"•'*&,.
University of California • Berkeley
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Elizabeth Rudel Gatov dated 31 January 1978, The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Women in Politics Oral History Project
Elizabeth Rudel Gatov GRASSROOTS PARTY ORGANIZER TO TREASURER OF THE UNITED STATES
With an Introduction by Eugene C. Lee
An Interview Conducted by Malca Chall
Copy No. f 1978 by The Regents of the University of California
«*
41
Elizabeth Rudel Gatov 1960
(San Francisco Chronicle)
San Francisco Chronicle January 30, 1997
Elizabeth Rudel Gatov
Elizabeth "Libby" Rudel Gatov, former treasurer of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, died Saturday of natural causes at her Kentf ield home. She was 85.
A resident of Kentfield since 1944, she was active in local, state and national politics, most often as a campaign chairwoman for Dem ocratic candidates. In addition to working on the campaigns of Gov ernor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Robert Kennedy, George McGov- ern, Alan Cranston and John Tun- ney, she was the Democratic Na tional Committeewoman for Cali fornia from 1956 to 1965. She also served from 1965 to 1977 on the ex ecutive committee of Planned Par enthood/World Population.
Mrs. Gatov was born and raised in Montreal. She attended Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Smith College and the University of Michigan, where she earned her bachelor's degree.
At Smith, in the early 1930s, she was friends with a classmate who drowned herself in a campus pond because she was single and preg nant and could not find a doctor willing to perform an abortion. The memory of this incident moved her to volunteer for Planned Parenthood.
In 1971 she established the f irst lobbying committee for Planned Parenthood, and in 1974 she be came the group's first national public affairs chairwoman. She , was proud to claim partial credit for California's Welfare Reform Act of 1970, which allowed women to receive public funding for abor tions.
She became acquainted with then-Senator Kennedy in 1956 and campaigned for him in 1960. When he left a San Francisco fund-rais ing dinner at the Fairmont before mingling with the crowd, she told him that was no way to treat vot ers. In 1961 he repaid her good counsel with the treasurer ap pointment
She left the Kennedy adminis tration after a year to return to California to marry Al Gatov. Her husband died in 1978.
Her long resume included stints as a reporter for the San Ra fael Independent Journal, political science lecturer at Armstrong Col lege in Berkeley and member of the California Juvenile Delinquen cy Prevention Committee.
She is survived by her daugh ter, Jane Jackson of Oakland; her son, Daniel Smith of Kentfield; four granddaughters; and two great-grandsons.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. February 8 at St. John's Episcopal Church, 14 Lagunitas Road, Ross.
Memorial donations may be sent to Planned Parenthood Gold en Gate, 2211 Palm Ave., San Mat- eo, 94403; Coro Foundation, c/o Roseanne Junker, 690 Market St San Francisco, 94104; or to the do nor's favorite charity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS — Elizabeth Gatov
PREFACE ±
INTRODUCTION by Eugene C. Lee ill
INTERVIEW HISTORY iv
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY viii
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION 1 [Interview 1, November 17, 1975, Tape 1, side 1] 1 Parents 1 Brothers
Education in Montreal and United States 10
High School in Dobbs Ferry 16
[Tape 1, side 2] 18
Smith College 23
Introspection: How the Past is Prologue 36
[Tape A] 36
II A DECADE OF ADJUSTMENTS, 1932-1945 42 [Interview 2, November 26, 1975, Tape 2, side 1] 42 Marriage: Intellectual Life in Storm King, New York 42 Return to College: University of Michigan 45
Career Choices Closed 48
Moving Home: Life and Work in Montreal & Pinehurst 49
Married and Widowed 52
Director of Well Baby Clinics 54
Drag Hunts and Polo 57
World War II and New Horizons 59
[Tape 2, side 2] 59
Marriage and the Move to California 62
Building a Home in Kentfield 66
Volunteer Community Activities 67
III CAREER GOALS AND POLITICS, 1946-1953 75 [Interview 3, December 1, 1975, Tape 3, side 1] 75 Developing a Sensitivity to Implications 75 Roger Kent's Primary Campaign for Congress, 1948 78 Reporter on the San Rafael Independent Journal 88
Election Night, 1948 91
[Tape 3, side 2] 92
Campaigns of 1950 95
Helen Gahagan Douglas 97
Roger Kent 105
Public Relations for the Red Cross and the Loyalty Oath, 1951 107
Decision to Teach Political Science 108
The Coro Foundation, 1952-1953 109
[Interview 4, January 7, 1976, Tape 4, side 1] 109
Experience as an Intern 110
Evaluating the Experience 118
On the Staff 122
The Democratic National Campaign, 1952 123
[Tape 4, side 2] 125
Attending the Convention as a Reporter 127
Women 133
Aftermath of the Campaign and the Decision to Leave Coro 138
IV FIRST YEARS AS A FULL-TIME VOLUNTEER IN POLITICS, 1953-1956 141 [Interview 5, January 14, 1976, Tape 5, side 1] 141 Joining the Staff of the Democratic Party 141 California Democratic Council Organizing Convention, 1953 144
Opposition 147
The State Campaign, 1954 152
[Tape 5, side 2] 155
State Central Committee: Election of Officers 159
Working with Roger Kent 162
Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Committee 165
Early Democratic Fund-Raising Efforts 167
Family Arrangements and Political Expenses 170
[Interview 6, February 2, 1976, Tape 6, side 1] 170
Building the Democratic Party in Northern California 173
The Issue of Neutrality and Support for Stevenson 177 Delegate Selection, Endorsements, and other Pre-Primary Activity, 1956 179
Adlai Stevenson 183
[Tape 6, side 2] 184
Delegates Elect Elizabeth Gatov to the National Committee 186 The Democratic National Convention: Selecting the Vice-Presidential
Nominee 188
The Stevenson-Kef auver Campaign 196
V DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEEWOMAN FOR CALIFORNIA, 1956-1960 199 [Interview 7, February 9, 1976, Tape 7, side 1] 199 The Democratic National Committee Issues 199 Women on the National Committee 204 Elizabeth Gatov 's Activities 208
The Women's Division 210
Speeches, Appointments and Other Matters 213
[Tape 7, side 2] 213
Managing the Senate Campaign for Clair Engle, 1958 217
Senator Engle and the China Policy 228
[Interview 8, February 25, 1976, Tape 8, side 1] 228
VI DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEEWOMAN FOR CALIFORNIA, 1960 235 The California Delegation, 1960 235 [Tape 8, side 2] 236 Reelection as National Commit teewoman 244 Replacing Paul Ziffren as National Committeeman 248 Background on Kennedy Nomination Strategy 251 [Interview 9, March 17, 1976, Tape 9, side 1] 253 The Democratic National Convention 259
The Adlai Stevenson Boom 260
Some Other Activities of the California Delegation 266
[Tape 9, side 2] 270
Assessing the Election Results 270
The Convention as a Procedure to Choose the Party's Candidate 271
Aboard the Kennedy Whistlestop Tour 275
Scheduling and Other Campaign Duties 277
Kennedy Election Issues 280
Appointments: Deputy Labor Commissioner; Treasurer of the U.S. 283
VII UNITED STATES TREASURER, 1961-1962 287 [Interview 10, April 14, 1976, Tape 10, side 1] 287 Appointment Confirmed 289 The Aura of the Kennedy Administration 292 On the Job as Treasurer 293 An Experience Cutting Through Red Tape 293 Redecorating the Office 296 Personnel Administration 296 Promoting the Idea of Colored Money 300 [Tape 10, side 2] 302 The Woman's Place in Government 304 Washington Social and Political Life 308 Resignation and Return to California 309
Edmund Brown Reelection Campaign, 1962 310
Filling the Clem Miller Vacancy 314
VIII DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEEWOMAN FOR CALIFORNIA, 1963-1965 319 [Interview 11, May 12, 1976, Tape 11, side 1] 319 The Senate and Presidential Campaigns, 1964 319 Replacing Senator Engle 320 Pierre Salinger's Campaign 325 Alan Cranston's Campaign 332 [Tape 11, side 2] 334 Relationships Between Pat Brown and the White House 336 Thoughts on Prestige, Leadership, and Survival 340 Reelection as National Commit teewoman 341 The Democratic Party's Power Struggle, 1964-1966 347 [Interview 12, May 19, 1976, Tape 12, side 1] 349 Democratic National Convention, 1964 352
IX A CHANGE IN VOLUNTEER ACTIVITY, 1965-1976 356 Resignation as National Commit teewoman, 1965 356
Some Reflections on a Decade of Northern California Party
Relationships 361
[Tape 12, side 2] 363
Thoughts on Resolving Social and Political Issues 364
The Role of the Political Party 366
Vice-President: First Federal Savings and Loan Association
Planned Parenthood
Lecturer in Political Science
[Tape 13, side 1]
X WOMEN IN POLITICS
National and Local Committees
The Matter of Exploitation *84
The Matter of Stress
Will Women in Government Make a Difference?
[Tape 13, side 2]
The Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee
Candidates' Wives
INDEX 405
PREFACE
The following interview is one of a series of tape-recorded memoirs in the California Women Political Leaders Oral History Project. The series has been designed to study the political activities of a representative group of California women who became active in politics during the years between the passage of the woman's suffrage amendment and the current feminist movement — roughly the years between 1920 and 1965. They represent a variety of views: conservative, moderate, liberal, and radical, although most of them worked within the Democratic and Republican! parties. They include elected and appointed officials at national, state, and local governmental levels. For many the route to leadership was through the political party — primarily those divisions of the party reserved for women.
Regardless of the ultimate political level attained, these women have all worked in election campaigns on behalf of issues and candidates. They have raised funds, addressed envelopes, rung doorbells, watched polls, staffed offices, given speeches, planned media coverage, and when permitted, helped set policy. While they enjoyed many successes, a few also experienced defeat as candidates for public office.
Their different family and cultural backgrounds, their social attitudes, and their personalities indicate clearly that there is no typical woman political leader; their candid, first-hand observations and their insights about their experiences provide fresh source material for the social and political history of women in the past half century.
In a broader framework their memoirs provide valuable insights into the political process as a whole. The memoirists have thoughtfully discussed details of party organ ization and the work of the men and women who served the party. They have analysed the process of selecting party leaders and candidates, running campaigns, raising funds, and drafting party platforms, as well as the more subtle aspects of political life such as maintaining harmony and coping with fatigue, frustration, and defeat. Perceived through it all are the pleasures of friendships, struggles, and triumphs in a common cause.
The California Women Political Leaders Oral History Project has been financed by both an outright and a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Matching funds were provided by the Rockefeller Foundation for the Helen Gahagan Douglas unit of the project, and by individuals who were interested in supporting memoirs of their friends and colleagues. Professors Judith Blake Davis, Albert Lepawsky, and Walton Bean have served as principal investigators during the period July 1975- December 1977 that the project was underway. This series is the second phase of the Women in Politics Oral History Project, the first of which dealt with the experiences of eleven women who had been leaders and rank-and-file workers in the suffrage movement.
The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobiographical interviews with persons significant in the history of the West and the nation. The Office is under the administrative supervision of James D. Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library. Interviews were conducted by Amelia R. Fry, Miriam Stein, Gabrielle Morris, and Malca Chall.
20 May 1977
Regional Oral History Office
^86 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
Malca Chall, Project Director
Women in Politics Oral History Project
Willa Baum, Department Head Regional Oral History Office
11
CALIFORNIA WOMEN POLITICAL LEADERS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
March Fong Eu, Sigh Achieving Nonconformist in Local and. State Government . 1977
Jean Wood Fuller, Organizing Women: Careers in Volunteer Politics and Government Administration. 1977
Elizabeth R. Gatov, Grassroots Party Organizer to United States Treasurer. 1977 Bernice Hubbard May, / Native Daughter's Leadership in Public Affairs. 1976 Hulda Hoover McLean, / Conservative Crusader for Good Government. 1977 Julia Porter, Dedicated Democrat and City Planner. 1977
Vera Schultz, Marin County Perspective on Ideals and Realities in State and Local Government. 1977
Clara Shirpser, One Women's Role in Democratic Party Politics. 1975 Elizabeth Snyder, California's First Woman State Party Chairman. 1977
Eleanor Wagner, Independent Political Coalitions: Electoral, Legislative, and Community . 1977
Carolyn Wolfe, Educating for Citizenship: A Career in Community Affairs and the Democratic Party, 2906-1976. 1977
Interviews in Process
Frances Albrier Marjorie Benedict Odessa Cox Pauline Davis Ann Eliaser Kimiko Fujii Elinor R. Heller Patricia R. Hitt Lucile Hosmer
La Rue McCormick Emily Pike Wanda Sankary Hope Mendoza Schecter Carmen Wars chaw Rosalind Wyman Mildred Younger Zlta Remley
August 1977
•
Helen Gahagan Douglas Juan it a Barbee Rachel Bell Fay Bennett Evelyn Chavoor Alls De Sola Tilford Dudley Walter Gahagan
Helen Gahagan Douglas Unit Interviews in Process
Arthur Goldschmidt Elizabeth Goldschmidt Leo Goodman Charles Hogan Mary Keyserling Judge Byron Lindsley Helen Lustig Philip Noel-Baker Frank Rogers
ill
INTRODUCTION
Self-effacing, soft-spoken, warm, charming — few upon meeting her would realize that they were talking to one of the most successful, tough-minded, experienced, and respected leaders in recent California political history. Yet no other words come close to describing the influence that Elizabeth Rudel Gatov has had on the life of the Democratic Party in the state over the past 25 years, a period marked by the rise of that party to its present dominance. (In the 20th Century prior to 1958, the Democratic Party had held the governor ship for only four years and had never controlled the state legislature.) In a field in which participants rise and fall with great frequency, she has — by expert opinion — been state co-chairperson, coordinator, or Northern California manager since 1954 of more statewide campaigns than any other person in political memory. Candidates for President, Governor, and United States Senator have sought her out — some successfully — knowing that her endorse ment would mobilize many others who looked to "Libby" for an assessment of political quality, that her leadership would bring with it practical and forward- looking political advice, and her active participation organizational skills matched by few on the state scene.
Born in Canada of American parents, Elizabeth Gatov attended Smith College and graduated from the University of Michigan, where she majored in Far Eastern studies. Her professional career — combined with service as a mother and grandmother — has involved journalism, business, banking, and leadership in many civic organizations, most recently Planned Parenthood in which she has played an active role at both state and national levels.
Through it all, politics has been a dominant force, commencing in 1948 when her Marin County neighbor, Roger Kent, was looking for a co-chairperson of his campaign to win a Congressional seat. She was selected, Kent reports, when he learned from a friend that vocational aptitude tests she had recently taken indicated she "should either be running a university or heading a division of General Motors." But it was politics that captured these talents, first at the congressional district level- from which she quickly moved into prominence in Northern California and then statewide election campaigns: Richard Graves, Edmund G. Brown, Sr., Alan Cranston, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Tunney, George McGovern, March Fong, William M. Roth, Morris Udall. In 1956, she was elected Democratic National Commit teewoman — at a time when there was only one such post for each state — and served with distinction until 1965. This period was highlighted by her appointment as Treasurer of the United States by President John F. Kennedy. She returned to California in 1962, to continue
;•=
obj [11 lit
iv
as a leader in state political affairs.
What characteristics have marked the remarkable career of this lovely and talented woman? The New York Times quoted one influential California Democrat that "She never rubs people the wrong way," while another said, "She gets up before a roomful of mad Democrats, pours oil on warring factions, charms them with her smile, and the fighting ends." Widely read in both domestic and international policy issues, deeply dedicated to the battle against social injustice, experienced in the "old politics" of party and precinct organization and the "new politics" of television, computers and polls, objective and detached when giving advic e but passionately loyal when committed, Libby Gatov represents all that is best in American politics. Respect, trust, integrity — her life is a personal rebuke and antidote to Watergate, a personal testimony to the glory of the democratic process at its best.
Eugene C. Lee, Director Institute of Governmental Studies
28 February 1977 University of California Berkeley, California
INTERVIEW HISTORY
For upwards of thirty years, following her initial introduction to California Democratic party politics in 1948, Elizabeth Gatov has been a major leader in this state's Democratic party. Whether working in local Marin County precincts, serving on state and national Democratic party committees, or plan ning campaign strategies, Libby, as she was always known to her fellow Democrats, carved out a distinctive place for herself as a volunteer in politics. During those three decades of dedicated party work she developed and applied her special skills in organization, policy analysis, candidate selection, and campaign techniques; she also mastered, or adapted an already learned capacity to be tough, mollifying, outspoken, or quiet, depending on the requirements of the specific situation.
The introduction by Eugene Lee, the brief biography, and the table of contents to this memoir, all provide a handy outline of Mrs. Gatov 's political career and those events in her background which preceded and accompanied it. But it is the memoir itself which yields the relevant details and the reasons why she could move from grass-roots organizer to Treasurer of the United States within thirteen years; why she held her post as Democratic National Committee- woman for California for an unprecedented nine years; and why major candidates continue to seek her out to chair their election campaigns. It is the memoir which reveals how her experience in politics has influenced her subsequent career as a teacher of political science, and how it has been brought to bear in the shaping of public policy in the field of family planning.
In discussing her life, in answering all kinds of questions, even the simple-minded ones, Libby Gatov was articulate and candid, seeming always to accept the two-fold nature of the California Women Political Leaders Oral History Project which has been to acquire background on women qua women, as well as to obtain related material for this office's ongoing study of California political history. As a strong "Pat" Brown loyalist, she has added substan tially to an understanding of the 1952-1966 Goodwin Knight-Edmund Brown, Sr. era in California politics, as well as many of the major state and national Democrats who were active during that period.
Because she teaches political science classes at Armstrong Business College only a short distance from the Berkeley campus, Mrs. Gatov agreed to come into the Regional Oral History Office after class to record the interviews. Thus all twelve taping sessions were held between one and three o'clock either on Monday or Wednesday, and at weekly intervals unless other scheduled appoint ments or vacations intervened. We began November 17, 1975 and finished May 19, 1976.
vi
At our first non-taping conference, she gave me a brief resume of her education and political career, and we agreed on the topics for the first several interviews. Eventually I developed an outline which blocked out the topics for the recording sessions. Some of these, I later realized, showed my lack of knowledge about the structure and function of the Democratic party, but Mrs. Gatov graciously and gradually taught me the facts. This information can now be passed on to readers who also need a grounding in political party history from the position of the neophyte.
Throughout her career in politics, Mrs. Gatov has managed to acquire and save letters, memoranda, newspaper clippings, and other memorabilia which are so much a part of political party activity. I wanted to study these primary sources, in order to broaden the scope of the questions and to correlate the data in the papers with the interview, particularly because, in 1969, after being interviewed briefly by the Kennedy Oral History Project, Mrs. Gatov promised her papers to the John F. Kennedy Library.
Several times in the early course of the recording, when I asked Mrs. Gatov if I could see the papers, an unbelieving look crossed her handsome, expressive face. Eventually she must have stopped worrying about whether she should let me see them, in their (to her) disorganized state, how I would use them, or how she could possibly get them onto the campus. Little by little, in briefcases, in cardboard cartons, and in suitcases the papers arrived. Gradually I checked through them for the background which, as I had anticipated, was invaluable.
Mrs. Gatov allowed me to keep original duplicates, and also to make copies of other selected papers for the files of the Knight-Brown Era Public Affairs Project, and to insert, where relevant, into this volume. She also agreed to placing copies of her speeches, and some other material related to her years in politics, and her term as Treasurer, in The Bancroft Library to accompany the memoir. This is only a small portion of her total collection which will be deposited in the Kennedy Library in Boston.
The time I saved by not traveling to and from Mrs. Gatov' s large and comfortable home in Kentfield to tape the interviews was lost later during the transcribing and editing process. We had recorded in the one room which is completely separated from the office's crowded three-room suite, but such was our concentration we were unaware of the carpenters and plumbers who were installing sprinkling devices in the rooms and halls around us, and unaware of the noise from the university's shuttle bus Humphrey-go-Bart plying its route directly outside the open window. On tape, Mrs. Gatov' s deep-toned mellow voice would often nearly disappear in the surrounding din, all of which was clearly picked up by the tape recorder.
By very careful listening most of the dialogue could be retrieved. Nevertheless in addition to the usual editorial questions dealing with facts, or requesting supplementary information, Libby Gatov had to be asked frequently to fill in missed phrases, or to choose between two words, each of which seemed
vil
to be what she had said.
On February 7, 1977 she picked up the first half of her lengthy manuscript for review, and on April 18, the final chapters. On the day she returned the latter we looked through her pictures to decide which to include in the volume. On November 9 we met again to discuss other final details. On that day Libby Gatov and I preceded our conference with lunch during which I caught up with some of her personal and political life: her decisions about the candidates for whom she would work in the 1978 state elections, her concerns about the effects of recent legislation on family planning efforts, the ERA, the Bakke case, and other problems in the forefront of American politics at that time. Because of her interest in vital social and political questions and her willing ness to put considerable effort into campaigns on behalf of candidates and issues, volunteer political action clearly will continue to occupy Elizabeth Gatov 's life in much the same way as it has throughout the years which comprise this oral history.
Malca Chall Interviewer-Editor
3 January 1978
Regional Oral History Office 486, The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California
viii
Elizabeth Gatov; Brief Biography
1911 Born, Montreal, Canada.
1917-1925 Private school - Montreal.
1925-1929 Masters School, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
1929-1931 Smith College
1935-1937 University of Michigan, B.A.
1937-1941 Lived in Southern Pines, North Carolina: directed segregated
well-baby clinics; library trustee; teacher in private school.
1944 Moved to Kentfield, California.
1945-1948 Member, boards of directors of: Marin County Red Cross, TB Associa tion, Sunny Hills School, San Francisco Jr. League.
1948,1950 Congressional campaigns for Roger Kent: women's chairman; organizing chairman .
1948-1950 Reporter, then feature editor, San Rafael Independent Journal. 1950-1952 Congressional district cochairman, First Congressional District.
1951 Public relations, Marin County Red Cross.
1952 Member, Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Sr. "favorite son" delegation to Democratic National Convention, defeated by Estes Kef auver .
1952 Reporter for San Rafael Independent Journal to Democratic National Convention.
1952-1953 Coro Foundation: intern, staff.
1953-1958 California Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Committee.
1954 Cochairman, Richard Graves gubernatorial campaign.
1955 Chairman, Marin County Democratic Central Committee.
1956 Delegate, Democratic National Convention.
1956-1965 Democratic National Committeewoman for California; executive committee.
ix
1958 Manager (Northern California), Clair Engle Senate campaign.
1960 Delegate, Democratic National Convention.
1960 Deputy Labor Commissioner, appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr.
1961-1962 Treasurer of the United States, appointed by President John F. Kennedy.
1962 Cochairman, Edmund G. Brown, Sr., gubernatorial campaign.
1962 Founder and vice-president, First Savings and Loan Association, San Rafael, California.
1964 Delegate, Democratic National Convention.
1964 Cochairman, Alan Cranston Senate primary campaign.
1964 Cochairman, Johnson for President, general election campaign.
1964-1966 Trustee, Coro Foundation.
1965-1977 Member, executive committee Planned Parenthood /World Population.
1966 Cochairman (Northern California), Edmund G. Brown, Sr., guberna torial campaign.
1968 Cochairman (Northern California), Robert Kennedy, presidential primary.
1968 Coordinator (Northern California) , Alan Cranston Senate general election campaign.
1968-1969 Trustee, Starr King School of Ministry.
1970 Cochairman, John Tunney Senate campaign.
1971 Co-founder Public Education and Research Committee (Planned Parenthood), California.
1972 Cochairman (Northern California) , George McGovern presidential campaign.
1973— Distinguished Lecturer, Political Science, Armstrong College, Berkeley.
1973-1977 Chairman, Public Affairs Committee, Planned Parenthood /World Population.
1974 Steering Committee, Alan Cranston Senate campaign.
1974 Chairman (Northern California) , William M. Roth gubernatorial campaign.
1974 Chairman, March Fong Eu secretary of state campaign.
1976 Organizing Committee, Morris Udall, presidential primary.
1977 Trustee, Institutes of Medical Sciences.
Member, Citizens Committee for Sex Education, Tamalpais High School District.
Honors :
1960 San Francisco Chronicle, Brass Medallion in recognition of many contributions to the Bay Area.
1961 San Francisco Examiner. Distinguished Woman of the Bay Area.
1962 Press and Union League Club of San Francisco, Black Cat for speech given at club luncheon.
1962 Coro Foundation for distinguished public service.
1977 Coro Foundation as mistress of ceremonies for its 35th anniversary celebration.
1978 Planned Parenthood, Alameda-San Francisco; Lifetime Membership,
in recognition of her significant contributions to the advancement of voluntary family planning.
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION (Interview 1, November 17, 1975) [begin Tape 1, side 1]
Chall : [while testing tape recorder] Do you want to say something to me?
Gatov: Yes, I had a most interesting weekend this past weekend. I was
down in Los Angeles at a pre-campaign planning session with Senator Tunney, who's an old, dear friend. I was highly flattered to be invited.
There were just seven of us, including him. We went over some polls that were done for him. He was amazed to discover that practically nobody knows that he's even been in the Senate! [Laughs]
Chall: That's a great problem for a senator who wants to be known as an incumbent]
Just for the record, would you give me the full name your family gave you, and the date of your birth, and where you were born?
Gatov: I was born Elizabeth Jane Rudel, on April 27, 1911, in Westmount, Canada. Westmount is a suburb entirely surrounded by the city of Montreal.
Chall: Like Piedmont being surrounded by Oakland [California]?
Gatov: Yes; it's an English-speaking enclave, surrounded by a French-speaking city.
Parents
Chall: How did you happen to be born in Montreal? Were your parents Canadian?
Gatov: No, my parents were American. They were both from Cincinnati; my mother was of English background, and my father's family was from Alsace-Lorraine. His ancestors had come over here sometime in the
Gatov: middle eighteen-sixties, I believe, or a little before that. When my father was a young man, I believe he was about twenty-seven at this time, he was offered a job by the Fairbanks Morse Scale people in Montreal to come up there and be their Canadian manager.
Chall: He was in Cincinnati at the time?
Gatov: He was in Cincinnati at the time, and he took the offer and went to Montreal in 1903. I have two older brothers who were born there, one six years older, and one three years older. I'm number three, and there were four of us all together. I have a younger brother.
Chall: You were the only daughter?
Gatov: The only daughter, in a very enviable situation. [Laughs] I later came to realize.
Chall: I see. What was your father's name? Gatov: Clarence Merrill Rudel.
-•
Chall: Was that a family name, Merrill?
Gatov: I presume so. Unfortunately, I didn't know either of his parents. They were both dead before I was born. I really grew up without grandparents. I just have to assume that's a family name.
Chall: So he was the sales manager for this company?
Gatov: The general manager.
Chall: For Canada, all of Canada?
Gatov: For all of Canada, yes.
Chall: Did he travel?
Gatov: Not that I recall. Of course, in those early days, I wasn't around. Then in the year I was born, he started his own company, the Rudel Machinery Company. This is why I don't remember him traveling, because he did stay pretty much in Montreal. He went to Toronto, where he had a branch office. He remained in the machine tool business, until his death, with that company.
Chall: In Montreal?
Gatov: In Montreal; and then about four years before he died, he became
president of Canadian Vickers, which is a structural steel, and in those days, also shipbuilding, airplane -build ing, and bridge-building company.
That was of course, in the depths of the Depression. Chall: When did he die?
Gatov: In 1938, of a ruptured appendix, now diagnosed. Chall: What was his background, that would get him into machinery?
Gatov: I wish I could tell you more. He was one of ten children, and towards the bottom. I think he was the seventh. He had a sister, of whom he was very fond, who used to come visit us occasionally. But really, he didn't seem to have very much contact with his other brothers or maybe sisters. I never heard very much about them.
Chall: No aunts and uncles that you knew? You didn't know others even though they were such a large family?
Gatov: Not on that side of the family. I have a suspicion that he had more energy and drive than possibly the others, and that they just lost track. They possibly resented him because he was quite a successful businessman. I got the feeling that they were scattered around and didn't do very much.
Chall: And the name Rudel is not one that you've come across?
Gatov: Yes, I have, because my oldest brother had done some looking into this; apparently there were three brothers who came to the United States from Alsace-Lorraine about the middle eighteen-f if ties. One of the brothers went to Albany, and there's a family of Rudels in New York. I don't know that Julius Rudel, the symphony conductor, is any part of that. There are very few that are spelled the same way, but there are quite a few spelled with two d's and two 1's.
And then there was a branch that went to Toronto, and another branch that went to Detroit. That's about, really, all I know.
Chall: What kind of an education did your father have? Do you know? Gatov: Yes. He didn't go beyond high school. Chall: He was a high school graduate?
Gatov: Yes, he was a high school graduate. His father was in the book publishing business of some sort. As I recall, my mother said that they made, among other things, the kinds of ledgers that they used to make — those old leather-bound books with lined pages that you see in county offices and courthouses.
Chall: So your father was really a self-made man? Gatov: Yes, he definitely was.
Chall: Apparently what he did then was to take up an opportunity that was offered as a young man. Do you know what he did before he was twenty-seven and went to Montreal?
Gatov: Yes, he worked for a company that's still going, called the American Tool Works, in Cincinnati. He apparently started in the machine tool business as a young man, and I think it was through his connection with the tool works that he got the offer in Montreal.
Chall: And so he just stayed in that field and stayed in Montreal? Now tell me about your mother. Her name?
Gatov: Her name was Anna May Ryder. Her father was a lawyer, her mother died when she was about nine, and her father remarried. She had a half-brother by that marriage and a full brother by her own mother.
I rather gather that she led a more affluent life than my father's family did. She seemed to have friends, at any rate, in Lexington, Kentucky, and Covington, Kentucky, named Coney. I heard her speak about going to visit friends there, and I suppose because she didn't have a mother, that she developed these relationships, and she probably spent a good deal of time with people other than her family.
Chall: Where was she born?
Gatov: In Cincinnati, also. They were both born in suburbs, but I forget the names of the suburbs.
Chall: You don't know if her parents had migrated from someplace else? Gatov: Her parents had come from England. Chall: Both from England?
Gatov: Both from England, and her father was a lawyer. My grandfather participated on the Union side in the Civil War. I remember her telling me about that. Somebody has his sword.
Chall: And what about her education? Gatov: She graduated from high school also. Chall: Did they have a religion in common?
Gatov: No. [Laughs] This is very funny. My father was brought up a
Baptist, and I gather, quite a strict Baptist family. My mother was brought up Episcopalian, and Father used to remark that he had never been given to smoking or drinking until after he had married my mother, [laughs] who believed that people should be able to, if they wished. And she didn't care for his, what she thought, were rather prim Baptist inhibitions.
My father liked to play cards a lot, and Mother didn't particularly, but they had friends who did, and they would often come over on Sunday evenings for bridge. Father would start to draw the curtains, and Mother would open the curtains and say, "Clarence, if you don't want the neighbors to see you playing cards on Sunday, you shouldn't play cards on Sunday.'" [Laughs]
But it was never a matter of conflict between them. It was really more a matter of humor.
Chall: And how were you all raised, in Montreal and in church?
Gatov: We were all brought up Episcopalians. Anglicans, of course, is what they called it in Canada, and Westmount. We went to St. Mathias church, and to Sunday school regularly. But I wouldn't say that my parents were religious. They just felt that it was something that we should do.
Chall : What did your mother do in the home?
Gatov: Well, she had a very pleasant life. [Laughs] Now that I'm the age I am, I can look at her with--some envy. She had a very -pleasant life indeed. Always plenty of servants in the house.
Chall: French -Canadian girls?
Gatov: No, the French -Canadians, I'm sorry to say--a lot of this will come out later—but there was a tremendous amount of conflict between the English and the French. No, the people that we had were usually Scottish.
We had a pair of sister^. One of the sisters married the German gardener, who was then taught to drive a car, and he became the chauffeur as well as the gardener. The third sister used to come in and polish the silver and do what the other two hadn't done.
Chall: They weren't live-in? Gatov: Oh, yes. Chall: They were?
Gatov: Oh, yes, the whole family lived in.
i Chall: So you had two sisters--
Gatov: --living in, and the husband of one.
Chall : And he was the gardener and chauffeur?
Gatov: He was the husband of the cook.
Chall: Did you have nannies when you were all little?
Gatov: Originally, the sister of the cook, Grace, from Scotland, was the nurse. She came over from Scotland about the time I was born. I don't know who they'd had before that.
I arrived in 1911, and Canada got into World War I in 1914, and my father's business became very prosperous, as a result. He was also put in charge, by the government, of the supervision of a number of munitions factories, and so forth. He was a very busy man, and came out of the war obviously more affluent, I can see now, than he was when we went in.
Chall: This is the time that you were growing up?
Gatov: I was three when the war began, so I do recall it beginning, but that's about all I recall. My uncle, my mother's brother, im an officer's uniform, had me on his knee, and he had a mustache, which he hadn't had before. [Laughs]
I recall being stuck by the mustache. Chall: Was Westmount an upper-class English suburb? Gatov: Yes. Chall: So your parents really fit right into it?
Gatov: Yes, except for the fact that they were Americans, something that I think they hadn't expected to have to deal with, in Canada. There was then, as there is now, a good deal of anti-American feeling. Sometimes it's subtle, and sometimes it's not so subtle.
Gatov: I don't know that it caused them any particular problems, I
don't recall that it did. They seemed to have a very active social life. I remember one function my mother gave that went on for two days, and I was moved out for two days. [Laughs]
Chall: Why was that?
Gatov: Well, she had two receptions, apparently. I recall that the furniture was moved, potted palms were brought in. When I got back, after the second day, in time for my supper, the house was just redolent of perfume and flowers. It was overwhelming.' [Laughs]
She became involved in a lot of charitable activities. Something called the IODE, which was a British title, and--I forget what it's called — the Protestant Infants' Home, which was a home for illegitimate children, I think; finding them, ultimately, foster homes, I suppose, or adoptive parents.
And she was interested in hospitals. I recall her as being a person who, in those years, was quite active within the community.
Chall: Was there any kind of suffrage movement happening in Canada at the time, that you can remember?
Gatov: No. She's told me that I was very interested in admiring a woman
Member of Parliament. This must have been in the twenties, a woman named Anna something. But I don't happen to recall.
Chall: The Canadian Parliament.
Gatov: Yes. But I don't recall my parents being involved politically, or even discussing it very much, until much later.
Chall: Did you have any contact with your mother's father?
Gatov: No, he was also dead. Her brother, Escott Ryder, was married to a woman named Nan Barnaby, from St. John, New Brunswick. They had no children, and Aunt Nan, looking back, was a most unusual woman.
She wore split skirts that were sort of like culottes, and rode bicycles, and used to take us on bicycle picnics, and canoeing picnics. She was a very vigorous person whom we loved, and she wasn't condescending to us in any way.
She also had a marvelous gift for storytelling. She used to regale me with the adventures of Hope Strong, which came completely out of her head. [Laughs] They were very exciting to me when I was six or seven, I guess.
8
Chall: Where did they live?
Gatov: They lived quite near us. And when my uncle was overseas in World War I, she lived with us all the time. She and my mother were very close friends, and she was just part of the family.
Chall: Does that mean that your mother's brother chose also to live in Canada?
Gatov: Oh, I forgot to mention that. Yes, my father, after he started his own company, then invited my uncle to move in and become his partner. So that's how they happened to be there. And then my uncle married. I guess he hadn't been married to Aunt Nan very long before he went off to the war, but in any case, she lived with us.
And then he came back to Montreal.
Brothers
Chall: Now let's see—you had a brother who was six years older than you?
Gatov: Yes, Tom Rudel, who lives in New York, and has his own machine tool business.
Chall: Oh, is that so? And then there was another brother a couple of years younger?
Gatov: Yes, Jack Rudel, whom I was closest to. He was three years older
than I, and he went, for boarding school, to Choate, where he managed to graduate straight into the machine tool business in 1928.
Chall: And where is he?
Gatov: He's now retired and living in Sarasota, and has a summer home outside of Montreal.
Chall: Where did he have his machine tool business? Gatov: He took over my father's business.
Chall: It's interesting, the boys following right in their father's footsteps. And then the younger brother?
Gatov: My younger brother, Bill, was in a variety of businesses. He
graduated from Princeton, as did the oldest brother. He was in a
variety of things before he went into World War II, and was captured
at the battle of Kasserine Pass, in North Africa.
He was a prisoner of the Germans for the next two and a half years. He was married before he went. And when he came back, my oldest brother took him into his company in New York, which was going nicely by this time, so Bill remained in that until he too retired just a few years ago. But the oldest brother has not yet retired.
Chall: And did the middle brother go to college?
Gatov: No. He went to Choate in the days when Mr. George St. John--I don't know if you've ever heard of him.... He was a remarkable headmaster. And my brother Jack was a marvelous hockey player, among other things, but he didn't read very much, and wasn't a good student.
They apparently thought so highly of him that they gave him a sort of special kind of diploma, and he was president of the student bpdy, and he was offered an athletic scholarship at Yale, but my father wouldn't let him take it.
He said, "You either go tn the front door, or you don't go.1" I recall Jack being at summer school just about every summer all the time he was at boarding school. To this day, he barely reads anything. Not that he's not interested, but he gets his information through other sources. I've never seen him sit down and read a book, and rarely a newspaper.
Chall: Maybe he was one of those people who just didn't learn to read right when he was younger.
Gatov: I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Chall: Nowadays, they'd be diagnosing him very seriously: "You must learn to read!"
Gatov: I was sort of the reader in the family. We had a library, off the large front hall, and the library had a conservatory on the next side, so it was always bright and sunny, even in the wintertime. There was a very large, comfortable chair there, and the Books of Knowledge, and a whole lot of really fascinating things. A set of Dickens and Mark Twain, among others.
I'm surprised, as I think back a little. My father got interested in biographies, and read more and more as he got older. I don't know why they got the books, unless they had shelf space to fill up. They got the books, in any case.
10
Education in Montreal and the United States
Chall: Were they interested in your education?
Gatov: Very much.
Chall: And the education of the boys?
Gatov: Very much. My father, like so many parents who didn't go to college, was determined that his children would.
Chall: I see, so that was expected.
Gatov: It was expected. It was just part of the routine. We all went to private schools, staffed by faculty who mostly came from England. At least the women who taught in the school I went to, The Study, as it was called, were all Englishwomen.
I mentioned the anti-American feeling earlier. It became stronger after World War I, and our parents felt that we were getting too one-sided a view, so as each of us became fourteen, we were sent to this country to boarding school.
That had an effect. Of course, we were also born with dual citizenship, I should have mentioned that. My father became a British subject in 1916, but that was after the last of us was born. We had the option of being American citizens at twenty-one, or Canadian citizens, which we were at birth.
Chall: In these private schools that you attended in Montreal--was there a
reason why you were sent to private schools rather than public schools?
Gatov: Yes. The public schools were not regarded as very good by my parents. I have no idea what they were really like. They didn't think they were very good.
Chall: In Westmount itself?
Gatov: Well, the private school I went to was in Montreal, but it was nearby, just a matter of blocks.
Chall: Was it a girls' school? These weren't coeducational private schools?
Gatov: All girls. Oh no, not coeducational. We wore blue serge uniforms, like jumpers, with the school seal on the breast.
11
Chall: Every day?
Gatov: Every day.
Chall: What was the name of your school?
Gatov: It was called The Study.
Chall: Just that?
Gatov: Yes, The Study. It was run by a Miss Gascoigne, who was a very stern woman.
Chall: That sounds almost like a French name.
Gatov: I think it's actually Welsh.
Chall: Only women taught in that school?
Gatov: Only women.
Chall: Were they generally unmarried women?
Gatov: Yes. All.
Chall: I guess that was necessary in order to teach. If you got married you didn't teach any more. And the boys' school?
Gatov: The boys went to Lower Canada College. It was not a college as we
would use the term. There they were until they were fourteen. They had uniforms also.
Chall : And taught only by men?
Gatov: Men.
Chall: No women in that school?
Gatov: No women in that school. After we all went off, one went back, Jack, the second one.
Chall: So let's see. When you were fourteen, that was 1925. Gatov: I went to Dobbs. Chall: To Dobbs?
12
Gatov: Dobbs Ferry, the Masters School. And I spent four years there.
Chall: So that was your high school, at Dobbs Ferry. Where is Dobbs Ferry?
Gatov: Just north of New York, on the Hudson River.
Chall: Why was that school chosen?
Gatov: Well, my parents inquired around. I should mention here that my
parents had begun going to North Carolina, to Pinehurst, at intervals in the fall and spring. Father liked to play golf, and so did Mother. They used to go down there for vacations.
So they had many friends in this country, and they began inquiring about good girls' schools and good boys' schools; Dobbs was one of the girls' schools that they looked at. I went too.
One of the reasons that we picked Dobbs was because it was so close to New York. It was easy for them to take the train in or out of New York to come see me. In those days, Dobbs had an excellent reputation as a college-preparatory school, with a high rate of acceptance for seniors.
Chall: And the boys, where did they go?
Gatov: One went to Lawrenceville, and two went to Choate.
Chall: So your parents really had it in mind that you would all go on?
Gatov: Yes, indeed. [Laughs]
Chall: Where is Lawrenceville?
Gatov: Lawrenceville is about four miles from Princeton. It's in New Jersey between Trenton and Princeton.
Chall: Now, in terms of their expectations for you all, was there a different expectation for you, as the girl?
Gatov: No, and I'm just so grateful that there wasn't. I realize now what a difference this has made in my life. I recall my father saying about something, with irritation, "Just because you're growing up to be a woman is no reason that you should also be stupid'" [Laughs]
This was really the way he felt; I had no excuses because I was a girl. I didn't expect anything different,. I know, and I think my brothers knew, that I did get quite a lot of special treatment, because I was the only girl. There is that father -daughter relationship, that, when it's going well, is just great.
13
Chall: And it did go well?
Gatov: Yes, it did go well. He had a great sense of humor, and he enjoyed being with us, after we began to grow up. I don't think he paid much attention to us when we were very small.
We had a summer home outside of Montreal, in Chateauguay on the St. Lawrence River. It was very spacious, and we built a tennis court, which was kept in good condition. I was expected to learn how to play tennis, and did. Father taught me, and we used to play doubles with the other members of the family. And I was supposed to learn how to play golf, and did; and know how to ski and skate.
These things were- -well, I just got the feeling that I was supposed to do whatever there was to do.
Chall: And the boys were doing it too?
Gatov: The boys were doing it too, and the second brother, Jack, was really marvelous to me. He gave me the clear feeling that I could go along with him and do whatever he did as long as I "wouldn't tell." No squealing on what happened. As long as I learned to keep my mouth shut, I could go with him. Of course, that was more interesting than anything else I could think of doing. After I learned to ski--I don't think I was very old, probably nine or ten--my brothers did a lot of ski jumping, which was big in those days, there.
So, as a special treat, I was allowed to go along and side-step up and down the landing area to break it up, keep it from packing to ice. It was very hard work; but I felt it was the greatest honorJ [Laughs]
It was slave labor, but I didn't know it. It got me there, and otherwise I never in the world would have been that involved. I wasn't a ski jumper. Girls didn't do that.
Chall: Did you ever think of trying it?
Gatov: Yes, I'd go over little jumps, two-foot jumps or three-foot jumps.
Chall: Did your brothers survive all this without broken limbs?
Gatov: Yes. They wore very primitive harnesses, compared to what they use today.
Chall: Where did they ski?
14
Gatov :
Chall:
Gatov : Chall: Gatov;
On Mt . Royal and Westmount mountain on Cote des Neiges Road. It means "hill of snow." The hill did get a lot of snow. The east slope was the ski jump, but we used to ski all over the mountain. It was mostly park. It was even more park then than it is today. It was very close. We'd take the streetcar, take our skis along, and in a few minutes there we were.
I have to say, having listened to other people talk about their childhood, I don't think I'm misjudging it when I say I had a happy one. I don't mean to sound as if it was all sweetness and light; it wasn't, of course. But, I can't recall our parents creating any feeling of tension with us.
I'm sure they had their disputes. They were very strong-minded people, and they must have. But I can't remember them shouting at each other, quarrelling. If they did, we weren't aware of it. Maybe this is the advantage of big houses. Anyhow, we grew up with a feeling of security, we took--I took—our comfortable way of living quite for granted .
I wasn't aware, inside my head, how people lived in the poverty that they did --though I could see it. I knew about the slums; we drove through them every time we went back and forth to our country place. I could see it in the country too.
But somehow it made no dent, at that time, and I just --well, I was very much of a vegetable, I think. I grew up without any feeling that life was ever going to be different. For instance, it never occurred to anybody to teach me how to cook, and when I got to boarding school, I had to learn how to make a bed. [Laughs]
I didn't pick up after myself, particularly. Life just went along in a very pleasant, easy way. It was an active life* I had lots of friends. My recollection is that we had a lot of my parents' friends around a good deal of the time, and my brothers' friends, and my friends; I don't mean it was a beehive of activity, but there were a lot of things going on. It wasn't in any way isolated.
And since you had so much help, your mother had no problem? be social and gracious?
Oh yes. She didn't boil an egg. [Laughs] She never did cook, as far as you know?
She could
Not that I remember, the end of her life.
And she managed to maintain that pretty much to [Laughs]
15
Chall: I don't think I have her dates.
Gatov: She was born in 1880, and died in 1969. father was born in 1874.
She was eighty -nine. My
Chall: Did your mother come away from Montreal , ultimately?
Gatov: Yes. After Father died—well, before he died, they had sold the house that we'd had in Westmount--9 Murray Avenue—that I'd grown up in, because by this time, we were all out of boarding school. The youngest one, too.
They built a house in Pinehurst, had an apartment in the Gleneagles, in Montreal, and they kept the summer place outside of Montreal. After he died, Mother sold that.
My Canadian brother, Jack, by this time was married, and he lived in Knowlton, a very pleasant English community, about sixty-five miles south of Montreal. They had a house, also, in Westmount, where they lived in the winter.
So during the summers, Mother would leave Pinehurst, and spend her summers with them. They built a little house for her next to theirs. She and they were very, very close. She got along awfully well with all her daughters-in-law, but this one, Ruby, in particular.
Chall: How did you get along with your mother?
Gatov: I think that we had at least the normal mother-daughter conflicts, which eased as time went on, probably because we both mellowed a bit. [Laughs] My parents were quite apprehensive about me.
I remember when I was in boarding school, we had a discussion of what college to go to. They wanted me to go to Bryn Mawr, because Bryn Mawr, to them, had a nice reputation. Vassar, for some reason, was never considered, but Smith, where I went, they thought was a very wild place.
It had that reputation at that time, because there was a professor, Harry Elmer Barnes, who had circulated a questionnaire in a sociology class asking students about their sex lives, which in those days was off limits.' The New York Times got a copy of it.
Anyway, they didn't like the idea that I was going to Smith, but I wanted to go to Smith because there were fifteen other people from Dobbs headed in that direction. I thought it was probably the most forward-looking, open, stimulating kind of environment.
16
Chall: Even at that time, you were looking for that? Gatov: I thought I was looking for it.
•
High School in Dobbs Ferry
Chall: Before we go into Smith, tell me a little bit about Dobbs. One
thing—you left a very close, active family, and went off to school.
Gatov: And loved it. I was very happy. I don't know whether it was because of the age I was—that I was sort of glad to be rid of the brothers-- or the thing that I recall most striking me, was a feeling of freedom. There was a great difference in atmosphere at Dobbs, from Miss Gascoigne's, where I'd been, where the students were automatically under suspicion, and you didn't have a warm relationship with the teachers; it was very formal with strict discipline. Because it was a day school, you didn't see the teachers after class.
I got to Dobbs and really thought that I had arrived in heaven, because the teachers were pleasant, the housemothers were cheerful. If you did something wrong, they told you about it, but told you sort of pleasantly. It was not a grim environment, but I'm sure that Dobbs was as strict as most girls' boarding schools were in those days.
I thought that this strict school was a very liberated environment, One of the things that impressed me particularly was American history, which I'd never had. Miss Marguerite Clark was my history teacher, and I found it an absolutely fascinating thing to learn about the American Revolution, and Civil War, and the War of 1812 from the other side.' [Laughs] It wasn't the same.1
Chall: A great education.
i
Gatov: I found that there was a tolerance for inquiry. You could ask if you could do a paper on something or other, and probably could, instead of something else that had been assigned. There was, I guess, conformity, but it was nothing like the conformity that I experienced at Miss Gascoigne's.
So, I was very happy, and I don't recall feeling homesick. I don't know why; I'd never been away from home; I'd never been to summer camp, because my parents felt that where we lived in the summertime, we didn't need camp. It was the sense of security, I suppose. I knew who I was. My parents called periodically, and wrote, and came to see
17
Gatov: me, and on the weekends we were allowed out during the semester, they would take me to New York or take me to Lawrenceville, where my brothers were, to a prom.
When they left there I went to Princeton to see Tom, and later had dates there on my own. I had a fine time.
Chall: That's really interesting. Miss Gascoigne's school, you think was a typical, English-type girls' school?
Gatov: It was the only one I went to, so I don't know that it was typical, but there were others there, a couple of others, that didn't sound any better—or different. They all wore uniforms, and they all, apparently, were staffed with the same kind of teachers.
Chall: They had all been trained in England, so they must have been carrying on some kind of tradition.
Gatov: I'm sure they were. I think, on reflection, they had a good deal of
personal unhappiness, because their age would have made them,
normally, wives of men that were killed in World War I. We tend to forget how many were lost in that war.
So I think that there was a lot that made these women rather unusually severe, except for Miss Marriott, who was very pretty, and had fluffy hair, and a sense of humor.
Chall: What about the teachers at Dobbs? Were they unmarried women?
Gatov: They were unmarried women, but there was one, Miss Roberts, who
taught math, about whom we all had serious suspicions. Miss Roberts lived in New York, in the first place, and commuted, and did not live on campus. And she didn't seem to have an old mother she had to take care of. [Laughs]
Miss Roberts looked as though she'd had a very pleasant weekend when she turned up on Monday.' [Laughs] We did a lot of speculating.
Otherwise, they lived on the campus, in the dormitories. They didn't have responsibilities for us, but they were there at mealtimes, for instance, and we would rotate around the dining room; sit at Miss Clark's table one week, then Miss White's, who taught English; Miss Seasholes, who taught Latin, another week; so we got to know the teachers as friends, really.
Chall: It must have been rather confining for the teachers. Gatov: It must have been dreadfulj
18
Chall: How large is Dobbs Ferry, or was it?
Gatov: At that time, it had about 200 boarders, and 80 or 90 students.
Chall: Were you divided into dorms?
Gatov: Yes, some had been private homes that were remodeled into dormitories, and there was one that had been part of an estate, and had a great deal of beautiful land around it; and then some that had been built as dormitories about 1910. Pretty ugly on the outside, but they functioned .
It was not an elaborate place, the furnishings and so forth were simple. They money was spent on the academic buildings, on the library, and study hall, classrooms, and assembly hall. Obviously, there had been some fund raising done, there were stained -glass windows in the assembly hall in memory of the various people who'd contributed.
And there was a great deal of what was then called "school spirit." Morale was very high, and I felt a tremendous interest in the place and identification with it. I was successful there. As I've said, I was fairly athletic, and I went out for hockey, and basketball, and baseball. I was on the athletic association and on the student council. I was president of the student body and president of the Glee club.
There were lots of things going on. We had a good deal of private time, and as I recall, the library was a very good library. I don't know if it actually was. It seemed to me that it had a lot in it. They were pretty generous with the use of it — you could check books out just as you would out of a public library. They had a lot of non-academic, non- textbook kind of things. There were concerts, and speakers .
There was a good deal of conscious effort made to bring social concerns into the school.
Chall: Who was the head of it?
Gatov: Miss Evelyn Pierce was the headmistress when I was there. She immediately succeeded Miss Masters, who was the founder.
[end Tape 1, side 1, begin Tape 1, side 2]
Gatov: Miss Masters, whom I never knew, died before I got there. Chall: So it was a relatively young school? Gatov: Yes.
19
Chall: You say they made a conscious effort to bring the social concerns into the school?
Gatov: Yes, we had speakers. I'm trying to think of some that impressed me paeticularly, but their names escape me. I remember somebody who was the head of the Foreign Policy Association, a tall, rangy, red -headed man who came back year after year.
Of course, New York had all these people. I guess for a small stipend, they could get them out for dinner and a lecture.
Chall: But they didn't have to. These were young girls in high school, so there must have been some reason.
Gatov: They, I think, had a feeling that first of all, most of us, by far the majority, were going to college. They didn't put up much with the "finishing school" idea, which was still extant, and they made it pretty plain that they were not a finishing school. If you wanted that, you went someplace else.
So you had to be serious-minded about getting to college. This was what they felt they thrjved on, their record of getting people in. Every year, at the end of the regular academic year, starting in the sophomore year, we had three weeks of continuation school, as it was called, which was nothing but the taking of old College Board exams, and cramming.
By the time you got to the real college board — they didn't seem too difficult. You could take them every year, or you could take the comphrehensives at the end. The era I was in, we did all of them. We took the College Boards every year, and then we took the comprehensive s at the end.
Chall: You were prepared!
Gatov: Yes, we were. So I think .it was no accident that fifteen of us went to Smith. I don't remember how many went other places, but most went to college. Some went to Sarah Lawrence, which was beginning in those days, the rest went to Vassar, Wellesley, Radcliffe. Some to Bryn Mawr.
Chall: What subjects, then, did you have? Gatov: In school? Chall: Yes. At Dobbs.
-
20
Gatov: I had four years of Latin, from Miss Seasholes, who is now retired and living in Washington. I still correspond with her. Wonderful woman. I had more than the regular amount of math, because I was very stupid. It took me two years to do the first year of algebra, and two years to do the second year of algebra.
Chall: At least they let you do it.
Gatov: And then I had geometry on top of that in my senior year, so they
started me right out tutoring in geometry, because it was obviously going to be necessary '. [Laughs] Well, geometry just didn't make any sense to me in those days. [Laughs]
Chall: Does it now?
Gatov: Yes, I do much better with it, thank you. [Laughs] I had to teach it later on. You learn that way.
History I loved. Partly, undoubtedly, because of the personality of the teacher, Miss Clark, who was never too busy. She was so pleased to find somebody so interested in something. They all were interested. And Miss White, who was our English teacher, was a disciplinarian, and had no tolerance for sloppy handwriting, poor spelling, sloping margins, or inaccuracies. [Laughs]
Chall: I would think that you had already been trained not to have any of those anyway.1
Gatov: Well, she was quite a remarkable woman. And I took French. Chall: A couple of years?
Gatov: Four years. And we always had to take Bible every year. Bible history was the course. We had to go to church every Sunday, but you could
go to any church you pleased, in the village. There was a good deal
of religious orientation. We had prayers every morning, and hymns,
and then we had a hymn session every Sunday afternoon or early evening.
And we had religious discussion groups called the Tens. I don't know why they were called that.
I was head of the Sincere Ten, I remember, which was a group of perhaps twelve, and we'd meet in one of the classrooms after the evening service, and talk about some phase of the Bible, or something to do with religion.
Chall: Do you think this school had been started--
21
Gatov: I think they all were rather religious in those days. I think
customarily, that the people who founded those schools came out of churches.
Chall: Were the girls primarily Protestant?
Gatov: Oh, my, yes. Protestant and Anglo-Saxon. I can't recall any Jewish girls. There may have been some; I'm sure there probably were, but I wasn't aware of it, and nobody of any other origin that I can recall.
Chall: No Catholics?
Gatov: No, no Catholics that I can recall, but then I'm sure there were some. They probably went off quietly in the morning to Mass, and were back by breakfast, or something. We didn't notice them. There was no special care for them. There was no Catholic Ten, this group I was speaking of. It was presumed that everybody was an Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Chall: So the expectations were that you would go to college, but beyond that they had no expectations of what the girls were going to do with their lives besides being educated?
Gatov: Well, Mother, I shouldn't say urged me, but she made it plain that
she wouldn't mind a bit if I decided to "come out," and make a debut in Montreal. People still did that. [Laughs]
However, as they explored the matter and went into what it would involve, it would have meant not going to college the following year.
Chall: Because of the money; it would have taken so much money?
Gatov: No, it wasn't the money. It was simply that if you were a debutante in Montreal in those days, you were supposed to do certain things. There were parties strung along all through the season, and you went to parties. In Montreal, most girls didn't go to college.
And apparently, you had to make some kind of a commitment. This was at a point when some people were deciding that they'd rather go to college than be a debutante, so the people who put on the coming- out parties selected the debutantes from a list, or whatever procedure it was, and they wanted to extract a promise, about a year in advance, that you would be there .
We talked it over. There was no pressure. I mean, Mother didn't mind. I just said, well, I thought I'd rather go to college. By the time we disposed of the debutante part, they didn't really care. They were spending a lot of time in Pinehurst.
22
Chall: Then somewhat against your family's best judgment, you decided to go to Smith, and they allowed you to do so.
Gatov: Yes. They didn't buck me: But just why did I want to go to Smith? I suppose because it sounded interesting, and a lot of my friends were going.
You asked me something a minute ago about what were their expecta tions. I can't imagine. It was never discussed. I was, of course, going to get married. Looking back, and from events subsequent to that, I realize that that was exactly what they had in mind. It was what girls did. They went to college, spent four years in useful academic pursuit, and then came out, or home, rather, and met someone and got married.
It was kind of fuzzy; we didn't discuss it. I didn't discuss it. Though, I realize that after I got to college, I began thinking in terms of working, because friends of mine who were ahead of me, were thinking in terms of working.
I had a clear impression that my father did not approve, that he would consider it a reflection on his ability to support me, if I were to work.
Chall: So it was just expected that you would do whatever seemed to be the norm in those days?
Gatov: Yes, and the norm was to get married. Chall: And to have a family and stay at home?
Gatov: Yes, to come home, and presumably live at the level of our parents-- maybe not quite . but certainly it was never expected that you'd learn to clean toilets, or scrub bathroom floors, [laughs] or boil diapers.
Because, you see, I went to college in 1929, and up to that point, that September, nobody had given the future much of a thought. It was just going to go right on being like the present.
Chall: And then in 1929 came the Depression.
Gatov: The Crash, yes.
Chall: You stayed at Smith two years, and I imagine you got married.
Gatov: I got married the middle of my junior year.
23
Smith College
Chall: I see. Tell me about Smith.
Gatov: Smith I loved and had a marvelous time at. First of all, I went with friends. This little clutch of us that went from Dobbs; we didn't particularly stick together after we got there. Smith was trying an experiment. They decided that they'd admit the biggest freshman class they'd ever admitted, with the idea that they'd weed them out heavily at the end of the freshman year.
Well, other factors weeded them out. [Laughs] They dropped out very fast because of the economic effects of the stock market on their families. Canada, interestingly enough, didn't really feel the Depression for a couple of years more. Eventually it did, and of course, it hit brokerage firms and things like that immediately.
But, really, the unemployment that was so devastating here—by 1931--was really very severe. It was not that severe, at that time, in Canada. So there was no problem about my staying on.
By this time, I'd gotten to know some boys, through my brothers, and some on my own, and I remember very well the first day I was at Smith, my boyfriend from Yale, Lincoln Stoddard from Worcester, arrived in his car and said, "Now, I'm going to show you all the back roads in Northampton." [Laughs]
We had a rule that you couldn't drive in a car after dark, or be in a car after dark, and you had to be in your house by ten o'clock. This was a complicating factor [laughs], because we had campuses of boys' colleges all around us. Williams was about seventy miles away, and Harvard was a hundred. Amherst was eight, and Yale, I think, was seventy. This was in the days of the rumble seat, of the Model A Ford, and all the boys I knew had cars.
They were mostly in these colleges, and would come around. Lincoln showed me how to get into Northampton without being observed by anybody [laughs], and what the nearest place was to get out for my particular dormitory unseen.
I thought that everybody had a very good time who was there, because I had a very good time. I went away on the weekends that we were allowed to. I forget what those restrictions were, but you couldn't have two in a row away, or something like that.
Chall: Certainly more than you had at Dobbs, though?
Gatov: Oh, much more.
Chall: The Dobbs restrictions, like going away once a semester, was that all through high school?
Gatov: Oh, yes.
Chall: I see. So you really were restricted.
Gatov: It was when I got to college that I realized—probably dimly, but I became aware that I was lucky to have had older brothers. Some of my friends that I went to Dobbs with, really went kind of nuts after they got to Smith, because the freedom was such that they really couldn't handle it, after the restrictions.
Boys were a strange breed, unknown and fascinating. They were just discovering them, where I'd lived with them all my life. I think I was very lucky in that regard. They were involved in sexual experimentations with men that I knew enough not to, not because of my parents, but because of my brothers. It was no moral thing, but a plain fear of getting pregnant.
One of the girls that I knew there did get pregnant, and we tried to find a doctor to do an abortion, but couldn't. She tiurned up drowned in a lake on the campus.
Chall: Oh, my goodness! What an experience.
Gatov: It was. It made an enormous impression on us, and is one of the reasons I've spent so much time working in Planned Parenthood to have abortions made legal and available.
For lots of reasons, I think I just enjoyed being there. I didn't realize it then, that there were a lot of girls at Smith, as there are probably at any girls' college, who had a miserable time, who came there not knowing any boys, and had no way to meet any. Though there were dances and so forth at college.
I don't know how to express it except by saying that when I later got to the University of Michigan—four years later--! saw the same kinds of girls we had at Smith who never went anywhere: the plain ones, those who didn't have much money, perhaps who were working, waiting on tables, things like this, in some of the self-help dormitories. At Michigan however they found boys and they were holding hands in the library and having a wonderful time.
25
Gatov: They had dates for classes, and it never occurred to me that a coeducational school could be like that.' It was a great eye-opener.! But as I say, I was still vegetable enough that I wasn't aware that not everybody had as good a time as I did.
I had plenty of money to spend. I was not aware of any particular restrictions or inhibitions from my parents.
Chall: You were outgoing, had an outgoing personality?
Gatov: I guess so. I was president of the class, in my sophomore year, and so I guess that means I got to know some of my classmates. I was intellectually stimulated by an English teacher and by a course in labor history.
I had a near-calamity with a five-hour Spanish course I took. It was taught by the head of the Spanish department, and it was a five-hour double course. I was going to get rid of the two language requirements in one year. I couldn't stand her, nor she me. I failed the mid year because she was proctor ing it and because a budding romance had collapsed. So I was put on probation. I had five hours of "E"--failure.
Chall: Failure in Spanish?
Gatov: Failure in Spanish. I went to see her after I got my grades. She said that if it had been anybody else but me, they would have gotten a D in Spanish, but she expected more of me.
I said, "Why? Why me?" She said, "You're gping to see the dean. The dean will tell you." Then I went to see the dean, who was a much pleasanter person. The dean told me that on the freshman year I.Q. tests, I had gotten one of the ten highest scores they'd ever had at Smith. Therefore, she couldn't understand why I had written the Spanish exam in French and Latin. I didn't tell the dean about my personal problem nor my inability to get along with Miss Bourland. But I was on probation, and that kept me on campus.
Chall: How long was that?
Gatov: All semester. All of spring semester, from February to May. Well, it happened that another girl in my house was taking a different section of the same course. I lived at 116 Elm Street, which was a small cottage on the main drag in Northampton. It probably had no more than about ten rooms, so I guess there were about twenty people. We had meals next door.
26
Gatov: The other girl was a young woman from New Haven, whose name was Miriam Botwinick--a tiny Jewish girl, not terribly bright, but we became good friends for some reason- -felt terribly sorry for me and my E from Miss Bourland. Her section was with Mr. Zapata. Mr. Zapata didn't teach like Miss Bourland did. Mr. Zapata, who probably disliked Miss Bourland as much as I did, decided that his class was going to do really well.
So he gave his class an outline of what was going to be on the final exam, and among other things, there would be a resume, to be written in Spanish, of a book that we had been reading. Then some grammar questions and so forth.
Well, it was the resumfi that captivated me, so I wrote it in English, translated it into Spanish, and a friend of mine who was a Spanish major looked it over and corrected it. Then I committed it to memory, and had it absolutely verbatim. I went into the final exam, and sure enough, it was as Mr. Zapata had told Miriam it was going to be! So I wrote it in awfully good Spanish, and answered the questions almost perfectly.
Anyway, I was staying for graduation --we had daisy chains in those days—the sophomores carried the daisy chains on their shoulders as the seniors marched to commencement between our two lines. While I was carrying the daisy chain, Miss Bourland came up and put her arm around my waist --she came up about to my shoulder- -and said, "I knew all the time you could do A work if you'd just apply yourself.1"
So I just said, "Thank you, Miss Bourland," and that was the end of that episode J [Laughs]
Chall: Were you back in Miss Bourland "s class during this time.
Gatov: Oh, yes.
Chall: You had to go back into her class and go on with her?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Even though you'd failed the preceding semester?
Gatov: I didn't get thrown out of the class altogether. I was allowed to go on to the second semester. I don't know, really, how it worked. But the net result was that she gave me an A by the end of the year.
Chall: Is that the only Spanish you've ever taken?
27
Gatov: I've hated Spanish ever since.' [Laughs] Even now, I can't do
much with it. I try to, when I go to Mexico or places. My husband speaks fluent Spanish.
Chall: That's a help.
Gatov: Yes, it is.
Chall: Was it a change for you, that you can recall, having men teachers?
Gatov: Yes, but they—the fact that they were men didn't particularly
impress me. The president wa» a man- -William Allan Neilson. He was a marvelous scholar, and lived in a house right in the middle of the campus. It was very much a center of student activities.
He tried to get to know the students. There were about 2,500 of us at that time, maybe a little more. He was a very short man, with a Van Dyke beard. He'd walk along the main arteries of the campus, say good morning to somebody and pick the books out of her arms and carry them for her, and engage in conversation all the way to wherever it was she was going.
We had compulsory chapel in those days, three days a week. The times you wanted to go were when Dr. Neilson was speaking. He was a very loved figure, who was very frank. I remember him talking about smoking one time. He said it was a "disgusting and expensive habit, to which I am addicted."
Another of his chapel addresses—he was talking about politics, or something like that— public participation. And he felt very strongly about these girls. I remember him saying this more than once, to the effect that "You people are probably the most privileged women in the world, and you're the beneficiaries of maybe the best educational system in the world. I like to think so. I want you to remember that you have a responsibility towards what happens in your country. And if you don't think that you ought to help run it, who do you think should?"
This is the way he would talk. He was challenging, trying to make us realize that there was more to the world out there than perhaps we saw. He knew where we came from- -much less than half the student body came from high schools, at that time. Most came from girls' preparatory schools.
So he knew that he had girls from affluent backgrounds, and by this time— we were into the early thirties --changes were occurring. He was a very wise man. I just loved him. He was trying to make us
28
Gatov: realize that there were going to be changes in the world, and
that we'd better be ready for them. We couldn't expect the past to continue.
Chall: And were you—did you become aware of it? Did it jolt you?
Gatov: To the extent of taking, for example, this course in labor history. I don't think I even knew there was a labor union until I took this course. I was ignorant.
Chall: That was probably something that he put into the curriculum.
Gatov: Quite possibly. I remember--! can't remember the name of the
professor, unfortunately, but I learned about such things as the Haymarket riots, the Pullman strike, all of these things that nobody ever mentioned before to me, even though I was brought up on the New York Times. My father used to get it in Montreal, driving into the city to pick it up on Sunday.
Dobbs required that we subscribe to it or the Herald Tribune, daily. Everybody had to subscribe to one of the New York papers, you see, and presumably read it, though I don't remember anybody questioning us on that. We did have current events sessions and so on. So I continued the habit of subscribing to the New York Times when I got to Smith, and I read it, but obviously I didn't read those things. It must have been like the sports page--I ignored it. So my world was beginning to open up, I think, by the time I left Smith.
I wouldn't »ay that I had any serious concerns. I didn't feel any calling to do anything about the problems that people encountered. But I did have friends who were upper classmen, who were taking jobs at Macy's, since this was the big thing in those days. If you were lucky enough to get into the Macy's training program, you were guaranteed a job as a salesgirl.
Chall: Smith graduates were doing this?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Because they had to?
Gatov: Yes, these were the girls who had to--or wanted to work. I don't
know. By this time, enough of them had to or wanted to do something. They were not getting married right away. They wanted to go to New York and work. And they had no practical training in anything.
29
Gatov: I guess it was not too dissimilar from those who came from
small towns in those days. New York was the magnet. The only way they knew to get in—certainly the college didn't, as I recall, offer us any job opportunities—was to find some kind of training after graduation.
You found one on your own. You went to New York and you applied, and if you were accepted, you'd made it.' [Laughs]
Chall: What about career opportunities? Of course, it was the Depression, but even so, were the girls encouraged to go into professional careers?
Gatov: Yes, they were. I don't recall any who were going into teaching.
I had several friends who went into medicine, and one didn't practice. She didn't stay with it.
Of course, the fact that I didn't stay there to graduate cut me off from what ultimately happened to many of them. So I couldn't really say. Perhaps you're familiar with the Status of Women Report of 1963, which was headed initially by Eleanor Roosevelt. She died, and Mrs. Esther Peterson took it over and presented it to President Kennedy just before the assassination.
It's a fascinating analysis of women up to perhaps 1960. What it showed, that so startled me, was that women from 1945 to 1960, were enrolling in colleges in both smaller percentages and number, graduating in smaller percentages and number, and going to graduate school in smaller percentages and number than they were in the thirties.
It came as a great surprise to me. It sort of triggered my thinking that something different had occurred. Perhaps it was the stimulus of the Depression. I don't know. But certainly, we were less, it seemed to me, we were less conventional in our expectations, perhaps, than some of the women who came along after World War II.
Chall: And you felt this in the girls that you knew who were ahead of you?
Gatov: Yes. They were planning on doing things on their own. They were not planning to go home.
Chall: I see. And they weren't planning on getting married right away?
Gatov: No. Some of them did. Some of them left college and got married, but this was not their be-all and end-all.
Chall: What were you majoring in, or had you planned?
.
30
Gatov: It was history. Chall: American history?
Gatov: It was just sort of loosely history. All I had taken up to that point was philosophy, which I thought was unbearably dull, and a world history course, which I thought was awful. Later, I realized that it never mentioned either China or Japan. It shouldn't have been called world history. It was western world history.
"*! was excused from freshman English and a couple of other things, among the required courses. My college board scores amazed me-- even in geometry. They were very good. I was surprised, and pleased, and Smith was my first choice. And I liked the place.
Chall: So it was a good two years?
Gatov: Oh, very fine, a very fine experience, with the exception of Miss B our land and the Spanish.1 [Laughs]
Chall: Do you look back on that as a sort of growing period?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Growing socially as well as intellectually?
Gatov: Yes, in a very sheltered environment. Because it was a sheltered environment .
Chall: Despite its liberal reputation?
Gatov: Despite its liberal reputation, it wasn't all that liberal. We had a lot of fun. One of the things I noticed about being in a girls' college, later observing the coeds at Michigan, was that during the week we had a feeling of total relaxation. We went around in dirty old Brooks sweaters, and filthy saddle shoes, and disgusting tweed skirts, caring not at all about how we looked.
Then, come weekends, of course everybody blossomed out.' [Laughs] I don't know that this was beneficial or otherwise, but it was comfortable. Strictly comfortable. We had no time periods of self- consciousness. We didn't worry about Bill over there, who I have a date with later. Perhaps he'd think we were a nut if we said something? I don't know if this is the way coeds feel. I realized that this was missing. It was not there; there was a lack of pressure—of that particular kind of pressure.
Chall: And you could be just as smart as you wanted to be?
31
Gatov: Yes; as you were expected to be. I really felt no feeling that you should suppress your inquiry, that there were courses that you shouldn't take beyond the required courses, which were not very exciting.
Mary Ellen Chase was there at that time. She was my freshman adviser. Well, I didn't have a great deal to do with her, because outside of the very apparent problems with Miss Bourland, I really didn't feel the need for an adviser. I knew pretty much what courses I wanted to take. So I knew her socially, but I didn't really have a "client" relationship with her.
It was an environment that was familiar to me. It was in the Northeast. It was a beautiful campus, sort of architecturally bare. We knew that the boys' schools got all the money. Dr. Neilson told us. The husbands always took care of their colleges first. He hoped that we would remember that. [Laughs]
Mrs. Morrow
The Morrow family was very interested in Smith, was one of the trustees.
Chall: Anne Morrow's [Lindbergh] mother?
Gatov: Yes. I wouldn't say that there was a feminist feeling, but I developed, at least, an awareness that I was expected to pull my weight, take my place, do my part. I developed some sort of a sense of social responsibility, that was beginning at Dobbs, but certainly got reinforced very hard at Smith.
Wealth was not considered anything to be particularly proud of. Accomplishment was.
Chall: When you went back to Montreal for summers--! assume you took off, and went back home? Did you discuss what you were learning with your brothers?
Gatov: Well, my oldest brother, I remember--! guess I was ser ious -minded , and probably more serious than I am today—and they [my brothers] complained about it. How could I expect any boys to be interested in me when I was—well, the term they use today is "heavy."?
I kept wanting to talk about all these things that were of no interest to them at all.
Chall: Certainly no other man would care.
f
32
Gatov: Absolutely not I, But, on the other hand, I didn't feel that I was ostracized in any way. I wasn't. I was one of the lucky ones, I think, having the best of both worlds. I had lots of beaux, as we called them then, and one who was the one I was very serious about, and finally wanted to marry.
He was from Hartford, and a member of a very prominent family. Chall: Where was he going to school?
Gatov: He had just graduated from Trinity. He went to Yale and got thrown out for some reason or other, and went to Trinity, which is in Hartford. And he was working in what had been his father's insurance business. His feather was dead. I used to go to Hartford a lot to spend the weekend with him and his mother. She was just a darling person who could imagine no evil about her son who was not only attractive-looking, but had white hair, which sort of made him doubly attractive.
They lived in a large, comfortable house in West Hartford, as I recall, and what had been the coachhouse was the garage, and the man who had been the coachman was now the gardener, and he lived upstairs. We used to go to dances at the Hartford Country Club a lot, and after the first couple of dances my friend would just disappear. I didn't mind, particularly, I was having a perfectly good time.
When the thing was all over, about two o'clock, he would be helped into the car by his friends, drunk as could be, and I would drive back, drive the car down into the garage, and the coachman would come down stairs and just take over. I got out of the car and went in the house and went to bed.
The next morning, I would come down to breakfast, and his mother would say, "Oh, poor boy, he's not feeling well today, but he'll be . along a little later."
Chall: Did she have any idea what was the matter with him?
Gatov: Apparently not. I think she couldn't quite acknowledge it.
Chall: And you were seriously interested in him?
Gatov: Tremendously. Oh, I thought he was just heavenly. So we got more or less engaged, and then he told me that it was a loose commitment, half a commitment. And I knew enough to know, even if it was not acknowledged to myself, that I really couldn't fit the family pattern in Hartford .
•
•
33
Chall:
Gatov: The subject came up, so that it was pretty clear that if we ever married, we were going to leave Hartford. Then somebody- Standard Oil offered him a job in the Philippines, which would take two years. I said, "Fine. If you do that, we'll get married." Then the family pressure on him began. He decided that he didn't want to go to the Philippines, that he wanted to stay in the insurance business.
I was broken-hearted (that was the episode which upset me during the Spanish mid-year), but I have since realized how lucky I was. That was just over.
Then I began to meet some men from various graduate schools at Harvard. I might want to go into this later, in the next interview, but that's how I met Don McGill, who was my first husband.
I think we can go into this, but I did want to check back on some details first. You said your family thought you were a little "heavy," for a girl who was ultimately supposed to find a man who was interested in her. Did you argue over social problems?
Well, I kept bringing them up.' [Laughs] And ask, "What do you think about it?"
And what did they think about it?
"Oh, shut up!" or, "I don't think anything about it." I became aware in this period, somehow, of things that would be later called dis crimination. I suppose it was just plain snobbishness in those days. But because the French spoke French and were Catholic and had very different kinds of education- -mostly church-oriented education- -and were obviously never going to amount to anything in the business world, a two-level situation really existed.
The city of Montreal was over eighty percent French, and so, of course, the French ran the politics of the province, totally. And the English had all the money. It wasn't until after World War II that this began to change. The French were definitely second-class citizens. There was no question about it. It showed in such little ways. You learned Parisian French in the schools, and it was made very plain that French-Canadian French was an abomination. You certainly didn't want to corrupt your pure French French with this patois.
So the French were supposed to speak English to the English. The English never spoke French to the French—except for my godmother. She came from a place called Bicque, a little town down by the St. Lawrence River, and she spoke perfect, flawless, French -Canadian French.
Gatov:
Chall : Gatov :
34
Gatov: A marvelous sense of humor — she was a great, great, woman. I
just adored her. She and my mother were very close friends. Whenever they got out in the country, where nobody spoke English, or in any kind of situation, Aunt Ethel, as I used to call her, could speak FrenchJ [Laughs]
Mother never learned a word of French, in all the years she lived there. No kind of French. She just ignored the whole thing'
Chall: Did you have French at The Study?
Gatov : Chall: Gatov:
Chall: Gatov :
Chall: Gatov: Chall: Gatov : Chall: Gatov :
Yes.
And then you had four years at Dobbs. You should know it quite well.
You would think so, but with disuse, it certainly does disappear.
And I also was aware that there was something wrong with Jews, and "niggers," as black people were called, and Catholics.
They called them that in Canada?
That was their name there. They had a very small population of Negroes there. No more than thirty-five Pullman porters who lived there. They had no part of anything. Nor did the Chinese, who did the laundry and were all called "John." I'm sure that there was a Jewish population in Montreal, but I wasn't aware of it, since they weren't where I was. I didn't meet them skiing or in school. I don't know the answer to that; obviously, there must have been a Jewish community.
I can assure you there was; my mother grew up in Montreal.
Did she?
In a very much Jewish community I
Obviously there was — is she alive?
Yes.
Well, she can confirm it. I've been giving you.
I'd like to hear her opinion of all this
It was a small, segregated world, but I wasn't aware that it was small and segregated. I guess that's the only way I can describe it. I didn't rebel against it; I just didn't think anything of it until, as I say, the stirrings began, at Smith, when I became aware that there
35
Gatov: were people to whom society was very punitive --harsh, and of course, I then began meeting Catholic and Jewish girls and could make my own observations.
This Miriam Botwinick, who saved my life out of the kindness of her heart.1 So I can see, now, that I was gradually moving away from the preconceptions that my family had, and that my two older brothers still do, which in some way has affected our relationship; we sort of tolerate each other in such matters. They're practically Birchers. [Laughs]
Chall: Well, a liberal education will do that for a girl. [Laughs]
Gatov: I remember when I was appointed treasurer [of the United States],
some newspaper found my mother, at Finehurst, and Mother said something to the effect that the whole family were Republicans. The reporter asked, "How do you account for your daughter?" and Mother said, "Well, I guess that something happened to her at Smith.'" [Laughs]
Chall: That's a good answer.
Gatov: For that question, at any rate. I can't answer it; I don't suppose anybody really can pinpoint change. There was no single occurrence, I can see now. But it was starting. The fact that I even took a course in labor history, which was certainly not required at that stage.
Dr. Neilson, I presume, was applying the prod.
Chall: Well, it would be interesting to know if Smith girls reacted
differently to their social environments when they were through with college than did girls from other girls' schools.
Gatov: The ones that I knew did, because we were friends; it probably meant that we had something in common anyway. One of them went on to become a newspaper reporter, and then correspondent for North American News Service. One was in the State Department. Miriam Fosdick, one of my classmates, is now quite a power with one of the Senate committees, I forget which one.
I can see that something drew us all together, and that was not verbalized, I'm sure. Some sort of community of interests. I think that Smith in those days had the reputation of being more "advanced."
Chall: Well, you left in the middle of your junior year to get married?
Gatov: Yes. I attended a wedding outside of New York in June at the end
of my sophomore year. I was part of the wedding party. One of the ushers was a man named Don McGill from Chicago, who was at Harvard getting a master's in history. He was about twenty-six, I guess.
[end Tape 1, side 2]
36
Introspection: How the Past is Prologue
•
[Recorded by Mrs. Gatov after completion of the first interview as she drove back to her home in Kentfield. Tape A]
Gatov: The first thing that I want to get in goes back to my freshman year in college. I began trying to write. I remember taking a course in creative writing, another one in music appreciation, and I was beginning to enjoy trying to express original--! hoped they were original, at any rate — ideas.
My desk was in the corner of a window—sort of a bow window—and I used to love to look out of it in the early evening after supper, and think about what the future was going to be like, and what I was going to be like, in a very, very generalized way. I remember writing some poetry at the time. If I can find any of it, I'll bring it over. It probably would express, better than these words can, what I was after.
It seems to me that my objective then was to no longer be confined to a narrow strata of society, even though it was a very comfortable and pleasant level at which I found myself. I realize now, on more thought, that I was aware there were all kinds of people in the world, and I wanted to be able to communicate with them, and have them communicate with me, to use the vernacular of today.
I wanted to be acceptable to all kinds of people. I don't know whether this was Dr. Neilson, or whether it was a religious training of earlier years. I don't remember going to chucch at all while I was at Smith, and I don't recall the chapel services had very much of a religious connotation. Ethical, perhaps. But I began to develop the feeling that everybody who is human is entitled to respect for that very fact.
I think also a little of this comes from my really delighted acceptance of American history and the American constitution. To go back even further, when I was in Dobbs— you remember I said I'd come from Montreal and never had any American history. I'd had a lot of Canadian history, and a great deal of English history. Canada was governed under something called the North America Act, which was passed in 1867, I believe, and it created a dominion. It created one country, and brought the provinces together, and they all acknowledged that they were part of the British Empire, in a commonwealth status.
But it was not a statement of principles. It was nothing like what I got so excited about reading in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I took the whole thing pretty literally. These
37
Gatov: people, about whom I began to learn a little something—the drafters of the Constitution—they were people of property; they certainly were as privileged as I was, and yet they had these marvelous conceptions of people having equal rights.
I realized that the concept of everybody equal under the law didn't mean that everybody was equal in the sense that the same was expected of you as was expected of me, as was expected of my brother. I don't think that I was ever that naive; but it was the concept that because you were an American citizen, this very fact guaranteed you certain rights in the community of humans, in the world of man.
I found this a terribly heady thing, and I just loved it. So I think that this was the start of my feeling that I must know more kinds of people, and break out of my mold. Not that it was stifling in any way. Nobody was holding me back, but I realized that these were ideas that I'd never had before, and my family might accept or not. It seemed not to worry me at all that they might disapprove.
Now as I recall, the word that I used to describe what I wanted to be was "cosmopolitan," which meant, in my vocabulary of the day, an ability to touch and to understand the ways of living, problems, aspirations, and the customs of all kinds of people.
Then there's another little bit that may illuminate something about my mother and me. This was about the weekend before my final set of College Boards, and my oldest brother was about to graduate from Princeton. I wanted to go, and my parents wanted me to go, but the school had a rule that you couldn't be absent on the weekend before College Boards began, the reason being that you had to be in good shape and get lots of sleep, and be ready to do as well as you could on the exams.
Well, my parents had no patience with this, frankly, so they called the headmistress and told her that they wanted me taken to the station to get on such-and-such a train to New York, and they would meet me, and we would go down to Princeton for the weekend. Miss Pierce (the headmistress) and Mother had quite a little argument.
Mother told me about it later. Miss Pierce said she didn't think that this was the proper attitude for my parents to take, on the weekend before the most crucial days in my life. My mother said that she replied to her, "Well, Miss Pierce, I think I'm at least as interested In Elizabeth's future as you are, and I think it would do her good." So I went.
38
Gatov: And there was another episode before I went to Dobbs. Something had occurred, and I've lost any recollection of what it was, when I was at The Study, Miss Gascoigne's school. Some sort of infraction of the rules, and Miss Gascoigne called my mother in. I think I was in bed with a bad case of poison ivy at the time.
Anyway, my mother was called in to talk to Miss Gascoigne. The school apparently blamed me for whatever it was that had been done, and told Mother that I was a disburbing influence in the school, and she doubted very much if I could really matriculate, as they called it, from Miss Gascoigne's. She didn't really throw me out, according to Mother, but she made it pretty plain that she wanted some changes in my attitude, if I was thinking of coming back in September.
I'd been there six years. I don't know why I was presumed the culprit, but I was. Mother reacted by saying that well, she wasn't so sure that she wanted me to come back. Actually, I was planning to go to boarding school although it wasn't necessarily going to be that September.
So the result was that I never went back. I got over the poison ivy and stayed out of school that summer. September saw me at Dobbs, and that chapter was closed.
With all our differences that we may have had, and I'm sure we had many, Mother was always on my side. I don't think I ever had any question about that. My parents and me against the world.
I do remember that I felt that my father understood me better than my mother. He had more of a sense of humor than my mother did, which appealed to me enormously. I'm not very funny myself, but I like people who are funny.
Something else that ought to be included someplace, which may explain some of my later life, was that my father and my brothers took an automatic and instant dislike to any young man that I brought home on my own. If he was a son of a friend of my parents, it was fine, or if he was a friend of one of my brothers, it was probably all right.
But it was made very clear to me that I was special in this regard, They wouldn' t--and never would — think that any man was quite good enough for their little darling. They also had some ground rules. My father would normally serve cocktails to anybody who was sixteen or older; this was just part of family routine. When I became sixteen, I would have one of the cocktails that Mother made.
39
Gatov: They were hideous concoctions of gin, lemon juice, white of egg, pineapple juice, and a little bit of apricot brandy. They were known as Mother's Cocktails. I thought they were delicious. This, of course, was during Prohibition in the United States, but we had no Prohibition in Canada. My parents took the rather enlightened attitude that children were going to be exposed to drinking, sooner or later, someplace, under certain circumstances, away from home. They might be protected a bit by learning something about it by drinking at home.
All of his life, my father didn't drink Mother 's cocktails. He had a scotch and soda, which he taught me to mix for him. He had two drinks before dinner and one at ten o'clock at night before he went to bed. It was just as conventional as it could be. Everyone was allowed two cocktails before dinner.
But my father made it very well known to me that any young man who took more than two was obviously a drunk and a worthless character. So I used to warn the boys who came up to visit us in the summertime or for the weekend, at Pinehurst or wherever, that whatever they did other times I didn't care about. "Please don't take the third cocktail that will be offered to you. It is a test. It makes life a lot easier to just say, 'Thank you very much, but no.'" Usually they did.
This exposure to alcohol I really feel was a very sound idea. I think that by removing the mystery, it helped a lot. This is not to say that I never had too much to drink--! certainly did. But during Prohibition days [when I was in the United States] , I remember tasting the awful stuff that people were drinking, and thinking "Heavens, how can they swallow it?" I was learning how it was made, and so forth, so that in those days I drank ginger ale, because the bootleg stuff was so awful. I had had good liquor, so I knew what it was.
When we were at Pinehurst, my mother used to smuggle Scotch across the border for my father. He bought corn liquor, which he would age and treat with great respect, from a bootlegger. By the time he seeved it--it was bourbon. So I've never had any of the poor and inferior stuff, and really wasn't very interested in drinking, or in the effect of it. I didn't drink very much during Prohibition. It wasn't something I did. It wasn't that I wasn't with plenty of people who did.
I have a little story that you might be interested in from when I was in boarding school. I went to Chicago during the summer, to visit a friend of mine who later enrolled at Smith. She lived in
40
Gatov: Winnetka. Her name was Jean Armstrong, and her father was president of the Monarch Food Company. It was a food canning plant, I guess, in Chicago.
I arrived on the Fourth of July, which was of no significance to me whatsoever, as the Canadian national holiday was the first of July. I'd taken the train from Montreal, and after a day and a half, arrived in Chicago. The Armstrongs met me, and we drove out to Winnetka. Well, getting to the station from Winnetka, you drive through a lot of downtown Chicago.
I could hear these bangs and pops and so forth. This was in the days of Al Capone, and I was absolutely certain that here I was in the gangster center of the country, and here were all the gangsters shooting at each other and nobody cared.' Nobody paid the slightest attention. Fortunately, I had sense enough not to say anything, and nobody else seemed disturbed.
I later learned that this was the great American custom of the Fourth of July.
Probably I should also say something about what it was like to be a Canadian in the United States in those days. Even less than today, Americans knew nothing about Canada. It was the great frozen North, it was full of Indians and polar bears, and probably a pretty primitive people.
So to make things more interesting, I remember inventing an Indian grandmother. I said that one of my grandmothers was French; since I didn't know my grandmothers, it didn't seem like running anybody down. One of my grandmothers, or great -grandmothers, definitely was French, and I decided that the other was an Indian, an Iroquois, the tribe that was prevalent around Montreal.
For years, I just let this little myth prevail at Dobbs, and it made me much more interesting.
Another thing that I quickly recognized was that people of this particular strata in the United States "find out" about each other. It was very difficult for them to find out much about me, so I was pretty well accepted. I went to a lot of other girls' coming-out parties, and I never heard of anyone saying, "Well, I'm not so sure that we should have her." But they said this about other people, I was aware.
So I would say that being a Canadian in the United States at that time was by no means a handicap, and probably was quite an asset.
Gatov: All this time, I was becoming more and more and more an American, I began to realize. Particularly, I was also a Democrat. I don't know by what process I got there, but I recall the Al Smith -Herbert Hoover election of 1928. We had a mock election at school, and a parade. I was one of six Democrats marching for Al Smith, and every body else was marching for Hoover. That taught me something, too, about the probable politics of my friends' families.
I'll remember to bring over the Dobbs yearbooks, with all the pictures, so Mrs. Chall can see how deadly earnest we were.
One more bit of clarification--! was telling you the problems I had with the Spanish teacher and the five hours of "E" on the mid year exam. I recall now very clearly what happened. It was partly my problems with Miss Bourland and the fact that I went to pieces when I saw her proctor ing an exam.
But also my romance with my hoped-for future husband in Hartford, fell apart at just that time. As I mentioned, I was pretty upset, because I realized that I was extremely attracted to him, and in spite of his getting drunk regularly at parties at the country club, he had many things to commend him. We had a lot of mutual interests, and I thought he was just a delightful person.
As I said, the decision not to go to the Philippines with Standard Oil had come just prior to the final, so I called it off and was in a state of emotional despair, so that was certainly a contributing factor to my miserable performance on the exam.
For some reason, I saw fit not to tell Miss Bourland about this. I suspect I thought that she disliked me enough anyway. She thought that I was too active socially and enjoyed life on and off campus. I thought she resented me and that this would only make matters worse.
[ end Tape A |
42
II A DECADE OF ADJUSTMENTS, 1932-1945 (Interview 2, November 26, 1975) [begin Tape 2, side 1]
Marriage; Intellectual Life in Storm King. New York
Chall : I recall that we were talking about how you happened to meet your husband, in about 1930, I guess it was. At a wedding?
Gatov: Yes. He was studying for a doctor's degree--! think I said it was a master "s--but he'd actually gotten his mater's at the University of Michigan earlier. He was working on his doctorate at Harvard.
Chall: What field?
Gatov: In history. Modern European history. And he was about the first person that I had met who was not out of the business world, and who had concern about some of these things which interested me, too. After the wedding, he came up and visited us, at our summer place outside of Montreal.
The family seemed to like him, and I realized that I was getting much more involved than I had been originally. I went back to college, and about Thanksgiving time, we decided that we wanted to get married. We made this known to his parents and my parents, and they were both horrified because the Depression was on, and he had no job, and I was in college, and for all of the reasons that they could possibly imagine .
So they suggested that we wait for three years. That seemed ridiculous to us, so we took matters in our own hands, and eloped, which caused something of a crisis all around. We were married by a Justice of the Peace in Petersburgh, New York on December 17, 1931.
Anyhow, he shortly thereafter got a job teaching in a boys' school called Storm King in Cornwall, New York. I don't know whether it's even still in existence.
43
Chall: Where was that?
Gatov: On Storm King Mountain, which is just north of West Point, on the Hudson River. Perfectly beautiful spot.
Chall: What did you do?
Gatov: I didn't go back to school after Christmas.
Chall: You went to live at Harvard?
Gatov: No, then we began job-hunting, began driving ail over, going to
schools, boys' schools mostly. He finally found a job, as I say, at Storm King, so there we settled in.
Chall: What did he plan to do about his graduate work?
Gatov: Nothing much, at that time. I don't know whether he was getting bored with it, or what, but after we stayed there three years, during the course of which my oldest child was born, Jane, in 1934, he decided that he wanted to go to the University of Michigan, law school. He didn't want to be in teaching.
While we were living at Storm King, I met a Mr. and Mrs. Louis Ledoux of New York. He had been to Japan many times, and was president of the Japan Society, as it was then called. He had a remarkable collection of Noh robes, some Japanese prints, and some ceramics, but not very much. They had a weekend place very near the school, on Storm King Mountain, and they were very nice to us and invited us over a great deal.
He was the first person that I had met who really had an intimate knowledge of any Far Eastern country. I remember, one day, saying to him, "You know, you're so interested in Japan, so informed- you really ought to be our ambassador." He looked horrified, and he said, "I could never do that, I'm much too fond of the Japanese!"
I didn't understand what he meant then. I know now. But it seemed to me sort of sensible that somebody who had empathy with the people that they were being sent to would want to do a better job. That was my first introduction to the Far East.
So we went to the University of Michigan.
Chall: I'll have to stop you for a minute. I don't have your husband's name.
44
Gatov :
Chall: Gatov: Chall: Gatov: Chall : Gatov: Chall: Gatov : Chall:
Gatov :
His name was Donald Hamilton McGill. He came from Wilmette, Illinois, It's a suburb between Chicago and Winnetka. He attended New Trier High School, and the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, and a graduate student, and then went to Harvard.
I see. Did you say that you lived in Storm King for three years?
Yes.
And he taught there three years?
He taught there for three years.
And your daughter Jane was born--
In 1934. She was one when we went to Ann Arbor.
So he decided to go back to graduate school, but in another field?
He went to law school.
Could you tell me what you were doing during that period in Storm King?
Well, after the baby was born, I was doing quite a lot, because this was in the days before laundromats and things. I was boiling diapers, and mixing formulas, and all those things. [Laughs] Much simpler today than they were then I
But before she was born, we. shared this great interest in history, and I was particularly aware of the gaps that I had in my education. We used to go to New York, down to the lower end of Fourth Avenue, where there were many, many second-hand book stores. He had quite a library; about 3,000 books at that time, and it continued to grow.
I decided that I knew nothing about Russia, which was another area that had never been mentioned much during my schooling. So I bought a lot of second-hand books on the Tsarist regime, and the Russian Revolution, and what happened after the revolution.
I was so aware of my ignorance. I had started this project not having the faintest idea why the Russian Revolution occurred, or that everybody else's revolutions had happened earlier—what was the matter with them? I had no idea how separated they were from the rest of Europe, and what their own internal problems had been. In any case, I found it very interesting, and sort of entertained myself that way.
t
45
Gatov: There was also a very interesting English couple. The husband was on the faculty, named Leavitt. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Leavitt. Elsie, I think, was her name. She and he broadened my knowledge enormously of things that were going on in Europe. In other words, what was leading up to Hitler, who came in at just this time, in 1933.
I remember so well listening on the radio with them, to Hitler addressing the stadium full of people in Nuremberg, I believe it was; prior to that, the overthrow of the previous chancellor. I became aware of the development of the Nazi movement, with a great deal of help from the Leavitts, who were much more informed than I. We used to listen to a lot of those things, and talk about them. I think this was when I realized that the United States was going to be involved in whatever happened. That even then, the world had shrunk to the point that probably all these things were very important to us. I guess that's the best way of putting it.
I remember the rise of Mussolini, and the calm with which people took that. There was no concern, apparently, that I was aware of, that these dictatorships were rising. Fascist states were there to stay. I remember the Spanish civil war.
The attitudes of people then was really rather of indifference, even in the pretty intellectual group that I was in at that time. People like the Ledouxs weren't the only ones who lived in Cornwall in the summertime and weekends that we come to know. It was a very interesting community.
Re turn to College; University of Michigan
Gatov: Anyhow, we went from there to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Soon after we got there, we went on a picnic, where the head of the geography department was present. Don had a lot of friends who were then on the faculty. So we fell right into a very pleasant social situation.
This man, whose name was Dr. Robert Hall, taught Far Eastern geography. I asked him if he had ever heard of Louis Ledoux, and he had, and wanted to know why I had. As we talked some more, he said, "Why don't you go back to school?"
The thought had never occurred to me until that time. I said, "Oh, I couldn't," and the usual things; I had a one-year-old child, didn't have much money. He said, 'Veil, you come to my office on
•
46
Gatov: Monday, and we'll see whab we can work out in the way of schedule." This was July or August, so there was still time. There wasn't the pressure that there is now to apply very early.
Anyhow, we did work out a schedule, for a degree in something pretty new then, called Far Eastern Civilizations. At that time-- this was '35, '36, and '37--only the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard, besides Michigan, were giving degrees in this field.
All the problems were able to be worked out quite easily. I got someone to come in early in the morning, who would stay until noon. All of my classes were in the morning, and I took care of the baby in the afternoon. I did my studying at night, and was able to take books out of the library, or borrow them, in this case, mostly from the professors.
It was not nearly as difficult as I had thought it was going to be.
Chall: And your husband acquiesced?
Gatov: Oh, yes, because he was going to law school. There was no problem there. It decreased any desire on my part to go do other things. The subject really never came up. I think he was quite pleased about it, as I recall.
There was one man teaching there then named James Marshall Plummer, who was quite a scholar, and became very well established in the field of early Chinese ceramics. He had a fabulous collection of his own. That collection was the reason for one of the courses-- I forget what it was called, in the catalogue.
We called it "warehouse technique," because it included unpacking his collection, which had just arrived from China, and cataloguing it, and sending various bits and pieces of it off on loan to various museums in the United States. We sort of kept his show on the road, so to speak.
He and his wife had spent a lot of time digging in kiln sites. I forget how they got to China, but they'd gone into the interior to visit a friend who'd been a classmate of his at Harvard, who was the American consul. The consul died while they were there; he got a letter out to Washington, notifying them of the consul's death, saying he was just a friend staying there. And the next word he had was, "Will you continue to stay there until we can find a replacement?"
He was acting consul for, I think, nearly a year.
Chall: I see. This was about '34?
Gatov: In '34, I would guess.
Chall: And problems arose with the Japanese?
Gatov: Oh, yes. Long before the Japanese problems, they were still having their civil war between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao. Apparently, he didn't seem to be disturbed by that in the slightest. Anyhow, they went digging at every opportunity, and came up with a marvelous collection of T*ang and Sung pottery, which I became entranced with, too.
Chall: Yes, what a treat '.
Gatov: It was. I just felt that this whole world out there existed, and I didn't know anything about it, so I was a sponge.
So two years went by. My husband, about this time, evidenced a mental illness which neither of us seemed able to handle. Although we consulted several psychiatrists in the Chicago area, they couldn't foresee any solution within the marriage; so we were divorced in Ann Arbor.
Chall: And that was about when?
Gatov: In '37. He left and went to southern California.
Chall: Did he finish law school?
Gatov: No. He was two and a half years into it, and he decided that he didn't want to finish it.
Chall: So that kind of shattered two lives unexpectedly?
Gatov: Yes, it really did. He left, and I stayed, and finished getting my degree.
Chall: You were almost through then? Gatov: Yes. I had one more semester to go.
Chall: What about your income at that point? Were your parents supporting you in any way?
Gatov: Yes. Both of our parents helped. They each sent us $125 a month,
which in those days was plenty. We even had a car. I think the rent we paid was something like $55 a month. [Laughs] I do remember the
48
Gatov :
Chall: Gatov :
food bills were about the same, about $55 a month, for three—really four people, because of the girl who came in and helped with the baby. We were able to get along very well.
So there wasn't that strain in going to school?
No.
Career Choices Closed
Chall: You did get your degree, then, in Far Eastern Civilizations?
Gatov: Yes. Then I talked to the dean of the law school. He discouraged me completely and said, "You don't want to spend the rest of your life doing somebody else's work in the stacks."
Chall: Oh? You thought of that?
Gatov: I thought of going to law school, too.
Chall: And they assured you that as a woman, you would never be a lawyer?
Gatov: I could never be my own lawyer.
Chall: I see.
Gatov: I'd be working for somebody else, and he would get all the credit, and I would just spend my time looking up material for his cases.
Chall: How did you feel when they told you that? Was that acceptable?
Gatov: I accepted it as a fact of life. I didn't like it, but I knew the dean and his wife—I forget their name, at the moment— socially, and there was no reason for him to try to discourage me, particularly. I felt that he was being sort of generously candid in saying, in effect, that this is a closed field.
So then I tried museums. I went to five, and they all said the same thing.
Chall: Around Michigan? Ann Arbor? Where did you go to?
Gatov: No, I went to where the good Oriental collections were, in Washington, New York, Boston, and Brooklyn, in those days. And, of course, the Depression was still on.
49
Gatov: Two drawbacks --one was that I didn't have knowledge of either
the Chinese or Japanese language. The other was that I was a woman, and they just said, really, essentially the same thing. "All we have women do here is dust the exhibits. I just don't think you're going to like to wield a feather duster for years."
Chall: You were overqualif ied already.
Gatov: So, I left Ann Arbor after graduation, and took my little collection-- by this time, I had two fine pieces. I had one given to me by Professor Plummer, and another by the assistant dean, who was also a friend of Plummers. I loaned them to the museum in Montreal, which had nothing in the Sung period at all. There they stayed for years and years.
I was happy about it because they were safe, and people could enjoy them. I didn't have to take care of them, but there they were.
Chall: You had to figure out what you were going to do if you couldn't be a lawyer, or you couldn't work in a museum?
Gatov: This became more and more of a problem. At that time, I really sort of gave up on independent career-hunting.
My father--! think I mentioned this earlier—while he'd expected me to perform at least as well as my brothers did, and certainly gave me as good an education as they had, nevertheless felt that if I were to go to work, it was an indication that he was not competent to support me.
This would, therefore, be a reflection on him. He made it quite plain.
Moving Home: Life and Work in Montreal and Pinehurst
Chall: You went home then, I take it.
Gatov: So then I went home, with my little girl. She was the only grandchild, and my parents were very, very fond of her. So I began moving from Montreal to Pinehurst and from Pinehurst to Montreal, which meant that any kind of sustained work was really out of the question.
Chall: Pinehurst, that was--
50
Gatov: — North Carolina.
Chall: Oh, I see. So you went with them when they went to Pinehurst for the winter. You just traveled with your family, and you weren't independent any more?
Gatov: Not at all.
Chall: That must have been quite—at least when you were in school, you were in school. You weren't traveling back and forth with them.
Gatov: It was quite an adjustment, and I think I was a little surprised at how much of an adjustment it was. My father died during this period, in June 1938.
While I lived with my parents there was plenty of help, so I didn't have to do a lot of the things that most young mothers do have to do. They decided that it would be all right if I did do some work.
Chall: What kind?
Gatov: Quite a variety." [Laughs]
Chall: Paid or volunteer?
Gatov: Paid. No. I did some volunteer, too, but I wanted some paid work. I wanted some money of my own. It was that simple, because though the divorce settlement included child support, there never was any.
I got a job in the local dress shop, which had just opened up. Chall: In Pinehurst?
Gatov: In Pinehurst. I started selling dresses, and I also started doing tutoring at the local school, where I had gone myself years earlier. It was an excellent school, run by a woman named Miss Chapman.
She took children who were down there with their parents—all stages of school, of course. They would bring their books and their assignments, and our job, the part-time faculty job, was to work with these children individually and see that they were where they ought to be by the time they went home. It was very interesting; it was my first teaching experience. I liked it very much. That is when I began to learn something about algebra. [Laughs]
Chall: These children were of all ages?
51
Gatov: Chall:
Gatov:
Chall: Gatov:
Chall: Gatov:
Yes. Both sexes, and all ages.
And they would come from extended periods of time? Like two or three months with their parents?
Perhaps that long, perhaps just three weeks. The fact that her school was there was part of the publicity of the town. Pinehurst, in those days, was owned by the Tufts family, who'd founded it in 1910. They owned all the land, and they owned all the hotels, and shops, and everything. In their little brochures, they remarked that in addition to the public school, there was a private tutoring school. It went along for years; Miss Chapman died about five years ago.
Is that right? And so this was a private tutoring school just for the children of people who came there to spend some vacation?
Or for the children of people who lived there all winter. They could also go there and go right along. So she acquired her tutors as she acquired her students. [Laughs]
You might be able to pay for your vacation? [Laughs]
So that went on that year. Then I don't recall very much about what happened after my father died. It was in the summer. I do recall something, which might be of interest someday to somebody.
My mother and my sister-in-law and I were very close at this time. I think we were all living together — in other words, my brother Jack, of whom I've spoken quite fondly earlier, .and his wife, who was a lovely person named Ruby- -we were all together in our country place the summer Father died. He died in June.
Mother said one day that she would like to take us, if we were interested, to somebody who was a psychic. I don't at the moment recall her name, but I think—Quest Brown.' about whom Mother had apparently heard some very interesting things. So she made an appointment for the three of us, and we went.
Well, I don't recall in what order she saw us, but I will never forget what happened when I went in. This woman had a string of amber beads. She kept feeling the beads, and then she handed me the beads; and said, "Just keep these in your hand for a minute or two." She was English, as I recall. So I kept the beads in my hand, and she took them from me, and she said, "You have lost someone very close to you, very recently, who died of an intestinal problem." My father died of a ruptured appendix. I don't recall whether I was number three, and, you know, whether she'd picked this up. She could have, I suppose.
52
Gatov: Then she went on, talking about me. She knew I didn't really live in Montreal, but I had some connection with it. She said, "You probably will be urged to stay here, but don't stay here. You don't belong here. You belong far away. Far, far away.1"
She didn't get any more specific than that, but really was quite firm. She was not an odd kind of person. She wasn't mysterious in her dress, no crystal ball, nothing weird in any way. Perfectly normal kind of a person, or so it seemed to me.
In any case, I was very interested in the fact that she had said that my future was not there. So of course, we all compared notes afterwards. She told my mother, for instance, that there would be no more deaths in her immediate family for quite a few years. So we all left feeling pretty good.
That's just a little insert.
Then Mother, Janie and I went back down to Pinehurst that fall, and this time I worked in a place called the Mediterranean Shop, which sold antiques. It was run by a very vindictive, unpleasant woman. One of the requirements of the job was that you stay after work and drink with her. Well, I didn't drink very much in those days, and she was pretty awful when she was drinking. So I finally quit.
Chall: That's a strange request of an employee.
Gatov: Well, it wasn't really a request, it was just made plain. I don't know how to put it .
Chall: Almost more than a request, it's part of the job. Gatov: So I just decided it wasn't for me, and left.
Meantime, I had met a young man who was an attorney there, who came from Lexington, Virginia. His name was Frank McCluer. We saw an increasing amount of each other.
Married and Widowed
Chall: Was he there vacationing, or did he work?
Gatov: No, he was working in a small law office in Aberdeen, about six miles away. After a couple of years, we were married. We were married a little over two years.
'
53
Chall: When were you married?
Gatov: In 1939. Then Pearl Harbor came, December 7, 1941. He was killed December 28, 1941, playing polo.
Chall: At Pinehurst?
' Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Was that one of his regular sports?
Gatov: Yes. We both rode a lot. I should get in here something about the life of that community, because it's going to end pretty soon. It was a very happy time for me. We lived in Southern Pines, which was also about six miles from Pinehurst.
We started to build a house, which included a self-sustaining wing attached to the house, but really quite separate from it, that my mother was going to live in. She would have two bedrooms and a living room, and a dining and kitchen area, and then we would have a larger house but it would all be part of the same.
It really looked as though things were going to be very nice. He had a lot of friends whom I had not met before, who lived in Southern Pines, which is a much more stable community than Pinehurst. People tended to have that as their main place of residence, even though a lot of them were northerners. They might go North for the summer, but Southern Pines was home. In contrast to Pinehurst, where someplace else was home and they came down there for the winter.
I met James and Katherine Boyd. He was an author who wrote Drams and Marching On, and a number of Revolutionary-era things, and wrote some poetry. And I met Buffy Ives, who was Adlai Stevenson's sister.
The Boyds and the Iveses became very close friends of ours. We still didn't have much money, but they included us in a great many things. The Boyds had a newspaper, The Pilot, which they encouraged me to write for, and I did, and enjoyed that immensely. They paid me modest sums, [laughs] just enough to encourage me and keep me in paper, I guess.
54
Director of Well Baby Clinics
Gatov: They propelled me into some fields. I became a trustee of the local library, and the most long-reaching thing that I did was to become the head of the Moore County Well Baby Clinics. And these, I'm sure Katherine Boyd, who was a Lament, paid for herself. I never inquired too much.
My job was to find doctors to man the clinics, locate sites for the clinics, and a nurse. The public health nurse usually was available. We would rotate the clinics in the different towns in the county, once a week.
Chall: Was it a poor county, amidst this general wealth?
Gatov: Yes. There were two communities of wealth, Pinehurst and Southern Pines. The rest of the county was like any place else in North Carolina in those days, quite poor. Poor white and poor black. I remember, for instance, a maid we had whom I paid three dollars a week. She was delighted to get it. It seems incredible today. [Laughs]
The clinics were segregated, needless to say, in those days. I began learning some of the differences among people who were poor. The poor whites were infinitely more deprived and their way of life, in my opinion at any rate, was much more primitive than that of the blacks.
I thought about it a lot, and came to the conclusion that the reason was that whites normally lived separately. They didn't live in communities. They lived at the end of wagon tracks that you often see as you're driving along small roads, in the Carolinas or Georgia. Just a pair of tracks that go off between pine trees.
At the end of that, you'd find a house, with chickens, and a dog, and maybe a little tilled land; but the people by and large were less educated and less trained in anything than any whites I had ever seen before.
They were what was known as the "cracker," and they really were. Very inbred, and frightfully ignorant. I remember one woman, for instance, who later brought her baby to the clinic. When she went into labor, the husband put a rope around her and squeezed --he pulled the rope through the loop and practically cut her in half.
Chall: My wordJ
55
Gatov: He finally got her to a hospital, and she survived. But he did this because this was the way he used to deliver his cows, he said.
Chall: Was this their first baby?
Gatov: Far as I knew, it was their first baby.
Chall: Oh my goodness.'
Gatov: This kind of ignorant brutality you never would find in the black community. They were truly communities. West Southern Pines, for Southern Pines, Taylortown, for Pinehurst. They had churches, schools, doctors in their own communities.
The streets usually weren't paved, they didn't look terribly prosperous, and they weren't prosperous. But nevertheless, they knew each other and they helped each other.
We had some midwives employed in the county, but I don't think that most of the black births were attended by a professional unless they happened to have a doctor. West Southern Pines did—but some of the other black communities did not.
Chall: Were these white doctors, if there were doctors, or were there black doctors?
Gatov: Black doctors would come to the clinic, and a white doctor — a white Catholic doctor, Frank Owens—would come to the black clinics as well as the white clinics.
These black families were better adjusted to taking care of children. We never saw any battered black children, for instance. I don't want to make too many wide generalities, but in the two years I did this work, I never saw a black battered child, and I saw plenty of battered white ones. Not only battered, but with frightful skin diseases, scaly heads, and malnutrition— this kind of thing.
The black children were really--! then understood why people just loved black babies, because they were so cute. They were well taken care of. They were bathed, at any rate, before they came to the clinic. They were all dressed up. It was my first exposure to blacks doing anything except cleaning the house or carrying a golf bag around a golf course, or that kind of thing.
Chall: What was the basis of their economy? Gatov: Working for the whites.
Chall: That was all?
Gatov: Practically all. Some of them, I guess, did rather menial mechanic helper jobs, in various garages. Some of them were teachers in their own school. By and large, they survived on the white community.
Chall: And the white poor lived on subsistence on their own land?
Gatov: On their own land, or they might be sharecroppers for some of the tobacco farmers who lived around there. The peach orchards were big then in those days. They might come in during that season.
But they lived a very dismal life, with a lot of diseases. I remember a woman with a goiter hanging right down onto her chest, and this kind of thing.
The blacks were visible, in this particular area, and there were a number of people in the white community who were interested in them, and were concerned about them.
Chall: The Well Baby Clinic was a private clinic?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Totally, then?
Gatov: Totally. They paid nothing, and the county paid nothing, except they did release their public health nurse for the days that we had the clinics.
Chall: Was there any attempt, at that time, to teach birth control? Was that an allowable subject?
Gatov: It wasn't particularly, there, and I don't remember being concerned about it there.
But prior to being down there, when I was still living in Storm King, my sister-in-law Ruby asked if I could find her the Planned Parenthood office in New York, because in those days, until quite recently, contraception was illegal in Canada.
They didn't want to have a child right away, so she came down to New York and I made an appointment for her and went with her to a Planned Parenthood office which was down in Greenwich Village some place, and was staffed by women doctors. It wasn't a remodeled old house; it was just an old house.
c
Gatov: Ruby was gone for quite a little while, and when she came back, she looked quite shaken. The doctor came with her. She said, "Mrs. Rudel has some sort of a growth in her uterus, and she should go to her own doctor as soon as she gets home." Meanwhile, I have given her a diaphragm and jelly.
So Ruby went off with a prescription for quite a lot of jelly, and she, at least, was equipped. She went back, saw her doctor, and he operated on what was the beginning of a whole series of uterine and ovarian cysts, and so forth. She finally died of cancer, but not until 1968. She lived a long time after that, but they never had any children. The interesting thing was that her own doctor never caught it.
Chall: He hadn't examined her, really?
.
Gatov: Not adequately.
So that was when I first heard about Planned Parenthood, and I must say, I thought their standards were high.1 [Laughs]
Chall: I should say. That's a very interesting story.
Drag Hunts and Polo
Gatov: The rest of time, when I wasn't involved in good works, [laughs] so to speak, during that marriage I rode a lot. As I said, Frank liked to hunt. It scared me to death.
Chall: He was a sportsman type.
Gatov: He had his own horse. So I took jumping lessons and went hunting with him, which was a very interesting experience now that I don't have to do it any more.
Chall: What did they hunt?
x
Gatov: Foxes, but mostly they were drag hunts. Chall: What is a drag hunt?
Gatov: A drag hunt --everything is the same, except that the course is laid
out ahead of time, by a man who is dragging behind him a bunch of old potato sacks that he hag had in the foxes' kennel. In other words,
58
Gatov: they had some foxes that they kept in a kennel. They would put
these gunny sacks in the foxes' kennel, and then attached to a long piece of rope, haul it — literally, along the course. Then they'd put it back where the foxes were.
The hounds would come out, get the scent, just as though they were following a real fox, and go madly off, [laughs] with us behind them.
The only nice thing about that was that you knew where you were going.
Chall: And you didn't shoot anything, did you?
Gatov: You didn't kill anything, no.
Chall: So it was just a matter of riding?
Gatov: Yes, a matter of riding.
Chall: And exercising the hounds?
Gatov: Early in the morning. It was really lovely. When I wasn't terrified, it was delightful.
Chall: And you could ride a horse that was going as fast as that?
Gatov: Well, I'd always ridden, but not this kind of riding. I'd done a
little more "hacking," just leisurely, for fun. This was much more serious business.
Chall: I see. So there were many horsemen there, and polo was the major game?
Gatov: Polo was the major game, besides golf. Fort Bragg was then qwite a
small military installation, about forty miles away. They would play versus the Sandhills, as this area of North Carolina was referred to. Frank was one of the seven or eight or nine who was available to play, and did.
The horse ran away with him, and he apparently tried to make it jump a little low fence, which would have taken him onto a golf course, Well, polo ponies don't jump. But they are trained to turn very fast, and this one turned, and threw him against a pine tree. He broke his neck.
Chall: How tragic and you had a very young child about this time.
Gatov: This was 1941 --end of December. Chall: She was about seven?
Gatov: Seven. Soon I realized that I wanted to get away from that community. It didn't have anything for me, after that, though we had many friends, and it had been a very pleasant existence.
Chall: It was a good marriage? Gatov: It was a very good marriage.
[end Tape 2, side 1, begin Tape 2, side 2]
World War II and New Horizons
Gatov: I learned then that someone who has been happily married has a more
difficult time adjusting to being alone. Instead of it being a relief, at first the loneliness is pretty awful.
But they're much more likely to get married again quite soon, because they feel the need of companionship, and they have faith. They're not recovering from a bad situation, they're trying to live through a good situation, that has terminated.
Anyhow, I felt that the golf and bridge--we used to play a lot- was no longer for me. First of all, we were in a war, which was a very serious matter. It's almost hard to recall the confusion in people's minds about what was going on.
Our innate optimism certainly went, with Pearl Harbor. I remember --possibly it was because we were so close to Ft. Bragg—we were blacked out every night, and we lived in a feeling of expectation that the Japanese were going to drop the other shoe someplace—whether California, or who knew?
We were close to a military installation, a« I said, and maybe the Germans were going to do something. It was kind of a time of pandemonium.
So I remember trying to get into the WAVES, which was the women's end of the Navy. I knew the undersecretary of the Navy, who was a friend of one of my brothers. He used to come down to Pinehurst a lot. I didn't qualify for that because I had a child. In those days, they didn't take anybody who had a child.
-
60
Gatov: So then I thought about getting a job on the Reader's Digest. I went to see somebody working on LIFE magazine who was a friend of a friend.
Chall: Why the Reader's Digest? What brought that on?
Gatov: I just thought it sounded sort of settled and secure. And I knew it was published in Pleasantville, New York, which is in Westchester County, and a very pleasant area to bring up a child, close to where I'd gone to school. I knew the country. I obviously didn't know much about the Reader's Digest. I hadn't been reading it frequently, I guess.
Anyhow, I remember going to see this friend who worked on LIFE, and he said, "Good God.' You couldn't stand thatj" [Laughs] So with this helpful piece of advice —
Chall: People were always telling you you couldn't work where you wanted to work!
Gatov: Couldn't do it. Well, in this case, he was certainly right.
So I went up to Montreal from New York to go skiing. My Canadian brother had a little house up in the Laurent ian mountains. It was a cute sort of habitant -type house about four miles in from the railroad station, south of a place called St. Adile.
It had a fireplace, kerosene lamps, and an outhouse and a big wood stove. I'd been there many times earlier, and knew how to operate it.
I went with a woman friend of mine that I'd gone to school with, and we were up there for about three weeks — in March—early March. And it was very good for me --some thing about being out in the snow, and the silence, and the lack of intrusion— no telephones, no people dropping in. It was a very therapeutic time for me.
After we left the Laurentians, we decided to go skiing another week, and went to Stowe, Vermont, which was new in those days. We had a very pleasant week or so there.
I got on the train to come home. Chall: Which was still Pinehurst?
Gatov: I was still living at Pinehurst. Frank and I were living with my
mother, because we were building this house together in Southern Pines, which was about three-quarters finished. We expected to move in by spring. It seemed sort of simpler.
61
Gatov: Mother, of course, was alone, and she kept urging that we do
this. She liked having Janie there. She enjoyed all the commotion,
and it wasn't that long a period of being together. Her house was
a fair-sized house. She used to go to Florida for little trips. It worked well.
Anyhow, I got to the station in Stowe, and saw a man sitting there in a uniform, which I thought, in my vast ignorance, was American customs. I had smuggled something into Canada. I'd smuggled a radio for my brother's mother-in-law. [Laughs]
Canada, of course, had been at war since 1939, and they were feeling pinches that we hadn't even started to. We hadn't begun anything yet. I thought, "Oh my, they've found out!" [Laughs] He's traced me to Stowe, and here I go.'
Well, it was not customs. He was the man I later married I [Laughs] I discovered it was a navy uniform, not customs.
Chall: How did you discover it?
Gatov: He began telling me. We got on the train, and he had the upper berth, and I had the lower berth. Somehow, I wound up in the upper berth, and he wound up in the lower berth, because he had a cold.'
Anyway, I don't think he really suggested it. I think I was the one who suggested it, and he took me up on it, much to my surprise.' [Laughs] Anyway, I didn't mind uppers.
So we had a few drinks in Lily cups, and he told me that he was in the Navy and going back to Norfolk, where he was stationed and so foeth. He had gone to Princeton and was in the class behind my oldest brother, and they'd known each other. We sort of started off from there.
Then I went back to Pinehurst, and I don't remember- -yes, I was doing some more tutoring. There was another tutoring school, The Ark over in Southern Pines, where I was teaching fairly regularly, all the time that Frank and I were living there. I continued doing that the rest of the spring.
His name was Fred Smith --and he knew he was going to be going overseas fairly soon. He was skipper of a sub chaser. They were very small little boats that carried depth charges on them. By early summer we decided that we would get married. This was July of 1942.
62
Marriage and the Move to California
Chall: July of 1942. So you really married very soon after.
Gatov: Yes, within eight months, which horrified my mother, because she was devoted to Frank. She didn't know what she thought of Fred. He was not exacly diplomatic with her all the time.
Chall: And he was what in civilian life?
Gatov: He'd been a banker, working with what was then the Hanover Bank. It's now something else, the something-else Hanover Bank.
Chall: In New York?
Gatov: In New York. He lived in New Jersey, South Orange. His mother was a
widow, and had been for some years. His father had been a stockbroker. He dropped dead when Fred was about nine, I think. He'd gone to Lawrenceville and Princeton.
We again shared a great deal intellectually in common. I didn't tell you much about that with Frank. Each time I married, there were very strong communities of interest. Frank was so distressed about the way black people were treated, for instance. If it hadn't been for the war, and if he hadn't been killed, he was about to move out of the South, because he felt that the South was never going to change in its attitudes.
He'd come from the Shenandoah Valley, which is quite different from the eastern shore part of Virginia in its attitudes. It's much simpler. It was never a slave -owning part of the South, and it had far different attitudes toward blacks, even though of course they'd been in the Civil War, and so forth.
His grandfather and my grandfather were on different sides in the Civil War, so we often talked about trying to get their two swords, and crossing them over the mantlepiece, but we never quite did.
But Fred, unlike a lot of his colleagues in those days at Princeton, and certainly in the banking world, was a Democrat. He was very enthusiastic about Franklin Roosevelt, and had a lot of friends who were in the administration.
The impersonal things, in each case, were the things that started to bring us together, I think, looking back.
63
Chall: The intellectual interests?
Gatov: Yes, this was the base, initially. And when he heard that I was my oldest brother's sister, he just laughed, and said, "That's ridiculous"' [Laughs]
Well, it wasn't, but we were very different.
So, we were married in South Orange at the end of August, I think. Yes, the twenty-second of August 1942.
Chall: I take it that this was his first marriage.
Gatov: His first marriage. All the families took it bravely. His family, because --here he was marrying a woman who had been married twice before, and had a child, which I'm sure didn't please hie mother or his aunts very much. Here was my mother, thinking I was nothing but a hussy. How could I possibly do this?
Chall: Certainly a wanton woman!
Gatov: Absolutely.1
Chall: But still her daughter.
Gatov: I was still her daughter, so she bravely did her part. We had a very simple, very pleasant wedding, and then took off for Norfolk, Virginia, where he was still stationed, and lived at the navy base--just outside the navy base, until he was sent, briefly, to Boston for some more training. He was there about six weeks.
Then we went down to Miami. For this period, Jane, my daughter, stayed at Mother's, because we knew we'd be bouncing around until we were at Miami. At Christmas she came down there with us. That's when I learned about landlords and children. Nobody wanted to rent to a family. An eight year old girl isn't a very threatening person, I wouldn't think.' [Laughs]
We had a terrible time finding a place, but we finally did find a place. The next nine weeks, I guess, we were together there. I became pregnant, and nearly lost the baby. The navy doctors did a remarkable job in helping me keep it, I thought.
He finally sailed from Key West, and went on out to the Pacific.
He had a hearing problem, which I had noticed when I first met him. And then, after I was married to him, I realized that it was more acute than I'd thought. In other words, he'd developed some cover-up devices which I think people do when they have some affliction of this sort.
64
Gatov: For instance, as soon as I'd say something, he would turn and face me, instead of just going right on being in the position that he was in.
Chall: Both ears?
Gatov: No, just one. Anyhow, he went through a very traumatic experience that I know very little about, when he went off with whoever was to be commander of the squadron of submarine chasers, who apparently suspected this hearing loss. Fred was so anxious that he not detect it, because he knew he wouldn't be able to go if he did.
Somehow he got through this, but when he came back from this shakedown cruise, he was a very upset man. They left about a week later from Key West, and off they went through the Panama Canal, out to Bora Bora and all those places that I'd never heard of before.
He was very anxious that I live with his mother, that we get acquainted, and that the child be born there. So we did. Janie and I moved in with Mrs. Smith, who was really very gracious. I know it was a trial to her, but she did her best not to show it too much. She was a very gregarious woman with quite a sense of humor.
I think she was pretty good to put up with us. She understood, too, that this was part of what he wanted, and so, all right.
Chall: Was he an only child?
Gatov: No, he was number three. Three girls, and him. He had the same position in his family that I had in mine. He had two older sisters and one younger, and he was the only boy.
Dan was born in September. Fred came back about a month before Dan was born.
Chall: On leave?
Gatov: No, he was sent back because when he had come up for promotion they caught the hearing loss, and sent him back, and he was at Oak Knoll Hospital in Oakland for quite a while.
My doctor wouldn't let me come out, so I stayed in South Orange, and he eventually arrived, and was attached to St. Albans Naval hospital in Brooklyn, not too far away.
Chall: Was he in the hospital because of his hearing?
Gatov: Because of his hearing. They couldn't make up their minds whether it was malingering, or whether it was real, and he went through an endless amount of tests, about which I know very little.
Anyhow, finally they made their decision, that it was real, and that he should be assigned to shore duty. So he was assigned to San Francisco. He had been to the west coast before. I never had.
As I recall, in telling me about it, he and a friend of his, the summer before we got into the war, thought that the war was coming, and we'd be involved, and that they being single, certainly would be involved. So they began picking out their postwar homesj [Laughs]
They got out to San Diego, rented a car, and drove to Seattle. The place they liked the best was San Francisco. Of course, that was also the headquarters of the Twelfth Naval District during the war, and still is.
So he came out ahead , and I arrived on a troop train with the baby, who was then six months old. I was still nursing him, mericifully, which made the whole trip just so much easier.
We arrived at two in the morning, and Fred met us. This was in the middle of February. We drove across the Bay Bridge, and up the hill to the Fairmont [Hotel], which was then a Transient Officers' quarters. They just had everything ready for us--a crib, and so forth.
We got out of the car, and there were these banks of blooming azaleas.' And I thought, [laughs] what heaven.' Because I'd left New Jersey—winter or summer, it's a pretty bad place, but winter is really ghastly. Gray, and the snow is filthy all the time. It was then. Not nice, good, clean cold, but just dirty, wet, clammy cold.
We stayed at the Fairmont for two weeks, while we tried to find a place to live, which he hadn't been successful at. Eventually we found a little house in Larkspur, in Marin county.
I'm sure we're the only service family who went through the war with what was called an "A" card for gasoline rationing—three gallons a week. He was very sticky about these things. He took the bus; I took the bus. We lived near enough to the shopping areas so that I could put the baby in the buggy and do the marketing. It worked perfectlly well,
That's the reason we finally wound up in Kentfield, because we'd never had enough gasoline to see any other part of the Bay Area. [Laughs] We did go visit a friend who lived in Kentfield--a friend, of another friend --and saw this very pleasant place that was developing, called Kent Woodlands.
66
Building a Home in Kentfield
Gatov: Very few houses had been built on that lovely land. So we bought a lot. In fact, we bought two lots* Beautiful, scenic spot. Then we got word that the owner of the house we were renting, who was also a navy officer, was being discharged for some reason. The war was sort of dribbling to an end at this point.
He was being discharged, and he wanted his house back. So we had to move. We couldn't find any place, really, to buy. There was a war-time provision, that if you couldn't find a place to buy, and were service personnel, and such-and-such, you could build a house of a certain number of square feet even though there 'd been no building for several years. We just fitted right into this little regulation. Then we couldn't build on the land we bought, because the utilities weren't in, so we bought another lot on the flat part, that had been hooked up, and built the house there, where I still am.
I began to realize the joys of living very near the entrance, very near the school, flat, the kids could bicycle and play in the street. I didn't have to be a taxi driver, because they could get themselves around, and it just worked beautifully.
We eventually sold the other two lots.
Chall: Did you bring Janie back to San Francisco as soon as you were settled here?
Gatov: Yes, she came out with me. She came out on the train also, and went to school in Larkspur that year. The school conditions were very crowded, I presume because of the impact of the service personnel. I remember there were fifty-five in her class, which seemed to me a bit much.
So I found out about Dominican Convent in San Rafael. Of course, in those days we had carpools, so that's where she went for the rest of her elementary school.
The war ended, and Fred went into the office equipment business; duplicating machines, collators, things that stuff and seal envelopes, and that sort.
Chall: Did he open up his own business? Gatov: Yes. Chall: Where?
67
Gatov: On Bush Street.
Chall: Bush Street, in San Francisco?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Why did he choose business, rather than going back into banking?
Gatov: I really don't know. No, I think I do know. He had been offered
several jobs, one of them with the Schlage Lock Company. He didn't want to work for anybody else. I think this was quite a strong feeling of his.
Chall: And how was his hearing at this point?
Gatov: By this time, he had a hearing aid which he had accepted very well. I say, "accepted it very well," in the sense that he never tried to conceal the fact that he had difficulty hearing. He didn't mind saying to you, "Would you mind speaking a little louder?" or more slowly, or something like that. He didn't try to hide it in his clothes. That pact of it, he did extremely well.
Chall: What were you doing during the war? You had two young children, of course, in a strange community.
Gatov: Well, Janie was in school. Then I found some other mothers who were willing to take each others' children three days a week. There were four children, altogether, involved, which gave two of the mothers two days off a week. It really worked beautifully.
Volunteer Community Activities
Gatov: And then I became involved with the Red Cross--! "d been involved before I left Southern Pines—and went over to the Red Cross in San Rafael, and offered my services. They decided that I would be a Gray Lady, so I worked at Hamilton Air Force Base Hospital.
This was very interesting to me, because they flew the wounded back from the Pacific, and this was their first stop back in this country. They did not bring in any of the neurological cases, or the mental cases. They brought them back by ship, the idea being that just the tranquility of the ocean voyage might possibly help.
68
Gatov: So everybody that we saw--badly messed up as they might be- nevertheless was in good shape emotionally, and ecstatic to be home. They wanted to drink just quarts of milk, gallons of milkshakes, tons of ice cream. This seemed to be what they all wanted.
Then we would arrange phone calls — long-distance calls—home. You quickly learned that one of the first things you ought to say when you met up with somebody was, "Welcome home.1 Where are you from?" Well, they'd be from Keokuk, and Keokuk turned out to be just the most heavenly place in the world I Wherever it was.1 [Laughs] The most, in my recollection, desolate and God -forsaken part of the country- -if it was home, that was where they wanted to be.
And the conditions [in the hospital] were sometimes perfectly awful. The men were lying on litters in the corridors, and so forth, because the authorities hadn't been able to get patients out fast enough to make room for others coming in. Generally, however, they were flown, within a week, to a general hospital near their home.
It was really a very well run, very intelligent operation, and my respect for military know-how escalated with this experience. I felt I was doing something valuable, because there weren't nearly enough nurses to be able to give any personal attention in addition to seeing about their private wants, letters, presents to their families. Ice cream and milk are things which are easy to take care of.
Some of the men had family problems, and then another branch of the Red Cross, if we notified them, would come in and pick that up, to see what could be done, or get information if they couldn't reach their wife on the telephone, and wondered what happened to her. So I felt that I was doing worthwhile work.
Chall: Two days a week did you devote to this?
Gatov: Yes.
Chall: Your two days out?
Gatov: My two days out, I did that. Fred didn't like it, finally. I remember him saying, "Why can't you do something that isn't all men?" In fact, he got so upset about the whole thing that he finally asked me to, stop.
Chall: This was still during the war?
Gatov: Yes. So I told Mrs. Kittle—Mrs. John Kittle—who was then the president of the Marin Red Cross, what had happened, and that I wouldn't be able to keep on. She sort of harrumphed a few times, and thought it was pretty silly, and I said, "Well, this is the way it is."
69
Gatov: So I didn't work for quite a few weeks, and then finally they called again, and said, "We're desperately short handed." So then I just told him that I was going to do it, that I was sorry he didn't like it, and I thought his view of it would change. If he'd just come out there, and see that there was no possible opportunity to develop anything like a personal relationship with anybody.
Anyhow, he didn't fuss about it anymore, and I went back.
So the war finally ended, and he went back into civilian life. My Red Cross activities petered out, but not before I'd had a very interesting invitation from Warden Duffy of San Quentin Prison. I was, by that time, chairman of the Camp and Hospital division of Marin Red Cross.
They had a hospital in San Quentin, which he said was terribly underequipped , and he was sure, as they were closing up some of the military hospitals, there must be some equipment lying around. You know, the operating room lights, surgical instruments, and this kind of thing for which he had no money in his budget.
So he took me on a tour of San Quentin, which was the beginning of a very interesting series of things that happened after that, and which I wrote about when I was, later, a reporter on the local paper.
Warden Duffy was a remarkable man, in my view. He felt that the prison, the prisoners, and the community would be better off if they knew each other. So quite frequently, every couple of weeks, the prisoners would put on shows, and community people would be invited to come in and buy tickets to these things. The money would go into some sort of fund for the prisoners.
He circulated the prison newspaper quite widely. He was trying to get people to understand that people who were in prison were no different, really—except that they were there, and we weren't — from the rest of us; that the prison wasn't necessarily a threat to the community; that the community could probably make things better for themselves and for the prison if they would take an interest in it.
Things have changed a lot since then. [Laughs] I don't recall, when we took that tour, having any feeling of fear. There were no particular guards—just he and I walked through the yard and into the building that had the hospital facilities in it, and then he showed me various other facilities. They had the jute mill in those days, and the chapel, and some of the carpenters' shops, classrooms, a tailor shop.
Anyway, they got that material.
70
Chall: Through your activity?
Gatov: I started it. I made out a list of the things they needed, and I
forwarded that on through the Red Cross chain, and eventually I got a very nice letter from him, saying, "Thank you very much, we have it.' We're very grateful." It was worth it in that sense, but it was an illuminating experience to me. I'd never been in a prison before.
And by this time, I was treasurer of Sunny Hills, which in those days was sort of an institutional foster home, really, for wards of the court.
Chall: Where?
Gatov: In San Anselmo.
Chall: And how did you get into that?
Gatov: Oh, somebody asked me. [Laughs] I guess somebody I knew from the
Red Cross, probably. And I was on the TB Association [board], I was also on the board of the Junior League, which I had joined when I lived in Storm King. I must admit this now. Goodness! [Laughs] I am what I am, due to the Junior League.' [Laughs]
Some women, who lived near Newburgh, New York, which was close to Storm King- -perhaps ten miles—were active in the Junior League there, and they proposed me for membership » and I joined. They had provisional work required --volunteer.
In those days, Franklin Roosevelt was still governor of New York, and the Depression had hit. He was, as I recall, the first governor to start any state program of relief for people who were unemployed.
He had two programs. One was called Home Relief, and one called Work Relief. Work Relief was jobs for men and other able-bodied people. Home Relief was for the elderly and for the families without anybody employed in them.
I was sitting there as a receptionist. My job, after greeting them, was to hand out the forms, and get them filled out, and get them in the right basket, for Work Relief and Home Relief.
Chall: Where would you do this? In Storm King?
Gatov: I went to Newburgh. I was living in Storm King.
71
Gatov: And this was where I met people who were really such pawns in
the system. For instance, I learned then about chain grocery stores. Most of these people had been going to the A and P, which was the grocery store, all their lives, and many of them had lived there for several generations. They weren't a floating population at all. And --no work, no credit. Cash only.
Then they had to go to the 'mom and pop' store, where they'd never been in before, probably, because the prices were a little higher, but they would give them credit.
Well, one of the things that the Home Relief office did was issue scrip which the A and P would accept, because when they cashed it in in Albany, it was money.
This was my first contact, that I can recall, with the government doing anything, and I must say that it was good.' [Laughs] I followed the fortunes of Franklin Roosevelt with great interest after that. I wasn't registered to vote because I still hadn't unsnarled my citizenship. Did I tell you about that?
Anyhow, the fact that you are entitled to American citizenship does not automatically give it to you. Nobody knew what to do when I asked. I couldn't register to vote because I didn't have any proof of citizenship. I couldn't get any proof of citizenship because there wasn't any; until finally, in North Carolina, a county clerk said, "Why don't you dream up a trip to Europe, and apply for a passport?"
This bright idea really worked. It took me six months, because my father was dead, and traditionally, as happened in so many cases, the courthouse that had his birth records had burned down. So we had to find people who knew that he was born in Cincinnati. It was pretty complicated. In those days one couldn't acquire U.S. citizenship from the mother.
However, everything was done, and I finally got my passport; so, passport in hand, I eventually was able to vote in 1940. As I say, in this period we're talking about, I still couldn't vote, but I followed the 1932 election with great interest.
I'll never forget his, "My friends, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself;" [laughs] the closing of the banks, I had $11.50. Everybody who lived through that remembers something specific about it. Then the great wave of hope that went through, you know. At long last, we w«ire going to get off the dime.
Well, as a result of the Junior League, and their placement of me, I became a confirmed Democrat.
72
Chall: I see; that's what did it.
Gatov: I heard people talking about what a terrible thing it was that Roosevelt was even doing this relief program.
Chall: Oh, you were in the area where they would have thought so, I suppose.
Gatov: Oh, yes. The Liberty League was beginning then, r.nd the husbands of some of my friends were part of it. As I recall, the thing that impressed me was that Roosevelt created, really, the notion that the government had some responsibility for people, beyond the national defense. The welfare part of that phrase of "common good" and so on, really meant something in personal terms.
I've been interested since in reading The Glory and the Dream, by Manchester. The first part of that is all about the early days of the Depression, which is so vivid.
Chall: And you and he remember it about the same?
Gatov: Yes. As far as I'm concerned, it was a very accurate account.
Chall: So that was a very important part of your life.
Gatov: It determined my political bias, for good. I remember then, in 1936, when Alfred Landon was running, and I was sure he was going to win, because it seemed to me that everyone I knew was for Landon. These sunflowers all over the place, in peoples' buttonholes! [Laughs]
Well, that was a landslide, of course, for Roosevelt. I think I was upset by his feelings about the [Supreme] Court, because I voted for Willkie in 1940, my first vote.
Chall: Oh, you did?
Gatov: I was very interested in Wendell Willkie, and particularly in his
"One World" concept, which I've never gotten over. I thought then, and I still think, that somehow we're going to have to find our way there.
I remember sitting up very late, listening to the Republican convention--! believe it was in Philadelphia at that time — when they finally get around to nominating Willkie. Then I saw him ultimately in a parade in New York. With the exception of that aberration, I have stayed pretty close to the fold I [Laughs]
Chall: Your studies of the Constitution were still fresh in your mind when
you were living in Storm King, that the Court packing plan would have--?
Gatov: It seemed offensive. It seemed unbecoming, almost, that just because the court wouldn't do what he wanted them to — like when they threw out the NRA.... You don't alter the structure in order to solve a problem. The structure had been working pretty well for quite a long time.
I remember also feeling a certain amount of pleasure when he [Roosevelt] campaigned to try to defeat eight Democrats--! can't remember who they were. I think they were eight senators, but I'm not sure—who didn't agree with him. He went into these different states, and campaigned against them, and they all got elected! I thought that was fine.1 [Laughs]
Chall: Was the intellectual community of Storm King, around the school, the people whom you knew there— were they of similar opinion with respect to Roosevelt?
Gatov: Not the headmaster and his wife. They were very starchy Republicans, I thought. But most of the rest of the faculty were. Our social friends, who we had outside the school, were not Democrats. They were mostly pretty wealthy Republicans from New York who just were there briefly. Awfully nice people.
I don't recall talking too much with them about any of these things. There wasn't any point.
Chall: What about the Leavitts?
Gatov: They were enthusiastic Democrats.
Chall: And the professor, the worthy scholar on Japan?
Gatov: The Ledouxs?
Chall: Yes.
Gatov: They were Democrats.
I have to say that party activity in those days didn't really mean much to me. My interests were much more international than domestic. I was far more familiar with who was in the British cabinet, and the French cabinet, and what was going on in Germany, than I was in what happened here.
I remember TIME magazine used to have quizzes, periodically, and I always did beautifully in the international section! But I fell down on domestic.
74
Chall: But it was interesting that the Junior League experience brought
you into the Democratic fold. I'm sure that really was not the plan of the Junior League.
Gatov: I transferred, as you can in the Junior League, I think to all
leagues except New York. I transferred to the San Francisco league, and then they started the Marin County branch, and I was head of that, and that automatically put me on the San Francisco board.
So these are the things that I was doing before I got into my first political campaign, which was in '48.
Chall: You were very active in the community, then?
Gatov: For lots of reasons. We belonged to something called the Lagunitas Club in Ross.
Chall: I've seen that name. What is it?
Gatov: There's Lagunitas Creek, and Lagunitas Lake, and Lagunitas Road. It's a Marin County name.
Chall: Is it a private club, for golf, or a country club or something?
Gatov: Tennis. Tennis and now swimming. When we came out here with the navy, people were very friendly in the community. We had a few vague contacts, but I found that people were most hospitable and friendly. For instance, we got into the Lagunitas Club very quickly. Normally, it would take awhile, but they admitted service families. We both played tennis, so we enjoyed that, because we didn't have a court.
It was a pleasant place; again, a place I'd never talk politics, because there were very few other Democrats except the Kent family, and the Skewes-Gox family, who were sympatico.
About that time, the United World Federalists was forming. And Alan Cranston was the first head of it in California. I was on the steering committee for Marin County, and that's when I first met Cranston. This was something that a lot of the Republicans were interested in, too, so we used to have meetings at the Lagunitas Club.
Chall: They were interested in this?
Gatov: Yes. Marin has always had an interesting kind of Republican, to me. It still does.
[end Tape 2, side 2]
75
III CAREER GOALS AND POLITICS, 1946-1953 (Interview 3, December 1, 1975) [begin Tape 3, side 1]
Developing a Sensitivity to Implications
Gatov: I'd like to tell you about some psychic experiences --one in
particular—that I had, because it really has something to do with all the next period that's coming up.
Let me start with a disclaimer. [Laughs] I don't claim that I'm psychic, but I don't disbelieve in people having psychic perception. Sometimes it's happened to me. The most striking incident of it was the night before my second husband, Frank McCluer, was killed.
I had a dream in the middle of the night. He was standing beside what I took to be a female creature, all clad in glowing white with long, flowing hair. He had on his ordinary clothes, and he was speaking to me. He said, "I'm sorry, darling, but I'm going to have to leave you now."
I awakened very upset, needless to say, and I woke him up, and of course, he said, "That's perfectly ridiculous." I had nothing to hang it on to at all, but to me it was very real.
The next morning- -he had a cold at the time, not a very severe one, but one of those sort of de&ilitating kinds — they telephoned for him after breakfast to fill in on one of the polo teams that day. I nearly had a fit, and did everything I could to persuade him not to, and to call them back and say that he wasn't well enough, and so on.
He wouldn't listen, and then as he was leaving, and I was crying and carrying on, he said, "What's the matter? Are you afraid you're going to be a widow?" And I said yes.1
76
Gatov: Those were the last words we exchanged. I thought I'd get that in, because I pay attention to things like that.
Chall: You had told me the story of going to the psychic in Montreal, who told you to get away.
Gatov: Elsewhere. Almost anyplace else.
Well, I just had a feeling — to coin the cliche — that coming events cast their shadow before. I've become, I think, as I've grown older, more sensitive to the implications of things, and so the surprises, perhaps, are fewer than they might otherwise be.
Chall: But it's more than just seeing the implications of things?
Gatov: Well, it's funny. You develop a strong sense that this is going to happen. There was case of it in 1967, I guess. It had to do with Lyndon Johnson, his running for reelection in '68—1' 11 tell you about it. Oh, we don't get to that point. [Laughs]
Chall: [Laughs] Oh, we'll cover. We might cover some of that period rather
rapidly, but we'll cover it. tell it now.
Bat just in case we forget it, why not
Gatov: We were with some political friends in Bolinas in the summer of '67.
The conversation was about LBJ. And without premeditation, I remarked that he wasn't going to run. Of course, no one agreed with me. Later, when he made that T.V. speech in March '68, I knew he was going to announce that he wasn't going to run. He did, at the very end of it. Only Al, my husband, remembered our conversation in the summer.
Chall: Very interesting story.
Today we're concentrating on your entrance into politics, going back to the place I think we were finishing last week.
The war had ended, and your husband was in business.
Gatov: I was involved in a lot of community activities in Marin County, and my children were growing up. We didn't have very much money at that time, and I thought, "Well, the time has come that I really can go back to work." I've always had sort of informal household arrangements with people, who might perhaps have a job on the outside, and they'd come in and live with us.
It's never been too much of a pressure. I've always been able to work out something that was not expensive, but was highly beneficial to me. So I had one of those situations at this time. I had a mother and her little boy. He was the same age as my son, and they were both going to school. So I had time.
77
Chall: Was that a live-in mother?
Gatov: Yes. She had just come back from Japan, and brought her little boy with her. Her husband was still there. She'd been interned all during the war.
Chall: Was your little boy going to private school or public school at that point?
Gatov: He started going to private school. He went to sort of a pre-nursery school at Dominican Convent, where Janie had gone as an elementary student. Then he went to kindergarten, and then went into first grade in the Kentfield School, right straight through the public school system of Kentfield.
All I knew was that I didn't want to do any of the things that I had done before, and as I think I told you, I started a dress shop, but I'd sold it by this time.
•
Chall: You mean in Kentfield? Gatov: In Kentfield.
Chall: Is that so? No, you didn't tell me that. [Laughs] I think we left off with United World Federalists.
Gatov: This was rather preceding that. Toward the end of the war — it wasn't quite 1945. Another woman who lived near me in Larkspur (where we were then living) and I, decided we'd open a dress shop. Our husbands, who were both in the navy, thought this was a fine idea.
So we found a place in Kentfield, sort of a remodeled barn near the fire station there, and went about trying to find out how you get into the dress business. [Laughs] If we had known anything about the dress business, we never would have picked that particular time to do it, because clothes were allocated then on a quota basis, and if you'd been a customer of somebody the year before, the year before that, then you got this much of however much you ordered.
So we were competing madly for about two per cent of the available stockj [Laughs] However, we opened, and it went along really quite well, and it's still going. It's moved its locale, because the building was torn down, but it's still there. It's in Larkspur now.
Chall: Under the name that you chose for it?
Gatov: Yes, the Ross Valley Shop. We got a little sign made for it that said, "Country Clothes." Must be still making money for somebody.
78
Chall : Well, was it making money for you, the two of you?
Gatov: No great huge sums, but it was worth it. I discovered I didn't like the dress business. [Laughs] At all.' I'd done it before, selling dresses, but I really just didn't care for it. I wasn't that interested in it.
So I thought I'd try to find something that I was interested in, and a friend of mine told me about a vocational guidance center, I think it was called, which was run by U.C. Extension. It was then on Powell Street, in the location that finally became the porno art spot [Museum of Erotic Art], about halfway up Powell.
Anyway, I went down, after having had lunch with this friend, and went in to find out what they did. I discovered that this particular program was run by three psychologists. It involved fifteen hours of testing, and then analysis, and then they did not offer to find you a job, but they offered to tell you where such jobs as you might be qualified for were available in the Bay Area. It was, I think, $40 at the time, which was not bad for fifteen hours, at today's prices j
Roger Kent's Primary Campaign, for Congress. 1948
Gatov: So I signed up and started the next week, and went in every day for three hours and took these tests. Finally, it was over, and it was over just about the time that I picked up a copy of the local paper, the Independent -Journal . and saw that Roger Kent had announced that he was going to run for Congress. This was in the spring, I would say, probably March, of 1948.
I knew Roger and Alice. Not very well, but we were in the same carpool. They had children the same age as my daughter, and we lived very near them, about a block and a half. They'd been to our house, and though we weren't close friends, at least we knew each other,
I thought, well, you know-he's a Democrat, and I'm a Democrat, and everything I read about him sounded fine, so I thought, really, I'm not doing anything. I'll just offer and see if I can help.
So I called up, and Alice, his wife, answered the phone. She said, "I was just about to call you and ask you to come here tonight to a meeting." I thought that was a little odd, but I said "Fine."
79
Gatov: I went to the meeting, and there were about fifteen people in their living room. I'd never seen any of them before. They were all people who were involved in Marin County politics at that time.
One of them came up, and sort of shook my hand, and said, "Well, I hope you know what you're getting into!" I hadn't any idea what he was talking about I [Laughs]
Roger went around the room and introduced everybody and said what they would be doing in his campaign. He said that I was going to be his women's chairman.
Chall : Without even asking youj
Gatov: I nearly slid off the sofa. So then I got some more commiseration. [Laughs] The county chairman had identified himself. I asked if I could call him the next day and get the names of some women who were active in politics in Marin. He blithely said, "Sure."
Anyhow, I learned that night that the First Congressional District, which it was at that time, took in eleven counties, all the way up to the Oregon border, and deeply into the Valley. Marysville was in it, and Yuba City, and Colusa [laughs], and Glenn County. It was an enormous district.
Chall: Did it have any part of San Francisco in it? Gatov: No. It stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge.
Roger's father had represented that district for quite a few years, until he retired in about the middle 1920s, I think, to run for the Senate. Roger had had no particular connection with it. There was a Democrat already in the race, who was very far to the leftj, and presumed, in those days, to have some Coirmunist connections.
Chall: Already in Congress, a representative from the first district?
Gatov: No, already in the race. The incumbent was retiring—Clarence Lea, who lived in Santa Rosa. This other candidate's name was Sterling Norgard, and he had a pear orchard, as I recall, in Ukiah.
So the Marin County group had decided that they were going to see if they couldn't find a candidate, and somebody who didn't know Roger I believe, didn't know him personally at all — said, "What about William Kent's son, Roger? I think he's just back from the navy." [Laughs] He was. It hadn't been too long.
80
Gatov: They went over to see him, and apparently a couple of them took him on a trip through part of the district—which he considers to have been a disaster. I wasn't there, and I don't know about it. I'll leave that to his papers.
When he came back, however, he did decide to run. So they used at room in the back end of the house near the kitchen as the office. That was fine for me, because it was so close to home. We ordered telephones, and rented desks, and equipped the place with what we thought a political office ought to have. Filing cabinets and a m ime og r aph mach ine .
I called the chairman of the county central committee, whom I'd met the night before, and I asked him if he would give me the names of some women. I had my pencil poised, and there was a long silence, and he finally gave me the names of two. He said that was all he could think of.
So I tried to track down the two. One of them had left the county, and the other one was in a mental hospital.' [Laughs] We were really starting from scratch.
In those days, of course, there was crossfiling, and Marin County was a very Republican county at that time, though it's a Democratic county today. Roger, himself, I presume was quite well known. Certainly the Kent family was very well known in the county.
It seemed like a breeze at the time, from there, for that particular part of the district, because Republicans as well as Democrats were quite willing to participate in a campaign, and make modest contributions, There wasn't any big money forthcoming.
But the rest of the district was something else, because none of us had any connections whatever there, and it was a matter of trying to organize as we went along. The only way you could cover the district was in a car, going up and down [highway] 101 and then off into the Valley, turning right in Lake County. [Laughs] It took days and days to do it.
He had a professional named Joe Paul, who is now deceased, and Joe was a p.r. press sort of person, who'd had some experience. I don't remember just in what capacity, but he'd had some.
Chall: In campaigns?
Gatov: Yes, I think so. He was the one to whom we turned, [laughs] when we wanted advice, so he must have had some experience.
81
Gatov: Everything seemed chaotic. Nothing's changed, actually.1 [Laughs] But I didn't know that at the timel [Laughs] I had one yellow pad full of notes of every telephone conversation that I took, and eventually I got what everyone gets in a campaign- -a very sore ear.'
We hoped that we were making headway. What we didn't count on was what happened, Crossfiling we understood merely intellectually, but I don't think we'd ever had any experience with it, and I don't think we really understood what was going on. Roger's problem was that he was too popular with the Republicans and not sufficiently so with the Democrats.
One of the rules of crossfiling was that you had to win your own party's nomination in order to survive. So Roger wound up with the greatest total number of votes, but too many Republican votes, which had come from Marin County, which went for him overwhelmingly. It was a bitter blow to him, I'm sure, because I don't think it was something that any of us had expected. He didn't win the nomination of the Democratic party.
Norgard had made sufficient inroads in the rest of the district. He'd been at it for some time and he was a farmer, not a city lawyer. Vincent Hallinan, as I recall, was part of his campaign structure.
Chall : Was that the Independent Progressive Party?
Gatov: Yes. Well, he had their endorsement, but he declined to say that he was part of it. It was a very messy situation politically, in those days. Very complicated, and we suspected people, and I guess they suspected you, too. There was never any way you could get rid of this Communist business. I imagine it's gone now.
Anyhow, Vincent Hallinan at that time was presumed to be very left-wing. There were some other people backing Norgard who admittedly had been members of the Communist party. The Daily Worker, which I believe is still published on the west coast—as I recall, we subscribed to it for the duration—was very hot for Norgard.
He got the Democratic nomination, and Hubert Scudder, who had been in the state legislature from Sonoma County- -Sebastopol— got the Republican nomination.
Chall: Norgard got the Democratic nomination?
Gatov: Yes, because he had more Democratic votes than Roger did, and Scudder
had more Republican votes than Roger did, while Roger's combined total, Republican and Democratic, was bigger than either of theirs.
82
Gatov: Eventually, I learned how I got into the campaign. [Laughs] There wasn't time, really, to ask, except that I finally met, in the course of it, a man named Lauriston Tardy, who was the head of the psychology department, as I recall, at San Rafael High School.
He had been one of the three psychologists who had run the testing center. I hadn't met him. My counselor had been somebody else. Laurie, apparently, about the time that all this was going on, or about to go on, was looking over the folders of people at the testing center. He saw the Marin County address--Kentf ield--so he picked up the file and read it.
According to his story after that—he was on the county central committee, which was engaged in hunting for a candidate. At a meeting with Roger, before he announced he would run, Laurie said, "Do you know somebody named Smith on Rancheria Road?" and Roger said "yes." Laurie said, "Well, you call her and get her into your campaign. She's not doing anything at the time, I know." [Laughc]
Roger said, "Why?" and Laurie said, "Don't bother me with silly questions. You just ask her. She'll probably do it, and you'll be glad." So that's why, as I was about to call Alice to offer to lick postage stamps, I was suddenly invited to be the women's chairman.
Laurie and I laughed about it many times, how by such curious interweavings of circumstance things occur.
Well, the next event politically--
Chall: Could we back up just a bit so that you can fill me in on something. You didn't demur when you were announced as the chairman of the women?
Gatov: No, I'd come prepared to offer my services. This was the service that was requested.
Chall : Did you travel all over the eleven counties getting women to help with the campaign?
Gatov: Not very much. As I recall, I took one tour through. The rest of the time I spent on the telephone, and didn't go up through the district again until the very end, as I recall, and then just to Eureka.
Chall: What did you do with women, or for women?
Gatov: I was calling, calling, calling. Well, I wasn't doing anything special with women.
83
Chall: Did you find any women?
Gatov: Yes, I did. A surprising number of them are still active politically today. We're all very close friends. [Laughs]
Chall: They were active at that time?
Gatov: No, they hadn't been, but they got into this. They were people that I knew socially, and went skiing with, and things like that.
Chall: The Mar in County group.
Gatov: That was the Marin County group, and they're still at it. [Laughs] Becky Watkin was one of them. It's been said of her, by those who analyzed election returns, that if she heads up your campaign in a primary, you win that county in the primary. That has generally happened. She's very active.
Another is a woman named Nancy Strawbridge, who's now Nancy Jewel. She's running Pete Stark's [Congressman Fortney Stark] office. Before that, she was executive secretary to Stanley Mosk when he was attorney general. Before that, she'd run his campaign. Before that, she'd run a U.S. senatorial campaign for Dick Richards in 1956.
Another is a woman named Nancy Swadesh, who has done a tremendous amount. She ran the campaigns of Congressman Clem Miller and others in Marin, and then went into state government. She's now involved, at the top or near the top, in the community college systems head quarters. You'd find her at U.C. Extension, in San Francisco.
Chall: These are women who started with you?
Gatov: Yes. This was the first campaign for all of us.
Chall: A good start.
Gatov: There was a woman named Vera Schultz, who by then was, I think, a member of the city council in Mill Valley, and later became a supervisor [Marin County]. She was very helpful.
I mentioned Jean Holmer, who later became president of the California League of Women Voters. She was very helpful. We had quite a lot going, and I tried to get this kind of caliber of people, really, in some of the other counties, and it was truch more difficult, because we didn't have much time. We were very late getting started.
Chall: Just time to file and go?