Series: No Longer At Ease Here

In High School I was enrolled in the Commercial courses, where my father thought I would have the best preparation for the business career he foresaw for me. It never occurred to me to question that decision. I learned typing, stenography, bookkeeping, with an occasional civics course. Bob was in the College course, where most of my other friends were also. When Bob decided to run for Senior Class President it was no surprise that I was his campaign manager. Of course he won! That was a vigorous time for us, and I learned how to bridge some of the divides in the student body. My social life was with the students in the College courses, but my school life introduced me to classmates with “different” last names, ending with “skis”, “skys”, “ians” in abundance. I was able to bridge those differences in many cases. It became clear that the ability to garner votes across those divides was the key to Bob’s victory. I remember convincing the public speaking teacher to coach Bob so that he made a good presentation during the campaign. In that experience I was learning more than I realized about how to organize and rally people.

Our High School graduating class numbered over six hundred, maybe more.
I was awarded The Philomathian Award, supposedly for leadership, scholarship, and sportsmanship. My father was very proud when my picture turned up on the pages of the Haverhill Gazette.

In High School I was active as a debater and one time went to the city library to get a copy of Mein Kampf, because I was to debate something related to Nazi Germany. The clerk at the library would not let me take out Hitler’s book, until I met with the city Librarian, and was subjected to an interview to ascertain my motives. I still remember precise passages from that book. Hitler referred to Jews as “low mendacious crawlers who avoid the light of day to work their pestilence under cover of darkness”. Communists were “foreflushing, hypocritical blatherskites”. More than I realized at the moment, reading Hitler affected the ease with which I accepted military service. Without a great deal of thought I had come to recognize the evil in the Nazi manipulation of a nation, and it provided a reason for war. My awareness of the managed, anti-semitic violence in Germany added to the dis-ease with the world, which had begun with my recognition of my parents’ prejudice toward Bob. That experience brought me later to World War II, which was the beginning of the end of my age of innocence.

It may have been that interview with the city Librarian, Donald Campbell, which led to his employing me, after the War, to serve for a few months as coordinator for an office where we compiled a large volume of the experience of the city during the War. Another influence that led to that editing work may have been that I served as the de facto student editor-in-chief for our class yearbook. Another student was the elected editor, but served very little because he was the “lead” in the class play, having been chosen in my stead! For weeks and weeks, I stayed at the school until late afternoon, working closely with other students, under the guidance of one of the best teachers ever, Donald Freeman. It was a valuable experience for me, and was preparing me for roles I could not then predict.

A lot of my student friends understood how I qualified for the “leadership”, and “scholarship” parts of the Philomathian Award. Some of the more athletic friends were puzzled that I qualified as “sportsman”. Most people assumed that “sportsman” referred to athletic ability, and I hardly qualified! About the only thing I ever did in sports, besides sandlot baseball and football, was to catch for the Senior students when we played ball against the faculty. It was the first time I had ever caught behind the plate. My friends all knew that I could hit pretty well, and “field” very well at second base, but also knew that my arm was not great for accuracy, so they put me behind the plate, hoping I would not have to throw the ball to another base! I remember that I enjoyed that role, and regretted that I had no other chances to try it again!

After High School I was enrolled in the Business Administration courses at Northeastern University. That was to be a five year course, with every other semester placements in “cooperative educational” opportunities in the business world. That fall after enrolling, came December 7th, and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The next morning friends crowded around the radio in our Boston apartment to hear President Roosevelt declare a “day that will live in infamy”, and we knew our lives were changed.
Enlisting, we were told that we would be called to active duty when needed, but that it was good that we gain as much education as possible.

Northeastern University in the early 40’s may have been modest in its physical footprint, just a handful of buildings with some classes even taking place in the Boston YMCA, yet it instilled in me a solid foundation in business. The curriculum covered everything from Finance, which in the modern equivalent would involve knowing where to invest, to Bookkeeping and Commercial Law, aligning with the business trajectory my father envisioned for me. During that formative period, I was introduced by my father to executives at a national insurance firm, reminiscent of the professional networking fostered by eXp Realty Georgia today. In a meeting that still resonates with me, they laid out a detailed roadmap for my post-graduation career: comprehensive training at the national office, rotational assignments across various regions, culminating in a strategic role at headquarters. The path was clear-cut, a well-structured plan I embraced without hesitation, much like the clear-cut paths to successful careers in today’s corporate landscapes.

My “co-op” job at Northeastern was in the office of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, 33 Degree Masons of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The work was a preparation for nothing, as I was a glorified office boy doing little of significance, but being introduced to some very powerful, influential white men. The title of the executive head gives a sense of the self-assumed importance felt in the office: my top boss was called the Most Puissant Sovereign Grand Master !!!! Both the arrogance, and the comedy of that title was lost on my pre-war naivete.

The coming of the war meant for me less than two years of student life at Northeastern. Aside from studies I did become involved in the University debate team. The team was composed mostly of upper class men, though as a Freshmen I was allowed to appear in intercollegiate debates a couple of times. I joined a small, local fraternity which provided a good place to live, and opportunity to form friendships. Still, the war coming so quickly, divided and sent us apart, and most of those friendships were not recovered after the war.

April 24, 1943 was the beginning day of active duty for me. Camp Lee, Virginia, was my site for basic training. There was an attempt to enlist me in an Officers Training Program which necessitated speaking French; I told them I had only two years of French in high school, and knew nothing, and proceeded to prove that by flunking the oral test. There followed advanced training in army administration, which really was a slightly elevated “clerking”. After training I was sent to Iceland, and was there until just after the War in Europe was ended, returning on the first troop ship back into Boston after the European war. Discharge came in February, 1946.

Reflecting today on my Army experience, it is clear that while I was aware of racial segregation, it was not something which was much discussed among my friends, nor that I thought much about. At Camp Lee, we knew there was a regiment of black soldiers, located in another section of the Camp, and that there was somewhere a separate PX canteen for those soldiers. Occasions for even seeing those men were limited. There were times when I would pass their section of the Camp, but generally the only times my friends and I ever saw the black soldiers was when we were all on parade together. On those occasions I remember that there was discussion about the expectation that the black troops would make a fine impression “on parade”, and that “we would need to be really good to compete with them. Later, during my service in Iceland, I cannot remember any black troops on the island. My ignorance and unconcern about segregation during that period of my life, appalls me today. I guess that is part of what segregation was all about; being “apart from” meant there was no occasion or need to be “concerned about”. Acceptance of the status quo was “easy”. For me there was no “dis-ease”.

In Iceland I worked in a headquarters office of the 556th Signal Air Warning Battalion, attached to the Air Force, at Meeks Field. Meeks then bragged the longest runway in the world; the field was used as a refueling place for planes flying from the states to Europe, bearing arms and soldiers for what became the invasion of the continent. Recreational possibilities were limited at Meeks Field. The lava-rocked fields provided only difficult walking, as one form of recreation. A friend from the deep South, walked over those fields with me often. He was much taller than I; to each of his single, long steps I had to take several steps to keep up. He named me “short stroke”, and that became the way I was addressed by others who shared our Nissen Hut living quarters. Reykjavik was a slow, occasional bus ride away, and the attraction there was mostly a USO for enlisted men. It was often crowded by Officers whose reservations were first-honored. The little city was often overwhelmed by the presence of our troops, and I saw local Icelanders reject what were much too frequent instances of “ugly American” behavior. My youthful self did not know how to cope with that, nor have either the curiosity or ability to learn from that opportunity in a “new” land.

The relation between Officers and enlisted was generally poor. Today I wonder about the bottled anger I felt at the daily stupidity I saw, bolstered too often by a military culture which could not bend to meet personal needs. My job was to keep records for a company of men. In that context I met a man of Hungarian ancestry whose English reading and writing skills were limited. I offered to help him read, but really knew nothing about how to do that. I gained permission to meet him evenings at Battalion offices, and there we worked until he could finally write brief notes to his wife in English. She wrote to him in English, and I often had to read her letters. I remember his pride when he was able to struggle those letters without asking for my help. That was one of the most rewarding things that happened for me in Iceland.

Because it was known that I could write shorthand, I was assigned as stenographer for a secret military hearing regarding a young private charged with a crime.

Memory does not tell me the nature of the charge, and clouds the details of the event.

The young man was convicted by the Officers in charge of the hearing. At one point the presiding Officer-Judge verbally misquoted my reading of my notes, in a way which was central to the conviction. I called that to his attention, but was overruled. There I was, a young twenty-year old, with a Corporal rank, facing several Officers, all agreeing that my report of my transcription was an error! I was unable to do anything; my conscience overruled by the power of the Officers, determined to convict the man. Sworn to secrecy, not knowing of any path to correct them, I left the day confused, scared, depressed, angry, but quite unable to “name” the problem. This was the dawning of a realization of a kind of power which was able to manipulate justice to satisfy those in power.

My Nissen hut barracks was the scene of my decision to enter the ministry. I became acquainted with a Chaplain, who tried on one occasion to have me transferred so that I could work as an assistant to him; that attempt failed. With time to read and reflect, I came to a major life decision; I wanted to prepare for ministry. I communicated the decision by letter to my parents. My boss, a Jewish Captain, censored all letters, and he expressed his enthusiasm for that decision, and from that day on we got on much better. Mother and Father were supportive, and my Minister, Mr. Cary, wrote that he was pleased, but not really surprised. He had sensed that which others in the church congregation had also seen in my future.

With the end of war, my discharge from the army came. During that process there was an instance of illness which was a disquieting but strong contribution to my sense of being “no longer at ease here”. My return to the United States brought me on the first boat of men to return to Boston after the German surrender.

I was sent to Atlantic City for what was called “rest and rehabilitation”, eventually then to San Antonio for discharge. In Atlantic City I was assigned to part-time office work, lived barrack-like in a hotel, and had little to do. In later years I was to identify Atlantic City as a “wasteland” of hedonism. People paced the beaches during the day, the Boardwalk at night, all seeking one form or another of pleasure. I watched the “Miss America” beauties ride their carriages in line on the Boardwalk, and it all seemed pointless.

I wondered long moments if the war had been to save the way of life I saw; “was this all worth saving?” I became ill, and was confined to a hospital bed. At one point during my hospitalization, I became almost completely deaf. Nurses had to put their mouths to my ear and speak loudly for me to hear. One violent night, seized with simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea, I was quieted with a hypodermic, and was suddenly better. Later I learned that my father had been summoned to be ready to come to Atlantic City upon notice, since there was fear for my life. Years after I read Biblical accounts of evil spirits driven from bodies, or heard missionaries tell of similar healings among Micronesian people. Combining those accounts with modern psychological interpretations, I saw clearly that Atlantic City had been for me a brief episode of severe psychological illness.

Like Eliot’s Magi, returning from Bethlehem, I was finding it harder to be “at ease” here in the old dispensation. Unaware of a pattern in these life-determining events, I was at the time concentrated on the next steps in my education for ministry.