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Rutgers Oral History Archives

  • Interviewee: Karesh, Janice
  • PDF Interview: karesh_janice.pdf
  • Date: June 2, 2000
  • Place: New Brunswick, New Jersey
  • Interviewers:
    • Sean Harvey
    • Sandra Stewart Holyoak
  • Transcript Production Team:
    • Cecilia Navas
    • Janice Karesh
    • Sandra Stewart Holyoak
  • Recommended Citation: Karesh, Janice Oral History Interview, June 2, 2000, by Sean Harvey and Sandra Stewart Holyoak, Page #, Rutgers Oral History Archives. Online: Insert URL (Last Accessed: Insert Date).
  • Permission:

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

Sandra Stewart Holyoak: This begins an interview with Janice Lehrer Karesh on June the second, the year 2000 in, on the campus of Douglass, formerly NJC, with Sean Harvey and Sandra Stewart Holyoak. We would like to thank you very much, Mrs. Karesh, for taking time today out of your busy reunion schedule to sit for this interview. To begin the interview, I would like you please to tell me a little bit about your family.

Janice L. Karesh: Alright. I was born in New York City. Although my parents were living in New Jersey but my mother's doctor was in New York and that's where I was born. I was the only child in an extended family and therefore I was spoiled very much until I was about five or six and there were some other cousins coming in. And my uncles, my father's brothers, thought I was absolutely the best. My sister says to me by the time she was born, which was five years later, I was too hard an act to follow and she decided she just wasn't going to try.

SSH: Well, can you tell me your father's name, please?

JK: My father's name was Maxwell Lehrer. He worked almost all of his life, starting very early. He used to, his father was a plumber and they used to tar roofs and that kind of thing, so all of the brothers worked. But he had a knack for and very early came into the retail business, the five and dime business, and I kindof grew up in the five and dime business. And that is where he met my mother. My mother graduated from (Julia?)Richmond High School in New York at the age of sixteen and she went to work as a bookkeeper because there were certainly no funds for college for her. … He was then twenty and he was managing a store and hired her and several years later they were married.

SSH: … Were the grandparents then, of either one of them, living in New Jersey or New York?

JK: Yes. The grandparents lived, my mother's family lived in New York in what I think is now Spanish Harlem. It was like 123rd Street between 2nd and 3rd. My grandmother was somewhat of an invalid, she only had one kidney, but she was very much on top of everything that was going on in the world. And would converse with me on a variety of subjects.

SSH: … And, were you, as a child growing up as you said in the extended family, you'd travel from New Jersey then into New York to visit.

JK: Right. … And there was a lot of back and forth traveling at that point. I know my father was, the first, one of the first in line to go through the Holland Tunnel. That kind of thing, he saw as a challenge.

SSH: [laughter] How did they commute back and forth? Was it …

JK: He had a car. I'm not sure what it was.

SSH: Now the business, the five and dime business, was in the City, then?

JK: Was in New Jersey, primarily.

SSH: Oh, in New Jersey. Oh, alright.

JK: It started out in Trenton. That means in Jersey City. He was with F.& W. (Grant?) which was one of the old five and dime companies until the Depression which closed a great many businesses. And then he went on the road for a while. He was jobbing in candies and brassieres and I don't know what all on extended trips.

SSH: Did you as a family get to travel with him at all then traveling …

JK: No, we were still young and in school and that was that.

SSH: Now were did you grow up and then begin elementary school?

JK: I grew up in Newark and went to elementary school there. I had two years at a New York school. We figured we would try to live in New York and we lived near (Van Courtlandt?) Park. And the public school I was in for the seventh and eighth grade was pioneering a program out of NYU for educating gifted children. And we had lots of fun; we had no idea what they were doing. And I don't think they knew what they were doing either. But at least twice a week would get on a bus and be taken to one of the museums and we were doing in-depth something or other. And had wonderful time. We wrote plays and playlets and …

SSH: Now was this a co-ed school that you were going …

JK: It was a co-ed. It was a public school in New York.

SSH: One other question about your family and … you lived in Newark … what part of Newark?

JK: We lived in up in the Weequahic section and I went Weequahic High School.

SSH: That name does come across our tapes often.

JK: Yay. Well, it was a huge school and was very proud of the fact that it sent many, many students on to colleges.

SSH: How ethnically diverse was your neighborhood and your school?

JK: Very little ethnic diversity. The majority of the students were Jewish in origin. My best friend, however, was a Catholic girl, Alice (Leland?), who later became a nun of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. And actually had her doctorate in English and taught at Fordham. So, we stayed in touch for a number of years.

SSH: Tell us a little bit about what it was like to be a young girl growing up in Newark and what some of the activities were.

JK: Well, you could go anywhere very easily and it was inexpensive to take the bus downtown. The (Mosque?) Theater was in Newark then and they would have a lot traveling Broadway-type shows and presentations. And I know I was exposed to elocution lessons, piano lessons dance lessons of some kind, and did not do particularly well at any of them. We were sickly children. Mostly because my mother, who had an enormous amount of intelligence, had nothing to do but take care of us. Which she did with great vigor. And the harder she worked, the less benefit she derived from it, I think. But when she died, and she was ninety-three, she was still introducing me as 'this is my husband's daughter.'

SSH: [laughter] Why do you think that was?

JK: Because I am very much like my father. [laughter]

SSH: One of the questions I was going to ask, had your mother continued to work but obviously …

JK: She worked, and that's where the war come in. She worked during the War Years. She went into Beth Israel Hospital and ran their dental clinic from top to bottom with extreme efficiency. I don't think they ever had a better supervisor. But then it was okay. You could go to work because of the war.

SSH: Yes. Were there any discussions about that dynamic between not having worked before and now working and then stopping again or …

JK: I think she was very disappointed when she had to stop but she accepted it and then my father went to Charleston in '45 and couldn't decide whether or not he was going to stay there. And would call home with statements like all the children are running around barefoot and they're drinking Coca-Colas for breakfast. He was very perturbed by that. But eventually it seemed to be like the wisest move for him. He had the opportunity to buy into a business there. So, we all ended up in South Carolina.

Sean Harvey: You said that you were spoiled until you were about five or six and those were the years the Depression really began. How did the Depression affect your family?

JK: I'm not sure. Other than the fact that there was … fairly little money. I don't feel that, I certainly, I think my sister feels this way too, but we were not deprived of anything that we really wanted to do or was interested in. Our parents made very sure that we had everything that we needed to have. I think I was aware of the fact that there was a depression. I remember, in the election before 1932, the weekly reader that kids get in school, had a breakdown of all the candidates. I think Mr. Hoover was running for re-election, Mr. Roosevelt, and also Norman Thomas. And my parents were electrified when I came home one day and told them they should vote for Norman Thomas because I agreed with his platform more than the others. And, of course, many of the things that he believed in came to pass. He spoke in New Brunswick I guess in '44, '45.

SSH: Did you hear him when he was on campus?

JK: Um-hmmm.

SSH: So, did you remember that you had brought up this in …

JK: Oh, yes! [laughter]

SSH: [laughter]

SH: What types of activities did you participate in as children in Newark during the Depression?

JK: Mostly the lessons of various kind. I was a child who read very early and who spent most of her time, if she was permitted to do so, reading. And the neighbors' children regarded as very strange and they said they couldn't talk to me because they couldn't understand everything that I was saying. So, that was okay. … I was more at home in school than I was in the neighborhood. But the libraries were wonderful and still are and just a great source of pleasure.

SH: You mentioned the (Mosque?) Theater, …

JK: Yay.

SH: … and that is a name that we have heard before, and you also mentioned that there were traveling shows that came through. What kind of shows were there?

JK: Well, I know I saw Katherine (Dunham?) there who was a modern dancer who did a lot of Caribbean Folk Dance, as well. And she was absolutely marvelous. There were concerts of various kind. Hers were perhaps the most memorable of the lot.

SSH: How, did your family keep a kosher home?

JK: Yes. In fact, my grand … my mother's father was a kosher butcher. And he was interesting in that the neighborhood began to change from Jewish to Italian. And he spoke a fairly good Italian after a while because the Italian wives were used to buying fresh meat. And you could only really get that at a kosher butcher's. So, he didn't…it was an interesting experience for him.

SH: So, he began to sell kosher meats to the Italians?

JK: Yes. They were … they knew they were fresh killed and that's what they wanted.

SSH: Did he have it …were there any discussions about how the rationing of the war affected his business or others in your family?

JK: It affected it somewhat but I don't think we had any difficulties with it. And when I was at college, like everybody else, we brought out ration books to Mrs. Javins and she checked them off. And then when we went home on vacation she gave them back and that's the way it was.

SSH: The … one other question I'd like to ask about your high school career was how knowledgeable, not maybe knowledgeable is not the word we should use here, in the high school, itself, with the developments in Europe, were there discussions in the school and were there discussions at home and …

JK: There weren't a lot of discussions in school and there was a very strong pacifist movement among some young people … 'cause I remember going to a few of those meetings and listening. The idea that we could learn to get along with other people rather than having to resort to warfare. So, …

SSH: In your family's home, were there discussions about Hitler's rise to power in Germany or …

JK: Not really. It was mentioned somewhat and then my paternal grandfather, who was very disappointed because I was not a boy and could carry on the name … brought over from England a refugee relative of some kind, who was a physician. And I remember that because my grandfather intended to marry him off to a rich young women but he was already married when he got here.

SSH: Were there any other stories like that that were discussed around the table?

JK: I don't think so.

SSH: Then how …

JK: We knew things were bad. We just didn't know how bad.

SSH: What is the ethnic background of your mother's and father's …

JK: My mother's family was probably Polish and I knew my great-grandmother pretty well … because when my grandmother was going to marry my grandfather they had to send back to wherever they came from for information about his family to make sure this was a permissible match. And it was very much a love match. I've never seen two people more in love for over forty years. And that's probably how much my mother became somewhat emotionally detached. They really had very little interest in their children. Now, their grandchildren they were interested in; me, particularly, they used to dress me up and take me for walks. But they were Polish. My father's mother came from Alsace-Lorraine and I understand she spoke seven languages. I am named for her. She died when her five sons were very young. My father who was the oldest was ten and he took a great deal of responsibility for the bringing up of his younger brothers. And I think that's one reason the brothers were always very close. My uncle Eddie got married in 1929 and I was like four and a half. And I had to be a flower girl or that wedding would not have taken place. And to the bride's dismay the brothers were only interested in what I looked like and what I was doing. And they used me to play tricks on one another. The Daddy-Mommy wants you routine being one of them.

SSH: Just then to leap ahead, we are back to …

JK: My father's father was probably Austrian.

SSH: … Okay.

JK: I think he was rather Germanic in his ways.

SSH: Going to high school then at Weequahic and thinking about college, was it assumed that you would go to college? Was it something unique or …

JK: My father always assumed that I would go to college and he always assumed that I would come here because he met some young women that were graduates of the college. And he was very struck with how posed they were and how well they handled social situations. And he felt it was a good place to turn out a knowledgeable but lady-like individual.

SSH: [laughter] Did you have any tomboy tendencies as they called it back then?

JK: No, no. I don't think so.

SH: What was your attitude as coming to school?

JK: I was very enthusiastic about it. And I still am. [laughter] I've always thought New Brunswick was wonderful.

SSH and SH: [laughter]

SSH: In high school, did you have a certain mentor that helped focus what your studies would be or …

JK: Well, my Latin teacher, Evangeline Key, was partly our guidance counselor. She was a wonderful warm women and we got very friendly after high school and I was in college and I was working on a Master's Degree; 'cause I was using her as part of my Master's program discussions on guidance. That worked very well.

SSH: Did she … was it very common for young women to be counseled to go to college there?

JK: At that particular school, it was. We had marvelous faculty. We had faculty who, if it were not for the Depression, would all have been doing something different, I think. The man who taught me mathematics was a naval architect. And until they started building ships, again, he was stuck doing math. But he accepted it with great vigor and he made it very interesting. I know when we took algebra he showed us a picture of the George Washington Bridge and discussed all the mathematical problems involved in building it. And then when we took geometry, he read to us the Mad Hatter's Tea Party scene from Alice and Wonderland - do you say what you mean means the same as do you mean what you say kind of routine because he was trying to get us in the … geometric frame of mind. And he also encouraged me to take an additional subject in my junior year which happened to be physics. So, I was I think the only female and probably the youngest in that physics class.

SSH: Well, that's great stories to hear because we curious how women were encouraged or not …

JK: Oh, he … they were great, oh … in terms of encouraging everyone to be the best whatever they could be.

SSH: What did you do in the summers in high school?

JK: We usually went to Belmar. … we were sickly children and my parents felt that all that exposure to the sun would be very helpful and healthful. I got sort of directed into the pre-medical idea by the time I was seven because I got so much contact with my family physician, who was a very sweet man, and he always said to me 'when you grow up, you will be a doctor, you will come and practice with me.' I broke his heart when I didn't go … [laughter]

SSH and SH: [laughter]

SSH: When … go ahead.

SH: It seems … like your family and your teachers and even this doctor always encouraged you in your education. Do you feel as a women that you were more as an exception to the rule? That people saw you as standing out as

JK: Well, they certainly did when I was a young girl and people said, "What are you going to be." And I said, "A doctor." And they said, "Oh, no. Women don't become doctors. Women become nurses." And I said, "Uh-uh."

SSH and SH: [laughter]

SSH: I like that: "Uh-uh."

SH: How about later as you continued through high school and before you came to college?

JK: They were very, almost all of them were very positive. And I didn't really associate with people who weren't planning on going to college. One way or another most of the women tended to.

SSH: Did you visit campus before you made the move?

JK: Yay. I came down here and was interviewed by Eloise, can't remember her whole name anymore. I think (Clark?) was her last name.

SSH: Did she have a nickname? We found that some people have given us names they don't recall.

JK: No, I don't, I don't think so.

SSH: Did anyone come with you when you came down to view?

JK: My mother came with me.

SH: What were your initial views of the college? Your first impression?

JK: The campus was beautiful then. It's rather more overgrown now but, you know, where the new dorms are used to be the most magnificent orchard with every possible kind of apple tree when the people that owned Woodlawn owned the property.

SH: You said that in the essay that you wrote that you had a great many expectations for your freshman year but with Pearl Harbor all those expectations changed. Did that …

JK: Well, I think we had more social expectations. There were so many things that were going on and you really had to stop and consider what you were doing more carefully. I think one's ideas about college life are largely formed by books and movies until you get to the point where you are actually involved in it. And then you do find it's a lot of work.

SSH: Well, the months preceding Pearl Harbor, before December, tell us a little bit about what you were involved in and where you lived and what your routine was like.

JK: We always lived on what was then the Douglass campus what is now the Corwin campus. And I roomed with someone I had known from high school. We didn't know each other well then but we certainly know each other well now. She's going to be here tonight. (Rooming with me.?)

SSH: What is her name?

JK: That's (Rega Nessbaum Boznar?). And we became very good friends. They had the Freshman Mixer then which was lots of fun. They had all the freshman girls from Douglass and all the freshman guys from Rutgers at a social event over on the Rutgers campus. Very fun.

SSH: Tell us what some of the activities were.

JK: Well, they had, you know, lines of people and then the music would stop and you had to dance with whomever and it was kind of entertaining.

SSH: Now were these …

JK: They had punch and cookies.

SSH: Now were these young men from the fraternities or were they just all freshmen …

JK: They were all the freshmen. And we were told it was really obligatory that we do this. So …

SH: I actually read an interview with one of the gentlemen from Rutgers College who talks about the same thing. About how they were waiting there and you were all …

JK: Right.

SH: … coming off of the buses and they were so excited, that you know. They got to meet all the women from NJC.

JK: Yay, it was really funny.

SSH: Well, tell us a little bit about the house rules and some of the requirements that were …

JK: Well, of course, as I get older I think they were probably pretty sensible. We signed in and out because we were on the honor system and if we were leaving to go anywhere. Freshman year you had to be in your dorm by eight o'clock, I think, unless it was a weekend and then you could stay out 'til eleven on Friday and Sunday and twelve thirty on Saturday night, but, umm, which my father thought was a great idea. And looking at my grandchildren in college now, it's not a bad idea.

SSH and SH: [laughter]

JK: And someone has to know where you are 'cause you write in the book where you're going and with whom you are going.

SSH: Did you have like a housemother or someone like that …

JK: No, we had house chairman who was usually a senior. And who held house meetings. She was the person responsible for reporting violations to the authorities. But as I remember freshman year they went very smoothly.

SSH: Was Mabel Douglass still here on campus?

JK: No, no, Dr. Corwin was the dean at that point.

SSH: Did you …

JK: Somehow we never discussed Mabel Douglass and it was years afterwards that I found out that she had been lost totally and was found at the bottom of a Swiss lake years later. Comes from reading the New York Times every Sunday. You catch with all kinds of information.

SSH: Did you have any interaction with Dr. Corwin?

JK: When you were freshman, not much. There were teas. The teas with the hats and the white gloves. And endless tea and conversation. I did get to know Miss Hickman fairly well. She terrified us when we were freshman. She had a mind that was so … outsized, I think. She gave us such absolute hell when there had been a sign-up sheet for, this is before the war started too, sign-up sheet for the Civil Air Patrol was offering flying lessons and no one had signed up. And she was highly indignant. And she said to us, "Just think of what's going to happen in the future. You'll wait for your grandchildren to land on the roof and take you off … which has not come to pass. It may be good. I don't know.

SSH: Did she seem to be the type of woman who would have taken advantage of this had she been a younger woman?

JK: Oh, yes. Very much so. She looked like somebody's little old grandmother and she wore very flowery hats in the springtime and violet and plaid in the wintertime. She was one of the few faculty who wore hats and plaid. And her way of starting class would be "Now, Miss so and so," and you hated to hear your name said, "what are we talking about today." So it was always thrown into somebody's lap. She liked me because I was a pre-med student and she felt that women should be doing things like going to medical school, going to law school, doing all of the things that they were capable of doing. And …

SSH: These are all great stories to hear.

JK: No, she, she was delightful.

SH: Do you have any other really memorable professors that stick out in your mind?

JK: My English professor, Mr. Rockwell, who was a Yale graduate and kindof a laid-back type. And our conferences always went the same way. He would say to me, "You can write but you've got to learn to spell and punctuate or nobody is going to read it." And I still don't spell.

SH: We've interviewed so many gentlemen from RC and they … all speak of their fraternities very fondly. And I'd be very curious to hear what a woman has to say about the fraternities on Rutgers College and the activities they ...

JK: The only contact we had with the fraternities, especially freshman year, … one of the juniors in our house was dating a man, a fraternity man, I think he was a Lambda Chi, and she would reel in rather the worse for drink most nights. So, I don't know what they'd got up to there. But, and then they, they would talk to each other it'd seemed like the middle of the night on the telephone endlessly. They were an interesting couple.

SSH: Did they ever marry?

JK: They did marry but I don't know that it lasted. She was studying ornithology and he was studying some other form of wildlife. She came, apparently, from a very straight-laced family and she saw being in college as a way to just forget all about that. Apparently it worked for her.

SSH: One question I wanted to ask was about the goings, staying still before we come to Pearl Harbor and your reaction to that, as the… you said it was very… the subjects were very difficult; that you found that you really had to work. Were you taking, I mean what advantages were you allowed to take of the library. Could you go late at night? Did you have to study in your rooms?

JK: We had to be in by whatever time it was and that was ironclad, if you were freshman. Beyond that, you could study in the library, if you chose to. I don't study at a desk. I still don't study at a desk. And I do most of my writing either lying on the sofa or lying in bed and that's, primarily, I think the way most of my friends remember me as being sprawled out with the books and the pencils and the pens. I did type because my handwriting is terrible which runs in my family.

SSH: Maybe that's why the pre-med.

JK: Yay. Maybe so.

SSH: One other question, we've talked to several of the men about the initiation that went on at Rutgers. Was there an initiation here?

JK: There was. It was a very low-key kind of one. You know, we wore these crazy little costumes for about a month. And ours were Indians, if I recall rightly, with the headbands and you had a sign with your name on it which was good because people got to know you and you got know the rest of the freshman class. And it was a little ungamely but it was okay And then there was one evening actually, I think, where they were supposed to trash your rooms or what have you. But it was very, very low key.

SSH: Were there certain rules that you had that you had to do for upperclassmen or rituals or …

JK: We had answer the door when it, the doorbell when it rang. That I do recall. You met the most interesting people that way. Because you met everyone's dates as they came in to pick up people.

SSH: What about Chapel? The Rutgers college men talk about their like or dislike of mandatory Chapel.

JK: I just kindof found it relaxing. Most of the clergy that spoke on the, at the Tuesday Chapel were very low- key in their sermons, if you will, I'm not sure that's what they were. And … it was an hour of peace and quiet and, primarily, that's the way I felt about it.

SSH: Did other women react the same or differently?

JK: Very few people cut it. You were only allowed so many Chapel cuts in a given period of time. So, almost everybody came. You got a little slip as you entered from the usher. You filled out your name and all this good stuff. And you deposited the slip as you left. And God knows what they did with them.

SSH: Was there a dress code on …

JK: The dress code was fairly simple. You had to wear a skirt to dinner. I was talking about that at breakfast with some people from the class of 1950. Had to have a skirt for dinner; didn't matter what the skirt looked like or how ragged it was or anything about it. It had to be a skirt. It could not be pants. And that, I think, was Miss (Leoboby's?) influence. She was a very refined Southern lady and she let some of it spill over into our lives.

SH: When you weren't in class or at Chapel what other type of activities did you do with your free time?

JK: Well, one thing we did a lot of was lab work, particularly, in the sciences areas so much was involved. The college worked very hard at making each of us find a sport that we liked. As I recall it, P.E. was compulsory up through your junior year. And by that time I had discovered what I liked and that was modern dance. And so, when we were freshman, we started working out with the Modern Dance group. And that was interesting; we had excellent instruction. And worked very well for me, anyhow.

SH: Do you feel that … that that performance at the (Mosque?) by Miss Dunham had any influence on your …

JK: Maybe so because she was magnificent.

SSH: But then we, the next question would be do you remember where you were and what the reaction that you personally had and those around you to Pearl Harbor Day?

JK: We were coming, I had been home that weekend and my father was driving me back to school and we heard all of this on the radio and I can remember being very confused and not real happy about what was happening or what was going to happen as a result. Because the initial reports that came out indicated that the East Coast could be affected, the West Coast could be bombed, you know, the whole nine yards. Nobody knew how much would affect the mainland at all and we just kindof prepared for the worst.

SSH: Did he continue to drive you down to school or was there any thought to take you …

JK: Well, he was, I don't remember when gas rationing started, but that limited that and if I went back and forth it was by train then.

SSH: I just meant after hearing that they had been bombed and these …

JK: No, we went on to school because he felt that that was about as safe as any place was going to be. And we stayed in touch by telephone. Telephone calls were so much less expensive then.

SH: When you heard about the bombing did you actually know where Pearl Harbor was or did you have to look it up …

JK: Yay, I knew where it was. That's another thing that Miss Hickman was very strong on - geography. We all took a placement test in geography when we were freshmen.

SH: Really?

JK: And, God - I can't imagine what the results were because you know how geography is. And I certainly couldn't pass one today; they've changed the names of everything. But she was gung-ho on geography and in her History of Western Civilization which was the obligatory freshman course you learned a great deal about how the barbarian hoards come down from the East so it was kindof interesting.

SSH: What were the reactions when you then got to campus? Were there …

JK: I think it was general shock more than anything else for the next few days. I know that the next day instead of going to lunch we ran home so that we could listen to the radio and hear President Roosevelt talk to the Congress and the Declaration of War.

SSH: Before Pearl Harbor had happened were there any of your friends, boyfriends or whatever, that had already gone into the service at all?

JK: No, I don't think so. I think they were supposed to register for the draft, and I'm sure they did even before that, but nobody thought it was going to come to anything at that stage. I do remember that some poor unfortunate young man proposed to me the summer before I started college and I looked at him and I said, "I'm going to college in September." As if to say 'what's the matter with you, are you crazy!'

SSH: Did you keep in contact with this …

JK: A little bit, not much.

SSH: Well, another question would be the discussions of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. You, as a young woman, and then your family what were their reactions?

JK: They discussed it. I know my father discussed it at great length. He thought that a lot of what was happening was good because it was an attempt to get everything back on some sort of even keel after the Depression. And we did talk about it. We talked about what it took to make a living in that day and age. And he was very, very positive about the fact that every human being needed to know how to take care of themselves and how to take care of any responsibilities that came their way. And that was an extremely positive reaction for me.

SSH: Politically, did he support Roosevelt?

JK: I don't, I'm pretty sure he didn't in '32. I think he probably did after that.

SSH: What about the Lend-Lease? Was there any discussion of Roosevelt's support for the … for England and …

JK: I don't think they saw any problem with that at all. They were interested in getting that war over with as rapidly as possible and if we could do it by Lend-Lease rather than actual participation that was thought to be a much easier way.

SSH: You had talked about a family member who was brought over from England to here. Were there any students here at Douglass that were in the same sort of foreign students being brought over ...

JK: I don't know. I don't think so. None that I knew.

SSH: Or if there was …

JK: There was a young woman from Honduras who was here to go to college but I think that would have happened with or without the war.

SSH: Once the semester ended then and everyone went home for the break, I think that was in January, when you came back then at the end of January, was there much difference?

JK: The difference was primarily in how we were setting up the black out schedules and how responsibilities within each of the dormitories was shared for making sure certain things were done and that was the major part of it. I think socially it didn't make a lot of difference, initially. It took a while, of course, a lot of young men knowing they would be called went and enlisted then …

SSH: Were you asked to contribute in any way to the war effort?

JK: There were various war charity kinds of things and Stamp Programs and such like.

SH: Did you ever participate in any bomb drives or anything like that?

JK: I don't remember having them on campus.

SSH: Did you work in any of the war industries that were supporting …

JK: No, I did that, I was an assistant instructor in a Rutgers Physics lab …

SSH: Tell us a little …

JK: because they were losing their male civilian instructors. So, a lot of people's route to the Doctorate got derouted at that point. And, we met with a group of the Physics Department, the girls who were taking advanced physics, and they told us what their problem was, asked us if we were willing to help, and if we could fit it in, and they, … we went to labs that just fit into our schedules. And they paid a $1 an hour which was considered magnificent wages. And I usually put in about four hours a week over there.

SSH: Now you went over to the Rutgers college campus …

JK: Yes.

SSH: … to teach physics there rather than have them …

JK: Right.

SSH: … come here on campus.

JK: Right.

SSH: Now to back up just a little bit, coming back in the second semester of your freshman year, and then going on as the war progressed, did the curriculum change or the focus change at all for young women here at …

JK: I don't think so.

SSH: … Douglass?

JK: I think there were a number of young women, mostly in the upper classes, who chose to enlist and would come back and talk about what they were doing. But, by and large, the curriculum stayed pretty well on course. We did have a lot of extra-curricular activities like the HEPS, the History, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology club that met and Dr. Hickman provided most of the speakers for that and they were exceptionally good speakers. I think we had John Dulles, at one point, and we always felt that we were pretty well informed about what was happening.

SSH: Now, did you continue with your pre-med coursework?

JK: Yes, I did. And, the things that changed were that women started knitting in class, writing letters in class, that … kind of activity.

SH: Do you feel that the attitude towards classes became less focused during the war because of preoccupation with what was going on …

JK: No, I think maybe it was even more focused because everyone was looking forward to a post-war something. Let's get this over with and go on with our lives kind of deal. Almost everybody was writing somebody overseas and we did go to a great many U.S.O. …

---------------------------------------------END OF SIDE ONE-----------------------------------------------

JK: … Relations Committee. We would get into the buses and go on to the U.S.O. And I don't know how the army handled it all on their side but, we saw a lot of really young men who probably had never been away from home before and who that cup of coffee and the cookie and a little conversation with someone female seemed to help, so.

SSH: How often did you do this?

JK: We did this about once a week, it seems to me.

SH: What types of activities did the HEPS do?

JK: They were primarily lectures; someone would come in and brief us at the first of the … each fall semester on what had happened over the summer in terms of the war effort and where people were and where the major battles sites were and just interesting … we did, and it didn't really have anything to do with HEPS, we did participate in the 1944 election, through either one of the parties, in helping get voters to the polls.

SSH: How did you do that?

JK: I don't know. We traveled with individuals who were party representatives. And I was with a young man who spoke Hungarian because we were taking large numbers of Hungarian-speaking population to the polls. And they were largely housewives and people involved in the war effort in some way. And it was kindof interesting. And we dropped by a party headquarters, this was the Democratic Party, at one point, and they had this big keg of beer which was entertaining. And people who looked like typical politicians. You know, you always think of them as being a little pompous-looking. And so they were.

SH: After going through so much effort to get F.D.R. re-elected, how did you feel when he passed away and the presidential office was …

JK: I think the whole college, as well as the whole country, was really in a state of shock for some time afterwards. Feeling as though the rug had kindof been pulled out from under your feet and not knowing, again, precisely what was going to happen next. But, I think Mr. Truman did a remarkable job of stepping in and getting things done.

SSH: What did, were you here when Eleanor Roosevelt visited …

JK: Yes, I heard Eleanor Roosevelt speak here. I also heard Lillian (Gallbreath?) who was the mother of the 'Cheaper by the Dozen' family and now I live just a few doors down from Frank (Gallbreath?) I think is the oldest of the sons, who married the publisher's daughter in Charleston and who wrote a column for many years as Ashley Cooper. In Charleston, the Ashley and Cooper's Rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean, among other things.

SH: I just wanted to step back for a moment. You had talked about being, in many ways, a professor at Rutgers college teaching physics. How did the men feel about having a woman from NJC teaching physics …

JK: Well, these were … soldiers. And soldiers were not permitted to feel much of anything …else. And, of course, what was funny was I wore, my hair was very curly and when it was long, I couldn't stand it. I wore pigtails with bows on the ends of them for maybe my last three years in college. And they just accepted it.

SSH: Would, did they come to you for extra help pheciciously or …

JK: No … , I don't think so. I think that most of them it was trying to teach them how to read a micrometer. They probably don't use these things anymore, not to mention slide rulers. And doing some experiments on torque and some on electricity. It was very … interesting.

SSH: Now, was this the ASTP Program that you were teaching?

JK: Yes, primarily.

SSH: Umm-hmm.

JK: I think they were turning out meteorologists and other … We had one group that couldn't figure out what they were doing in college. They said they were an attack brigade but that's the way things worked sometimes.

SSH: Did you have to interact with any of the administration then over at Rutgers college?

JK: I met with some the … a couple of the instructors. That was about all.

SSH: Do you remember what building you taught this in?

JK: No, I don't. It's the one that had all the big physics labs in it. And …

SSH: I think that may be the History department now.

JK: And the regular staff had little offices downstairs that were like miniature labs where they were doing their own little projects.

SSH: Were you able to take a bus back and forth or did you just walk …

JK: No, I … I used to be able to walk. That … two miles doesn't take that long when you are young and in a hurry. So, going back and forth was nothing.

SSH: To be focused on a pre-med and then teaching the A.S.T.P. Program, or teaching physics, I should say, and … but you've also talked about your interest in the humanities and things like that, was it able … were you able to do this or were you juggling it all …

JK: Yes. Because, one reason I was able to do this, and most medical schools have adopted it, was the medical school of my choice was Women's Medical in Philadelphia which is now part of the whole University of Pennsylvania Medical School complex. And they encouraged as much participation with the liberal arts as possible. I was interviewed with them and I remember it very well. I was nineteen years old. Met with three or four different professors. They were very interested in the health of perspective students so they wanted to be sure we were doing something athletic and modern dance worked out okay for that. And they were very, very positive about … actually the dean looked at me and she said me, "Go back …" 'Cause I was applying for early admission. I wanted to come after my junior year. And she says to me, "You're too young, you're too thin, go back and finish college, put on ten pounds and you can come when you are finished.

SSH: Had your health improved after you came to …

JK: Oh, yes. After I got away from my poor mother, it improved immensely.

SSH: And so, this was your sophomore year or the junior year that you were trying to make this early admission …

JK: It was my junior year that I was interviewed. Early in the junior year.

SSH: Were you disappointed that you couldn't go?

JK: I understood. They saw it wasn't an absolute necessity for me whereas the young man, that I was going with at that time, was provided with early admission at NYU, (Bellevue?) because otherwise the Army would have snatched him up. And actually he …

SSH: Was he at Rutgers?

JK: … he was in in-between. He was at Rutgers. Between his completion of what they saw as absolutely necessary and his medical school class starting, he was in the army for nine months and working at Fort Dix, mostly, in the Medical Core.

SH: Did you stay in contact with him through that time period?

JK: Oh, yeah. Yay, we were still planning on getting married during that time period.

SSH: Do you want to share his name with us?

JK: He was Julius J. Cone and a lot of the class of '45 may know him. Very exemplary young man. He had worked all of his life. His parents were dead; he had an older sister. He always made his own spending money. He worked pretty steadily at college, as well, in addition to having a college scholarship. And, he said when he went for that interview he was apparently due to be inducted the next day or so and he was completely relaxed because what difference did it make. And then when they accepted him they notified his draft board that he would not be going that route.

SSH: Here at NJC, knowing that you were one of the early admissions to Penn or Women's … down in Philadelphia, did they help you in any way, did they encourage you, did they direct your studies in …

JK: They were … perfectly happy with what the medical college wanted. And, in fact, I got to, take a second course with Dr. Hickman in my senior year. I took her course in the History of China which was fascinating. And it included a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum where we had to go down into the bowels because all of the artifacts that were remotely breakable were stored down there in case a bomb hit the building they wanted them to stay intact. So … but she was very funny and there, too she would storm into class, she was busy working, I think, on the first charter for the United Nations, too, at the time, so, she was always some place else. She'd storm into class and she'd say, "What can we deduce from the fact that Shang Kai'shek has recalled his concubine?" Who knew!

ALL: [laughter]

JK: So …

SSH: So, she stayed very much on the news and taught it from that …

JK: Yay, she was very up-to-date on everything. She was too funny.

SSH: What about the letter writing that went on and the phone calls and ...

JK: Lots and lots of letter writing. I think because we were so close to Kilmer a lot of people who knew us and came through would run by a lot of young men and at least kiss somebody goodbye. And, I wrote a number of them for a long time.

SSH: What, as a young girl, what did you do to just kindof fudge the rules here at NJC?

JK: I think we were pretty good, certainly the first couple of years. My roommate got married surreptitiously. She did not want her parents to know because he objected … they were objecting to the young man. He was a perfectly fine young man. He's … she's still married to him. The … so, she actually was out of school for a brief period of time and had covered it with her professors. They knew that she was making up the work and the rest of it.

SSH: And they (waived?) this year …

JK: While they were in the process of getting the blood test, getting married, you know, the whole nine yards. And, I think it was kindof a difficult period for her and that certainly fudged the rules because I knew where she was. And I just didn't say anything to anybody.

SSH: How hard was that, I mean, did not, were there not rules here that didn't allow married women on campus?

JK: No, not … during the war.

SSH: Oh, it had changed?

JK: Janet Norwood who was married at the end of our sophomore year … who was in … a member of our class and who also was the Commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Standards. Labor? Yay, I think that's the name … married. And as long as, I think that there was this tale of the famous talk with Miss (Broodie?) about how they were never to reveal any secrets of the marriage bed to these poor impressionable young women.

SSH: [laughter]

JK: Very funny.

SSH: So, did your roommate then come back and finish her degree …

JK: Yes.

SSH: … and be your roommate then?

JK: Yes. And, I think there was a couple months when they were living in Trenton and she was commuting from Trenton but she finished and graduated on schedule.

SSH: Were there commuter students to NJC?

JK: There were commuter students. By and large, and I think I mentioned that in the thing I did on the … our NAACP Conference, they were discoura … there were black students who were discouraged from living on campus. They were told they wouldn't be comfortable, they would feel out of place. What we did in our dorm was … Isabelle Angles was very friendly with … Connie Anderson and she would have her come and stay if there was something that required presence on campus. I was very friendly with Caroline Rice and she would come and stay with us when there was something happening on campus. And nobody in the house seemed at all uncomfortable about anything.

SSH: Tell us about the NAACP Youth Conference ...

JK: Well, it was one of these deals. The school governing council was asked to send delegates. And anybody who wanted to go put their name in the hat. And they pulled two names. And the other person was Flo Bernstein who was a friend of mine. And we went to the NAACP Conference in Richmond, VA. It was rather startling for them to receive us 'cause I don't think they had anticipated two young white women. But they had housing for us with a lovely family and we participated in everything that went on. The only other group to send white students at all was Sarah Lawrence.

SSH: Now did you stay with black families at Richmond?

JK: We stayed with a black family. We went to the dances which were well attended and we were danced with. And everybody told us we were so brave and I said to her, "What's so brave about it? You know, we came here, we do what we intended to do." Adam Clayton Powell was one of their speakers and, boy, he could make the rafters ring. But … and I used to tell Flo we were the only two white women who could sing Lift Every Voice and Sing , in its entirety.

SSH: What else went on at the conference and what was the outcome then for you?

JK: I don't know what the conf … the outlook … the final outcome of it was. I think they were trying to motivate the young people to become more politically involved. And that seemed to be the focus. And, of course, that was the … what needed to happen. Of course, Richmond was still very Jim Crow. That was the one thing I had a great of problems adjusting to in Charleston. And it wasn't as though there was separate housing because blacks and whites in Charleston have always lived in very close proximity. It was just the buses and the water fountains and the, you know, all that … the libraries, that's ridiculous, the schools.

SSH: Now when did your father and mother move down to Charleston …

JK: In '45.

SSH: … after you graduated?

JK: In '45, yay.

SSH: The same … before you graduated or after?

JK: My father went down before I graduated. My mother went down that … summer and I started working on a Master's at NYU and was living with a relative who really needed somebody to stay with her.

SSH: Well, tell us a little bit about the change in direction from …

JK: The change in direction came about because, if Julie and I were to marry, somebody was going to have to work. He was in medical school; he would be going into his junior year. And if I had been in medical school in Philadelphia, there was no point to the whole thing. So, I thought I could combine education more easily with somebody else's career and I switched and started work on a Master's in Education, mostly in Guidance and Counseling. And, something about that choice bothered me on some level badly enough so that it essentially destroyed the relationship.

SSH: Were you … When you made the announcement here at NJC that you were not going then to medical school was there anyone who tried to encourage you or discourage you or …

JK: No, no. They understood and it was an accepted practice, certainly.

SSH: Because by the time you did this then the war was over.

JK: Yay.

SSH: And … so, that was … I just wondered if there was any …

JK: No.

SSH: Tell us about the changes then on campus as the war progressed and then ended, if you can remember those …

JK: I remember the rationing, mostly. But it certainly didn't seem to interfere with ice cream. We ate a lot of it. Someone was talking at dinner last night about Spa and that you had to get your orders in by ten o'clock to get delivery that night. And they used to deliver to each of the separate little dormitory houses. And we ate a great deal of ice cream in the small hours of the morning. Sometimes more than ice cream but we were using up a lot of energy in that point in our lives and it really didn't seem to make any difference. The food at the college remained pretty consistent. There the ice cream was always exceptionally good. Of course, I think they were producing some of it at the Ag. College. It really had nothing to do with the war but it was very noticeable that the milk would have a decided spring-onion taste in the spring when the cows were sent out to pasture. Rather funny.

SH: You mentioned earlier the blackout policy around campus …

JK: Umm-hmm.

SH: … and you were blackout warden.

JK: Yay.

SH: What types of duties were involved in that …

JK: You just had to make sure that all of the windows were such that either they were covered with something very thick or the lights were out. And my roommate set-up in … the closet a little study coup of her own when she got to the point where she had to get something done. We frequently would have blackout alerts on nights before a psychology test or something else. And … she was a very conscientious studier. Still is.

SH: Did you ever run into any conflict or problems with anyone who didn't want to … because an exam or …

JK: No, I think people were very cooperative, just on general principles. And we did give dances on the separate campuses and invite some of the ASTP fellows over and do that kind of activity.

SSH: You had talked earlier about the pacifists that were …

JK: Yay.

SSH: … Were there pacifists here on campus also?

JK: Not … that I noticed in '41.

SSH: And you talked about Norman Thomas, what year did he …was that in '43 before the election that he was here …

JK: No, he was here probably in our senior year, '44. He was asked to speak by one of the churches and did a wonderful job.

SSH: Did you get to meet him or …

JK: Well, I got to shake his hand. That was it. I always regretted that I never got a chance to vote for him because by the time I reached voting age which was twenty-one in those days he was no longer running.

SH: You mentioned that you had thought of joining the service at the age of twenty and even earlier but that your parents wouldn't let you. What is the story behind that?

JK: Men could voluntarily sign up at the age of seventeen. Women, or … and some of them I think were younger, women had to be twenty to sign without parent permission. We were just working too hard. We were doing comparative anatomy which was very well taught by a doctor (Rome?) who was also the most spectacularly woman I had seen in a long time. She had platinum blond hair and dressed to show off her coloring. She was just amazing and she was also extremely bright and knew her subject backwards and forwards. And the interesting thing about the young fraternity fellows on campus is that they all invited her to come and eat at their fraternity houses which she got the biggest kick out of. Then several years after we left college she said she was tired of writing letters of recommendation to medical schools for other women and she went to medical school and got her M.D. and married another M.D. and practiced for many years. But, Jenny Owens Packer, and I don't think Jenny is coming back this … to this reunion, went to … worked for a year after college and then went to Case Western Reserve where she met the man she was … she married. Jenny became a pediatrician and started her practice while seeing him through the long surgical internships and residencies and they both were practicing for many years. He was a rather noted heart surgeon so, it worked … very well for her.

SH: Did Drs. (Latham?) or Dr. (Demoroi?) ever teach NJC?

JK: I don't think so. I don't remember the names.

SH: They were well noted Drs. … Professors over at Rutgers College for comparative anatomy and catanatomy and things like that. And I wondering if you had ever …

JK: Yay, now they had catanatomy at Rutgers for many years, I think. That was a terrible dissection.

SH: What types of classes did you have over here aside from comparative anatomy in preparation for medical school?

JK: Histology, which was quite difficult because I can't draw what I see under the microscope. Embryology which used the same text as the medical school. In fact, I gave my text to Julie when he was in medical school because then he didn't have to buy one. Let's see what the other one was. And, they were doing genetics over here, too.

SSH: When you went on to do your Master's what did your parents think of you giving up your dream of …

JK: They were fine with it. They were in the process of going from one place to another place and it was whatever I wanted to do.

SSH: Did your sister then come to NJC?

JK: No, my sister went to business college briefly. My sister doesn't like to be too far from home. And she dropped out and came back and made an unfortunate marriage but she has four very nice children.

SSH: I'm just wondering if she too had followed you here. Two, your Master's then was in counseling what … did you finish your degree then at NYU?

JK: I finished my degree at NYU in … let's see it took two summers and one semester. And when I was hired to teach in Charleston the principal was very impressed because he was just getting his Master's degree.

SSH: So, you went back to live with your family then down in Charleston.

JK: Yay. I thought, my mother and sister have more social adaptation problems than I do and I thought it might help if I were around for a while. And …

SSH: Where abouts in Charleston did you live?

JK: We lived on Rutledge Avenue. At that time housing was prohibitive in Charleston. There just weren't any houses. They had … none had been built during the Depression; none had been built during the war. So, we lived in the upper floor of a very nice lady's house. And, in fact, the phone service, we had an extension to her phone because you couldn't get a new phone line. When we were married we lived in a house that had been made into apartments from one of those huge old houses and it had this magnificent circular staircase which was lots of fun. And then we decided to start our family we had to find more space.

SSH: You … how … tell us the story about how you met your husband.

JK: Everyone had told me I should meet Erwin. And somehow or other, I was there for several months, and it just never happened. And then Rita (Banoff?) who was a New Jersey girl who had gone to (Goucher?) who was married to a Charlestonian who had been at John Hopkins called and said her brother was coming out of the service and she was going to give a party and could Erwin (Garesh?) pick me up. I said fine. And he did, and I was talking about this last night. He kindof radiated serenity and I was at the point where that really looked very good to me. And I told him he never had a chance which he thought was very funny 'cause he didn't believe me. But it was true. He was like a fourth or fifth generation Charlestonian and didn't know there was any other place in … you could live comfortably, in spite of his three years aboard the carrier Saratoga which he loved. He had already completed dental school and was serving as a medical officer on board and really thoroughly enjoyed it. He died of melanoma; I don't think those three years did him any good in the Pacific sun. But he got to Indiana, Australia, and a lot of places he wanted to go back to and a lot of places he didn't want to go back to.

SSH: When you went to Charleston did you become active in the Jewish community down there, the …

JK: Yes, it was almost impossible not to because the first year I was there I somehow got recruited to teach Sunday school. And I was teaching sixteen-year-olds and I wasn't much older than they were. So, it was an interesting combination. And then after I married I was active with the National Council of Jewish Women and I still am because it is an organization I like. And also with the League of Women Voters which just got a foothold in Charleston in '47. And I am still very busy with them.

SSH: Did you ever think to cont … pursue your medical career at the …

JK: A couple of times, after my second child was born I thought about it. But I thought it might be too difficult for everybody concerned. And then just before I went to (Buefort?), South Carolina, I got an offer … I was forty-five years old, I had two kids in college, I got an offer from Melvin (Eisely?), he was the head of the anatomy department at the Medical University of South Carolina which is in Charleston. And he says come and do a Master's in Anatomy with me and that essentially will get you through your pre-clinical years and then you can figure out what you want to do. I said, "Yay, it is very tempting but there is no way with two kids in college and drop everything and start over."

SSH: Now were you still teaching and working in school systems or …

JK: I … I had started working with a new department, the Department of Mental Retardation, it's a state department. Mostly because Bert (Cecenia?) who was a Rutgers graduate, I think he got his Ph.D. there, too, headed up a very progressive program of habilitation and was opening a new institution. And he was wonderful to work with, he encouraged a lot of project writing, he had ideas that were far ahead of their times. And we wrote a lot of projects. Then (Buefort?) County got a huge federal grant to start including the more severely handicapped kids into the school system. And, after they got the money, they figured out that they needed somebody to tell them what to do with it. So, they called Dr. (Cecenia?) and he says, "Oh, I have just the person for you." And so, I went down there. I didn't know how long I was going to be there. I took … with my two younger kids. And I was there for twenty years. And I developed their entire program for education in all the areas of handicapped.

SSH: So, you moved then to (Buefort?) from Charleston.

JK: Yay.

SSH: How many children … tell us about your children.

JK: I have four children. They are all, of course, exceptional children. They are all very public spirited which is kindof funny in a way. The oldest, my daughter, Sara, has two children. One of whom, (Hadie?), is going to be a recreational therapist as soon as she figures out what which Master's program she wants to work in. And Lee is managing the … an American Bread Company establishment, whatever that is; I don't think I've been in one. Sara is teaching as a … what's called Consulting Teacher in North Carolina. She, too, works largely with mostly disturbed children and deals with their integration into regular classrooms. And so, she can teach them in the regular classroom and out of the regular classroom and work with the teacher that works with them otherwise. And that seems to be very interesting to her and she enjoys it. (Heim?), was born an engineer somehow. He's another one whose handwriting is completely ineligible; I can usually read it but not always. But he can do anything with his hands except write. And he went to Clemson and got his degree in environmental engineering including his Master's. They wanted him to stay on for a Doctorate but he was ready to get out into the real world at that point. And he has his own business and does a lot of small water treatment plants for some of the smaller cities and townships in South Carolina. So, he's got kindof a floating cast of businesses that he works with. Annie, who was THE wildest from the time she was born has become a very stage respectable banker and she is a Regional Vice President with BankAmerica who drives me crazy about "you don't have to go out at night." Who says? [JK] "I'm going to the such and such meeting." [spoken by Annie] "Where is it?" And she leaves these nasty little messages on my answering machine that say, "It's nine o'clock. Why aren't you home, yet?" Terrible. And she …

SH: It's like curfew back at NJC. [laughter]

JK: And she says she's not sure how she survived those years when she was so wild and (wooley?) but she did. She's married to a very nice man who is in the construction business. And she's always making him knock down a wall in their house and do something else and he doesn't want her to get anymore ideas. And then Charlie, Charlie is supposedly employed by the insurance business but he actually does more civic work than anybody else I know. He runs huge fundraising campaigns for places like the Heart Association. He's very active in the A.S.P.C.A. My children are all very animal-oriented. He raises a lot of money for them. He does something called Lunch Buddies which involves corporate groups getting involved with public schools. And groups go and have a lunch buddy assigned to them, a child that they meet with every week. And they provide mentoring and role modeling and all that other good stuff. And that's been very successful; it's worked very nicely. So, Annie says she never knows what to say when people ask how employed Charlie is or where he is employed. He does manage to write a, apparently, a fair share of health and life policies because he is self-supporting so … must be okay.

SSH: So, what is … you had talked about taking … still taking poetry instruction, that kind of thing …

JK: The College of Charleston and most of the South Carolina universities offer practically tuition-free courses to seniors. And so, for twenty-five dollars you can take pretty much anything you want if there is room. And I went back and started doing first the poetry sessions with Paul Allen who is a wonderful inspirational teacher. He's also a funny person. And I had written on and off for years and, so, I started doing some work with Paul. And then I took a Physical Anthropology course which I loved. As well as, this year I took one in the Gender of Anthropology which is fascinating. I've taken philosophy courses of various kind and religion courses of various kind. It's been very interesting. And what's nice is that the undergraduates are very nice to us. They treat us just like anybody else.

SSH: What would, in reflecting back, what do you think was the greatest influence that NJC had on the woman that we are interviewing today?

JK: I don't know. I think we somehow, and it's an intangible, you can't put your finger on it, somehow it's made almost all of us 'cause I have just gotten some surveys from our class, very active in our communities, in civic and cultural and, you name it, between the libraries and the hospitals and the rest of it. We are all still, and we are all now retired, involved very heavily with those kinds of activities. I serve as a Guardian at (Litum?) which is a volunteer job with family court and, in particular, with abused and neglected children. And the judges pay a lot of attention to the Guardians because we have no axe to grind. We can make whatever recommendations we see is in the child's best interest. And I have courses, some cases that I have followed for as long as four and five years. It's very difficult to work things through of inclusion in some cases.

SSH: Are their any other thoughts that you'd like to leave on the tape?

JK: I don't think so. I enjoy writing poetry; I do a fair amount of it these days. I belong to the Poetry Society of South Carolina and meet with a writer's group once a month and that helps.

SH: Who are some of …

SSH: Go ahead.

SH: Who are some of your favorite poets?

JK: Well, I kindof like people like John (Ashbury?) and Charles (Wright?) where you're not real sure what they're saying sometimes. That's … interesting. But I like most of them. I get annoyed with Alex Ginsburg because I know people from his family and he had nothing to rebel against but he sure as heck rebelled against it anyhow. But, very entertaining.

SSH: Well, alright. I thank you very much for taking time.

JK: Thank you.

SSH: And, if there are any thoughts that you would like to put down on paper to add to the interview we'd love to have …

JK: Okay …

SSH: … you do that.

JK: … I'll do that.

SSH: … And we thank you very much. This concludes the interview.

JK: Thank you both.

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

Reviewed by Cecilia M. Navas //01

Reviewed by Sandra Stewart Holyoak //01

Reviewed by Janice L. Karesh //01

Targum Cover 11 22 1963a

 

"HERE IS A BULLETIN...": Memories of the Day Camelot Died

 

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

Images from that day and the events that followed remain etched in our collective consciousness—the open-top Presidential limo traveling down the people-lined streets of Dallas; President Lyndon Baines Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One beside a shaken First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy; John, Jr. saluting his father's passing casket at the funeral in DC.

Those who lived through that traumatic period can recall both their initial shock and the nuances of their reactions.

In "HERE IS A BULLETIN...": Memories of the Day Camelot Died, ROHA presents a sampling of stories related to the Kennedy tragedy, a touchstone event for multiple generations.

The Rutgers Targum (campus newspaper) cover from its November 22, 1963 issue. (Image courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.)

 

Voices of Veterans Banner 1

Voices of Veterans

 

Voices of Veterans is an online exhibit showcasing passages from oral history interviews of veterans who served in the Second World War and in wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. ROHA created this exhibit in commemoration of Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT MORE ONLINE EXHIBITS 

 

 

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