Jump to: Tape 01, Tape 02
WWII Veteran Transcript
Subject: Donald Dugan & Gloria Dugan
Interviewer: Bobby Alan Wintermute
Tape Number: 03 of 03
Interview Date:
Transcriber:
Transcription Date:
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Interviewer: Third interview session, Don and Gloria Dugan, October 17th 2008.
While we're waiting for Gloria lets recap Don, our last two interview sessions
detailed your military service, you began your entering the session, covered
basic training, your training in the states. That we talked at length about
your service overseas, and now we're bringing you home. Now as I recall
correctly you left France in the Spring on 1946.
Dugan: To come home?
Interviewer: Yes.
Dugan: No. I don't think it was.
Interviewer: Why don't you tell us about coming home, recap it yourself?
Dugan: ...Having a hard time...I can't think of it right now.
Interviewer: Okay. Okay, Gloria you want to?
Gloria: I think he said he came home New Year's Day.
Dugan: No, I didn't come home New Year's-
Gloria: New Year's. You came across in the winter.
Dugan: Oh in the winter yes, but New Year's Day would have been a special day.
Gloria: Well you said everybody was violent ill because-
Dugan: Oh yes.
Gloria: The seas were so high, everybody was beyond the pale, it was just,
nobody up and about. And that was-
Dugan: Have you ever been seasick?
Interviewer: No, I haven't sea long enough to be seasick, yeah.
Gloria: But it was January.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Gloria: He came home in January because I know, because he told me when he got
home, he wasn't but a short time and his mother said school begins next week, so-
Interviewer: They wasted no time then-
Gloria: No, no.
Dugan: My mother?
Interviewer: They shipped you right out to school.
Gloria: Right, so that was January.
Dugan: Fortunately we live at home when we went to school and we just went to to
Queens College, it was just, the bus, come up to Hillside Avenue and make the bus.
Gloria: It was January Forty-Six.
Interviewer: What was Queens College like, the campus like, around Queens, the
area around this campus like in Forty-Five, Forty-Six.
Dugan: No, the word isn't gratuities but no-
Interviewer: No amenities?
Dugan: No, pleasant amenities! No amenities.
Gloria: It was really in a rural area, next door was a farm.
Dugan: It was, you'd hardly think it was a college campus it was just a, the area
was called the Quadrangle, there wasn't even a bench on it, just an open field,
and the facility had been children adolesc- what are they called?
Gloria: Juvenile delinquents.
Interviewer: Juvenile Home.
Dugan: Yeah, Juvenile Hall.
Interviewer: Before it became a college?
Gloria: That's correct.
Dugan: Yeah.
Gloria: And there was the farm next door which was run by-
Dugan: And, and long after it became a college, it was the same thing they never
made any improvements.
Gloria: The next door was a farm that was really cultivated and I think it was
part of Farmingdale, it was part of New York State, but at that point it, we
didn't understand all of that-
Dugan: Across, across the street, what was across the street? Kissena Boulevard
was Promenade Golf Course.
Gloria: Yeah, there was a country club there which is now occupied by the project,
Electchester which was built by the Electrical Union. That's [?] income housing.
But on all sides there was nothing the only thing on the corner there, was the
Huddle, it was a small diner kind of place where people went for Hamburgers and
whatever, cause remember during the war there was no cafeteria, because the
troops lived in the Library.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: And G-Building, so, and very few people had cars, everybody took the bus,
even the professors, a lot of the professors were of foreign extraction I guess
during the war and so there was a campus where the students were engaged
because it was a school where you had to take the test. So it was grueling, I
mean I don't think it was any walk in the park, going to Queens.
Interviewer: Well before we talk about the curriculum at Queens during the war I
want to get a sense of when, in your memory, the development of Flushing in that
area began.
Gloria: Well downtown Flushing was very well-developed, I lived in Flushing and
there was a library on the corner of Kissena and Main Street.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: And it was an upper class, upper class because most people owned their
homes there were very few apartment houses.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: And it was a quiet scenario, Queens College was very quiet on campus.
It was not any rowdy. The big thing they would have, a St. Patrick's Day parade
and that was fun, and they'd bring a big white horse in and outrageous nonsense.
There was never any, any anti-semitism. There was never anything of that nature
that I could remember. I don't think anybody knew if anyone black, white, or
green or yellow.
Interviewer: Well I was going to ask you what was the predominant ethnic makeup
of Flushing at that time.
Gloria: I think they were WASPs. You know, white Caucasian. Very, they were all-
Interviewer: So even very few Irish in the area?
Gloria: Yes Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans, there were very few, no Russians,
there were Jewish people too, one of my neighbors was Jewish and no absolutely
no-
Dugan: No Ethniciticity.
Gloria: In terms of detrimental to anybody people went to school, you see, the
people that age their parents had seen the depression and they were very
concerned about education and holding on to the houses, we’re going through a
Déjà vu, I mean people were concerned about losing houses, losing jobs, they’d
just come out of the depression, of course the War made everything perfect,
because everything improved after the war but people were not wealthy, people
did not have cars, if you had one car in the family that was it, and that was
fortunate.
Interviewer: Well lets, lets ask you about your life during wartime, what do you
recall life being like at home?
Gloria: During the war? I had a younger brother but he was not in the service
and my father had a position which he never lost in the depression, I wasn’t in
the depression but-
Interviewer: What was his position?
Gloria: He was in the insurance business, he actually represented the company in
working compensat. cases in the courts, and he had that job until he retired.
We didn’t want for anything in terms of food, or clothing, but there weren’t a
lot, there wasn’t a lot of clothing, I mean you had a good dress or you had shoes
but you took care of them and they weren’t, people weren’t into trends ‘I’ll buy
this today because I like it’ and everybody seemed to understand that, nobody
felt deprived.
Interviewer: Do you recall the rationing at all?
Gloria: Oh of course I do. We got books in the mail and they had symbols, they
were little stamps and, each of the symbols represented something which you
could buy. And I do remember distinctly the airplane was for shoes, and there
were some for butter and some for meat and silk stockings, and they were all
rationed and we didn’t really worry about it, we used the coupon. People, one
summer we worked and it’s kind of an interesting sideline, everybody worked, I
mean everybody worked, nobody had time off to find themselves, they found
themselves already, and I worked in the OPA on 34th street and it was your, your
duty to, if your son went into the service to return the ration book, and so
people did return the ration books, you know, in today’s world that would never
happen, people would have said ‘ha sure, I’ll take those stamps and I’ll spend
them, and nobody would be able to get-
Interviewer: It’s hard though when it’s everybody knows everybody’s business.
Gloria: Yeah, Actually it was interesting that people were extremely pleasant,
and extremely friendly, however there was a scenario, a situation where people
were very unto themselves nobody really knew everybody’s business. Neighbors
always addressed themselves, the women always addressed themselves as misses.
If you were very close to your next door neighbor your dad might address the
gentlemen next door by his first name, but it was a very formal scenario, and
children always addressed their adults with misses or mister or whatever, and
it was really a, we didn’t feel deprived-
Dugan: Civil.
Gloria: No not at all.
Dugan: Very Civil.
Interviewer: Very civil you said, Don?
Dugan: Everybody had good manners and, civil, just a…
Gloria: People were helpful but they weren’t busy and they weren’t nosey. They
would, you know, help people and so forth, Don can tell you in the war, before
the war, he had neighbors that were out of work and, he said that his parents
would send food to the neighbor-
Dugan: Oh yeah.
Gloria: Because, the man had a position that was, just disappeared. Like we’re
gonna have now, Roofers, Plumbers things like that.
Interviewer: Going back to the war and rationing, is there anything you regretted
most, not being able to have?
Gloria: No I didn’t, again I worked, I had a lot of jobs, we all did, and I worked
in a department store, I worked in McCurs which is no longer there, it was on 34th
Street, and as a part timer, we used to work Thursday night and Saturdays, wherever
they needed you that day, you worked in that department, so you got to know the
whole nine yards of the whole store. So very frequently I would work in stockings,
which was on the main floor and the buyer kind of liked me, so sometimes she’d say
you know, we’re gonna get stocking and so then I would have my coupon and I’d buy
eight pair of stockings, so that was the way it went and, no we didn’t have any
problem with that.
Interviewer: Did you run into any circumstance, or hear of close to you any
circumstance involving the black market for rationed goods?
Gloria: No, we didn’t experience that at all, not that I-
Interviewer: You didn’t hear stories of people, obviously for sugar or for meat or
for gasoline…
Gloria: No, we didn’t have that, everybody had a ration for gasoline, and if you
had a position where you needed to drive your car, you got an extra coupon and
you could buy five more gallons of whatever but no, nobody, people just, and
people didn’t do the driving they do, we think lots of things were walkable in
those days, you could, it wasn’t down the corner but, you could walk four or five
blocks or ten blocks to the store. And women did that, most women didn’t drive.
Don’s mother did drive, my mother did not, so you went to the grocery store, or
you went to the meat market you didn’t have to drive.
Interviewer: Did you know Don before the war?
Gloria: No.
Interviewer: No?
Gloria: No.
Interviewer: Okay, when did you meet?
Dugan: She was such a young thing.
Gloria: I was young yeah, I was young and foolish-
Dugan: I, excuse me, I started college in January forty-two, Gloria started in
January forty-four.
Interviewer: So a two year difference.
Gloria: Yeah, he’s three and a half years older then I am. I met Don in about
September forty-six.
Interviewer: Before you met Don were you involved with anybody else? Did you meet
anybody else?
Gloria: The boys and men were just coming back. No, I didn’t have any old
boyfriends.
Interviewer: Okay, what about attitudes in your neighborhoods towards men who,
or young men who couldn’t go to serve. Or didn’t go.
Gloria: That was never discussed and there was no, bad feelings about them or,
it was just, maybe their parents felt that they got lucky that they didn’t have
to go, actually-
Interviewer: No resentment that you know of?
Gloria: No. Absolutely none. Absolutely none. And we had a couple of them on
campus who were disabled, you know, mobile, but disabled and, they were fun.
There were about five men on the campus and you know, it was, there wasn’t issue
at all. As a matter of fact, Bird Church-
Dugan: Two, Two of the men on campus were my fraternity brothers, Joe Gazzone
and Bird Church.
Gloria: Bird had a problem with his leg, excuse me, his leg which was a result
of swimming in Flushing Bay he got osteomyolitis and it never healed-
Interviewer: Yeah.
Gloria: And there was no Penicillin, and he’s now eighty seven years old and
he’s still alive and he’s still living with us and, family of seven children so.
And then Joe had a withered or some difficulty, but other then that, we
considered them perfectly normal and there wasn’t any problem.
Interviewer: You hear accounts or, as a history you hear accounts of some people
exploiting their 4F status for various reasons, that clearly wasn’t that case here,
we also hear stories of ethnic disorder in communities where white Americans or
Anglos, mixed more closely with different ethnicities or different groups. I’m
thinking for example in Los Angeles, the Zoot Suit Riots or in Chicago and Detroit,
the ethnic riots over Blacks going to work in factories for the war effort was
there anything like that, that you are aware of, in New York or that you were
exposed to?
Gloria: No, not at all. There were pockets of blacks. Corona was Italian, very,
very Italian and then the Blacks began to move in there and there may have been
some tension but there was never political, in the papers maybe like that. There
were ver- I guess, in that era, the particular ethnic groups didn’t tend to move
into other areas because they were happy with the thing, Corona was Black, part
of Flushing by the railroad was black, very run down, it was awful. They were,
I guess, not in where I lived, it was very mixed, they were, Midwesterners, but
there was kind of upper-class, upper-middle-class so it was very different.
Interviewer: It really was an ‘other side of the tracks’ kind of mentality.
Gloria: Yes, it was the other side of the tracks mentality. Exactly, I mean
there wasn’t any intermingling even, not only fraternization, but intermingling,
I mean, when I went to Bayside High School there was one black boy in the whole
school. One. I’ll never forget it, he live on Oceania Street, so there weren’t
any blacks. Queens College had very few as well.
Interviewer: What was the attitude of students and faculty towards that?
Gloria: Color Blind.
Interviewer: Yeah?
Gloria: Absolutely color blind, absolutely color blind. We were color blind, it
didn’t matter to us.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: No, I don’t think that meant, not a bit. I think there would have been
dissatisfaction in the families had dating and marrying someone ethnic, that
wasn’t of your ethnic, not ethnic but color, I think that would be a big issue.
The Chinese didn’t even exist, that ran the laundry and they owned the restaurants
I mean, they just didn’t wherever they lived I don’t know where they lived, but
there was a Chinese Laundry, everybody had a Chinese laundry and the barber was
always Italian, the shoemaker was always Italian, the restaurants were Greeks and
Italians and, the, they just, the gas stations were just, all American whatever,
now they’re Turkish or whatever, so it really wasn’t, no there wasn’t any
difficulty whatsoever. The faculty, they were just, I have to tell you Bob, the
students there, the biggest fear was to get thrown out because remember there
were no options, you, if you came home and said ‘Well guess what? Failed.’ It
would have been, I cannot tell you what it would have been. Right Don? It would
have been like the end of the world, you know, it wouldn’t be like ‘Let’s see
where we can find someplace else for you’ I don’t, that would not have happened,
you would have been right in the work force. I, I’ll tell you a very funny story,
a friend of mine, it’s a little away from the subject, she was at Queens, she was
a little older then I am and she wasn’t, she was getting to the point she didn’t
think she was happy there, and she was getting harder, so she was going to drop
out. So Dean Kiely, is, this school wasn’t enormous at that point, and Dean
Kiely was a very hands on person. A beautiful woman if I must say, and she must
gotten lists of people that were dropping out, being the Dean, and so she called
my friend Pat to the office and Pat gave her this spiel that, you know I can’t
stay because my parents can’t afford it for me to stay here, and Dean Kiely
looked her right in the eye and said, “Pat, with that Camel’s head jacket on
you’re giving me a snow job, and that is not true, and I don’t want you to drop
out.” And she didn’t, and she did graduate, but that was kind of a hands on
scenario, with the Dean.
Interviewer: Well coming to this college in those days was free admission wasn’t
it?
Gloria: Yes it was, the only thing we had to buy books and a couple of fees, but,
it wasn’t open admission, you had to have the, if you had, I can’t remember what
the average was, and then if you had just a little below that, they had an
admissions test and you could take, and then you’re on your own after that, you
know the comprehensives, and the required, you know, they were all required.
Interviewer: Okay. Before we give up on the war and [?] together, as you said
you worked, you had several jobs, what did you for leisure time, if there was any?
Gloria: What did we do for leisure time? Didn’t have much leisure time, obviously,
cause we went to school and school was, a whole day in those days. And they were
four days a week, at least, and you never had the fifth day off because you know,
they alternated and, Thursday night we worked, Saturday we worked, every single
day that was off we went to work you know, holidays, day after Christmas we went
to work, summers we worked, so there wasn’t and we dated, went to the movies, and
went to dances with the fraternity, beer parties and stuff like that, and nobody
ever got drunk because nobody, first place there wasn’t that much money and second
place how much beer could you drink?
Dugan: And there was no drinking on the Campus.
Gloria: No. Nobody drank on the Campus. Nobody really smoked either, it’s
interesting. Some of the guys smoked, the guys that came back from the service.
But very few people smoked, you know-
Interviewer: That is interesting.
Gloria: Yeah, nobody really smoked, I can’t remember-, oh Patty Healey smoked,
somebody a couple, they didn’t have to say no smoking in the cafeteria cause
nobody did it, it was interesting.
Dugan: And most of the men didn’t smoke either. And it’s interesting because,
in the service, they used to just give you cartons. You know, and we’d go
immediately, go out and sell the cartons for whatever we could get for them.
But…no smoking. Well I didn’t smoke, I didn’t smoke when I came home and I
hardly smoke now. I was never a big smoker, my brother James was a smoker but he
stopped, he just stopped, period.
Interviewer: Switching back to you Don, you’ve come home, forty-six, your mother
tells you school starts next week.
Dugan: Right.
Interviewer: You’re going back What was your, your feelings, your thoughts about
the college when you returned?
Dugan: I’m sorry I didn’t-
Interviewer: What was your thought about the college when you returned?
Dugan: Well, I didn’t expect much from amenities from Queens College, they
didn’t have any.
Interviewer: Had it changed at all?...Had it changed at all?
Dugan: No it hadn’t changed at all, no, not at all. Men who liked to play
basketball could either go out an unless [?], in the back out doors, or, in the
basement there was a, ceiling wasn’t any higher then this, and they could play a
little basketball, you know, but that was, they had no gymnasium or anything like
that.
Interviewer: Well you were the first class to come back.
Dugan: No, oh, just about, I guess…I guess. I can’t, I was discharged in forty
six, right, I can’t even-
Gloria: Forty Six.
Dugan: Forty Six.
Gloria: Right.
Dugan: I guess.
Interviewer: Did anyone that you know of, in your class, have trouble adjusting-
Dugan: No.
Interviewer: To life back home?
Dugan: Just fit right back in, there was no pressure to do that, the only
pressure on it was grades, no other pressures.
Gloria: Most of the families were intact too, and they had siblings, and
everyone was happy to see you come home.
Interviewer: Well, I’m thinking about those cases too where family members
didn’t come home, I mean for example, the Bradley family, you know-
Gloria: I didn’t know his older brother, Don did.
Interviewer: You knew John Bradley then?
Dugan: Oh yeah, he was in my fraternity.
Interviewer: Yeah, Yeah.
Dugan: He introduced me into the fraternity.
Interviewer: What was your thoughts about learning that he wasn’t coming home?
Dugan: That’s the way it was. Didn’t make it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Dugan: No, no, great feeling or emotional feeling.
Gloria: I knew one, I’m gonna tell you one that reported, because I wouldn’t
want, if you turn the recorder off I told you something that-
Interviewer: Going off the record.
[RECORDING STOPS THEN RESUMES]
Interviewer: Back on the record…What were your thoughts about coming home and…
seeing some men who hadn’t served, was there any resentment towards them?
...Towards men who had not served.
Dugan: Oh no, none at all.
Interviewer: No?
Dugan: [laughs] I can’t remember anyone that hadn’t served. I didn’t have that
feeling, no.
Interviewer: Did you-
Dugan: Just it wasn’t any problem, you know? You’d say ‘Jeez this lucky guy
that got his 4F’ or something? No none, no, wasn’t an issue, it was a non-event.
Interviewer: Did you come back to school with anyone who was seriously injured,
or disabled as a result of their injuries?
Dugan: I’m sure there were, but I can’t remember anybody now.
Interviewer: Okay…what was your thought about coming home and seeing that Queens
College had become a campus, to say, full of women?
Dugan: Well it wasn’t any…it was, hardly called a campus because there were no
facilities, amenities as I said.
Interviewer: But the-
Dugan: Have you ever been up to Queens College?
Interviewer: I teach at Queens College.
Dugan: So you went to Queens, well there was never, I don’t know when you
graduated but probably wasn’t any different.
Interviewer: That’s it’s no different now.
Dugan: The Quadrangle is, was the same, nothing, it had no facilities, didn’t
even have enough books in the library you could only take a book out of the
library for two hours.
Gloria: It was murder.
Dugan: That was a, that was a bad problem.
Gloria: You’d have an assignment-
Dugan: They always gave you assignments, you always had to take assignments, for
that day, you know, homework for that night.
Gloria: Had be back before evening, next morning. Nobody had a clue, so you had
to, and if you could get the book, that was the big hassle, and you couldn’t take
it out, early in the day, because people were using it-
Dugan: They only had two books-
Gloria: So you have to wait until eight-
Dugan: Copies of the Book.
Gloria: And the next morning you had, it was unheard of not to return the book,
I mean I think they would have absolutely blown a whistle if you hadn't returned
the book-
Interviewer: I’m sure your fellow students would have done it.
Gloria: Absolutely. Exactly.
Dugan: I don’t know why the city didn’t sponsor more, I mean, so, so I don’t
want to say deprived, but limited in there.
Interviewer: Well, Queens was established in thirty-nine, forty, nineteen-forty,
no, Queens College was, was-
Gloria: Thirty Seven, right, in there? First class was forty one.
Dugan: I think the first class was in forty one.
Interviewer: First class was forty-one, so it would have been thirty-seven
you’re right. So it hadn’t been in existence very long, and the war of course,
disrupted many of the plans for it…
Dugan: I thought it was thirty eight that the, it was, the date.
Gloria: I say so the first class was forty-one.
Interviewer: Tell me about the Pipe and Bowl fraternity.
Dugan: About the Pipe and Bowl fraternity?
Interviewer: What was it?
Dugan: Well it was the premier fraternity on the campus, but it was only a
local or, there was only one national group, or greek letter thing, but I don’t
even remember who they were, so it was just local bunch of, I’d say…top
membership, this was, this was the, this was the, you know there weren’t too
many more of us then that. Then that there you just see that it was just a
local…oh was this all the Pipe and Bowl, yes it is.
Interviewer: How often did you meet?
Dugan: This, this was the fraternity at it’s height.
Interviewer: How often did you meet? The fraternity members?
Dugan: We used meet, in between classes [laughs]. Cause, we just met, Queens
College was on a quadrangle, and meet out at the lamp posts, kind of a thing,
but, if we met once a month, formally at somebody’s house, you know it’d have
to be at somebody’s house, sometimes we had rented a hall, when we were going
to have kind, a beer party or something like that, we’d have to rent the hall.
Gloria: And they were wild.
Interviewer: They were wild.
Gloria: Not that they were wild, the places were wild, I mean they went back of
saloons, and basements and stuff like that.
Dugan: And there was very little drinking.
Gloria: Very quiet.
Dugan: Yeah, no, no, rowdyism.
Interviewer: How many of them were of the members of the fraternity were in the
service?
Dugan: Oh, I think everybody there was in the service.
Gloria: He wasn’t it in because he had a short leg.
Dugan: Gary Regalmen was in.
Gloria: These guys were all in, this guy Henry wasn’t in, he was in my class so,
my class missed them. Kevin missed it.
Dugan: Kevin’s brother.
Gloria: We just went, uh lets see, he was in my class, so he missed it. I don’t
know about him. He was in, he was in, he was in my class, he was not in, he was
not in either, he was in my class, I think all the guys were in. So about, three
quarters of them I would say were in.
Interviewer: Right. Was there, were there any other fraternities besides Pipe
& Bowl?
Dugan: Oh sure, I would say, at least a dozen, I would think.
Gloria: The entire cafeteria, you know that would be, G? That one back there.
Is that G? What’s the one by the side? That’s G and the other is H?
Interviewer: Oh, Yeah, G is the one down, down, yeah.
Gloria: Well where that, that was, a decent sized building, you know, one story,
you know, one story. And there were, that’s where the cafeteria was, so you had
tables and each of those tables one on either side, was occupied by a fraternity
or sorority, and people sat at that table. And that’s was the, social delineation,
everybody sat at his or her own table.
Dugan: They had a cafeteria line, where you could buy some food, but most guys,
brought their own sandwiches.
Gloria: It was, it was a regular scene table scenario, sandwiches, unless the
people went to The Huddle, walked out you know walked down to the huddle and had
some hamburgers or whatever. But it didn’t give you much time, if you had
classes back to back.
Interviewer: Sure.
Gloria: So they went to the cafeteria. But that’s where the social life was and
there were parties, only the fraternities, colleges did not have any parties.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: And the sororities and fraternities, and that’s how guys met the girls,
and a lot of them married.
Interviewer: Well I was going to say, how did you two meet?
Gloria: On the campus.
Interviewer: On campus.
Gloria: On the campus, yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah?...You indicated before, let me check, let me just double
check time whether-
Gloria: Yeah, that’s alright.
Interviewer: You had mention before that there was a bit of activism on campus,
political activism, in nineteen forty-seven, nineteen forty-eight.
Gloria: Forty Nine.
Interviewer: Do you want to describe the context of that?
Gloria: Well…the only contact that we ever had with, there was AYD, American
Youth for Democracy, and, I, from my observation, most of the people on the
college campus, were more centrists there were, staunch, parents were staunch
Republicans, staunch Democrats, but that didn’t influence the children on the
campus, if we would call them children, but there were some liberal, very
liberal and communistic professors, and there were students who were inclined
to do that as well, believe that as well, so they would, create flyers and
stand outside the campus. It was a chain-link fence, and when you’d get off the
bus they would distribute the flyers-
Interviewer: Why when you got off the bus?
Gloria: Because they weren’t allowed on the campus. You couldn’t distribute
literature on the campus.
Interviewer: Any group?
Gloria: Any group.
Interviewer: Not even for like a student social, or?
Gloria: There weren’t any. No, that was done all probably to, you know, the
fraternity took care of that or, somebody got word out, and I didn’t get the
impression that there was much intermingling between the fraternities, I mean,
if you, in one fraternity were having a party, we were not, we never thought to
go and we weren’t invited. So that, and that wasn’t any issue, we just didn’t
do it.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: But there was, there were professors who were, real communist leanings
there was no question about it, and they made no bones about it.
Dugan: Well a number of them were prosecuted, I’m not, not right at the war
period but there after.
Gloria: I don’t remember that-
Dugan: Yes they were.
Gloria: But I do remember they had very liberal leanings.
Interviewer: Right. Well you indicate Don that they were investigated was that
on a state level or federal level?
Dugan: I don’t think it was state, it was probably some, minor federal group.
Gloria: I don’t remember that. I don’t think we had anybody on the campus that
was on McCarthy’s list, I don’t believe that, I may be-
Interviewer: Well what happened to the, the AYD?
Gloria: Just evaporated.
Interviewer: Why?
Gloria: I don’t know. I guess there wasn’t enough activism there that, anything,
I don’t think the camp-, I do not think the college quieted them at all, I don’t
think so. Because I think there were enough liberal professors there who would
were gonna tolerate it, which they were, would be right.
Interviewer: Cause it’s interesting because I recall interviewing a short time
ago, some of the students from the 1960s,-
Gloria: Okay.
Interviewer: Generation and their view was that the faculty was actually rather
conservative, and that there was very little activism before they arrived.
Gloria: Well you’re talking ten years. We’re talking…forty-eight, you’re talking
sixty, so um, I honestly think that the students who were on campus at that point,
were not politically involved.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: Not at all.
Dugan: Very little activism.
Gloria: I don’t think that-
Dugan: Almost non-existent.
Gloria: Once the war was over everybody sort of settled back and didn’t want to
rock the boat if you will. It was just ‘Alright let’s calm down and we’ll all
do’ and our parents were that way, you know, our parents had political views
but they weren’t rabid about everything, they were, I think, Bob I think we’re
gonna see the same thing now, you’re going to see the situation where people
are saying ‘What’s gonna happen to me how am I going to survive this? And if I
do survive it I’ll be very happy for this.’ And I think that’s what they did-
Interviewer: You think survival took precedence over ideology or-
Gloria: No question, no question. If you were about to lose your house, or your
car, or you can’t put food on the table for your family I think that takes
precedence over, I think that’s what we’re going to see now.
Interviewer: Well, thinking back to forty-eight, again to redirect it, there was
a recession, brief recession, when the war ended, the idea that there was full
prosperity after the war is, rather a myth, were there, was there concern over
the future?
Gloria: No.
Interviewer: When you came home?
Gloria: No.
Dugan: No.
Gloria: No.
Interviewer: No concern about a job?
Gloria: No.
Interviewer: Or possible livelihood?
Dugan: No.
Gloria: Not at all. The only thing I could-
Dugan: There was no reason to have, to be concerned, you could get a job, or
just graduate and come out and-
Gloria: Merriam will appreciate this, the only job you could get you had to know
how to type, you used get, I was really, you could not, you could not go into an
office and get real, and personally, they wanted to know if you could type.
Horrible. And if you could get by that one then you probably had a decent chance
to get a decent job. But, if, you know, women were so poorly paid and, it was
different, there were definitely different rules in the offices about men and women.
Interviewer: Right. Both in conduct and in pay.
Gloria: Yeah, in everything, pay, women had to go to work with hats and
stockings and high heels and gloves and [?], and you’d have to wear the suit and
you know the whole nine yards, [?]…We used, I remember when I worked one time,
Merriam will appreciate this too, there wasn’t any air conditioning in offices,
so it was the game and we wore white, we wore a blouse, everything was sent to
the dry cleaner or washed so people would put paper cups on, so they wouldn’t
get dirty, or they wouldn’t stick to the desk, and so, if it got hot, everybody
would wanted to, the men would open the windows, wide, and then, the women
would be complaining because their hair was blowing and so, down the windows went,
so it was a day of up and down with the windows, it was really, it was really
very, looking it back on it it was ridiculous, but it got, and the subways weren’t
air conditioned either and they were hot, you could imagine in the subway.
Interviewer: I’ve been in the subways, I’ve been in the Seven line when the air
conditioning was out in this little train.
Gloria: I can remember being on the D train once and it was so hot and we got
stuck in the tunnel, and there was a woman sitting there, she had white crepe
blouse there, it was literally shrinking on her, it was so hot in there, it was
impossible. So, you know, we’ve come a long way in that.
Interviewer: What was your first job, real job after college?
Gloria: Oh I went to work for AT&T and then I quit that after I, cause I didn’t
like it and I went back to grad school and I, became a teacher and a school
principal. So I spent really my whole career as a teacher.
Interviewer: Okay. Don? After college?
Gloria: Don?
Dugan: After college? Just went out and, walked, knocked on doors to get a job,
I didn’t, I didn’t have a goal, a specific, I had no experience so I couldn’t
offer myself, or a skill to do something special so I was, I worked for Macy’s.
Gloria: After the war, Don.
Dugan: After the war that’s, oh well that was after-
Gloria: You went to Lindenmeyer.
Dugan: Okay.
Gloria: As a paper salesman.
Dugan: I got a job with Henry Lindenmeyer & Sons, an old paper distributor, I
was assistant to the bill manger.
Gloria: And then he went-
Dugan: Frank Zaruka. And then I went to a night school.
Gloria: He went to BBDO the advertising agency.
Dugan: Oh I worked for the uh-
Interviewer: Ah, Okay.
Gloria: And he was an accounting executive on Campbell’s Soup.
Interviewer: Okay.
Gloria: He did the print.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: And he was there and then he went, left there and he went to Nabisco, no
I guess the reverse, you went to Nabisco first, Lindenmeyer-Nabisco he was
special products there.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: In that department all kinds of R&D and special products, then he went to
BBDO advertising agency, and he was the executive on Campbell’s I said, and then
he left there and he went to Sunshine Biscuit and he was director of marketing.
And then he left there, because they folded, and he went to, the Saint Regis paper.
Dugan: They were taken over by American Tobacco Company.
Gloria: Right. And then he went to Saint Regis paper and he was a director of
communications there. And he retired because they again were taken over by
international papers.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: And then he retired.
Interviewer: Right. Do you think your experience in the workplace was typical of many-
Dugan: Oh yes.
Interviewer: After the war? Yeah.
Gloria: Yeah he went to Grad School, took his MB at NYU, and put-
Interviewer: Did you use the G.I. Bill for your MB?
Dugan: Oh yes. All the way.
Interviewer: Would it have been possible to do it without it?
Dugan: Pardon?
Interviewer: Would it have been possible to do so without it?
Dugan: Oh yes, it may have been possible but I don’t know if it was terribly
probable, because, my father didn’t make a lot of money, and I had my, my Brother
James was just three years, we’re both in college together, so, and then I had
a younger sister and a younger brother, so.
Gloria: I think it would have been possible but it would have been a stretch.
Dugan: Yeah.
Interviewer: Right.
Gloria: Same in my house it would have been a stretch.
Dugan: The G.I. Bill was just [?]
Gloria: You know, how times have changed, I have a brother who is four years
younger then I am and I went to Queens, because that was the option, four years
later my brother went to Princeton. So you see how things changed, dramatically.
Interviewer: And that’s the story that we hear as historians of the post-war-
Gloria: Yeah.
Interviewer: -prosperity.
Gloria: Yeah, It wasn’t just the post-war prosperity, but it was also the
knowledge on the part of students, of getting loans and grants and scholarships,
which nobody heard of in our era. Nobody. Maybe they didn’t, if your had
parents, maybe your parents had gone to college you would have known that. But
we were not aware of that.
Interviewer: Right. Another feature of the post-war years, going back to the
anxiety, fears of…the bipolar world, between the Soviets and the United States,
fears of communist infiltration, within the United States, the growing sense of
the Cold War, between these two partners, in the second world war. What were
your thoughts or feelings about the Russians and the Soviet Union in the forties
when you were at Queens College.
Gloria: They were far away, and it just wasn’t making any impact on us, as far as
I was concerned. We looked upon the communists, if we really gave it any thought,
which was, it might just a little.
Interviewer: Even with Communist Professors?
Gloria: Yeah, we just didn’t, even, the communists professors whatever they were
espousing, it wasn’t registering with us, it was really. I think they were
talking to the wall, I maybe-
Dugan: One of my favorites was Vera Schlachtner, she was real communist, and she
was prosecuted. But she was sweetheart, and not a sweetheart because she was
ugly looking or so very manly, holy smokes, she couldn’t get a man if she had to,
but and she was a real communist she got prosecuted.
Gloria: And Shaft Tall was too.
Dugan: And Shaft Tall was-
Gloria: The guy openly admitted it, he married [?]campus, get out of the campus.
Dugan: Yeah they were, they were prosecuted. And it was-
Gloria: I don’t know if he was prosecuted.
Dugan: Took a while but-
Gloria: He was an out and out communist and Willy Withers in the economics
department, he was.
Dugan: Professor Wood, did you ever have it with us, I did too, Professor
Withers, William Withers.
Gloria: William Withers. But there wasn’t any discussion or fear.
Dugan: No not at all, almost a non-event.
Gloria: It was almost a non-event, that’s pretty sad.
Interviewer: Did either of you have to sign a loyalty oath?
Gloria: No. No.
Interviewer: A loyalty oath?
Dugan: I’m sorry?
Gloria: A loyalty oath. We never signed a loyalty oath.
Dugan: A Loyalty Oath?
Interviewer: There was, during the 1950s-
Gloria: Really?
Interviewer: -a loyalty oath for students applying to Queens College.
Dugan: The only loyalty oath I took was in the Grand Central Palace where I was
sworn in, in the army.
Gloria: When I started to teach we had to take a loyalty oath. When I started to
teach we did, for that, yeah, in the fifties.
Dugan: No.
Interviewer: Yeah, during the height of the fifties and even I think they
stopped using it in the sixty two-
Gloria: Okay, no.
Interviewer: There was a piece of paper that you had to sign.
Gloria: Never.
Interviewer: To attend Queens College.
Gloria: Really? That’s against academic freedom, isn’t it? You would think.
Interviewer: You would think. Kind of,-
Gloria: Kind of pretty provincial-
Interviewer: -Kind of shows the pervasive influence of McCarthyism.
Gloria: I mean that’s really provincial, I mean what are you, everybody gotta
think the same, that’s pretty boring.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Gloria: Well, yeah McCarthy he was another [?]
Interviewer: Well you, you mentioned earlier about a the AYD, I mean, I’m sure
that they ran afoul of HUAC and other-
Gloria: Maybe, we never knew anything about them.
Interviewer: -other right, right wing groups.
Dugan: American Youth for Democracy, they never, they never, whats…politicized on
the campus, they never, weren’t active on the campus, maybe they.
Gloria: They’d have sandwich signs and signs outside campus, but never on the
campus.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: Maybe they were told not to.
Dugan: Right.
Gloria: Maybe that was their limitation. I don’t know.
Interviewer: Well, I mean you look back also at the experience of the kids from
the class of sixty-two, sixty-three and sixty-four. They were discouraged from
being active on campus as well, they chose to ignore that and in some cases paid
a penalty with disciplinary action, and expulsion, and the threat of expulsion.
So I wonder if they same was not applied to [?]
Gloria: Never. I don’t think so. Because we would have heard that. We were
would have said, what happened to Joe, where is he and they’d say ‘You know,
he’s over there and you know, he was making a ruckus and so they threw him out.’
No I don’t think that. No, I, in my experience, no. They kind of just didn’t
exist, Bob, it was like going ‘Okay there they are’ maybe they had, I’m sure
they did have their own clique, and but they just dissipated, they evaporated
if you will.
Dugan: They weren’t fervent believers.
Gloria: I don’t know, I guess we kind of looked up them as kind of, kids who had
nothing else to do and that’s what they were doing you know and, kind of
protesting and [?] of that was I was in Italy and my daughter was there, and she
was going to school and the Red Brigade was out and I said ‘Oh Barbara, lets get
out of here. It makes me nervous, the streets and the goose-stepping and the
uniforms.’ And she said ‘Mother, It’ll be lunch time, and they all go to lunch
and it’s gone, nothing ever happens.’
Interviewer: [laughs]
Gloria: You know and they weren’t, so I guess maybe that what AYD, I don’t know.
She said ‘At twelve O’Clock it will be all over. Cause they all go to lunch.’
And that’s, anyway that’s the story of Queens College I was shocked to see how
enormous it was and I was shocked to see, not shocked, I guess, awakened to the
fact that there was so many ethnic groups, I mean, hundreds of different people,
kinds of people. And I think its great, because it’s a one, it’s a leg up and I
think it’s terrific.
Interviewer: Good. Good. Well I think that’s where we’re going to conclude,
unless theres any final comments you want to make.
Gloria: No, we enjoyed it, it was fun, Don enjoyed it I’m sure.
Dugan: Yeah.
Interviewer: Thank you both for-
Gloria: You’re more then welcome.
Interviewer: -the time in your house, and for, you know hosting myself and the
students-
Gloria: It’s fine, no problem.
Interviewer: -for the project, and we’ll close out there, thank you again.
Gloria: You’re welcome.
Dugan: Our Pleasure.
Gloria: Now what-
[END OF TAPE]
End of Tape 03 of 03
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