harold a. katz memoir volume 1 - University of Illinois Springfield

white suit with a conservative tie. I identified myself to a guard at the gate and was given
immediate clearance to enter the grounds. Mrs. Roosevelt received me in a second floor
waiting room.
We were soon escorted to a veranda overlooking the White House lawn. Alice Longworth
Roosevelt was at tea that day. And so was Barbara Ward Jackson, the editor of the London
Economist. It was very exciting for me. I occasionally interjected some comments in that
distinguished company. Mrs. Roosevelt would invariably ask, "What did you say?" or some-
thing like that. I assumed it was due to my southern accent. I discovered subsequently
that she had one good ear and one bad ear. It was my misfortune to sit on the wrong side
of Mrs. Roosevelt. So, if I'd sat on the other side, I could probably tell you that I had a
stimulating back-and-forth conversation with her. But sitting on the wrong side, she didn't
seem to hear what I had to say. But it was very fascinating to me to be able to move even
on the outer perimeter of such a distinguished group. Thereafter, I maintained occasional
contact with Mrs. Roosevelt.
Q: Did you meet the president?
A: I didn't. Of course, when I was at Campobello in 1942, we lived in the Roosevelt home,
an 18-bedroom cottage where Franklin and Eleanor spent nearly every summer from 1909
until 1921, when polio struck. We saw the boat that Roosevelt had been out in that fateful
day. It was still in the boathouse.
The Roosevelt cottage is now part of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, run by
the US. and Canada. Electricity, telephones, and a causeway to the mainland have been
added since I lived there in July and August of 1942.
Q: What did you do?
A: Faculty members from major universities would come down and spend a week with
us. It was a four-week seminar, and there would be an eminent faculty member for each
of the four weeks. Mrs. Roosevelt also was there during some of the time. We would
engage in discussion of different social, political, economic problems of the society. And the
faculty person would speak.
Our first speaker was the president of Hunter College in New York, George N. Shuster, a
distinguished Catholic layman. This was a period when young liberals were unhappy with
what was going on in Spain where Franco was annihilating the democratic segment of the
country. When Dr. Shuster finished talking to us and opened a question period, one young
man from New York, one of the students who had just been waiting to throw something
at him about the church and its iniquitous position on Spain, jumped up and said, "I have
a question. As a liberal Catholic - " President Shuster stopped him right there. He said,
"Young man, I am a Catholic liberal. There is no such thing as a liberal Catholic." The
years have changed all that. Today there is such a thing as a liberal Catholic, a Catholic
who refuses to accept the church position on a matter of theology or dogma. But at that
time, the very beginning of the 1940's, even outstanding liberal persons of the Catholic faith
made it very clear that they were not liberal Catholics, that they were Catholic, period, and
they were liberal, period.
Q: Do you remember any participation of your own in question periods or anything?
A: No, I said nothing memorable. All of the students who went there were very interested
in current events, world affairs, problems of the nation, that's why they went there. It did
afford an opportunity for students to meet with other students who were more like them. At
Vanderbilt I was outside of the mainstream. At Campobello I was in the mainstream. That
in itself was useful to know. There was a world with other people who were like me. If