Oral Histories and Memoirs

Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be. The last of life
For which the first was made.

Our times are in His hands
Who sayeth "The whole I planned." Youth shows but half.
Trust God, see all, nor be afraid.

It seems to me that says everything about retirement. That what you put in at the beginning or through it, comes back.

Why did I select Adult Education? It wasn't always Adult Education. It started with Immigrant Education. As a career, there is a good deal of background that brought me to it, sort of prepared the way.

I graduated from Wellesley in 1918, during World War I. My major was literature. I had Katherine Lee Bates, who called me "Sarah Frances." She was a wonderful teacher. I majored in social work. I had done some volunteer work for the Troy Times who had a camp for the underprivileged children, and during the summer vacations I went out and volunteered for a month. It wasn't my first contact with foreign people because I lived in Chicago.

My mother was a Midwesterner. My father was born on Hudson Street in New York, but the two met in Illinois. Wellesley was founded in 1875, and I was born in 1895, so it was to be Wellesley.

I was taken back there and baptized in the Episcopal Church on the street where she had lived as a young girl. She went on the Mississippi boats, and I think I have a card case now in my china cabinet that the boy friend gave her on one of these occasions. [chuckles] She later became a teacher, and my father was in education from the beginning. She lived in a small town in southern Illinois, which was founded by the English in 1818, very near the community of New Harmony, which was a free-thinking kind of a literary colony, and it was very near my mother's home. I've been over to see New Harmony.

My father, being from the east had come to the west. They were married in Albion and went up to northern Illinois, where I was born. He was always in public school work.

Johnnie Polumchuk, that I mentioned before, [before the interview] was the Polish boy that got perfect attendance. These people had never had chocolate before, and so my mother made hot chocolate and a birthday cake and had it down in the room. And I gave, in my name, the head of the "Laughing Boy," it is a lovely sculpted head of a boy. I can't give you the name, but I gave that to the room as a mark on my birthday.

My father was like this. He insisted that there be beautiful pictures in the halls. He'd go out and raise money to buy these pictures for schools that he had. He was superintendent in Indiana, at East Chicago. From East Chicago we went to Indianapolis where I went into high school. I used to pass by James Whitcomb Riley House. It was a great literary area, Indianapolis. My father headed the first trade school in the area. It was called Winona Technical Institute. The first linotypes were taught at this trade school. There was a foundry and there was a library school. These were jobs, learning how to be a foundryman and so forth. It was rather a new idea at that time.

Then we moved to Boston. This was in the area where my father came from. His background was Beverly. His father was one of five boys and four girls. His father was from that big family in Beverly and fought in the Civil War. There's a whole book about the 35th Infantry in the Boston Historical Society, and my grandfather was in that and his name is in the book. John Grove Smith. He was born in Beverly. Then he went to Phillips Exeter at Andover and met my grandmother Sarah, for whom I'm named. They had two boys and two girls. There's nobody left on either side of my family. I'm completely alone.

That's the New England part of me, and my mother's side of it is of the English coming into Illinois. New Harmony was very near, that was the free-thinking society, you may recall. Robert Dale Owen. And it is still possible to visit. So that's where the family began.

As I say, I was born in '95 and Wellesley was born in '75, and when I came, she said it was her aim that I go to Wellesley, which I did. I graduated in '18 with not a clear idea of what I would do. I liked people, like my father. My mother was equally aware of people. She was as concerned about the cleaning women as my father was about people.

When he came to Boston, he became the Director of Education for the YMCA, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He had to develop a program of education. From there he was called to Troy, New York, to a technical high school, and that was while I was in college.

When I graduated, we were at war, in '18, the war was going to end before '19, but it was still going on. I thought I would like to go into private school, college, and teach literature. But my other field was social work. So that summer I was home trying to recuperate from college, for one thing, and get my feet on the ground. And I came to New York with my father. Now, there were many jobs for women in those war years. You could get a job. There were plenty of them, in other words, for women, because during that war women had more opportunities for work and jobs than they'd ever had before. So I suppose that was in the back of my mind, but I came into New York and looked around, and I was offered several. The Girls' Friendly was one and the other was the YWCA, and I forget what the other one was. I took the YWCA. That, you see, was in the social field, social work. Over in Bush Terminal war work was going on. A lot of women were taking the places of men in war jobs of manufacturing. Bush Terminal was a big plant at Second Avenue and 40th Street in Brooklyn. All the girls that were in the Y.W. were college girls like myself. So the Y.W. took a building and a cafeteria and lounges, on the other side of the cafeteria. There could be clubs. There they developed classes of knitting, classes of discussion, in other words, those who didn't have any place to go at night could be there. And they gave the Bush employees a decent place to eat.

Now the war was going on. I was as green as grass. The birds and the bees didn't mean a thing to me, and I lived, believe it or not, up at 138th and Morningside Drive. And I worked over at Second Avenue and 40th Street, used to come in at 2 o'clock in the morning to Times Square and take the subway out of Times Square up to 125th and got off and walked through the Columbia campus and over to Morningside, and never thought a thing about it. If I saw the light in the corner store, I knew I was all right. I lived there that year, and of course loved New York.

Now back to my father. He had been a friend of Dr. John Findlay for many, many years. He was the Commissioner of Education in the [New York] State Department of Education in Albany and he had kept the friendship with my father for all the years. He was an Illinois man, and my father married an Illinois woman, so that brought them together. He was Commissioner of Education, and when he retired from that, he went to the New York Times, and he was editor until he retired permanently.

In the meantime, in '18 and the summer that I graduated, we were getting to the close of the war, suddenly America became aware of the millions of foreign born who were in our country, who were in war plants producing for war and didn't speak English, couldn't read English, and they lived in their own little communities, but were a great labor force. Then, of course, we became very scared – the whole government and our war set up – that maybe these were enemy aliens. How did we know but that they might be fadduddling against us. So there was a great stir in America by the government and other leaders that something had to be done for the foreign born to learn English and become Americanized and citizens. They needn't have worried. I don't know the percent, but there was nothing like that among our foreign born. They were devoted to America. They gave their sons, a great many of them. But this stir within the Washington headquarters of education, the Department of Education, brought a great deal of worry. And there was, over the whole country, among educators, a stir that something had to be done to teach these people English and become adapted to America. They thought there were hundreds of them who were spies and all this business. We are going through worse than that now!

Being a friend of Dr. Findlay's, Dr. Findlay chose my father to head up the department in the New York State Department of Education. He had the background, and Findlay knew that he'd been in communities where there were foreign born. He had these friends that were foreign born, and so appointed my father. Well, the war stopped, and I came back from New York to Albany to live. They had moved to Albany from Troy, and my father had set up a department.

I hadn't wanted to be necessarily a teacher, but I was glad to be in public education. So I took the exam in New York and was okay, and then they had state universities, like Albany has a state university. There were plenty in Boston. Of course, New York was the greatest center for foreign born. It was filled, as it is today. He started courses at the state [university], and I took that course, passed the state exam, and then I was given the job of organizer in the state department under one of my father's two assistants, both of whom were women. And so I reported directly to them, but I was still, of course, under my father. I was given a most interesting job in the Mohawk Valley. There's Utica, there's Rome, where the onions [grow]. Utica, sheeting. Little Falls was, I think shoes, partly, and then you worked right down to Albany, and all of those were industrial areas on the Hudson River.

It was my job as an organizer to go into Utica. I'd go first to the superintendent, make an appointment and go in and say that I represented the new Department of Immigrant Education. It was more widely known as Americanization, and it went on all across our country because the national set up of education was pushing all public schools to begin this teaching of the foreign born within their midst. So I would go into a superintendent and say that I was a representative from the State Department of Education who were organizing throughout the state, classes of teaching English to foreign born. Would they put on such a program? The state would train the teachers for teaching this. It was a new form of teaching languages. It's used now a great deal in schools. There, it was by action. Then if he said that he would, I said that the state will pay for the training of the teachers if you get the teachers that want to do this.

Then I went to manufacturers in the town and sat as close to the president as I could get and said that the public schools are going to open evening classes for teaching of the foreign born that are not yet citizens or cannot speak English. Then I went to the priest, whether it was Catholic, Protestant, Greek, whatever it was. Will they support the program? Then I went to the manufacturers. Would they be interested in promoting this by signs in their halls and getting the leadership in their factories to see that they would go to school? There would be some state support. I've forgotten what the support was, but there was a certain amount of return from the state if they put on the right kind of program.

I did that all up the Mohawk Valley, which was a wonderful process of training, and then I had to keep my thinker on. How were the teachers doing, and if they opened the classes, had they done the publicity and so forth? As long as I was in the department, it was my responsibility to see how they were doing, if they were producing, if there were foreign people coming out.

Then I had a chance to go to Haverhill, Massachusetts, to improve their set up. Of course I had lived in Melrose, so I knew the Boston area pretty well. In fact, during my stay here in Stamford I was offered to take the state department director for Massachusetts, but I didn't want it. I preferred to stay here, so I stayed here. That was wonderful experience in Haverhill. It was a shoe town, you know. It made shoes, and then shoes moved all out to the far west where they could get the leather much easier. I built it up there. I taught afternoon classes of Greek mothers, where we'd go over to the window and yell down, "Come on up! The teacher's here!" We'd gather around the kitchen table or whatever. Of course I went to all their festivities. [interruption]

So then at Haverhill the shoe business was wiped out. It was taken right out of their hands and moved to the Midwest where they could get leather much easier. I built up the school there, but it was a New England town and it was a little bit harder to sell in New England. They are staid in their ways and feeling and to take initiative –We were a great shoe center and wealthy people had lost their homes and so forth.

Of course, my father was well known as one of the first directors and he was president of the Association of Directors of Adult Education in state departments all over the country. And he was a wonderful guy, a wonderful guy. Bob Deming was the head in Connecticut. He lived in New Haven. He wanted me to come to Stamford, and my folks were down at Marshfield, down on The Cape [Cod], and he called me, and I said, "Oh, Stamford." I ate at the Greek restaurant on the square. Do you remember those Greeks that had that restaurant? It's all torn down now.

We always talked with the priest. I always went to the priest and talked about it and urged him to announce the coming of it. There are some national Polish organizations, so I would see who was the head of that and try to get into one of their meetings.

Then I took over the W.P.A. program; that was in the '30's.

[End of side 1 of interview tape]

There were three books the government got out. There was the first book; and then there was a second book. They learned it immediately and they used it immediately. So that was called "the direct method," and that's what beginners started out with. Then there was an intermediate primer, and they were pretty well into advanced then.

You see, I need that. I'm alone in the world. I haven't anybody left.

And then I've traveled a lot. And that is wonderful, because I have had wonderful times in Europe with my scholars!

When we got to Naples, then we had a lot of Italians from that area of Naples and down south, even where they had the earthquake, a man whose father had a dining room over on the West Side was in our schools. By golly, he came in to Naples and got us and took us out to his home. The name, I've forgotten what it was, but I said, "Oh, my, the people tell me they came from here." He had to stop and get some fancy cakes for us.

He was back with his family there, living a house, on one side. It was a funny kind of house, because the apartments were here, and the store was downstairs and there was a big parking place, you know. He lived on this side and his brother lived on the other. So what a time we had! He came in and took us out to his house. What a dinner we had! The brother came in. I wish you could have seen the house, the Frigidaire, and he had his wines down at the bottom. [It was] a very, very comfortable house. Then he took us back to Naples that night, with this boy. One of his girls was in school in Naples, and the boy was home. We had a wonderful time there.

Then we went on to Greece. And do you remember – I don't know if you were here, but there was a liquor [store] up in Ridgeway that was owned by these two Greeks, he and his wife. They went back to Greece. They sold the business. A wonderful tie. We'd been to their weddings and they had a lovely house on Eighth Street. They went back to Greece, and he died there. You know it is so expensive to bring bodies, she just couldn't afford to bring him back here, so he's buried in Greece, and she's gone now.

From Naples, we went through the Aegean and went through that canal that takes you into Greece.

Then when we came back to Naples, this friend came in and met us at the boat. We had clothes that we gave him because Ruth had taken more than I had, and she gave him clothes. He and his wife and boy came in to see us off, because we were going on the Vulcania the next day over to Spain, and then we were getting the bigger boat over there.

Oh, yes, I've had a wonderful time with the people that have gone back and I've visited.

I want to go back to Candido, this Guatemalan. I went to Guatemala and had a ball, because he had sent something to Dr. Alvarado! He walked – now they don't walk, they run like this through their forest. They don't walk when they are on the roads, they trot. Do you get what I mean? They never walk like we do. They run. Of course, you see them a lot in Guatemala when you are going from town to town.

So I was on a cruise to Guatemala. I think Candido wanted me to take a fruitcake to Dr. Alvarado [chuckles], so I took a fruitcake to Dr. Alvarado. What a time I had there with him! I wasn't properly dressed for the opera, I'm telling you. All these furs, wraps, you know, at the opera. He took me to the opera, he took me to his club. Candido was his houseboy, he took care of all the birds. He had an aviary in his hall.

Candido trotted all the way down from way up here to Guatemala City. He had been influenced by the Lutherans. The Lutherans were very strong in Guatemala. In fact, one of my college classmates did the Bible in whatever language they have. She did it, and she was very devoted to Guatemala. He was up there with his mother, way up in the corner, if you look at the map. And he trotted down through the forest. He'd hear the bears and the other things at night, and cuddle up to a tree. He did this panting. He wanted to get down to Guatemala City, so he went from his house, clear down like this, and then into Guate. I can't give you the name of the first town he got [to]. But he stopped there and he went to the hospital and asked them if they had a job, and they didn't have any, so he stayed as a houseboy for a woman. Then he finally decided he wanted to make the rest of the way to Guatemala City and he did it that way.

Guatemala is very Lutheran. The Lutherans have done a whale of a lot of work, in Guatemala. I think they have written a Bible in Lutheran or something. One of my college mates was down there and did work with the Lutherans. So, he got down there, and he was very devoted to the Lutherans. That's why I thought this church we passed today was Lutheran. I don't know whether it is or not.

So when I got there, of course, I contacted Dr. Alvarado because I had a fruitcake for him from Candido. What a time I had! I had a ball! He took me to the opera, and I was no more prepared clothes-wise for the opera than anything. Everybody was in furs, and here I was in a nice summer coat and so forth and so on, at least a dinner dress. And here were these wealthy people that came to this opera. I can see it, but I can't tell you what it is. Anyway, after that he took me to his club. Royal treatment. Royal treatment.

Then when Candido went down, he got the woman next to the bank, the old National Bank there on the corner. Do you remember there was cloth, a woman sold by the yard there? Well, he went down there and got her to get him two kinds of suit cloth. So he bought it there and took it down to a tailor to make in Guatemala. Dr. Alvarado is very wealthy and his sons are the presidents of banks and all that. They gave Candido a dinner, and he announced that if Candido was ever in need, that they were to take care of him, in his name. This is what he thought of Candido.

There was a wonderful guy that came in, that took – Gee, I wonder who that man was? He used to be in charge of personnel. He was a local man. I forgot him.

Then we had W.P.A., and so I had extra teachers, you see. So I said, "What about having a class down here?" I said, "Can you get anything together so we can have classes down here two nights a week?" And he said, "Yes." He got [chuckles] tables, and I don't know where he got them! And lights over the tables and things, up in his recreation hall. There were no partitions or anything. The classes were separated from each other. It wasn't an easy thing, but we did it. He had a party at the library afterwards for them. Gee, Marshall wouldn't any more have had a party in the working area, let alone in the special recreation hall. So, we got those men taken care of. You have to persist in those kind of things.

When I read these, I say, "I wonder how I ever did it?" But it's not a good word to use, but I loved the job.

He became the president of the national organization. I think he was the first director named. He went to New York every week, and he'd see Dr. Findlay. He'd call him, and they'd walk New York. They went go for a morning walk, before breakfast, he and Dr. Findlay. He kept a great friendship with him.

I meant to close this with this. When my mother died, she died in '42, and she had said to me, that if she went first, she wanted my father to have a dog and a garden, wherever he was. So when he came to Stamford, he lived with, you know my teacher's name, Laura Mix. She had a room. She took roomers, so she had a room and he stayed over there. I was in a small apartment there at 53 Prospect. So he had a room there and came over to me for breakfast, and dinners, too, until we could find a house. So we found a house on a nice street, there at Courtland Street. He had his dog and he had his garden. And he went in '43.

He was in, strange enough, a woodworking class at the high school, under my department. [laughs] He had a bench in the basement. That's interesting, isn't it? A whole circle. When he went, he said – He called me "Sallie." My mother didn't like it, she wanted it to be "Sarah Frances," but she never called me "Sarah Frances," except when she was mad at me. [laughs] Pops, he said to me, "You've been awfully good to me." It's interesting that the whole circle came around, because I had started with him at Albany, in his particular field, and yet he was a part of my job, at the end.

[End of interview]