It's impressive how these flyers seem to be all in on the war--something that hasn't happened since WWII as far as I know. This is stuff I never would have looked for on my own, and I'm happy to be reading it. I love the photos too!
During WWII my father was a radar mechanic at the far end of the shuttle bombing, dubbed Operation Frantic, in which allied bombers left England to bomb Germany and German-held territory. But instead of having to fly all the way back to England, they could fly the relatively short distance to Poltava or Mirgorod, and land in one of the three US bases in what was then USSR and is now Ukraine. He was there from May 1944 to--if I remember correctly--late summer 1945, and learned Russian well enough to become one of the foremost experts on the Soviet economy.
Brooklyn born and raised, he finally learned to drive on one of the bases in Ukraine, in a Jeep. The story is well told in Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen Behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance, by Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian scholar at Harvard, who took advantage, among other things, of a KGB file on my father that we only found out existed in 2017, from which we learned--among much else--that a Russian woman he'd gone out with there, who disappeared on him, had been told by the Soviet authorities she must ditch him.
And I finally learned a bit about what he'd been doing on his first postwar return trip to Russia, which took place when I was about to turn 5, while he was gone for six weeks. I didn't understand how the mail worked, but one day during that period I'd colored something on some construction paper. I'd taken my childish creation outside and lofted it, hoping the winds of Cambridge would somehow convey it to him in the mysterious land over the mysterious sea. And there, in the prologue of Plokhy's book was a vignette about my father being followed and questioned by a couple of incompetent KGB officers during that very period. Yes, all these years later, it was a (minor) relief to have an account.
Thanks - I just bought the book at Amazon. the next book after the one I am currently working on is the 15th AF story, which includes Operation Frantic.
I can't remember what made it into the book. There is the mention of the authorities forcing one of the women he went out with to ditch him. There is also an incident where the base couldn't get radio contact England, which they badly needed to do. My father finally told one of the higher ups on the base that there was one guy who could get them in contact, but he was really pissed off about something and they'd better treat him really nicely. If that's not in the book, I suspect my brother could give you details, and there are probably other things where he'd remember and I don't. Or not as well. I'm sure he'd be happy to help.
There is nothing about Studebakers in the book, but they figure in my father's stories, as the US sent loads of trucks as part of Lend Lease, and they held up marvelously on the washboard roads and through the frigid winters breaking the ice for soldiers to become friends with Russians, and resulting in the fact that my first cross country trip, at age 4, was in a 1950 Studebaker Champion.
My father was VERY interested in Russia. He'd gotten interested as an undergraduate at UNC, when he'd learned that the Soviet Union had gone through the Depression with full employment. He was interested in how well Soviet communism was working (not well, and he realized it, but I don't know whether that realization came in Russia during the war, or later, after he became an academic).
His getting sent to USSR was an odd happening. He'd been in England during the war, where is commanding officer was a real jerk. At some point, he'd gotten a promotion. When his CO congratulated him, he said "No thanks to you, sir." Two weeks later, he was off on a ship, he didn't know where to. The ship went to Cairo, from whence he went on land with other soldiers through the middle east, the caucasus mountains, and finally entered USSR on May 6, 1944 via Tabriz in northern Iran.
We also have photos that we can lend you. (There are a few in Plokhi's book, and I have one of him driving the Jeep on one of the bases in Ukraine which is not in that book.)
There may be other materials that didn't make it into Plokhi's book. My brother could speak to that. When you're ready, let me know, and I'll put you in touch. My email is holzmandc@gmail.com; my phone (landline) is 781-862-1101. I should soon have a new cell phone, so that will be more contact info.
Thanks for all. Being able to put information in about the American experience in the USSR in Op Frantic will be good, since it doesn't normally get considered - thus making it a good topic in a TC book.
when I hear about virtually ANY WWII AAF guys, my standard questions are "What neighborhood in Brooklyn?" and "Which high school did he attend?"
if this sounds a tad blinkered (or even just single-minded), humor me. this is one way of saying that I'm not entirely sure why I'm asking, but I always ask. I seem to have a weirdly abiding interest in the histories and cultures of NYC high schools. I figure it's harmless enough.
and it's a great story. after the war, did other government agencies try to further de-brief or even recruit your dad? he obviously had many experiences the powers-that-were in the postwar period would have been very happy to hear about in depth.
that he only learned to drive in the service is also a quintessential NYC thing. even today, there are amazing numbers of NYers who have no particular interest in driving. that most driving here tends to be a shitty experience, I find it increasingly hard to find a lot of fault with the "non-driver" position. and as a longtime part-time cab driver, I know whereof I speak.
My father lived at 505 12th St. His father taught physics at Manuel Training High School (I think tht's the correct name)--including to I.I. Rabi (Nobel winner) and the pilot of the Enola Gay. His mother taught second grade somewhere in Brooklyn.
My father learned to drive probably at least a decade, maybe two before his mother learned to drive. (His father never drove.) I think my father's friend Sam Chavkin, onthe same base, was also from Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn thing led to a problem in fourth grade. My teacher, Saran Morgan Hutchins, was fresh from the West Coast, 23, teaching at the Cambridge Friends School, where I'd probably been sent because of my autism, which my mother had diagnosed when I was 3, but never told me. In any case, it was a great school, and Miss Morgan (she wasn't married yet) was a great teacher.
But one day I got a composition back with a word circled in red. What's the mtter with that?! I asked. "that's not a word," she said. Yes it is, I said. No it's not, she said. Yes it is, my father uses it all the time, he tells us to clean up this jernt!
That ended in a draw, I think, and it was a decade before I realized what had gone down that day. My brother and I still use the word jernt. And people still hear the Brooklyn in me, yes, even at age 70.
Fun fact about Miss Morgan. She was the niece of Ann Morrow Lindbergh. I found that out googling 4-5 decades later. She had none of her uncle's prejudice. She was a lovely and excellent teacher. One interesting other thing about her. It was a very small class, 12 kids. She paid attention to us, and so I assume she knew that I was reading on my own a book about her uncle and his family. I got to the part where the baby was kidnapped, and to the best of my recollection, the book was vague about what happened to him after that. So I asked my parents, and I think they did tell me he'd been killed, but I'm not certain of that.
In any case, I assume that Miss Morgan knew what I was reading, but she never said anything about it. Which, in retrospect, was absolutely the right thing for her to do, for reasons that I can think of and perhaps others that I don't know. I do know that had she told me, I would have been upset since the baby was her cousin, and I loved her, as I did all really good teachers.
I looked it up...Manual Training High School's name was later changed to John Jay HS (nothing to do with John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which I attended for a year to take graduate courses in Addiction Studies ((!)) and is a terrific school...taking classes with cops and firefighters was actually a great experience). it was a good Brooklyn HS for many years, but (as with most Brooklyn High Schools), its academic performance fell and kept falling, so that it was closed in 2004 and the campus now is home to three or four of these little "boutique" public high schools (NOT Charter Schools), some of which are good, others not so much. when you house several schools in one building, the logistics are a nightmare because any kind of inter-school fraternizing is forbidden so cafeterias have to be used by one school at a time...think about it. lunch at 10:30 sounds stupid; lunch at 2:30 is downright abusive.
I like to think that they'll work all this out eventually. that was the voice of the optimistic Levine on my right shoulder. the pessimist Levine on the left shoulder you're already familiar with...
That must have been fascinating tking courses with cops and firefighters. The closest I've gotten is one of my mechanics is also a firefighter. His ex-wife and daughter are Jewish. And he's a great guy.
I've never thought of having an optimistic holzman on one shoulder and a ppessimist on the other. Might have to try that.
these are great stories. at that time, there were thousands of them in the NYC Board of Ed. in the fifties, when I was in elementary school, I had several genius teachers. this was especially true of my fifth-grade teacher, who made it his business to "deal with" my stammer and to involve me in projects with other kids to bring my grade in "Works and plays well with others" from an "Unsatisfactory" to an "Outstanding." these were absolutely brilliant, dedicated people, who were making enough as teachers to be able to live reasonably well, especially when two teachers were married. at no point when I was growing up were teachers considered anything less than bright, dedicated professionals.
obviously, as all of that stopped being true, the quality of teachers began to diminish. there are still some great ones out there, but the best ones can't wait to become administrators (oy).
the human qualities of new recruits to public school teaching is, of course, only one of many reasons why a NYC public school education is now the occasion for an eyeroll.
it's one of the many reasons NYC is no longer a wonderful place to live. but it's definitely one of the saddest.
Back in the mid-90s, when I hit the "age barrier" in upper-level Hollywood, I briefly considered the option of doing some substitute teaching in LAUSD (a fate I was eventually saved from by being monolingual), but I took the C-BEST exam, the California state teacher's competency exam (in which you demonstrate a 9th grade level of knowledge). Unlike everyone else who took it that day, I did not take any cram courses, and the last time I had done "story problems" was in 1958. We had three hours to take the test. I finished in about an hour and 15 minutes and got many surprised looks when I turned it in and left, the first one to do so. Two weeks later I got my result - 94th percentile! At least a third of the test-takers - and most looked to be recent college graduates - failed it.
it's funny...when it looked as if I wouldn't get any social work positions in the NYCBE, I took the equivalent test ("general knowledge"). I was genuinely bugged by how easy it was, and I made sure in the "writing sample") that I used a lot of complicated sentences (which is to say, lots of dashes and semicolons). it turned out I'd gotten two wrong answers (one relating to books I hadn't read and the other had two perfectly good answers, but I probably picked the wrong one--and I still maintain I was right). in the essay, my score was perfect.
and I was still angry because I didn't feel like I'd be comfortable with any kid of mine (theoretical kids, of course) being taught by someone who'd need a cram course to pass THAT test.
This is interesting. I don't know anything about my grandparents as teachers, but if they were anything like what you're describing, they must have been terrific. So I'm very grateful for your account, which with your permission I will forward to my siblings and my cousins.
also interestingly, back when I was in school (and a long time before it), it was not at all unusual for two married teachers to work in the same school. whenever this was the case, it seemed to be a really good thing for both teachers.
I also remember that when I first started working at the NYCBE, the tests were all devised by the Board itself and were considerably more difficult than the state exams. and at the Placement Department (where a friend's mother worked after she retired), you could mention a teacher ANYWHERE in the whole huge system, and someone in that office could give you a capsule bio of that teacher. it was pretty remarkable. and, of course, it was trashed.
NYC Board of Education, which was taken over and re-named as The NYC Department of Education (suddenly under complete mayoral control) by Bloomberg who, whatever one might otherwise think about him, was a chaotic force in NYC public education (as well as being in the oversized pockets of the very wealthy Charter School people).
that this chaos was real (and this is literally true) became obvious within about a week of Bloomberg taking his oath.
I'll grant that in a few other ways, Bloomberg might have been a more or less decent mayor; god knows, he was a mountain of likeability and decency compared with the scumbag he replaced. and Bloomberg wasn't especially likable or decent. sort of like Al Franken on Ted Cruz ("I like Ted Cruz more than anyone else in the Senate does, and I HATE Ted Cruz")
based on what you've said about the teachers in your family (especially your mother, who was obviously very special as a teacher and a parent), your grandparents were the best of the old-time NYC teachers I'm talking about. that kind of integrity is ALWAYS generational, especially among teachers.
My mother grew up in Denver. They met at Harvard. My mother came from an amazing family. Her mother was probably the first female Coloradan to get a PhD. Unfortunately the MS took her down, and then out. Her brother--my mother's uncle--ran the Colorado democratic party for the first half of the last century--he gave the speech advocating ending prohibition at the '32 convention. But this guy, both a second and a third cousin, was probably the most amazing of all, https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/remembering-tom-hornbein-everest-pioneer
although there was another cousin, a woman--who became a major figure in Buffalo (If you can get into the obit pls copy and paste it in for me. I got into it once, and havne't been able to get into it again and I have no need to subscribe to the buffalo news
it's a pretty aggressive paywall, but I managed to have a copy sent to my Kindle. I'm not sure how to get this to YOU. but yeah, your relatives were quite a bunch. how did those Jews get to Colorado? probably not all that different from how my Russian great-grandfather ended up settling in Little Rock.
I'm not sure. That's a good quesstion. I think they came in the 1850s or 1860s. Actually, by then there were trains probably to Illinois from the east coast, but nothing x-country yet.
so it sounds like you're from German (as opposed to Pale of Settlement) stock. same folks, just different places.
when I was growing up, however, the general understanding we had (as kids) was that the German Jews were stuck up in all kinds of ways ( to some of them, Yiddish was an embarrassment, even if it was the Jewish lingua franca and based mostly on German). actually, the Germans are the ones who created the world of Kosher delis, to help give the Russian/Polish Jews a way to make a living. things like Pastrami sandwiches didn't exist outside of Germany and related Western European countries before the early twentieth century. but when I was a kid, every reasonably Jewish neighborhood had its own Jewish deli...AND an Appetizing store.
NOW, alas, it's very difficult to find a good Pastrami Sandwich in NYC. another clear sign that the place has been horribly diminished in every way.
Unlike Carnegie Deli in the Beverly Hills "golden triangle," which made Pastrami sandwiches so good that Billy Wilder told me he wouldn't buy them elsewhere. Last I heard they're still doing that.
I think our ancestry is mostly pale of settlement. The last name is only one of 16 ancestors going back to when most of us came. Although like Holzman, Hornbein may be German. My mother's father's lineage was definitely pale of settlement (Shevetevsky). My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Mandell (not sure how many l's.
I don't think either Boston or Seattle had enough Jews to provide ample pastrami, at least in the neighborhoods where we lived. Of course, we did have my second grade best friend, Ralph Siegel, maybe two stones throws from us. His grandfather was a founder of Nordstrom's, which began in Seattle, and which ws the location of one of my earliest remembered dreams (sliding down the bannister and getting butterflies in the stomach). Ralph's mother--daughter of NOrdstrom cofounder, was interior decorator to Seattle's elite, including John Ehrlichman, probably long before he became a Nixon aide. And I did go to a Jewish nursery school which was very close by, although I have absolutely no recollection of how I got there. And I met my nursery school teacher again when we came back the year I was in second grade. The following summer, she was associated (can't remember how) with the JCC day camp I went to. So maybe there was pastrami in that neighborhood. But there were plenty of people in that neighborhood who weren't Jewish--the Dibleys, the Kanyers, the Petersens, the Morehouses. I really have no idea what the proportion of Jews was. And when I say "neighborhood," I'm thinking within two blocks of us, but the nursery school was not in wht I'm referring to as neighborhood, athough I think it was just across the main street from that neighborhood. All these questions and no parents to ask. (If it hadn't been for the MS I think there's a good chance my mother would still be alive, even though she'd be 100. Between the cousin who made it to 104 ,her couch potato sister with the terrible diet making it to 90 (my mother was athletic and ate according to what was considered good nutrition at the time, and adjusted to new knowledge, which is how her three kids learned to do likewise).
MY query elicited one very interesting response about my grandfather and grandmother:
Grandpa Abe taught some very smart kids and I believe one or more received Nobel prizes. An interesting story is that he never forgot a student. He’d be walking along and see someone and go over and greet them. They might not remember him but he remembered them. Grandma Molly taught in the afternoon (the English portion) at a very religious boys yeshiva. She loved the kids. She taught second grade and I remember her bringing me to work one day.
my Southern family members all did the entirely typical-unto-cliche thing and went into "dry goods" (department stores). one of my great-grandfather's brothers ended up pretty much owning everything in Dermot, Arkansas. I remember visiting him once when I was about three and having him greet me with a roomful of white pigeons (I remember pigeons, although they might have been something else). I also remember not liking the whole thing very much...it seemed too chaotic.
Thnks to your comment about Brooklyn teachers, I mentioned this stuff to my siblings and some cousins, and I've now learned some interesting stuff from a cousin about my grandfather, the Manual Training HS physics teacher. Among other things, he never forgot a student. He would greet them on the street years later. And my grandmother reportedly LOVED her second grade students. Good stuff to hear.
This 2nd and third cousin, who died at 92 on May 6, was my most illustrious relative (maternal side). I'd finally read his book so that I could discuss with him intelligently what he'd done. One of the family names identifies a feature close to Everest's summit.
There's nothing like good teachers, and I was mostly fortunate there, although my first grade teacher was terrible, and my third grade teacher was stuck with a lousy curriculum and too many kids in the class (30-plus). (second grade was a good private school on the other side of the country.)
I have two teachers I can remember - one (still a friend) who "opened the door to my life" for me - and one who was the stupidest fuckhead I ever met in 12 years of that. The rest are a grey mass of also-rans.
I had a second-grade teacher who was very, very twisted. she was a knockout redhead with a pornographic body who actually seemed to like hitting kids. she's put a passage on the board, tell us to copy it three times, while she opened her wardrobe and--I swear to god--did all kinds of twisty, sexy things while she kept reapplying herlipstick. it was so weird, no one in class mentioned it for several months.
since my second grade was housed in a junior high school (long, boring story here) I'd copy the passage once and sneak out the back door. she'd send big kids to find and return me.
one day, she sent me to the vice-principal's office, where I started to read one of the books on his desk...a book for tenth graders. he noticed and had me read for him, at which point, he told me that whenever I was bored, I was free to visit his office and read with him. that first visit was my first encounter with one of the magnificent teachers I'm talking about, and it was the first game-changer.
Amazing stories! And what a weird teacher. I mean, those behaviors might have a place between consenting adults, but in a second grade class?!!! That is effin weird.
Beautiful work, TC. Thats Another Fine Mess is the greatest subscription value on Substack. BTW, thanks for the Thom Hartmann recommendation--another great value in journalism with integrity.
I wonder what is the proportion of those of us who had the misfortune to serve in Vietnam whose fathers had served in the South Pacific? Mine did, and I never heard one word about it. There must be a lot of us who are in the same boat. Maybe that's why I am drawn to these stories. When New Caledonia was mentioned a thought bubble appeared above my head "Dad was there!". I suspect I am not alone.
When I get on into describing what living and fighting on Guadalcanal was like, it will be very apparent why the survivors didn't talk much about it. My former father-in-law only talked about it when he realized I was a serious student of the topic and knew a lot, that I could understand his stories.
Thin Red Line yes, directly. Mailer's novel is a fiction inspired by the Guadalcanal fighting. BTW - don't waste time on Malick's movie - any relationship between that and the actual truth of Guadalcanal is coincidental.
I love the quotes from the diaries of participants! I wish my father had kept a diary while aboard Enterprise in 1942. I talked with him about it in 2015 when he lived with us during the last year of his life. He could not recall many details from so many years ago. He did remember the sky going black from AA fire during the attacks on the carrier, and his sorrow about lost lives of his shipmates.
The diaries are gold. It's like being able to travel back in time and interview the young person who was there fighting. They're much better than in-person interviews were 60-70 years later. I really love all the young Americans who kept them for their rebelliousness (if their superiors ever enforced the no-diaries rule, they were in Serious Trouble).
One diarist, Ted Graham from VB-15, an already-published writer at 22, who planned to write a novel based on his experience after the war, literally wrote directly to me across the time-space continuum when he wrote an introduction to his diary: "But man born unto a world war generation may live but only part of that life, not realizing even the lesser of his dreams. I am of that age and thinking perhaps some chronicler may some day wonder what this great group thought, dreamed, cherished and felt. From the war many will live, of course, but they, in their busy life, may take no time to write their thoughts." Of all of them, I really wish he had survived and I could have known him - I'm certain we'd have been friends.
Michael Connelly once said to me that he really respected non-fiction writers because they had "the power to bring the dead back to life." Which is what I try to do.
It's impressive how these flyers seem to be all in on the war--something that hasn't happened since WWII as far as I know. This is stuff I never would have looked for on my own, and I'm happy to be reading it. I love the photos too!
During WWII my father was a radar mechanic at the far end of the shuttle bombing, dubbed Operation Frantic, in which allied bombers left England to bomb Germany and German-held territory. But instead of having to fly all the way back to England, they could fly the relatively short distance to Poltava or Mirgorod, and land in one of the three US bases in what was then USSR and is now Ukraine. He was there from May 1944 to--if I remember correctly--late summer 1945, and learned Russian well enough to become one of the foremost experts on the Soviet economy.
Brooklyn born and raised, he finally learned to drive on one of the bases in Ukraine, in a Jeep. The story is well told in Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen Behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance, by Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian scholar at Harvard, who took advantage, among other things, of a KGB file on my father that we only found out existed in 2017, from which we learned--among much else--that a Russian woman he'd gone out with there, who disappeared on him, had been told by the Soviet authorities she must ditch him.
And I finally learned a bit about what he'd been doing on his first postwar return trip to Russia, which took place when I was about to turn 5, while he was gone for six weeks. I didn't understand how the mail worked, but one day during that period I'd colored something on some construction paper. I'd taken my childish creation outside and lofted it, hoping the winds of Cambridge would somehow convey it to him in the mysterious land over the mysterious sea. And there, in the prologue of Plokhy's book was a vignette about my father being followed and questioned by a couple of incompetent KGB officers during that very period. Yes, all these years later, it was a (minor) relief to have an account.
Thanks - I just bought the book at Amazon. the next book after the one I am currently working on is the 15th AF story, which includes Operation Frantic.
What's the title and author of the one you're currently reading?
I meant the next book by me that am writing. Your suggestion is good research.
Glad I helped you!
If there's good stuff in it about your dad as you say, he might even end up in the book.
I can't remember what made it into the book. There is the mention of the authorities forcing one of the women he went out with to ditch him. There is also an incident where the base couldn't get radio contact England, which they badly needed to do. My father finally told one of the higher ups on the base that there was one guy who could get them in contact, but he was really pissed off about something and they'd better treat him really nicely. If that's not in the book, I suspect my brother could give you details, and there are probably other things where he'd remember and I don't. Or not as well. I'm sure he'd be happy to help.
There is nothing about Studebakers in the book, but they figure in my father's stories, as the US sent loads of trucks as part of Lend Lease, and they held up marvelously on the washboard roads and through the frigid winters breaking the ice for soldiers to become friends with Russians, and resulting in the fact that my first cross country trip, at age 4, was in a 1950 Studebaker Champion.
My father was VERY interested in Russia. He'd gotten interested as an undergraduate at UNC, when he'd learned that the Soviet Union had gone through the Depression with full employment. He was interested in how well Soviet communism was working (not well, and he realized it, but I don't know whether that realization came in Russia during the war, or later, after he became an academic).
His getting sent to USSR was an odd happening. He'd been in England during the war, where is commanding officer was a real jerk. At some point, he'd gotten a promotion. When his CO congratulated him, he said "No thanks to you, sir." Two weeks later, he was off on a ship, he didn't know where to. The ship went to Cairo, from whence he went on land with other soldiers through the middle east, the caucasus mountains, and finally entered USSR on May 6, 1944 via Tabriz in northern Iran.
We also have photos that we can lend you. (There are a few in Plokhi's book, and I have one of him driving the Jeep on one of the bases in Ukraine which is not in that book.)
There may be other materials that didn't make it into Plokhi's book. My brother could speak to that. When you're ready, let me know, and I'll put you in touch. My email is holzmandc@gmail.com; my phone (landline) is 781-862-1101. I should soon have a new cell phone, so that will be more contact info.
Thanks for all. Being able to put information in about the American experience in the USSR in Op Frantic will be good, since it doesn't normally get considered - thus making it a good topic in a TC book.
Happy to help, and I'm sure my brother will be as well!
when I hear about virtually ANY WWII AAF guys, my standard questions are "What neighborhood in Brooklyn?" and "Which high school did he attend?"
if this sounds a tad blinkered (or even just single-minded), humor me. this is one way of saying that I'm not entirely sure why I'm asking, but I always ask. I seem to have a weirdly abiding interest in the histories and cultures of NYC high schools. I figure it's harmless enough.
and it's a great story. after the war, did other government agencies try to further de-brief or even recruit your dad? he obviously had many experiences the powers-that-were in the postwar period would have been very happy to hear about in depth.
that he only learned to drive in the service is also a quintessential NYC thing. even today, there are amazing numbers of NYers who have no particular interest in driving. that most driving here tends to be a shitty experience, I find it increasingly hard to find a lot of fault with the "non-driver" position. and as a longtime part-time cab driver, I know whereof I speak.
Great comment!
My father lived at 505 12th St. His father taught physics at Manuel Training High School (I think tht's the correct name)--including to I.I. Rabi (Nobel winner) and the pilot of the Enola Gay. His mother taught second grade somewhere in Brooklyn.
My father learned to drive probably at least a decade, maybe two before his mother learned to drive. (His father never drove.) I think my father's friend Sam Chavkin, onthe same base, was also from Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn thing led to a problem in fourth grade. My teacher, Saran Morgan Hutchins, was fresh from the West Coast, 23, teaching at the Cambridge Friends School, where I'd probably been sent because of my autism, which my mother had diagnosed when I was 3, but never told me. In any case, it was a great school, and Miss Morgan (she wasn't married yet) was a great teacher.
But one day I got a composition back with a word circled in red. What's the mtter with that?! I asked. "that's not a word," she said. Yes it is, I said. No it's not, she said. Yes it is, my father uses it all the time, he tells us to clean up this jernt!
That ended in a draw, I think, and it was a decade before I realized what had gone down that day. My brother and I still use the word jernt. And people still hear the Brooklyn in me, yes, even at age 70.
Fun fact about Miss Morgan. She was the niece of Ann Morrow Lindbergh. I found that out googling 4-5 decades later. She had none of her uncle's prejudice. She was a lovely and excellent teacher. One interesting other thing about her. It was a very small class, 12 kids. She paid attention to us, and so I assume she knew that I was reading on my own a book about her uncle and his family. I got to the part where the baby was kidnapped, and to the best of my recollection, the book was vague about what happened to him after that. So I asked my parents, and I think they did tell me he'd been killed, but I'm not certain of that.
In any case, I assume that Miss Morgan knew what I was reading, but she never said anything about it. Which, in retrospect, was absolutely the right thing for her to do, for reasons that I can think of and perhaps others that I don't know. I do know that had she told me, I would have been upset since the baby was her cousin, and I loved her, as I did all really good teachers.
I looked it up...Manual Training High School's name was later changed to John Jay HS (nothing to do with John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which I attended for a year to take graduate courses in Addiction Studies ((!)) and is a terrific school...taking classes with cops and firefighters was actually a great experience). it was a good Brooklyn HS for many years, but (as with most Brooklyn High Schools), its academic performance fell and kept falling, so that it was closed in 2004 and the campus now is home to three or four of these little "boutique" public high schools (NOT Charter Schools), some of which are good, others not so much. when you house several schools in one building, the logistics are a nightmare because any kind of inter-school fraternizing is forbidden so cafeterias have to be used by one school at a time...think about it. lunch at 10:30 sounds stupid; lunch at 2:30 is downright abusive.
I like to think that they'll work all this out eventually. that was the voice of the optimistic Levine on my right shoulder. the pessimist Levine on the left shoulder you're already familiar with...
That must have been fascinating tking courses with cops and firefighters. The closest I've gotten is one of my mechanics is also a firefighter. His ex-wife and daughter are Jewish. And he's a great guy.
I've never thought of having an optimistic holzman on one shoulder and a ppessimist on the other. Might have to try that.
I Laughed Out Loud...
these are great stories. at that time, there were thousands of them in the NYC Board of Ed. in the fifties, when I was in elementary school, I had several genius teachers. this was especially true of my fifth-grade teacher, who made it his business to "deal with" my stammer and to involve me in projects with other kids to bring my grade in "Works and plays well with others" from an "Unsatisfactory" to an "Outstanding." these were absolutely brilliant, dedicated people, who were making enough as teachers to be able to live reasonably well, especially when two teachers were married. at no point when I was growing up were teachers considered anything less than bright, dedicated professionals.
obviously, as all of that stopped being true, the quality of teachers began to diminish. there are still some great ones out there, but the best ones can't wait to become administrators (oy).
the human qualities of new recruits to public school teaching is, of course, only one of many reasons why a NYC public school education is now the occasion for an eyeroll.
it's one of the many reasons NYC is no longer a wonderful place to live. but it's definitely one of the saddest.
Back in the mid-90s, when I hit the "age barrier" in upper-level Hollywood, I briefly considered the option of doing some substitute teaching in LAUSD (a fate I was eventually saved from by being monolingual), but I took the C-BEST exam, the California state teacher's competency exam (in which you demonstrate a 9th grade level of knowledge). Unlike everyone else who took it that day, I did not take any cram courses, and the last time I had done "story problems" was in 1958. We had three hours to take the test. I finished in about an hour and 15 minutes and got many surprised looks when I turned it in and left, the first one to do so. Two weeks later I got my result - 94th percentile! At least a third of the test-takers - and most looked to be recent college graduates - failed it.
now THAT is actually pretty shocking. FAILED IT??
maybe that's why every friend I ever had from that part of the world would begin to shake whenever they mentioned the possibility of working in LAUSD.
it's funny...when it looked as if I wouldn't get any social work positions in the NYCBE, I took the equivalent test ("general knowledge"). I was genuinely bugged by how easy it was, and I made sure in the "writing sample") that I used a lot of complicated sentences (which is to say, lots of dashes and semicolons). it turned out I'd gotten two wrong answers (one relating to books I hadn't read and the other had two perfectly good answers, but I probably picked the wrong one--and I still maintain I was right). in the essay, my score was perfect.
and I was still angry because I didn't feel like I'd be comfortable with any kid of mine (theoretical kids, of course) being taught by someone who'd need a cram course to pass THAT test.
This is interesting. I don't know anything about my grandparents as teachers, but if they were anything like what you're describing, they must have been terrific. So I'm very grateful for your account, which with your permission I will forward to my siblings and my cousins.
also interestingly, back when I was in school (and a long time before it), it was not at all unusual for two married teachers to work in the same school. whenever this was the case, it seemed to be a really good thing for both teachers.
I also remember that when I first started working at the NYCBE, the tests were all devised by the Board itself and were considerably more difficult than the state exams. and at the Placement Department (where a friend's mother worked after she retired), you could mention a teacher ANYWHERE in the whole huge system, and someone in that office could give you a capsule bio of that teacher. it was pretty remarkable. and, of course, it was trashed.
Wow! (What's the NYCBE?)
NYC Board of Education, which was taken over and re-named as The NYC Department of Education (suddenly under complete mayoral control) by Bloomberg who, whatever one might otherwise think about him, was a chaotic force in NYC public education (as well as being in the oversized pockets of the very wealthy Charter School people).
that this chaos was real (and this is literally true) became obvious within about a week of Bloomberg taking his oath.
I'll grant that in a few other ways, Bloomberg might have been a more or less decent mayor; god knows, he was a mountain of likeability and decency compared with the scumbag he replaced. and Bloomberg wasn't especially likable or decent. sort of like Al Franken on Ted Cruz ("I like Ted Cruz more than anyone else in the Senate does, and I HATE Ted Cruz")
based on what you've said about the teachers in your family (especially your mother, who was obviously very special as a teacher and a parent), your grandparents were the best of the old-time NYC teachers I'm talking about. that kind of integrity is ALWAYS generational, especially among teachers.
My mother grew up in Denver. They met at Harvard. My mother came from an amazing family. Her mother was probably the first female Coloradan to get a PhD. Unfortunately the MS took her down, and then out. Her brother--my mother's uncle--ran the Colorado democratic party for the first half of the last century--he gave the speech advocating ending prohibition at the '32 convention. But this guy, both a second and a third cousin, was probably the most amazing of all, https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/remembering-tom-hornbein-everest-pioneer
although there was another cousin, a woman--who became a major figure in Buffalo (If you can get into the obit pls copy and paste it in for me. I got into it once, and havne't been able to get into it again and I have no need to subscribe to the buffalo news
https://buffalonews.com/obituaries/ruth-kahn-stovroff-104-volunteer-and-leader-in-jewish-community/article_f64cc69b-3f85-542d-beeb-039f4314f870.html
it's a pretty aggressive paywall, but I managed to have a copy sent to my Kindle. I'm not sure how to get this to YOU. but yeah, your relatives were quite a bunch. how did those Jews get to Colorado? probably not all that different from how my Russian great-grandfather ended up settling in Little Rock.
I'm not sure. That's a good quesstion. I think they came in the 1850s or 1860s. Actually, by then there were trains probably to Illinois from the east coast, but nothing x-country yet.
so it sounds like you're from German (as opposed to Pale of Settlement) stock. same folks, just different places.
when I was growing up, however, the general understanding we had (as kids) was that the German Jews were stuck up in all kinds of ways ( to some of them, Yiddish was an embarrassment, even if it was the Jewish lingua franca and based mostly on German). actually, the Germans are the ones who created the world of Kosher delis, to help give the Russian/Polish Jews a way to make a living. things like Pastrami sandwiches didn't exist outside of Germany and related Western European countries before the early twentieth century. but when I was a kid, every reasonably Jewish neighborhood had its own Jewish deli...AND an Appetizing store.
NOW, alas, it's very difficult to find a good Pastrami Sandwich in NYC. another clear sign that the place has been horribly diminished in every way.
Unlike Carnegie Deli in the Beverly Hills "golden triangle," which made Pastrami sandwiches so good that Billy Wilder told me he wouldn't buy them elsewhere. Last I heard they're still doing that.
I think our ancestry is mostly pale of settlement. The last name is only one of 16 ancestors going back to when most of us came. Although like Holzman, Hornbein may be German. My mother's father's lineage was definitely pale of settlement (Shevetevsky). My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Mandell (not sure how many l's.
I don't think either Boston or Seattle had enough Jews to provide ample pastrami, at least in the neighborhoods where we lived. Of course, we did have my second grade best friend, Ralph Siegel, maybe two stones throws from us. His grandfather was a founder of Nordstrom's, which began in Seattle, and which ws the location of one of my earliest remembered dreams (sliding down the bannister and getting butterflies in the stomach). Ralph's mother--daughter of NOrdstrom cofounder, was interior decorator to Seattle's elite, including John Ehrlichman, probably long before he became a Nixon aide. And I did go to a Jewish nursery school which was very close by, although I have absolutely no recollection of how I got there. And I met my nursery school teacher again when we came back the year I was in second grade. The following summer, she was associated (can't remember how) with the JCC day camp I went to. So maybe there was pastrami in that neighborhood. But there were plenty of people in that neighborhood who weren't Jewish--the Dibleys, the Kanyers, the Petersens, the Morehouses. I really have no idea what the proportion of Jews was. And when I say "neighborhood," I'm thinking within two blocks of us, but the nursery school was not in wht I'm referring to as neighborhood, athough I think it was just across the main street from that neighborhood. All these questions and no parents to ask. (If it hadn't been for the MS I think there's a good chance my mother would still be alive, even though she'd be 100. Between the cousin who made it to 104 ,her couch potato sister with the terrible diet making it to 90 (my mother was athletic and ate according to what was considered good nutrition at the time, and adjusted to new knowledge, which is how her three kids learned to do likewise).
That would be great if you can get me that obit. She was my mother's first cousin, about ten years older.
MY query elicited one very interesting response about my grandfather and grandmother:
Grandpa Abe taught some very smart kids and I believe one or more received Nobel prizes. An interesting story is that he never forgot a student. He’d be walking along and see someone and go over and greet them. They might not remember him but he remembered them. Grandma Molly taught in the afternoon (the English portion) at a very religious boys yeshiva. She loved the kids. She taught second grade and I remember her bringing me to work one day.
The NObel winners were I.I. Rabi (nuclear magnetic resonance, making MRIs possible) and George Wald.
impressive, impressive.
my Southern family members all did the entirely typical-unto-cliche thing and went into "dry goods" (department stores). one of my great-grandfather's brothers ended up pretty much owning everything in Dermot, Arkansas. I remember visiting him once when I was about three and having him greet me with a roomful of white pigeons (I remember pigeons, although they might have been something else). I also remember not liking the whole thing very much...it seemed too chaotic.
Thnks to your comment about Brooklyn teachers, I mentioned this stuff to my siblings and some cousins, and I've now learned some interesting stuff from a cousin about my grandfather, the Manual Training HS physics teacher. Among other things, he never forgot a student. He would greet them on the street years later. And my grandmother reportedly LOVED her second grade students. Good stuff to hear.
This 2nd and third cousin, who died at 92 on May 6, was my most illustrious relative (maternal side). I'd finally read his book so that I could discuss with him intelligently what he'd done. One of the family names identifies a feature close to Everest's summit.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/remembering-tom-hornbein-everest-pioneer/
of course, David...forward away!
Thanks!
There's nothing like good teachers, and I was mostly fortunate there, although my first grade teacher was terrible, and my third grade teacher was stuck with a lousy curriculum and too many kids in the class (30-plus). (second grade was a good private school on the other side of the country.)
I have two teachers I can remember - one (still a friend) who "opened the door to my life" for me - and one who was the stupidest fuckhead I ever met in 12 years of that. The rest are a grey mass of also-rans.
I had a second-grade teacher who was very, very twisted. she was a knockout redhead with a pornographic body who actually seemed to like hitting kids. she's put a passage on the board, tell us to copy it three times, while she opened her wardrobe and--I swear to god--did all kinds of twisty, sexy things while she kept reapplying herlipstick. it was so weird, no one in class mentioned it for several months.
since my second grade was housed in a junior high school (long, boring story here) I'd copy the passage once and sneak out the back door. she'd send big kids to find and return me.
one day, she sent me to the vice-principal's office, where I started to read one of the books on his desk...a book for tenth graders. he noticed and had me read for him, at which point, he told me that whenever I was bored, I was free to visit his office and read with him. that first visit was my first encounter with one of the magnificent teachers I'm talking about, and it was the first game-changer.
Amazing stories! And what a weird teacher. I mean, those behaviors might have a place between consenting adults, but in a second grade class?!!! That is effin weird.
Beautiful work, TC. Thats Another Fine Mess is the greatest subscription value on Substack. BTW, thanks for the Thom Hartmann recommendation--another great value in journalism with integrity.
Flattery will get you EVERYWHERE Stewart! :-)
Thanks much. Mark Twain once observed that a man could dine out for a month on a good compliment; this is three months' worth.
I wonder what is the proportion of those of us who had the misfortune to serve in Vietnam whose fathers had served in the South Pacific? Mine did, and I never heard one word about it. There must be a lot of us who are in the same boat. Maybe that's why I am drawn to these stories. When New Caledonia was mentioned a thought bubble appeared above my head "Dad was there!". I suspect I am not alone.
When I get on into describing what living and fighting on Guadalcanal was like, it will be very apparent why the survivors didn't talk much about it. My former father-in-law only talked about it when he realized I was a serious student of the topic and knew a lot, that I could understand his stories.
the general assumption about both "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Thin Red Line" is that they're both about Guadalcanal. is this correct?
Thin Red Line yes, directly. Mailer's novel is a fiction inspired by the Guadalcanal fighting. BTW - don't waste time on Malick's movie - any relationship between that and the actual truth of Guadalcanal is coincidental.
I love the quotes from the diaries of participants! I wish my father had kept a diary while aboard Enterprise in 1942. I talked with him about it in 2015 when he lived with us during the last year of his life. He could not recall many details from so many years ago. He did remember the sky going black from AA fire during the attacks on the carrier, and his sorrow about lost lives of his shipmates.
The diaries are gold. It's like being able to travel back in time and interview the young person who was there fighting. They're much better than in-person interviews were 60-70 years later. I really love all the young Americans who kept them for their rebelliousness (if their superiors ever enforced the no-diaries rule, they were in Serious Trouble).
One diarist, Ted Graham from VB-15, an already-published writer at 22, who planned to write a novel based on his experience after the war, literally wrote directly to me across the time-space continuum when he wrote an introduction to his diary: "But man born unto a world war generation may live but only part of that life, not realizing even the lesser of his dreams. I am of that age and thinking perhaps some chronicler may some day wonder what this great group thought, dreamed, cherished and felt. From the war many will live, of course, but they, in their busy life, may take no time to write their thoughts." Of all of them, I really wish he had survived and I could have known him - I'm certain we'd have been friends.
Michael Connelly once said to me that he really respected non-fiction writers because they had "the power to bring the dead back to life." Which is what I try to do.
I love your plane porn.
Wow. Thanks.
Waiting TC...patiently.😊
I'm glad my work helps you.