Tämän väitöskirjatutkimuksen keskiössä on valtion ja valtiollisen koulutusjärjestelmän puitteissa harjoitetun kansalaiskasvatuksen keskinäinen suhde murroskautena 1980-2000. 1980-luvun puolivälistä alkaen sekä Venäjällä että Suomessa on koettu merkittäviä valtioon ja kansakuntaan vaikuttaneita yhteiskunnallisia mullistuksia. Neuvostoliiton romahdettua Venäjä on pyrkinyt löytämään uusia tapoja kansallisen yhtenäisyyden ylläpitämiseksi, valtiovallan uudelleen rakentamiseksi ja maan kansainvälisen aseman parantamiseksi. Suomessa puolestaan Euroopan yhdentyminen ja lisääntyvä maahanmuutto ovat asettaneet muutospaineita kansalaisuudelle ja kansalliselle identiteetille. Tästä kontekstista käsin väitöskirjassa kysytään miten peruskoulussa harjoitetun kansalaiskasvatuksen tavoitteet ja sisällöt ovat muuttuneet vastaamaan 1990- ja 2000-lukujen sisä- ja ulkopoliittisia muutoksia. Tutkimuksen tutkimusaineiston muodostavat venäläiset ja suomalaiset koulutuspoliittiset asiakirjat sekä kahden kansainvälisen järjestön - Euroopan Neuvoston ja YK:n kasvatus-, tiede- ja kulttuurijärjestön (UNESCO) - viralliset dokumentit. Historiallisista ja yhteiskuntapoliittisista eroistaan huolimatta sekä Suomi että Venäjä antavat edelleen suuren arvon kansalaisuudelle ja kansalliselle identiteetille. Venäjä on 1990-luvun lopulta lähtien lujittanut kansalaisuuden ja kansallisuuden suhdetta. Valtiovalta korostaa kansalaisten uskollisuutta Venäjän valtiota kohtaan ja alleviivaa tätä kautta keskeistä asemaansa kansalaiskasvatuksen koulutuspolitiikan määrittämisessä. Isänmaallisuuskasvatuksen ohjelmat ovat 2000-luvun alusta lähtien korostaneet alistumista aktiivisen osallistumisen sekä konsensusta mielipiteiden monimuotoisuuden sijaan. Yksilöllisen identiteetin asemasta etusija annetaan kollektiiviselle identiteetille. Suomi on sen sijaan alkanut purkaa valtion ja kansakunnan vahvaa historiallista sidettä ja painottaa yhä selkeämmin kansallisen identiteetin kulttuurista ulottuvuutta. Tämä kulttuurinen käännös on tullut väistämättömäksi Suomen pyrkiessä säilyttämään kansallisen identiteettinsä ja legitimiteettinsä globalisoituvassa maailmassa. Kansalaisuuden ja kansallisuuden vahvan yhteyden purkaminen avaa mahdollisuuden yhdistää uudella tavalla käsitykset kansalaisuudesta ja kansallisesta identiteetistä. Toisaalta tässäkin mallissa kansallinen taso nähdään ytimenä ja muiden tasojen lähtökohtana. ; This doctoral dissertation studies citizenship education policies in Finland and Russia in relation to the supranational citizenship education rhetoric shaped by two large intergovernmental organizations, the Council of Europe (COE) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The research pursues two broad research aims. First, to understand the supranational agenda of citizenship education, and second, to analyse citizenship education policies in Russia and Finland since the mid 1980s up to 2007, and to compare them to the supranational agenda of citizenship education. The dissertation is concerned with the macro level and thus the research data comprises policy documents issued by the Russian and Finnish state authorities, and the two intergovernmental organisations. The analysis of policy content draws on the rhetorical and policy-as-discourse approaches in order to elucidate the objectives of citizenship education, as well as the arguments employed to justify the proposed objectives throughout the studied period. Individualising comparison enhances the interpretative task of the dissertation, as it increases the visibility of one national context by contrasting it with another, and therefore helps to find adequate explanations to particular policy outcomes. In selecting Russia and Finland as the two national case studies, the dissertation concentrates on countries embedded in different state models and citizenship traditions. The main motivation behind the selection of the COE and UNESCO is to acknowledge and analyse the rising supranational educational governance, which increasingly provides models for and restrictions on actions and policies at national level. The study is particularly interested in the relationship between the state and citizenship education in public schooling at the time of state (re)formation and nation (re)building. Citizenship education is perceived as a means to legitimise and maintain state power unsettled in periods of political changes. Equally, citizenship education offers a prism through which to examine larger processes in a given society, in particular, changes in the relationship between the state, citizenship and nationality, and possible modifications in the meanings of these essential socio-political categories. For the national cases examined in the dissertation the period since the second half of the 1980s has been rich in political changes related to, and leaving their mark on, the state and the nation. Whereas since the collapse of the Soviet regime Russia has striven to find ways to regenerate national cohesion, rebuild statehood and reconsolidate its status in the international arena, Finland has attempted to adjust its national identity and citizenship to European integration and increasing immigration. The analysis of the COE and UNESCO reveals that there is no one modality of citizenship education embraced by the examined supranational actors. On one hand, in clear contrast to the traditional model of citizenship education, they advocate proactive political participation, critical scrutiny of state institutions and action against the state on the basis of universal human rights. They also promote diversity and perceive citizenship as a multilayered concept extending to the local, national, regional and global levels. Instead of linking rights and duties to membership in a territorially demarcated polity of the nation-state, the COE and UNESCO often advocate the notion of human rights and link rights and duties to the global humanity. In this manner, supranational organisations decouple citizenship from nationality and, by doing so, advance the postnationalisation of citizenship. On the other hand, the intergovernmental character of the organisations and their origin embedded in the consolidation of the nation-state system lead to inconsistencies in the agenda and somewhat surprising repetition of the traditional citizenship rhetoric, for instance, in linking society narrowly to the territorially demarcated nation-state. The supranational agenda also continues to emphasise the key role of national governments in implementing citizenship education and therefore still posits the nation-state as a central player in education policy and practice. The Russian case exemplified convergence with the post-national supranational citizenship education rhetoric only during the first half of the 1990s when the new country leaders did not pay serious attention to regenerating national cohesion and building an all-embracing national identity. In this period, preference was given to the de-legitimation of the Soviet type of political education, and slightly later to the development of citizenship education policies stressing citizens´ rights, knowledge of the legislation and lawful conduct for the purpose of building a constitutional state. In terms of national identity, the authorities advocated a vague category of universal human values and encouraged the re-consolidation of sub-state national identities. Toward the end of the 1990s, the contents of citizenship education policies shifted radically. The state has re-emphasised its leading role in defining citizenship education policies with the main objective to craft citizens´ loyalty to the Russian state. The programmes of patriotic education, which appeared in the beginning of the 2000s, prioritise subordination over active participation, consensus over pluralism, duties over rights and collective identity over an individual one. Compared to the mid 1980s, when citizenship education in Finland was premised on the idea that the vitality of the Finnish nation is invariably linked to the sovereignty of the Finnish state, the latest curricula documents stress national culture as the prime source of national integrity. In its return to a predominantly cultural understanding of the nation, Finland exemplifies the debundling of the state and the nation, and nationality and citizenship. The transformation into a Kulturnation is a necessary step to secure Finland´s national being in a globalising world, which transforms and weakens state sovereignty, without putting the legitimacy of the Finnish nation into question. The decoupling of nationality and citizenship opens up the possibility for a multilayered conceptualisation of both citizenship and nationhood. However, the national still constitutes the core, with the sub- and supranational layers as additional ingredients of the emerging citizenship recipe. Despite major differences in their historical and current socio-political contexts, Russia and Finland continue to attach strong value to national identity and national citizenship. However, whereas Russia, since the late 1990s, has moved in the direction of state nationalism and a closer bond between the nation and the state, which preclude any possibility for a multilayered conception of citizenship, Finland has forsaken a previously strong link between the state and the nation and seems to be strengthening its cultural identity in peaceful alliance with Europeanness.
Cotxes, camions, tractors, avions. tots necessiten els neumàtics com a component imprescindible per al seu funcionament. Malauradament, degut al desgast per ús, els neumàtics tenen una vida útil limitada que obliga a renovar-los cada cert temps passant a ser Neumàtics Fora d'Ús (NFU). Paradògicament, els neumàtics són formulats per a suportar condicions extremes d'ús i, entre d'altres matèries primeres contenen cautxú vulcanitzat, una elevada quantitat d'estabilitzants i d'altres additius que fan dels neumàtics un material no biodegradable. Fins al 2006, era possible desar els NFU en abocadors però aquesta pràctica va ser prohibida per la Comunitat Europea (directiva 1993/31/EC). Aquesta directiva conjuntament amb la creixent consciència mediambiental ha potenciat la investigació per a trobar noves aplicacions per les 3.4milions de tones de NFU que es generen a l'any a Europa. Els NFU són emprats com a font d'energia o en aplicacions civils, però cada vegada més, són emprats en autopistes o per usos decoratius després de patir un procés de separació i trituració (NFU triturat). Les propietats físico-químiques dels NFU en fan un material molt interessant per la comunitat científica internacional que es centra en buscar noves vies de reciclatge mitjançant aplicacions d'alt valor afegit. Una opció per reciclar grans volums de NFU és utilitzar-los granulats com a càrrega en matrius termoplàstiques, encara que aquesta és una tasca difícil degut a la baixa compatibilitat entre aquests dos materials. Les seves característiques superficials són les responsables d'aquesta baixa compatibilitat. Cal afegir també que el tamany de les partícules de NFU obtingudes a partir de processos industrials és entre 400 and 600μm, sent aquest un tamany massa gran per poder ser fàcilment embolcallades per qualsevol matriu. D'altra banda, el cautxú dels neumàtics és troba altament vulcanitzat i, per tant, aquest reaccionarà químicament amb dificultats amb d'altres materials. Totes aquestes propietats fan dels NFU un material difícil de treballar-hi. La present tesis estudia diferents mètodes de compatibilització d'un Polietilè D'alta Densitat (PEAD) de grau d'injecció i NFU triturat obtingut a partir de processos estàndards de molturació. La resina de PEAD va ser escollit com a matriu degut al seu ampli rang d'aplicacions d'injecció. L'objectiu principal és explorar diferents mètodes de compatibilització d'aquests dos materials per obtenir òptimes propietats mecàniques, tèrmiques i morfològiques en aplicacions d'injecció. Els composites són optimitzats per a que continguin la màxima quantitat de NFU, una adequada transformació i el mínim cost. Després d'un estudi preliminar de composites basats en NFU i PEAD s'han estudiat tres mètodes diferents per millorar l'adhesió entre aquests dos materials. El primer mètode consisteix en oxidar la superfície de les partícules de NFU granulat amb tractament basats en àcids, amb l'objectiu de proporcionar rugositat per a un anclatge mecànic. En el segon mètode s'han emprat additius humectants i ceres, ja que aquestes substàncies redueixen la tensió interfacial entre les partícules de NFU i la matriu de PEAD. En l'últim mètode, es va estudiar la influència de l'Etilè Propilè Diè Monòmer (EPDM). Amb aquest mètode, les partícules de NFU són embolcallades per l'EPDM, aquest efecte pot ser millorat amb l'ús de peròxids. Les propietats dels "composites" són bastant diferents en funció del mètode emprat. Després d'una comparació dels "composites" obtinguts pels tres mètodes, s'ha trobat que el que conté 30% d'EPDM i dos peròxids, corresponent a la formulació:: 30% NFU + 40% PEAD + 30% EPDM + 0.5% Trigonox 311 + 0.1% Peròxid de Dicumil compleix els objectius fixats en la tesis: bona adhesió entre les partícules de NFU i el PEAD on l'elevat valor d'elongació n'és una conseqüència directa, la seva obtenció mitjançant un procés de compatibilització de cost reduït, un nou material amb una elevada quantitat de NFU (30%), la seva facilitat de transformació,, i el més important, una nova via de reciclatge dels NFU per a una aplicació d'alt valor afegit. ; Cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes. all need tyres as essential component to work. Unfortunately, due to its continuous use, tyres suffer from wear and have a limited lifetime; therefore, they must be changed every certain time becoming end of life tyres (EOL tyres). Paradoxically tyres are formulated to withstand difficult conditions and among other raw materials, they contain vulcanizated rubbers, high amount of stabilizers and other additives that turn tyres into non biodegradable material. Until 2006, disposal of EOL tyres in landfills was a common practice but it was banned by the European Community (directive 1993/31/EC). This European legislation together with an increasing environmental consciousness has instigated researchers to find applications for 3.4million tonnes of used tyres generated per year in Europe. Some extended uses for EOL tyres are energy recover and civil applications but the use of tyres after separation and grinding processes (material know as Ground Tyre Rubber - GTR), has increased during the last decade. Physical and chemical properties of EOL tyres make them an interesting material for the international research community focused today on finding new ways to recycle tyres for value added applications. A good option to recycle big volumes of discarded tyres is using GTR particles as filler in thermoplastic matrixes, although this is a difficult task due to the low compatibility between the two materials. The surface characteristics of the GTR particles are responsible of this low compatibility. Despite these facts, the particle size obtained from standard industrial grinding processes is between 400 and 600μm. These particles are too large to be entrapped easily in polymeric matrixes. These characteristics in conjunction with the fact that GTR is made of highly crosslinked rubber with difficulties to react chemically to other materials, make GTR a material very difficult to work with. The present thesis deals with the study of different compatibilization methods for an injection moulding grade of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and GTR obtained from standard industrial grinding process. The HDPE resin was chosen due to its wide range of injection moulding applications. The aim is to explore different methods to mix these two materials and obtain optimum mechanical, thermal and morphological properties for injection moulding applications. The composites are optimized to obtain the highest GTR amount, adequate processability and minimum cost. After a preliminary study of the composites based on GTR and HDPE, three different methods to improve the adhesion between these two materials are studied. The first method consists in an oxidizing treatment on GTR particles surface in order to promote mechanical anchoring. In the second method the influence of wetting additives and waxes is studied. These substances reduce interfacial tension between GTR particles and HDPE matrix. The third and last method, study the influence of Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) addition with and without peroxides. In this method, GTR particles are encapsulated by EPDM and this effect can be boosted by the use of peroxides. The composites properties are quite different depending on the used method. After a comparison of the composites obtained by the three different compatibilization methods, it is found that the one with 30% of EPDM plus two peroxides, corresponding to 30% GTR + 40% HDPE + 30% EPDM + 0.5% Trigonox 311 + 0.1% Dicumyl Peroxide fulfil the objectives of the thesis. This composite has good adhesion between GTR and HDPE that results in high elongation, it is obtained by a cheap compatibilization process and contains a high amount of recycled tyres (30%), it is easy to process, and the most important thing, it represents a new route to recycle scrap tyres for a value added application. ; Postprint (published version)
Cotxes, camions, tractors, avions. tots necessiten els neumàtics com a component imprescindible per al seu funcionament. Malauradament, degut al desgast per ús, els neumàtics tenen una vida útil limitada que obliga a renovar-los cada cert temps passant a ser Neumàtics Fora d'Ús (NFU). Paradògicament, els neumàtics són formulats per a suportar condicions extremes d'ús i, entre d'altres matèries primeres contenen cautxú vulcanitzat, una elevada quantitat d'estabilitzants i d'altres additius que fan dels neumàtics un material no biodegradable. Fins al 2006, era possible desar els NFU en abocadors però aquesta pràctica va ser prohibida per la Comunitat Europea (directiva 1993/31/EC). Aquesta directiva conjuntament amb la creixent consciència mediambiental ha potenciat la investigació per a trobar noves aplicacions per les 3.4milions de tones de NFU que es generen a l'any a Europa. Els NFU són emprats com a font d'energia o en aplicacions civils, però cada vegada més, són emprats en autopistes o per usos decoratius després de patir un procés de separació i trituració (NFU triturat). Les propietats físico-químiques dels NFU en fan un material molt interessant per la comunitat científica internacional que es centra en buscar noves vies de reciclatge mitjançant aplicacions d'alt valor afegit. Una opció per reciclar grans volums de NFU és utilitzar-los granulats com a càrrega en matrius termoplàstiques, encara que aquesta és una tasca difícil degut a la baixa compatibilitat entre aquests dos materials. Les seves característiques superficials són les responsables d'aquesta baixa compatibilitat. Cal afegir també que el tamany de les partícules de NFU obtingudes a partir de processos industrials és entre 400 and 600μm, sent aquest un tamany massa gran per poder ser fàcilment embolcallades per qualsevol matriu. D'altra banda, el cautxú dels neumàtics és troba altament vulcanitzat i, per tant, aquest reaccionarà químicament amb dificultats amb d'altres materials. Totes aquestes propietats fan dels NFU un material difícil de treballar-hi. La present tesis estudia diferents mètodes de compatibilització d'un Polietilè D'alta Densitat (PEAD) de grau d'injecció i NFU triturat obtingut a partir de processos estàndards de molturació. La resina de PEAD va ser escollit com a matriu degut al seu ampli rang d'aplicacions d'injecció. L'objectiu principal és explorar diferents mètodes de compatibilització d'aquests dos materials per obtenir òptimes propietats mecàniques, tèrmiques i morfològiques en aplicacions d'injecció. Els composites són optimitzats per a que continguin la màxima quantitat de NFU, una adequada transformació i el mínim cost. Després d'un estudi preliminar de composites basats en NFU i PEAD s'han estudiat tres mètodes diferents per millorar l'adhesió entre aquests dos materials. El primer mètode consisteix en oxidar la superfície de les partícules de NFU granulat amb tractament basats en àcids, amb l'objectiu de proporcionar rugositat per a un anclatge mecànic. En el segon mètode s'han emprat additius humectants i ceres, ja que aquestes substàncies redueixen la tensió interfacial entre les partícules de NFU i la matriu de PEAD. En l'últim mètode, es va estudiar la influència de l'Etilè Propilè Diè Monòmer (EPDM). Amb aquest mètode, les partícules de NFU són embolcallades per l'EPDM, aquest efecte pot ser millorat amb l'ús de peròxids. Les propietats dels "composites" són bastant diferents en funció del mètode emprat. Després d'una comparació dels "composites" obtinguts pels tres mètodes, s'ha trobat que el que conté 30% d'EPDM i dos peròxids, corresponent a la formulació:: 30% NFU + 40% PEAD + 30% EPDM + 0.5% Trigonox 311 + 0.1% Peròxid de Dicumil compleix els objectius fixats en la tesis: bona adhesió entre les partícules de NFU i el PEAD on l'elevat valor d'elongació n'és una conseqüència directa, la seva obtenció mitjançant un procés de compatibilització de cost reduït, un nou material amb una elevada quantitat de NFU (30%), la seva facilitat de transformació,, i el més important, una nova via de reciclatge dels NFU per a una aplicació d'alt valor afegit. ; Cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes. all need tyres as essential component to work. Unfortunately, due to its continuous use, tyres suffer from wear and have a limited lifetime; therefore, they must be changed every certain time becoming end of life tyres (EOL tyres). Paradoxically tyres are formulated to withstand difficult conditions and among other raw materials, they contain vulcanizated rubbers, high amount of stabilizers and other additives that turn tyres into non biodegradable material. Until 2006, disposal of EOL tyres in landfills was a common practice but it was banned by the European Community (directive 1993/31/EC). This European legislation together with an increasing environmental consciousness has instigated researchers to find applications for 3.4million tonnes of used tyres generated per year in Europe. Some extended uses for EOL tyres are energy recover and civil applications but the use of tyres after separation and grinding processes (material know as Ground Tyre Rubber - GTR), has increased during the last decade. Physical and chemical properties of EOL tyres make them an interesting material for the international research community focused today on finding new ways to recycle tyres for value added applications. A good option to recycle big volumes of discarded tyres is using GTR particles as filler in thermoplastic matrixes, although this is a difficult task due to the low compatibility between the two materials. The surface characteristics of the GTR particles are responsible of this low compatibility. Despite these facts, the particle size obtained from standard industrial grinding processes is between 400 and 600μm. These particles are too large to be entrapped easily in polymeric matrixes. These characteristics in conjunction with the fact that GTR is made of highly crosslinked rubber with difficulties to react chemically to other materials, make GTR a material very difficult to work with. The present thesis deals with the study of different compatibilization methods for an injection moulding grade of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and GTR obtained from standard industrial grinding process. The HDPE resin was chosen due to its wide range of injection moulding applications. The aim is to explore different methods to mix these two materials and obtain optimum mechanical, thermal and morphological properties for injection moulding applications. The composites are optimized to obtain the highest GTR amount, adequate processability and minimum cost. After a preliminary study of the composites based on GTR and HDPE, three different methods to improve the adhesion between these two materials are studied. The first method consists in an oxidizing treatment on GTR particles surface in order to promote mechanical anchoring. In the second method the influence of wetting additives and waxes is studied. These substances reduce interfacial tension between GTR particles and HDPE matrix. The third and last method, study the influence of Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer (EPDM) addition with and without peroxides. In this method, GTR particles are encapsulated by EPDM and this effect can be boosted by the use of peroxides. The composites properties are quite different depending on the used method. After a comparison of the composites obtained by the three different compatibilization methods, it is found that the one with 30% of EPDM plus two peroxides, corresponding to 30% GTR + 40% HDPE + 30% EPDM + 0.5% Trigonox 311 + 0.1% Dicumyl Peroxide fulfil the objectives of the thesis. This composite has good adhesion between GTR and HDPE that results in high elongation, it is obtained by a cheap compatibilization process and contains a high amount of recycled tyres (30%), it is easy to process, and the most important thing, it represents a new route to recycle scrap tyres for a value added application. ; Postprint (published version)
Los hechos políticos que protagonizó Turquía esta semana han generado confusión. Por un lado, concretó un acercamiento histórico con Armenia, un vecino en constante litigio. Por el otro, rechazó realizar un ejercicio militar regular junto con Israel, con quien mantiene desde hace décadas una alianza histórica. ¿Está Turquía realizando un cambio en su política exterior? ¿Se está produciendo un cambio en el equilibrio geopolítico de la región?Más cercaDesde hace días el nombre de Turquía viene colmando la sección "Internacionales" de diarios y revistas especializadas en todo el mundo. Y no es para menos: el proceso iniciado en setiembre de 2008 con la visita a Armenia del presidente turco Abdullah Gull para un partido de fútbol, derivó el pasado sábado 10 de octubre de 2009 en un histórico acuerdo firmado en Zurich que prevé la normalización de las relaciones entre ambos países.El acuerdo (firmado por el Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores armenio Edvard Nalbandian y su homólogo turco Ahmet Davutoglu) consiste en dos protocolos que estipulan un calendario para el establecimiento de relaciones bilaterales y la apertura de sus fronteras en un plazo de dos meses, a partir de la ratificación por los Parlamentos respectivos.Las gestiones de Estados Unidos, Rusia, Francia y Suiza tienen mucho que ver en que las Partes hayan podido sortear los obstáculos que los separaban, fundamentalmente vinculados al reconocimiento del Genocidio Armenio (inflingido por parte de los turcos entre 1915 y 1918), así como al retiro armenio de Nagorno-Karabakh, un enclave que mantienen "de facto" desde la guerra con su vecino Azerbaiján (y a causa de la cual Turquía cerró su frontera con Armenia en 1993, en apoyo a la reivindicación azerí).En ese sentido, se habría convenido que a los cuatro meses de ratificado el acuerdo se daría paso a la creación de una comisión conjunta que estudie el Genocidio Armenio (lo que podría dar lugar a un reconocimiento oficial turco), al tiempo que se habla de ciertos compromisos por parte del gobierno armenio en relación a Nagorno-Karabakh. Sin embargo, las reivindicaciones posteriores del primer ministro turco Recep Tayyip Erdogan y del presidente armenio Serz Sarksyan, sumado a las hostilidades de políticos opositores y las protestas de manifestantes nacionalistas en ambos países, evidencian que aún hay mucho camino por recorrer en este proceso.Más lejosA los pocos días Turquía volvió a sorprender al mundo con una noticia, si bien menos histórica, ciertamente inesperada. Las maniobras militares "Anatolia Tagle", fijadas para el lunes 12 de octubre (de las cuales también participarían fuerzas de OTAN, EEUU e Italia) fueron postergadas producto de la decisión de Ankara de no incluir en ellas a Israel. Dichas maniobras implicaban la prueba de los sistemas aéreos de defensa y de reposición en vuelo, así como la planificación de movimientos en el espacio turco fronterizo con Irán, Siria e Irak.El premier turco Erdogan justificó la decisión en lo que llamó "sensibilidades diplomáticas", atribuyendo la inconveniencia de actuar en conjunto "con los aviones que sobrevuelan Gaza". Los desencuentros entre Turquía e Israel vienen precedidos por el enfrentamiento acontecido entre el propio Erdogan y el presidente israelí Shimon Peres en el último Foro de Davos, a lo que luego se sumó la renuncia del ministro Davutoglu a la anunciada visita a Israel en Octubre, al serle rechazada la posibilidad de visitar Gaza.No obstante, fuentes oficiales israelíes intentaron restarle importancia a dicha decisión, transmitiendo que la alianza es histórica (desde inicios de la Guerra Fría) y estratégica para ambos, de allí que no está en peligro. Y si bien hay quienes en los últimos días adjudican la posición de Turquía a demoras en el suministro por parte de Israel de un material aeronáutico previamente convenido, resulta evidente que las relaciones bilaterales se encuentran en un mal momento. La mejor demostración de ello es que Turquía aún no ha repuesto su embajador desde que el anterior finalizó su período, hace ya varios meses.¿Más cerca o más lejos?La gran razón para la confusión de estos días radica en el sentido que tienen ambas acciones del gobierno turco. ¿Tienen relación entre sí? Y si la tienen, ¿se tratan de dos movimientos que van en la misma dirección o, por el contrario, se oponen uno al otro?La aceptación por parte de Turquía de entablar el proceso para armonizar relaciones con Armenia encuentra diversas motivaciones. En lo que hace a su propio interés, la reconciliación con el mundo armenio constituye una de los principales escollos para su futura adhesión a la Unión Europea, en donde la población mayoritariamente cristiana y la carga del "reconocimiento del genocidio" pesa, y mucho.Asimismo, es claro el deseo turco de asumir un mayor liderazgo en la región, de modo que no puede estar totalmente enemistado con un vecino que también tiene una importancia geo-estratégica: ante el conflicto de Rusia con Georgia, la ruta por Armenia se torna esencial para asegurar el aprovisionamiento de gas y petróleo. Similar motivación tienen Rusia y EEUU, de allí la presión que en esta fase de "detente" ejercieron para que se concrete el acuerdo; el primero consigue así reducir el poder geopolítico georgiano, al tiempo que EEUU también se asegura dicha ruta energética y un nuevo paso de tropas hacia Irán.Por su parte, las tensiones que viene experimentando con Israel se pueden explicar, ante todo, por un progresivo acercamiento que viene experimentando hacia sus vecinos en el sur y sud-este: Siria, Irán e Irak, e incluso más allá, como Arabia Saudita o Sudán. Hay quienes dicen que se trata de un "regreso a la región", ya sea por una cuestión de índole ideológica basada en el ascenso de las tendencias islamistas en un Estado históricamente laico, o por el ya mencionado deseo de recobrar el liderazgo en la región (en un momento en que Irán recoge toda la atención).Pero también puede explicarse por el temor del gobierno a dejar de ser percibido como "islamista" cuando se acerca demasiado a Europa, de allí la necesidad de realizar una política pendular inversa. Es decir, para atenuar tanto "Occidente", el actual gobierno turco necesita apelar a un poco más de "Oriente".De allí que cuando el gobierno turco se decide a armonizar relaciones con Armenia (con sentido hacia "Occidente") le resulta por demás efectivo para revertir esa imagen un choque con Israel (con sentido hacia "Oriente"). Por supuesto, la defensa de la causa palestina y las fricciones con Israel siempre recogen buenas ganancias políticas en el mundo islámico.Ambos movimientos contienen un mismo sentido, pues Turquía con ellos consigue acrecentar su rol de líder regional. Y ambos contienen sentidos contrarios, logrando así equilibrar su imagen política tanto ante el liderazgo europeo como ante la opinión pública local.¿Implica esto un cambio en la política exterior turca? Claro que lo es, se trata de un re-posicionamiento estratégico que viene sucediendo de manera progresiva desde hace años. ¿Puede llegar a cambiar el balance estratégico del Medio Oriente? Parece poco viable, pero Philip Gordon y Omer Taspinar ("Winning Turkey: How America, Europe, and Turkey Can Revive a Fading Partnership", 2009) ya advierten en su libro sobre el riesgo de "perder Turquía". Por lo pronto, aparenta ser más una cuestión de diplomacia mediática que de verdadera intencionalidad política de dar un viraje a sus alianzas.No olvidemos que, al fin y al cabo, se trata de un país que está acostumbrado a estar en una constante encrucijada histórica-cultural: con un pie en Europa, con el otro en Asia.Licenciado en Estudios Internacionales. FACS. Universidad ORT - Uruguay.
Foreword The Max Weber post-doctoral Programme is a unique programme. In 2007– 2008, there were forty Fellows on the Programme, covering a wide range of research interests within the Social Sciences and Humanities, and representing twenty-three nationalities. Among the different activities of the academic year, the conference on "European integration without membership: models, experiences, perspectives" is a good example of Fellows' initiative and their concern for relevant issues. Encouraged by Professor Marise Cremona of the Law Department of the EUI, three Max Weber Fellows, Francesco Maiani, Roman Petrov and Ekaterina Mouliarova, took the initiative to organize the conference, invite the participants, actively participate in its development and, finally, act as editors of the proceedings which follow. The Max Weber Programme, in collaboration with the Law Department, fully supported their initiative, but the credit is theirs and that of the participants who contributed to the conference. Since its foundation more than thirty years ago, "European Integration" has been a recurrent theme in the research agenda of the European University Institute – specially within the Law Department. The conference built on this long tradition, but also took from the new perspectives that young postdoctoral Fellows, with different national experiences, can bring to the discussion, a discussion that brings forward new issues, when the EU27 must reassess its relationships with neighbouring countries that form part of the broader European area without aiming at becoming EU members in the years to come. A fruitful discussion on this relevant issue needs academic reflection, as well as practical legal and political experience, it needs understanding of the EU perspective, as well as that of neighbouring countries. It is again to the credit of the organizers that in the panels of the conference all these perspectives were present in open discussion. The proceedings that follow bring together the papers presented in this conference that took place at our beloved Villa La Fonte on May 23-24, 2008. Ramon Marimon Director of the Max Weber Programme ; At the beginning of the 1990s, the concept of "European integration" could still be said to be fairly unambiguous. Nowadays, it has become plural and complex almost to the point of unintelligibility. This is due, of course, to the internal differentiation of EU membership, with several Member States pulling out of key integrative projects such as establishing an area without frontiers, the "Schengen" area, and a common currency. But this is also due to the differentiated extension of key integrative projects to European non-EU countries – Schengen is again a case in point. Such processes of "integration without membership", the focus of the present publication, are acquiring an ever-growing topicality both in the political arena and in academia. International relations between the EU and its neighbouring countries are crucial for both, and their development through new agreements features prominently on the continent's political agenda. Over and above this aspect, the dissemination of EU values and standards beyond the Union's borders raises a whole host of theoretical and methodological questions, unsettling in some cases traditional conceptions of the autonomy and separation of national legal orders. This publication brings together the papers presented at the Integration without EU Membership workshop held in May 2008 at the EUI (Max Weber Programme and Department of Law). It aims to compare different models and experiences of integration between the EU, on the one hand, and those European countries that do not currently have an accession perspective on the other hand. In delimiting the geographical scope of the inquiry, so as to scale it down to manageable proportions, the guiding principles have been to include both the "Eastern" and "Western" neighbours of the EU, and to examine both structured frameworks of cooperation, such as the European Neighbourhood Policy and the European Economic Area, and bilateral relations developing on a more ad hoc basis. These principles are reflected in the arrangement of the papers, which consider in turn the positions of Ukraine, Russia, Norway, and Switzerland in European integration – current standing, perspectives for evolution, consequences in terms of the EU-ization of their respective legal orders1. These subjects are examined from several perspectives. We had the privilege of receiving contributions from leading practitioners and scholars from the countries concerned, from EU highranking officials, from prominent specialists in EU external relations law, and from young and talented researchers. We wish to thank them all here for their invaluable insights. We are moreover deeply indebted to Marise Cremona (EUI, Law Department, EUI) for her inspiring advice and encouragement, as well as to Ramon Marimon, Karin Tilmans, Lotte Holm, Alyson Price and Susan Garvin (Max Weber Programme, EUI) for their unflinching support throughout this project. A word is perhaps needed on the propriety and usefulness of the research concept embodied in this publication. Does it make sense to compare the integration models and experiences of countries as different as Norway, Russia, Switzerland, and Ukraine? Needless to say, this list of four evokes a staggering diversity of political, social, cultural, and economic conditions, and at least as great a diversity of approaches to European integration. Still, we would argue that such diversity only makes comparisons more meaningful. Indeed, while the particularities and idiosyncratic elements of each "model" of integration are fully displayed in the present volume, common themes and preoccupations run through the pages of every contribution: the difficulty in conceptualizing the finalité and essence of integration, which is evident in the EU today but which is greatly amplified for non-EU countries; the asymmetries and tradeoffs between integration and autonomy that are inherent in any attempt to participate in European integration from outside; the alteration of deeply seated legal concepts, and concepts about the law, that are already observable in the most integrated of the non-EU countries concerned. These issues are not transient or coincidental: they are inextricably bound up with the integration of non-EU countries in the EU project. By publishing this collection, we make no claim to have dealt with them in an exhaustive, still less in a definitive manner. Our ambition is more modest: to highlight the relevance of these themes, to place them more firmly on the scientific agenda, and to provide a stimulating basis for future research and reflection. ; Foreword Ramon Marimon 1 Introduction Francesco Maiani, Roman Petrov and Ekaterina Mouliarova 3 I. The European Neighbourhood Policy and Ukraine's European Ambitions Marise Cremona: The European Neighbourhood Policy as a Framework for Modernization 5 Bart Van Vooren: The Hybrid Legal Nature of the European Neighbourhood Policy 17 Viktor Muraviov: The Impact of the EU Acquis and Values on the Internal Legal Order of Ukraine 29 Roman Petrov: The New EU-Ukraine Enhanced Agreement versus the EUUkraine Partnership and Cooperation Agreement: Transitional Path or Final Destination? 39 II. The EU-Russia "Strategic Partnership" Olga Potemkina and Nikolay Kaveshnikov: EU and Russia in Search of Strategic Partnership 47 Aaron Matta : Updating the EU-Russia Legal Approximation Process: Problems and Dilemmas 59 Paul Kalinichencko: Problems and Perspectives on Modernizing the Legal Background to the EU-Russia Strategic Partnership 71 III. The EEA Model and Norway's Legal Traditions Karin Bruzelius: The Impact of EU Values on Third Countries' National Legal Orders: EU Law as a Point of Reference in the Norwegian Legal System 81 Tor-Inge Harbo: The EEA and Norway: A Case of Constitutional Pluralism 91 IV. The Swiss "Bilateral Way" to Integration Andrés Delgado Casteleiro: Relations Between the European Union and Switzerland: a Laboratory for EU External Relations? 103 Francesco Maiani: Legal Europeanization as Legal Transformation: Some Insights from Swiss "Outer Europe" 111 René Schwok: Towards a Framework Agreement in the Context of New Bilateral Agreements between Switzerland and the European Union 125 Concluding Remarks 137 Marc Franco Contributors 139
This work aims to give the reader a holistic introduction to Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), an asset category which has recently experienced both popularity and criticism. Collateralized Debt Obligations represent a subset of asset-backed securities. As opposed to classical types of asset-backed-securities like mortgage-backed securities or credit card debt-backed securities, a Collateralized Debt Obligation is a vehicle transforming bank loans or commercial paper into tranches of traded securities. While Collateralized Debt Obligations have been an established part of the U.S. fixed income market, it was only recently that academics showed interest in this asset category. From an asset pricing standpoint, CDOs represent a challenge as credit risk from a heterogeneous pool is passed through to tranches. Hence, asset pricing models have to account for expected defaults and default correlation on the one hand while incorporating the structural support the CDO is offering to the debt tranches on the other. Also, regulatory agencies such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision have increasingly covered CDOs and their use in credit risk management, thus further stimulating interest in this asset category. The report is mainly organized in three parts. The first part presents the basic ideas of Collateralized Debt Obligation as well as their structure and principal economics. Part II is the core of the report focusing on the aforementioned asset pricing problem and presenting various models to cope with it. Finally, the third part presents some of the multifaceted applications of Collateral Debt Obligations and concludes with an outlook for the product category. Here, special focus is laid on the European and German market as this is seen as a major area for growth.Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: Index of figuresv Index of tablesvi Prefacevii 1.INTRODUCTION1 1.1Definitions1 1.2Mathematical Classification2 1.3Purpose and Relevance of CDOs4 1.4Motivation and Aim of the Study6 2.STRUCTURE AND DESIGN OF CDOS8 2.1Underlying Assets9 2.2Tranches10 2.3Purpose11 2.3.1Risk Transfer11 2.3.2Credit Risk Pricing Arbitrage11 2.4Credit Structure13 2.4.1Market Value Structure13 2.4.2Cash Flow Structure13 2.5Summary and Typical CDO Structures15 3.RATIONALE AND ECONOMIC FEATURES18 3.1Incentives to enter CDO Contracts19 3.1.1Comparative Advantages in Holding Specific Risks19 3.1.2Incentives for Equity Holders19 3.1.3Incentives for Debt Holders20 3.2Results of Imperfections inherent to CDO Contracts22 3.2.1Adverse Selection22 3.2.2Moral Hazard26 4.PRICING OF COLLATERALIZED DEBT OBLIGATIONS28 4.1Multi-obligor Default Models30 4.1.1Importance of Correlation in Pricing Models30 4.1.2Diversity Scores32 4.1.3Infectious Defaults33 4.1.4Default Intensity Models37 4.1.5Modeling Dependent Defaults with Copulas41 4.2Recovery Risk44 4.3Risk-neutral Transformation46 4.4Pricing in default intensity models47 4.5Pricing Example in Default Intensity Models49 4.5.1Collateral Pool49 4.5.2Sinking-fund Tranches50 4.5.3Prioritization Schemes50 4.5.4Simulation and Discussion53 4.6Alternative Pricing Model: Loss Cascades58 4.6.1Loss Distribution in the Collateral Portfolio58 4.6.2Loss Distribution in the CDO Tranches60 4.6.3Simulation and Pricing Results60 4.7Approximate CDO Pricing64 4.7.1Monte-Carlo Simulation64 4.7.2Reduced Form CDO Valuation66 5.RATING OF COLLATERALIZED DEBT OBLIGATIONS68 5.1Assessment of the Collateral Credit Quality70 5.1.1Default Rates and Severity70 5.1.2Pool Diversity71 5.1.3Credit Enhancement levels71 5.2Assessment of the Legal Structures and the Parties Involved73 5.3Assessment of Pool Administration74 5.4Rating Agency-Specific Differences76 5.4.1Moody's Investors Service76 5.4.2Standard and Poor's77 5.4.3Fitch IBCA77 6.APPLICATIONS OF CDOS79 6.1Credit Risk Management80 6.1.1Credit Risk Management Strategies80 6.1.2CDOs in Active Credit Portfolio Management81 6.1.3CDOs as Reinsurance Instruments82 6.1.4Comparative Advantages of CDOs83 6.2Balance Sheet Management and Regulatory Capital Relief84 6.3CDOs as a Funding Source88 6.4High Yield Fixed-Income Investment89 6.5Arbitrage and Equity Tranche Speculation92 7.OUTLOOK FOR CDOS IN EUROPE AND GERMANY94 7.1The European Asset-Backed Security Market95 7.2The German CDO market 2000-200297 7.3Regulatory Issues99 7.4Economic Drivers for the German CDO Market101 8.CONCLUDING REMARKS103 9.REFERENCES106 10.APPENDIX112 10.1Legal and Economic CDO Transaction Structure113 10.2Glossary of Terms114 INDEX116Textprobe:Text Sample: Chapter 5.1.1, Default Rates and Severity: A starting point for assessing the credit quality of the collateral pool is the rating of its assets. However, such ratings may be unavailable for individual bank loans. The difficulty of quantifying the credit quality of the commercial loans to be included in a CDO transaction has proved to be a major impediment to obtaining an acceptable rating for purely CLO transactions. In CBO transactions, which have structures that are virtually identical to those of CLOs, yet the underlying bonds collateralizing the CBO obligations usually have pre-existing credit ratings, which permit the rating agencies to analyze the proposed CBO structure by reference to the known ratings. In contrast, commercial loans are not generally rated by the rating agencies, and the task of assessing the credit quality of a large portfolio on a loan-by-loan basis can be very cumbersome. One approach to this problem is the attempt to concatenate the lender's internal credit rating system and loan underwriting criteria to the rating agency's rating. While the initial installment of such a correlation pattern is time-consuming, the rating process on further transactions a single lender issues should be significantly simpler. Another alternative to a loan-by-loan evaluation is the actuarial analysis on a portfolio. This actuarial approach requires extensive information about payment, delinquency, default and recovery characteristics over time for a fairly homogeneous product type, preferably originated or serviced by a single bank or company. This seems currently feasible with large European CDOs as the recent European trend is towards very large CDO transactions from a single lender as discussed in Herrmann and Tierney. In applying this approach, rating agencies apply their own historical data to the default rate and recovery rate factors in the following well-known equation: Expected Loss = Default Probability Loss Given Default. However, rating agencies still have to solve the problem that data on default probability and recovery rates are clustered according to the credit ratings and relative seniority, which again forces the evaluator to classify unrated debt in consonance with the established categories. Pool Diversity: As discussed in section 4.1.1 correlation is a major factor in evaluating CDOs as its ability to serve senior tranches is especially sensitive towards default correlation in the collateral pool. Concentrations of loans with borrowers in the same or related industries or borrowers in the same geographic area are viewed as increasing the risk of a portfolio, and usually result in rating agencies downgrading the CDO tranches or demanding higher levels of credit enhancement. Generally speaking, the adverse impact of concentrations of loan types is decreased by diversification of the loan portfolio, which may be achieved by increasing the portfolio size or decreasing the average size of a loan. All the rating agencies use cash flow models to stress test the collateral pool and its ability to service outstanding debt under a variety of economic, interest rate, default and loss scenarios. In addition to those tests, Moody's has established its diversity score based on the binominal expansion method which is discussed in section 4.1.2. Despite its lack of deep theoretical foundations it has become a standard metric in evaluating CDOs and is typically being referred to in the prospectus accompanying the initial offering. Credit Enhancement Levels: Credit enhancement levels represent a means of ensuring that mezzanine and senior tranches may be served from the cash flow derived from the collateral portfolio. Based on the aforementioned analysis of credit quality, expected loss and pool diversity, the rating agencies set credit enhancement levels required for senior and mezzanine classes to achieve the desired rating. This is based on the level of losses that a pool can sustain while continuing to service rated debt issues. The lower the credit quality of the collateral and the higher the desired rating, the larger the required credit enhancement. For example, for a diversified pool of B-rated collateral, the base case default rate for Moody's is 31.8%. Assuming a conservative recovery rate of 30% the expected loss is 22.3%. But to obtain a target rating of Aa2, Moody's analysis shows the rated class must be able to survive a 39% loss rate or 55.7% default rate on the collateral without default of the securities.
Приведена информация об истории возникновения и развития Ботанического сада Тверского университета (ТвГУ), его структуре, основных экспозициях и фондовых коллекциях, проводимой учебно-просветительской и научно-исследовательской работе. В настоящее время на территории сада представлены 350 видов деревьев и кустарников и более 2 000 травянистых растений. Созданы 8 экспозиций и 6 фондовых коллекций. По числу представленных таксонов коллекция ирисовых превосходит все аналогичные коллекции ботанических садов России и СНГ. Фондовая коллекция редких и исчезающих растений Тверской области объединяет 118 видов сосудистых растений и 4 вида мохообразных. В гербарии Ботанического сада ТвГУ хранится около 4 350 образцов. Ботанический cад регулярно выпускает каталог семян. Сад проводит научно-исследовательскую работу по следующим направлениям: «Изучение флоры Тверской области», «Интродукция как способ сохранения биоразнообразия», «Интродукция представителей семейства Iridaceae и перспективы их использования в декоративном цветоводстве средней России», «Биоморфология и фенология растений-интродуцентов». Запланировано широкомасштабное испытание редких и исчезающих растений средней России. Предполагается создание компьютерных баз данных, контакты с отечественными и зарубежными ботаническими садами. ; The Botanic Garden of Tver State University is situated at the meeting place of the Volga and Tvertza rivers. It is one of the main green spaces of Tver. The history of the Garden goes back to 1879. It was planted by the merchant Ilya Bobrov at the former territory of Otroch monastery. After the October Revolution the Garden became national property and was used as a leisure center. The main planting occurred between 1938 and 1941 but a great number of plants disappeared during World War II. Since 1949 the Botanic Garden had been reconstructed under the supervision of M. Nevsky, a well-known Russia botanist. Since then the main objectives of the Garden were to promote community awareness and knowledge of plants and to stress the importance of their conservation. In 1989 the Botanic Garden has become an integral part of Tver State University. In the course of its long history the Botanic Garden of Tver State University has developed into a unique institution valuable for science, culture and leisure. It is the only Botanic Garden in the upper reaches of the Volga River. The Botanic Garden has the sectors of «Dendrology», «Wild Flora», «Ornamental Flower Gardenin» and «Herbarium». At present the Botanic Garden of Tver State University has a collection of 350 species of trees and shrubs and 2 000 species of herbaceous plants. Plants grown in the open air are distributed according to natural ecological zones: the Far East, Europe and North America. The Botanic Garden has a number of floristic expositions. The exposition of steppe flora, numbering 135 species, is the only one in the northern part of Russia. The most part of the exhibited plants are collected in their natural habitats. The exposition presents species from the northern area populations and from the isolated populations. Systematic exposition presents more then 260 species of 42 families. This exposition gives a basic notion about morphological and taxonomic variety within a plant family. The exposition is of great value for educational purposes. The Subtropic flora exposition demonstrates more than 350 species of such plant families as Araceae (about 50 species), Orchidaceae (about 20 species), Polypodiaceae (about 30 species), Palmaceae (15 species), Bromeliaceae (10 species), Agavaceae (10 species), Liliaceae s.l. (10 species). The exposition «Gatesway to Staritza» is being set up. It will present rare and endangered vascular and bryophyte flora of various ecological zones of the upper riches of the Volga river: Salvia glutinosa, Laserpitium latifolium, Diplazium sibiricum, Gymnocarpium robertianum, Crepis sibirica, Gentiana cruciata, etc. The exposition will also include the collection of calcephiles. The exposition «Valdai» will immitate a unique ecological complex of Valdaiskaya highland: the flora of lichen woods and green moss pinewoods, rare and endangered plants of latifolious woods and shadowy moist ravines and plants found in the open slopes. Tver Botanic Garden has six fond collections: «Rare and endangered plants of Tverskaya oblast», «Irises of various ecological zones», «Ornamental Coniferals», «Ericaceae family», «Liliaceae family». The fond collection of Iridaceae family species is the richest one in Russia and the countries of the CIS. It presents 87 species, 6 tribes and 30 genera from Africa and Central America. The collection serves as a base for introduction experiments and the study of the structural and rythmological features of Iridaceae family and its ontogenesis. The results of the introduction experiment are published (a candidate thesis and 11 articles). The fond collection of Iridaceae family also includes the collection of wild irises (98 species and varieties) and hybrid varieties of gladioluses (50 varieties). The fond collection of rare and endangered plants of Tverskaya oblast numbers 118 species of vascular plants and 4 species of bryophytes. Much attention is given to Orchidaceae family (10 species, including Orchis militaris, Cyprepedium calceolus, Epipactis atrorubens), vascular cryptogams (14 species of Pteropsida class, including Eusporangia ferns Botrychium lunaria, Ophioglossum vulgatum and relict species Diplazium sibiricum, Cystopteris sudetica, Gymnocarpium robertianum). Diphasiastrum tristachyum of Licopodiales order has been selected for introduction experiments. The collection presents various ecological groups: the flora of mineratrophic spring-water marshes and the flora of the sandbanks of oligotrophic lakes. The Botanic Garden has begun an experiment on introduction of rare and endangered bryophytes. The collection served as a base for the research into introduction as a means of biodiversity conservation. The fond collection of ornamental coniferals has 80 species and forms. Special attention is paid to the species of the following genera: Thuja, Juniperus, Picea, and Chamaecyparis. The wild representatives of these taxons are under introduction experiments. The herbarium of Tver Botanic Garden presents 4 350 representatives of the flora of Tverskaya, Smolenskaya, Pskovskara, Leningradskaya and Moskovskaya oblast, collected by A. Khokhryakov. Herbarium collection of introducted plants numbers 220 species. The herbarium is being constantly enriched. The Botanic Gardens has a rich seed fund. It is constantly replenished. The seed catalogue is published regularly and sent to botanical institutions both in Russia and abroad. Tver Botanical Garden is always ready to exchange its seed in living material. The expositions of the Garden are extensively employed into the educational process of Tver State University and other educational institutions of the region. Tver Botanic Garden offers wide-ranging programmes of courses, visits, opened days, public lectures and materials and provide various activities for school children and students. Since 1990 numerous expeditions have been organized with the aim to replenish the seed bank and the living plant collection. The expeditions allowed to collect floristic material from various region of Tverskaya oblast and to set up a collection of rare and endangered plants of the region. The collected material is carefully listed. The lists of vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and basidial macromycets have already been published. Since 1999 Tver Botanic Garden has begun to work on the project «Introduction as a Means of Biodiversity Conservation». It will include a wide-scale experiment on introduction of rare and endangered plant species of Middle Russia. The project is intended to develop a scientifically valid theory of introduction and re-introduction. Special attention will be paid to difficult-to-introduct species and those taxones which have never been studied in culture: calciphyles, the flora of mineratrophic marshes and sandbanks of oligotrophic lakes, and rare and endangered bryophytes. Alongside with research work, Tver Botanic Garden is conducting the research on the problems of introduction of Iridaceae family and perspective of the introduction for ornamental flower gardening. The new research on biomorphology and phenology of introducted plants has just begun. The computer database on the flora of Tverskaya oblast is being set up. It will include the lists of rare and endangered plants of the region and information on phenology of introducted plants. Tver Botanic Garden is currently looking for international partners who`ll be interested in a long-term and mutually advantageous collaboration.
Part six of an interview with educators in the Leominster, Massachusetts area. Topics include: How family time and family activities have changed over time. How families stressed and supported education. ; 1 SPEAKER 1: … was a decision that had to be made. And I'm glad that my mother – my father too, but my mother especially – was so determined that I was going to have an education regardless of where we were, that no obstacle would be insurmountable. And it was decided that, yes, I would not work. I would go to school. And only after I had become settled, I would have a part-time job, which I did working at [unintelligible - 00:00:39] markets after school. But the idea was that education was paramount. I know that one of my sisters started higher education in Italy. She went to… at that time, the school was run by sisters in a town called Alba in Piedmont. And the time came when the sisters, the good sisters said, "The situation here in Italy is such that we cannot guarantee her safety, so we're sending her home." And that was the end of her education. But, my sister too did well. She was able to continue on her own. And, she got to be a chemist to a major paint manufacturer in Europe. And right now, we envy her for her pension. She has one of the best pensions of anybody. And that kind of money she can keep for her son, who is about 45 now, in some luxuries which many Italians cannot afford. But education has always been the kind of thing to strive for, even if it means that you have to… going to debt for, and, if you have to forgo immediate gains for long-term results. In a way, I'm glad that my family decided to do that, that kind of thing for me. And in another way, would I be happier to sit down and not have all these talks about world concerns in my mind? Would I be happier if I would sit in front of a television, sit and relax, have a beer? SPEAKER 2: [Laughter]. SPEAKER 1: I don't know. I don't know. I think once you open the door and see what's there, it's very difficult to shut and say, "Wow, I'm going to be 2 oblivious to this, oblivious to that. Let them solve their own problems. I got mine. That's enough to keep me thinking." But… SPEAKER 3: [Unintelligible - 00:02:59]. SPEAKER 4: He makes a very good point. Today, over and over and over, we keep hearing about wars and stuff. Remember when we were kids you had one radio and once a day, everybody sat down and listened to what's happening in [unintelligible - 00:03:17] or what was happening in [unintelligible -- 00:03:19], and… SPEAKER 2: And no pictures. SPEAKER 4: No pictures. Once a day… and you listen to the results of the election at 1 o'clock in the morning. You're sitting next to the radio, but that was family. Something that you did together, everybody did together. Everybody sat around and listened. Not anymore. SPEAKER 2: Nope. We used to have all the… like [unintelligible - 00:03:39] radio theater was one. And it would literally be a movie that they were speaking of… SPEAKER 4: Oh, sure. SPEAKER 2: … through on the radio. And then, the others were all comedy programs. SPEAKER 4: Do you remember Sunday nights? SPEAKER 2: Boy, I'm hoping all the rest of the… SPEAKER 4: [Unintelligible - 00:04:01] baby sitcoms and "The Shadow"? SPEAKER 1: The Shadow. SPEAKER 2: I remember being in a class at Fitchburg State. I've forgotten what. Just some psychology class. And I was the only one in the room, including the instructor that know what life was like without TV. [Laughs] And so, you know, you are ancient in a lot of ways. They couldn't believe that you could live without TV. SPEAKER 4: [Joe Serafini] was the first Italian family in our neighborhood to have a TV. We would go watch wrestling and Howdy Doody. SPEAKER 2: Howdy Doody. [Laughs]3 SPEAKER 3: How big a screen? SPEAKER 1: Probably 8 inches. [Laughs] Probably 8 inches. SPEAKER 4: Oh, yeah. And his father owned a business so they were big time. SPEAKER 3: Can others of you give me examples how your family stressed education? Stressed that you should go on to school and not quit and get a job? SPEAKER 4: Oh, mine you know, is similar to Vincent's experience. My mother and father, as was very common at that time… whatever education my mother got, she got when she was here in Everett. When she went to Italy, I don't believe that she ended up in school. And my father would've probably gone to third grade. That was very common. The elementary schools that you know, Vinnie referred to, which they call [unintelligible - 00:05:47] I'm sure was pretty much the same throughout Italy because they were all government run, provided education through grade 5 although a lot of people did not make it through grade 5. After that, if you should get to secondary school, you have to show that you have some intellectual talents or your parents had money. There were examinations depending on the kind of school that you were going to. So universal education, as we think of it, was available through grade 5. That's if your parents wanted you to attend, because there were a lot of kids who did not, because their parents wanted them to tend the sheep in the fields or you know, help out at home. I don't recall… I was young, but I don't recall you know, children [unintelligible - 00:06:40] where anybody would come in to the house and say, "How come, you know, Pelino is not in school today? We know he's 6 years old. How come he's not registered for school?" There just wasn't that kind of follow through that, you know, that I could see. So you went to school because your parents wanted you to go to school. 4 And, you know, Vinnie is correct. Times were difficult. My father did not serve in the army. He was not physically able to, but he did end up in a German work camp. After Italy changed sides and joined the allies in 1943, then all of a sudden all the German troops that were in Italy were now in occupied territory. They were no longer in the territory of an ally. So a lot of the able bodied men were taken you know, to help with the German war effort. Then he mentioned Albania. That's where my father was taken to work camp. He escaped you know, came home. I had an uncle who was in the military. My father had served in the military in the 1930s, but then when he wanted to join back up you know, for the Second World War, he was not physically able to. But my uncle served in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Africa. He was captured at the very outset of the war and spent the whole time there. So, his family, my aunt and her two kids, you know, who lived in the same house with us, were very dependent as Joe said on you know, family, you know, helping each other. I mean, that's what you needed to do to you know, to survive. But from the time that the war ended, I was in school. My parents demanded that I go to school. After school, I did what everybody else did. We had a dozen sheep or so. And one of my older cousins who was out of school, you know, he's completed the fifth grade and was…/AT/mb
Экономический материализм после полемики конца XIX в. — Влияние Октябрьской революции на судьбы социологии в России. — Диалектизм марксистской социологии. — Г. В. Плеханов. — В. И. Ленин. — 77. П. Маслов. — И. А. Гредескул. — Историки-марксисты: М. Н. Покровский. — Я. А Рожков. — Главные систематизаторы теории экономического материализма: Н. И. Бухарин, И. П. Разумовский, С. Оранский и др. Главные пункты систематизации. ; Kareev N.I. ( 1850—1931 ) is one of the most remarkable figure in Russian sociology widely well-known not only in Russia but far away from it's boundaries. Today we should state that he has been forgotten during the soviet period. Bom in Moscow in nobleman's family he finished gimnasium with excellent degree and entered Moscow State University .He took courses with well-known professors in Russian history as M.S Kutorge, V.I. Gerie, $.M. Soloviev. In 1877—1878 he visited Paris where he conducted his famous research 'Peasant and peasant question in the last ф quarter of the 18th century'. He also is an author of great variety of works on different historical themes including ' History of Western Europe of New Time' (1892—1917) , 'History of French Revolution' ( 1924—1925 ). After coming back to Russia Kareev taught different disciplines at St Petersburg University but very soon he got his discharge for the serious linkages with student movement. He returned to the University only after 1905. With a group of political activists he tryed to prevent tragic events of the 9th of January, 1905 . Kareev was a member of Constitutional-Democratic party having started his political career in the first State Duma. After 1906 he gradually left political arena and devoted himself only to scientific work. Kareev's sociological theory has been mainly formed in the first half of 80-s of 19 century. He believed in it all his life. His theoretical findings were shown in his dissertation published in 1883. 'Nature of historical process and role of personality in historical development ' ( 1889 ) became a conseqent continuation of his dissertation which he himself considered as his best work. Kareev published a number of his sociological findings in 'Historical Phylosophical Etudes ' (1895),' Introduction to Sociology' (1897), 'General Principles of Sociology' (1919), 'Fundamental Principles of Russian Sociology' (1930) (the latter is still unpublished ). Kareev's sociological conception to a high degree emerged on the basis of traditional (in particular Conte's and Spenser's) sociological approaches and he gradually evolved their assumptions.His works bore deep influence from the French school of sociology,he was impressed by the early positivism.But he was too much occupied with details to appreciate or represent the idea that came to form a subjective approach in sociology. Kareev criticized Conte for his 'jump' from biology to psychology and sociology. He replaced Conte's individual psychology by the collective one. He also has foreseen many ideas of the direct Kant's followers as Vindelband, Rickert,Zimmel. In fact he created a school of subjective approach in Russian sociology. He began to study a broad range of human social life and developed a subjective historical method for collecting and analyizing of social facts. According to Kareev's point of view a society is an agglomeration of economical, political and judicial factors; but the crucial factor is intellectual (or spiritual) culture. In the effort to understand relationships between individuals and society sociologists should study the intersections of history,politics,economics, psychology focusing on the ways by which social forces shape individual and group behavior. Kareev found himself confronting with immensely expanding and increasingly restive marxisl theory. His scientific transformation occurred in the context of the Russian revolutions of economical cyrcles of inflation and depression and of a threat to social order from revolutionary ideologies. He escaped political repressions followed after the revolution of 1917. We suggest a unit 'Marxist Sociology' as a part of 'Fundamental Principles of Russian Sociology', the last Karcev's work finished in the end of 20-s .''Marxist Sociology ' is a critical review of marxist theory and an attempt to represent main ideas of Russian marxist sociologists without ' anger and prejudices '. Kareev showed differences between marxist, positivist ci.c. objective ) and subjective approaches in their interpretation of (1) how historical process occurs, and (2) what is the historical role of personality in producing of social change. Classical positivism ignores emotional and moral aspects of social behavior, one must study individuals in terms of their social context the idea of social forces determining individual behavior . The basic principal of sociology : how individuals live together in groups, by studying them scientifically Karcev presented the material with references to Conte's, Durkhcim's and Spenser's conceptions. Positivists believed that it was possible to study social reality systematically and objectively just as other scientists studied organisms, mind, the Earth and stars. Subjective approach concerned with individuals' own perception of their position in social structure. It's based on a personal feeling of affiliation to a given group. Individuals identify with other people , their beliefs, share similar positions, deal with personal awareness of their positions.Sociologist should observe not only material facts of people's life but all the lime keep in mind economical,political and specific psychological facts which arc as real as the material ones. During the beginning of the 20-th century in particular — after the Revolution of 1917 marxist sociological approach (in Lenin's interpretation) had a significant influence on social policy in Russia. Marxists put an emphasize on that what social relation between 223 humans were determined by struggle between classes. In particular a ruling class (which ШШ position is due to the ownership of and control on means of production) controls also though often in subtle ways the whole moral and intellectual life of people. That's why Karcev calls attention to the sharp paralysis of intellectual and spiritual life and a deep crisis of culture. According to marxist theory law and governments, art and literature, science and philosophy serve more or less directly the interests of a ruling class.Marxist arc considered as economical delerminists because they have been sure that social classes* is a result of unequal access to means of production. Class consciousness refers not only to people's perception of distinct class levels and shared interests based on common situation , it also refers to a heightened commitment and perception of class which usually leads class members to interact and to join efforts for realising collective goals. That is why individual role in the historical movement is greatly neglected. Kareev presented detailed analysis of the positions of a new generation of marxist — of so called legal marxists. He emphasized the role in that strategy development of N.A. Rozhkov, M.N. Pokrovsky, N.A. Andreev, F.V. Sulkov under the soviet time. He polemized with Lenin and Plckhanov as with the most notable figures of post-Marx period in Russia. Author made clear the differences between scientific position of (1) legal marxists, (2) independent historicans as Kluchevsky,Vinogradov, Vipper, Petrushevsky, Tafleand (3)those new marxisls who sistematized marxist theory in a new way (Bukharin, Rasumovsky, Oransky), Karcev supported an idea about two types of social evolution suggested by Conte and Spenser in sociology. 1) Spontaneous self-development 2) Creative development (A. Bergson). He underlined that sociology has to be positive science studying definite categories of phenomena in social reality without any methaphisics. We hope that the names like Karcev whenever again will come back to our historical memory and will be with us as one of the most important part of our Past. We suppose to continue publications of the less-known and unknown authors significantly contributed to our Russian culture.
SummaryThe current debate on expanded economic cooperation in the Nordic countries has been going on for more than two years. The Prime Ministers of the four countries have met on at least ten occasions. The government officials have presented three extensive reports with concrete proposals. The Nordic Council has devoted the bulk of its last three sessions to this question. The Nordic daily press has produced thousands of editorials and a substantially larger number of news articles on the subject. The interest organizations have examined the concrete proposals and have criticized or commended them from their point of view. The political parties have list ell to and participated in the debate, made tactical moves, aggregated conflicting views and on the basis of these have formulated new standpoints. Less is known, however, about public opinion concerning the Nordek plans, but a couple of opinion polls in Denmark and Finland provide some indication.According to a Danish poll published in February 1969, 61 % of the respondents in a representative sample of the Danish population were positive toward an expanded economic cooperation among the Nordic countries, while only 5% were against it. In another poll presented in September the Same year, 43% of the respondents preferred Danish membership in the EEC along with Great Britain to a Nordic economic union. 26 % answered positively to the question of whether Denmark ought to join the EEC even if Great Britain did not. A larger proportion or 33% preferred a Nordic economic union under the condition that Britain did not join the EEC.Over half of the respondents in a Finnish opinion poll conducted at the end of January 1970 believed that Nordek would have predominantly positive effects, while 25% were of the opinion that the advantages and disadvantages were equal. Classifying the respondents according to party sympathies, the results were that 74% of the supporters of the Liberal People's party believed that the advantages were greater than the disadvantages. For the remaining parties, the figures were: 72% for the Swedish People's party, 69% for the coalition party, 55% for the Social Democrats, 49% for the Center party and 32% for the People's Democrats.The Nordic parliaments have debated the Nordek issue to a varying extent. The Danish Folketing and the Norwegian Starting have held several debates devoted especially to the market questions; the debates have opened with accounts given by government representatives concerning the negotiations. In the Finnish parliament and the Swedish Riksdag on the other hand, the Nordek plan has not been discussed to any great extent. So far in Finland, it has been discussed in parliament once (in December 1969), while in Sweden it has been dealt with on intermittent occasions but a special Nordek debate has not been arranged.The manner in which the governments have kept themselves informed of the view of the interest organizations has also varied in the four countries. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden the organizations have been urged to submit official comments. In Finland a formal procedure has been avoided and instead frequent informal contacts between the negotiating officials and representatives of the organizations have been relied upon. A system ‐ similar to that in Finland ‐ has also existed in the other three countries in addition to the official channels.The interest organizations strongly supporting Nordek have been a united Nordic trade union movement and the Federation of Swedish Industries. Criticism or outright rejections have been conveyed by the Danish Council of Industry, the Federation of Norwegian Industries, and the farmers' organizations in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Information about the attitudes of the Finnish organizations is not available.The majority of the political parties in the Nordic countries have backed Nordek. Among the clearly positive parties are the four Social Democratic parties, all the Liberal parties (except the Danish Liberals), the Conservative parties in Finland and Sweden, the Christian People's party in Norway and the Center party in Sweden. The Norwegian Center party and the Danish Conservatives have been more hesitant, although increasingly more positive with the passing of time. The Center party in Finland and rhe Liberals in Denmark have mainly expressed negative points of view. The People's Democrats/Communists and the Social Democratic League in Finland and the Conservative party in Norway have been the most vigorous critics of Nordek.The Swedish government, as far as one can tell, has been united in its support of Nordek. In the remaining three countries, however, clear differences in opinions have been discernible between the Prime Ministers, who have been mainly positive, and individual ministers who have been negative. The Danish Prime Minister Baunsgaard has not always shared the views of the Minister of Market Affairs, Nyboe Andersen, on Nordek; and on several occasions statements by Foreign Minister Karjalainen have differed from the views expressed by the Finnish Prime Minister Koivisto. In Norway differences in opinion between Prime Minister Borten and Minister of Trade Willoch have been markedly noticeable.The Nordek debate has centered around five issues: (1) the Nordic customs union and the relations to the EEC, (2) agriculture, (3) fishery policy, (4) institutional arrangements, (5) the construction and size of the funds and the investment bank. The four countries have attached varying weight to specific problems. The Danes have often emphasized the importance of extensive cooperation in agriculture, have desired strong and nationally independent organs of cooperation, have advocated suspension of tariffs on certain industrial goods for an unlimited period of time, and have demanded as an absolute prerequisite for participating in the Nordek cooperation that it be compatible with future membership in the EEC. The Finns have wanted to retain their extensive trade with Eastern Europe and have demanded that consideration be given to their special agricultural problems, and have underlined their lack of interest in both EEC membership and association. The Norwegians have also demanded tariff suspensions for an unlimited period for certain goods, have put forward special requests concerning fisheries, and have stressed the importance of compatibility between the Nordic cooperation and EEC membership. The customs union has been the major Swedish demand during the negotiations.The Nordek plans were brought up quite unexpectedly by Denmark, but even subsequently the negotiations have not been void of dramatic incidents. Most frequently the unexpected moves have come from Finland. Mr. Koivisto unexpectedly pleased the other Nordic Prime Ministers through his surprisingly positive statement in Oslo in October 1968 on the plan:; for economic cooperation between the Nordic countries. But four months later, President Keklionen during a talk with Prime Minister Erlander in Helsinki expressed the Finnish opinion as being that the tempo of the negotiations had become too fast, The real surprise did not occur, however, until the beginning of December 1969 when Mr. Koivisto announced that the planned Prime Minister meeting in Turku was called off. A month and a half later the Finnish government gave the go ahead sign to continue the substantive negotiations aiming at a settlement at the session of the Nordic Council in Reykjavik. The Finnish conditions for proceeding with the negotiations included clear reservations concerning the EEC. The Nordic Prime Ministers agreed in Reykjavik on a time table for signing the Treaty, which meant that this would occur around 7 March 1970. Subsequently the Nordic parliaments were to ratify the Treaty during the spring session the same year. On 24 March the Finnish government, however, announced that it could not sign the Treaty because of the other three countries' active interest in the EEC. Instead the matter was passed on to the new government to be formed after the election. The following day Foreign Minister Karjalainen expressed doubts as to whether Nordek could at all be carried out before the end of 1970. Once again external forces have played a decisive role in formulating the market policy of the four countries. Danish and Norwegian hopes of starting negotiations soon with the EEC combined with the Finnish reservations made in January and March 1970 make it difficult to judge the prospects of Nordek being implemented. Nordek cannot be said with certainty to be a fact until the ratification documents are safely‐ in the custody of the Foreign Ministries of the four countries. March 25, 1970
RésuméPLANIFICATION DANS LES RÉGIONS AGRICOLES: A. K. CONTANDSENaturellement, les régions à prépondérance agricole vont perdre en étendue dans une Europe fortement peuplée: il en restera pourtant suffisamment, dans les années à venir, pour qu'il vaille de leur consacrer une étude spédale.A titre d'exemple, considérons le cas des IJsselmeerpolders aux Pays‐Bas. Ils offrent l'image d'une région agricole proche d'une représentation idéale. Il n'y subsiste rien du passé qui puisse faire obstacle á la considération des problèmes qui découlent de la situation présente. Or on s'aperçoit maintenant que, bien que jouissant de revenus convenables, les habitants y sont, à divers points de me, peu satisfaits de leurs conditions de vie. La viabilité des villages demeure inférieure au niveau souhaité, les ouvriers agricoles se sentent en état d'infériorité par rapport aux ouvriers industriels, la mécanisation croissante des exploitations rend difficile l'existence des familles agricoles. Il est malaisé de trouver dans le plan de colonisation existant des voies de solution aux problèmes résultant de ces conditions de vie et qui concernent toute la population.La réction des planitcatcurs devant ces résultats d'enquête se perçoit dans la conception du plan pour le polder à aménager ensuite dans l'IJsselmeer. On y construira moins de villages, ce qui revient à une extension de l'échelle de dimensions; la dimension minimum de l'exploitation sera plus élevée. En fait il ne s'agit guère que d'une adaptation aux changements observés; ce n'est pas une intervention radicale.Cela tient au fait que le planificateur doit travailler d'après une idée directrice (»Leitbild«), une conception générde de I'état de choses vers lequel il faut tendre. C'est sur la base de ce seul »Leitbild« qu'il peut appréier quels changements sont fonctionnels et quels autres ne le sont pas et dire par conséquent ce qui doit être encourageé, écarté, modifié ou neutralisé. Ce »Leitbild« n'est pas de lui‐même rationnel, il provient d'une subjectivité collective, d'un commun accord existant dans un état de culture déterminé sur certains principes généraux. Pour une part le planificateur ne peut influencer ce »Leitbild«, il doit l'accepter, mais, au niveau d'une sousculture, il jouit d'une certaine latitude pour toucher à des éléments culturels.Par conséquent, dans le nouveau polder, certaines conditions faisant partie du »Leitbild« ont dûêtre acceptées par le planificateur comme un donnééchappant à la discussion. La culture du nouveau territoire devait être en harmonie avec la culture néerlandaise considérée globalement, les fermes devaient être des exploitations individuelles à caractère nettement familial. Dans cette optique, il était nécessaire de créer des villages.La recherche soaologique relative aux régions rurales fait émerger principalement deux problèmes: l'urbanisation et le sous‐développement des campagnes. Si l'on place ces deux problèmes dans la ligne d'un »(folk‐urban continuum« ils se situent aux deux extrêmes. Une telle perspective ne laisse aucune place à un domaine agraire qui sous son aspect physique, ne serait aucunement atteint par la ville, tout en étant habité par des hommes »modernesa«. Dans une perspective de »continuum rural‐urbain« un tel domaine se trouvera tout à fait à gauche tandis qu'il figurera à droite dans une perspective de »continuum traditionnel‐moderne«; dans le dernier cas la vie de groupe, au lieu de son expression physique, en porte l'empreinte. Travailler en fonction de notions bipolaires c'est courir le risque de ne considérer que superficiellement les régions agraires dont il s'agit. Aménageurs et sociologues ne touchent pas à ces domaines, soucieux qu'ils sont de tenter d'intégrer les mondes urbain et rural en un tout harmonieux. Ces domaines n'appartiennent pas davantage à la sphère d'intérêt de ceux que préoccupe le développement économique et social des régions sous‐développées: ces régions sont en effet déjè relativement prospères. Il faudrait cependant comprendre que le seul fait d'atteindre un stade de développement moderne suscitera de nouveaux besoins de transformations. Dans une région agricole prospère, à mentalité urbaine, existera une discordance entre l'équipement matériel et les aspirations qu'on éprouve à ce sujet. Villages trop petits et systèmes d'exploitation agricole feront obstacle à un développement de type urbain. La viabilité du monde rural en sera donc diminuée.Avec un »Leitbild« différent, il eût été possible de concentrer la population dans des centres urbains, mais toute la structure eût alors dûêtre adaptée à ce changement fondamental.Il apparaît qu' à partir d'un certain niveau de bien‐être les développements ne sont pas toujours logiques ni fatalement déterminés, mais dépendent en partie de choix que l'on fait. La direction choisie dans le planning dépend pour une large part du »Leitbild«.Même avec un »Leitbild« bien clair, il n'est pas possible de présenter des formules de planning applicables partout. Des situations spécifiques, de nature historique et géographique, compliquent habituellement les daires beaucoup plus que ce ne fut le cas dans les IJsselmeerpolders.Toutefois cet exemple montre clairement que dans les régions agricoles où, à court terme, on ne peut escompter aucun accroisement d'activité non agricole, et oú la population est marquée d'une mentalité urbaine, il se pose un problème social d'un caractére particulier, qui appelle toute l'attention du planificateur.KurzfassungPLANUNG IN LAND WIRTSCHAFTLICHES GEBIETEN VON A. K. CONSTANDSEIn der Sozialforschung über Fragen des in Wandlung begriffenen flachen Landes rücken deuttich zwei Hauptptobleme in den Vordergrund: Die Verstädterung des flachen Landes und die Rückständigkeit. Ordnet man diese beiden Probleme in ein 'folk‐urban continuum' ein, dann stehen sie an den entgegengesetzten Enden. In einem solchen continuum ist jedoch keine Stelle für ein Agrargebiet vorgesehen, das physisch nicht von der Stadt berührt wird, dennoch aber von modernen Menschen bevölkert ist. Ein solches Gebiet ist auf einem 'rural‐urban continuum' ganz links zu finden, auf einem 'traditional‐modern continuum' hngegen ganz rechts, weil nun auf das Gruppenleben der Nachdruck gelegt wird, statt auf seine physischen Auszerungsformen. Das Arbeiten mit polaren Begriffen bringt die Gefahr mit sich, dasz die erwähnten Agrargebiete zu stark vernachlässigt werden. Diese Gebiete werden nicht von den Planern und Sozialforschern beachtet, die sich mit den Bestrebungen zur Integration der städtischen und agraren Welt in ein harmonisch funktionìerendes Ganzes beschätigen. Ebenso wenig liegen sie im Interessenbereich derjenigen, die sich mit den Bemuhungen um eine sozìale und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung rückständiger Gebiete beschäftigen, weil die fraglichen Gebiete bereits wohlhabend sind. Man musz sich jedoch darüber im klaren sein, dasz das Moderne selbst neue Bedürfnisse nach Veränderungen wecken wird, sobald das moderne Stadium erreicht ist. In einem wohlhabenden, geistig verstädtenen Agrargebiet wird eine Diskrepanz vorhanden sein zwischen der materiellen Ausstattung und den Vorstellungen, die die Menschen darüber besitzen. Die Dörfer werden dort zu klein sein, die agraren Betriebssysteme werden die Entwicklung zu einer städtischen Lebensweise behindern. Der Lebenswert des flachen Landes wird dann abnehmen.Natürlich werden die vorwiegend agraren Gebiete im dicht bevölkerten Europa der Fläche nach abnehmen; doch werden sie auch in der Zukunft noch grosz genug bleiben, um ihnen eine besondere Untersuchung zu widmen.Als Beispiel werden die niederländischen IJsselmeerpolders behandelt. Sie stellen ein modernes Agrargebiet dar, das dem idealen Vorbild nahe kommt. Es gibt keine Überbleibsel aus der Vergangenheit, die den Blick auf die Probleme trüben könnten, die sich aus der gegenwärtigen Situation ergeben. Es zeigt sich nun, dasz die Bewohner, obwohl sie über ein angemessenen Einkommen verfügen, in verschiedener Hinsicht mit ihren Lebensverhältnissen unzufrieden sind. Der Lebenswert der Dörfer liegt unter dem envünschten Stand, die Landarbeiter fühlen sich dem Industriearbeiter unterlegen, die zunehmende Mechanisierung des landwirtschaftlichen Betriebes erschwert die Existenz der bäuerlichen Familien. Im Rahmen der vorhandenen Siedlungsstruktur ist es nicht einfach, eine Lösung für diese Verhätnisse zu finden, die für die Bevölkerung selbst recht problematisch sind.Die Reaktion der Planer auf diese Untersuchungsergebnisse kann aus der Planung für den nächsten Polder im IJsselmeer entnommen werden. Es werden dort weniger Dörfer gebaut werden, was einer neuerlichen Maszstabsvergröszerung entspricht; die Mindestgrösze der Betriebe soll angehoben werden. Praktisch ist dies nicht viel mehr als eine Anpassung an die festgestellten Veränderungen; es ist jedenfalls kein radikaler Eingriff.Der Grund dafür ist, dasz der Planer mit einem 'Leitbild' arbeiten musz, einer allgemeinen Vorstellung über den Zustand, der anzustreben ist. Allein anhand dieses Leitbildes kann er beurteilen, welche Entwicklungen funktional und disfunktional sind und was infolgedessen gefördert und was bekämpft, umgebildet oder neutralisiert werden musz. Dieses Leitbild ist an sich nicht rational; es ist aus einer kollektiven Subjektivität abgeleitet, einer bestimmten Übereinstimmung, die man in einer Kultur über allgemeine Grundsätze besitzt. Zu einem Teil kann der Planer dieses Leitbild nicht beeinflussen; er musz es hinnehmen, aber ad einer subkulturellen Ebene hat er einen gewissen Spielraum, innerhalb dessen er snit Kulturelementen manipulieren kann.Daher muszten in den neuen Poldern bestimmte Voraussetzungen, die zum Leitbild gehoren, von den Planern als Daten übernommen werden, die auszerhalb jeder Diskussion standen. Die Kultur des neuen Gebietes muszte sich harmonisch in die gesamtniederländische Kultur einpassen, die Bauernhöfe muszten individuell gefühtte Betriebe sein mit dem Schwergewicht auf dem Familienbetrieb. Von diesem Standpunkt aus war die Gründung kleiner Dörfer eine Notwendigkeit.Wäre das Leitbild ein anderes gewesen, dam hätte die Möglichkeit bestanden, die Bevölkerung in städtische Zentren zu konzentrieren; aber dann hätte auch die gesamte Struktur dieser fundamentalen Änderung angepaszt werden müssen.Es zeigt sich, dasz oberhalb eines gewissen Niveaus die Entwicklungen nicht immer logisch und unabünderlich bestimrnt sind, sondern dasz síe zum Ted von der getroffenen Wahl abhähgig sind. Die Richtung, die in der Planung eingeschlagen wird, hängt zu einem guten Teil vom Leitbild ab.Selbst mit einem klaren Leitbild vor Augen ist es nicht möglich, der Planung Rezepte zu liefern, die überall verwendet werden können. Spezifische Situationen historischer und geographischer Art komplizieren die Dinge in der Regel viel mehr als es in den IJsselrneerpoldern der Fall ist.Nichtsdestoweniger zeigt das gewählte Beispiel deutlich, dasz in Agrargebieten, in denen eine Zunahme nichtagrarer Tätigkeit in absehbarer Zeit kaum zu erwarten ist, ein soziales Problem besonderen Charakters auftritt, ein Problem, das die volle Aufmerksamkeit der Planer verdient.
Speech by B.A. Alejandro Carrillo at the meeting that took place at the National Theater in the evening of July 27, 1936. The aforementiones speech is etitled "la situación del proletariado de los Estados Unidos" (the situation of the proletariat in the United States). The typed version was done by Gregorio Martínez Dorantes. Within the speech, Alejandro Carrillo makes a review of the history of the proletarian movement in the United States since the Civil War, that is since the second half of the nineteenth century. It was in 1886 that the American worker movement was getting ready to fight against bourgeoisie. Since 1900, it started the industrial organization and until 1925, it was carried out a true revolution. Then, European and American immigration begun as well as a capitalist period. In 1905, it was organized the organization Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary group that fights for worker rights and tries to isolate honest revolutionary activists from the rest of the workers. This seems to be a wrong way to address the problem since they are detached from the worker multitude. It is also in 1905 when the first economic crisis takes place causing salary reductions and readjustment of workers. In 1913, a new crisis was beginning but it could be avoided thanks to the First World War because the United Sates replaced industry and commerce in Europe. The American Socialist Party was founded by Eugenio List against war and participation of the United States in the war. At the same time, the American Labor Federation, the biggest worker organization in the country, supported the war because it favored the economy and since then, it was the main allied of financial capitalism. In 1919, it broke out a strike of steel workers and it begun a persecution against worker movements, which are bloodily repressed as it happened in the state of Washington during a strike in September 1, 1927. Two important leaders were assassinated, Sacco and Vanzetti. In 1929, during the great crisis of the New York Stock Exchange, the American worker movement entered a period of strikes that extended across the country, which was a glorious period for the proletarian. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office decided to confront and overcome the crisis. He offers to workers the right to organize in unions and to get rights collectively that cannot be accomplished because the big companies are carrying out a persecution against those who want to make use of these rights. The economic crisis gets worse and it arises a division within the American Labor Federation. It arises a group led by William Green, who is the group's president and friend with Morones and Calles. He has a fascist tendency. It arises another group led by John Louis, who is concern about the national situation and is leading the progressive movement. He forms a Workers Front, which fights for industrial organization of workers against the labor union of Green. Carrillo makes a comparison between industrial and labor unions. The latter are in disadvantage since there are many labor unions for each industry. Moreover, if a union begins a strike, the rest of the factory keeps working. Louis realized said issue and was convinced of the need to have industrial unions so they could give support and strength to the strikes. The Mexican Workers Confederation is connected to Louis, since Green for being friend with Morones and Calles did not want to know of it. Finally, he criticizes Morones for his statements in Washington affirming that he left Mexico because there was a fascist government and he was a revolutionary man. He says that the authentic worker movements condemn Calles and Morones, and that the Mexican Workers Confederation is attentive to the actions of the American worker movement, which is in a significant period of its fight. / Discurso pronunciado por el Lic. Alejandro Carrillo, en el mitin que tuvo lugar en el Teatro nacional la noche del 27 de julio de 1936, titulado "La situación del proletariado de los Estados Unidos"; la versión taquigráfica es de Gregorio Martínez Dorantes. En el discurso, Alejandro Carrillo hace una revisión de la historia del movimiento proletario en Estados Unidos desde la Guerra Civil, es decir, desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Es en 1886 cuando el movimiento obrero norteamericano se concientiza y se prepara para luchar contra la burguesía. A partir de 1900 se inicia la organización industrial y hasta 1925 se lleva a cabo una verdadera revolución; cuando se abrieron las puertas a la inmigración europea y americana, y se da en general un brillante periodo de desarrollo capitalista. Es en 1905 cuando se organiza el primer núcleo de lo que se conoce como Los Trabajadores Industriales del Mundo, agrupación revolucionaria que lucha por la causa obrera y que pretende aislar a los revolucionarios sinceros del resto de los trabajadores, errónea manera de enfocar el problema porque se desvincularon de la masa obrera. Es también en 1905 cuando ocurre la primera crisis económica con la consecuente reducción de salarios y reajustes de trabajadores. En 1913 se inició otra que se salvó gracias a la Primera Guerra Mundial, ya que Estados Unidos suplió a la industria y comercio europeos. Es contra la guerra y la participación de Estados Unidos en ella que se fundó el Partido Socialista Norteamericano por Eugenio List. A su vez, la Federación Americana del Trabajo, la mayor organización de trabajadores del país, apoyó la guerra porque favorecía la economía y es desde entonces la principal aliada del capitalismo financiero. En 1919 estalla la huelga del acero y una persecución contra los movimientos obreros reivindicadores del los derechos proletarios, que son reprimidos incluso sangrientamente como ocurrió en el estado de Washington durante la huelga general, dolorosamente reprimida el 1 de septiembre de 1927 en Boston, Masssachussetts, cuando son asesinados dos importantes líderes, Sacco y Vanzetti. En 1929 cuando la gran crisis, desencadenada por el ruidoso crack de la Bolsa de Valores de Nueva York, el movimiento obrero norteamericano entra en un periodo de huelgas que se extienden por todo el país, éste es un glorioso periodo para el proletariado. En 1933 llega a la Presidencia Franklin D. Roosevelt con su política del nuevo trato, decidido a afrontar y superar la crisis, y ofrece a los trabajadores el derecho de organizarse sindicalmente y de contratar colectivamente ofertas que no pueden cumplirse porque las grandes empresas inician una terrrible persecución en todo el país contra quienes deciden aprovechar estos derechos, y la crisis económica se agudiza hasta que en la Federación Americana del Trabajo surge una división; un grupo encabezado por William Green su presidente y compadre de Morones y Calles, de tendencias fascistas, y otro por John Louis, quien angustiado por la situación del país se pone al frente del movimiento progresista y forma un Frente Unico de Obreros que lucha por la organización industrial de los trabajadores contra la organización gremial de Green. Hace Carrillo una comparación entre los sindicatos industriales y los gremiales, estos últimos en desventaja porque son muchos los gremios que trabajan en cada industria y si entra a huelga un gremio el resto de la fábrica continúa trabajando; Louis se dio cuenta de ello y se convenció de la necesidad de contar con sindicatos industriales para darle mayor fuerza a la huelga. La Confederación de Trabajadores de México está vinculada con Louis, ya que Green por su amistad con Morones y Calles ni siquiera quiso recibirlos. Por último critica a Morones por sus recientes declaraciones en Washington en las que afirmó que había salido de México porque aquí existía un régimen fascista y él era revolucionario. Comenta que los auténticos núcleos de obreros progresistas repudian a Calles y a Morones y que la Confederación de Trabajadores de México está muy atenta a los movimientos de los trabajadores de la industria norteamericana que están en un muy importante momento de su lucha reivindicadora.
Correspondence between Gen. Plutarco Elías Calles who is living in exile in San Diego, CA and Gen. Abelardo L. Rodríguez. Gen. Calles informs he will be interviewed by the magazine Today whose director is Mr. Moley and who asked him to write an article regarding the situation in Europe. Gen. Abelardo L. Rodríguez replies informing he visited Scotland and Ireland and that he received the copy of the magazine. He congratulates him for the article. He asks Gen. Calles to clarify the statements by the American press that he was a dictator. Gen. Calles replies he has not made statements regarding his role in Mexican politics because the newspapers do not publish them. Gen. Abelardo L. Rodríguez sends a letter to Gen. Calles complaining about the weather in London and talks about the situation in Germany, Japan, Italy, the United States, London, Spain and Russia. Gen. Calles sends a newspaper clipping of the San Diego Union to Gen. Rodríguez. Gen. Rodríguez sends a letter to Melchor Ortega in February 1937. He writes about the arbitration system regarding worker conflicts and states that President Roosevelt will legislate about it. He analyzes strikes and how they have functioned in France. He tells him he read in Times that President Cárdenas decreed freedom of religion to practice Catholicism in Mexico due to a violent event in which the police in Jalapa, Veracruz interrupted a mass and killed a person. Gen. Rodríguez writes to Gen. Calles saying he is not surprised the amnesty decreed by the president does not include him. They exchange birthday, Christmas and New Year's greetings, and sympathy for the death of the mother of Gen. Rodríguez. "Notes on my trip to Russia" by Gen. Rodríguez in 1938. The notes were published by El Universal in seven different articles between October 24 and November 14, 1938. There are copies of articles 1 (two copies), 2, 3, 5 (three copies), 6 (two copies) and 7 (two copies). Gen. Rodríguez criticizes Stalin. The titles of the articles are "The Stalin regime", "Woman and Family", "Where does capital gain go?", "Natural Resources" (three copies), "Land Exploitation", "Communism and Democracy". Article "The Ex-President Gen. Rodríguez confirmed his statements about Russia". Article "Sharp statements and mendacious claims against A.L. Rodríguez" El Universal November 15. Gen Calles asks Gen. Rodríguez to recommend Enrique Ferreira since he was dismissed from his consular appointment. / Correspondencia entre el general PEC, que se encuentra en el exilio en San Diego, Cal., y el general Abelardo L. Rodríguez, quien vive primero en Londres, Inglaterra y luego en Ensenada, Baja California. El general PEC informa al general Abelardo L. Rodríguez que concedió una entrevista a la revista Today, que dirige el señor Moley, quien además le pidió que escribiera un artículo acerca de la situación mundial, de los regímenes totalitarios en Europa y de los importantes acontecimientos que estaban por ocurrir. Se lamenta del avance del comunismo en nuestro país y de la nueva ley monetaria promulgada en México. Contestación del general Abelardo L. Rodríguez, quien le comenta que visitó Escocia e Irlanda; que ya recibió un ejemplar de la revista Today y lo felicita por su artículo que hace un análisis muy preciso del radicalismo con el que se gobiernan las naciones y manifiesta que él no cree que vaya a estallar la guerra en Europa porque es mucho lo que los países tienen que perder ya que han invertido mucho en armamento y si situación económica no es muy estable. Solicita además al general PEC que desmienta los constantes infundios de la prensa, sobre todo norteamericana, de que fue el dictador, el Jefe Máximo hasta su exilio en San Diego. Dice que ya le ha pedido esta aclaración varias veces pero que no ha encontrado respuesta. El general PEC, desde Los Geysers en Cloverdale, Cal., E.U.A., donde está recibiendo un tratamiento de aguas termales, le contesta que agradece su opinión sobre su artículo publicado en Today y que si no ha hecho una terminante aclaración de su papel en la política mexicana desde que dejó la presidencia es porque no se la publican, porque al público lector norteamericano no le interesan esos asuntos políticos sino los escándalos y notas amarillistas y que además su aclaración no tendría fuerza, ya que provendría de él mismo, que es el directamente implicado; pero que siempre que tiene oportunidad explica cuál fue su papel en la política mexicana durante los años que participó en ella. El general Abelardo L. Rodríguez envía una carta con saludos al general PEC, se queja del clima de Inglaterra y reitera que él considera que una conflagración mundial es remota y explica la situación en que se encuentran Alemania, Japón, Italia, Estados Unidos, Inglaterra, España y Rusia y las posiciones de sus respectivos gobernantes. El general PEC envía al general Abelardo L. Rodríguez un recorte del diario The San Diego Union. El general Abelardo L. Rodríguez escribe una carta a Melchor Ortega en febrero de 1937 en la que comenta el mecanismo operativo del sistema de arbitraje obligatorio en materia de conflictos obreros; asegura que hasta el presidente Roosevelt legislará en esta materia porque son graves los trastornos que causan a la economía las constantes huelgas; hace un análisis de todas las posibilidades de este recurso y cómo ha funcionado en Francia. Por último le comenta la noticia que leyó en "El Times" acerca de que el presidente Cárdenas decretó el libre ejercicio de la religión católica en todo el país, después de los desmanes de la policía del gobierno en Jalapa, que interrumpió una misa y mató a una persona. El general Abelardo L. Rodríguez escribe al general PEC informando que no le extraña que no lo hayan incluido en la amnistía general decretada ya que las causas de su exilio son distintas a los delitos incluidos en la misma. El general Abelardo L. Rodríguez y el general PEC intercambian felicitaciones por sus onomásticos, por la Navidad y año nuevo y un pésame por el fallecimiento de la madre del primero. "Notas de mi viaje a Rusia", serie que escribió el general Abelardo L. Rodríguez con sus impresiones de la Rusia de Stalin, que visitó en 1938. Fueron publicadas en siete entregas en el periódico El Universal, entre el 24 de octubre y el 14 de noviembre de 1938. Sólo se conservan recortes de la 1a. (dos copias), de la 2a., de la 3a., de la 5a. (tres ejemplares), de la 6a. (dos ejemplares), y de la última (dos ejemplares). En esta serie el autor critica muy duramente el régimen impuesto por Stalin, a quien considera como un dictador sanguinario y brutal que ha establecido un sistema que no respeta ninguna libertad, que reprime cualquier intento de superación personal por méritos propios y que sólo favorece a los miembros del partido. Los títulos son "El Régimen Stalinista", "La mujer y la familia", "¿Adónde va la plusvalía?", "Los recursos naturales" (tres copias), "La explotación de la tierra". "El comunismo y la democracia. Ratifica el ex presidente de México, Gral. Rodríguez cuanto ha dicho de Rusia. Desde Ensenada, Baja California, envía esta ratificación de lo escrito en sus artículos anteriores acerca de la Rusia stalinista y piensa que los desmentidos provienen de agentes asalariados de Stalin. Agradece a Excélsior la hospitalidad que le dio en sus páginas para publicar sus impresiones de viaje. El Universal publica la misma aclaración el 15 de noviembre: "Desahogos virulentos y afirmaciones mendaces contra A. L. Rodríguez". El general PEC solicita al general Abelardo L. Rodríguez que recomiende a Enrique Ferreira, que injustamente y sólo por considerársele emparentado con él, fue cesado de su cargo consular.
Transcript of an oral history interview with W. Russell Todd conducted by Joseph Cates at the Sullivan Museum and History Center on May 16 and May 19, 2016, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project. W. Russell Todd graduated from Norwich University in 1950 and was president of the university from 1982 to 1992. In his interview, he discusses his thirty-two years of active duty in the U.S. Army as well as his experiences at Norwich University. ; 1 W. Russell Todd, NU '50, Oral History Interview Interviewed on May 16, 2016 and May 19, 2016 At Sullivan Museum and History Center Interviewed by Joseph Cates JOSEPH CATES: This is Joseph Cates. Today is May 16th, 2016. I'm interviewing General Russell Todd. This interview is taking place at the Sullivan Museum and History Center. This interview is sponsored by the Sullivan Museum and History Center and is part of the Norwich Voices Oral History Project. OK, first tell me your full name. RUSSELL TODD: William Russell Todd. JC: When were you born? RT: I was born on the first day of May, 1928, in Seattle, Washington. JC: What Norwich class are you? RT: Class of 1950. My father was 26. My son was -- I'll think about that. JC: Well, we'll get back to that. Tell me about where you grew up and your childhood. RT: For the first year of my life we lived in Seattle, Washington. Dad had a job with a lumber company out there, getting experience to come back to work for his father, who ran a lumber company just outside Milton, Massachusetts. So I grew up for the first nine or ten years in Milton, Massachusetts, a very nice place, right on the edge of where Mattapan and Milton come together. There was a lot of traffic. Well, just for an example, during that period of time I came up with my dad to his fifteenth reunion, and the difference in traffic between where we lived and what we found up here was considerable. When I got back to school on Monday the teacher said, "Russell had a day off. He's now going to tell us what he saw." Well, nothing came to mind, and I stood and told them that I had seen something they had never seen, miles and miles and miles of dirt roads. Now I live on one. (laughs) JC: Was that the first time you were ever at Norwich? RT: Yeah. JC: What was your impression of it when you first saw it? RT: It was a very interesting period of time. It was just before World War II affected the United States, and many, many people were sending their sons to Norwich -- rather than perhaps better prepared schools -- because they could get a commission. They assumed that everyone was going to go to war, and the opportunity of getting an education and a commission together at the same time really appealed to a lot of people. Our football team got everybody we wanted of great quality. We won all the games in that time 2 frame. And we had some very, very fine people who came back in 1946, the year I entered the university, and they made a big impression on my life. JC: I'm sure. I assume the buildings were the same. There weren't any new buildings between the time that you went and -- RT: As a matter of fact it was 1941 I believe, and two buildings on the main parade ground were being dedicated. One wasn't quite finished, and the other was, and two new dormitories shows you an example of what I was saying, how it was a golden period in Norwich's history. But saying that, the opposite is true when the war ends. You remember that we had, what, 15 cadets come up here after the Civil War. They all got off the train, (laughs) yeah, we don't think much about that. It's happened each time there's been a war. The incentive, or the idea, or the concept of perhaps having to serve didn't appeal to a lot of people at the end of wars. JC: Right. You kind of have a boom before the war and a bust after the war. RT: Yeah. JC: What made you decide to come to Norwich? RT: I think probably that trip did, that and the fact my dad was always talking about it. He would make us on Saturday nights -- eating beans and franks -- to sing Norwich songs around the table. (laughs) JC: Do you remember any of those Norwich songs? RT: There's a good one. What is it? "Oh, My First Sergeant" "Oh, my first sergeant, he is the worst of them all. He gets us up in the morning before first call. It's fours right, fours left, and left foot into line. And then the dirty son of a buck, he gives us double time. Oh, it's home, boys, home. It's home we ought to be. Home, boys, home, in the land of liberty. And we'll all be back to Norwich when the sergeant calls the roll." JC: That's wonderful. (laughter) I've heard in some of the oral histories "On the Steps of Old Jackman," but I haven't heard that one before. (Todd laughs) So when you came here with your father, was that during homecoming? RT: Well, homecoming and graduation were the same period of time. It was fascinating to me. It was a cavalry school. They had all kinds of drills that we went to and watched, and prizes were awarded. People loading up the water-cooled submachine guns on horseback and racing around, then taking them down, and putting in ammunition blanks, and firing -- you know, first, second, and third prizes kind of thing. Oh, yeah, that impressed me. Then, of course, the parades were fun to see. But it took about three days to get through graduation and homecoming as a single entity. JC: When you came to Norwich what did you major in? 3 RT: That's an interesting story. As I said, Norwich was having trouble at that time recruiting people, and I got recruited by the president of the university. We met in Boston, and he asked me all the things I was interested in, and to him it looked like I should be an engineer, and he wanted me to take an exam that would carry that forward. Well, I took the exam, and I became an engineer, and about the first part of the second semester I discovered you really had to do the homework. I really didn't like that much, and I wasn't doing very well, so I changed my major to history and economics. I really found that fascinating. JC: Well, tell me about what it was like being a rook here. RT: Yeah, another interesting thing. I was sold on the rook system, and my dad had always talked about it. When he brought me up here, people would drop off their suitcases, and go right out onto the parade ground, and start being ordered around by the corporal. I thought that was great. I never seemed super. But I didn't have many followers on that. I was very anxious that my father leave, and get out of there, and go home, and I convinced him to do that. But after, oh, maybe a month the class, who had elected class officers by that time, called a class meeting, and we all got together -- I've forgotten where now. "We got to stop this. We got to tell these guys we're not going to put up with this nonsense. We've got to show our power." I stood up and said, "Gentlemen, this isn't what we want to do. We want to put up. We want to show him we can do it," and I got booed right off the stage. However, they eventually made me class secretary, so I didn't lose all my friends that day. (laughs) JC: Now let's talk about post-war Norwich, because you did say there's kind of a bust. There isn't as many people. RT: Yeah, I think we had 200 in our class, and there was no really classes of Bubbas. Norwich toward the end of the war, when they were really desperate to get money to pay salaries to the faculty, had a high-school level. I think it was two years, the high-school level, and many people went into that and came up here, and that toward the end made some income for the university. But what it did for us, as an incoming class of freshmen, we had our officers, lieutenants, who were younger than we were, but they'd been here two years. You know, that didn't sit over very well either. That was difficult. JC: And the cavalry was still here at that time. RT: It was, yeah, for the first two years of my term and tenure at Norwich, at that point. JC: What do you remember about the horse cavalry? RT: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Well, let's just put it this way. The first person I visited in Northfield when I came back as president was my old sergeant [Kenoyer?], who we hated. He was tough. But on the other hand, we really liked him, and I felt very, very sorry for him, and I really wanted to see him. His son had won entry into West Point, and 4 about two nights before he was to report in he and a bunch of his buddies were in an automobile accident. I think they were hit by a train and killed. Sergeant [Kenoyer?] was never the same after that. He continued to ride horses in the parades in Northfield and that kind of thing. But he was a character. His education was perhaps at the level he was working, taking care of the horses, and taking care of the riding. He was a good man, but, for example, I had a roommate named George Pappas who was scared to death of the horses, and some of the horses knew it. They knew when you were afraid. And old George would step into the stable area, ready to put on the harness, and that old horse would just back him into the wall and lean on him -- oh, you win. Then, of course, [Kenoyer?] would come by and say, "Kick him in the neb with your knee!" Well, no one was going to do that, trapped in there. So George, he decided that he would skip equitation classes, and instead he took 10 demerits for every single class that he was supposed to be at, and he spent his first semester walking around the parade ground on Saturdays carrying a rifle, doing tours. Many things can be said about George. That's a whole other story of absolute wonder. But it was difficult. We only went down once a week actually to use them, but there really wasn't a hell of lot you can learn in one-hour time once a week. But toward the end of the freshman year we were out trotting around in the neighborhoods, etc. I remember one time one of the captains in the Army ROTC program there, officers, Army officers, lead us on a parade, and we went out across the railroad tracks and up into the hills. And on the way back the horses got the idea they themselves would like to jog back to the stables, and we came charging down that hill totally out of control. Some of the horses and men went all the way to downtown before they came under it. I went through the football practice. (laughs) It wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. Now there were some people here, including a classmate by the name of Bob [Bacharat?] [00:13:18] who really was a polo player. He came from Switzerland. I think that's the reason he came to Norwich was to be able to play polo, and we played polo in that time frame with people like Miami who flew their horses up here. Now, I never saw the plane, but we were told all this and a few years earlier, before the war, that Norwich was playing the big colleges and winning. Toward the end of the first year we played something called broom polo, which they'd throw out a basketball on the floor, and then you'd have to hit it with a broom to get it to go to the goal. Those kinds of things were fun to watch. I remember one time George, my roommate, in skipping class went up into the stands, which are on the south end of the hall, but up above in a balcony, and he opened the window and got a snowball, several of them, and put them up there. When somebody would go by, the stove down on the floor -- there were four stoves in that place -- they'd get red hot, but they really didn't make a hell of a lot of difference when the temperature was 30 below or whatever it might have been outside. And the horses, when you'd take them from the stable to the riding hall, would fight you all the way; they didn't want to go out in that cold. But George, on one occasion, dropped snowballs on those red-hot stoves, and you can imagine, they hissed. As the horse went by, this great hiss came out, and the horse would throw the guy, or run for the far -- I went hell bent for election to the far wall. And when he stopped, I went right up onto his neck and was hanging on. Sergeant [Kenoyer?] came over and gave me hell, you know, "You didn't take control of that horse." (inaudible) [00:15:36] There are people lying down all 5 around, and the horses are running around. Well, there's a certain romance in having the horses, so long as you're sitting in the stands watching a polo game. (laughs) JC: Had you ever ridden a horse before? RT: No, never. JC: So you didn't have any experience with horses. RT: Neither did anybody else. Yeah, yeah. They were wonderful animals though, for the most part. JC: Now you said a lot of the people that were there before the war came back after the war to finish up. RT: Mm-hmm. A lot may be too much of an adjective to use, but Alumni Hall was essentially filled with non-married veterans, or veterans who hadn't brought their wives back. Civilian clothes and having nothing to do with the military. The rest of the dormitories were filled with 200 and whatever it was cadets, and the very few upperclassmen like the one I mentioned who came up through the high school route. We didn't have a lot to do with them, and they were very serious about their studies in the classrooms, very serious about their studies. The fraternization took place after the first of the year when we could go into a fraternity house, and I remember the older veterans -- older, 22 maybe -- who were in Theta Chi, where I was, were a remarkable bunch of people and very, very much appreciated. They didn't always come to dinner with us, but they were in the house and participated with it. They ranged all the way from a parachutist in Europe to a lieutenant colonel in the air force. So that's a big gap. But they were great guys who made fraternity life reasonable. JC: Well, tell me about Theta Chi. Why did you choose that one? RT: Oh, yeah, the same old story, the same reason I came here. My dad was a Theta Chi. Why, of course that's what I'd do. This is my father's fraternity, you know. JC: So what were the fraternities like? RT: They weren't too bad. When General Harmon eliminated them, I thought it was the right thing to do, because there weren't fraternities at other military colleges. And when they were started I really believe they were very useful. They were much more an eating club, and since there wasn't a mess in the university in the 1850s. If you look into some of the old records you'll see at graduation time they invited the alumni back to have dinner, and they had dances. They had inter-fraternity baseball and football, etc. We were trying at my time, in my fraternity, to replicate that. It wasn't perhaps as successful as it might have been. It was great fun to beat SigEp in baseball or something. But it was a different part of the university. I remember one time when I was a corporal, and one of the men in the rank under me, in the barracks, was in the fraternity. We get down to the fraternity, 6 and he would give me a hard time for giving him a hard time. It wasn't what I thought it should be, but it was a good time. I mean, don't misunderstand me. Well, it was a fraternity. (laughs) The girls came in by train, if they were away. Carol came up several times on a train to spring break, or a winter carnival, and that kind of thing. That was good sport to have a place where we could party. There was no drinking - baloney, there wasn't. (Coates laughs) I remember one time we were having lunch, and one of the seniors, one of the veterans that had come back, was the president of the house, and he said, "Our Theta Chi member on the faculty, old Professor Woodbury, is going to be our chaperone for the party. Does anybody know Professor Woodbury?" "I know Professor Woodbury. My father told me about him. I've met him once." He said, "Good. You and your date will sit in the living room with the Woodburys while we're down in the basement drinking." (laughter) It wasn't much fun that night. We had the bars hidden behind sliding doors, or doors that pulled down, and all this kind of stuff, so if we got word that there was someone from the faculty coming we could close it up and all sit down, smile, and look like there was no alcohol in the place. JC: Can you tell me a little bit about winter carnival and some of the dances that you all had? RT: They were good sport. Much of the fun though centered around the fraternity at that time. Yes, of course we went to the dance, etc., but before going to the dance we probably went to the fraternity, and certainly after the dance we went to the fraternity, and that was really good sport. In my senior year my roommate, Rollin S. Reiter, from Ohio decided that in his fraternity they were going to have a special Christmas party. Now, it didn't make an awful lot of sense, because it was right at exam time. We took exams right in that time frame, so he really had to work to get these guys. They were going to do it in tuxedoes, not in our uniforms, so that slowed it down a little, too. But one of the guys, Chubby Jordan, who has since passed away, he was a brigadier general in the Massachusetts National Guard later on, an ex-marine. He didn't want to go do it, so they convinced him that he had to do it, and they would get him a date. When he went to the fraternity house, he was introduced to the worst looking girl in the place, and he immediately started drinking beer and avoiding her and all this. It wasn't even the girl they were going to match him up with, and they just were teasing him something awful. When he got very sleepy they put him on the pool table, laid out flat like in a mortuary and put two lit candles, one at either end of him on the pool table. It was a sight for sore eyes. (laughs) JC: I bet it was. Now you were on the rook committee while you were there? RT: Yeah. In my sophomore year I was the head of the rook committee, elected by the class. During the summer period of time I had to get together with the printers and the university and go through this business. There were big posters that said "Beware, Rook, Beware," and then they listed all the things down. We'd get them printed up here by John Mazuzan down in the Northfield Press, and then we'd sell them to the rooks at $1 apiece. I don't know what we did with the money, in the class coffers I guess. Yeah. I remember that President Dodge, who had no military experience previous, but was a very, very well known scientist and had been the dean of one of the big Midwestern schools in that area, 7 he was brought in by some hefty people on the board of trustees. He didn't fit. He didn't understand us. He was a great academic and did some very fine things for the university. But he called me in one day, as head of the rook committee, and said, "When will this period end?" This was right after supper. I said to him, "Sir, it's very clear. It's right on the chart." He said, "I want it to end at Thanksgiving." I said, "Sir, I don't think you're talking to the right guy. You should really be talking to the commandant of cadets, your left-hand man." He said, "Well, I don't know if I can convince him," and I thought, oh, my God, what have we got here, you know. (laughter) He was a fine gentleman, but the minute it was possible for the alumni to discover that General Harmon might be available, in May of my senior year, Dodge was gone. The alumni just -- it wasn't working the way they wanted to see it work. JC: So Harmon was not president any of the time that you were here? RT: His inauguration was held at the same time as my graduation. It was one thing. He had been here for maybe a month, and I remember that we had a football banquet, and they invited General Harmon to come. And he stood up and told us all that he had been here as a cadet, and he had come back in 1935 as the commandant of cadets, and he loved and understood this university, and he was going to make it famous, you know, kind of, "Yeah!" Just the kind of story we needed. Then he told us a story that just curdled me. It was a dirty story. I'd never heard some guy stand up in a dinner and tell a dirty story. It sort of surprised me. He had that reputation. As a matter of fact, one time later in my career, when I was in the army, I was asked by my boss if I would go back to Hamilton, Massachusetts, where I had lived at one time and see Mrs. George Patton, and tell her that her son-in-law -- as a brigadier general -- was about to be sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky. He was married to one of Patton's daughters, and he is now a bachelor. I was to go with three sets of quarters' plans and say, "Which of these, General, would you choose, because we at Fort Knox can now get the house painted up and ready for you, and all this kind of stuff ahead of time?" Well, Mrs. Patton agreed. When the time actually came general orders was late in his itinerary and couldn't be there, so she said, "Why don't you and Carol just come to dinner, and we'll talk about this? I will pass your message to Johnny when he comes through next week, and your leave is over." So that was just fine. But we had a quiet period in that Mrs. Patton was at one end of a long table, and I was at the other end, and Carol was in the middle, and there was a little old maid with a bonnet on her head, and an apron moving around quietly around the room. Everything went silent, and I said, "I can handle this." I said to Mrs. Patton, "Mrs. Patton, do you happen to know General Harmon?" And she said, "Indeed, I do, Russell, and he's a very disgusting man." (laughter) Now as it turns out, she gave an award right after that, she gave an award at Norwich of a similar pistol of General Patton's famous (inaudible) [00:29:38] to the leading cadet. But she was clear. (laughter) JC: Yeah, I've heard stories about General Harmon. RT: He did a great job. He stayed too long, but he did a great job. 8 JC: Well, what clubs were you in when you were here at Norwich? RT: Yeah, I went out for football. I'd come from a little school in Wenham, Massachusetts, where we played six-man football, and if one guy was sick, it didn't look like we were going to play, you know, kind of thing. I went out for football in Beverly High School, and that was danger. I mean, I wasn't up to that. When we got to Norwich I said, "I'm going back out for football. This looks like --" They were mostly freshmen. There were some veterans that came back, and there were some very good veteran players who came back but weren't interested in playing football. They wanted to study and have a family life. So Norwich had a terrible football team during that period of time. About the second day of practice Joe Garrity, who'd been a friend of my dad's who I had known, put his arm on my shoulder as we walked back to the locker room and said, "I've got a job for you." And I thought to myself, I'm going to be quarterback for the freshman team. And he said, "You're my manager, how about that?" and I said, "Oh, OK." Later in life, when I became president, the alumni director here, Dave Whaley, took me out to visit various alumni clubs. In Chicago a fellow named Hale Lait, who played football and was co-captain in his senior year, started to walk up to us, and Dave says, "Mr. Lait, do you know General Todd?" Hale Lait says, "Shit, he used to wash my jock." (laughter) And it was true! We had a big laundry over there. JC: Were you in any other clubs while you were here? RT: Yeah, I'd have to think upon it. We had an international relations club that I became president of at some point of time under -- oh, come on, his name is skipping me. I'll come back to it. But we brought I people to speak on the issues, and then Norwich formed an alliance with the other colleges where we were all working together, and that was sort of fun working that out. Oh, incidentally, when I was manager for the freshman team I had to write all the letters to the other schools and make all the arrangements, all that kind of thing. It sort of surprised me that the university wasn't doing that; the athletic department wasn't doing that. JC: Did you have a favorite professor when you were here? RT: Yeah, and I just told you I couldn't remember his name. (laughter) Sidney Morse. JC: Oh, OK. RT: Old Sidney Morse was a terrible lecturer, but he was a genius, you know. He understood American history, and that was his forte, and he also was a wonderful human being and understood us. He really got me to dig in and start getting decent grades. He would lecture, but he would have side comments on this thing, and there we are taking notes left and right. I never wanted to miss a class under any circumstances. He invited some of us -- one of them being me -- over to dinner, and he was just a great sport. He was not a big man in stature, but a big man in intellect. JC: Was there a professor you particularly didn't like? 9 RT: Oh, there were some who I'd rather not name who I didn't appreciate or think that they were at the level they should be. JC: What was the favorite class you ever took here? RT: I guess it was history. That's what I worked at. Let me go back to what I didn't like. We lost -- somehow, I don't know how -- one of the economics professors, and President Dodge brought in somebody in mid-semester, and this guy had written many books and was well appreciated around the world, but he was terrible. He couldn't remember any names, he refused to take any attendance, so people didn't come. You could answer him back and forth. I was told, I can't vouch for this, I was told by the people that say they did it. They invited him out the night before his final exam to join them for dinner in Montpelier, and when the time came, they picked up the tip, and went down to the railroad station, and put him on a train going to Montreal. (laughter) I believe it was true. But he just wasn't accustomed to teaching at our level in that circumstance. He was someone that should have continued writing his books. He was essentially a sociologist, but that was a while. I got called in by the dean for skipping class, and the dean was a great guy at that time. I was a little embarrassed by it, but the class was mostly veterans in this particular -- in economics. You know, they had their way. They weren't required to come to class. If they didn't come to class it chalked up one of a series you could have freer, but cadets didn't have that, so I just played like I was a veteran to old Mumbles [McLeod?]. That's what they called him, Mumbles. When the dean called me in, I got right back on it. JC: Decided you'd rather go back to class. RT: Yeah. JC: Did you ever get in much trouble when you were here? RT: Not really. I came close a number of times. Well, let me go back and talk about Carol. Carol and I met one time when we were in about the ninth grade. She was in Beverly, Massachusetts, and we were living in Hamilton, Massachusetts, at the time, and the Congregation youth groups met at a third place, Essex, Massachusetts. There were lots of people of our ages. You know, these groups didn't know each other. And I spotted her. She was -- wow! Wow, yeah. But I never got to speak to her before we broke up and went back. A couple of years later in Beverly High School -- we'd moved to Wenham, and Wenham didn't have a high school, so I went to Beverly High School. Todd with a T and Wyeth with W happened to have lockers opposite each other on the wall, and I said, "My God, there's that girl." I went over and spoke to her, and she invited me to her birthday party, and that'll show it all started with us. But it came to a point in our sophomore year when I had changed from engineering into history and economics. I had to make up some subject material that I didn't get in the first part, and I went to the University of New Hampshire trying to make it up. I went down on the weekend to her house in Beverly, and I stayed with her aunt 10 who lived next door. She was on my team. But Carol when we were -- she said, "Let's stop this tennis game for a minute. I want to talk to you." We walked up to the net, and she said, "You know, I'm through with this relationship. You're never going to be serious about anything you do in your life; you're going to be a perennial sophomore. I want to do more with my life than you are going to do, and this isn't going to work out." OK, I'll show you. I came back and studied like hell for the last two years I was here and sort of caught up. But it was interesting, when I was invited back at graduation time to be the officer who commissions everybody, and at that time the university ordered a master's or a PhD, you know, honorary to the speaker. Loring Hart didn't tell me whether I was supposed to say anything or not, so I had in my pocket a little thing I would say. It went something like this. It is indeed an honor to be here. I represent my classmates in this ceremony, and I'm very proud of the way Norwich is moving. But I would like you to know that 25 years ago, this very day, I received a letter from the committee on academic degrees and standings that read to this effect: "Dear Cadet Todd, The committee has met and has agreed to allow you to graduate (laughs) based on the circumstances that were not your fault." (laughter) So, you know, that's the way life went for me. I dug in and did relatively well. But another interesting thing about that. I don't know about anybody else, but I had a picture in my mind of VMI, and the Citadel, and all these places as being superior to Norwich in their military training, etc. But when I got in the army I discovered that 50% of them were duds, and it just changed my life around and my feelings about my institution. Yeah, it was strange. JC: When you graduated from Norwich what was the first -- you went into the army. RT: Yeah. JC: Did you go straightaway into the army, or was there a period? RT: Well, some of us -- I think it was 12, maybe as many as 15 -- received an opportunity to go into the regular army, not into the reserve army. I was one of those. About half of my classmates who were given that ability to do that chose not to do it, so there were a number of us that went. Upon graduation we received our commission in the United States Army Reserve, and then two weeks later I was brought into the regular army with another commissioning thing, which happened to be by my father's Norwich roommate, Colonel [Rice?] in Boston. He was running something in Boston for the army at the time. That was sort of fun. Then I went immediately off. We graduated about 15 or 17 May or something, June rather. On the second day of July, I reported in to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Light at Fort Meade, Maryland, as one of these people you had a regular army commission. So there wasn't any time -- there was time enough in between that the family all went down to Cape Cod for a two-week vacation, but I graduated and went into the army. JC: Now did you get married before you were in the army? 11 RT: No, no. No, no. I was still trying to get back in Carol's good graces. Before I left -- well, I went, as I said, to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Now the army was doing something really stupid at that time. They had been told to reduce the army's personnel requirements, and rather than reducing in any reasonable way, they chose to take one-third of every squad, one-third of every company, one-third of every battalion, one-third of every regiment. It was a paper army. It couldn't really operate well at all. But when the war broke out in Korea they took from those drawn-down forces and sent them over as individual replacements, supposedly to go into units that also had the same kind of vacancy that was created now. So we had almost no reasonable training while I was in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment before going to Korea, and these people went into units for which they were not trained. The army was really messed up, really messed up. General Abrams one time in discussing this with a group of officers, after he'd become chief of staff of the army, had tears running down his face. "No army should ever do that to its people. There is no excuse for it, and as long as I'm chief of staff I guarantee you that our units will be ready to fight, if we have to fight." You know, oh. It was a terrible mess over there. So before leaving that unit in which I had a miserable career for that short period of time. For example, it wasn't two weeks later that the post's military police battalion left Fort Meade and went to Korea. Company A of my organization, of which I was a lieutenant, became the post's military policemen. Now, we know nothing about being the post's military policemen, not a thing. There wasn't anything in ROTC, there wasn't anything that lead us to believe. What I knew about policing was I'd seen in movies, and I hid behind the "Welcome to Fort Meade" sign in my sedan, and chased down someone that was speeding, and discovered it was the chief of staff of the post. At midnight I went over and had a bed check in the post's prison, to see that there weren't any knives in there. But I got called in and said, "Hey, come on, get off it. You can go to jail for what you're doing," you know. (laughs) It was crazy. I was trying to do my job as I knew it, but no one was there to supervise me in any way. JC: And how long were you doing that? RT: I left there in September. I went in in July, left in September, and got to Korea in late November, first having leave and then going to the West Coast, going through the checks and balances of travel over there. Just about that time MacArthur announced that the war would be over by Christmas, and as a result the army slowed down the number of replacements they were sending over. This was just about the time that the marines invaded Inchon, and it was followed up with the 7th Division behind them, and trapped the North Vietnamese soldiers below us. It was really a magnificent maneuver. So we were just sitting around in California waiting to get orders. Every weekend we'd go into town, and we'd go into some bar and then talk out loud about how we've got to go, and waiting to go to war, this kind of thing. Somebody would pick up the bar tab. (laughs) Then we crossed the Pacific during a hurricane, and that was something most unusual, as you might imagine. The piano broke loose in the lounge. It had been a troop transport in World War II, and they converted it to be a troop ship but for families to go to Japan or other places. At that time these ships were the property of the army, it wasn't the navy. 12 I remember distinctly there was a captain on board, mostly lieutenants, but this captain on board was a ranger, and he'd a big, puffed-up chest, and walked among us, and told us to stand up straight, and "Take your hands out of your pockets." When he'd get tired of doing that he decided we should have bayonet drill, and issued the bayonets, put them on our rifles, and went up on the deck. Oh, God. I said, "I'm not playing this game." There was a ladder still going up the funnel, in wartime where they had a station to look for submarines, OK. I went up there while everybody else was screaming and hollering down below and got away with it. It's a wonder I ever went anywhere in the army. (laughs) JC: So what was Korea like? RT: Well, let me describe it. We arrived the day before Thanksgiving in Inchon, got off the boat. There was a long, long tidal process; the ship couldn't get close to the docks or anything else. So they threw the nets over the side, and we were to go over the side of the ship and climb down into a small boat to go in. But we had all our personal gear with us. We were carrying great bags of stuff. I had two bottles of whiskey in my bag, and some damn fool says, "Drop your bag into the boat." I did. (laughs) But as a matter of fact, they took our uniforms away from us at that time and said, "We will hold them here, because if everybody goes home at Christmas it won't affect you for a while, and you'll be in a regular army uniform." But we got on the boats and went on the shore. They fed us what was left over from the Thanksgiving dinner, and a lot of canned fruits, put us on a train, and sent us up to North Korea. Each of us, each lieutenant, was on an open freight car, you know, enclosed but with doors on both sides, and each one of them had a little stove in it. It was cold, and we headed north, and every time the hospital train came south on that one track we would pull over maybe an hour before it came by, and then stick around and get back onto the thing. In my one car I had 27 people. Those cars were small. They were Japanese-style freight cars, and they were small. We had nothing but straw on the floor and a sleeping bag, but it was a summer sleeping bag, not a winter sleeping bag, and the stove didn't really heat the thing at all. There were slots in the side of the thing. Anyway. We didn't have any ammunition, and we would get shot at on the train. Now, nobody I know of got hit, but it made quite an impression. But still they didn't issue us any ammunition. There was a major in charge, and he was in the last car, which was a caboose kind of car, tight, a good stove, etc., etc. So whenever the train stopped we as lieutenants would run back and sit in his car with him and then take off again. Many of the soldiers would get off and run in to find somebody in the little town we stopped in and buy rot-gut whiskey. Boy, they were in trouble. One of the people in the car behind me, I was told, went blind on the spot. Maybe he was cured later, but it made an impression. We finally got to the capital of Pyongyang, and they put us on trucks and took us to what used to be a hospital. We went on about the fourth floor and were on cots, or on the floor, kind of thing, and at midnight that night some captain in the army came in and said, "OK, everybody out. Get down on the truck below. Let's go. Get your gear together." Well, we all didn't get there first, and the last of us were turned around and sent back. That batch was never heard from again. The next morning we were loaded on trucks and sent up. But before going they fed us a good breakfast. We went down into 13 the basement of this place -- it was steaming and dark down there -- and we had breakfast on some slate or granite tables. Steam is pouring out of the coffee pots, etc., and I filled my cup with coffee and took a big drink to discover that it was maple syrup. I went forward that day sick as a dog, sitting at the end, at the tail of that truck yurking all the way. I'm sure all those men I was traveling with, "Look hey there, look at that lieutenant. He's so scared he's puking," you know. We went on and eventually we came to a stop, and the captain who was leading this convoy came back and told us to get off the trucks and go into these schoolhouses that were available, right immediately, I mean, just saw them and said, "Take them." We went into the schoolhouse, and he turned around and went back to get "another load," quote, unquote. We never saw him again; he never came back. Here we are with no ammunition, carrying guns, living in a schoolhouse, and the Chinese are moving in on us. They were moving down the mountains on both sides of this thing, and then there was a tremendous, tremendous loss of life up the mountain further, coming toward us. The 38th Regiment that I joined after we got out -- I get the men out, and then I jumped on a mess truck headed south, all trying to find where the headquarters for the 38th Regiment was. The 38th Regiment was part of the 2nd Division, and it lost in about two days, coming through a real tight trap -- there was a river, there was a road that wasn't wide enough for two tanks to pass, and then there was a mountain again on the other side, and the Chinese are up on both sides just raking the convoy. One truck stops, you know, they've got to push it off the edge to get the convoy going again. Now I wasn't a part of that, but I joined the company that did, and when I finally caught up with my unit, it was because I had stopped in from the schoolhouse when I saw the 1st Cavalry Division people pull on in close to us, so I went over and inquired. I walked into the TOC, the tactical operation center, and there was a major sitting in front of a map, on a stool, making little marks on it. I waited a while, and he didn't notice me, and finally I said, "Sir, could you tell me where the 38th Regiment is?" and he turned around and said, "No, but where's the division? Where is the 2nd Division?" I said, "Sir, I have no idea. We're trying to find it. We were left off down here." He said, "I don't know where they are. If you --" It was that confusing. They lost something like 4,000 men coming out of that gap. Now, I wasn't affected, not at all, in any way. I was scared to death at times, but then after that I joined the 38th Regiment. When I went in to meet Colonel Pappal -- yeah, something like that -- he shook hands with one, and passed me a bottle of whiskey with the other one, and said, "Son, you're going to need this." I reported in to the battalion commander, and he at the time was meeting with his staff in a little hutch where the Vietnamese -- the Vietnamese -- the Koreans built their houses of mud and mud brick, and they would cook in an open room attached to the house, and the smoke would go under the floors and heat the house. We were sitting on one of those floors, warm and toasty, and they were passing the bottle of whiskey around this circle as we talked about (inaudible) [00:59:47]. By that time the bottle of whiskey got pretty hot. (laughs) It was a very strange circumstance. When he finally got to it, the battalion commander said to me, he said, "Todd, you're going down to A Company." I said, "Sir, and who commands A Company?" He said, "You do." I had about as much opportunity to learn infantry tactics and lead a rifle 14 company as nobody at all. My buddy who I was traveling with who had some experience in World War II in combat in Europe, came back and went to the University of Illinois, and then came into the army the same as I did, through the (inaudible) [01:00:34], he was sent down to a company that already had an experienced commander. You know. Nobody was thinking. I sent the first sergeant back to division headquarters, he got commissioned, and he came back, and essentially he told me what we ought to be doing. Then we did it. Until MacArthur issued an order, that probably came to him to do it, that said all armored officers that had been assigned to infantry units are to be returned to armored units. So I went down to the regimental tank company of the regiment where my company commander, before coming over there, was an infantry officer who was aide to camp to the commanding general who gave him the tank company in the 38th regiment who didn't know a damn thing about tanks. It was really screwed up everywhere. At a point when I was running the rifle company, I was told that a replacement was on the way, flying in, and he would replace me as company commander. Oh, great, that's good news. The guy showed up, and during World War II he had been in the air force as a bombardier. He had absolutely no infantry experience. He had joined the nearest reserve unit to his home when he was discharged. It really wasn't working out. Where we got replacements, the adjutant would go down and say, "Has anybody been through armored training?" Nobody. Nobody. So there wasn't anybody to send to the armored company except the people that came in (inaudible) [01:02:41]. So we were training these guys, but we weren't -- there were some old sergeants that really knew what they were doing, and that's we made. We eventually had a pretty good tank company. I remember my sergeant was a gruff, old son of a bitch. I walked up to a formation he was holding one day, and his back was to me, and I was walking toward the platoon. And I heard him say "The kid says we got to --" I said uh-oh. "Sergeant [Beach?], come with me," and we went in to see the company commander. I told the company commander that I couldn't resolve this one. He said, oh, very well, I'll assign someone else." Sergeant [Beach?] remained behind. Wow, I've done it. Sergeant Beach comes out. I said, "What happening Sergeant?" and he said, "I'm going to be the lieutenant in charge of the other platoon." Ahhh, God, you know. (laughs) It just wasn't the army I knew later on. Yeah. It was a very sad arrangement. It really wasn't until General Walker was killed in a jeep accident, and he was the 8th Army commander, and they sent General Van Fleet over to run it, and we by that time had moved 125 miles to the rear. We were running as an army. Word got out very quickly that General Van Fleet's orders were "I don't want to see your plans of defense, I want to see your plans of attack." And everyone says, "Sure, sure, General. You look at them, and you'll be all alone up there." Well, by God, he took that army and straightened it out and moved it forward and stopped the Chinese, without much additional support. It was amazing to see that happen. I'll never forget that, that one man deciding that he's going to turn the army around and you'd better fall in line. I did have one experience before that happened when I was with the tank company, and I was in a jeep riding down a road, and the division commander had decided that since we had all these losses, and we're all screwed up, that he had a way to make us all feel proud of ourselves and identify. The methodology he used was that one regiment would have a mustache, another regiment would have sideburns, and another 15 would have goatees. Crazy, just crazy. But I'm driving down the road, and an assistant division commander, a one star, is coming this way, and he went right by, and I saluted, and then he stopped and hollered back at me. I jumped out and ran down to his jeep. He said, "You're not obeying the division commander's orders." I said, "Sir, what do you mean?" He said, "You shaved." I said, "No, sir, I've never shaved." (laughter) God. Yeah. But General Van Fleet really pulled that into order, and he relieved a lot of people. He relieved my brigade commander, gave us a lieutenant to be the colonel's slot in the brigade, who turned out to wind up with four stars in the end. They made the mechanism work. JC: Amazing. Now, you were awarded the Medal for Valor in Korea, weren't you? RT: Yeah. I got a Bronze Star for Valor and a Silver Star for Valor, neither of which I really want to talk about much. I think somebody else would have done better to have them than me. I mean, I was pleased, happy to receive it, proud to wear it on my uniform kind of thing, but there was a lot of that going on to bolster up morale of everybody. JC: Is there anything else you want to say about Korea? RT: I don't know. At the end it was a pretty good experience. When we had gone into a stalemate, we started a rotation system back to the United States, and it was a point system. If you came within a certain period of time, then you could go back at a date specific, so we all knew when we'd be going back. There were points for the kind of job you had and all this kind of thing. It was interesting, I went back to Japan, spent a few days in Japan. When we got on the boat I was assigned -- as I had on the way over -- to a large stateroom, and I think there were 12 of us in it, and up and down cots. It was the same gang I went over with. You know, the timeline of where you engaged in combat were the same for all of us, in different units, and that was really pretty special. Two of them, only two of them, didn't come back, and they were both infantry officers. To the best of my knowledge, from the 38th Regiment that I was familiar with, the lieutenants didn't go back whole. The majority of them were killed. Those that were wounded were wounded seriously enough that they didn't come back to the unit. So it was us armored guys that, essentially, came back together, went over together and came back together. Stopped in Hawaii on the way back, pulled into the port, and there's all these hula girls down on the thing, people with big signs, "Welcome Home, Veteran." I said, "Hell, I'm not a veteran. That's a guy that sits outside the post office trying to sell pencils." (laughs) That came as a bit of a shock to us. But, yeah. JC: Well, once you got back to the United States where were you stationed? RT: Before I got back to the United States, on R&R in Japan, I knew of my rotation date. I called Carol, who by that time had finished her year after Smith at Radcliffe, taking the first year of the Harvard Business School program at Radcliffe -- business school faculty, business school-devised location, Radcliffe. I called her and said, "How about meeting me in New York City on such and such a date at the Biltmore Hotel? We'll meet under the clock." Now, meeting under the clock, there'd been a movie about that whole 16 business. So she did, and we went to my family's house. They'd moved to Scarsdale, New York, at that point. I asked her to marry me. She said, "Give me a couple of weeks." So I went back to visit my family. They're not my immediate family, my grandparents in Quincy, Massachusetts, and my other grandparents in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I went to -- my uncle, my mother's brother, ran a hardware store that had originally been his father's, and he said, "What are you going to do about a car?" I said, "I got to get one." I sold my car before I went over. He said, "Well, I've got a good friend who's honest, and I think we can get a good car." So I went over that afternoon and bought a car and called Carol, and I said, "I bought a car today." She said, "A convertible?" and I said, "Yes," and turned it in the next day and got a convertible. (laughter) I'd do anything to make sure she's sweet. She said yes, we were married on the nineteenth of June of that year, and she obviously had to quit her job to become an army wife. JC: So where did you all go after that? RT: The first station when we returned, and I'm talking now about the same group of army officers that went over and came back together, also went to Fort Knox, and we lived in newly-built quarters that were built by a civilian contractor on the edge of there, which were great for a newly-married couple, but they certainly weren't anything special. George and Joanne Patton lived next door to us, a small world, yeah. I've lost my train of thought here now. (break in audio) JC: And we'll get back started. All right, so we were talking about Fort Knox. RT: Fort Knox being a first assignment together in the army was really great. So different. I mean, Fort Knox was organized. Everything was working well. People were happy. Not that we weren't working hard, because we really were. My first assignment was to a training division. It took the number of the division, the third, and replicated it and then trained, basic training. I was in the 2nd Brigade headquarters working on the planning and that kind of thing. I really was disappointed that I wasn't one of the company commanders, but it turns out that that was a tough job. In the tank company, the guy that headed the tank company had more tanks than a tank division, and it was a mess to keep them all straightened out and going around. So one day I went back home for lunch, and Mrs. George Patton, Sr., was sitting in the living room of our house talking to Carol. She had come down to Fort Knox because George and Joanne had just been married, and Joanne got some kind of disease when they were on the honeymoon in the Caribbean. And I reintroduced myself to Mrs. Patton, and we sat down and talked. She asked me what my job was, and I told her. I said, "But I've got to go. I've got an appointment this afternoon to see the commanding general. They're looking for an aide to camp to the commanding general, and I really don't want that job. I really would prefer to get an opportunity to command a company in the division here." She said, "Russell, General Collier is a very, very fine man. He has a 17 fine family life. He is a very, very successful soldier who commanded the 2nd Armored Division at the end of the war in Berlin. You could learn an awful lot working for him." So I went over, and I got the job, and for the next two years I was the junior aide to the commanding general. I did such things as travel with him when he went to different places for different purposes. My buddies all got a hold of me when they found out I was going to do this job, and all had things they wanted changed at Fort Knox, and I was to be their agent in telling the commanding general how he could change the place. Very early on we went out of the headquarters, down the steps, into the car, went past the post theater. I thought, well, here goes. I said, "Sir, do you realize that on this post now an officer must be in his full dress uniform in order to go to the movies?" He said, "Yes, I know that, and it will remain that way." I didn't have many new ideas for him after that. (laughs) He'd go over to the armor school, and the people that are teaching in the combat kinds of business would say, "This is what we're doing now, General, and what do you think? We'd like your approval of it," and I'd sit in the back of the room and listen to what was going on, and understand it. I would hear the people that had served in combat talk about what you ought to do, and I got a great education. Also, every year there was something called the Armor Warfighting Conference. Twice I was there for that. They bring in all the people that belong to the Armor Association, or were serving in an armored position, all the senior people, and they'd talk about what the army ought to be doing in armor. One of my jobs was to go into the airport in the general's big sedan and his chauffer and pick these guys up and drive them back to the post, and I'd chat with these guys, and it was really fun. I got to know an awful lot of people, army commanders, army staff members, and all this. I really felt pretty special that I'd had this kind of an opportunity. Then we also had at Fort Knox in that time frame an armor board. This armor board, when General I. D. White was the commander at Fort Knox -- before General Collier -- that the chief of staff of the army was not pleased with the way the chief of ordnance was managing the tank program and gave the responsibility to the commanding general at Fort Knox. All the bigwigs gathered at Fort Knox to make decisions about what the next tank would look like, what the next armored personnel carrier would look like, etc., etc. Again, I sat in the back of the room, and young captains and majors, most of them West Point graduates who'd gone off to graduate school and were coming back and using their talents. It was a great, great opportunity for me. We were always invited to the house when the Colliers were having a party, and people would say, "Oh, you're going over there and pass the cigarette butts around with them, aren't you?" "No, we don't do that. We're part of that group." Mike Popowski here in town, his dad was one of those colonels on the post at that time. I really got to know all those people. Not that it was doing me any good, but I learned from them, you know. I learned how to act, I learned when to shut up. It was very useful, and it was a great time. The Colliers were magnificent to us. We had a child while we were living there -- it was Tom, and Tom got burnt badly in an accident at our house. He was crawling across the floor, and there was a coffee pot that started percolating, and he looked up and pulled on the cord, and it came over and broke open on his back. The Colliers came over and relieved us of our 24-hour duty, and they took it over; they sat with that baby. We were their family. It was amazing; it was wonderful. 18 Yeah. I began to really understand what the army was about, that it could be a good army. JC: Well, after Fort Knox where did you go? RT: Let's see. Oh, yeah. When General Collier left, he was to be promoted and going to go to Korea, and he offered me the opportunity to go with him, and I told him that I would much prefer to have a tank company in Europe. While I loved the guy and his family, I wanted a tank company in Europe. He said, "We'll take care of that," and he called up the commanding general of the 2nd Armored Division in Europe, the one that they call Chubby Doan, and told him the situation and that I would be on orders to go over to the 2nd Armored Division and a tank company. He said, "I'll give him a tank company." So, wow! You know, we made it, and off we go to Europe. We pull into Bremerhaven, which is the northern port in Germany, and they send forth a little craft to meet the boat. A sergeant first class climbs up the rope ladder and comes over and starts telling people what their orders are going to be, and I was ordered to something called the 13th Military Intelligence Group. I thought, oh, my God, something's wrong here. The colonel who was in charge of us all on the boat, for the boat trip, he got his orders, and he opened it up, and it's the 13th MIG. He said, "What's an MIG?" I said, "The best I know it's a Russian airplane." (laughs) It turned out that he thought he was going to the 1st Infantry Division for a regiment. Well, we got off the boat, and both of us went down to this intelligence group, went through two different fences, guards posted in towers and all the rest of it, and slept in an open bay area over the officers' club. There were a number of other offices there, and they said, "What are you going to do?" I said, "I don't know. I'm here by mistake. I'm headed to the 2nd Armored Division." They said, "No, no, you aren't. We're all in the same business, fellow. Tell us where you're going." And I said, "No, no. I'm an officer, and I'm going to --" They said, "We understood an armored officer was coming, and he was going to go underground and behind the Iron Curtain, and report on the Russian movements." Holy Crow! That's not for me. So the next morning I went down and asked authority to see the commanding officer of the 513th [sic] MIG. He spoke with me, and he said, "No, you're going down. You're not going to do that; that's rumor. You're going down to the headquarters in Heidelberg, and you're going to be an intelligence officer in that headquarters." I said, "I'm not an intelligence officer." He said, "That's your orders." OK. So I went down to Heidelberg. General Jim Phillips was the G2 at the time, and I asked to see him, and I went right up to his office and told him my sad story, that I was going to go to the 2nd Armored Division -- and he was an armored officer -- "Now here I am an untrained specialist in your department." He said, "What were you going to do?" I said, "Well, General Doan in the 2nd Armored Division had accepted me to come and be in tank company." He says, "I'll talk to him about that," and he reached over -- they had a red phone system that red phones went to the different generals in different locations -- he picked it up and dialed 27 or whatever it was, and General Doan answers the phone, and I'm sitting there. He said, "I got a young captain sitting here that tells me he's supposed to be in the division. Tell me about him, what are you going to do with him?" Well, poor old General Doan hadn't remembered much about the phone conversation a couple of 19 months before or something, and said, "Well, I'm going to make him my aide." And he said, "Like hell you are. I'm keeping him here for that." (laughs) I did it all over again for another two years in the headquarters at [Usera?]. [01:26:32] It was a great experience. General and Mrs. Phillips were a mother and dad to us; they'd invite us to Sunday dinner, and little Tom would crawl around the floor or under the table, and General Collier would feed him peanuts or something. It was a wonderful time, and when the Colliers would take a trip and borrow the commander in chief's train, we went with them. It was marvelous. I saw all of Europe. I knew most everything that was going on in the intelligence field, and it was a great experience with wonderful people. But when he got assigned to go back to the United States, I took the Colliers up to the port to put them on. When I came back, this again on the commander in chief's train, I had the train stop in Mannheim, and I got off in Mannheim. I wasn't going to be stopped again and reported in to the 57th Tank Battalion and for the last year there had a tank company. That was probably the greatest experience of my life. It really was a good experience. We were hard training, we were well trained, good people. In the beginning we had a wonderful commander who was a major, and the division commander, General Doan, didn't want to put a lieutenant colonel in that slot. He wanted this man to get that experience, but eventually they had to pull him and let -- the lieutenant colonels were backing up. So we were out maneuvering and we came to the last day of the maneuvers, and the new battalion commander arrives, and we have this party in a beer hall. The new commander arrives, and one of the company commanders in Charlie Company walked up to the head table with two boots of beer. You know what that is? Glass things that replicate a boot. Big. He puts one in front of each of the two commanders and says, "Let's see who's the better man." This poor guy that has just got off the train coming down from Bremerhaven and crossed the ocean picks up his boot and starts to drink. The battalion commander we love drinks it down and wins the contest, and the new battalion commander was so tight from drinking that beer too fast his feet slipped out from under him as he sat at that table and went right down under the table. (laughter) That was his first day of duty, and he didn't improve much after that. We were all pretty cocky, the company commanders; we were doing a lot of good things. But he knew nothing about it. We told him -- we were told that he had served in a tank battalion in World War II, and that's all we knew about him. It sounded great to us, a guy with some real experience. Well, it turns out that he reported in to a replacement company, and they said, "Take this truckload of men and go forward to point A. There will be a sign on the road at so many miles or kilometers. Turn left in there, and that's where your unit will be." Well, he got down there and made the turn, then went up, and three Germans come out and say, "Achtung! Put him in the compound!" and he went directly to the prisoner-of-war camp. He never had any experience. He'd been a public information officer before, and he was terrible. He was so bad that in a morning meeting every time, when he would suggest something the other three company commanders, we'd sort of nod or shake no. And "Well, what's the matter?" You know why? We didn't get any leadership out of him at all. When it came time to leave there, I had probably the most frightening experience in my life. He stood up in front of the entire battalion officer group and said, "Well, now that Captain Todd is leaving maybe I can take command of this battalion." Oh, my God. 20 Oh, my God. He gave me an efficiency report that would sink anybody, but it just turned out that in that moment of time the army changed the efficiency report system whereby your commander rates you, and his boss rates you, and then a third person rates what they did. Well, the third person turns out to have been the fellow that had been recently the brigade commander, and he knew me, he knew my performance, etc., and he sent back the efficiency report to be redone. Ho. (laughs) Yeah. Those were good times though, good times. Scary times, but testing, really testing you. JC: Because you were right there in Germany during really the height of the Cold War. RT: Yeah. As a matter of fact, one time we were out on maneuvers, 200 miles from our base, when the French and British moved into Suez, because the Egyptians said they were taking over the canal. There we are sitting out in the woods saying, "Oh, my God," because the president had said, "Oh, no, you don't." Eisenhower said, "No, you don't. You can't do that. We give you a lot of money to bring your economies back from the war, and we'll stop it tomorrow unless you withdraw." But we didn't know all that, and my guys are saying "We're going to gyro to Cairo," you know, that (laughter) kind of stuff. We finally came back. But if we'd had to go, I haven't seen a unit that would be any more ready than we were. Yeah. It was really a great exper-- In a company command, everybody doesn't have to bypass the battalion commander who's a dud. But when you do have to do that, then you're really thinking on your feet. It was great. JC: What was your next assignment after that? RT: Would you believe back to Fort Knox? JC: Oh, really? RT: Yeah. I went back there to go to the Armor Officer Advanced Course, which was a nine-month course in there, in which they were teaching you at the next level. Now the course we took before at Fort Knox was a course we should have had before we went to Korea. I came away with a great impression of how good that was. It was excellence. When I saw General Collier working with the instructors and telling them how to handle this kind of thing. When I came back three years later, it was a well-organized organization. In fact, General Abrams had been there as the head of the command department. It was a first class education. I really and truly look back upon my Norwich experience as not up to that standard that the army was producing there. At the end of that course I had talked my way into becoming one of the instructors in the command department, and I was thrilled to death about that. On graduation day I'm sitting in my chair on the aisle, and as the assistant commandant went by my seat he stopped and said, "You're going to be working in my office." (laughs) So I then worked for Colonel Chandler, who was a first-rate soldier. He had been horse cavalry, in the Philippines, and was on the Bataan death march. He was really very much a gentleman, very much strong willed, and very much of a tutor, and I worked out of his office. My job was to arrange the schedules of the classes, and we had all kinds of classes -- enlisted classes, officer classes -- so that they would mesh how 21 many people, how many classrooms do we need, how many instructors do we need, on what day are we going to do it? I was bringing home page after page of long paper, and on the kitchen floor working out the details of making this thing work. It was great, but, again, there was an intermediary. There was a lieutenant colonel who was my immediate supervisor who, again, I thought to be a dud. On my first day of working there he said, "That's your desk right over there." And I'm, "Yes, sir." I went over to my desk. Now what do I do? Here I am, I found my desk. There was a major sitting at a desk facing me who never looked up. He was just scribbling away, scared to death of this guy evidently. A few minutes later he came over and said, "Well, here's the first project I want you to do. This is it. I want you to study this, and then rewrite it, and we'll discuss it." Fine. It wasn't five minutes later, he came over and said, "No, I want you to do this one instead." I went through about six of those before I understood what I was doing. I was hopeless that anything was really going to happen. That same day he came over and looked over my shoulder, and I looked up, and he said, "What are you writing there?" I said, "Well, sir, I'm writing myself a note so that I will be able to put these things in the appropriate order." He said, "Well, you're not saying it very well." (laughter) It was awful. My out was Colonel Chandler, and a major got assigned to the office, and he very quickly understood what was going on here and went in and talked to Colonel Chandler, and Colonel Chandler moved him out. Again, we got a very, very fine operating organization going. It was good; it was very successful. But, you know, every time there's some kind of a roadblock in your career, you've got to stop and figure out how the hell you're going to get around it. JC: What was after Fort Knox? RT: Twenty more years of -- let's see. I graduated from Fort Knox. I was selected below the zone for a promotion. Do you know what that means? JC: Uh-uh. RT: When you're considered for promotion a board meets in Washington, and everybody whose career appears between this date and this date is considered. Isn't that right? Well, what they started, and I don't know if they're still doing it or not -- I think they are -- they would go below this zone and choose certain people to be examined with this group, and I was lucky enough to do that and really jumped ahead. In the headquarters there was Major Howard from Norwich University. Major Howard didn't graduate from here, but he was an instructor when I was a student here. He was in another department, or I didn't see much of him. But when I came out on the below-the-zone list, there were two of us at Fort Knox that came out on it, and he called me on the phone, and he said, "Well, I thought Frank would make it, but I never thought you would." (laughter) So things are weird, but Leavenworth was an exciting time. I was a captain. The majority of people were majors and lieutenant colonels. A real shock of my life in the first day was seated at tables, and there's a blank card in front of you, and the instructor said, "Now write your name on it, not your rank. Write your name on that card." Well, the guy sitting opposite me was a lieutenant colonel, and I was a captain, and I don't know his rank. What do I call him? We were all calling each other by their first names 22 rather than you find in a unit. That (inaudible) [01:41:04] like that, I'm up against it here. So I worked hard, harder than I've ever worked, and at the end of the halfway mark in the course they gave us standings of where you stand in the course, and I was number five or something. I said, "I'm working too hard." Yeah, that was good, a good period in our life. We had Saturdays and Sundays off. I had a little golf group I played with on Saturdays, and Michelob beer was local out there. We'd buy a pitcher -- the loser would buy a pitcher of beer, and that was a big deal. That was a big deal. JC: So when did you go to graduate school at the University of Alabama? RT: Strange you should ask that. When I came to the end of the course at Leavenworth a general officer, a brigadier general, came out to the course to announce to the armor officers, to the infantry officers, etc., what your next assignment would be. About the third name he read was a good friend of mine, and when he read off where he was to go this guy went "Ooohhh." The general looked down at him and said, "What's the problem?" He said, "Sir, I don't think anybody in your office ever read my request." "Oh." He said, "Major so-and-so, come out here." The guy comes out from behind the curtain with a big notebook, and the guy flaps through it, and he looks down, and he says, "I don't know what you're complaining about. It says right here, 'Anywhere in the world but Fort Knox.' And you're going to Fort Knox, your second choice." (laughter) Then he got to my name, and he said, "I want to see you right after this." I thought, oh, God, what now? So I went in, and he was in his office. There was a temporary office. And he said, "We've got a problem here," and I said, "Sir, what is it?" He said, "Well, they've got you going to graduate school, and as the chief armor officer I want you to go to an armored unit." I said, "I have a choice?" He said yes. I said, "Where will I go if I go to an armored unit?" He thought for a minute, and he said, "You'll go to the tank battalion in Hawaii." I said, "Can I discuss this with my wife at lunch?" and he said, "Sure," and I came back and said, "We have decided that we're going to go to graduate school," and that's how that worked out. JC: So you went to Tuscaloosa instead of Hawaii. RT: Yeah. (laughs) JC: Now, what degree did you get at Alabama? RT: MBA. It was a good tough course, but it was in the process of changing the curriculum of business schools, and some of it was very tough. Part of it was very simple, but some of it was very tough. I established a schedule where I went in very early in the morning, got in there before 7:00 every morning, went down to the basement of the library where I had an assigned carrel and started working until it was time for a class to begin. I'd go up to the class and go back to the basement, eat my lunch in the basement, go home at 5:00, and hardly ever did any midnight work at home. We lived a good, wonderful family life in Tuscaloosa. Now, it wasn't all easy. There had been the problems of the colleges not admitting blacks, and the president of the United States pushing hard to make them do it. 23 Then there were the riots at Ole Miss, right at that time. The army sent down its chief person who determines whether the applicants will go to college -- army applicants -- and to which college they will go to. So we all gathered, and there were people taking nuclear physics, and [we have to?] discuss with him, and he talked it back and forth, etc. Finally one young captain in the back said, "Sir, this is all very interesting, but the army's practically at war with our citizens. What the hell happen-- What do we do? What are our orders, and what are our instructions here at the University of Alabama, if the same kind of thing breaks out on this campus?" This poor old duffer who'd been the president of some college someplace sort of shook his head and said, "Well, I hope you'd be on the side of the government." (laughter) That hit right in the heart of soldiers. But it was a good program. When I left I was going to be assigned to the headquarters in US Army Europe in the comptroller's office, and you're required to stay in that position for three years to make up for your being chosen for that job. They want to use your knowledge and experience. Just before I left they changed it, and I went to the US Army Support Command in France, which had 57 separate organizations that it commanded, to include a pipeline that came in at St. Nazaire and went out to all of the air bases and army refueling, etc., and repair of tanks, repair of everything. We took German factories over, used Germans. It was a very, very exciting assignment in terms of technology, but I got assigned to the comptroller's office in that damn headquarters, and I was one of three soldiers. The rest were all civilian employees, or French. One of the people that worked for me was from Yugoslavia; he'd escaped Yugoslavia. So it was a mixed up kind of place. We lived at a French house down by the railroad station. We didn't want to live in the government quarters, we'd done enough of that. We wanted to have an experience in France. From that point of view, it was wonderful. The job was terrible, just terrible. They expected me to know everything that they did in their routine because I'd been to this business program. Well, I had to really move fast to catch up with them. My boss was a man by the name of [Birossi?]. He'd been an Italian-American soldier in World War II who married an Italian and never went home, and when they created the support command then he stayed on in Europe and became a very important man in the headquarters as the budget manager of this very vast organization. I worked like hell to try and get it straightened out. They first gave me the responsibility of working the budget of a couple of the major organizations, one the tank rebuild plant, which was -- God, it looked like General Motors out there. I finally got frustrated with it all. We'd all sit in a room, roll out our papers, and bring in the guy, the comptroller, from that organization, and you'd sit facing each other with Mr. [Birossi?] looking over your shoulder, and you'd work out a budget for them. How the hell did I know? I didn't have any basis for doing it, but we'd discuss it to get it. When this was all over and calmed down I said, "This is stupid as hell," to [Birossi?]. He said, "What are you talking about?" And I said, "We've got the world's best information technology program right in this headquarters, those guys that are working the plants do it all by technical means, punch cards, and here we are sitting around trying to argue about a number on a sheet of paper that doesn't mean a damn thing." He said, "What do you suggest?" I said, "I suggest we go to talk to them, get onto their system somehow, and work this thing out that we can make a reasonable stab at it." He said, "OK, wise guy, do it." 24 Now, there was a lieutenant colonel in this overall office who was Birossi's boss, and I went to see him and told him, I said, "Now, I'm not competent to do this. There's no question about it. However, if you give me two of those young captains of finance that work down the hall from me, I can get this thing started and going." So he assigned these two guys to me, and we changed the whole system of how we did the budgeting of US Army Europe. I got some kind of an award for that. Then they put me in another job where I had all kinds of stupid responsibilities. I had a responsibility for efficiency of each of these many, many organizations, and I got permission to send people -- Frenchmen -- back to the United States to be trained in each of those depots to do it. Then we pulled all of this together right as the secretary of defense had initiated a program to improve work force relationships, his program, and they sent it out and said, "Everybody in the army, navy, and the air force will use these procedures." And my two-star boss said, "No, we won't. We're not doing that. We got a god system, we just got it started, and, well, that's the way it will be." OK, you're the boss. So six weeks later, maybe two months later, there's a message sent to the commanding general that said "We're sending over someone from the Department of Defense to look at your program." I got called in to the CG's office, and he said, "You got two weeks to put this program in place." Well, you know, I was put into a position where I got attention, and I could do what I wanted to do, and I could get help to do it, and everything just sort of worked together. It was a great experience. But, again, it's a case of speaking up and saying what you think is wrong and finding a way to do it. I went in on the train from Orleans into Paris to the IBM plant with boxes of punch cards in my (inaudible) [01:53:43] and brought them into IBM, and we worked it out with them to do it at first before we turned it over to our own organization. That's because if we screwed it up, we'd screw them up badly. But those two finance captains did all the work. I just plowed ahead. Another time, in that same job -- I really thought -- when I got there I said, "My career is ruined. My career is ruined. Who's going to believe that I was in a damn headquarters for a support group? No, uh. I'm an armored guy. No." But anyway, they came up with another program, again, out of the Department of Defense. This time it was to work specifically with -- I can't remember the name of it, but, again, it came out of the secretary of defense's office, and again I got the job to do it. But this time I had an opportunity to start from the beginning with it. It was a matter of saving money, and we were supposed to put out programs, out to our subordinate units, and help them find money and other ways of doing business (inaudible) [01:55:09]. We started with the laundries, a simple thing, and went into the laundries with the people we trained, and they would say to the laundress, "How can you do your job better?" They'd say, "Well, I've been working at this for six years. If we did this, and that, and the other thing," and all of a sudden we weren't doing anything but saying "How do you do it?" and then helping them do it, and getting their boss to agree to it. Well, then you had to take all this information and turn it over to another agency who would check your figures, and numbers, and back and forth, and everything. That all seemed to work out, and things were going along rather well when they put me in for an award as the civilian of the year for product improvement. I was called (laughs) into Heidelberg, and they put on a parade, and the commanding general and I are -- there were other people, for other reasons, being recognized that day. I'm standing 25 beside the commanding general when the troops are passing in review, and he said, "What the hell are you doing here? This is a civilian award." I said, "Sir, you signed it." (laughter) And off we went. I just kept working. Living there was great sport, except the French are crazy. We lived in a neighborhood, as I said, on Rue de la Gale, and the house was an old one. It was rent controlled, and we had to slip the landlord money on certain days, and you'd walk up to his house with a paper bag full of money. A door would open, a hand would come out and grab the paper bag out of your thing, the extra money for the -- crazy. In the neighborhood we never made close friends except in one instance. Our youngest daughter, Ellen, went to French school. The other two kids refused; they were smart enough not to do it. Ellen and her friend [Pascale?] (inaudible) [01:57:36] walked to school with her mother and Carol, over to school. The ladies walked back from school. After lunch, walked over, back to get, march them over, again, at the end of the school day. And they talked, and they talked, and they talked. Not a single word of English was ever spoken for three years between these two women. We get back to the United States and got a very nice letter from her, in English, and she said, "You never would have improved your French the way you did if you knew I had been a nanny in Great Britain and speak English." (Cates laughs) Now, that's the dirtiest, rottenest trick I can ever imagine happening. (laughter) When we had a problem with the house, you'd try and go out and find someone that would fix the faucet. Now, there are four sizes of pipe, and there are 12 sizes of faucets, and there are 14 sizes -- and they ask you which one do you want? You don't know. So somebody has to come and measure it and go back, and two days later you've got water running again. When it came time to buy coal, we went down to the place you buy coal, and it was a storefront on the main road, right in the main store, and he's got little glass canisters with different kinds of coal in the window. You don't buy coal that way anywhere else in the world. We went in, and he wanted to know how many radiators we had in the house, and how many veins each radiator had, and how many sections were in the stove, and then he could figure out how many tons it would take to heat the house. He didn't ask if there was any broken windows, or open doors, or boards off on the roof. They did it totally unscientific. Then when you come to that decision, then they say, "Now do you want it from Belgium? Do you want it from --" you know, down the list. We want anthracite from Belgium, OK. Then they come and dump it in the house with buckets in the window of the cellar, and the whole house is covered with coal dust everywhere. And it was expensive. Living there was not easy, but we made a pact that we were going to go once a month with the kids to Paris, every time, every month, and we did, and we traveled a lot. Not any great distances, but we loved parts of France. But the French were very difficult to live with. JC: Oh, I'm sure. I've been there once. (laughs) RT: The worst one was my father had a cousin who was, in relationship to Dad, it was about six up from him in the corporation, and he was the chairman of the board. We got a call that he was coming to visit the French company that was owned by the American company, and they were going to come down and see us in this hovel (laughs). And just about the time we knew that they were coming but not exactly when they were coming, 26 the French left us with a bit of a problem. When they put in the sewer system, they left the septic tank in the house, in the basement, made of clay, and it began to leak. Do you have any idea what living in that house was like? You couldn't flush a toilet. When I'd go off to work and leave Carol, they had a deal with these crazy guys coming in, and eventually they came in. One guy came in, and he took off the top of this thing, and then he went away. She chased him down, and he said, "Oh, you've got to hire somebody else. The union won't allow me to put the hose down in here and suck out what's left. You've got to find that guy." And it went on, and on, and on, and trying to live in that house. Fortunately we got it cleaned up before Uncle George showed up for lunch. (laughter) JC: Sounds like it was quite difficult living in that house. RT: It was very difficult. Every single day one of us crossed the street to the bakery that was directly across the street from us, and we'd order a demi pan, and bring it back for breakfast, or something else. And every single day that one of us went, my own experience was I'd walk in the door -- "Bonjour, Madame." (laughter) The only guy that spoke to us lived next door, and the reason he spoke to us was that nobody else in the neighborhood, or the town, or the city would speak to him, because he had been a butcher during the Nazi occupation and gave the Nazis all the best cuts of meat. We had no phones. It took three years to get a phone, and it was a three-year tour. If you got a phone, you had nobody to call; they'd all gone home. They're crazy, just crazy. (laughs) JC: So what was the next assignment after France? RT: Well, while in France the Vietnam War broke out, and people lieutenant colonel level in Europe were being pulled back to the United States and given a command in Vietnam. So I applied to get a command in Vietnam, and they said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, you haven't finished your tour for having gone to graduate school. You can't possibly go." This is talking to somebody back in Washington. Then another job opened up, and they needed a lieutenant colonel in an armored battalion, and I called them back again. I said, "I'll come back to this job after that. How about that?" "Nope, we can't do that. We can't do that." Eventually they said, "OK, when you come home from --" I put enough pressure on them. "When you come home from France, we'll send you to Vietnam." And when we came home from France, they said, "No, you're going to go to the Armed Forces Staff College. You've been selected among the army, navy, and air force to go to the Armed Forces Staff College, for six months. After that, we'll get you a job that will get you to Vietnam." Well, you know, it's frustrating, just terribly frustrating. After the Armed Forces Staff College they told me I would go to Vietnam, but first I would go to pick up 57 tanks that had just been manufactured of a new design, and I was to form the tank battalion in the United States, train it in the United States, and take it to Vietnam. When that day came, ready to go, we had three rounds blow up in the chamber back at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and they said, "Hold it. You're no longer on the list to go. But you are going to go to the Naval War College." I couldn't get to Vietnam! It was very difficult. 27 JC: What was the Naval War College like? RT: Terrible. The Naval War College, well, we called it the sleeping room. They had two major speakers every day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. That was fine. I mean, I loved to hear them, and they did have a message, but it wasn't work. It was sitting there like you're turning on the television. There was no challenge to this thing at all. Now you could go and get a master's degree along with it from George Washington, but I couldn't, because I had a master's degree, so they weren't going to let me take that program. So they hired somebody the University of Massachusetts had fired from their Economics Department, an old man, to be my mentor and take me through a separate program -- nothing comes out of it other than a dissertation at the end. OK, I'll put up with it, but he was awful, and it was a waste of my time. You never had time between these people to really go to the library and do something. It was 20 minutes. What can you do in the library in 20 minutes? No, you don't. Everyone went and get good coffee, sat around and talked, etc. Oop, time to go back into the bedroom. There was nothing going on in terms of substance in the place. When I had my first time as directing my little group, I worked long and hard on the assignments, and came in the next morning and said, "OK, let's see. Now we had readings in this one, and then we had a differing opinion from this requirement, and then this one, and another one. Commander Jones, what do you think about this?" "Oh, shit," he said, "You don't think I pay any attention to that, do you? I'm in the George Washington program. I'm not going to do any of this." That was a general attitude. There wasn't any depth to what we were doing. One day the admiral in charge, who'd married a British lady and had just come back from another tour in London, said, "How would you like to have lunch at my house with a guest speaker, Todd?" I said, "Gee, that would be very nice, sir." I got up there to discover there were 12 or 13 of us at separate tables and he and the speaker was at another table. What did we do? We sat around and chatted, and ate his food, and left. He said, "How'd you like that?" I said, "What are you referring to, sir?" He said, "Well, the opportunity to be with the speaker." I said, "We weren't with the speaker. You were with the speaker." "Well, how would you handle that?" "I'd put in a round table, and we'd all sit around and talk." "What a great idea." Really, really bad stuff. So he did, and then he invited me to come, and I went, and he said, "How did that go?" I said, "Sir, that was wonderful. But if you did that in the classrooms it might help, too." "We don't have round tables in the classrooms?" He'd never been in a classroom. We didn't have one single naval officer who was nuclear qualified come to the course. They sent them to the National War College. We didn't have one single graduate of a senior college who was on the faculty. I could go on, and on, and on about how bad it was. But one day, in Vietnam, I was sitting at my desk outside General Abrams's office, and I got a call from the naval head in Vietnam. I'm trying to think of his name. I know it as well as I know my own. But anyway, he called me and said, "Russ, I got to see General Abrams." I said, "Well, he's tied up at the moment. Come on up and sit down, and I'll get you in just the minute I can break into it." He said, "Good," and he came up. We sat there, and he said, "I got to talk to General Abrams. They're going to announce this afternoon that I'm the new chief of naval operations, and I don't want him to hear it from anybody else but me." I said, "Oh, have I been waiting for this." He said, 28 "What are you talking about?" I said, "You can do something about the Naval War College that I couldn't," and I laid it out for him, and he fired the guy when he got back there. This is Zumwalt, Admiral Zumwalt. He fired the guy and changed all the programs. I mean, they were tough on him, and they've got a good school there now, or at least the last I knew of it, a very good school that has been accredited. But it was awful. JC: Did you finally get to Vietnam after the Naval War College? RT: Yeah, that's why I was sitting in General Abrams's office. I was to be sent over to be on the command list, which meant this list of people the army feels are capable of doing a job as colonel in a combat unit. They sent my name over, and then they called me back and said, "We've withdrawn your name." (sighs deeply) I said, "Come on, guys. This isn't fair." He's "Hold it, hold it, hold it. They're looking for an assistant to General Abrams, and we've sent your name in." I said, "Look, I've met General Abrams a few times. I don't think he was very impressed with me. I don't think he'll select me off of any list of yours." He said, "There is no list. We only sent your name." (laughter) So I went over there, and I sat for, oh, eight months I guess in General Cao Van Vien's office, who was the head of the Vietnamese armed forces, and I acted as a liaison between General Abrams and General Cao Van Vien, of which there was no requirement. Those guys talked to each other whenever they wanted to. But I represented General Abrams when General Cao Van Vien called the other -- the Koreans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, etc., etc. -- together on a Monday morning to have a meeting, and that was interesting, and I learned a lot, and I met a lot of people. Eventually the secretary of the staff rotated home, and I took his slot. You actually work for the chief of staff, but I read and decided which messages that came in that night would go into General Abrams the next morning, so I got to work very, very early and stayed very, very late, day after day after day, seven days a week. But I really loved working for the guy. Every Saturday morning we would meet with the commanders of the army, navy, air force, etc., the CIA, in the basement of our building, and it was general so-and-so, admiral so-and-so, etc., and Colonel Todd. And Colonel Todd sat in the back of the room and checked -- again, a great learning experience. Watching the interrelationship between these very, very senior commanders was a great experience. Then I went with General Abrams every Monday morning down to brief the ambassador. We'd drive down in his sedan. On Sunday I'd prepare a book for him that he'd go over, and then he'd have that in front of him. He never read it. He never sat in front of the ambassador and read it. I'd be on pins and needles all the time that he'd turn to me and say, "What the hell's this?" (laughs) But he was great. Then I got a command. I left the headquarters and went out and joined the 24th Division as a brigade commander, and I'd been there about eight days when it was announced that the brigade was to go home. (laughs) The next day I got a call on the radio, out flying around in my helicopter -- I had seven battalions in the brigade at the time -- from the corps commander, General Davidson, and General Davidson said, "Meet me at coordinates so-and-so," and we both flew into a point. He said, "I'm pulling you out of this. I've got a problem with the Royal Thai Army. The officer we have working 29 with them is not acceptable any longer to the Royal Thai Army. I need somebody tomorrow, and you're it." That was the craziest thing I've ever been involved in. Wonderful, wonderful Thai commander, who began his military experience at age five in a military academy run by the government. He finished his education in France. The French owned Indonesia. Thailand (inaudible) [02:16:30]. So there we were. Day in and day out, he and I would receive the same briefing. He'd get it in Thai, and his aide-de-camp would give it to me in English. We never ever, ever came to the same solution. We were generations in thought apart. For example, in World War II Thailand never declared war on anybody, but went to war against the Allied forces when they thought Japan was winning. This fellow was a captain in the Thai Army, and he did something very spectacular -- whatever it was, I don't know, very heroic. He was called back to the capital, and he was given the Royal Order of the White Elephant or something. They'd give out five for every war. This was something very, very special, parades, the whole business. He went back to his unit, and then the Thais decided that the Japanese weren't winning the war, and they changed and became our allies. Now you're not going to believe this. They called him back and took the medal because he was fighting on the wrong side. (laughs) I could go on forever on this. My brain couldn't absorb it. When I'd left that and gone back to the United States, I guess when this happened -- I don't remember where I was, but anyway, I wrote him a letter, and I said, "What in the world is going on in Bangkok? You were the commander of the 1st Division, responsible for the security of Bangkok. Your father-in-law is the dictator. They're rioting in the streets, and, to the best I know, nothing's happening." He wrote back to me, after some (inaudible) [02:19:06] time, and said, "Well, you just don't understand our way of thinking. The soldiers had killed some civilians who were rioting, so I went back to my BOQ and stayed there two weeks, and when I came back my father-in-law had been deposed, and the fighting was over." Huh? (laughs) And it wasn't that he wasn't a good soldier, and it wasn't that he was afraid of anything. No, we'd fly around in his damn helicopter and take it places I never would have gone. On the other hand, he had some VIPs coming over, and he said, "We can't take the helicopter today. I'm going to use it tomorrow for some Thai VIPs, and I don't want any fingerprints on it, I don't want to make sure there's no bullet holes in the thing. We'll just take this other thing." What? We couldn't come together. At one point, the real one that almost got me in trouble -- I think it was on Thanksgiving -- our base camp also had three units in it from the 1st Cavalry Division, and the Thais, and the Thais who were responsible for the security, and I was responsible to the US headquarters. Well, on the big army base, maybe 15 miles away, on Thanksgiving night everything went up in the air, flares, and shooting, and machine guns, and all the Thais thought this was great, and they all did it. He called me in the next morning, and he laid me out. He said, "No Thai would ever do that. Your Americans did this." Well, OK, I'll suck it up. "I assure you it won't happen again, sir." So come New Year's time, I put out to my staff with each of his units, where they normally served, to stay with them all night and record everything that happened in that TOC. Next morning he got me again when I went in there. I said, "Sir, before we say anything else, I suggest you talk to your TOC officer." He went down there, and those 30 guys, we made them record everything, and he discovered that it was his units that were doing it. What do you suppose his answer to that one was? JC: I don't know. RT: He called in his senior officers and said, "I'm resigning from the army. You've let me down." And he went back into his hooch and stayed there for about three days. I woke up at the end of three days early in the morning, and the whole goddamn Thai Army that was posted in Vietnam was out there in a formation. I walked out to see what was going on and stood behind him -- he was up on a platform -- and they all apologized, etc., and he forgave them, and they went back into the woods to their positions. They'd left their fighting positions to come back and apologize to the commanding general. JC: Oh, wow. RT: (laughs) You can find one worse than that, I'll bet. My goodness. JC: Want to stop again? (break in audio) JC: Let's stop here, because we've done about another hour and 10 minutes. (break in audio) RT: Let's -- (break in audio) [02:23:15] JC: All right, this is Joseph Cates. Today is May 19, 2016. This is my second interview with Major General Russell Todd. This interview is taking place at the Sullivan Museum and History Center. This interview is sponsored by the Sullivan Museum and History Center and is part of the Norwich Voices Oral History Project. So when we left off last time we had gone through Vietnam, and you're ready for your next assignment. What was that? RT: OK. When the Royal Thai Army left Vietnam I moved out to a brigade, as I said earlier. But the time with the brigade was very unsatisfactory to me as a professional. It was a little more than a month, and that's not what I considered to be a command. So thinking about what would happen when I got home, I called to the Pentagon, talked to the people in armor branch. A lieutenant colonel sits on a desk and shuffles the papers for colonels and helps make the decisions. I told him I wanted to have a particular command at Fort Lewis, Washington, that I knew the command was about to change. And they said, "Oh, we've already appointed somebody to that port. But you are coming back to go to the Pentagon." 31 I had fought off the Pentagon earlier in my tour. When I was working for General Abrams I got a call from the Pentagon that said "We're bringing you back to the United States because a new position has opened up, and it calls for a brigadier general, and although you're only a colonel, we want you to fill that position." And I said, "Tell me about it." They said, "Well, you're going to be the army's first drug-and-alcohol-abuse officer." I said, "You've been watching what I'm drinking." He said, "No, this is what we've got in mind for you." And I said, "That isn't going to work. It just isn't going to work. I'm over here on a two-year tour, and if you want me to leave here, I'll give you General Abrams's telephone number, and you can call him and ask him to release me." Well, no, they didn't think they would do that. (laughs) So when I went back I went to the Pentagon, and there I went to work for a four-star general who I had met several times, because he traveled to Vietnam back and forth, General Kerwin, a wonderful, wonderful soldier. And when I reported in he told me that I was going to be the head of the department that he supervised for the Modern Volunteer Army. My job would be to coordinate all of the programs that were going on both at posts, camps, and stations around the country and around the world, and also within the Pentagon, to evaluate where we ought to be going. Well, OK. It wasn't my first choice. I had about, oh, 10 lieutenant colonels working for me in a very small office that didn't have any windows, and there was a lieutenant general working in the chief of staff's office whose title was the chief of modern volunteer army. So I was torn between two very senior officers who didn't agree with each other very often, and the job went on, and back and forth, and up and down, but a lot of answering letters from the Congress and this kind of thing, and then evaluating things that came from the field. Well, one day I was up in the next level in the Pentagon, because I'd been called by that lieutenant general, and he started chewing me out just something awful for reasons I couldn't explain. Finally he said, "I'm going down and see General Kerwin." My boss. What the hell's this about? So I was standing alone in his office. He went out a side door, and I said, "I've got to get to General Kerwin quick." So I picked up -- they have red phones that go between the very senior officers. I picked it up and dialed General Kerwin's office, and he has to answer that, no matter what's going on. And I said, "Sir, we got trouble," and told him what was going on. I saw him later in the day. He said, "Thanks. That really made a difference." From that moment on, he treated me like I was one of his best friends and had faith in what I was doing. Now, they did bring back in a major general who had just stopped commanding the 82nd Airborne Division, and he came in, and he was my immediate supervisor. But General Kerwin made a proposal -- not a proposal -- instructions to everybody about that time that said "Everybody that works for me in the deputy chief of staff personnel office is going to spend four years in this job." I could see my chances of getting a second shot at a brigade just going out the window. Carol and I had bought a house in Washington, the first home we ever owned. In France it was a rental, and everything else was army quarters. So this was special. She loved that house. She took a job in Washington, DC, in the personnel department, and then she had done a lot of that before, and that was sort of a big part of what she had done at Radcliffe after Smith, and she loved that job. In fact, everywhere we went she tried to find a job that would keep her busy and active. 32 So there we were, balancing back and forth. Now what do I do? Well, I'll go back to my old trick and call the people in my branch on the phone, and I called this young man early one morning before anybody else was in the office, and he happened to be there. I told him my plight, that I'd been really cheated in that one month I'd had in the thing, and General Davidson had said I was coming to Europe with him to command a brigade, and that didn't work out once he found out I'd never been in the Pentagon. "So I want a command, and I want to lay it out right now. I want you to start working on it." He said, "Sir, I'm not sure I can do that." I said, "Well, what time do you come to work?" He said, "Well, I'm in here by 8:00 every morning." I said, "Get in at 7:30 on Monday, because I'm going to call you every goddamn Monday I'm sitting at this desk," and I did. Eventually he said, "I've made an appointment with you with my boss, Colonel [Touche?], who oversees all the branches for colonels." I walked over, and it was my old friend from Fort Knox who had been the senior aide when I was the junior aide to General Collier. He had talked it over with the committee that makes these kinds of decisions, and they were going to put my name in nomination to go back onto the brigade commanders list. Great. A few weeks later I get a phone call that says "We put your name before the committee, and you are on the list, and you're number two." Uh-oh. I'm supposed to spend four years working for General Kerwin? (laughs) So a little later they call back and said, "Whoa. Wait. In the 2nd Armored Division the brigade commander has moved up to be chief of staff, and that brigade is open." I said, "OK. Now you guys call General Kerwin and tell him that you're pulling me out." They said, "Like hell we will." (laughter) So I went to see General Kerwin, and he sort of grimaced and (inaudible) [02:32:24]. He said, "You know my policy." I said, "Yes, I do, sir, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me." And he said, "I'll tell you tomorrow." So the next day he called me, and he said, "Against my better judgment I'm going to let you go to that command. But let me tell you this. The day that's over you're coming back to work for me." I said, "Yes, sir. Thank you." I ran home. (laughs) A little later, in time, the moving truck was in front of the house. I'd gone home, checked out of the office, done everything appropriately, and gone back, and there was a phone call waiting for me at home. General Kerwin. He went on to say what he really wanted me to do, wouldn't I know, is that -- "Sir, we've made our deal," and he says, "OK, but remember, I'm going to get you when you get (inaudible) [02:33:21]." And that was very pleasing to me. I loved the idea of working for him. But, again, it was a matter of just working your way through the system. It was terribly important to my career and to me. People were telling me that "You don't have to do this" kind of thing. You know, "You've done all those kinds of things." But no, that wasn't the career I wanted. So I went to the 2nd Armored Division and took over the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, and that was a real fun thing. I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of good people working for me. Some of them went on to become general officers later on. The first thing that happened was they told me that the brigade in one month is going to move to Germany on Operation [Forger?]. Does that mean anything to you? Well, in the Cold War we had built all kinds of home hutches and places to store tanks and materials that take a lot of time to get into the theater. If they said, "OK, the balloon went up. Come over here," you wouldn't have had any -- you'd have to wait for your 33 tanks for a month. So they had all those vehicles and stuff over there, and every year we went over and exercised the idea of flying over -- not me, the army did. It was my brigade's turn, and it was just great. I had planned that thing for every possible contingency, in my mind, and we laid it out with the staff. I said, "Now if this happens, or that happens, or this happens, this is what we'll do. Plan A, B, C, and D." And damn, I figured everything except it was going to snow at Fort Hood, and the air force wouldn't show up. (laughter) So we were about two days late getting there, and it slowed things up. But we went out on maneuvers for about a month and a half, and that was a great experience. I'd done it as a company commander when I was stationed in Europe, but as a brigade -- when I went over I've been detached from the 2nd Armored Division of the United States and attached to the 1st Infantry Division, when I got over to Europe. There for the first time I met a fellow named (laughs) -- I met someone, a senior officer, a brigadier general who, because my brigade wasn't part of his division, I had to go through the ropes of him looking over my shoulder for the first three weeks of what we were doing. It wasn't easy. Eventually he and I had a good reputation among each other, and then we're good. It worked out pretty well. Well, his name is Fuller, Fred Fuller. Just to move that part of the story a little further forward, when I went to Forces Command he was the DESOPS, and I was the assistant -- correction, he was the DESPER, personnel, and I was the assistant DESOPS. And again, good friends, you know. No, sir. I had to prove myself all over again to him. That was tough. That was tough. Then when I became division commander at Fort Hood, would you believe they made him the corps commander, and my boss again? And again, I went through the process. I called it rook training, he wanted to test me on everything that was going on, and then eventually he agreed, and we got along. That was a very difficult relationship I had with that individual. So we came back from Germany after the Reforger, and it was time to change division commanders. A general officer that I had met once or twice but didn't know came in as the two-star commanding the (inaudible) [02:38:26]. This was a fight for my life. He, in my opinion, didn't represent a good soldier. He would drive in his jeep with the two stars on the front, down the street, and the men in the division would say, "Hi, General," and he'd wave back, "Hi." No saluting, none of this. He would come around in my battalion and ask the company commander and the battalion commander to see their operational reports, and particularly the readiness reports, whether or not this tank would go or that one. He required them, not required them, but pushed hard for them to like take something off this tank and put it on that tank, and now we've created another tank that this one isn't working, this one if you take the parts and put it on this one, that's one less tank, but will look that much better. It was everything how you looked. Eventually he was promoted to lieutenant general and shipped to Europe, and his chief of staff caught on to his way of life, reported it. He got thrown out of the army, reduced to major general, and was retired. But that was a tough fight, that was a tough fight. In town now there's a major general, retired, John Greenway. Maybe you've met Phyllis. JC: I have. RT: Well, John Greenway was my chief of staff in the brigade, and I don't know how many times he saved my life. He'd say, "No, no, no, don't go up there and tell that general off. 34 Don't do it. Stop here." One time I actually said, "The hell with you, John, I'm going up there." I was really mad. Again, he had ordered my people to do something that was not proper. So John called up the division chief of staff, who was a good friend, and said, "Russ is on the way. Stop him." (laughs) So I never got in to see him, and I calmed down, and the chief of staff discussed it with me in a way. But it was a difficult, difficult system to live with, but I had wonderful people working for me. JC: Well, that's good. RT: Yeah. JC: What year is this? RT: Oh, my God. (inaudible) [02:41:04] I can't remember my birthday. (laughter) It was about '60 something, yeah. I came back to the United States, and I was assigned to forces command, where General Kerwin was, the man that said, "You're going to go work for me," and I went to work for General Kerwin just as I'd been promoted by the system to be brigadier general. I worked for him for two years and then another year with General Rogers, who went on to be the chief of staff of the army, and it was great. Real professionals who understood various ways of handling people beautifully. I must admit, he had a chief of staff who wasn't quite up to speed in my opinion, and as a result I found myself bypassing the chief of staff, which really isn't a very good idea. But both General Kerwin and General Rogers, when I was there, would call me on the phone directly and ask me to do something. As the junior brigadier general at Fort McPherson, Georgia, they immediately appointed me to be club officer, and to be the president of the Association of the United States Army chapter at Fort McPherson. I was really the junior guy in that headquarters as far as a general officer is concerned. The biggest thing that happened to me really there was that that's when we had the baby lift out of Vietnam, and then we had the evacuation of Vietnam. In the operations business at forces command, we had the responsibility of preparing those units in the United States, wherever they might be involved, to prepare them for the influx of people. I was up a lot of nights and really mad at the air force sometimes. They would bring in planes early, before we could finish taking people off the previous planes and get them, kind of thing. They finally came around. But it was a real wonderful experience as far as I'm concerned. I had the thrill of getting a thank you letter from the president and being called in by the State Department, who had the responsibility of taking these people once they arrived in the United States -- when they arrived in the United States the army was responsible for them. We took old barracks and tried to fix them up to be for families and all the rest of it. And the next step was to put them out into the population in America, and that was done by the State Department. At the end of this, the State Department gave me an award and invited me over to Foggy Bottom, and it was carried out in the formal part of that. It's a very ordinary-looking building, but inside, on the top floor, they have collected and put in there all the furnishing and antiques of America. They would go to somebody that had something that the State Department wanted, and they would say "We would like to have it, and we will replicate it exactly, and give you back the replication." They built -- it's a museum, it's a wonderful, wonderful museum of 35 American furniture through time. I was really impressed with it being there. I wasn't that impressed with the State Dept- people in Vietnam. (laughs) It was very interesting. JC: Yes, sir. So this was around 1975, that would be (crosstalk; inaudible) [02:45:47]. RT: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I did one or two year. JC: Where were you from Fort McPherson? RT: From Fort McPherson, when my immediate boss left General Rogers called me in and said, "I want you to be my full-time top guy and deputy chief of staff operations." I said, "No, General, that isn't right." "What are you talking about, it isn't right?" I said, "You want someone that's been a division commander to be in that job. I mean, you're dealing with all those division commanders, and if the guy that's passing the instructions hasn't had the experience of being a division commander, it doesn't come through right." And he said, "All right. All right." About a year later I was on a board in Washington. You're sent in to do a lot of those things. Interestingly enough, on this particular one I was the head of the board for captains being promoted to major, and I got in trouble with General Rogers. The instructions we had were "These are the formulas, etc., that you follow when you're looking at the history of their being in the service. You can add to this other things, if you, as a board, want to do it." The first thing we added to it was that any captain who had served a normal period of time as a captain in the combat arms branches and had not had a company wasn't to be promoted on this occasion to major. Passing up a captain, you pass up the real army and the real understanding of the army, and, oh, boy. It turns out that we eliminated from being promoted five captains at West Point, instructors, and that reverberated around the world. (laughs) General Rogers finally calmed down. Then on another occasion when I was away in Washington he called me on the phone and said, "The major generals promotion list has just come out." I said, "Oh, good. Who's on it?" and they said, "You are." Oh, wow. After I went back he called me in his office and said, "Now, I'm going to send you to Fort Hood to command a division." Previous discussion, you got to have a command. I said, "Oh, my. Where's George going?" And he looked at me with this great strain on his face and said, "George who?" I said, "George Patton, 2nd Armored Division." I had been in the 2nd Armored Division twice. Four men have commanded the 2nd Armored Division, three of them during World War II. I knew that was my place in life. Well, he said, "You're going to the 1st Cav." Of course, when I'd been there as a brigade commander the 1st Cav was the enemy. (laughter) It was a little difficult to change my mindset that I was now the head of the 1st Cavalry Division, but it turned out to be a good assignment, too. We were immediately assigned a mission of working on something that was called Division '86, and this was the '76-'77 time frame. What we would do is to experiment with different organizational concepts, try them out, and another R&D organization would evaluate whether this was a good idea, or whether it wasn't a good idea. But, man, was that a lot of work. We had soldiers picking up their mattresses and marching over two streets, and then joining another company, because now we were trying -- we were going to have tank platoons with only four tanks rather than five tanks, 36 and these guys had to fill in for the -- you know, back and forth, and up and down. It was a crazy time, but it was very, very rewarding. We lived next door to George Patton and Joanne Patton, and as a matter of fact we had become very close friends over the time we were in the army. We went home on vacations sometimes by accident at the same time, back in New England, and other times purposefully. But we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary together, both divisions, at the club, and it was officers. It was really good sport. JC: Was that your last command? RT: No. They sent me to -- at one Fort Hood, after two years of commanding the division, I went down and commanded something called [Tecada?] [02:51:38], which was a research and development experimental station kind of thing. I was doing to the rest of the world what they'd been doing to me, for two years I guess, at which point I was shipped over to Europe to be the deputy chief of staff for operations under General Kroesen. He was one of the most magnificent soldiers I'd ever met. I worked for him once before for a short time, but he was first class. Then I got a call from Loring Hart, president of Norwich University, who I'd gotten to know -- over his 10-year span as president -- pretty well. In my traveling around at various times, I was the head of the Norwich Club of Georgia, the Norwich Club of Fort Hood, the Norwich Club in Europe. They'd come over to visit, and we became close. I had come home on leave to see my dad, who was in bad trouble health wise, and I got a call from Loring Hart to my dad's home down in New Hampshire. He said, "I need you to come up here. I need to talk to you; it's important." And I said, "Gee, I don't know. Dad is not well, I don't know how long he's going to live, and I can't be here very long, so I really and truly want to see as much of him as I can." He said, "Well, afterward, after this weekend" -- it was a big alumni weekend -- "I'll stop in to see you." I said OK. Well, Mother got a hold of me, and Dad got a hold of me and said, "Go on up there." Dad said, "Get a hold of my classmates and tell them I'll be there next year." Well, I knew most of his classmates. When I arrived I found them at lunch in the Armory, and I walked down to the table, the half where they were, and started saying this lie about my father, he's going to be getting well, and he'll see you next year when he comes. All of a sudden the most unusual thing happened. There was this great noise in the Armory, and it kept getting louder and louder and louder. As this individual coming into the room got closer to our table, I discovered that it was General Harmon coming back, and all of these people were saying, "Ernie, Ernie, Ernie, Ernie." I couldn't believe it, you know, really and truly. It showed me just exactly how much he was loved by this institution. That doesn't mean he didn't make a lot of mistakes at times, but he really pulled us out of the woods. So Loring Hart stops in at the house and says, "The board at Norwich University has told me that 10 years is enough, and I'm going to retire. I want you to put your name on the list to be considered." I said, "You're a PhD, you taught English, you became the dean of the university. I don't have any of that." He said, "And you don't need it either, because I'm absolutely certain they're going to choose a soldier." I said, "What do you know, I'm qualified." I went back to Europe, told my boss, and then came back. I made a couple of trips back and forth. I told my boss, which was General Kroesen, what was 37 going on, and then went to see the chief of staff of the army to tell him that I was putting in my papers. You know, after you've been division commander you owe the army something, because of the experience they've given you. So I went to see General "Shy" Meyer, who I'd known in Vietnam, and I was a little dubious here. What will he say? So I told him, and he jumped up from behind his chair, rushed around to my side of his desk, shook my hand, and said, "Boy, that's just exactly what I want to do when I get out." (laughter) Then, unfortunately, and this doesn't have to be spread around, he told me that my name had been submitted to be promoted to Lieutenant General, and it is now before the Congress. Had I not put this in and had I been selected, I was going to go to one of two different jobs, and neither one of them sounded as much fun to me as coming home. Not that I could change my mind. Once you've told the army you're retiring, you're retiring. You don't change your mind. So that's how I got here. JC: What were the other two choices? RT: To be the chief of staff of USEUCOM, which was for the European theater of all of the activities there, and the other one was on the joint staff, doing the DES-OPS kind of work, which is called the J5. JC: So you come to Norwich. Talk a little bit about the application process, because I know Phil Marsilius says in his oral history that they gave you an eight-point plan that they wanted implemented. RT: Yeah. Very unusual I thought, and very useful. Before I get to that (laughs), Carol and I came. We went to New York City and joined a committee of the board who were involved in the selection process. The plane was late, the taxis weren't running, and we were late getting to this thing. Carol was a little nervous that that showed that maybe we weren't working hard enough to get there. They said to me, "We've just finished lunch. Do you want something to eat?" and I said, "Oh, yeah. How about a bowl of onion soup?" Carol said to me afterward, "You could have chosen anything but that cheese dangling out of your mouth." (laughter) But, to me, we had a wonderful conversation, and quite frankly I left in the cab going back to the airport with a member of the board who sat there and congratulated us, because they were certain that the board was now going to select us. Yeah, interesting. Where were we in our discussion? JC: The eight-point plan. RT: Yeah. I can't tell you what the eight-points are right now, but they were all reasonable, one of which was to make Vermont College work, the system of the two institutions together, and that's interesting, too. On that point I tried very hard -- they put a lot of pressure on Loring to go up to Vermont College at least twice a week. He'd go home, changed out of his uniform into civilian clothes, go up to Vermont College, and I don't know what he did, presumably he did good things, and came back again. I got into that routine with him, and I found that Vermont College was in deep trouble, I mean, in my opinion. Over time Vermont College had reduced the quality of their education in order 38 to sustain the number of students they needed, and they had all kinds of programs going that didn't make a lot of sense. They had a nursing program that was excellent. Excellent. They had just bought some programs from -- oh, what's the name of it? JC: Goddard? RT: Goddard College, and they were difficult to mesh into the family. For example, I hadn't been here very long, and I got a call from Mrs. Lippincott, who was the chief officer of Vermont College and had previously been Loring's assistant. I got a call that said, "There's going to be a graduation on Friday" -- this was about Wednesday -- "and it's going to be outside at Vermont College. It's going to be one of the Goddard programs that's graduating at this time. They would like to invite you to be part of their graduation." So I said, "Fine, I'll be there." But before I went I hadn't heard anything more, so I called up to find out, and I said, "Now, what's my role in this? Do I hand out the diplomas? Do I make a speech, do I congratulate them from the platform? What do I do?" They said, "Oh, no, they just want you to sit there and be present. They do all this themselves." OK. I can live with that, and we'll see what happens. The first student to graduate came up, gave a little speech, each one of them, and then took their diploma and put it from their left hand to their right hand, and went back to their chair. The institution wasn't involved. This happened seven or eight times before I really said this is something we've got to look at. Then they decided, or they didn't then decide, the next thing was to have a musical rendition. They had a fellow with a fife and a piano player, and they pushed the piano out toward the group, and the front leg broke off pushing it through the grass. They somehow got it jacked up and started, and the flute player -- well, it was awful, just awful. The next day I said to my vice president, Jim Galloway, major general, retired, I told Jim what had happened, and he said, "You know, you weren't the first. I was the first. The same sort of thing went on, but it was crazier when I was up there." I said, "Tell me." He said, "The flute player was in a tree." (laughter) So we spent some time trying to bring it into the focus. Quite frankly they had some fine professors. They just didn't have a system involved. JC: I've always heard Goddard is a little strange. RT: Well, put it this way. One time Carol and I invited the president of -- oh, in Burlington. JC: UVM? RT: N
Part one of an interview with John Clementi. Topics include: Memories of John's father, Sandro Clementi. His father's work history and how he became an executive in the plastics business. His father's business contacts in Italy. How his father brought new designs to his company and how the company grew. His father owned a pool hall. John's memories of the family trips to Italy they would every summer when he was growing up. What Italy was like around 1960. Speaking Italian in the United States and in Italy. Italian dialects. John's thoughts on discrimination. John's experiences at Leominster High School and at Deerfield. How John went to Boston College Law School. John left litigation work and joined his father at Plastican. How he met his wife. What Latvia, his wife's homeland, is like. How John and his father divide tasks at Plastican. What sort of products the company makes. The ethnic diversity that exists within the company. ; 1 LINDA ROSENLUND:This is Linda [Rosenlund] with the Center for Italian Culture. Today we're with John Clementi, a [Plastican] located on Industrial Road in Leominster. And today is Thursday, December 13, 2001. John is the son of Sandro Clementi and brother of Anna Canlangelo. So, John, um, could you tell about, first of all, your father, your -- you were telling me before I turned the microphone on that he's really… JOHN CLEMENTI: Yeah. Um, he, um… you know, I think that people that know him, that have known him for any given amount of time would, um… what I think, would all agree that he's just a, an extremely talented, um, gifted person, uh, has the ability to, uh, look beyond the present. He, he, he has a remarkable gift for, for being able to predict trends the way that, that the world is heading. He has a wonderful knowledge of, uh, human nature, um, which is [unintelligible - 00:01:14]. And he – and he's just a very talented executive. I think he has, um, he possesses all of the skills that one would think of in terms of being a very, very effective, uh, executive. Um, and, and I, I think he, he's been able to… exhibit those skills in all sorts of different situations and venues. [Unintelligible - 00:01:34] remain a constant, at least in my experience, having worked with him over the course of the last, uh, 25 years or so. LINDA ROSENLUND:Growing up, was, was he the owner of the… JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, um, growing -- no, I think that he… Plastican really wasn't formed until, um, late '60s, early '70s. Uh, I remember my dad in various roles. I remember him as the proprietor of a, um… of a pool hall. Um, and, and going with him on Sunday mornings, uh, to go clean the pool hall up. I remember him, um, as a, um… as a foreman in a plastics factory, um, working at the [unintelligible - 00:02:21]. And, uh, him sort of coming home, um, eating dinner and then go work another job, so, you know. I 2 think I -- my first true recollections of my dad are probably in that capacity. I still remember the blue uniform and the, you know, the grease and the plastic chip. I mean, I was at an age, I think at that time, I was probably maybe four or five years old. And if he did, then I wasn't old enough to understand. I clearly remember is that, you know, he would come home briefly and back. It's still sort of a joke. At the time, the Mickey Mouse Club was the popular children's show. They came on at five o'clock. And if you would ask my father, to this day, Mickey Mouse, he sort of has this negative psychological reaction because it was sort of his signal that it was time to go to work to the other job. And so that's sort of the way I remember my dad coming home and spending with us, you know, a brief amount of time around dinner and then going back out to work another shift. LINDA ROSENLUND:Asking him how it was that he became involved with Plastican, and it's my memory that he was perhaps worked in sales? JOHN CLEMENTI: Yes. I think we need to kind of go back before Plastican. His first involvement with a proprietary company was with Yankee Plastics. And that would have been back, I think, in 1956. And I think that's where the story comes in about the real estate agent and being made aware of this particular company. It would be around the time that I was talking about earlier. He was working in a plastics company anyway. He was working at Star Manufacturing Company as a shift supervisor. And as such, he more or less had to know the ins and outs of operating the plow from -- I mean, even as a child, in those days, he was literally hands-on. He would come home, as I say, covered with grease and plastic dust in his hair and on his clothes and so forth. He knew intimately the details of running a plastics operation. 3 He was also fortunate, you know, I think he would tell you that he was, in that the owner of that company was an Italian himself. And his name was Nick Dimassa, D-I-M-A-S-S-A. And Nick had been in the United States for a long time. He was the kind of person who -- you know, he was a boy, he was a very elegant figure, you know, just sort of the [block] of white hair and always had a [unintelligible – 00:05:25]. He was a successful manufacturer back in those days and my dad worked for him. And my dad often tells me the story that… you know, I think Mr. Dimassa told him, you know, that instead of making money for him, for Mr. Dimassa, that at some point maybe… well, because he was too talented to work for other people. Then the opportunity arose with this company, Yankee Plastics, which was a small action molder or custom molder that manufactured the kinds of things that are really no longer manufactured in the United States anymore. And by that, I mean… LINDA ROSENLUND:Making that no longer made. JOHN CLEMENTI: Right. So… LINDA ROSENLUND:Like what? JOHN CLEMENTI: Like, you know trinkets and giveaway items—small, little things. And basically for other companies, for other people. It wasn't a proprietary line. It was a line of products that were manufactured for the others. And the product line, from what I could tell, at least at that time as a child, you know, seem to have evolved and that the things that he made were bigger. You know, [unintelligible - 00:06:32] larger. And that line seemed to evolve from the kinds of things that we were just talking about into things like pitchers. And the company evolved into a proprietary housewares manufacturer. And I think probably the turning point for that company, for Yankee Platsics, happened to… in the early '60s, that probably had emerged as a leader in 4 design, especially in plastic design. Because I think it's safe to say that plastics is an ersatz material, a substitute for something else—wood or net, or -- in a sort of view it's a surrogate, whereas in Italy, at the time, emerging from the war, plastics was a new material. It was different. It had a higher value to most people. And subsequently, extraordinarily talented designers in Italy were designing plastic housewares, and my dad saw that and realized that very mundane items were being designed to be extraordinarily beautiful, and brought some of those designs to the United States and began to manufacture them on a proprietary basis, and began selling them to companies that were at the time, you know, the equivalent of the big-box retailers that we know of now as K-Mart or Walmart. It would have been a Woolworths or WT Grant. And so he started manufacturing these products for those kinds of companies, and I think that's really where the company began to assume a different… LINDA ROSENLUND:Now, did he hire anyone from [ideas forward]? JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, it was interesting at the time. From around 1960 on, we would spend a good part of our summers in Italy. We would go back to the ancestral town, Corfinio, and the whole family would. And, you know, while we were there, my dad made business contacts in the north of Italy, Turin and Milan, where the plastics business was happening—not only just for Italy but for Europe, in a way. And he made contact with various designers, the most prominent of which was a house called Leonardo, and had some designs done for plastic housewares. And I mean mixer, decanter design, that was just kind of thing where, if you saw it today, it would be just as beautiful today as it was. You know, classic, modern design. And he picked up on that. And, you know, purchased some designs from that house and began to sell them, manufacture the products and sell them. 5 He didn't even know the process but continued, I think is… you know as we continue to maintain a relationship with Italy in terms of going there in the summer, I think he was probably more aware of what was going on in Europe, both by way of Danish and Swedish and Finnish. Right from the very start his proprietary line probably had an edge in terms of quality. I think he was probably… he was a leverage, I think, pretty much to the Hilton those days. But I think that what happened was, once these designs hit, they were just enormously successful. In fact, there was one item, I think if you ask him specifically, there was one item that really was all the [doctoring gamble], which item was sort of a revolutionary item. It was the decanter that now I think we all probably recognize, the one with the measuring lines on the outside and the flip top, little spout on the top, you know, where you take the soft lid and put it on top. And now it's an archaic item, but in those days I think it was a bit revolutionary in that it replaced, you know, the glass pitcher that lemonade would go in, for example. That, I think, was probably the item that provided most of the working capital to go ahead. I would say that was the most significant item. LINDA ROSENLUND:Ask for a design they have an idea of art and then they make contact with? JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, in those days there was a—and there still is, in fact—a national houseware show in Chicago. And I believe that they saw it in Chicago, because my dad would exhibit with everybody else. And I think they saw the item and liked it and tried it on, and it became wildly successful [unintelligible - 00:11:42] a springboard for other items. In fact, I think that was the first, and then the items from Italy that were really high fashion came later. So that, I think that was probably the item that really made the difference. And of course, you could -- the world thinks that 6 came from that. In other words, you had the decanter, now you make the tumblers that go with the decanter, and it sort of becomes a set, and off you go. And there are other sets then, you know, that… pitchers and tumblers, you need bowls, and so you make bowls. And then you need colanders. You know, all of that sort of houseware items that we've come to realize is sort of … you know, the staples of plastic housewares—laundry baskets, lace baskets, all of those things. The line eventually evolved and grew so that it went from things like small tumblers to wastebaskets and trash receptacles, big, 34-gallon trash receptacles. The company evolved, such that from, let's say, from, 1967 it went from a small custom molder to a full-blown housewares manufacturer with a proprietary line. There's a real difference. I mean, custom molder, you're a job shop working for other people. And then as a proprietary line, you are a brand name, and you are manufacturing for yourself. And I think that was a crucial revolution, really, as far as… LINDA ROSENLUND:After more… JOHN CLEMENT: Yeah, I think -- you know, in Leominster, where in those days there were scores of custom molders, custom molders being people who manufactured items for other companies. You know, I think everybody's dream was to have their own proprietary line because you could essentially control you own fate. And my dad was… you know, enough of a visionary to realize that even early on, and thus the importance of coming up with designs that were at the time, at least, you know, innovative and different and would provide an [entrée] in places like Woolworths, for example, that he might not otherwise ever be able to get into given the existence of companies like Rubbermaid at the time. So I think that was a big, a major factor in, you know, being successful going forward. 7 No. Mr. Dimassa was the owner and chief executive of the company called Star Manufacturing, and that's where my dad was a shift foreman, where he learned the art and science of plastics. And he left Star Manufacturing to purchase Yankee Plastics, which was not much more than a garage type operation, very small manufacturing plant with, you know, with not much in terms of sales and not much in terms of machines. But he left Star Manufacturing to buy Yankee Plastics with his life savings and start, you know, in the business as a proprietor. I heard them talk about it. And I heard my dad talk about it and… basically say, I think, with a lot of admiration, that my mother just -- my mother never ever reminded him of what he was doing and what the risks were involved and, you know, the potential downside. Basically, she was there to support him in whatever he felt he needed to do, and that she always basically had faith in what he was doing. She never had much doubt that it was going to be successful. Yes, yes, yes. LINDA ROSENLUND:… while he was at Star Manufacturing? JOHN CLEMENTI: I'm not sure of that, but I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that he was doing both, yes. He was working two jobs at the time. LINDA ROSENLUND:I never really understood… JOHS CLEMENTI: Well, I think it's… again, I hate to speak for him in that regard, but I think it's because it was a [solicit] income that didn't require a tremendous amount of sophistication if terms of the language, in terms of, you know, business relationships, banks, regulatory agencies. You know? It's a pool hall. People put down money and play pool, and that's that. So it's fairly straightforward, easy kind of business to get into. That doesn't mean you're necessarily successful at it, but it's… you know, if I had to guess, I would think that was the reason. 8 LINDA ROSENLUND:Well, I don't want to put words into his mouth or your mouth either, but I can remember, when asking him about social clubs, he said, "Oh, no. I never belonged to a club," but I got the impression that the pool hall was… JOHN CLEMENTI: I don't know. I don't know about that. I think he probably met a lot of people that way that he might not have met otherwise. But I never had any impression from him that it was a social thing. To me, it was strictly, from what I could tell, a business thing. And it wasn't… again, from what I could tell, the clientele there was not… Italian. It wasn't Italian American. It was just at the pool hall in another town and, you know, in the early '50s. And my dad would always say that, you know, was unfortunate, but pool halls always did well when economies didn't do well. Because people were laid off and had time on their hands, you know, what do you do? And, you know, the pool hall is strictly, from what I could tell at least, an economic thing. LINDA ROSENLUND:At the pool hall, when he fought Yankee… JOHN CLEMENTI: I believe he did. You know, I'm pretty sure that he did. In fact, I think that it was before he did that, and it wasn't simultaneous in my recollection. LINDA ROSENLUND:Are there any differences in your whole life… JOHN CLEMENTI: Gee, you know, to tell you the truth, no. My life, my social life was more or less the same as it always was, which is substantially different from the way things are nowadays in a sense that, you know, people visited each other unannounced. You know, people would show, you know, the Italian talking about the Italian, relatives and friends and acquaintances. There was certain informality, you know? It was not unusual maybe a couple nights a week to have people show up at your house for coffee after dinner and talk, or in the summertime to show up and sit up on the porch or whatever. You know, and that continued 9 right on through. So to that extent, nothing really changed. My dad had been working a lot of hours anyway, so he continued to work a lot of hours. And really, our lives… you know, at least for a child, which is what I was, really didn't change. I mean, I think it's fair to say things, you know, things got moved. When I was in the second grade, we moved to another house that was newer and nicer. But substantially, not different from what it was before. So I can't say that life really changed at all at that time. Again, I didn't perceive that anything had changed. The big thing that would've convinced me as a child that we, you know, that we were doing well and that, you know, my dad was a successful person, was, you know, the trips that we would take to Italy in the summertime. Because at a certain point, I realized that not everybody went to Europe every summer. You know, as time went on I realized what a big deal that really was. LINDA ROSENLUND:Were you going to… JOHN CLEMENTI: At the beginning… I can't remember exactly. I don't think she was still living there, but we had -- we just had lots and lots of relatives there. And we have -- the ancestral home was there, and it's still there, the house that my dad grew up in. And at the time, there was sort of a ritual that happens with Italian immigrants from Central Italy and Southern Italy that have kind of gone on this, you know, sort of the… the exodus from Italy, especially in the post-war. They returned in the summertime, usually for the month of August. And it's a little known fact, but there are… tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Italian immigrants in places like Australia, Argentina, Canada, huge number of Italian immigrants. France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium. And these people in the summertime returned to Italy because, among other things, it's vacation in Europe the whole month of August in Italy. No one works. It's a vacation month. 10 And people -- it's kind of a class reunion for everybody. And so, for example, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that our little town of a 1,000 people becomes a town of maybe 3,000 people in August. And so this became sort of a ritual with our family that we would go back for the month of August and… you know, my dad would basically see the people he grew up with, his classmates, his friends, his relatives. And my mother too, because obviously my mother was brought up there as well. And so, you know, it sort of became, as I said, a ritual, or something that was expected. Of course, in the meantime, my dad was, you know, was also doing business, going to design houses, mold makers and talking to the people in the business in Italy who were sort of making it happen over there. And, you know, would build some tools in Italy, get some ideas et cetera. SPEKAER 1: Do you want me to stop this? JOHN CLEMENTI: Yeah. And as I say, for my dad it was business and pleasure, you know, well… nice for me because it afforded me a chance to see cities like Milan and spend some time in big cities whereas… you know, outside of the usual tourist traps, if you will, and get to visit, you know, some companies, and to see Italy as an economic entity as opposed to a tourist entity. And I have to say it was a significant education to me. Because among other things, it allowed me to keep the language, which, you know, was usually lost at some point. But that became I think a very important part of our lives, because for 10 years, I'd say from 1960 to 1970, I think we went every year. Yeah. And just last year my daughter, who is now a senior at Dartmouth, learned Italian and spent a term in Sienna. And we were able to visit her there and that was just a real joy. I was thrilled that she decided on her own that Italian was the language she wanted to learn. And so that was sort of gratifying. But we, 11 the family has been back to Italy, and… I think they enjoy very much and I think they're proud of that side of the family that it's of Italian heritage. I hope that they, you know, continue on and will… learn more about Italy and become more involved with the culture. But that's something they almost have to do on their own, simply because having married someone who is an Italian, it becomes a little bit more difficult. LINDA ROSENLUND:… recruit some of his friends in Italy that have come to America? JOHN CLEMENTI: No. I think… interesting, going back to Italy in those years… I never perceived an overwhelming desire on anybody's part at that time to come to America. Because I think by then, it was pretty much over. Italy was enjoying an economic boom. People were doing well. There was a migration in Italy. People from the south went to the north to work—places like Turin and Milan—to work for companies like Fiat, you know, Pirelli. You know, big companies. And so, there was very little impetus at that time for anybody to come to the United States. I think that was pretty much over. LINDA ROSENLUND:Now, when you… JOHN CLEMENTI: All the time. And it was, it was sort of a wakeup call, because when we first went to… Italy in 1960, it… it was a lot different from what it is today, in many ways. Our little village was primitive. There were maybe three automobiles. There were only a couple of television sets, and they belonged to fraternal organizations. There was no television before until eight o'clock in the evening. It was just so different from what we as Americans expected in terms of lifestyle. Most of the houses didn't have full indoor plumbing. Animals—horses, oxen—were used for transportation. People worked in the fields largely with their own physical labor. It was a very rudimentary agrarian 12 economy, much like what you would see in a third world country today. It would be unfair to call it a third world country because there were obviously other things going on in the big cities, et cetera. But for a ten-year-old child, it was a real eye opener. It was very exciting in many ways to be able to be stepping back in time. But by the same token, I realized that it was a life that was substantially harder than what I was used to. And the natural result of that was to think, "Boy, if we didn't come to the United States, this is the way we would be living now." LINDA ROSENLUND:… back to the village? JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, extraordinarily well. All of our relatives and friends were happy to see us. I mean, they really couldn't have done more for us. They were very lavish in their hospitality and would just about do anything for you to the point of almost being an embarrassment. And so to that extent it was just wonderful. For me, it was a lot of fun because, as I said before, at that time there was a language gap. I'd learned Italian before I learned English, but then I went to school, and, like most American kids, children of immigrants, you don't want to speak the language in public. And so the Italian, while you could understand it, you were always hesitant to speak it. And so when I got to Italy, if I wanted to communicate, I realized that I got to try to speak it as well. And… they had some fun with me and, you know, my brand, my version of the dialect that's spoken in our little village. But we got along well and we had a lot of fun, and it just sort of drew from there to the point where when I was in high school, going back -- I don't think that it was sort of like, "Oh, he's back again." And, you know, I knew everybody and they all knew me, and it was sort of like going to a summerhouse, like [unintelligible - 00:29:35] or something. It was, it became that kind of thing. 13 LINDA ROSENLUND:… dad must have spoken the dialect as well? JOHN CLEMENTI: Yes. LINDA ROSENLUND:So how did he communicate with the businessmen…? JOHN CLEMENTI: Oh, it's interesting, this whole notion of the dialect. I think you'll find, even in Italy today, that some sort of switch goes on and off when you enter the region or when you enter the village. You speak dialect, but when you're anywhere else you speak Italian. It's a phenomenon that I don't think exists here in the United States, where people speak both pure Italian and dialect. And this is true wherever you go. And I noticed this when we do business, as we still do today, with companies in Italy, especially up north. We communicate in Italian or in English, but I know that the people that I'm dealing with, the principals, they'll communicate with their employees in their dialect, which I absolutely don't understand. And if I communicated with my relatives with them present, they wouldn't understand me either. LINDA ROSENLUND:I thought that was more of a recent… JOHN CLEMENTI: I would think, and I hate to speak for Italians, but I think what they would tell you is that people who -- descendants of peasants, say, for a lack of a better term, when they would go to the big city, would speak relatively poor Italian, simply because they spent all their time speaking dialect. But they would know, they would know what they should be saying. And so as time has evolved and education became such that everybody is literate, everybody in Italy speaks the same language. But when they go home, they speak their dialect. And it's a really interesting phenomenon that I don't think as an American I would ever come close to understanding if I didn't go over there to see it firsthand, how someone could be extremely literate. Well, for example, I have a cousin who has written a book—actually, I think books—about classical history, Julius Cesar et 14 cetera. Extremely literate in Italian, and yet when he walks down to the piazza to talk with the guys, boom. He speaks dialect, and just as quickly can go in and out of that mode. So it's a phenomenon that I think still exists, probably to a lesser extent, because I think young people with mass media, watching television, listening to the radio, the Italian becomes modernized, and it is what it is. LINDA ROSENLUND:… now there find it difficult being [unintelligible - 00:32:44]? JOHN CLEMENTI: It's in central Italy. LINDA ROSENLUND:But did he found it difficult going to the north and being taken on seriously by the businessmen up there? JOHN CLEMENTI: You know, I don't think that occurred because… let's not forget, I mean, in the business world he was American. And it was an American company. And even though he spoke Italian, speaks Italian, knows the culture, you know, I think that's the way he was dealing. I think he was always taken very seriously. However, that doesn't discount the fact that there is a, to this day, a dichotomy between north and south. There is a certain… I don't know how to put it, but there's a definite culture clash between the north and the south of Italy. And the northerners view themselves as much more sophisticated, refined than the southerners. And as the southerners, you know, have a similar view of themselves compared to the northerners. In fact, there was actually a movement in the north of Italy to secede from the country. There were this movement, as recently as four or five years ago, for people from the Po Valley to create a country called Padania and secede from the country of Italy. And it doesn't look like it could be real, but I assure you, very real phenomenon. But that was there, and I think that's still there. But I don't think it ever affected my father's ability to do business there. 15 LINDA ROSENLUND:What about accent? JOHN CLEMENTI: You know, again, I think that America has been remarkably fair and welcoming to my father and people like my father. I've probably been -- you know, my father, and people like him who have accents that become self-conscious about it and so forth, I think my dad would tell you that he's been treated fairly, you know, by banks, local banks, who had faith in him early on. And I don't think he's ever forgotten that. I honestly believe that when it comes to discrimination, I think it's there, but I think that to be fair about it, I don't think it's ever been an impediment to me or to meet people, Italian Americans who have a certain sensibility, a certain sensitivity, you know, that it exists. I mean, you know, there will always be… you know, the untoward comment, the, you know, the references, you know, the mafia references that [unintelligible - 00:36:02] me personally. LINDA ROSENLUND:Not even at… JOHN CLEMENTI: Not even at Deerfield. In fact, particularly not at Deerfield. And that's one of the reasons why I personally love the place so much. Because, you know, I think everybody knows and everybody knew at the time, you know, Deerfield was sort of the quintessential Yankee. But the headmaster at the time, Mr. Boyden, Frank Boyden, who's sort of a giant in secondary education, he treated us all the same, and I never… certainly institutionalized from Deerfield. You would get a wise comment from a kid here or there, you know? I chucked out to the usual ignorance that you would find in a high school. I felt that Deerfield, to me, was crucial in my life. I think it was the single most important… Well, let's see. The ethos at Deerfield then and even now was, work hard, play hard. And a certain discipline at the place. By discipline I don't mean a military style discipline, but there was a 16 lot of work to do. It was hard. It was a real interaction between the faculty and the students. And I often tell people, we were as students probably respected by the faculty far more than we deserved. And the place sort or inculcated a sense of responsibility, a sense of giving back to the community. You know, a sense of [unintelligible - 00:37:50] your affairs in a courtly manner. You know, being mind and being understanding. You know, I don't think that was necessarily happening in high school for me. I think it just took my… just took who I was and sort of took me to another level, sort of challenged me, stretched me. I often feel I could've graduated from Deerfield and not gone to college, I'm not sure how much of a difference… It was mine. I mean, I was just going through my sophomore year. You have to realize, it was 1966, and the world was sort of getting to be a little topsy-turvy. You know, the drug culture had made [unintelligible – 00:38:38] in Leominster. And, you know, it was just a confused age. I was doing well in school, at least in terms of grades, but I didn't feel I was achieving very much. But I was probably doing well in a group of… really doing all that well. I thought I was just going through the motions, to tell you the truth, and I felt this sense of malaise about it that, you know, that hammer is going to fall here sometime. And you know, I don't like the way this… and, you know, I just started researching prep schools. I just thought I need to get out of here, down to Deerfield. There were kids that I'd gone to school with who had left and gone… More than anything, what happened was I went --when I was feeling this malaise, I just decided to go to the library and pull out catalogs, where I can get some catalogs. And, to tell the truth, they were very exciting. You know, [area in Dover], 17 Deerfield, you know, the idea that you could play sports on any level, you could study subjects that weren't necessarily offered in high school, and I think the idea of being away from home. I wasn't afraid of it because I've, you know, gone to Europe. It was kind of all of those things put together. I mean, my parents were a little bit taken aback, "Why do you want to leave? What's this all about?" But, you know, after going through the process, the tours and all of that, I think they kind of said okay, and so off we went. LINDA ROSENLUND:So you apparently knew… JOHN CLEMENTI: Yeah. But at time it was fairly clear that we could afford it. I think I knew that in my mind. After all, as I said before, we've been going to Italy now for, you know, at that time, seven, eight years, six, seven years. And so I didn't doubt that that was the case, so… LINDA ROSENLUND:… get the sense that your family was very successful and perhaps -- so [unintelligible - 00:40:58] the other students. JOHN CLEMENTI: [Unintelligible - 00:41:01] at Leominster High? I mean, I had that sense, you know, occasionally, but it really wasn't an overriding factor. I mean, I was pretty much of a happy camper in a way. I had a lot of friends, I loved sports. I was on teams with people. I never felt different, I never felt singled out, I never felt exceptional. It was really… as I said before, it was more a question of worrying about sliding down the slippery slope, if you will. Because, you know, I knew friends that, you know, one year were afraid to go to a dance and in the next year were dropping acid. So it became a kind of thing where I really felt that I wasn't going to progress hanging around. I thought I needed a change of venue. You know, I mean, the factual answer is yes. But I never -- it was important in a sense that they monitored my grades and spoke to my teachers and made sure 18 that I was doing what I ought to have been doing. But I think as time went on, as I got into high school, I think their ability to influence what was going on became less and less, simply because the issues I think became more and more complex. And, you know, they were dealing with them was less and less, simply because now instead of talking to a teacher, you have to talk to every one of these teachers and you need to have a better knowledge of what was going on. I think another thing that I've realized quite honestly is I think is the reverse of what you were asking. I was a sophomore in high school. I believe there was a switch for my philosophy of tracking students to a philosophy of open classrooms. And I have been attending school with same group of kids more or less since seventh grade. And as a sophomore, all of a sudden I realized I was in classes with kids that I'd never been in classes with before. And I think I came to the realization, and then I looked around and I thought it was me, and I thought, "Oh, I'm no longer in the top group. I'm now in the lesser group." But then I realized there were another two, three kids that I knew were very bright, that I knew were, you know, smart as anybody in the class, if not smarter, that were with me, but that there were classes where all the kids were bright. I don't know if this is true, but I surmised that if your parents were on the ball, if your parents knew what the score was in school, that they knew who the good teachers were. And along with the program, then you would be one of the guinea pigs in the open classroom. And this is sort of getting back to your question, "Why did you go to Deerfield?" I think what really set me off was an English class that I was in, in which… it was pretty clear that the class remain in the [gamut] from the brightest kids in the school to probably the least talented in the college curriculum. And the class 19 became a series of same kids putting up their hands, coming up with the answer, being ridiculed by the kids that didn't have the answer, who felt insecure and [badly]. And then what would happen is you would just realize this wasn't advancing the knowledge of the class. And so I thought: "If this is the way it's going to be, then it may be time for me to…" that was another; that was a pretty important fact that I neglected to mention, but… I felt badly for the teacher. Because what happened was she just started teaching to the mean. It all fell apart, in my opinion. [Laughter] SPEKAER 1: And I'm talking about… during high school. JOHN CLEMENTI: You know, I hate to speak for him, but wouldn't have surprised me if he did. I think he probably did. LINDA ROSENLUND:Did he push you for an education to go to college, or… JOHN CLEMENTI: Oh, I don't think he ever did. I don't think he ever expected me not to go to college. And by that time, having gone to Deerfield, you know, that was a totally different culture. And, you know, everybody was going to go to college. In fact, the game changed when I went to Deerfield. Another big reason why I went to Deerfield is in those days I really wanted to go to an Ivy League college. Go to on Ivy League college? Well, interestingly, my sophomore year in high school I was on the debate team, and we had a pretty good debating team in those days. And we went to [unintelligible - 00:46:37] which were up at Dartmouth and Hanover. And I remember to this day, because it was in February and it was classically Hanover, snowing all day long. But… I just, you know, I want to do it, this is where I want to go. You know, I want to go here. At that point, I think that kind of finalized the decision to leave Leominster, because my ability to get there would be seriously stained. And so, you know, I started applying to these other places, [unintelligible - 00:47:11] whole 20 thing evolved. My parents had interestingly -- it's funny, because I had a discussion with my dad about it. You know, my dad, his recollection is he sent me there. My recollection is I wanted to go there. Because really, we have no relationship to any of those kinds of schools. Back to funny story. When I… about that time, and it was in the winter, was in February, I think, I had applied to all these schools and I was now on my schedule. And my dad was still working, you know, hands-on. And I'll never forget, we had an interview at Phillips Andover Academy. And my dad was still, you know, he picked me up, he was still dressed in his work clothes. We went to Phillips, sitting in the admission's building. You know, there's old piano, old room, books, and a fireplace roaring. And it was really warm, and dad was just exhausted. And he just fell asleep. Officer was critiquing my [laughter]. And so, you know, that was kind of my recollection of that episode, which now I think is really funny and is really kind of -- but now I think about it, it's like, "Sure, he was tired. The guy was working really, really hard. He was exhausted." I mean, I dragged him out of the plant to come to this… I knew what was going on, you know, in those days. Not then, you know, they didn't know. They kind of got it from other people, it's the kind of deal was, you know, Philly, you know, that kind of thing. And I think in Deerfield they kind of started to get the idea, because Deerfield was the soul, it really still is. It's just, you know, [unintelligible - 00:49:12]. And don't forget, it was 1966. You know, [GI dye] shirts, long hair, the whole bit. Boom, Deerfield, you know? Coats and ties, suits, you know? You think they were kind of blown away by that. I think they thought to themselves, "This is the best thing that ever happened." You know? My mother tells me now that it broke her heart when I left. 21 LINDA ROSENLUND:What were parents' weekends like or parents'…? JOHN CLEMENTI: It was… it was fine. You have to realize, going back, in a way. And so, you know, I think that kind of went away. There's a kid growing up and that's why I see these Hispanic people working here a lot, and I really emphasize. I know what it's like. You know, they want the same things we want. We all want the same things. But Deerfield was… my parents, I think they're very proud of Deerfield. They… it's something I wish they had, gone to public schools, but quite frankly, I just… in this day and age I just never felt… I just didn't feel that public schools were living up to -- I went to Bancroft school in Worcester, and then they went to Deerfield. My girls went to Deerfield and my son is at Deer- -- I have a long Deerfield tradition. LINDA ROSENLUND:You keep the tradition? JOHN CLEMENTI: But I can get them to go elsewhere but they keep following me. So [unintelligible - 00:51:06] letters at Dartmouth. I have senior and freshmen, both of whom went to Deerfield. They've had wonderful careers. Now I have a son, Alex is a freshmen at Deerfield, and… yeah, I think when I went it was $3,700 a year. It really is. It's a… LINDA ROSENLUND:Follow up with you a little bit, then you decided to pursue a law degree? JOHN CLEMENTI: Yeah, I went to law school. You know, it's something I wanted to do from when I was in high school, really. And you know, it was… I went to Boston College Law School. But, you know, I had to decide what I wanted to do—did I want to go to a big city and, you know, could I come back here. I'd been interning here for this firm that I eventually joined. And they liked me and I liked them, and so when it came to, you know, the time to figure out what I wanted to do for a living, I'd lived in Boston at that time for three years. And that was great, but I -- there was a 22 chance to, you know, make an impact going back to my hometown and going to a small town all the time. You know, all the time. And, you know, I think it was just… have a guaranteed job in the city and all that stuff. I thought that that's what I wanted to do. So I joined the law firm and… I enjoyed it and had fun. I liked the people a lot and I liked the law a lot. And it was really a joy with people I met in the law. And at the time I was doing mostly litigation. I was mostly in court doing mostly criminal work. And… that was fun. But at a certain point I realized that's not what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. And just about at the same time I came to that conclusion, this company, Plastican had been formed and had been a going concern for about… seven or eight years. And… we had a plant; you know, in Leominster, about 70,000 square foot plant, and there was potential to get it bigger and to do other things. But my dad, at that point the jobs and so forth became much more specific in a point became this, "Listen, there's a lot to do here. There's a lot of potential here, but I'm at the age where I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to go [unintelligible - 00:53:56] all over the United States to do what we need to do." And so, I thought about it and realized that it was exciting, it was a lot of upside potential, and so I left the law and joined the company, and in sort of a COO, beneath my father. And the first task at hand was to set up some sort of a operation in the west, and so I went out and scouted the west and decided upon Dallas. And we… at the warehouse operation there we built a plant, begin to manufacture product there, and established a plant in Dallas in Texas. That was in 1978. And off we went. And then, a few years later, we realized that we had a plant in the east, a plant in the west, but there was a lot of business in the southeast. Florida 23 was a growing state. Georgia, the Carolinas. We really needed a place, a plant there. And so I, you know, we did the same thing, and I went down to and scouted the Southeast and came upon Macon, Georgia after much research and lots of trips to Georgia. In the meantime we add it on to the plant in Dallas, and since add it on to the plant in Macon. And then three years ago we built, we purchased a plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and so now we have a plant in Arizona. As for the Plastican side, we have four plants, and we're selling people coast to coast, so to speak. LINDA ROSENLUND:Now, you get an experience with the plastic industry? JOHN CLEMENTI: Oh, yeah. You know, in high school was the summer job, you know, was… you know, before it was time to go to Italy, in June, July, we worked in the plant, and so… but it was all about in terms of how it works and what you do. I had experience with that. I was here all the time in the summer, so I knew everybody and I knew everything that was going on. Well, you know, that's interesting. Yes, because I did have a part time job after school working at a local accountant's kind of doing arithmet- that was sort of after school from, like, 2:30 to 5:00. So I guess the answer is yes. I don't know how that happened, but I did have a part-time job, yeah. I think it was just the winter, because I didn't play any sports in the winter. LINDA ROSENLUND:… that you were [soft]? JOHN CLEMENTI: No. To be honest with you, I don't remember. I think I probably wanted the money. You know, in high school you could use a little more money. Yeah, I played baseball. It's the sport I cared about most. And I played football too. And that was another reason actually that I went to Deerfield, because Deerfield had great baseball, got my hand at another level. And so that was another impetus. 24 I think they just assumed that that's what kids do. It's interesting because… my parents never saw me play. You know, my dad was always working and my mother, you know, didn't really care, which was fine with me. And… it's another story. My dad saw me play the last game I ever played on the parents' weekend, right before graduation. And it was interesting, because he… you know, he was sitting in the stands and so forth and so on. And… so, we played the game and that was at that. After the game he said to me, "You know, I was talking to this really nice man in the stands, and he said that he thought you were a pretty good player." "Well, that's nice," I said. He said, "Well, you know, it's interesting. His name was DiMaggio." Well, it wasn't Joe DiMaggio, and I don't know if he was related to him. As it turns out, it was Dom DiMaggio, who played for the Red Sox, played centerfield for the Red Sox, and his son Paul was in my class. And, you know, it was kind of funny that, you know, Dom DiMaggio tells my father that kid's pretty good. Who's that kid? And he says, "That's my kid." And it was the only game he ever saw me play. And to this day, I have this sort of… conflict, you know, when I see, you know, soccer moms and little league parents and so forth. I think myself, all the fun I had playing, my parents weren't there. And I'm thinking, "You know, maybe I had a lot of fun because they weren't there." And I didn't have to do anything for anybody, you know? You know, I played, and whatever would happen, happened. And inevitably I had fun, and that was at the end of it. You know, I didn't have any dad telling me what I should have done or mom screaming at me for doing something or -- you know, it was kind of -- I left it there. So when I talk to parents now about that whole thing, you know, who feel compelled to see every single game, the every single practice. And I personally don't feel that way; I just don't 25 feel that way. I go to watch my kid play football, but, you know, if I don't go I don't feel it as a big deal. I don't have to do it. You know, that's another story. And so, the Dom DiMaggio thing was really, was a fun thing, to this day. LINDA ROSENLUND:Did you ever feel like you could go beyond? JOHN CLEMENTI: As I got older I realized how far I was away from going on. At Deerfield I played with guys that went to the major leagues. And, you know, I realized what the difference is. There's a difference, you know? [Laughter] LINDA ROSENLUND:… like who? Who played in the major league? JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, there's a guy who's now the coach at Brandeis, a guy named Pete Varney who's a footnote in history because he was the fellow that caught the famous pass in the Harvard-Yale game, 29-29 tie with the… the headline in the school paper was: "Harvard defeats Yale: 29-29." They scored I think, 26 points in, like, three minutes to tie the game, and he caught the extra point that tied the game with no time left on the clock. So Pete Varney was a footnote in history. But he played for the Chicago Red Sox and, you know, he's a big, strapping guy that could really hit. And the, [Ralph Teiner], the announcer of the [unintelligible – 01:00:45] for the Giants was at Deerfield. You know, just the slew of kids. A kid named Willie Roberts who played for the Houston Oilers and footballer Gary Bonner who said, "All the Russian records are…" you know, you can tell. I mean, there's a difference. I wasn't a very good athlete. I was a good player because I really liked the game and I knew how to play it, but I didn't have the ability to become [laughter]. I wish I did, but I didn't. LINDA ROSENLUND:And getting back, we talked about this just a little bit before I turned the recorder on.26 JOHN CLEMENTI: Oh, well. I mean, I ask the same question you were asking me. Because their kids, you know, they were… people from our village, from Corfinio, that are living here in Leominster who gave their children Italian names—Sandro, Pulino, Vega, Rosana—I mean, real Italian names, which are lovely and I love -- you know, I love them. And I said, "You know what's this, John? Why not Giovanni?" And dad and mother both said, "No! We named you John on purpose so you wouldn't get stuck with one of those names." Kind of interesting that they were thinking that way. To me it was kind of surprising that they were thinking that, because, you know, I think about it now, my dad was 22 and my mom was 21. It took a little bit of thinking, you know? No, I was born… LINDA ROSENLUND:But coming in, I thought you were born in Italy. JOHN CLEMENTI: Well, that's kind of interesting the way life works too, because she is very similar to me in the sense that her parents immigrated at just about the same time. And they were born in Latvia and were displaced people because they were invaded by the Russians, and then by the Germans. And they were taken to war camps in Germany. And her parents met in the war camp in Germany. All of these people who were displaced people were given the option of returning to their homeland or [remain there]. And because Latvia had been occupied by the Soviet Union, by the Russians, the word had gotten out as to what life was like on the other side. They decided not to go back to Latvia, and I guess were able to immigrate to the United States through the auspices of a church group, essentially as refugees, but even more so. So my wife was born in Germany. They didn't emigrate until… they immigrated though. It's interesting, you know, marrying a Mediterranean, marrying a [unintelligible - 01:03:52], 27 essentially in Nordic culture. But I think the common bind, you know, bound, being bound together by the immigrant thing, we understand a lot of the same things. You know, the bit about all of that stuff. All of the things, the feeling awkward, the sharing understanding of those things. Grew up in New Jersey. And it's really funny, you know, I've… her dad was a very successful contractor. And… she and her siblings all went to private schools. She went to private school. It was sort of like the same thing. The same thing happened, you know. You think you're unique and you realize you're far from it. LINDA ROSENLUND:How did you meet her? JOHN CLEMENTI: Blind date. Blind date. It was the Feast of St. Anthony in the North End. And law school at the time and a friend of mine who was living in Boston who said, "J, you know, my girlfriend has a friend, you know, up from New Jersey," and, you know, "would you like to go out with her?" "Sure, why not?" In those days, and I guess still today, every week in the summer there's some feast or another, and I go up there. It was a bit of a happening, and so… we had a blind date, and that was that. LINDA ROSENLUND:[Unintelligible – 01:05:29] JOHN CLEMENTI: Yes, it's really… I think back now, and it really is. Because you know, immigration, from Western Europe was over for the most part, by then. You know, there were very few immigrants that came to this country, you know, much after, 1948, '49. I meant, from Western Europe. I mean, they came from other places, from South America and Asia, Africa, but not many from Western Europe. So, it was -- yeah, it was… I think so. Yeah, definitely. You know, I guess, of the heart, it doesn't work that way. [Laughter] LINDA ROSENLUND:And a different religion. 28 JOHN CLEMENTI: Yes, she's a Lutheran. Yeah, I think it… my parents were remarkably disciplined in bearing, in that regard. And so were hers. They were both smart enough to know that, you know, if this has been what's… you know, go along and let's respect the choices and… you know. You know, it's been fine. It's really interesting. They feel both. As I say, my oldest one speaks Italian. My middle one really looks Italian. And my little guy, you know, I think he's at that age where, you know, he doesn't really feel -- but, we went to Latvia last summer, visited Latvia for a week. And it was great because I wanted to go, I wanted to see one of these former Soviet countries and see what life is like there. But it was good for them to see where their grandparents came from and, you know, to really get -- when I say, you know, they've been to both places and I think it's fair to say they feel a real affinity for both places. It really was… the impression you come away with is that it's a country that's really trying hard. Very interesting. You see construction cranes everywhere in the capital city, which is Riga. And very interesting phenomenon there. The country is divided in half ethnically. Half of them are ethnic Russians and half of them are ethnic Latvians. Who are, the Latvians are basically Teutonic in what they are, you know? They're very Germanic. And the Russians are Russian. And there's a real split there. And there's a great deal of resentment left over from the Soviet occupation. And there's resentment both ways. And the leadership of the country is very interesting, because when the country was liberated, children of immigrants -- and immigrants could come back as citizens. And so the prime minister of Latvia is a Canadian woman. And all of the signs in Latvia are written in three languages: Latvian first, English second, and Russians are not too thrilled about that. But the Latvians understand that, 29 you know, English is the -- it's really interesting. I mean, it's just, watching the country develop. You know, the average income there is, like, $250 a month, you know? They email some in Latvia. They're fully aware of everything that's going on in our culture, movies, CNN. Kind of, like… community is in sort of a weak fog, everything that's happened in the last 20 years up an away, and kind of bringing the country into the modern period without having to go through all the baggage of what has gone before. So, it's a real eye opener because all of the vestiges of Soviet domination are still there. I mean, these horribly snotty apartment buildings that are so depressing. You know, it's depressing architecture. And on the other side, avant-garde, hard music. It's a country that is leaping, you know, just jumping right out of the '40s into the, you know, the 2000s without anything in between. And it's happening. LINDA ROSENLUND:Are you hoping to do business…? JOHN CLEMENTI: Honestly, we don't export much of our products, so I never really thought -- on a personal level, no. I think it's just the… it's interesting. You fly through Frankfurt, boom. You know? Connect to Riga. Yeah, it's only an hour. Then from Riga we went to Stockholm, Sweden, which is only an hour. And there's a flight to Estonia. LINDA ROSENLUND:From Stockholm? JOHN CLEMENTI: Mm-hmm. Probably. We were in Stockholm this summer ourselves, we were in June, been there in June. LINDA ROSENLUND:Is there actually, by Stockholm, it was the… JOHN CLEMENTI: Yes, I was surprised. I don't know why I was surprised, but Stockholm just impressed me massively. It's a really beautiful, beautiful city, very impressive. You know, they have that magnificent park across the bridge, really impressive to me. LINDA ROSENLUND:… all of a sudden they've been able to…30 JOHN CLEMENTI: Infiltrate [laughter]. You know, that's a funny kind of situation. By the time that I became a member of the club, I think there was no longer any need to infiltrate. I think that that had changed completely. I remember a very dear friend of mine who was a member at the time—I was a lot younger—asking me if I wanted to be a member. Really hadn't given it much thought, and I said no. And since I've spoken to Jewish people, it was a real thing there. You know, there was, there were clear notions of the time when a Jewish person couldn't be a member. And I think some of those people sort of said, "Well, you know, that was then. This is now." So, you know, to me, I kind of view it as a… doesn't have nearly as social significance it might have had 20 years ago, or 25 years ago, when it really [unintelligible - 01:12:13]. It's no longer relevant to me. I don't think it's any longer a symbol of anything. I don't think so. LINDA ROSENLUND:No? JOHN CLEMENTI: No, I really don't. No. I think those days are long gone, honestly. You know, they may exist somewhere, you know? In the South, or you know, New York. Maybe it's important what club do you belong, but I don't think it's important at all. SPEKAER 1: … product these days at Plastican? JOHN CLEMENTI: Five-gallon bucket is and always has been the most important product. It's the workhorse of the rigid packaging industry. You know, we package everything from swimming pool chlorine, driveway sealer, paint, driveway, drywall compound, detergents, industrial chemicals, you name it. And back then it's five-gallon buckets. So it's a staple item. Lots of them, but that's the good news. The bad news is there are lots of us doing it, and so it's a very competitive business. You know, technology has always been an important part of what we do, and so…we try to keep on the cutting edge in terms 31 of technology. And only can make them quickly but also to make them well, so that the quality of the product is consistent over time. Packaging products get transported vast distances, and so it's important that the seal is really good and that the product is real good. We purchase recycled resins, and so we manufacture product out of recycled plastic, reclaim containers from customers that want us to so that we can assist in closing the circle. We have a very interesting product, which is the curbside recycling bin, the blue boxes you see on the side of the road. We manufacture those as well, and we manufacture those for the state of Massachusetts. And what we do there is we use recycled resin to manufacture the recycling bins, and so it's kind of -- well, I don't know. The way we kind of divided the tasks in the end, I basically run the day-to-day operations. I'm [unintelligible - 01:14:42] marketing personnel, human resources, purchasing, for the most part, the day-to-day operations of things. My dad, on the other hand, is concerned with things like capital purchases, big machines, molds. And he purchases raw material, resins. You know, the raw material. That's kind of the way we divide things. So, you know, the day-in-day-out headaches are mine. And [unintelligible - 01:15:19] aspect is his. That way, you know, we're constantly talking, so it's… we're always engaged in a dialogue about how we should do this how we should do that. And when one of us is on vacation or away, obviously the other takes up the slack. You know, I think it will continue to be more competitive going forward, you know? With globalization and consolidation, there are fewer and fewer companies to sell to. And this is an issue, that more and more purchasing power. And so the only alternative is to become more and more competitive. So… you know, I will be focusing our efforts on ways in which 32 we can make the company more competitive and more user-friendly to the buyers. One of the things about consolidation is with the added mass these companies are adding, what they do is they expect their vendors to provide more and more by way of service. Whereas you might have had good quality and good price, I think going forward that might not be enough. We have some products for the swimming pool industry in particular that are really innovative. "How I get these darn things off?" And with consumers [unintelligible - 01:16:50] is that you have to make sure that they don't come off. And so if you run into a conflict -- but we think we designed some products that make it easier to take the lid off and put it back on while making sure that nothing leaks in the meantime. So that's where -- I think that's the most exciting item that we're introducing. For those who have a one-gallon paint can, that has revolutionized things as well. LINDA ROSENLUND:Packaging? I mean, do you do everything on…? JOHN CLEMENTI: R&D? Marketing, mostly. So yeah, I will do that here. So this is our latest baby. LINDA ROSENLUND:Is that on the market yet? JOHN CLEMENTI: No. Not yet. LINDA ROSENLUND:… revolution. I think the other… JOHN CLEMENTI: Maybe. [Laughter] LINDA ROSENLUND:Well, you never know… JOHN CLEMENTI: You never know. SPEKAER 1: Is security an issue here? JOHN CLEMENTI: In terms of intellectual property? Yeah, it's an issue everywhere. So far so good, though. I mean, our products have been patented. We spend a lot of time and effort. I think we're pretty secure, but who knows? Here, I think in Plastican we have about 300. I think companywide we -- I think we have a very good 33 track record. I mean, I'd bet that fact that four employees that are going to be celebrating 30 years with us in a couple of months. We have very little turnover management, almost none. As far as our shift employees are concerned, the day shifts are very stable. It's really the -- it goes with the nature of the beast. When you're running 24 hours a day, there are some people that would only work 11 to 7 and 11. And there are other people that would never do it. The toughest shift tends to be 3 to 11, because it's kind of in the middle of the day and… that shift. But other than that, we're pretty fortunate with turnover here. Yeah, I think it's safe to say that we're no different from any other manufacturers in the Commonwealth. We have a lot of people of Hispanic -- I think we have a cross section of the people who live here. LINDA ROSENLUND:Can you mention that again? JOHN CLEMENTI: Yeah. Well, we have a lot of Hispanic employees. I'd say it's probably the major ethnic group that we have. And we also have a lot of Asians—Koreans, Vietnamese, Hmong. And so it's pretty much the reflection of the people that live in our area. I would hope so. I'd like to think that we've give people opportunities to advance themselves, you know, professionally, economically. I too provide opportunities to people. As I said before, we've been fortunate in that our recruitment and retention, we've just been very successful people come here. But I think everybody wants to leave a legacy of fairness and opportunity, and I hope to do the same./AT/lj/es
