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

camp also. They tend to attract a type of person who is not too fraternity/sorority-dance
oriented. I played tennis. I went to movies, but not the Chez Paree in Chicago, and night-
clubs, and that sort of activity. I was more of a hayseed.
Q: Let's see, the Aragon and the Trianon were going full blast then. Did you get out to
those?
A: Oh, I did occasionally. I did like to dance. It's pleasant to think now about those big
dance halls.
Q: Do you remember any of the big bands that you saw there?
A: I remember Dorsey and Kruppa and Wayne King from that period.
Q: What about the legitimate theater. Did you attend much of that?
A: Yes. I went to a number of plays. Today, the legislature's funding of the arts has pro-
duced a real renaissance of the theater in the Chicago area. The semi-professional theater
that abounds in Chicago now hardly existed then.
Q: Was there a symphonic orchestra at the University of Chicago?
A: No. There was, of course, the Chicago Symphony. I remember once attending "Lady
in the Dark" at the Civic Opera House, with Gertrude Lawrence and Danny Kaye. I sat
with my date in the very last row in the very top balcony. You need a telescope to be able
to see what's going on down there on the stage. One row back, and I would have been out
in the lobby.
Q: Where did you meet Miss Lewison?
A: She worked at the War Labor Board. We met there, and that's what produced the sparks
that produced the marriage that produced the family.
Q: Was she from Chicago?
A: She was from Chicago. Her father was a fine internist who taught at the University
of Illinois. He had died by this time, however. She lived with her mother. She and her
brother, Edward, an outstanding surgeon who taught at Hopkins and who specializes in
breast cancer in Baltimore, and her mother, Julia, were the only members of her immediate
family.
Q: And so you just got to know each other in the activity there?
A: Yes. I edited the newspaper at the War Labor Board. One day, I got a little note from
someone 1 didn't know, telling me how much she liked a particular article I had written
for the newspaper. Of course, I was very pleased to have anybody take notice of what was
in the newspaper. That was Ethel Mae who had sent me the note. Soon, she and I got
to be friends, and she attended some of the economics graduate school classes that I attended
at the University of Chicago. She had graduated from the University of Chicago. And on
July 21,1945, we were married in Chicago.
Q: So it was kind of a whirlwind sort of thing, a year, or a year and a half, or so.
A: Right. I'd known her a good many months. But I did propose marriage to her relatively
soon, uncharacteristically soon for me.
Q: Was she active in supporting Wallace, also?