BIRTHDAY | Robert Caro, 85

L to R: Alec Baldwin, Jules Feiffer,
Robert Caro, East Hampton Library,
2015. Photo by JTMarlin.

October 30, 2020—Happy 85th birthday, Robert Caro. A New Yorker by birth, Caro is known for his two in-depth biographies, of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson (five volumes so far, or is it six?), to which he has devoted his lifetime. 

These congratulations are a reprise of the Happy Birthday posted here on your 80th, five years ago.

Congratulations also on the fine tribute to you today from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, from which this is extracted:

As an investigative reporter for Newsday, Robert Caro wrote why a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay would be a bad idea. It was promoted by Robert Moses, the urban planner. Caro had been convinced his articles would reverse the decision to build the bridge, but the state’s Assembly voted to begin construction. Caro was stunned. He said: 

I got in the car and drove home to Long Island, and I kept thinking to myself: ‘Everything you’ve been doing is baloney. You’ve been writing under the belief that power in a democracy comes from the ballot box. But here’s a guy who has never been elected to anything, who has enough power to turn the entire state around, and you don’t have the slightest idea how he got it.

Caro's latest book, on his
work habits. Previewed in
The New Yorker.

Caro took seven years to write his 1,300-page biography of Moses, The Power Broker (1974). He was so broke while he was writing the book that his wife sold their Long Island house without telling him. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction [he won again with his LBJ biography]. To write biography well, Robert Caro believes it must read like fiction. He says:

Rhythm matters. Mood matters. Sense of place matters. All these things we talk about with novels, yet I feel that for history and biography to ­accomplish what they should accomplish, they have to pay as much attention to these devices as novels do. 

Caro keeps a strict routine when writing, like wearing a suit and a tie and keeping the same hours every day. He interviewed LBJ's speechwriter 22 times and lived in Texas for several years while doing research.

Comment: I was introduced to Robert Caro in New York City in 1974 when The Power Broker first came out, I think by Julius C. C. Edelstein, who was a fellow professor when I taught in the CUNY system in the 1970s. 

I have met the Caros several times since then at the Authors' Night in East Hampton, where they have a summer home. He has described both of his biographies as investigations into power—how it is acquired and how it is used. He has said: “The power of the historian is the power of the truth, a very basic thing.”

The Guardian published a fine interview with Caro last year that includes his wife Ina. She was Caro's sole research collaborator and recently wrote two books of her own on traveling in France. One of her books describes the palace that Fouquet built; it inspired Alice and me to visit it when we were in France recently.

THE FREE LIFE | 50 Years Ago

September 18, 2020—This week's East Hampton Star has a Guestwords (op-ed) tribute by LTV's Archivist, Genie Chipps Henderson, to "The Free Life" balloon that was launched from George Sid Miller's farm in Springs 50 years ago. In the aerial photo above, Accabonac Harbor is in the background.

The three balloonists were: 

• Actress Pamela Brown, 28, daughter of Kentucky Congressman John Y. Brown Sr. and sister of Kentucky Fried Chicken CEO John Y. Brown, Jr.
• Her husband Rodney (Rod) Anderson, 32.
• Famed English balloonist Malcolm Brighton, 32. 

It was Brighton's 100th balloon ascent. It was also his last. I have written about this flight  in prior years, for example, here: http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-21-end-of-free-life.html.

The balloon was first assembled over several weeks in the field behind 775 (now 771) Springs Fireplace Road. It was then brought north on the same road to Miller's larger field —a pasture for horses from which the horses were temporarily removed—for inflation, filming, and launching.

As the flight plans moved along, some nagging questions arose:

• Only one of the three was an experienced balloonist.
• The balloonist was not involved in the design of the balloon, and had issues with it.
• Above all, the design did not allow easy separation of the gondola from the balloon.
• Another experienced balloonist pulled out because he decided it was too risky.
• On the day before the launch, a couple of tears were found in the balloon. One of them was described by farmer Miller as a "hole in the side" that was "patched". 
• A crowd came to see them off. The press was out in force—a problem, because it meant rescheduling would have wasted their time and lost face for the crew.
• It was beautiful launch day. What could go wrong?
• The departure was fueled by champagne.

The momentum of a sendoff makes turning back difficult. I am reminded of this when I speculate why it has been so hard for some to self-quarantine or accept a lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19. Momentum keeps us wanting to stick to the old plan, the old way.

After they took off, a PanAm pilot warned them about a cold front coming south. When they reached Newfoundland, they ran into a storm. Brighton, in a clear and professional voice, notified the Gander Delta weather station that they were ditching the balloon. They were coming down over water. That, alas, was the last anyone heard from the balloon.

Presumably Brighton was planning on cutting the lines that held the balloon to the gondola and the crew would then get into the onboard raft and be rescued. One could imagine that in the storm the crew could not cut them fast enough. If they did cut loose and made it to the raft, it would have been a challenge for the 1970-vintage operation at Gander to send out a rescue mission to get to them quickly. They were hundreds of miles away.

No one ever found any trace of The Free Life.

Genie Henderson was a close friend of fellow Kentuckian Pamela Brown. Here is her story: https://www.easthamptonstar.com/guestwords-opinion/2020917/guestwords-50-years-later-free-life. A plaque is being prepared to mark the pasture where the flight was launched.

Brighton's daughter, who was eight years old at the time, has initiated a special site to honor the quest represented by The Free Life—https://www.thefreelifeballoon.com/. It includes a compelling movie about the flight.

CONSTITUTION DAY | 233rd Anniversary Celebration

September 17, 2020. On this day in 1787 the United States Constitution was signed by delegates at the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention. 

The Signing of the United States Constitution by Louis S. Glanzman, 1987. 

Commissioned by State Societies of the Daughters of the American 

Revolution. Independence National Historical Park Collection.

We may forget that the Constitutional Convention was created to raise money for the central government so it could maintain a military to stop piracy. The central government was supposed to provide such services but it didn't have the money to pay for them. It didn't have an effective means of collecting its debts.

The war with Britain had officially ended four years before, but the Articles of Confederation created by the Second Continental Congress were weak. After overthrowing an imperious monarch, George III, the Americans had no taste for another strong central authority. The United States had no real executive, just a president of the Congress. The Second Continental Congress had thrown the government-creating job back to each of the 13 colonies. They did their job, and took on what they could, but some things could only be done centrally, like maintaining an Army and a Navy.

By 1787, not one of the states was up-to-date on its federal taxes. The central government had no way to force collection. Meanwhile, pirates were attacking American ships, and the central government could afford neither to pay them off nor defend the ships. Troops were deserting, and the national military was unable to come to the aid of states when they needed it.

James Madison and other leaders organized the Constitutional Convention to enable the central government to collect taxes and provide reliable services. In May 1787, delegates arrived in Philadelphia and there spent the next four months rewriting the Articles of Confederation. It was hot and buggy. The 55 highly educated, and by-now politically seasoned, delegates averaged 42 years of age:

• George Washington was elected president and rarely spoke. 
• Alexander Hamilton was absent from much of the deliberations but emerged as the principal author of the Federalist Papers, arguing why the Constitution should be ratified. 
• Governor Morris was a witty man with a peg leg who wrote the famous preamble to the Constitution. 
• Benjamin Franklin, 81, could no longer walk and had to be carried around Philadelphia in a sedan chair.
• James Madison was constantly in attendance, taking notes and arguing strenuously for a more powerful central government. A small man, 5'6" and weighing 120 pounds, he became known as "the Father of the Constitution.” On the final day of the Constitutional Convention, he wrote: "“Franklin, looking towards the President's Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often … looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”

Today, the National Archives is celebrating the 233rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution with special virtual programs for all ages, including book talks,  public programs, and interactive webinars. The National Archives is the permanent home of the original Constitution. See the Archives special Celebrating Constitution Day page for information about its public programs, family activities, and online resources.

SHIPS | MS Boissevain (1937-1968)

The MS Boissevain, built 1937, named after Jan Boissevain (1836-1904)

September 13, 2020—The MS [Motor Ship, sometimes MV for Motor Vessel] Boissevain was officially launched on June 3, 1937 in Hamburg. The passenger ship was impressive for its day. It and the other two ships built at the same time were intended for luxury service in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

 

The MS Boissevain was named after Jan Boissevain, older brother (by six years) of Charles Boissevain (1842-1927), who was your blogger's great-grandfather. A friend and third cousin, Ben Boissevain of Ascento Capital, is great-grandson of Jan Boissevain.

Today I received some photos I hadn't seen before, from Thomas E. Brown. They were in a photo album he purchased in the 1990s from a German dealer, Hermann Historica. It has many photos of the shipbuilding dock at Boehm and Voss during the 1930s. It contains  details about the MS Boissevain and the two other large passenger-cargo liners of the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM). 

1. The first series shows the launching party's arrival at the B+V shipyard 45 in Hamburg on June 3, 1937. They are met by shipyard dignitaries. Here is a sample.

Launching party arrives, met by shipyard executives.

2. Ellegonda Duranda (E. D.) Boissevain is in many photos—she is the young lady in front at with the cake-like hat, dark coat and bouquet of flowers. She is your blogger's third cousin, Jan Boissevain's great-granddaughter.

Ellegonda Duranda Boissevain (born 1914) is in front at right. She later married
Eduard Veltman and subsequently Arthur Anton Kunzil.

3. The white-haired gentleman in the first photo is also seen making a speech in the launching photo below. 

Unidentified white-haired man presides.

4. Then they all leave.

Dignitaries depart.

Each of the three ships was named after one of the KPM founders/Directors— Jan Boissevain, Mr. Tegelberg and Mr. Ruys. These three Dutch liners were all launched in 1937, yet strangely each ship was built by a different builder, as well as one outside of the Netherlands, yet each ship was identical, with minor interior décor differences. 

Once completed, each ship reached their homeport in Asia, but they rarely visited the Netherlands, which was invaded without warning or pretext by Hitler in 1940. Instead, the ships operated as part of the most exotic and far-ranging ocean liner service in the world. 

The Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij — “KPM” or “Royal Packet Navigation Company"—  operated extended voyages from Hong Kong, Manila, Saigon, Bangkok, Singapore, Batavia, Rodriguez, Mauritius, Réunion, Tamatave, Lourenço Marques, Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, and Cape Town. Also Zanzibar, Mombasa, Mahé, Belawan Deli, Shanghai Hong Kong.  Here's another photo of the MS Boissevain.

Speed trials for the MS Boissevain were a success.

Their services varied, and their schedules would include South America, after their WW2 troop-carrying duties. The three ships were originally built with luxurious and extremely spacious accommodations for just 82 passengers in First Class, 72 passengers in Second Class, and 500 Third Class passengers. 

First Class passengers had specially designed public rooms. Two deluxe suites had glass- enclosed private verandas. There were spacious promenade and sports decks and a Lido Cafe opening onto a tiled outdoor Pool. The passengers included very wealthy people in First Class, International and Asian tourists, and migrants to a new land. In their 30 years of operation, the MS Boissevain and its two sister ships became greatly loved for exemplary service and fine cuisine, provided in elegant interiors. 

From the Blohm & Voss slipway, the MS Boissevain entered the water for the first time.  Once afloat, she was towed to her Blohm & Voss "Fit-Out" berth, where she was fitted out, had her funnel placed atop and masts added. When she was completed in October she headed out to sea for her speed trials, which reached an excellent 18.1 knots at top speed. 

The Boissevain was delivered to KPM in Yokohama, Japan on December 1, 1937. KPM ensured the ship was fully crewed and stocked up to commence her first voyage in early January 1938. The advance 1938 MS Boissevain schedule was published by KPM prior to the MS Boissevain being completed, with an artist's impression of The Boissevain on the cover. 

During World War II they became troop carriers and their glamorous interiors were sacrificed to wartime needs for maximum capacity for troops. The MS Boissevain was renamed HMS (Her Majesty's Ship) Boissevain because the boat was in the service of the Dutch Queen. The ships docked with troops in the Dutch East indies in Batavia and Tandjong-Priok.

After the war and independence for Sukarno's Indonesia, in 1947 the ships were refurbished and reglamorized in Hong Kong. They went into service and in 1961 were refurbished again, with a new branding as part of the Royal Interocean Line (RIL). The ships were scrapped in 1968.

To help sort out family relationships to Jan Boissevain (1836-1904), the shipowner and co-founder of KPM, here is an abbreviated Boissevain family tree. Jan is the older brother of Charles Boissevain, who is your blogger's great-grandfather. The numerous descendants of Jan are called the Jantjes and similarly numerous descendants of his younger brother are called the Charlestjes.

Sources: 

Timetable: http://www.timetableimages.com/maritime/images/list.htm Short link: https://bit.ly/2Zx8tAd. 

KPM: http://ssmaritime.com/KPM-Boissevain-Tegelberg-Ruys-1.htm Short link: https://bit.ly/3ir4DQN Short link: https://bit.ly/35u2noc.

Family Tree: Your blogger based on the Nederlands' Patriciaat ("Blue Book").

WW2 | Who Mostly Enforced the Blackouts?

 August 12, 2020—Wearing a mask in Covid-19 time is akin to blacking out your windows, or turning off lights, during World War 2.

Who enforced the rules then? The answer is they were volunteer air raid wardens. They would patrol the streets looking for lights in windows, and they would knock on the doors of people who were letting light appear that could guide enemy bombers.

Was there much violation of the rules? No, because everyone understood it was in the interest of the neighborhood not to be visible from the air at night. 

More here. 

WW2 HOLLAND | Jimmy Huizinga, Wally van Hall

August 2, 2020—I wrote something about the visit of Wally and Gijsbert van Hall to New York City in 1929 (!). The two brothers had jobs on Wall Street. They spent time with Jimmy Huizinga, son of the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1942 for his anti-fascist views and died in prison in 1945.

I just received a short memory by someone who became, a generation or two later, another friend of Jimmy Huizinga. My correspondent's name is Rider McDowell, a writer who lives with his wife and sons in Pebble Beach, California. This is what he wrote to me, posted here with his permission:

Rider McDowell (L) and Jimmy Huizinga, 
in Gassin, France.

Jimmy was my surrogate grandfather. Great guy. His wife was the former Mary Cookson, who’d previously been married to Johnny Churchill. They were a great couple, took me under their wing when I was 19.

I was introduced to them in London through a girlfriend’s family. The Huizingas were looking for “an artist in residence” to work as a part time handyman on their property in Gassin [just west of Saint-Tropez on the Côte d'Azur], for the spring and summer season. Jimmy had just turned 70 and Mary used to say she was born on the same day as JFK.

I was an aspiring writer and Jimmy read and critiqued my first mystery novel as well as my first play and several short stories. They were great fun and we became very close and would get together for years afterwards in London for dinner, etc.

The first time I met Jimmy we walked from his property in Gassin to one being constructed by industrialist Gunter Sachs, an enormous ornate plate glass, bird cage of a house. And Jimmy said, “Look at this monstrosity and look at all that glass. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” And I said, “I think so.” And with a chuckle we each picked up a rock, and threw it at this enormous window, and then ran.

Even though Jimmy was 50 years older than me, we were like pals. We'd drive around to various expatriate parties around St Tropez. Jimmy knew everyone. My English girlfriend would hang with Jimmy's wife, and Jimmy and I would raise hell at the parties, meeting people and having constant laughs.

Once we went skiing for the day, some French Alp. We drove all the way there and back in one day. When we returned, he made me drag him into his house, feigning two broken legs to Mary, who almost fainted. 

He was a very popular guy, a lot of fun, but very dedicated to his own writing and led a responsible life in general. Twice I lived in their 'cabanon' in Gassin, and thereafter we would see each other in London, and then we communicated regularly by mail and phone when I moved to NYC. 

They had a delightful little mews house in Lennox Gardens Mews, in the Knightsbridge neighborhood of Westminster. They would rent out when they went to Gassin each year. David Niven came by to rent it once—his daughters were taking some course at Sotheby’s—and Mary was impressed that Niven appreciated the furniture in the house, which was quite old and eclectic. 

Jimmy felt that Niven's wife was bad news. "There's something wrong with that woman, I'd stake my life on it," he told me. He said he'd followed her around during their tour of the house fearing she might steal something. Jimmy christened me his American grandson and there was an aspect of this to our friendship. 

The advice he offered me about life and a career and what sort of people to avoid, etc., was extremely helpful, as I had little of this from my own tenuous homefront. Looking back I can see that Jimmy saw me partly as the son he never had. Just a great guy.

NYC MARCH FOR CIVIL RIGHTS | NAACP's James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson, c. 1917.

July 28, 2020—On this day in 1917, 10,000 Blacks organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) marched on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Credit for this is given to novelist-poet-songwriter James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), who was also a lawyer, a U.S. consul overseas and a leader of the NAACP.

Behind the scenes at the NAACP was Inez Milholland Boissevain's father, John E. Milholland, who was the NAACP's first Treasurer. Inez, of course, died in 1916 and her father would still be grieving.

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was a hotel headwaiter and his mother was a teacher at the segregated Stanton School, which  Johnson attended until he went to his school. He grew up in a middle-class home, and his mother encouraged him to pursue his interests in reading and music.

Johnson attended high school and college at Atlanta University. He received his bachelor’s degree 1894. After college, Johnson became the principal of Stanton School, and expanded the school to include a high school. He also began studying law.  In 1898, he was admitted to the Florida Bar, the first Black person to be admitted.

Johnson continued to serve as principal and began practicing law. In addition, he wrote  poetry and songs. In 1901, Johnson decided to pursue a career in writing. He and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, left for New York City to write songs for musicals. They composed about two hundred songs for Broadway.
I
n New York, Johnson also became involved in politics. In 1904, he served as treasurer for the Colored Republican Club. In 1906, the Roosevelt Administration appointed Johnson as the United States consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he served as consul in Corinto, Nicaragua until 1913. In addition to his service as consul, during this time, Johnson anonymously published his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912).

In 1916, Johnson accepted the position of field secretary for the NAACP.  He worked at opening new branches and expanding membership. In 1920, the NAACP appointed him executive secretary. In this position, he was able to bring attention to racism, lynching and segregation. After ten years of serving as executive secretary, Johnson accepted a creative writing teaching position at Fisk University.

Johnson developed his own philosophy on lessening racism in America. While W.E.B. Du Bois advocated intellectual development and Booker T. Washington advocated industrial training to combat racism, Johnson believed it was important for Blacks to produce great literature and art. By doing so, Johnson held that Blacks could demonstrate their intellectual equality and advance their placement in America. 

One of his more popular works was God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927). In 1927, he also reissued his first novel under his own name. Johnson died in 1938, after a train hit the car his wife was driving.

Sources: NAACP History.

BIRTH | John Ashbery

John Ashbery

July 28, 2020—Today is John Ashbery's birthday. I was privileged to live in the same building in Chelsea, Manhattan for half his life. We shared the management skills of an overqualified young woman who cleaned our apartments. 

He was a generous man, and did a reading an an exhibition of the art of Brigid Marlin. He had just published "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (1974) and Brigid was similarly fascinated with convexity and had done several self-portraits of that nature. John Ashbery when I spoke with him was always thoughtful and instructive. 

Here is what Garrison Keillor says about him:

He was born in Rochester, New York (1927), and raised on a farm near Lake Ontario. He worked as an art critic in Paris and New York in the 1950s and '60s, and his poetry has been influenced by abstract expressionist art. It's also often called "difficult." "I'm quite puzzled by my work too, along with a lot of other people," he told Contemporary Authors. "I was always intrigued by it, but at the same time a little apprehensive and sort of embarrassed about annoying the same critics who are always annoyed by my work. I'm kind of sorry that I cause so much grief." He's won nearly every American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a MacArthur "Genius" grant. In 2009, he became the first living poet to be the subject of one of the Library of America's "Collected Poems of ..." series. The Oxonian Review remarked: "It is a fitting honour for a man whose decades-long reign as one of the high priests of the contemporary American poetry scene has always been something of a paradox. Having received nearly every major award for achievement in the humanities, he continues to incite considerable debate as to whether his poems 'mean' anything at all." Ashbery told the London Times: "I don't find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which is by fits and starts and by indirection. I don't think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life."

BIRTH | A Little Engine that Could, July 25, 1814

George Stephenson (1781-1848)
Father of Railways

July 25, 2020—On this day in 1814, English engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848) introduced his first steam locomotive, a little engine that could named Blücher.

It was used to carry coal from Newcastle upon Tyne to the rest of the world by sea.

This was the first-ever practical locomotive, able to haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph. It was used to tow coal wagons along the wagonway from Killingworth to the coal staiths at Wallsend for transfer to ships.

From this first locomotive, Stephenson quickly developed better ones, using his "steam blast" technology. He created his famed Rocket locomotive in 1829.

Born June 9, 1781, in Wylam, Northumberland, England, he died August 12, 1848 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. In addition to inventing the first practical locomotive, he created the first railway line in 1825. He is properly called the “Father of Railways.” 

He was the son of a mechanic and so learned to operate a Newcomen atmospheric-steam engine by 19 years if age. The engine was used to pump out a coal mine near Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He enrolled in night school after following the news about Napoleon, and he learned how to read and write.

His knowledge of steam engines won him the post of engine wright, chief mechanic, at  the Killingworth colliery. In 1813, he visited a neighboring colliery to examine a “steam boiler on wheels” constructed to haul coal out of the mines. It was promising but broke down frequently.

With the support of Lord Ravensworth, principal owner of Killingworth, Stephenson built the Blücher. Not satisfied, he sought to improve his locomotive’s power and introduced the steam blast, redirecting exhaust steam up a chimney, pulling air after it and increasing the draft. The new design made the locomotive practical and opened up the railway age.

R.I.P. | John Lewis, 1940-2020

Rep. John Lewis receiving the President's
Medal of Freedom, 2010.

The following appreciation of Rep. John Lewis is from guest blogger Doug Clemmons, a Baltimore-based attorney who wrote earlier about a life-changing meeting with the late Elijah M. Cummings. 

The late Honorable John Lewis was a living American hero for his entire adult life.

He is worthy of the praise you would give someone injured on the field of battle fighting for the freedom of Americans—even those who never knew on a personal level the soldier’s sacrifice or name.

Fortunately I had the opportunity to serve, and learn from, a Congressman that provided me the freedom to attend many hearings and events where Lewis was a speaker. John Lewis was close to (and looked like) the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, another wonderful leader I had the great privilege to meet and was not always properly recognized, but was always there for his constituents.

These two Congressmen shared a trait I would describe as an aura. You knew if you were wrong, you would be in for an earnest and peaceful fight that would not end until you changed my way of thinking.

The New York Times obituary of John Lewis summarized: “Images of his beating at Selma shocked the nation and led to swift passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was later called the conscience of the Congress.”

Doug Clemmons, Esq.

It has been a year for deaths of those who worked on behalf of their brothers. Another Atlantan and an original Freedom Rider, Reverend Cordy Tindell Vivian, affectionately known as C.T., also died this past weekend. He was 15 years older than Lewis and an 18-year veteran of the civil rights movement. He had participated in a lunch counter sit-in in 1947, when he risked his life alongside another minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Congressman Lewis.

I am thankful for the right to vote and I am thankful for the contributions of all the Black leaders to the cause of freedom and equality. In times like these I have special reason to be grateful for their legacies and the courage they showed in building them.

FOREIGN FLYERS | July 10, Battle of Britain Starts

A German map for the invasion of England.

July 10, 2020—On this day in 1940 the Battle of Britain began. It was to be the beginning of Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's invasion of England.

It was intended to be a preliminary air battle of a few days. It ended up becoming a standoff, as the Royal Air Force held off the Luftwaffe for the entire summer.

Of the RAF flyers, Sir Winston Churchill said on August 20, 1940: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

"The Few" included 550 foreign flyers, out of 2,900 RAF pilots. The foreign flyers  came from Commonwealth countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as expatriates from Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and other countries under Nazi occupation.

The Polish No. 303 fighter squadron shot down 126 Luftwaffe planes during the battle, more than any other Allied unit. The RAF’s top ace was Josef Frantisek, a Czech aviator who claimed 17 aerial victories.

Some were from the United States. One famous flyer was 29-year-old Billy Fiske, who  was a gold-medal winner for bobsledding at the Winter Olympics.

At the end of his teaching year at the University of Maryland, where he was a mathematics teacher, my uncle Willem van Stockum signed up to teach flying to the Royal Canadian Air Force. As conditions worsened in his native Holland, he volunteered to be a bomber pilot for the RAF, although at 33 he was considered old for this job. He left from his base in Melbourne, Yorkshire on June 9 and was shot down a few hours later. It was during the week of D-Day. He is buried near where his plane came down, in Laval.

He was listed as Dutch, and he has a tombstone provided by the Dutch Government. But he was trained as a mathematician at Trinity College, Dublin, obtained his degree from the University of Edinburgh, was living in the United States when he signed up and was seconded by the RCAF. All these countries claim him.

His Flying Officer (pilot) counterpart on the other plane shot down that night was from Australia.

BIRTH | Dorothy Thompson, 1893

Dorothy Thompson,
Time Cover, June 1939

July 9, 2020—This day in 1893 was born journalist Dorothy Celene Thompson,   in Lancaster, New York. Time magazine poll ranked her as one of the two most important woman in the United States, along with Eleanor Roosevelt. She married novelist Sinclair Lewis.

A foreign correspondent for the New York Evening Post in the 1920s, she later became its bureau chief in Berlin. She so angered Adolf Hitler with her reporting on the Nazis, that he personally expelled her. 

Her syndicated column, On the Record, appeared three times a week in as many as 170 papers, and she also had a popular radio show that was listened to by overseas troops during World War II. She died in 1961.

In early 1944 she wrote a column on, and devoted a radio show to, the idea that soldiers fighting for the Allies needed a vision of the postwar world to motivate them. 

My uncle Willem van Stockum, then a volunteer bomber pilot at the 10 Squadron RAF base in Melbourne, Yorkshire, responded to his sister, Hilda van Stockum. He said that visions of the future do not motivate soldiers. 

What motivates soldiers, Willem said, is outrage at tyranny. 

His letter to my mother on this subject was published as an article, "A Soldier's Creed," in The Horn Book in its Christmas 1944 issue under the authorship of "A Bomber Pilot." It has been widely referenced and quoted. 

Willem van Stockum was shot down over France in June 1944 on his sixth mission, during the week of D-Day, attacking Nazi supply lines before and after the Normandy invasion. He is buried with his crew and that of another plane shot down on the same mission, in France. A book on his life was written by Robert P. Wack, Time Bomber (Boissevain Books, 2014).

Willem van Stockum, RAF. 

I didn’t join the war to improve the Universe; in fact, I am sick and tired of the eternal sermons on the better world we are going to build when this war is over. I hate the disloyalty to the past twenty years. Apparently people think that life in those twenty years, which cover most of my conscious existence, was so terrible that no-one can be expected to fight for it. We must attempt to dazzle people with some brilliant schemes leading, probably, to some horrible Utopia, before we can ask them to fight.
I detest that point of view. I hate the idea of people throwing their lives away for slum-clearance projects or forty-hour weeks or security and exchange commissions. It is a grotesque and horrible thought. There are so many better ways of achieving this than diving into enemy guns. Lives are precious things and are of a different order and entail a different scale of values than social systems, political theories, or art.
“Why are we not given a cause?” some people ask. I do not understand this question. It seems so plain to me. There are millions and millions of people who are shot, persecuted and tortured daily in Europe. The assault on so many of our fellow human beings makes some of us tingle with anger and gives us an urge to do something about it. That, and that alone, makes some of us feel strongly about the war. All the rest is vapid rationalization. All this talk about philosophy, the degeneration of art and literature, the poisoning of Nazi youth, which the Nazi system entails, and which we all rightly condemn, is still not the reason why we fight and why we are willing to risk our lives.
Here, let us say, is a soldier. He asks himself, “Why should I die?” You would tell him: “To preserve our civilization.” When the soldier replies: “To Hell with your civilization; I never thought it so hot,” you take him up wrongly when you sit down and say to yourself: “Well, after all, maybe it wasn’t so hot,” and then brightly tap him on the shoulder and say: “Well, I’ve thought of a better idea. I know this civilization wasn’t so hot, but you go and die anyway and we’ll fix up a really good one after the war.” I say you take him up wrong because his remark: “To Hell with your civilization” doesn’t really mean that he is not seriously concerned about our civilization. He is simply revolted by the idea of dying for ANY civilization. Civilization simply isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to die for. It is something to enjoy and something to help build up because it’s fun, and that is that, and that is all.
When a man jumps into the fire to save his wife he doesn’t justify himself by saying that his wife was so civilized that it was worth the risk! There is only one reason why a man will throw himself into mortal combat and that is because there is nothing else to do and doing nothing is more intolerable than the fear of death. I could stand idly by and see every painting by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo thrown into a bonfire and feel no more than a deep regret, but throw one small, insignificant Polish urchin on the same bonfire and, by God, I’d pull him out or else. I fight quite simply for that and I cannot see what other reasons there are. At least, I can see there are reasons, but they are not the reasons that motivate me.
During the first two years of the war when I was an instructor at an American University in close contact with American youth and in close contact with the vital isolationist question in the States, I often felt that there was much insincerity, conscious or unconscious, on our, the Interventionist, side of the argument. We had strong views on the danger of isolationism for the United States. We thought, rightly, that for the sake of self-interest and self-preservation the United States should take every step to ensure the defeat of the Nazi criminals. But however sound our arguments, our own motives and intensity of feeling did not spring from those arguments but from an intense passion for common righteousness and decency.
Suppose it could have been proved to us at that time that the participation of the United States in the stamping out of organized murder, rape and torture in Europe could only take place at great cost to the United States, while not doing so would in no way impair her security. Would we not still have prayed that our country might do something? And would we not have been proud to see her do something?
There is an appalling timidity and false shame among intellectuals. The common man in the last war went to fight quite simply as a crusader. I am not talking about politics now, I am not either asserting or denying that England declared war from purely generous and noble considerations, but I am asserting that the common man went and fought with the rape of Belgium foremost in his mind and saw himself as an avenger of wrong.
After the war the common man went quietly back to his home. The intellectuals, however, upon coming back, ashamed of their one lapse of finding themselves in agreement with every Tom, Dick and Harry, must turn around and deride the things they were ready to give their lives for. As they were the only vocal group, the opinion became firmly established that the last war was a grave mistake and that anyone who got killed in it was a sucker.
And now, in this war, these intellectuals are hoist with their own petard. They lack the nerve and honesty to represent the American doughboy to himself for what he is. They do not give him the one picture in his mind which would stimulate his imagination and which would make him see beyond the fatigues, the mud, the boredom and the fear. The picture is there for anyone to paint who has a gift for words. It is a simple picture and a true picture and no one who has ever sat as a small child and listened with awe to a fairy story can fail to understand. The intellectuals, however, have made fun of the picture and so they won t use It.
But some day an American doughboy in an American tank will come lurching into some small Polish, Czech or French village and it may fall to his lot to shoot the torturers and open the gates of the village jail. And then he will understand.
There is a lot of talk among our intellectuals about our youth. Our youth is supposed to want a change, a new order, a revolution or what not. But it is my conviction that that is emphatically NOT what our youth wants. Have you ever been in a picture house on a Saturday afternoon, when it is filled with children and some old Western movie is ending in a race of time between the hero and the villain? Have you seen the rapt attention, the glowing faces, the clenched fists? What our young men really want is to be able to give that same concentrated attention and emotional participation, this time to reality, and this time as heroes and not as spectators, that they were able to give to unsubstantial shadows, before long words and cliches had killed their imaginations. Killed them so dead that they can no longer see even reality itself imaginatively.
It is up to the intellectuals to rekindle the thing they have tried to destroy. It is as simple as St. George and the Dragon. Why not have the courage to point out that St. George fought the dragon because he wanted to liberate a captive and not because he wanted to lead a better life afterwards? Some day, sometime, my picture of an American doughboy in a Polish village will become true. Wouldn’t it be better for him then to have the cross of St. George on his banner than a long rigmarole about a better world?
As long as our intellectuals and leaders do not have the courage to risk being thought sentimental and out-of-date and are not willing to stress that nations as well as individuals are entitled to their acts of heroism and chivalry, they will never be able to give our youth what it needs.
It is true that every fairy story ends with the words: “and they lived happily ever after.” How irritating a child would be, though, if it interrupted its mother at every sentence to ask: “But, Mummy, will they live happily ever afterwards?” It simply isn’t the point of the fairy story and it isn’t the point of this war.
Presumably we won’t live happily ever after this war. But just as a fairy story helps to increase a child’s awareness and wonder at the world, so this war may make us more aware of one another. Perhaps we shall learn, and perhaps some things will be better organized. I hope so. I believe so. But only if we engage in this war with our hearts as well as our minds.
For goodness’ sake let us stop this empty political theorizing according to which a man would have to have a University degree in social science before he could see what he was fighting for. It is all so simple, really, that a child can understand it.

BIRTH | William Strunk Jr. of Strunk & White

William Strunk, Jr.

July 1, 2020—This day in 1869 was born William Strunk Jr., born in Cincinnati, Ohio (1869). He was an English professor at Cornell, where he published his grammar book The Elements of Style,

E. B. White

He intended it as a reference for his students, and one of those students was Elwyn Brooks White. E.B. White went on to become a famous writer for the New Yorker (he wrote Charlotte's Web), and in 1957, White was commissioned to revise and expand the original grammar book. The new version of the book, commonly referred to as "Strunk & White," has sold more than 10 million copies.

WOODIN | Index to Biography

Will Woodin (L) and FDR.

I am writing a biography of William H. Woodin, the first Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was President of American Car & Foundry (ACH) in 1917-33, once one of the 20 companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  He was also Chairman of American Locomotive (ALCo). The book is nearing completion and here is a first stab at an index (page numbers to be inserted when the book is paginated). Thanks to Holly Chin, summer intern from Wellesley College, for her assistance with this index and with other research and publication tasks to get this book in front of the public! John Tepper Marlin

1932 General Election

Acheson, Dean

Alexander Hamilton, Musical

American Car & Foundry (ACF)

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Armenian War

Atherton, California

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

Banks

Berwick Railroad

Berwick Store Company

Berwick, Pennsylvania

Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania

Brains Trust

Brough, Louise, Winner of Woodin Cup

Brown, John

Bryan, William Jennings

Bryn Mawr College

Bureau of Engraving and Printing

Bush, George W., 43rd President

Carnegie, Andrew

Charles I

Cintas, Oscar Benjamin

Civil War, U.S.

Clark, Sarah

Cleveland, Grover, 22nd and 24th President

Coal

Coin Collecting

Columbia County, Pennsylvania

Columbia University

Committee on Banking and Currency

Commodities Futures Modernization Act

Connecticut

Cotton, Rev. John

Cromwell, Oliver

Cuba

Davenport, Rev. John

Devon Colony, The

Devon Yacht Club

Dickerman, Bill

Dickerman, Mary Louise

Dickerman, William C.

Diner, Hasia

Dow Jones Industrial

Dune House, The

East Hampton Presbyterian Church

East Hampton Star

East Hampton, N.Y.

Eaton, Fred

Eaton, Theophilus

Emergency Banking Act

FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Federal Reserve Board

Fireside Chat (FDR)

Fletcher, Duncan, Senator

Foster, Elizabeth

Free Masons

Free Silver Movement, The

Gerli, Anne (see also Anne Harvey)

Germany

Gibson, Althea

Glass, Carter

Gold Reserve Act

Gold Standard

Gram, Carl W.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Great Depression, The

Great Migration, The

Greenbacks

Gruelle, Johnny

Guild Hall

Harrington, Katherine

Harrison, George L.

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartman, Sarah

Harvey, Anne

Harvey, Col. Olin

Harvey, Mary

Heights, The

Hoffman, Mary Mae (Maisie)

Hooker, Charles I.

Hooker, Rev. Thomas

Hoover, Herbert

Hutchinson, Anne Marbury

Hyde, Carolyne

International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF)

Iron

J.P. Morgan, Bank

Jackson & Woodin

Jackson, Col. Clarence

Jackson, Mordecai

Jacobs, Helen, Woodin Tennis Cup Winner

Jahnke, Nora Hannah Morris

James VI

Jessup, Annie (Nan)

Kennedy, Joe

Kondratiev Cycle

Kondratiev, Nikolai

Lehman Brothers

Lily Pond Lane, East Hampton

London, England

Long Island, New York

Lord Brooke

Mack, George

Maidstone Club

Mallory, Molla

Marble, Alice

Market Street

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Mayflower

McFadden, Louis Thomas

Mellon, Andrew

Miller, Charles

Mills, Ogden

Miner, Anne Woodin

Miner, Charlie Jr.

Miner, Charlie Sr.

Miner, Mary “Perky”

Moley, Raymond

Morgenthau, Hans

Morgenthau, Henry

Nanin, The, Boat owned  by Woodins

New Haven, Connecticut

New York City

New York State

Norbeck, Peter

Norbert, Peter

Olympics

Osborne DuPont, Margaret

Owen, Evan

Oxford, Connecticut

Panic of 1873

Panic of 1893

Pecora Committee (see also Ferdinand Pecora)

Pecora, Ferdinand

Pennsylvania

Phipps, Louis E.

Phipps, William Hamilton (Bill)

Pine Grove Cemetery

Poliomyelitis, Illness of FDR

Populists

Presbyterian

Princeton University

Pullman Strike

Puritans

Quakers

Queen Mary Syndrome

Raggedy Ann Songs, Music by Will Woodin

Railway Age

Railways

Riomar, Vero Beach

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (FDR)

Rowe, Billy

Rowe, Elizabeth “Libby” Foster

Rowe, Woody

Russia

School of Mines (see also Columbia University)

Securities and Exchange Act

Selden, William H., Sr.

Shakespeare, William

Sir Henry Rider Haggard

Slowe, Lucy Diggs

Smith, Al

Snow, Ann (Mrs. William H. Woodin III)

Spain

Steagall, Henry

Steel

Stephenson, George

Strach, Mary Harvey

Stuart, Jeb

Subject Topics

Susquehanna River

Susquehanna Valley

Tariffs

Thaw, Harry K.

Thaw, William II

Thomas, Beth (Mrs. William Woodin III)

Treasury

Tucson, Arizona

Vero Beach, Florida

Warm Springs Foundation

Washington, D.C.

Williams, Rev. Roger

Wilmot, Mary

Wilson, Woodrow

Winthrop, John

Woodin Cup  (Maidstone Club)

Woodin, Benjamin

Woodin, C. R. (Clement)

Woodin, David Charles

Woodin, Elizabeth “Libby” Foster (see Rowe, Elizabeth “Libby” Foster)

Woodin, Joseph B.

Woodin, Milo

Woodin, Will H. III

Woodin, William H. (Will)

Woodin, William H. II (Willy)

World War I

World War II

Yale University

Zehnder, Charles H.