me a month to get over and ... we were with a crack unit. There were only about five of us. And we were with a crack unit. ... They had Indian guides that talked Seminole, or this and that. We later found out that they got wiped out the first night, ... wherever they landed eventually, in the war. I think the Japs knew Seminole or something. ... No, we didn't have that much to do with any of them.
KP: So Bougainville was the only experience you had with an amphibious operation where you had troops abroad?
CG: Well, that I think that was the only time we had ... soldiers on our ship. We might have had an observer or something at one time or another. But ... that was an emergency thing.
KP: I was recently on a World War II destroyer, and they are very small, especially seeing the enlisted men's quarters, but even the officers' quarters, they are small. Did you think that at the time or did you get so used to it? A lot of people look at my question, and they don't ...
CG: My mother went on our ship in California after the war was over and that's what her comment was, how small it was. I think it's all the world you live in. I passed my old house in Evanston, and I look at the lawn, and it looks minuscule. And ... there's a parkway, but it doesn't look big. To me it was big, but I was a little fella. ... You get so accustomed to the destroyer, its size, that I never had that feeling of smallness. I figured, if anything, we could dodge better, and we weren't such a big target. Who wants to hit us when they could hit that big cruiser over there. So, no, I never had that feeling.
KP: You mentioned the officers had a lot of fun. What about enlisted men, and when they went on leave, and the ports of call? Did you ever hear any problems with that?
CG: There were some of ... some people that ... take one sip of a drink and they're gone. We had a guy who was a warrant officer, ... that we never knew ... his personality changed. Yeah, there were predictable guys that get all screwed up. ... It was like ... a lot of the movies which overdo it, but you had ... the average guy just went along the shore and you know, they do their thing. In Sydney, we, the officers rented a house, and it was a wild scene there, but ... no fistfights. ... None of that kind of stuff. Yeah, you knew that a certain amount were going to come back all bloody because that was their background and their history, and you knew it was going to happen. My favorite story is the football player guy and I and another buddy were at what happened to be a large place in New Hebrides, Espiritu Santo, at an officer's club. Big party going on, not parties, guys drinking beer and whatever. Time to go back to our ship. I say, ... "Come on, Harry." ... Harry says, "I gotta find my hat. Where's my [hat]?" He couldn't find his hat. Regular hat with a bill, officer's cap. I'll never forget this as long as I live. There were a lot of guys there, a lot of hats there. And I said, "Oh Christ, take someone else's." "No, I want my own." [he said]. Now this is a big guy. We could not convince him, and he wasn't sloppy drunk or anything. We could not convince him that he should take someone else's hat. We get down to the dock, he walks over to a guy, he says, "Hey fellah, you got my hat." And I thought, "Uh-oh, now what's going on?" And the fellah says, ... "No, I don't. Look ... I'll show you." He takes the hat off, turns it over, and says, "See, Harry Dunkel, that's me. You took the wrong hat." Puts the hat on. My friend Dave and I used to look at that cap. How did he know it was his hat? It looked like every other one. Never forgotten that. It was so weird.
KP: And, he obviously wanted his hat.
CG: He wanted his cap, and it was his. But how in the hell did he know that it was his? ... Being in the navy during World War II, to me, was a lot like sailing. You know, where they say, hour after hour of sheer boredom ... interspersed with sheer moments of terror. That's about what it was like. ... You had all this boredom, ... and fun, and time to think, and a lot of guys read and stuff like that. And even when you were four hours on, and four hours off, as long as there wasn't anything happening then, what was so terrible? Except the idea of when's it going to be over, blah, blah, blah, you know.
KP: It sounds like an obvious question. What did you think of the Japanese as an enemy? You mentioned that you had seen a pilot.
CG: Bastards, bastards. You know, you read about the horrors of Guadalcanal, and all the horrors of guys hung up; they were bad guys. Which I think that most people my age down deep have a hatred, especially if they were in [the Japanese [theater], still have a hatred ... [of] the Japanese. There are guys that ... won't buy a Japanese car. It's just tough to do.
KP: Would you buy a Japanese car?
CG: Yeah, I finally joined in. I've kidded for years that everytime they were taking pictures here, that what they're really doing is wiring the city. Someday, they'll blow up Chicago. It was ... a deep hatred. I mean, these were the people that were interrupting our lives, screwing us up. A lot of Jewish people, who saw the true horrors of the Holocaust, don't understand our feelings. ... They think we should feel stronger towards the Holocaust. But, ... everyone looks out for themselves. That was the war that was affecting me. And I have good friends who were shot down over Germany or whatever, that were into that war, Gentiles and Jews. ... Their whole thing is, they don't know from Japanese. ... They were bad guys-- Pearl Harbor, you know. We don't even want to believe that Roosevelt probably could have stopped this.
KP: What about the atomic bomb dropping? Where were you when the atomic bomb was dropped?
CG: Central Pacific ... halfway between Japan and where they were based. Watching those big B-29s, I guess they were, ... you know, flying over us. What was my feeling? ... Well, [I] didn't, first of all, believe that it was [over], because we didn't, we down deep wanted to believe that it would end the war. But, great! As far as the people, tough. ... You know, we didn't bat an eye, and still don't really, except we know the horror of it. The terrible things in what went through with the sabre rattling between the United States and Russia all those years and all that ... and the fear that someday, someone is going to drop one. ... We're now at an age where [if] they drop it, you know, that's not our problem, it's really your problem now. But, really cold blooded about it. Not "serves the poor bastards, serves the bastards right." It was, "Great, Truman did a great thing." ... It's not unlike, if you want draw a very dumb analogy, knocking a quarterback's knee out. Now our team's got a chance to win. You don't worry about the guy's knee. And I never heard anyone say anything about those poor Jap[s]. ... "That's great. Let's go do it again. Get the hell out of here."
KP: When you left the service, you decided not to use the GI Bill. Had you thought of going back to school at all?
CG: No, I'd graduated.
KP: So you did not want to get a professional degree? Become a lawyer.
CG: No.
KP: You also mentioned you did not want to sell insurance.
CG: Well, I had a friend of mine's brother who, if you met him at a party the next night ... he'd figure out a way to call you, and I didn't want that reputation. As it turned out, I don't think my mind is geared for insurance because you sell it a couple of ways. One is the guys who just plain backslap. And the others are true financial planners, and the insurance industry has changed so dramatically in the last 25 years anyway, ... that these guys really got to know their stuff. ... So it worked out for the best ... [for] me. ... I went in as a a trainee at the May Company in Los Angeles. ... My first job was to work on the floor which I hated the public, and then I met the guys who had the Toni company going. That's how I got into sales promotion.
KP: Now, then, you stayed in that line of work.
CG: That general field of consumer goods sales promotions. That's what basically [I] was doing, and now, for the past eighteen years, I've been like my own sales promotion agency, selling displays and working on marketing plans and sports marketing and stuff like that, which I still do. My business is atrophying, but it's a great way to have income coming as you ... phase yourself into when they don't need you around anymore at all.
KP: You mentioned, that you were this Midwesterner going to Rutgers, and you then came back to the Midwest. But I read in a news clipping from the Rutgers Alumni Bulletin that you had wanted to go to California at one point. Are you happy that you stayed in Illinois?
CG: Oh yeah.
KP: In the Chicago area.
CG: Actually, I went to work up in the twin cities. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul [area] for the company, and I came back here. ... That was a time when we all thought Los Angeles was great. But I've always been comfortable and happy here. I like the Midwest, I have always liked it. ... When I was married, we lived in a suburb much further out than Evanston, along the lake. And now, strangely enough, I'm in the next suburb to Evanston and like reliving my childhood everyday because I'm passing places that I haven't seen regularly in a long time. For example, when I came here, I came along the lake. When I was in Highland Park, I would take the superhighway. But now, I keep going through Evanston, and I pass everyday where I went to grade school and a block from where-- it's very, very spooky, interesting, and sort of fun. ... It's sort of interesting, after all these years, to really sort of go into your past. My experience with Rutgers, you want to go into that?
KP: Yeah, please.
CG: When I settled back here, I went to a couple of alumni club meetings. There was no- one anywhere near my age group, and I felt like a real outsider. These were nice guys. One of them, I think, is still [alive], and he moved to Arizona a long time ago. I think he's been big with his class-- Rees Davies. He was a nice man; they were all nice guys, but I had about as much in common, ... as I do with the principal at New Jersey College for Women, now. So, that offered me nothing, and I had no classmates. The only one I retain any connection with was my first roommate I had at college, who I still stay in touch with. Here I am, and then as Rutgers starts asking for money, you know, like they do, ... I feel a certain amount of loyalty, because they did ... help me get through school and all this and that, but that was the Rutgers that Earl Reid Silvers and Ernie McMahon and those people lived, in that cocoon. That was the old Rutgers, that was the private college. And now, what am I giving to the State University of New Jersey for? You know, ... I can't benefit for it. I don't live there. ... If I'm going to give to someone, I should give to the University of Illinois, or something like that. ... The change that came about Rutgers, just sort of included me out because I am not a New Jersey person. This old friend of mine went to the University of Rochester. He is active in the University of Rochester and always was. But the University of Rochester is the University of Rochester, it's not the University of New York. And so I have no axes to grind for myself by being active. I went through there several years ago, wandered around campus a little, and I'm just not part of that act. ... I like to read the stuff, so I send in to the Alumni Association and this and that. But as far as my trying to build a bigger and better Rutgers, you know. When Rutgers played Northwestern--I think it was two years ago-- I got tickets to the game. And I attended the tailgate party, ... and it was like if I went down to an historical luncheon right now, there I'd at least know you. But I was left out, ... which is fine. ... That's the past, and all you can have is your good memories of it. ...
KP: It sounds like you have very positive memories of your days at Rutgers.
CG: Yeah, I enjoyed it! It was difficult to be there, but I think I'm only the better for it. As they say, through life, you got to play the game. As long as you play straight, play by the rules, and yeah, I have very good memories of Rutgers. It was a lot of fun. They were good to me. ...
KP: And yes, Rutgers is the State University of New Jersey.
CG: Yeah, that's right.
KP: Is there anything I forgot to ask you about in terms of your wartime experiences or Rutgers experiences?
CG: No, I think we've ...
KP: I also do not want to keep you too much away from the games.
CG: No, it's just [that] the first one starts now, but that's just Pittsburgh.
KP: Yes, yes.
CG: ... and Cleveland. That one won't be decided for a little while. I can't think of too much else to [say]. ... I'm sure other people have told you about the waste of war, but if you sit back, and in retrospect, you realize what this country accomplished in such a short period of time; it's quite outstanding. ... I think The Caine Mutiny, is a wonderful, wonderful, story, in what it's real point is. ... what would we do without people like Captain Queeg? Granted, that he was a bad guy, and ... he was crazy. But it's people like that that prepare this country, and ... keep us honest. They're there.
KP: Do you think that The Caine Mutiny is the best movie about your navy experiences?
CG: Oh yeah, I definitely think [so]-- because there were connivers like the ... Henry Fonda part. I think it's a wonderful story, I really do. Because it's ...
KP: I remember the first time I saw it, and I was really struck by it.
CG: Yeah, because we had a captain who was just like that guy, with the balls. Absolutely, complete with the tick and all, and ... he was totally irrational. ... The Caine Mutiny changed ... my attitude on him. Not my feeling for him, my attitude. I mean here's a guy that ... when I became JG, he called me in and told me that I'd come up for review. There was no way I should be promoted, but he wasn't going to block it because ... at least I was out there. He says, "At least you're out here. You're not sitting behind a desk in the states." So that's a great way to promote a guy, you know, a really, a wonderful guy.
KP: And he had been a navy person?
CG: Yeah, an Academy guy.
KP: ... who, it seems like, resented these, you know ...
CG: Yeah, and one of the ... fine moments of my navy career is when his head, his toilet kept clogging up. So I brought up my ship fitter, who was one of those guys who had been like a CC[C] guy during the Depression, been in the navy, served a hitch. And he made me bring him up there, and he said, "Condon, why is my head always stopped up?" Condon looked him right in the face, and said, "Captain, either you're using too much toilet paper, or you shit too much." He put him on report right then and there, and ... threatened to put me on report. But, he's the guy ... that really kept the ... officers together, because of the common hate. ... Yet, there was a ship, even though he was the second captain that came on it, ... he filled a niche. He was ready and prepared, and someone has to do this kind of stuff. So, I think ... that was a very good story. Certainly better than the Mr. Roberts thing. Which is a little different.
KP: You were on a ship that saw quite a bit of action.
CG: Yeah, we saw a lot of action. I like the war movies, you know, the stuff, the carrier stories and all that kind of stuff. It's interesting; it did bring back memories and so on. ... But, ... as I say, I have good memories of the Navy.
KP: How many people from your navy days do you stay in touch with?
CG: Two, because the bulk of them are, strangely enough, on the west coast. I stayed [in] very close touch with my ... ex-football playing friend ... who was a Dutchman, a perfectionist at whatever he did. He built quality, you know, really expensive homes in the Tampa-St. Pete area. And, another friend of mine is in Sacramento. I stay in touch with them.
KP: Did you ever join any veterans organizations?
CG: No. ... I give to the veterans organizations, but ... those things are for a guy who ... looks for recreation in a certain area. ... It's not for me. I'm not much of a joiner. I sort of go about my work and my business and my family, and I'm now a three-year widower. I think I told you that, ... probably get married this year.
KP: Congratulations.
CG: ... That in itself is an interesting adjustment because what you have to do is-you don't replace. If you had a good marriage, you don't replace. So you got to find a place in your heart for a new experience. That's really what it's all about. Which is not easy to do. Some guys get married because they can't stand to be alone, but if you're alone, on a platform of North Philly, and you're the only Midwesterner, maybe three or four more, at the University of Rutgers, and you're alone in the navy, and I didn't get married until I was almost 30, you know, you're used to being alone. Some people are never alone.
KP: I know. Your first wife, how did you meet her?
CG: I belonged to a country club, and a very wealthy guy asked me, could I get him the best razor that Gillette makes, wholesale? The best razor Gillette makes was five dollars. And I could have got it for him for two dollars and fifty cents. And this bastard was so cheap [that] he took me up on it. So I bought him the razor and he said, "Now I owe you." [He] gave me the two-fifty, he said, "I owe you a favor." ... Two months later he wants to fix me up on a blind date, and it really roused my curiosity. Who needs blind dates? And that's how I met my wife. [laughter] Got the guy a five dollar razor for two and a half bucks.
KP: And it got you your wife.
CG: Yeah. ... I met this woman [that] I'm going with, because one of my wife's best friends, you know, they all want to fix you up. I said, "Well, I'm gonna go out." In fact, I'd had a couple of dates. I said, "But I don't want anything to do with anyone I know. I don't want to know anything about them. I don't want to know any of their friends. I don't want to know them. All that is out." And she called me. She says, "I want you to meet someone." ... Here she lived in the next suburb, and ... now, I know some people we know in common, but never knew her. ... I don't know how people, there's a lot of guys, you know, ... their wife kicks off and boom: they're married to their best friend's widow or whatever, just like that. I don't see how they can do it that fast. That's what makes horse races, I guess. All right so I spilled out my guts.
KP: Yes. Thank you very much. I just need to do a formal closing.
CG: Sure.
KP: This concludes an interview with Mr. Clark J. Gutman at the Palmer House in Chicago, Illinois on January 7, 1995 with Kurt Piehler. And thank you very much.
--------------------------END OF INTERVIEW-------------------------------
Reviewed: 4/1/96 by Linda E. Lasko
Reviewed: 12/17/97 by G. Kurt Piehler
Edited: 1/22/98 by Gloria Hesse
Entered: 1/25/98 by G. Kurt Piehler
Edited: 2/12/98 by Clark Gutman
Entered: 2/22/98 by Eve Snyder
Reviewed: 2/23/98 by G. Kurt Piehler