Growing Pains
with Dick, Bob, and Fred
by
Richard G. Kopff, EdD
1913 - 1993

Lightly edited by Derick Kopff
Please feel free to direct comments and questions to Derick Kopff.
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Growing Pains
with Dick, Bob, and Fred

Richard G. Kopff
Malverne, New York, Monday, March 8, 1993

My three sons, Dick, Bob, and Fred, have persuaded me to write a kind of autobiography (for them, not for publication). They seem to have a particular interest in my very early home life, and in my various relatives too. On March 3^rd I heard a lecture by Rebecca Sinkler, General Editor of the New York Times Book Review section, and her comments on a "nobody" memoir moved me to action.

I decided to begin this in the form of a journal, not exactly a diary. What form it will eventually take, I don't know, but my boys convinced me that the most important thing was to begin. This is my beginning. Dick suggested that my first page should be my letter to Sherman Raskin, and here it is.

Tel: (516)-599-2669
Fax: (516)-599-4324

March 4, 1993

Sherman Raskin
Chair, English Department
Pace University
41 Park Row
New York, New York 10038-1502

Dear Sherman:

Just a note of appreciation to you and Mark Hussey for staging Ms. Rebecca Sinkler yesterday at our neighborhood auditorium. She was deeply interesting and stimulating.

Among the most stimulating remarks to me was her discussion of the trend toward the "nobody" memoir. It moved me.

Mine will not be a best seller, because I am not driven, like the others, by "anguished pain" and a "universal frustration." And I have no need for a "healing process."

My three sons (ages 57, 52, and 48), within one week of each other, have each asked me to write an autobiography (for them, not for publication). Unfortunately for the publishing world, we do not hate each other enough, so I have to look further for motivation.

While I therefore have no need for a "healing process," I do have an exasperating need for a "growth process," not to heal wounds but to integrate my own growing pains, even (or especially) at the age of 79. Our whole world has growing pains, but I cannot reasonably believe that they are all sick. We have to cope with the nature of human nature, and our issues lie in their well-ness, not in their sickness.

While Ms. Sinkler caught my ear when she was "an optimist by nature but a pessimist by experience," I confess that I look instead for a growing maturation for myself and my three capable sons, because I am neither optimist nor pessimist, but a realist who can dream.

Thank you for Rebecca Sinkler.

Cordially,

Richard G. Kopff

Adjunct Professor, Psychology, PNY

cc: Mark Hussey
Chair, Editorial Committee
Pace University Press

Growing Pains
with Dick, Bob, and Fred

Richard G. Kopff
Malverne, NY, Thursday, June 10, 1993

This I can't believe. It has been three months since my first entry! And I'm still not down to writing an autobiography! I finally staged my fourth symposium in four years, successfully executed on May 15^th, but it took almost everything I had to give to do it. At any rate it's over, my thank you letters are all out, and I have a chance to shift gears.

I am impelled to write today, because I read a review of Arthur Ashe's new book by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in today's New York Times. The review heading is The Art of Going Gentle into that Good Night. This is an allusion to Dylan Thomas, but I'll come back to that in a minute or so.

I forgot that I wanted to double-space this, so I'll begin now.

The reviewer writes that Ashe quotes a theologian, Dr. Howard Thurman, with one of his "prayer-poems."

How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one's self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for
The still moments and the resting lull.

Almost reflexively my mind went back to a poem which Dylan Thomas composed for his father: Do not go gentle into that good night.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the day.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Perhaps Dylan Thomas's father had not attained the heights that Ashe reached on the tennis court. With infinite tenderness and tolerance the poet says this to me, because he knows that I do not want to center down, to sit quietly and see myself pass by!

There are moments of quietness, however. In this afternoon's mail I received a thank you note from Alex Rapoport, acknowledging his appreciation for the luncheon I had for four cohorts at the Princetown Club last Friday. He wrote, in part:

I must say that you have so much flair and style when it comes to
organizing people and creating a team-spirit activity.

And there are moments of quietness too in reading. I am in the middle of four books now, having started the second, third and fourth before finishing the first, second, and third. Perhaps this is not "quiet" reading, but more of what Dylan Thomas was writing about - raging against the dying of the light. But I haven't had so much fun in a long time!

June 12, 1993

My earliest recollections are of 649 East 18^th Street, in the stately comfortable Flatbush section of Brooklyn. I was born there on September 29, 1913. My very first faint memories were of knitting - knit two, purl two, knit two, purl two. This was 1917, and I was four. My Mom encouraged me to knit socks for my father. I have no recollection of my father then; he was in France with the A.E.F. I found out later that, as first lieutenant, he was commanding officer of the 165^th Aero Squadron in Romerantin, France; he had observer's wings, not a pilot's wings.

June 14^th

I dimly recall his return, when he unpacked a trunk, and handed me the spiked dress helmet of a Prussian soldier. That helmet is now hanging over my study fire place and directly under it is my framed naval sword.

I had often wondered as a youngster why my father was so meticulous in his dress. In my pre-teen years, when I had my suit coat on, he always cautioned me to keep my coat buttoned, so that it would appear neat and proper. My shoes had to be shined. Perhaps, I realize now, it was his military experience still fresh in his mind. He saw to it that my brother, Fred, and I had short and neatly trimmed hair. That military influence, whatever its source, continued on well after World War II. I was graduated from Annapolis in 1934; Fred received a Field Artillery ROTC commission at Princeton; my two sisters, Helen and Marjorie, each married a West Pointer; you, Dick, as a medical doctor, served as a captain in Vietnam while you, Bob, had an enlisted rating in Korea. Thus we had three successive generations of Kopff men in uniform, overseas, in life-threatening situations which used to be called wars. Peter, my brother's second son was a distinguished military graduate at Princeton, although his active duty in Germany was not under combat conditions. Although we served, none of us Kopff men made the military a career, although my sisters' husbands did.

My Dad's influence on us all was strong, pervasive, and long-lasting; four successive generations have also been in law - Dad, Fred, Peter, and now Derick. But a parallel influence was also quietly at work, my wonderful teachers at P.S. 152 (the "Glenwood Road School"); Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn (the second oldest high school in America, where Aunt Edith stimulated my interest in good literature and my home room teacher, Mrs. Katherine Simpson, not only made me like Latin over 3 ½ years but planted the seeds of deep interest in the mythology and literature in the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome). At the Naval Academy my favorite subjects were literature, naval history, and French. My bachelor's thesis was on Adam Smith. Hofstra was largely psychological technology but at TC Columbia University some gifted professors rekindled broad reading interests. Thus, although I was never a career naval officer, and never became a true scholar, my interest in scholastic matters were nurtured from the time I was six years old, and seems to be re-awakening now. The latter bent stems properly from gifted and caring teachers, not Dad, although Dad never down-played scholastic achievement (quite the opposite).

Let me go back to 649 East 18^th Street, Brooklyn. This was a marvelous old house. Brooklyn used to be called "the City of Churches," and so it was.

June 15^th

The ambience of the neighborhood was quiet elegance. 649 reflected this. Coming in the front door, to the right was a small reception area, big enough for two large comfortable chairs with a spittoon between. To the left was a large formal living room, with antimaccassars over the formal chairs. The room was rarely used, with the notable exception of Christmas Eve, when a very large Christmas tree stood in the southeast corner. The room directly east (to the rear) was separated from the living room by two large heavy sliding doors which we children never touched. Behind the living and dining rooms was a huge kitchen, with an enormous cast iron coal stove. Mealie (Amelia) Barnett was our servant girl; her mother, whom we always called Mrs. Barnett, worked part time. I was always awed by the huge kitchen range in which there always seemed to be a fire. A supply of coal was in a bucket to one side. Out the back door was a small yard with not much grass, because a large double garage was surrounded by a concrete pavement to accommodate the exit of the large Packard touring car which Grandpa always drove.

Down a center hall from the front entrance was a wide circular stairway, with a half size marble statue of a nymph on a post. I slept in the large front bedroom on the second floor; there were two in front. I remember it mainly because that was where my mother tended to me when I caught a bug in the widespread flu epidemic of 1917. Other rooms are vague in my four year old mind, except the glassed-in second floor back porch; where Gramma used to read to me out of Hurlburt's Stories of the Bible, and where I received my first chess lessons from her. She was so patient with me!

The third floor was where Fred and I played most. It was perfectly enormous, covering the whole third floor area except for two tiny bedrooms. Our toy trains covered the whole third floor, and we had many uninterrupted happy hours there. It was up there one day when Mrs. Barnett claimed magical powers, boasting that she could pull her teeth out with her hands. We dared her, and she responded by pulling out her false teeth. Fred and I were duly impressed for a long time.

The Davidsons lived directly across the street. Harold Davidson, the youngest of five boys, was my age, and we were good friends. The Schildwachters were next door to the south of our house. Their daughter, Lillian, was older than I, and her sex and age prevented close friendship. Down the block on our side of the street was Richie Rabbe, about my age, and a first class baseball pitcher.

We all played street games, being a little young for enthusiastic baseball, which came however after we moved.

3:30 am, Thursday, June 17, 1993

These were very happy carefree days for me. One day our home was robbed while we were out. I can remember the statue at the foot of the stairs lying broken on the floor. It wasn't long after that that we moved. Our family must have been quite upset by the burglary.

Mom, Dad, Fred, and I lived briefly (perhaps about a year) in an apartment on Dorchester Road, and I remember attending Sunday School at a Congregational Church close by. Then we moved to 1136 Flatbush Avenue, a second floor apartment over a haberdashery. We called it a "railroad" apartment because the rooms were strung out one after the other like cars on a railroad train. Only the front and back rooms had windows. The apartment was somewhat gloomy and the stairs from the street were dark and quite narrow.

The trolley cars going up and down Flatbush Avenue had big serial numbers painted on them, and I used to amuse myself copying them down, and then adding up the numbers. I have several pictures in my mind from this relatively happy house. The first was the birth of my sister, Helen. I can see Dad and Dr. Pierce (he with a bushy moustache) sitting gravely in the front living room in the gathering darkness, waiting, waiting, quietly talking. I was seven then, and I didn't know what they were waiting for, until the next day when I was surprised to be introduced to my new sister. All four of us were born at home, not in a hospital.

My next flashback at 1136 was seeing "Uncle Heinie" Garms, Gramp's nephew, at a dinner in the dining room. Uncle Heinie was working in a butcher shop, but after a relatively brief time went back to Gnarrenburg. When Uncle Heinie was about to sit down at the table, I sneaked around and pulled the chair out from under him. It was perfect timing on my part, because he landed on the floor. I couldn't understand why no one else but me thought it was funny! I have mercifully forgotten whatever my punishment was.

In one sense my life began here, because my memories now include graphic remembrances of people, not just locations. This was at 2218 Newkirk Avenue (now dubbed "NewCrack" Avenue) Grammy and Grampa lived next door at 2216, within a row of six small attached brick homes. Almost immediately the wall between the two living rooms was removed, and a few years later a doorway was cut on the second floor, making it almost one 12-room house instead of two six-room houses.

I still retain a picture in my mind's eye of my first day of kindergarten at P.S. 152, a happy wonderland of small tables and chairs and lots of toys and playthings. At this time we were at 649. I know we were still at 649 because I was run over by a light truck when returning from 152, and was examined there by good old Dr. Pierce. I was lucky not to have a scratch on me, but I do remember Mom's great concern when I told her what had happened to me on the way home.

2218 and P.S. 152, along with Erasmus Hall High School were locations where I have very happy memories, up until just before being graduated from the Naval Academy.

Richard G. Kopff
Malverne, NY, Thursday, June 24, 1993

The Admiral

Growing pains occur when as teen-agers, say, parts of our body are growing at different rates, and we experience awkwardness in coordinating them. At nine or ten, I remember complaining to my Mom that "my knees hurt." After feeling and manipulating them she looked at me sympathetically and said: "Don't worry, Dickie, the pains will go away. They're only growing pains." And so they were.

About a year ago I had visions of what might be a sort of "retrospective growing pain." At the age of 79 my mind went back to an encounter I had with Admiral Rosendahl at Lakehurst when I was 31 and a Lieutenant Commander soon to become a full Commander with scrambled eggs on my cap visor.

At your office last year, Dick, I had picked up a National Geographic Magazine that contained an article about the rigid airship, U.S.S. Macon, a helium filled zeppelin which was really an aircraft carrying a small squadron of five scouting planes back in the early thirties. An ingenious trapeze arrangement allowed these planes to take off and return while the airship was in flight. See the accompanying photograph. [Ed.: Not included, nor am I familiar with it.]

Now a little history. I was designated a Naval Aviator (Airship), number L-145, awarded February 1, 1943. At Lakehurst I had reported directly to Rear Admiral (later to become Vice Admiral) Charles Emory Rosendahl, Chief of Naval Airship Training and Experimentation (NATEC). I started as Assistant Training Officer, then Training Officer, and for the last few months was his acting Chief of Staff.

Some time in 1944 the Admiral asked me to check the efficiency of the search plans of the scouting planes flying from the Macon. Although the search plans had been developed at the War College, the Admiral had suspected that there were leaks in the plans, but no one else on his staff could prove it.

I did not prove that the search plans were 91% air-tight, but that 9% of the area "covered" would not be seen. The Admiral sent my proofs to Admiral King's staff, who corroborated my findings. Messrs. Trauber and Jones of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group verified my calculations and subsequently furnished the equations which were included in the confidential book I wrote (84 pages) which was published by the Naval Airship Training and Experimental Command (NATEC), 1945. (Search Plans for a ZRCV: A Discussion of the Scouting Potential of a Rigid Airship Plane Carrier).

One point of this story is that Messrs. Trauber and Jones told Admiral Rosendahl that I had unknowingly invented a new method of mathematical proof to resolve the problem. (I suspect that this may have had something to do with my subsequent appointment to Chief of Staff.)

When young psychology students tell me that they do not know how to determine the cause of some particular human behavior, because no "scientific" method exists to do so, my impulse is to tell them: "Invent one." I am neither a genius nor a war hero. My highest decoration is a lowly commendation ribbon awarded by the Secretary of the Navy for the training program I had responsibility for, overseeing seven different service schools.

Connected continuous effort can resolve many apparently intractable problems. I thought my modest and personal example might encourage some youngsters to become more self reliant and venturesome in their inquiries. The Macon story lends some color, authenticity, and specificity.

Do you remember playing gin rummy with the Admiral's wife, Jean, when they had dinner with us one night, Dick? Jean was a sharp bridge player, and she took you on somewhat condescendingly at first. After all, you were only seven or eight then. But you were a gin rummy sharp yourself. As time wore on her condescension dropped and her competitiveness and pride took over, but she still couldn't beat you consistently. You held your own in that match-up!

I admired the Admiral very much, fellers. He was a genuine war hero, had commanded the Macon in the flight operations I briefly described, and had commanded a surface cruiser in combat. He wore a Navy Cross and a Distinguished Flying Cross in addition to a bunch of other decorations. He was brave, enterprising, and very sharp. He was patient but never condescending. He always treated me with kindness and respect. I would have broken my back for that man. He socialized effectively but I had never seen him under the influence of alcohol. He never spoke sharply to me.

I remember one occasion when I entered his imposing second floor corner office in our NATEC staff building to deliver an important report. As I returned and stood at attention in front of his desk, he stopped signing his mail, put down his pen, and with a smile asked for my report. After I had delivered a few sentences he picked up his pen again and resumed signing letters. This made me angry, because I had worked hard on the report, and I thought it deserved his full undivided attention, because the subject was important. I stopped talking because I didn't know what else to do. When I fell silent he looked at me patiently and in good humor said: "OK, Dick, I can hear you when I sign these letters." I resumed talking, but when he resumed signing letters I again stopped talking and stood quietly at attention. This time he put his pen down with more force, and again smiling a little said: "OK, Dick, I'll listen to you!" And he did not resume writing until I had finished my report.

The Admiral was a quiet man, originally appointed to the Naval Academy from the state of Texas. He was ambitious for his projects and very hard working, and he held both himself and his staff to high standards of performance. Yet he had fine self control and worked with quiet efficiency. Thus his staff also worked quietly and efficiently. We all got to work early and stayed late, because he did. He didn't need to be a hard taskmaster because he imbued us with the importance of our work. He was a good organizer, took the time to go into the details of a project that was difficult or complex, and planned effectively. He was an excellent writer who had authored several books in our field. He also taught me the value of public relations; he knew several senior people on the staff of the New York Times. He maintained close relationships with the German lighter-them-air people to follow their technical advances. On one occasion I met Dr. Hugo Eckener, head of the German consortium, at Rosendahl's house. I was flattered, because Eckener had a world-wide fame.

After my release to inactive duty and the Admiral's retirement, I helped him set up a small consulting firm in Manhattan. I completed several studies on the projected worldwide operation of rigid airships for both freight and passenger carrying. This was an exciting and stimulating time for me, but we were unable to raise the necessary funding. After less than a year I returned to the Brooklyn Union Gas Company until I completed my doctorate at TC Columbia University.

Yet the Admiral and I continued our association through correspondence until his death. He was a major influence in my life. I still remember an occasion, early in my duty on his staff, when I had to undergo an exploratory abdominal operation at Lakehurst. On my first post-op day in the hospital, I was amazed to see the Admiral's smiling face in my hospital room. I was startled, but yet pleased and flattered that he took the time and had the personal interest and sensitivity to come to see me. He was a real human being whom I was proud to know and serve. He instilled excitement and purpose into my work. I terminated our business relationship with deep regret, but our personal regard for one another continued until his death.

War-time is a time of various growing pains for a person in uniform. All of us did things we had never done before. It is a time of rapid change, much uncertainty and ambiguity, and on occasion deep fear because of personal hazards. One gets the feeling of being in an uncontrolled environment, physically, cognitively, and emotionally. The organizations in which we work, like teen-agers' bodies, are often growing unevenly and at differential rates. Sometimes our actions seem awkward.

Yet this was a time of stark reality, reality with which we had to cope in order to survive, if indeed we were destined to survive. On my first trip westward in a little convoy escort vessel, a former British corvette, I lost 25 pounds caused by seasickness. Yet I never became seasick again, and in later years as a blimp pilot I was sometimes the only one in the 11-man crew who was not airsick.

Without medical attention (because none was available), our physical bodies, along with emotion and cognition, somehow matured into a more coordinated activity in a stressful environment that was often physically uncomfortable, demanding, and debilitating. Like Admiral Rosendahl, Spike Long, my corvette skipper, was a calm role-model, yet one who demanded and received high standards of performance. Both of them taught me the value (necessity) for effective leadership under stress and the inestimable value of knowing one's self and controlling one's self to the limit of one's ability and moral strength.

Richard G. Kopff
Malverne, NY, Friday, July 2, 1993

Kindergarten and Grade School

I'm going to write something now without a point to it, because the event comes so clearly in my mind. But I don't know why it is so clearly focused. Perhaps it will become clear as I write. On a warm sunny afternoon we were walking somewhere in the Brighton Beach area, Mom, Grandma Garms, and one to two other ladies, probably including Cousin Grace. I was about six - I couldn't have been much less, and certainly not very much more - - when I became separated from the group. The area was not crowded. Finally I realized that I was lost, and I was momentarily petrified! I felt almost paralyzed. I began to run in circles, and then I finally saw Mom! She saw me at the same instant, and she came to me with her arms outstretched. She did not seem as upset as I was, but the warmth of her greeting told me a lot. My fright evaporated instantaneously, and we resumed our walk. She calmly suggested that I not run away again as far as I had, and I guess I never did . . . not until it came time to fly from the nest a dozen years or so later.

As I write, it comes to me that this essentially happy experience taught me two conflicting lessons, though it has taken seventy years to articulate them. First, for a long while I was a little afraid of getting too far away from Mom (and later Dad). Second, paradoxically, I became unafraid of venturing out on my own, subconsciously knowing that everything would turn out all right, that Mom (or Dad) and I would somehow find each other again.

A few years after this, I guess Fred and I were nine or ten, we were playing stickball together on East 23^rd Street. One main worry was not to break any windows in the big apartment house across the street, a constant hazard to us kids. Well, sure enough, Fred hit a ball that broke a window in the apartment basement. The enraged superintendent came out from nowhere, looking for blood. Fred tried to climb the nearest tree, while I stood petrified half way down the block. Fred wasn't quite fast enough, and the super managed to kick him in the buttocks before Fred managed to get out of range. Now I was really scared, and I quickly raced in and told Dad. (This must have been a Saturday because Dad was home). Dad hurried outside, saw Fred up in the tree, and a very angry super yelling threats of mayhem. With that, Dad reached back and smacked the super in the jaw, knocking him down. Then Dad helped Fred down from the tree, and the three of us went back to the house. Dad was my hero. I had been given a lesson in manhood, I thought.

Well, later that same evening, the two strapping sons of the superintendent paid us a visit. I have no recollection of any words that were passed, but Dad suddenly rose and picked up the telephone. Dad told me later that he had called the local police precinct. Apparently some threats were made, and my hero again did not flinch. Shortly after, the two men left, and I never saw them again, nor did we have any further trouble with the super. I thought my father was the bravest man in the world.

A couple of years after that Fred and I were driving about 8 a.m. to Dad's office in the Municipal Building in Brooklyn. Dad was in the front seat next to John Urban, our full-time chauffeur, and Dad was puffing on his smelly cigar. Suddenly, half way down to Borough Hall on Flatbush Avenue, a burglar alarm went off in a store across the street. To my amazement Dad ordered John to stop the car, and in no time at all Dad was racing across Flatbush Avenue to the store, disregarding traffic, intent only on stopping what he thought was a burglary. I knew Dad was unarmed. Yet here he was, now a little on the portly side, acting like he was the Lone Ranger. Well, it turned out to be a false alarm, and I gather Dad was just a little disappointed. I wasn't; I was beginning to be a little scared. I began to think that my Dad was pretty courageous. He pooh-poohed the incident, and I then (or later) began to think that Dad had just a bit of a modest streak in him too.

Dad never drove. He told us that when he was younger he had taken driving lessons, but he had wrecked the car. He resolved never to drive again, and I never saw him behind the wheel. He smoked cigars incessantly in the car, which my brother and I found to be an abomination. If we opened the windows Dad would complain that he was cold, and we were ordered to shut them. However, he was my hero, and one doesn't question the vagaries of heroes. We coughed, but we survived. Much later, when I was seventeen and trying my own first cigars to imitate Grampa Garms and Dad, I found to my consternation that these cigars made me feel just as sick as Dad's used to in the automobile. Fortunately, for my manhood, I found that I could tolerate cigarettes and a pipe much more comfortably. And thus began a lifetime habit of smoking.

Let me go back to kindergarten. What a happy time that was for me! The southwest corner of the first floor of P.S. 152 must surely have been a sunny room in heaven. And the teachers were smiling gentle angels. Mom had no problem getting me to go to school then. The kids were all friendly. I had never met so many young kids before, and we quickly made friends. This was a very happy time of my life.

Yet it matured gently and grew naturally into a world of competition. That's when I became acquainted with Miss Robina Murray, our track, field, and baseball coach. She was a mannish-looking spinster who I thought knew everything there was to know about every baseball position and every track and field event. I was pretty fast, and she entered me in practically every PSAL (Public School Athletic League) meet each year. I was her star in the 40-yard dash. She patiently taught me how to crouch on the mark. We would hurry home for lunch, and then go back for track practice and try-outs before afternoon classes started. I can still see and hear her blowing the whistle which dangled from her thin neck. I had never seen her angry, although she could speak affirmatively and directly at times. I thought she was a bundle of energy, but she was never overbearing or cross.

Harold Hendler was a better shortstop than I was, but I was proud to be given a P.S. 152 baseball uniform. At least I had made the team! I was better at track than baseball, but I enjoyed the baseball more. On game days I was permitted to wear my baseball uniform to school, to be ready for the game right after classes, and I proudly felt like a little bigshot, swaggering around classes in my nifty uniform.

The most fun that I ever had at grade school, though, was at the parties that somehow sprang up during the eighth grade, in celebration, I suppose, of the anticipated graduation. I think that Libby Lauritzen started them, then Selena Sillick, Marjorie Meyer, and the rest of perhaps a dozen or so of us hosted parties on a Friday night. We were daring, playing racy games of post office. Receiving a letter meant going to the post office (a closet), the "letter" being a clumsily administered kiss from the female sender; then it was my turn to send a "letter" to a girl of my choice. Dinner or some sort of collation was always served. The merriment was genuinely and deeply felt. The sponsoring mother (and father) were always present, but never intrusive. The most daring parcels collected at the "post office" were perhaps longer and more lingering kisses, but never anything more. What a thrill for a 12-year-old!

This was all a long time ago in a different era, because I can't recall seeing any blacks, or Jews, or orientals in my classes.

I want to stop now and appoint an editorial committee. Dick, I'd like you to be my editor-in-chief, because you have the experience of having a publisher's contract to edit a book for publication. Bob, you are appointed founding editor, because you hood-winked me into writing whatever this turns out to be. Fred, you are appointed Chief Financial Officer, even though I don't have ten cents for you to administer, because you are a financial wizard. Each of you has one co-equal vote in your deliberations.

Richard G. Kopff
Malverne, NY, Sunday, July 11, 1993

I guess I was in some ways an over privileged youngster, because my maternal grandfather, Richard Garms, was pretty well fixed financially. He retired at about the age of forty, I am told. My name is Richard Garms Kopff, his oldest grandson, and I guess he liked that idea! Grammy saw to it, for example, that I always had good clothes. Grandpa and Grammy went to Germany every second year, traveling always on the North German Lloyd line, and always traveling first class in these greyhounds of the Atlantic. This was pretty far removed from me because of my youth, until it was announced when I was 13, that Fred and I were going to spend two months with them in Gnarrenburg, Gramp's home town. Of course I was delighted, but I had no way of evaluating this trip because the experience was beyond my ken. We used to spend our summers at the Columbia Fishing Club (now defunct) in Eltingville, Staten Island. I'll have to tell you about this some day.

One day I saw a steamer trunk in our bedroom. Fred had one too. In this we were supposed to pack everything we would need for a two month's trip. It stood perhaps four feet high, and when opened up had drawers coming out like a regular chiffonier, a chest of smallish drawers on the right, and a place to hang suits on the left with another drawer or two on the bottom of the left side. It was explained to me that I would have to live out of this trunk for the length of our sea voyage (about ten days), so I should be careful how I unpacked the linen I would have to use.

I have no recollection of our bon voyage party, but in retrospect I don't know how my mother stood it. She previously had refused to let me go on overnight Boy Scout hikes, and couldn't stand letting me go to a summer camp for two weeks, even though Bob Peters, my best friend, had his camp counselor describe the advantages of Camp Hawthorne in Maine which he was attending. Mom couldn't part with us for even one night. I confess I resented her overprotectiveness, but in my youthful maturity I realized that this was more her problem than mine.

The ship itself was wonderful to explore. I soon found out that damen and herrn meant ladies and gentlemen's bathrooms, and we quickly found out how to reserve time for a shower or tub. The S.S. Stuttgart was perhaps 10,000 tons displacement, average size in those days, but only a third the size of the Queen Mary (and about one-third her speed). Yet, to me the Stuttgart was an awesome machine. [Ed. For a little history on the North German Lloyd line and The Stuttgart see: www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/nglloyd.html]

The morning after embarkation I was struck dumb! I rose early, before Fred, and before my grandparents in the next cabin, and went up on deck. I couldn't believe my eyes. I still remember that morning. Looking forward I could see nothing but calm ocean. Looking abeam on the promenade deck I could still see nothing but ocean. Where were we? Then I looked back to see New York's shore line, and there was no shore! This was my first exposure to the vastness of the ocean. I was excited, not afraid. I began to anticipate what adventures might lie ahead of me. I was tickled silly! I had a feeling of sheer delight.

From this distance I can't provide much connected narrative, just some vignettes. That view of the ocean hit me first and most. Close behind, however, was the appearance of Grammy, and the treatment she was given everywhere. She looked and acted as if she were the queen mother herself. Gram was not snobbish, but she had an innate dignity that simply commanded attention and fawning respect. When she walked down the wide stairway that led to the dining room, it was an entrance, entirely natural and unaffected. The maitre d' hurried to escort her to her place, while every visible waiter snapped to attention. I had never seen such goings-on! Gram was always faultlessly groomed. She had told me that her hair was naturally gray from the time she had survived a shipwreck in her teens, off Labrador. Her hair was simply magnificent. And she always took care of it. She was faultlessly clean and tidy. She had the money to buy good clothes, and she knew how to select and wear them.

That trip on the Stuttgart was good from another standpoint. Grammy saw to it - - very quietly - - that Fred and I learned how to behave in a formal dining room. Racing to our table, like rowdy boys, was simply out of the question. It wasn't done! We paraded quietly and in a dignified way, as befitted the grandsons of a duchess or queen mother. We talked freely at our table, but quietly and without interrupting others. We learned how to give meal orders in a proper way, and how to behave at a table in a mannerly way. This was our introduction to formal dining room etiquette, and Gram somehow knew how to get it across without fuss and feathers, and we somehow took it naturally and normally. It was no big deal. We were becoming young gentlemen.

In the meantime, Grampa Garms was somehow always a quiet dignified man in the background. He carried himself well, seemed pleasant, and carried out his share of the bargain by providing all the money that was needed. Grammy did everything else, and he never challenged her in my presence. Whatever control he had over Grandma was so artfully accomplished that I could never detect it. Dad always called them Mr. Garms and Mrs. Garms, never anything else. Dad told me after Grandpa's death that "Mr. Garms is the only man I ever knew who never had an enemy."

The ship was interesting for many reasons. There were small sophisticated shops, except for size the equivalent of anything to be found along Madison Avenue. Fred and I played shuffleboard every day. Delicious snacks were freely served between meals. The ship's orchestra played at dinner, and for cocktails and dancing after dinner. Entertainment was provided after dinner. We had reserved deck chairs. The promenade deck was ideal for a morning constitutional. This was high living for me! No wonder my grandparents liked the North German Lloyd!

In my memory the small country town of Gnarrenburg is half way between Bremen and the seaport, Bremerhaven. Uncle Heinie met us and shepherded us into the small steam driven train which chugged its way to Gnarrenburg. From this point on my memory and specific chronology fail me.

I am looking now at a treasured photo of 25 of us taken by Ernst Krohn, Osterholz-Scharmsbeck, Bahnhofstr. I had written the identities of each of these people, but that piece of paper is now missing. Is it possible, Fred, that Derick has it now? I recognize most of the faces but I can't put names on most of them without help. I would guess I was 15 then. Dad joined us after our North Cape cruise, when we returned to Gnarrenburg in 1928. Uncle Heinie, Uncle August, and Aunt Frieda Luhrs are in the top row, right. Gramp's sister and brother are in the first row. They were wonderful kind people.

Their farmhouses were solidly built with concrete foundations. In a cool section of the lower floor I recall seeing preserved meats hanging from hooks. On our first trip there, Fred and I had the dangerous sport of examining the cow pastures, and seeing how close we could come to the cows. We were very much afraid of them, to the amusement of our aunts who had to milk them.

One of the sights to be seen in little Gnarrenburg is the denkmal (check Derick for spelling. [Pops was correct - "Denkmal" is German for a monument or memorial - Derick]) This is a relatively modest sized monument erected by Grandpa Garms to honor the memory of soldiers [Ed. - soldiers from Gnarrenburg] who had given their lives in WWI. It was deeply appreciated and revered by the townspeople. Another sight to see was the local glass factory.

After a while, on that first trip, Fred and I became somewhat bored, and we were very happy to go home at last. We made a few side trips to Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin, to dig up a few more relatives, but I have no recollection of these.

Our second trip, when I was 15, was much more eventful. Shortly after arriving in Gnarrenburg, we embarked on a two-week cruise to Scotland, Iceland, the North Cape, and back down through the gorgeous Norwegian fjords. The ship, I think, was the S.S. Berlin, slightly larger than the Stuttgart, and it carried a seaplane. Mom let Fred and me take a ride in it over Iceland, but she refused to go with us. She was deathly afraid of flying, and said that she wanted at least one family survivor to get back home.

On the cruise I developed a minor love affair with a pretty girl of my age from Easton, Pennsylvania. I played the piano for her, but it didn't help the courtship that much because my playing was not that good, and my amorous advances were not that much more sophisticated. Nevertheless we enjoyed each other's company, but neither of us attempted any follow-up correspondence.

We were well north of the Arctic Circle, and in the Land of the Midnight Sun. North of the most northern tip of Norway, I was fascinated by seeing the sun dip to the horizon, but not below it. This was the Midnight Sun, when the sunrise began another day without any intervening darkness. Passengers fretted somewhat when it became difficult for them to decide whether it was 2 am or 2 pm.

Cruising in the Norwegian fjords was breathtakingly wondrous. Willie and I have so far been unable to find my photo album of this cruise, where I have places and dates written under the photos. Fifteen years later I was to recall some of them as I followed Hitler's conquest of Norway, and some of the allied commando raids from England.

Norwegians are clean people, but I was able to smell their fishing villages from miles out at sea. We made a landing near Lapland, and drove into a Lapland village. Here we saw herds of reindeer, and for a small tip a Laplander would wrestle one to the ground for us.

The only misadventure during the whole cruise was running around on an uncharted reef north of Iceland. It was scary for a while, but our captain kept his cool. Our water supply became contaminated, and we had to drink bottled water for more than half the trip back.

Fred and I had still another trip, but under entirely different auspices. I entered the Naval Academy in July, 1930, at the tender age of 16. At the end of plebe year we embarked on two old battlewagons and cruised to various ports in Europe. "Youngster cruise" is not a pleasure cruise. I performed the duties of a second class seaman, holystoning the decks and performing other menial and labor-intensive chores. I slept in a hammock for two months.

The point of this story is that Germany felt it was grossly unfair to Fred that I was getting a "free" trip to Europe, so she immediately planned a trip for her and Fred to take a culture-laden cruise down the Rhine. My battleship, the Wyoming, made a stop at Copenhagen, and Fred and Gram planned to meet me in Bremen, at the Columbus Hotel. I managed to get a few day's leave, but the trip was not easy because I could speak no German; at the very best my German was rudimentary. I also felt somewhat rankled that I was working my fanny off while he was cruising in the lap of luxury. Fred was quite aware of the conditions and my feelings, and he teased me the whole time. Just to heighten the contrast, Fred was then a student at The Lawrenceville School while I was "enjoying" plebe year at the Naval Academy.

Fred was full of practical jokes, and he had with him a celluloid facsimile of false teeth. At one point during dinner he asked the waiter for a glass of water, and he calmly put his fake false teeth into the glass to the consternation and discomfiture of the waiter. The waiter finally saw through Fred's effort at humor, and we then continued our dinner in the Hotel Columbus grill room. Funny what we remember, isn't it? I think Gram always believed that my cruise was better than the one she provided Fred. Gram had peculiar notions anyhow. She used to tell her friends that she was paying my tuition through the Naval Academy, which made Dad wild. Yet he never tried to reconcile Gram to the truth of that story, but used to shake his head sadly at Mom in private. It was one of his pet peeves. Fred got one more trip out of Gram, when she took him to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The top story of this trip was when she boasted that she had shaken hands with Hitler. I think that one almost gave Dad a stroke. Some family we have!

Malverne, New York, Wednesday, July 14, 1993

Ida Helen Virginia Bowen Kopff
and the Bowen Family

It is time now to introduce your mother to you. It can be only an introduction, because we lived together as man and wife for 37 ½ years; we were married February 4, 1935, and she died August 31, 1972.

We were high school students together at Erasmus Hall when I met her, and for me it was love at first sight, literally. She was the most gorgeous, talented, literate woman I had ever met! I was deeply and irrevocably smitten. The date and even year of that first meeting are lost in memory, but it was at an afternoon meeting of the Bibliophile, our book club. The faculty advisor was Miss Edith Rodkey, my English teacher and also her aunt. Miss Bowen, as I called her at first, was a couple of years behind me in grade level. Gin, as I called her for all but two weeks of my subsequent life, was there to recite some verse. And I was absolutely transformed! I had never seen such professional talent, combined with grace, loveliness, poise, and complete self-control. She was impressive.

I found out later that Gin had received elocution lessons back home in Altoona. [With your patient sufferance, I'll call her Gin, because that's what I called her. We have a confusing number of Moms now, and Gin makes it easier and more precise for me. Okay?] The following year Gin had a female lead in the high school play staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which I missed because I was then at college. I feel sure that she had the talent to become a professional actress, but a year or so later she had enrolled at the school of nursing at Brooklyn Hospital. She had not consulted me on this, but merely advised me of the fact by mail. Because of various complications, I am not sure that my advice would have carried much weight anyhow, but such a turn would certainly have had a profound significance for her. The pits of the Great Depression were on us in the early thirties, and that may have had a determining effect on that important career decision.

Miss Rodkey was one of my favorite teachers. She used her classroom as a kind of special theater of her own, designed explicitly for her own use. She was an attractive lady, but she would make more faces than Wallace Beery himself. They were both "muggers." John Wells and James Brady were classmates and friends of mine, and the three of us delighted in trying (in private) to imitate the many faces of Miss Rodkey. She was extremely well read and wrote many published book reviews. She and I got along well together; we seemed to enjoy each other's impishness.

It turns out that Miss Rodkey was Mother Bowen's (much older) sister. The two were really different in temperament. Aunt Edith performed with gusto and style, and was a spinster. Mother Bowen was very sharp intellectually, undoubtedly sharper than her sister Edith, and Mother Bowen also had an extraordinarily strong wit, which she often used to keep her eleven children in line: Virginia; Lip (Samuel Lipton, which became S. Lipton because Lip hated the name Samuel); Tim (Thomas Vaughn Bowen, Jr); Bum (Robert); Jack; Dave (David Lloyd George, a name his father told me was bestowed because they had run out of names for their growing tribe); Margie (Margaret); Elizabeth (almost as gorgeous as her older sister, Virginia, whom she strongly resembles); Florence (real little scamp); Harry; and finally Kathryn. You were almost as old as Kathryn, Dick so prodigious was your mother's family.

To return to Aunt Edith, on a Sunday morning date, Gin took me to her Aunt's Presbyterian church in downtown Brooklyn, and there I was surprised to see and hear Miss Rodkey singing a solo as part of a choir's rendition. Miss Rodkey had a rich contralto voice, not quite of operatic quality or range, but nevertheless more than just pleasant, cultured, and well trained. She sang with confidence, and evidently enjoyed the exposure. She had a master's degree in English, unusual for a woman in her day.

In retrospect, it would be hard to imagine lifestyles more different than the Bowen menage in Altoona and Miss Rodkey's existence in an Ocean Avenue apartment, just off Church Avenue, convenient to Erasmus Hall High School just a few blocks away. There was a piano in both locations, but books were overflowing in the Rodkey establishment; they were everywhere. The Rodkey apartment building was in a staid genteel neighborhood. The Bowen household, outside of the central part of the city of Altoona, was overflowing with children, not books. The house (and especially the bathroom) were too small for this burgeoning but essentially happy family. The next door lot, not owned by the Bowens, was nevertheless used by them to cultivate vegetables for the dinner table, and a few flowers for decoration.

Because of the crowded conditions, the Bowen family often ate in two sections. They never went hungry; there was always a bin of potatoes in the cellar, a bin almost as large as our coal bin on Newkirk Avenue. Mother Bowen kept a blackboard in the kitchen where daily assignments and missions for the children were kept. (In the Navy we called that the "plan of the day.") She always baked her own bread. It was a well organized family, and a happy family. It was a family truism that "the first one out is the best dressed." I never witnessed a single squall between Mother and Father Bowen.

I was entranced by their organized chaos. I'll never forget my first visit to Gin's home, with Mother and Father Bowen, along with Lip, Tim, and Bum, standing in the living room and five pairs of beady little eyes staring at me from behind the protection of the banister on the stairway to get a look at "Gin's boy friend."

Tom Bowen (I always called him Father Bowen) was employed as a printer in the composing room of the Altoona Mirror. He was a strong union organizer, but he certainly appeared to be not a flame thrower around the house. He was articulate and well mannered. Lip used to complain to me about having to listen to his father's philosophical discussions (although I honestly enjoyed them) (Lip called it "preaching") but Lip himself had much of his father's image in life. Lip and I used to joke about it a lot, later.

Lip had trouble getting himself a job in those days of deep depression, and he wandered over the northeast section of the country, hitchhiking rides whenever he could. He eventually ended up with us in New York, where I was lucky to get him placed in New York Business Department of the Brooklyn Union Gas Company. He was a capable business man and eventually became Treasurer of the Gas Company, where he was well respected.

Tim was one of my favorites, a real man's man, always with robust stories to tell. He used to bum cigars from me quite shamelessly, until I began to leave an open box on the piano so he wouldn't have to ask. He as a good soldier too, became a sergeant, but unhappily was killed by a sniper's bullet in Germany.

Bum was quiet but likeable; Jack was more outgoing. Dave made a career for himself in the army as a radar technician; he was also on the quiet side. The girls, Margie, Liz, Florence, and Kathryn, got along well with each other and with me, but they were progressively younger and beginning to approach your age, Dick. Our interests were different, especially at the beginning. Harry (inexplicably called "Boosky") was the runt of the family, but sharp and good natured.

Gin, perhaps because of her age (the oldest of eleven), perhaps because of her innate talent, perhaps because of her Aunt Edith's influence, always seemed to me to be just a little different from her brothers and sisters. She had more poise, more innate dignity. Yet early in our association she made me aware of her resentment of having been "farmed out" to Aunt Edith. Gin took this as a form of rejection especially by her mother, and she never really got over it. I believe it was the source of many of the problems that developed later. In truth, from my observation, I think the opposite was also true. I believe that Mother Bowen felt that she was doing Gin a favor, providing a fine development opportunity for her eldest daughter by exposing her to the cultural advantages offered by living with Aunt Edith, while being able to go to one of the finest high schools in the country at that time.

The Rodkey family was well educated, and Mother Bowen told me that her family felt that she had married below her station and class when she married Tom Bowen. The book I have in front of me right now was autographed "Edith Rodkey, Love for my sister, R.G. Rodkey." This is The Banking Process, by Robert G. Rodkey, PhD, Associate Professor of Banking and Investments, School of Business Administration, University of Michigan. New York: Macmillan, 1928. With much glee Gin and her brothers almost invariably referred privately to their "Aunt Bert." Yet Gin's mother's family had on a number of occasions made overnight visits to this already overcrowded home, sleeping on the floor in the living room. Apparently there had not been a complete break in the families' relationships, as there had been in my case.

In spite of surface differences that I noted, Gin seemed always to be on good terms with her whole family, without exception. There was much love in this family, much good humor, never any untoward differences that might indicate sibling hostility or resentment toward parental supervision.

Very rarely Father Bowen would administer discipline with a small switch toward an errant son. By the time Father Bowen had cut a small switch, and cut off some small greening shoots to make it a suitable instrument for parental application, the guilty son would have started crying in terror. The father had learned how to use anticipation to make it worse than the application. Yet this was a gentle family, not rowdy, although there was frequently noisy humor, particularly among the boys.

Over the years I have wondered about Gin's resentment of her mother's "rejection" of her. With eleven children in the house, it was difficult to give all of the individual personal attentions that children seek. Perhaps Mother Bowen had this in mind too when arrangements were being made for Gin to move to Brooklyn. In any event, the resentment was there down deep, and it exacted a heavy toll in Gin.

Now, about Ida Helen Virginia Bowen Kopff's name. Gin didn't like Ida any more than Lip liked Samuel (he was named for Sir Thomas Lipton, of America's cup fame) and Gin never used it. Helen, after the first year or so, became confused with Helen Kopff, my mother's name, so that was dropped also. That left Virginia, and that stuck.

I genuinely liked and respected the Bowen family, all of them. I think they liked me too. Mother Bowen did not fail to let her sharp wit fall in my direction once in a while. In return, I'd threaten: "Mother Bowen, I'm going to teach you to drink, smoke, spit, and swear before I'm done." Yet she never took umbrage at this; she could dish it out, but she could also take it.

They never served alcohol in any form in their house, although I knew that Father Bowen would have to stop at a bar for union strategy meetings occasionally. Shortly after our marriage I brought home a bottle of my favorite rye, plunked it on the able, and asked: "Anyone want a drink?" I deliberately aimed this at Father Bowen, while the kids held their breath. He calmly rose and said: "Thank you, I don't care if I do," and poured himself a drink. Then Margie and Tim made a rush for glasses, and we were off to the races. I did not repeat that performance very often, but the sound barrier had been broken.

Corinth, New York, Sunday, July 18, 1993

The Nature of Human Nature

About 25 years ago, shortly after I had received the doctorate and my state license to practice as a psychologist, I remembered describing some industrial clients' behavioral problems to a very bright young clinical psychologist whom I respected. His response was: "We don't have a 'scientific' method to measure these. They are just not part of the discipline of psychology." And he dismissed the problems as not worthy of further professional discussion. As time passed I discovered other industrial psychologists who felt as I did, that our methodology was lacking somehow, but by far the preponderance of "psychologists" resided in the camp of my friendly discussant, they were logical positivists. Some human behavioral problems were felt to be outside the discipline of psychology. This began to bother me.

Perhaps seven years ago I began my study of the nature of human freedom, not American freedom, but human freedom. Here I ran into the same problem. The discipline of psychology lacked the methodology to attack the full range of human freedom, because the problem was much too complex. Then I became angry! If a scientific discipline restricted the research for truth, then the discipline was at fault, not my desire to search for ultimate truth.

My mind went back to Admiral Rosendahl when he asked me to validate the Macon's search plans. I really didn't know that mathematical theory was inadequate to deal with this type of analysis. I had a problem in front of me, and I approached it as a problem-solver. For obscure reasons, which are still obscure to me, I was able to solve the Admiral's problem. Some operations research guys noted that I had invented a new method of mathematical proof to solve this problem. This was no big deal. I wrote a short book which described my method, but it received no rave reviews. As a matter of fact, I am aware of no written reviews of my noteworthy invention, except that in the correspondence of my beloved Admiral, who promptly promoted me to acting Chief of Staff.

The lesson I learned, however, was that rules can be restrictive. The rules of an academic or scientific discipline are meant for the guidance and protection of academic practitioners who are seeking truth with integrity. Integrity is necessary to weed out charlatans and fakers who can irresponsibly mislead the public. This is thus an important moral issue. And yet my ignorance promoted free and independent problem-solving inquiry on my part which ultimately led to a very modest invention which solved an old problem no longer of consequence.

I bring this topic up because we need freedom with integrity to pry into the nature of human nature now, however briefly, an inquiry into the nature of human nature because the problem is in front of us, as the Admiral's problem was in front of me. It is Mt. Everest to climb because it is there. The problem exists! I shall try to approach it primarily as a problem, not with the help (and the restrictions) of a behavioral scientist.

Human beings are ineffably complex. Interestingly enough we create different cultures around the globe, and these cultures which we create in turn influence (control?) our thinking, behavior, and moral codes. Imagine that! Our own creations control us! Culture is the human-made portion of our environment by definition. Our physical environments and our cultural environments influence us. We can (and do) modify our physical environments, but we ourselves and our predecessors created the cultural environments. We can modify our cultures but we have created them in the first place! (We used to write man-made, but one modification some of us are making is to write that cultures are human-made, thus giving a bow to the recent progress of females in forming our destiny.)

Humans have the innate capability to be more than noble or heroic. We also have the capability of being evil and corrupt. Our creator has endowed us with freedom of choice, uncensored, absolute freedom of choice. While our creator has given us total freedom of choice, our varied governments have not.

Various governments have laws which differ from one another. Beyond laws or edicts, we have customs or traditions which differ from one another. These laws, or edicts, or traditions, or customs, have grown up or evolved over many millennia, recorded certainly over the past 2500 years at least, from ancient Greece and Rome in what we call Western society.

Since 1044 A.D. and the establishment of the Magna Carta in England, we have had the Rule of Law. This has matured into the English Common Law and the Napoleonic codified laws, differently arrived at but similar in promulgating certain codes of behavior. Various forms of religion have attempted to apply rules of beliefs standing for what is "right" or "wrong," usually with implied divine sanctions and sponsorship.

If we have free will, fellers, then it seems to me that we have a moral imperative to do some more reasoning to make sure that we don't end up killing each other. In other times, this is what the sons of kings did: they killed each other. I don't want you to kill one another. I want you instead to support one another. This is what you are doing, and it pleases me to see the concern you have for one another.

The Achilles heel that humans have is that our moral reasoning has not kept pace with our technological development. Perhaps we have been too busy seeking the good life. We have not rejected the moral life in the highest senses, but maybe we have been too busy to pay attention to it. If we busy ourselves pursuing A, or B, and/or C, then we don't have time for D, E, or F.

It is because we have freedom of choice, because we have literally quite limitless God-given talents, that we have this quite awesome responsibility. We must search for virtue, or truth, or goodness, whatever word we choose to describe it. The difficult part of the problem is that we have to search for it as part of our daily lives in a struggle to survive physically.

Let me tell you what happened to me in my last year at the Naval Academy, and immediately thereafter, that had such an effect on me.

Corinth, NY, Sunday, July 25, 1993.

Pastor Luther D. Gable

First, however, I have to touch briefly on someone none of you know anything about. Pastor Gable, of St. Stephen's Evangelical Lutheran Church on Newkirk Avenue, at about East 28^th Street, maybe a half a dozen blocks from our home at 2218, confirmed me when I was 14 years old, before I even knew Gin. I was then a sophomore Erasmus Hall High School.

He used to deliver his sermons in a sonorous voice, occasionally leaning out over his pulpit, and using his left hand to sweep his longish hair from his eyes. He spoke publicly as I thought Desiderius Erasmus himself would speak, kindly but with affirmative conviction. He simply commanded attention.

I don't remember very much about my weekly confirmation classes, nor about Pastor Gable personally; the net result was that I took my biblical studies seriously, whatever the reason, and was confirmed first in my class. Secondly, whatever his influence was, I began tentatively to think of religious or philosophical studies for college.

I had gotten hooked on a naval career beginning in the eighth grade, after reading Dave Darren's First Year at Annapolis . . . then his Second Year at Annapolis, . . . Third and then Fourth Year. Pastor Gable's mystical aura made me examine other alternatives. Also, Mrs. Simpson's teaching of Latin focused my interest in classical studies at high school, but my Latin grades said "no." I could never get more than 75% or 80% in my term grades in Latin, and I was refused admission to the Greek courses. So that settled that. Strangely enough I was getting honors grades in math and physics, so in the last half of my senior year I dropped Latin and French and doubled up on math, so as to enter the Naval Academy with four years of high school math behind me. I also got Mr. Keck (a math teacher) to tutor me on the substantiating exam for entrance into the Naval Academy. (I had been exempted because of my grades and the standing of Erasmus Hall H.S. from taking the full entrance exams in a half dozen different subjects.) Yet my interest in classics remains, fellers, and in literature and languages with some added interest provided by Edith Rodkey.

Something else became of increasing and continuing importance. I called him Mr. Van Siclen, but Mom called him Jimmy. Perhaps they had been classmates. Jimmy gave me my first piano lessons, starting when I was perhaps six or seven years old. He would come to the house, and after a while Fred began to take lessons too. Jimmy was never better than an ordinary music teacher, but he was kind, considerate, and conscientious. Fred was never interested in piano playing, practicing no more than perhaps three hours a week when pressed, more interested in stepping out to play ball. I loved to practice. This sometimes got on Dad's nerves. "Helen does he have to practice while I'm home? I have a case to try tomorrow!" Then I'd slip down to make my model airplanes, which I did quite well. These were rubber-band-powered balsa wood models which I built from scratch, and they flew quite well. On a Saturday morning I could talk my way into a local armory, where of course there was wide open space and no wind. In The American Boy magazine I found out how to build these planes, and got rudimentary flight theory, finding out that most of the lift comes from the camber of the top of the wing, not the bottom. I fashioned myself a fine little workshop in the basement and spent many happy hours there.

In the course of time I began to get far better piano (and music) instruction from George Folsom Granberry. Mr. Granberry was really a teaching musician on the faculty of the Berkeley Institute, a girl's prep school in downtown Brooklyn which my two sisters were shortly to attend. He maintained a suite of rooms in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, then eminently respectable. I took part in a recital of Granberry's pupils in Aeolian Hall, Manhattan. To jump ahead just a little, although I had rowed in the lightweight (150-pounds) crew for three years at the Naval Academy, in my first class (senior) year I played the piano in the pit orchestra for the combined musical clubs show in 1934. Buck Walsh was the head crew coach at the time, and when I told him my intention to quit crew because I wanted to play the piano, he gave me a mock effeminate sweep of his hand, and said: "Oh, you do, do you?" and those were the last words I ever had with Buck. I certainly don't regret my three years of crew, and neither do I regret the year of practicing and playing with the orchestra. Both gave me a great deal of pleasure. Had I been at Cornell, for instance, Dick, instead of the Naval Academy I most surely would have continued taking piano lessons, and taken some formal music courses to see where it would lead me. But I had not such options at Annapolis.

I knew that I had a lot of interest in music, but I had no way then of judging the stretch or reach of my modest talents. My father's father and grandfather had demonstrable talents with the violin, and in conducting. My mother had been graduated from the New York Conservatory of Music (piano and violin). But my climate at an engineering school was inhospitable in this direction. I thought then too of Cousin Philly (a Baas), and his inventive genius could have consecrated in either music or engineering in my genes.

Yet one of my forebears had been Commodore of the Hamburg-America Line. My Dad's influence proved controlling. During Christmas Leave in my plebe year I talked to Dad about transferring to Cornell where I could follow up on my liberal arts interests, but he begged me to finish the first year. He was equally persuasive at the end of each succeeding year, until I was graduated at the tender age of twenty in May, 1934. In September I became twenty-one, I resigned, and then told him about it. I felt that it was about time for me to make my own decisions.

Now I have to go back and forth a bit.

Continuing from Corinth, July 25, 1993

More on the Nature of Human Nature

I know that my mother loved me.

Many were the hours when she would play popular and traditional songs on the piano, with Fred and me lustily singing our hearts out to her accompaniment. (She also had quite a good singing voice, and she invariably joined in.) Fred and I loved these song-fests. She was also a good cook. She and Dad used to host a weekly (Sunday nights) pinochle game with "Uncle" Bruney and "Uncle" Bill Dau (the latter related to the Baas side of the family), invariably ending up with sandwiches, cake, and coffee, and perhaps social beer or highballs during the games, ending promptly at 10:30 p.m.

Another regular feature of our home life was Mom's weekly bridge game, three tables with "the girls." If one was absent, I would be drafted to be a fourth at a table when I came home from school. Thus I learned to play bridge at the age of twelve or thirteen.

Corinth, NY, 1:30 pm, July 26, 1993

Our home life was reasonably equable, with some notable exceptions. When Mom was driving with John, the chauffeur, in normal traffic, whenever John would put on the brakes Mom would invariably give a frightened squeal, sometimes much more loudly than others. She would gasp loudly, as if the traffic were dangerous (which it was not). If Aunt Mardy were sitting in the back seat with Mom, Aunt Mardy too would reflexively also gasp and squeal, but not quite so loudly. Aunt Mardy had an additional problem; she was simply unable to drive through tunnels. If the Holland tunnel was the most direct and logical way to her destination in New Jersey, she would drive north past the Lincoln tunnel and go all the way to the George Washington bridge to cross over. I never saw a single exception to this. It would drive me bonkers to hear these two women squealing sometimes almost hysterically. I usually thought that Mom would start the gasping, with Aunt Mardy responding as if almost on cue with her own gasp. I found it somewhat unnerving. In contrast, Dad was always imperturbable as a car passenger, always calm and relaxed.

Later it also became apparent to me that Dad was an active alcoholic, but Mom was never more than a social drinker. Dad could go years without a drink, but when he fell off the wagon it was a mighty fall. Dad had some unusually bad spells when I was at the Naval Academy or later on active duty, and I was then actually unaware of what was going on. This was the time when Thomas E. Dewey was investigating the Brooklyn District Attorney, William F. X. Gheoghan, and his office. Dad was Chief Assistant, and the pressures must have been enormous. Dad was never accused of any wrong doing, nor was he ever connected with any unethical activities, but he suffered grievously. I had personal knowledge of one Assistant D.A. who was disbarred, however. Fred was abundantly aware of what was going on, however, and he would come home from college to go looking for Dad in his journeys from bar to bar. Dad could disappear for three or four days at a time. After resigning my commission and marrying Gin, Fred told me the whole sordid story, and complained that Dad's disappearances were the cause of Fred's taking five years to get through Princeton.

My dating Gin began in my last year at high school, and at first caused no special problems. Nor were there any special problems during my first couple of years at the Academy. Oh, Dad would growl at me if I were fifteen minutes late for dinner when I was home on leave, but it was the dinner's delay that bother him, not Gin. However, when it became apparent to Mom that I was deeply in love with Gin, Mom's attitudes changed markedly.

In my senior year at the Academy I had given Mom a miniature of my class ring, with a large diamond which Mom had supplied. But at the same time I had given Gin a miniature, which contained a diamond surrounded by sapphires purchased with my own money. In Navy tradition this was an engagement ring, and Gin knew this. When Mom found out about Gin's miniature, the skies darkened and the weather became really ugly. Mom refused to bring Gin down to my graduation, which was a bitter experience for me (and for Gin too). After graduation Mom literally and directly began presenting me with the most malicious gossip about Gin.

In September, 1934, I resigned my commission in the regular Navy after I had received an invitation to teach at the New London Nautical Academy, a newly formed boys' prep school which had first started in Guilford, Connecticut. Three classmates of mine were already teaching there, and had encouraged me to join them. I did. They were Hi Smith, Bull Frazer, and Bob Davies.

In the meantime my courtship with Gin continued its course through rocks and shoals and stormy weather. Gin by this time was taking training at the Brooklyn Hospital, then an accredited teaching hospital. One evening I had invited Gin to attend a play in New York, and I asked Mom if I could use John and the Packard. Well, Mom became hysterical and started yelling at me. As I walked out the front door on Newkirk Avenue, she followed me to the front porch. There she continued to scream at me, hysterically by this time. I kept my date with Gin, using taxis, however.

The next day I discovered the difference between my mother's love and my father's love.

Dad quietly explained to me that he had no problem in my dating or marrying Gin. It was, he said, wholly a matter for me to decide, not for him or my mother to decide. He also said, however: "I want to continue to live with your mother, and when push comes to shove I am going to support her, Yet I want you to know my private views, man to man. I'm so sorry your mother behaved the way she did."

I admired Dad for being so direct and forthright with me. And I thanked him. And I never forgot it. And we parted friends after this talk.

It became too uncomfortable for me to live at home, and Gin and I decided to get married on February 4, 1935. I made a trip to Altoona to get approval of Mother and Father Bowen, and on February 3^rd Gin and I eloped to New London and were married there in a Presbyterian church with two members of the minister's staff as witnesses. That day we took up residence at the school. That night I discovered that Gin was a virgin. So was I. And Dick was born 10 ½ months after our wedding. I am proud of all three of these accomplishments. So much for Mom's calumnies about nurses in general and Gin's morals in particular!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the school was in deep financial trouble. The headmaster, a young merchant marine master, found the going too rough and literally disappeared. The faculty held some soul-searching meetings, and elected me headmaster, conferring on me the title of "captain." We all keenly felt the responsibility for the education of our young boarding students, all of us agreed to serve out the semester without pay, I took over the financial management of the school, I visited parents, explained our situation, and raised enough money to finish the academic year. At the end of the year I thanked all hands, resigned, and began my employment with the Brooklyn Union Gas Company. Gin and I found a thirty dollar a month apartment on Newkirk Avenue between Flatbush and Bedford Avenues, and you, Dick, were delivered by Dr. Philip L. Nash at the Caledonia Hospital south of Prospect Park.

Now let me skip ten years to finish this part of the narrative. In 1945 I was on Admiral Rosendahl's staff at Lakehurst. One night Gin woke up shaking, and told me she was dying. I summoned the medical officer on duty, who made a very careful examination. At its conclusion, he looked at me solemnly and said: "Commander, I can't find anything wrong with your wife." The next day I took her to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, and they gave me a diagnosis of "severe psychoneurosis." That was the first time I ever heard those words uttered, and I was totally at a loss. They kept her there under observation for two weeks.

It wasn't long after that that I was released to inactive duty. The Admiral had suggested that I go back into the regular Navy, transferring from my reserve status, but my heart really wasn't in it. I had a number of serious talks with Gin about it. By this time her feelings about Navy life had completely changed, and she urged me to stay in. She thought that we could stay at Lakehurst, but of course that was not realistic. The first thing I would have to do would be to request sea duty, which she neither liked nor agreed with. I had had close to six years on active duty, and considerably more time would have to pass before I could be eligible for any pension benefits. On balance, I felt I had to make the decision myself, and I did. I slipped back into inactive reserve, and we returned to Cambria Heights.

Gin's condition did not improve. We had gotten referrals from the Philadelphia medical staff. I began to wonder if it wouldn't help her, and help me to help her, if I were to start therapy myself. I took the matter under advisement, and that's when I met Willie Console, although I always called him Doctor Console.

He had been designated a Flight Surgeon during his active duty in the Navy, which was then a generic term for any physician in the naval air arm; it had nothing to do with surgery. Perhaps partly because of his naval service we hit it off right away, and I feel now that he had a determining influence for the better in my life from then on.

Actually, I think I was well advised to undertake counseling for my own sake then. First, there was Gin's condition, which was not easy to cope with in our changing life style. Second, I had extreme difficulty with my mother, and the two of them were actively antagonistic, both beginning to take it out on me. Third, the economy was such that I knew what it meant to be unemployed.

I started seeing Dr. Console two days a week at his recommendation, not long afterwards reducing that to one session a week, again at his suggestion. I found out very quickly that I was looking forward to our visits. They were not all that easy to live through. As we dug more deeply into various aspects of my complex family relationships I often found myself quite anxious in between visits. After all, he was actually restructuring my way of looking at myself, my wife, and my parents.

As you might expect, Dick, he gave me very little directive advice. Yet at one time he cautioned me about expecting my mother to change. "Water does not run uphill," he said to me once. "You are not going to change your mother's attitudes or feelings." This he said with just a little impatience in his voice. My ideas took another direction, and I decided not to see my mother and to give my whole attention to my own little family. That began the estrangement which was to extend through ten years. It turned out to be a tremendous relief to me.

Something else happened that turned my life around. Shortly after we started I asked Dr. Console to recommend some books on psychology for me to read. He told me in no uncertain terms that that would not be helpful, and that I should focus on my own therapy. I responded by saying that I wanted to learn more about the discipline of psychology, and that I would explore more reading with or without his help. He then sighed, and suggested Pearson and English's book on The Great American Mom, and I was off to the races. As you all know, this led eventually to my degree in psychology at Columbia.

After a couple of years of this satisfying and constructive therapy, my travel schedule increased and it became more difficult for me to meet Dr. Console's schedule. We had several serious evaluation sessions, and he finally said that he didn't think I needed therapy any more, that I should try flying on my own. And I never saw him again.

Because of Dr. Console's expertise I have never hesitated to seek counseling from a qualified psychiatrist when I felt it might be helpful. I felt real sorrow when I heard of his death not too long ago. I felt as if I had lost a good friend and a valued counselor.

Here is one example. Some years later I sought out a psychiatrist in Rockville Center. I told him that I was quite anxious because I felt I was going to lose my job. We started the therapy. One day I wandered in and told him that I had been fired. He was thunder-struck. In a few minutes he told me that he was terminating my treatment, that he himself had not adequately understood the circumstances. We shook hands, and I never saw him again either. Yet I respected his honesty and forthrightness. He had helped me. I have had several other similar experiences, and I would no more hesitate to seek psychiatric counseling than I would hesitate to see a general practitioner for some physical ailment.

Corinth, NY, July 29, 1003

Five Generations of values (good and bad)

Several connections and influences come to mind now. I'll begin with Grampa Garms. I saw him die of a heart attack in a double bed transferred to the living room. I was sixteen then, and shortly after this I left for the Naval Academy. He was a kindly old gentleman (75) who always treated me affectionately, although I never got close enough to him to have deep personal conversations. He never discouraged these, but I guess I was as busy as most boys my age, and I now see that I had lost some good opportunities to get to know him better.

After his death, Dad and I used to talk a bit about Grampa, for whom he had enormous respect. Apparently Grandma Garms was an alcoholic herself. Gramp's method of handling this, Dad said, was simply to stop talking to her. This bothered Grammy enough to make her climb back on the wagon. Imagine the wisdom of my old grandfather! No wonder everyone liked him! He must have been born in Germany about 1855, emigrating to the United States about 1868, when he was thirteen. He couldn't have known anything about psychiatry even if it were as widely published then as it is today. Grampa had to have used his common sense, and his own personally developed sense of values. Richard Garms Kopff has thought many times about his, grateful for his role model that his grandfather provided. Dad followed through on this with respect for Mr. Garms. Showing respect for one's elders was inculcated in me throughout my first sixteen years of life, but it was of course easier to do in those days, wasn't it? Those were different times. Mom and Grammy taught us as boys to take our hats off in an elevator in which ladies were present, and to give up our seats in the subway to a lady who was standing. Little things like this.

Continuing from Corinth, July 29, 1993

Five Generations of Values

Unhappily, Dad did not always give his own mother the unfailing deference and respect he gave to his father-in-law and mother-in-law. Dad and Uncle Herbert both called their mother "Ma." Dad could be curt to all of us on occasion, even to his mother, although I never heard Uncle Herbert utter a cross word to his mother or anyone else. Yet Dad and Uncle Herbert got along very well with one another although we did not visit frequently.

I often wondered if something had happened earlier in Dad's life that brought about this seeming impatience on his part toward his mother. I guess this impatience was just part of his nature or personality. Yet Grandma Haendel never took exception to it, nor did she ever respond to Dad in a hostile or even defensive way. Pauline Evelyn Keller Kopff Haendel was a very bright woman, sharp, perceptive, and quite sensitive. I was told she had been graduated from Hunter College, which was most unusual in her day. On her relatively infrequent visits she always brought gifts, and in many ways showed that she cared deeply for her grandchildren. She used to listen to my playing the piano and would sometimes softly cry when I would play old NYU songs. She was never active politically while I knew her, but I gathered that she had been a co-leader in the Democratic party in rock-ribbed Republican Suffolk County for a significant part of her life. I don't know when she married D. Haendel, but they were divorced. This was never discussed in the family, as if it were some sort of disgrace, but I never gleaned any further information or history about it. Well, they never discussed cancer either; some subjects were just taboo en famille in those days. Midge told me of a telephone call received by Dad (which Midge overheard), apparently an inquiry if Dad would defray Dr. Haendel's burial expenses when he died. "He can be buried in Potter's Field for all I care," was Dad's angry retort, she reported.

Dad never hit any of us that I can recall, but he sure showed his anger when we strayed form the straight and narrow. He had a relatively short fuse, and I guess Fred and I followed suit as we grew up. This changed markedly for me after my conversations with Willie Console. I developed more patience and tolerance for others since then.

Here's one example. During plebe summer at the Naval Academy, the Second Class were at Annapolis, with the plebes, while the First and Third Classes were off on a cruise, and discipline was relatively relaxed. Those of us quartered on the fourth deck of the fourth battalion in Bancroft Hall were up one night after taps performing various innocuous acts of mischief (like turning on the fire hose on our deck). At one point a red-headed classmate named Red Adams apparently took a dislike to me and told me I was "full of shit." I immediately knocked him down with a right to the jaw. In just about ten seconds perhaps fifty classmates had formed a circle, and Red and I went at it with bare knuckles, with cheers from all around us. I had the better of him the first round, but he did better the next round. Our affair was broken up then with the arrival of a duty officer, and every one scattered. Red bilged out academically after Christmas, and I shed no tears for him. Dad sent me a twenty dollar bill in the first mail after hearing about my fracas. I was glad to get the twenty dollars, of course, but I was really most tickled about his enthusiastic response to his pugilistic son. I have been called worse names since then, but this was my last fist fight ever, in spite of Dad's reward.

Dad was typically a very busy father. In spite of a relatively short temper he always treated us with real affection, but he was out many nights each week mending political fences. On a few occasions I accompanied him, and was introduced to many political big-wigs, which I thought was fascinating. Had I completed my legal education before going on active duty, I might well have tried to follow in his foot-steps, because I really liked the law. My first assignment on active duty was at NAS Jax, and although I was assigned to teach navigation, I immediately volunteered as defense counsel in summary courts-martial, and found it completely absorbing. I did well at it too. Perhaps more later.

Some questions come to my mind, my sons. What values have simmered down through five generations, good and bad values: Grampa's generation; my parents' generation; my generation; yours; and my grandchildrens'? This embraces about 150 years.

In my case Fred and I received moderately strong discipline, but we certainly did not suffer child abuse. We had a lot of love, sometimes perhaps too much. Because Grampa and Grammy were essentially inn-keepers, I would guess that their two daughters were not over-protected; their parents would have been too busy. Our men-folk over the years have typically worked hard and conscientiously, more recently supplemented by the work of our women-folk. There has been a musical streak in our family, not always equally apportioned.

I don't think it would be fruitful for me to go much further right now, because I think this is something you should do for yourselves, individually or perhaps even collectively. What I seem to have been writing is a form of oral history, with its strengths and limitations. You are quite able to draw your own conclusions, and I think you should. Remember that you have freedom of choice, as I have had. If I would leave one message here, it is that our individual and collective moral reasoning is becoming frighteningly more important. You don't have to put on a clerical collar to do this. You will be more effective if you exemplify good moral reasoning in your business and/or profession and in your personal life. We need to be more tolerant of others, but not tolerant of everything. I subscribe to Grampa Garm's quiet discipline, as I understand it. But my personal emphasis is on the positive side. What can I do that is productive useful, morally good? I'll come back to this from time to time as the spirit moves me. Human beings are marvelously endowed.

Corinth, NY, July 31, 1993

USS Restless (formerly HMS Periwinkle)

It is time now for you to see a few other vignettes in your father's life. One brief (eight or nine months, but important to me) period was the time I spent on the USS Restless (PG 66, a Patrol Gunboat in our Navy's parlance, but actually an English corvette of which type we received eight in some odd kind of reverse lend-lease).

I was in the first detachment to leave NAS Jax immediately after Pearl Harbor. On the way to Boston to join my transport you took sick, Bob, and we had to seek help from a doctor in Rhode Island. I was driving in uniform (after all we were at war), and when the time came to pay the bill, the doctor waved us off. "How can I possibly accept any money from you," he said indignantly. "You are going to sea to fight a war, while I stay home in my comfortable private practice. No siree, and thank you for what you are doing." The American people were behind us in WWII, unlike Vietnam.

I went to England in the huge Canadian Pacific liner, Dutchess of Atholl, loaded with thousands of American soldiers and perhaps 500 or so American naval officers and enlisted men designated to man eight British corvettes. Even the passengers were assigned "battle stations" to expedite abandoning ship following a possible wolf-pack attack. We were given sketchy briefings en route, and each naval commanding officer began the organization of his new crew. The point that interested me most here was that on each general quarters drill all Pearl Harbor veterans were at their appointed stations before I arrived, no matter how hard I tried to beat them there. I even went to my bunk fully dressed, with my overcoat at my right had, so deep was my resolve. It was only later when I was training our men in the Restless on how to fire depth charges that I got the answer. I could hear our depth charges going off before the officer-of-the-deck pressed the general quarters alarm. And so did the experienced navy people on the Dutchess. They had been attuned to their environment and were sensitive to every off-beat sound. And they had reacted instantly. So did I, later.

At Newcastle we were trained by young experienced English officers on how to sail and fight their little ships. I found these officers most competent ship handlers and aggressive fighters, but their standards of ship cleanliness either afloat or ashore did not meet American standards, and we literally had to shovel the dirt off before we could do much of anything else.

My ship had a complement of five officers: a full lieutenant as commanding officer; a lieutenant (jg) as exec and navigator; and three reserve ensigns, two of whom were qualified for deck duties only, and a third (the youngest) a merchant marine reserve qualified for engineering duty only. Most of our enlisted men (about 85) were reservists, although a few senior petty officers with technical specialties were regular navy. We trained well together and I felt confident that we would do our jobs adequately if push came to shove.

Our first assignment was to take a convoy of 60 ships from Newcastle to Loudonderry, North Ireland. We had eight American-manned British corvettes, and a destroyer which was the flagship of the convoy commodore (British). My first fright came when I found my own little ship was navigating in waters that my chart told me were mined. I showed my skipper, who shrugged his shoulders, but he did nothing else. So I followed his example. We lost no ships on our journey north to the Pentland Firth, and I concluded that our charts had not been brought up to date.

Our journey though the Pentland Firth was remarkable not for submarine attacks but for the most violent weather that I had experienced, before or since. In my little navigator's cabin directly under the bridge I was plotting bearings being called down by my chief petty officer on the port side, and first class petty officer on the starboard side, both taking bearings on shore-based navigation aids they were not sure of, rockets going off, all during a driving rain and a stormy sea.

I had more troubles. The latches on my navigator's cabin doors were not functioning correctly. When the ship's bow would be tossed in the air, my starboard side door would open and slide back. That automatically cut off my lights. When we would roll to the port side, the other door would slide open, and the lights would go off again. All my charts not being used were stored in large thin drawers, while the chart I was working on was tacked to my big navigator's table. Our little ship was tossed about so roughly that my chart drawers were thrown open and the charts strewn all over the deck which had several inches of sea water on it by this time. On top of this I was violently seasick, and the bucket I was using for it was over turned. I decided that any German U-boat skipper crazy enough to surface in this situation would have to take care of himself. Fortunately we traversed the Pentland Firth with no casualties other than some bruised seasick mariners. Also fortunately, I had my door latches repaired in Londonderry when we arrived there. With some humor I thought: "This is a helluva a way to fight a war."

Our approach to Londonderry gave me another lesson. I had diligently studied the tide and current tables with which I had been furnished before departure, and I had charted our course as if my life depended on it (as perhaps it did). With our convoy pointed toward North Ireland, our convoy commodore suddenly signaled that he was taking a new position in the rear of the convoy. Following this, the next senior officers, in turn, each did exactly the same thing. Because my skipper was the most junior in the escort group, it became his job to lead the convoy into Londonderry Harbor. And I was his navigator! This was another new experience for me, and I was grateful for my almost compulsive navigation practices. We all made it in safely, but I felt a few years older by the time we tied up at the dock.

In preparation for our trip westward, I had asked our consul in Londonderry for charts for Newfoundland. The clerk refused me because, she said, our merchant ships were to proceed to Boston, and I had no need for such charts. Some sixth sense told me to insist because our course would take us not too far from Newfoundland. I was finally given the charts. Sure enough, when we were about half way across the Atlantic, my ship received a signal to leave the convoy and proceed alone to the capital of Newfoundland. Going into a strange harbor was tough enough, but to have had to do so without charts was something I simply couldn't visualize. I felt lucky that I had asked for those Newfoundland charts. There we picked up the casket of an Admiral who had died, and we took him to Boston. From Boston to New York we used the Cape Code Canal, another first for me that ended happily.

Entering New York harbor was a real thrill. Gerritson Beach was where our ship tied up. This was my first experience using a commercial pilot, and I guess Captain Long's too. It went without incident.

I might point out here that all this time I had been using a British sextant which was made of wartime ersatz substitute materials. From my star sights crossing the Atlantic I never knew where we were closer than somewhere in a fifty-mile triangle and I actually used a position in the signal of the nearest merchant ship instead of my own calculations. Back in New York I got a standard issue Navy sextant, and it made all the difference in the world. I found four of my startsights finally crossing a single dot, and I felt better. On our first trip south from Norfolk to Key West we were detached and told to join a northbound convoy to New York. Our look out picked up the center vessel of the lead ship within one minute of the time I had said we would. This time my captain felt better.

Malverne, NY, August 19, 1993

"They also serve . . ."

It has been my pleasure to read some thrilling stories of sea battles from the history of ancient Greece to secret accounts of the battle of Midway in WW II. I found each of them equally enthralling. But I realized that the Restless would never be part of a fleet engagement. We were too small. Yet North Atlantic and Caribbean convoy duty offered their own rewards and possibilities for intrepid action.

I remember meeting my old friend, Hi Smith, one night (1942) in the officers' club at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Our escort group had just brought a bunch of merchant vessels south, and we were waiting for another convoy to form and go back up to New York. The room was noisy and smoke-filled with the chatter of the usual war stories. Then I was overjoyed to bump into Hi (Hinton Ira Smith, USNA, 1934). He was serving in a small escort aircraft carrier, nowhere near as large as the old Lexington or Saratoga. Yet what a story he had to tell!

His escort group had detected a German sub and forced it to the surface, but the sub would not give up. In the surface battle that ensued, Hi's skipper had finally tried to ram the U-boat, but the prow of the escort carrier merely slipped over the bow of the submarine, pinning it in place. By this time, Hi excitedly related, he and others on the bridge of the carrier were actually shooting their pistols at the German officers, who were returning with their own small arms fire. What a helluva way to fight a war at sea, I thought! Just like Errol Flynn. Hi's group eventually captured the sub and its crew, I recall.

While we were trying to sink U-boats, we had to be ready to capture one if we could. What a prize that would be! As the executive officer of my ship, I was designated by my captain to be in charge of such a boarding party if it came to pass. I had chains ready to be sure that the sub would not be able to close her conning tower door when we boarded her, and in my boarding crew, among others, were an experienced electrician's mate and a machinist's mate. We drilled, we were ready, but I was never presented with the opportunity given to Hi Smith. As a matter of fact, my skipper had warned all hands that he would attempt to ram a submarine if all his other options failed. Many times I mentally studied and rehearsed what my boarding party would have to do, but it was not to be. Lucky Hi, I sighed. All I could talk to Hi about was the execrable weather we had experienced in the Pentland Firth. I have not seen Hi form that day to this, and I am sorry for that. I had been good friends with Hi and his wife, Mary, whom he had met up in Connecticut when we were teaching at the New London Nautical Academy in 1934-1935.

In a card game you play the cards you are dealt. What else? I was playing the cards I was dealt in the Restless and in the luck of the draw in the assignments we drew. Hi Smith had drawn a royal flush in his surface engagement with the U-boat. Sometimes the luck of the draw is just bad beyond belief. In our first trip westward across the Atlantic, the inexperienced young ensign acting as supply officer (in addition to his many other duties) forgot to requisition toilet paper. Wow!

Malverne, NY, August 21, 1993.

We used our Sears Roebuck catalog, and every other scrap of paper on board. What a way to fight a war!

I can't remember what my bunk room was like, probably because I spent so little time in it. On the way back from Londonderry, I'd spent two hours in bed, - then an underwater contact evaluated as a submarine, - - then two hours in bed, - - then another contact, - - then a final one hour in exhausted sleep, until another general quarters alarm that kept me up for the rest of that day. That was what it was like all the way home, except for our short stay in Newfoundland.

And that was typical of my sleeping habits in the Restless. If it wasn't underwater submarine contacts, then it was because we were in sight of land in our coastal routes. My skipper early informed me that the ship's navigator was expected to be on duty on the bridge whenever we were in sight of land! Moreover, whenever a landfall was expected, the captain wanted to know my prediction as to when it would come in sight. Also, I was charged with predicting exactly when we would sight the next light house and what was the period of its various colored beacon flashes. Of course I had a table of all lighthouses on our east coast along with their periodicity, but it all took a bunch of work. Since our coastal routes took us from New York to Guantanamo Bay, and from Norfolk to Key West, the work eventually became routine.

So did my celestial navigation, with four or five star-sights in that brief time when stars were visible and so was the horizon, with sun lines when the sun came from the east or west (for longitude) and near noon (for latitude), and lower (or upper) limbs of the moon when they were possible. Star identification eventually became fun rather than a difficult chore for my quartermaster crew and me. We had to do all of our calculations using tables in Bowditch's American Practical Navigator. We did not have the newfangled electronic short cuts available today. I sometimes wonder whether modern seagoing navigators even know how to plot a position line using old-fashioned methods after they have become accustomed to Loran and other modern aids that can give almost instant results.

I recall the shock I felt when we first sailed into Norfolk Harbor in 1942. At that time there was a twenty-two mile channel that led from the outer harbor to our own dock location in the immense Naval Operating Base. My shock was caused by seeing so many masts sticking up above the water, the masts being those of merchant vessels sunk in Norfolk Harbor by German submarines. You see, fellers, we were still losing the war in 1942 because German U-boats were sinking ships faster than we could build them. A couple of years ago, I was swapping some war stories with a young graduate student, who at first simply refused to believe my account of seeing merchant ship masts sticking up above the water. "I never heard of that," he exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me that ships were sunk right in the Norfolk harbor? How come I never heard or read about this? Why was it never published?" All I could do was to tell him that I had been an eye witness, and he finally just whistled and went off shaking his head.

One of my more distasteful duties on board was to censor all of the personal correspondence of our enlisted men. We were not to disclose where we were at the time, where we had been and where we were going. We were also constantly reminded not to talk about any ship movements while we were ashore. It was a source of considerable amusement to me, on my first visit Key West when I made a collect call to Gin, to hear the operator say to her: "Lieutenant Kopff is making a collect call from Key West, Florida. Will you accept the charges, madam?" I passed this anomaly through channels, but I don't think anything came of it.

In the course of time, it gradually became clear that our group had a pretty regular run between Norfolk and Key West, and on one trip Gin made a scouting trip from Altoona, bringing you, Dick, and you, Bob, because Fred had not been born yet. I had my second shock in Norfolk the first morning in the hotel, when Bob woke up and kept bouncing up and down in his crib yelling "Who's he? Who's he?" while pointing at me. It was sad, but it was funny too. I consoled myself when I thought of the troops we were convoying to Europe. After Fred finished law school and six years of playing soldier in France and Germany, his three kids are now ten years younger than my three. He had told Willie Maude Compton, his bride-to-be, that he didn't want her to face a lifetime of taking care of a possible basket-case, and that they would talk about marriage after he got back home. As you know, Fred came back home okay, and Willie and he were married on December 16, 1945.

There are some other bitter-sweet memories, not quite so personal. One came to pass on a very stormy day. I was about to mount a covered ladder on the port side, when I saw a seaman's mess attendant descending with a huge tray of food for the crew. At that point our ship gave a lurch, so did the mess attendant, and in no time at all he was flat on the deck in front of me with plates and food scattered all over. He looked at me with a lugubrious smile and said: "Sir, she's not much on liberty, but she's a home and a feeder." I never forgot those words. We had good cooks, and our food was really not too bad. We were occasionally treated to pies and cakes. The British people had been especially kind to us. One catch was that we had no refrigeration equipment on board, so we never could take more than a few days or really fresh food, and we had to go back to preserved meats of one kind or another.

Our problems were varied. I can recall three times when our steering mechanism went out of kilter. That meant we had to stop dead in the water while the chief engineer and a small working party went below to fake up some sort of jury rig that would enable us to steer under way until we completed our mission back to port. Let me tell you, fellers, as soon as our engine stopped, every man not on some essential duty below deck came topside, partly to look for the enemy, and partly to be able to abandon ship expeditiously if we were torpedoed. It gives one a lonesome nervous feeling. Obviously, each time this happened, no sub was lurking nearby, but we didn't know it at the time.

Only once in eight months did our fine English Sperry gyroscopic compass become inoperative at sea. This was a major problem for us when it happened, because we were completely dependent on it. Oh, yes, guys, we had a magnetic compass, but it was badly compensated for magnetic deviations. Our magnetic compass had underneath it two large iron balls which were supposed to be appropriately adjusted to compensate for our ship's residual magnetism. These are called the "navigator's balls" by the bridge crew and quartermasters. I had swung ship outside Norfolk to accomplish these adjustments. The frustrating part of this time-consuming exercise was that every depth charge attack caused the magnetic compass to go out of adjustment again. I suppose I had been taught how to make these adjustments at the Naval Academy, but I had no recollection of it and no practical experience in actually doing it. I hit the books and did a passable job. Anyhow, that's the magnetic compass. Our complete reliance was on the gyro compass. Our Captain got hold of the chief engineer and me in a hurry, thrust us down a vertical ladder that led down to the gyroscope, and said: "Don't even think about coming up again until that gyroscope is working properly again!" It was several meals of sandwiches later when we finally came topside. I knew what precession was, but nothing really about the practical workings of a gyroscopic compass. Nor did the chief. Once again we were totally on our own resources, and somehow we managed to bumble through.

Oh, yes, I also had a premature brush with civil rights some fifty years ago. In my Navy days, mess attendants were either black or Filipino. Our mess attendant (black) was the best gun pointer in our ship, shooting our newly installed five-inch gun on the foc's'l. He was intelligent, pleasant, easy to get along with, and very hard working. I thought his classification should be changed from mess cook to seaman, to allow him greater opportunities for personal advancement, and actually for us to make fuller use of his fine capabilities. He was willing. The Captain agreed to forward my request with a favorable recommendation, but higher authority took a dim view of it. It was denied. This outright prejudice made me angry, but I had done all that I had known what to do through channels. "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day." I did my best on my own initiative.

Malverne, NY, August 22, 1993

A few words are needed now to sum up my tour on the Restless. The straits of Florida were not as hazardous as the Murmansk run for allied convoys, and of course the weather was not chilling, but these straits were in themselves extra hazardous because they were happy hunting grounds. During our first run south, unless memory fails me, we decoded a message saying that the convoy just ahead of us lost five ships to U-boat torpedoes. We had no losses, and suffered no attacks. The convoy behind us then lost eight ships. The Captain and I were bemused by our apparent lucky passage. The weather was gorgeous. Early one morning our low freeboard foc's'l was littered by flying fish that had expired on deck. It bothered me, as navigator, that our fifty-five ship convoy was making such slow progress. Our speed, of course, could not be greater than the speed of our slowest merchant ship, eight knots in this case. Yet, if I recall correctly, the Gulf Stream flows north at three knots. That meant that we were passing shore points at only five nautical miles an hour! It seemed to me that I was watching the same lighthouse all day long.

Our "luck" held out. During my eight months at sea in the Restless, our convoy escort group lost a total of only one ship to torpedoes. The last ship in the starboard file of our convoy was torpedoed off the Carolina coast in broad daylight on one trip south. We were about a mile away, on the port side of our convoy, and we immediately gave chase at our full flank speed of fifteen knots. I was crouched down in a tiny cubby-hole on the bridge in front of the Captain, giving courses to steer in an expanding search pattern, but no luck.

I was somewhat upset later to hear the crew talking about the "boiler explosion" suffered by the unfortunate cargo ship. They couldn't believe that a submarine was prowling these waters, because they had seen no action. The Captain and I were worried about a lowering of motivation and attention to duty of our lookouts, so we read them of losses on preceding and following convoys. It seemed to make no difference to the crew. They did not believe our reports.

Later I found out that a blimp from Squadron ZP-14 based at Weeksville, NC, had picked up the sub with the blimp's underwater magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) gear, and dropped its two depth charges, unsuccessfully. The blimp then summoned two destroyers not too far away, and they did the job. The sub surfaced, the crew abandoned ship, and the sub captain himself acknowledged the torpedo that my crew had called a "boiler explosion." That same pattern of activity (lack of direct observable contact) followed during eight months of continuous convoy escort operations of the Restless's escort group in demonstrably sub-infested waters during a war we were then losing.

So much for my intrepid combat experience in the surface Navy. I was later detached, sent to Lakehurst, and after flight training was designated Naval Aviator (Airship) in February 1943. My first post as a pilot was as Engineer Officer of that same squadron, ZP-14, that picked up the sub that sank the only merchantman that Restless lost.

I felt frustrated at leaving Restless, PG-66. It had promised to be such exciting duty, yet I didn't have the luck that Hi Smith had. I think that it was Milton who wrote, some five hundred years ago:

What a helluva way to fight a war!

Malverne, NY, August 29, 1993

The Columbia Fishing Club

The Columbia Fishing Club was very important in my early life from the beginning of my time on earth all through grade school. Each summer Grampa Garms would pack us in his big Packard touring car, would ferry across to Staten Island, and drive down Hylan Boulevard to the club entrance in Eltingville. That trip was so pleasurable to me as a young kid, I even liked the approaches to the old 69^th Street ferry in Brooklyn. I can still visualize our passing Fort Hamilton. Why do I keep remembering these things? I was ecstatic on the old ferry boats, listening to the Italian guitar players during the crossing, sniffing the salt air, sometimes walking over to the entrance to the engine spaces down below and carefully peering down. Watching the ferry dock was a delight in itself.

The club property must have been maybe twenty acres or so, stretching from Hylan Boulevard down to the ocean. At the entrance, as a kind of gatehouse, was the home of the cook, caretaker, and general factotum, Mr. Schultz, who with his wife (whom we always called Mrs. Schultz) cooked and served all meals. The dining room was in the south wing of this house and accommodated the fifteen or twenty families who were members. Mr. Schultz would summon us to all meals except breakfast by clanking on a heavy triangular metal gong, which he would hit with a heavy steel bar, too heavy for me to manipulate. Over the inside entrance to the dining room were two magnificent stuffed tarpons, caught by Mr. Debacher. They must have been six or seven feet long. I have wanted to go tarpon fishing on the west coast of Florida ever since seeing these magnificent specimens, but I never got the opportunity.

The meals were table d'hote, but I especially liked breakfast because I could order big, thin German pancakes with lots of butter and syrup, plus bacon and sausages. I can still see them and taste them. Each family had its own table, the Debachers, Phil Kick, Charlie Eppleur, Chris Ahlers, Mr. Ahrens (a postmaster), Captain Jack Meyer, his wife and adult daughter Agnes, the Werfelmans, the Strahmans, the Schneiders (their son Bob was about my age, and we built model boats together), and a bunch of others whom I can't recall offhand right now.

From the dining room a curving dirt road led to a large white frame house which served as the dormitory. Each family used the same rooms each year. There was a large bathroom with showers on each floor. Some families (like ours) had their own servant girls to take care of their rooms, but usually each family did its own policing. There was a large airy screened-in porch in front, with rocking chairs, straight chairs, and a swing. Croquet was played in the front lawn. The same dirt road continued from the big house down to the white wooden garages near the water; here there was also a workroom for cleaning the fish the members caught over the weekend.

Near the garages but facing the ocean was a lovely white pavilion or veranda where the women often played cards. An open roofed porch with chairs circled the building on all four sides. There was usually a cool breeze here. Right in the center of the beach front was a small well-constructed dock extending about one hundred feet or so into the ocean, with a covered porch there and attached benches around the edges. A ladder (actually more like stairs) extended down each side to enter boats coming alongside. The dock had handrails along each side for its full length, making it relatively safe for younger children. Fred and I loved to go fishing along the dock, as well as to go swimming.

Facing the sea, on the right-hand side was a quite large boathouse, which had rails going down into the water for launching boats. I never saw this in use. Some of the old timers had their naptha launches stored here but I guess the launches were about as old as their owners, who were Grandpa Garms's age. I never saw one of these naptha launches in use. Dick Werfelman (my Dad's age) stored his gorgeous sailing yacht here, and I did watch him sailing his sloop a few times.

We had beautiful lawns here, perhaps 250 yards at a stretch, and some of the younger men often practiced driving golf balls there, driving and pitching when it suited them. Fred and I spent Julys and Augusts here, along with the other children, but most men commuted to the city after their two weeks vacation periods were used up, coming back to the club each night.

Saturdays were the days when the men would go fishing. We were in sight of the Great Kills harbor, and one, two, or even three boats would be chartered to go out to the Sandy Hook region, and spend all day trolling for blue fish, weak fish, and whatever else they could catch. I remember the day when Dad's guest was Senator Robert Wagner, and I proudly shook his hand. He seemed to me then to be a giant of a man, but kindly and gentle. I guess Dad was politicking!

One day Fred and I made a little punt down by the garages, just large enough for the two of us. It wasn't very seaworthy, and it leaked, but we had fun maneuvering it around the dock. I think that was a pretty fair accomplishment for a couple of grade school kids, maybe ten years old, with no guidance. We mounted oarlocks and we rowed it. It really floated! There are some pictures of this around somewhere.

We had our two-wheelers with us at the Columbia Fishing Club, but we were not allowed to drive them off the property. I would go whizzing around those dirt roads in grand style, pretending to be a locomotive engineer. I remember getting up a schedule (time table), from the dormitory to the garages, then back up to the dining room, then back to the big house, trying to keep my train on schedule. (Why in the world would I remember this?) Anyhow I had fun. Copying the adult men, Fred and I drove golf balls around the long lawns. Then we would switch to batting practice and some make-shift ball games. Vince Meyer, Captain Jack's son, joined us one day after he flunked out of Dartmouth, and I so admired his powerful bat. I had never seen anyone hit a ball that hard.

Once in a while Mom and Grammy would squire us to the evening movies in the town of Great Kills, and we thought that was a special treat.

Sometime, I think, during my high school years the Columbia Fishing Club just gently disappeared; it expired. Perhaps twenty years ago I made a point to drive past the entrance, and it looked ragged and unkempt, and I felt sad. It seems strange to me now that I heard no family conversations about its demise. During our summers there I was too young to be curious about how the club was founded, or how it was run, so I can't tell you about it. Apparently the senior members were all of first generation German stock, of my grandfather's generation. I have no idea of how this group discovered itself. They were friendly enough, but there was little or no contact among them during the remaining ten months of the year. And so, to me, the passing of the Columbia Fishing Club remains a complete mystery, a ghost of the past. I have no unhappy memories here, only immature, growing up, happy recollections and reflections, and a yearning to go back, not to the property, but to the happy civilized people who co-habited my world then. The club was unpretentious and the furniture was unpretentious. Yet it was comfortable. So were Fred and I. So were my folks. Life was simple then for all of us those summers on Staten Island when Fred and I were traversing our grade school years.

I have the thought of Bobby Schneider, the son of a furniture manufacturer who was a member. Did Bobby inherit his father's business? Sorry I have been too busy and preoccupied to find out. Besides, Bobby was nutty as a fruitcake. The only interests we had in common were making model boats. He as a loner, nervous, not athletic, not a swimmer, not a fisherman. He did persuade his father to carve out a few simple designs that Bobby and I dreamed up separately, and Mr. Schneider brought them back to us from his plant. To me they were invaluable gifts for us to sandpaper, refine, and paint, a gift beyond price. They made a couple of kids very happy.

So, fellers, the Columbia Fishing Club remains a somewhat vague mystery in my younger life. It was happy and uncomplicated. Perhaps that was good for us, for Fred and me. I think so. Thanks to Grampa Garms who, as usual, was always in the background. All he did was to make it all possible.

Growing Pains
with Dick, Bob, and Fred

Malverne, NY, September 1, 1993

Judge Frederick Louis Kopff

I thought first of entitling this section Grandpa Kopff, but Grandpa Kopff is simply beyond me right now. I called him Dad all my life, and I still want to refer to him that way. Strangely enough, his brother, my Uncle Herbert, always called him Ded, even in their later adult years. I guess that Ded is the diminutive of Fred, which Uncle Herbert found impossible to pronounce as a young child, and "Ded" stuck.

Dad was born on St. Patrick's day, March 17, 1887, on East 128^th Street between 2^nd and 3^rd Avenues, Harlem, New York. His father was F. (for Fokke) Frederick Kopff, who was First Violinist (Concert Master) of the Theodore Thomas Symphony Orchestra. He was a close personal friend of the then cellist Victor Herbert, and he named his second son after him (my uncle Herbert Kopff). My Dad's father died when my Dad was only about six years old. My recollection is that they were on tour in Scranton at the time. This brings up one of Dad's few superstitions. Dad had some rabbits as pets when his father died. One day when I wanted to buy a rabbit for a pet, Dad refused with horror in his voice, and then he told me the story. He associated rabbits with his father's death all his life.

Dad's mother was Pauline Evelyn Keller, the daughter of John B. Keller, a founder and first cashier of the German Savings Bank which in 1917 became the Central Savings Bank, Grandma Haendel had a brother Otto (known as O.B. Keller). I met Uncle Otto quite a few times. He was evidently quite prosperous, living in a fine house in Jamaica Estates, L.I., with his second wife, Aunt Julie. (Even after his divorce, he called his first wife the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.) He had some sort of an executive position with Keuffel & Esser, makers of a fine grade of drafting equipment. He was always kind to me, but I privately thought that he was a bit of a wind bag.

My Dad's grandfather was Peter Friederich Theodor Kopff (1818-1894), who married Ida Sophie Wilhelmine Muellenhof (1833-1915). Theodor was a concert violinist in Germany, and Dad says he played many command performances before the Kaiser and the Kaiserin. Theodor's brother, Edmund Kopff, was Commodore of the Hamburg American Line, and commanded the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, at that time the largest passenger ship afloat.

Dad has said this to me a couple of times, rather proudly. I guess it's true, if we don't dig too deeply. Dad did have a distinguished collegiate career. He was graduated from New York University in 1911, standing second in his class (Salutatorian on graduation day). He played center on the NYU varsity football team, was president of his sophomore class, and was editor-in-chief of his college news weekly. He was active in his college fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha, and proudly showed me his fraternity house during a football Saturday while I was still in high school; it didn't look much different from Fred's at W&J when I had a change to inspect that some years later. [Boys will be boys.]

But Dad was a standout on his intercollegiate varsity debating team. Grandma Haendel used to talk to me about her conversations with the debating coach, who enthusiastically recounted to her Dad's ability to take any side of any question and do well no matter what side he was assigned. He could, he said, change Dad's side in a debate, and Dad would then do equally well on the opposite side. He was also active each year in the varsity show, although I don't know what he did here, probably master of ceremonies or interlocutor.

I have to indulge in just a little speculation here. Dad was 24 when he was graduated from college. That means he started when he was twenty. There are some gaps here I cannot fill in. However, I spent a wondrous week-end last Saturday and Sunday, September 4-5, 1993, staying overnight with Barbara (Schlosberg) Melikan and her family, and then Sunday with Midge (Kopff) Black, where I taped something of Jim Black's thirteen years with the C.I.A. During my visit with Midge she told me that Grandma Haendel told her that there was some friction between Dad and Dr. Haendel, which resulted in Dad's dropping out of high school and going to work. Midge doesn't know just how much high school Dad missed. At any rate, Dad had a change of heart at some point and decided he wanted to go to NYU. Of this I had been unaware, but Midge and I both recollected that Grandma Haendel had sent Dad to a prep school, Dwight, (which may still be in existence)[Ed. It is now the Dwight-Englewood School, a private High School in NJ], but she told Dad that he could have only one year there to fulfill requirements to enter NYU. However, Grandma Haendel said, Dad did strive mightily and completed the necessary preparatory work to enter NYU in the year she stipulated.

Dad was dealt a different deck of cards in that he was 20 years old when he entered as a freshman. Dick Schlosberg III and I were somewhat handicapped, in one sense, because he was graduated from the Air Force Academy after just turning 21 and I from the Naval Academy was still 20 in May, 1934. What a difference four years make in what you can do in college! I was 16 all through my plebe summer, and weighed in at a spanking 135 pounds when I entered. Something of a physical transformation occurred in me that summer, because in two months I had put on ten or twelve pounds and was rowing in the 150-pound crew by fall.

Anyhow, Dad was graduated from NYU in 1911. He was graduated from New York Law School in 1913, and admitted to the bar the same year. I remember Dad telling me that he had worked for a time as a floorwalker in one of the major New York department stores, but I can't be specific about that time between 1913 and 1917, when he was called into service. He served for about a year in France as commander of the 165^th Aero Squadron, in Romerantin, as a First Lieutenant. He had observer's wings; he was not a pilot. The next two years are a blank in my mind and in my notes. Dad seems to have been proud of his service in France as part of the AEF, but he never talked about any part of his service in France. Well, I was only four or five years old when he returned, so what can you expect? I want to speculate a little more now about what we have learned so far about my Dad.

My Dad was evidently a very bright guy, intimidatingly so in my early youth. There was no way, in my mind at the time, that I could measure up to his achievements or his standards. He was a better role model for me than he was a coach. Yet he never criticized me for any perceived failures in my performance, nor did he ever demean me or my brother. Dad was a driver, a high achiever, ambitious, a very hard and conscientious worker. I would call him an elitist. He was somewhat intolerant of mediocrity. I have no quarrel with any of this. As a talented debater, he would instinctively respond quickly and sharply; this was part of his personality. But this did not make him easy to live with. Like many of us, he would have been quite unaware of the effect of his sharp rejoinders on a young child. Yet he gave Fred and me manifestations of his deep love for each of us. If anything he was at times overly generous, almost as if he felt guilty about his busyness. Along with this, however, he did have a quick temper. He could and did think quickly, and he acted and reacted quickly in almost any situation. This was his nature, and this was his training, and the environment in which he worked rewarded this kind of behavior. I was still at the Naval Academy the year he delivered fifty illustrated lectures on various cases he had tried, with George Conant operating his slide machine. Some nights he delivered two or three. That was prime time away from home. But that was Dad. He was an indefatigable worker. He seems to have had a compulsion for work.

When I look back at his college record, I am still awed. Just imagine! He had a distinguished academic record, standing second in his class! He played varsity football. (Because of this he refused to let Fred and me play high school football, claiming that there was inadequate supervision, and that we could be permanently injured. I think he was probably right.) He was a full-time debater, and also editor-in-chief of his college's weekly newspaper, a demanding position. What does all that tell you about his abilities and personality?

1918-1920 Private practice

1921-1922 Assistant United States Attorney (Eastern District, New York)

1923-1929 Assistant District Attorney, Kings County

1930-1939 Chief Assistant District Attorney, Kings County

These were years of hard work for Dad, but the last few years were times of great tribulation. William F.X. Geoghan, the Kings County D.A., was investigated by Thomas E. Dewey, then a special prosecutor. There was never a breath of scandal in anything Dad did. Nevertheless, for many political reasons Geoghan was removed from office but no criminal charges were successfully prosecuted. Geoghan was later, as I recall, appointed to a judgeship and was subsequently elected to that office. During this time, Dad was subjected to cruel political pressures, but was never accused of any wrong-doing, or any unethical professional practices or personal dealings.

1940-1941 Private practice

1942-1946 Counsel to Kings County Clerk - This was a political appointment of no particular significance.

1947-1961 Judge, New York City Court

Dad died on February 28, 1969 a few years after being re-elected to a second 14-year term. At his funeral, a stranger came up to me and introduced himself as Dad's campaign manager during Dad's first campaign for City Court Judge. He patiently (and with some satisfaction) explained how the Democratic organization had selected a Jew, a Catholic, and a Protestant for three court vacancies. As the cards were dealt, the Jew received the most prestigious State Supreme Court nomination, the Catholic the nomination as Surrogate, and the Protestant the lowest ranking judgeship of the three, the City Court. In the following election, Dad was the only one of the three who was elected.

1956-1957 by Appointment, Justice of the New York State Supreme Court

1959- Special Referee by appointment of the Appellate Division, Second Department, and assigned to the Civil Court of the City of New York.

Past Master, Midwood Masonic Lodge #1062 (Life Member). Fred and I also joined this lodge, and Fred also became Master after his return from the wars. Dad served too as Deputy Grand Master, First Masonic District, Kings County. He was Chairman of the Committee on Law Enforcement, New York Grand Lodge, for a number of years.

Past Monarch and Past Secretary of Long I Grotto (Life Member). Past Potentate and for a number of years Trustee of Kismet Temple (Shrine - Life Member). Fred and I both joined the Grotto, and we took our 32^nd degrees in the Masonic Scottish Rite in Kismet Temple.

Past Commander of Long I Grotto Post, American Legion (Life Member). Fred and I were both members of this Post also. Dad was Past County Vice Commander, Kings County, and for a number of years County Judge Advocate and Chairman of the County Resolutions Committee.

Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at college, and Delta Theta Phi Law Fraternity at law school.

I was also a member of Delta Theta Phi at Brooklyn Law School.

Past Trustee, Brooklyn Lodge of Elks (Life Member)

Member, 7^th Regiment, New York National Guard

Past President, Men's Club of St. Stephen's Evangelical Lutheran Church, and subsequently a member of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Brooklyn.

4:27 a.m., Malverne, September 9, 1993

Anecdotes and Clues

If Grandma Haendel's father was a co-founder of the German Savings Bank down on 14^th Street in lower Manhattan, then he must have been fairly well off financially, certainly not poor. [In that famous blizzard of 1888, Dad tells me that JBK walked from 14^th Street to his home on 124^th Street!]

If John B. Keller was also first cashier, I would assume he was also bright intellectually, with at least some education. This would explain Grandma Haendel's brightness, perceptiveness, and perhaps her political responsiveness. I can dimly recall many earlier animated conversations Dad and his mother had about politics in Suffolk County, even some of the names, such as Otto Viemeister in my church now, with whom I am quite friendly, who came from Suffolk County but who remembers little to nothing of his family's background.] As a matter of fact, Helen (Kopff) Schaefer reminds me a great deal of Grandma Haendel in Helen's quickness and responsiveness. What I had earlier interpreted as a lack of respect on the part of Dad toward his mother may actually have been a mutual spontaneity between two quick minds. And so our family's detective story is beginning to unfold. Both Chris and Peter reflect Dad's sharp responsiveness and flashing spontaneity. And so do Dick III and his sister Barbara, and Barbara's son Mark Jr., although Dick III exercises much firmer self-control than Barbara. [More is coming on this subject.]

4:30 a.m., Malverne, NY, September 11, 1993

More Anecdotes and Clues

John B. Keller - In a conversation last night with Richie Wrede, who has had more than thirty years with CitiBank, he expressed the view that J.B. Keller had to be a man of some substantial financial means, and then Richie added quite deliberately that JBK also must have had quite some personal influence to be a co-founder of the German Savings Bank. This is some substantiation of my own inferences.

Yorkville (upper Manhattan east of Park Avenue) used to be a community of German immigrants, much as Brighton Beach in Brooklyn now harbors a sizeable Russian population, although Yorkville currently is ethnically pluralistic. A proportion of these German emigrants brought with them money earned in Germany, and JBK may have been one of these. He also would have had access to German friends, which would explain his ability to obtain a nucleus to found a bank, and to call it the German Savings Bank. It would have been a focal point where Germans would have been encouraged to trust their savings. The change in the bank's name in 1917 to Central Savings Bank would have been a simple business expedient for tactical reasons when war was declared with Germany in 1917.

Marriage to Edna Connor - Does history repeat itself? Dad was married 35 years to Mom when she died; I was married to Gin for 37 years when she died. Dad waited two years after Mom's death before he married Edna Connor at the age of 62; I waited 13 months before marrying Willie on my 60^th birthday. Dad was married to Edna 20 years when he died; Fred was married to Willie 20 years when he died; this year I shall have been married 20 years to Willie Maude Compton Kopff. Perhaps Dad and I were the "marrying Kopffs." Within four months of your mother's death, fellers, I became consciously aware that I wanted to get married again, perhaps because of my experience with Gin had been a good one. I had no idea who it would be at that time, but something inside of me told me that a man needed a woman to become himself. I couldn't subscribe to the emerging morals of the day, because I also knew that there was more to marriage than sex, a lot more, and the last twenty years have proved how right I was. I may return to this later.

Edna, incidentally, passed away quietly earlier this year, somewhere in her nineties. In my mind this marriage was ordinary, neither spectacularly happy nor abominably abysmal. They both drank too much. Yet she fussed over Dad and kept a reasonably neat home for him. She used his title atrociously: the tailor was told to do this and that for "the Judge's clothing;" the butcher was told this and that for "the Judge's meat;" and similarly in all the other stores in that Flatbush community. The Judge this and the Judge that. She was proud of him, and for that I liked her. In their peculiar fashion they seemed to tolerate each other fairly well.

Edna had been a Navy yeomanette in WW I, and hoofed around since then like the clubwoman she was. So did Dad after Mom died. This was a common interest. She had been often in the Long I Grotto restaurant; I had seen her there when she had been just one of the other customers. She was talkative and friendly, the gossipy kind. Dad said to me one day with a dead-pan face: "My doctor told me that Edna was limited. What did he mean?" I didn't have to respond. Edna had no intellectual interests whatsoever. Fred, Helen, Midge, and I were all somewhat surprised when Dad told us he was going to marry Edna (to me, almost as if he were seeking my approval). My immediate response to my brother and sisters (and I remember it well): "This is Dad's business, not ours. Let's just support him in his choice." Fred agreed with me and I think the girls did too. Edna was closer to Fred and Willie than she was to Gin and me, but we were always civil in our relationship. There were never any hard feelings between us.

Behind the Bench - Every time I went into Dad's courtroom, a court attendant would approach me immediately, as I was quietly seating myself well back in the room. A trial would be in process, an attorney concentrating on presenting his evidence to the jury, Dad somnolently sitting in his chair (with no sign of recognition of me). The attendant would wiggle his finger at me to follow him, I would tip-toe after him down an aisle between spectators attentive to the trial, and he would motion me to mount the couple of steps behind Dad's chair. Dad would swing around, motion me to a chair right next to his, shake my hand warmly without saying a word, then swing back to face the jury trial where a battle was being won or lost. At the first break he would swing back and then, with a smile, tell me how glad he was to see me. These are among my fondest recollections. I couldn't have felt more proud if King Solomon had commanded me to sit next to his throne while he was dispensing justice in his royal wisdom. What a way for a father to show his son that he is loved! Yet he never discussed this procedure with me. He acted as if it was his prerogative to invite me to sit next to him and it was my due to accept it as his son.

Dad was the soul of quiet dignity while arguments were being presented. Yet there were times when he would surprise me by suddenly raising his voice and, pointing a finger, say with firmness not without a touch of anger: "Counselor, I have told you not to raise that issue. If you do it again, I'll hold you in contempt of court." The attorney's head would droop, and with a muttered apology he would go back to presenting his case. Dad knew how to keep order in his court, and see the rules of evidence and other procedures were carefully observed. He was treated respectfully.

Lunches with Fred and me - Fred and I quite often visited Dad in his chambers, usually without calling first. He always seemed glad to see us. We usually timed our visits to arrive at lunchtime. Although we sometimes went out to a nearby restaurant, more usually he would have a court attendant ask what kinds of sandwiches we wanted, and then we would eat sitting in easy chairs right there in his chambers. This was on Schermerhorn Street in the Central Courts Building right off Boerum Place.

Fred and I finally reached the (to us, surprising) conclusion that Dad actually preferred to visit there with us rather than at his home on Newkirk Avenue. It was almost as if this was his real home, where he could talk with us in privacy without the intrusion of distracting female gossip. Dad thoroughly enjoyed talking over legal issues that Fred might raise, but he also always seemed interested in my progress at The Psychological Corporation, even though I could not go into the thicket of psychological problems and conflicts which might be engaging my own interests. Yes, he was always responsive when I did bring up some issues, but the law was his field, and Fred's discipline too.

After Fred's death on May 15, 1966, feeling that Dad might miss our fairly frequent informal luncheon meetings, I began to call Dad each day at noon to say hello. One day I failed to call him because of the pressure of business, and the next day at noon he called me. From that day until the day he died about three years later, unless I was traveling out of town, one of us would call the other at noon; sometimes he would initiate the call, and sometimes I would. For quite a long time after Dad's death I felt just a little blue at noon-time, because I missed those friendly father-and-son chats. Ever so often, on a Friday, Dad would openly express regret that we would not be talking to each other until the following Monday. I treasured these conversations. Dick, you and I seem to be following a similar pattern.

Pipes and Cigars - Dad was an inveterate smoker, of cigars almost as much as pipes, but never cigarettes. So am I, minus the cigars which make me sick to my stomach. For about twenty years I smoked perhaps two packs of cigarettes a day, but gave them up when the statistically significant link of cigarettes to cancer was established. But, I reasoned, no such statistically significant proof was established linking pipe smoking to cancer. So for forty years more I have smoked a pipe with the same deep satisfaction Dad had. A few months ago, my internal medicine man, Dr. Julian Greenberg, gave me the same explanation that I had received from a chemical engineer employed by Celanese Corporation when I worked there about forty years ago. The temperature of combustion of tobacco in a cigar or in a pipe is less than that in cigarettes, a temperature below the carcinogenic forming level burned in cigarettes. It was Dr. Greenberg's opinion that it wouldn't make a helluva lot of difference (especially at my age) whether I gave up pipe smoking or kept smoking my beloved pipes. So I have continued to my very great satisfaction. Cigarette smoking has a statistically significant link to cancer; pipe smoking does not. One day a few years back a psychologist associate lost patience with me and said to me with great frustration and irritation: "Dick, you are just a statistical anomaly!" So be it. I continue to enjoy my pipes. At the age of eighty I could care less.

Alcoholism - This is a dark side in our family, and it needs to be discussed. I don't know what Winston Churchill's son would say about his father's drinking, but here are some of my comments about my father's drinking, and I was privileged to see him in some of his worst moments.

September 13, 1993, in my study at Malverne

Alcoholism - Alcohol is a progressive cerebral depressant, Gin taught me from her study of Materia Medica in the Brooklyn Hospital School of Nursing. Alcohol has the insidious effect, like many prescribed drugs, of moderating a symptom without having any effect on what is causing one's worry, or pain, or illness. That is one reason I am not a pill-popper.

I remember that Christ made wine out of water to accommodate a friend who was throwing a wedding party, and was in short supply. The Greeks were drinking wine at least 500 years before Christ, and the Egyptians were brewing beer long before that. Problems associated with alcohol have been around for a long time. Fortunately the alcoholic residue is eliminated from the human body in a relatively short time.

The Greeks had a few words for overindulgence: "Everything in moderation." My early naval orientation gave some practical words of wisdom: no one will criticize your drinking at a party the night before, so long as you can report for duty on time, ready, willing, and able to do your job. If you can't do that, then quit drinking.

3:00 a.m., September 14, 1993.

Yet these platitudes don't give sufficient recognition to the evil effects of overindulgence. My mind goes back to a convocation at Kismet Temple (Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine) where Dad was supposed to be sitting at the Divan as a past Potentate of Kismet Temple. It was all Fred and I together could do to keep Dad from falling right on his face, hiding him in by-ways of the Temple so others couldn't see him in this condition, preventing Dad from trying to do his part in the festivities which he was manifestly totally incapable of handling. I have never seen a person so completely drunk still able to stand and walk unsteadily. He would certainly have fallen if it were not for both Fred and me supporting him. I have no recollection of how we ever got him home. But we did.

My recollection is that Dad's worst bouts of alcoholism came in the late thirties, when the DA's office in Kings County was being investigated by Dewey. I was disgusted, ashamed, and deeply concerned. It was difficult for me to feel pity for him when he was in that condition. I don't know how Mom managed to put up with it all. Mainly with Fred's guidance we got Dad admitted to a "hospital" on Central Park West, reputedly also used by Bing Crosby for the same affliction, for "drying out." Through no fault of the cleaning staff, the corridor odors were offensive. The "patients" were bedraggled, woebegone, and evasive, but not hostile or abusive. I visited Dad very frequently, but I hated to go into that environment. I hate now even to think about it. The experience was repulsive. Yet, as far as I could tell, the patients were not mistreated, but they looked like the dregs of humanity. I don't remember Dad ever having had to go back to that place, or to a place like it, but Willie tells me he had been there at least once before with Fred.

I felt a helpless pity for Dad.

This week, during a routine physical examination, Dr. Julian Greenberg and I agreed that there is a strong and apparently well-founded suspicion that genetics carries a clue to this human behavior diagnosed as alcoholism. If so, the genes come from both my mother's and father's sides of our family. Grandma Garms was an alcoholic, and so was my father. Perhaps some of my mother's and father's recessive genes came together in my sister, Helen. Many people can drink quite heavily socially, and yet can stop; an alcoholic can not stop. A true alcoholic should not take even the first drink.

Until we learn more of genetics, we in our family need to be watchfully careful. I personally do not believe that alcoholism is an acquired social trait; I believe that it is a trait genetically acquired. Yet that is only my personal belief.

I don't tamper with the nature of human nature; I accept it as it is. I do not want to be in the position of denying reality. I am trying to find out more about the complex nature of human nature, and then to seek ways of controlling it, or diverting some overpowering human traits into more constructive channels. The Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment should show the ineffectiveness of legislation in controlling alcoholism. A simple prohibition is not enough. All Prohibition did was to make wealthy bootleggers. Over at least 3,000 years of recorded history, human beings have discovered how to make and use fermented drinks. I subscribe to the use of alcoholic beverages in moderation.

Free human beings do have freedom of choice, and they very frequently exercise it either way in many frustrating situations. I would not remove that freedom of choice, if I could. But I would counsel moderation and I would seek other outlets for the drive to imbibe alcoholic beverages.

I don't know how to balance out Sir Winston Churchill's heavy drinking against his many achievements in statecraft, politics, reporting, and history writing. I can still hear his ringing words in England's hour of greatest peril. I suspect that I would accept his drinking in view of his many great achievements. I feel the same way about my Dad, but most ordinary alcoholics are not especially talented people.

There is another interesting and thought provoking factor here that I hope to touch on soon. One day I showed Dad a picture of himself surrounded by his fifteen young grandchildren, and asked him for his thoughts when looking at it. His immediate response was: "My God, what have I done!" Dad (I think) doesn't know what has happened in the fifteen years since his death. Perhaps six or seven of these fifteen grandchildren have turned out to be stand-out performers in different disciplines. For example, (and I'll give more details later) Dick Schlosberg III (Helen) has reached top levels in publishing as senior vice president of Times Mirror, responsible for Times Mirror's six eastern newspapers and the company's magazine operations. Chris Kopff (Fred) is a recognized classics scholar at the University of Colorado, and published a book for which he wrote the forward in Latin and the body of the text in ancient Greek. Dick Kopff, Jr., MD (me) is co-editor of the The Textbook of Psychoanalysis now about to be in press for the American Psychiatric Association, of which you, Dick are a Fellow. Jim Black (Midge) is a senior analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and personally participates in daily briefings with the White House Staff; his field is economics and he supervises some 20-odd staff people. You, Fred Kopff III (me) are a highly successful human resources consultant, and are making far more money than I ever did in the firm I founded. Peter Kopff, Esq. (Fred) is a founding member of the law firm of Kopff, Nardelli, and Dopf, and is outstandingly successful in medical malpractice with a firm of 27 members and associates, plus a bevy of supporting consultants and other employees; he too has exceeded his father's performance. As with Winston Churchill, I would accept my Dad's drinking in view of his achievements and the achievements of Dad's grandchildren. On balance, my Dad left quite a heritage, even though I must admit that many others have made important contributions in the conception and rearing of these grandchildren. "We come from good stock," Dad used to say. The genetic evidence would seem to support his statement. Sir Winston: Sire Kopff. All of Dad's children have been exceeded in performance by 40% of his brood of grandchildren, not a bad batting average!

[Editor's Note: You will notice that the last entry is for 3:00 a.m., September 14, 1993. Pops passed away 10 days later on September 24, 1993. - FLK,IV]