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This is Herb and Bula Blinder talking with Claudia Levy on September 27th, 1995 at their house on Crady Lane. Tell me about your lives before you came to Bannockburn. Where you grew up, what your families were like.

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Well, first of all, Bubbles and I are first cousins. So We've known each other all her life, since I'm older. But I was born in New York, but moved to Cleveland, Ohio, very shortly after I was born.

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I didn't return, my family returned to New York when I was nine years old. Next month I'll be 76. I lived in New York from the time

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I was nine, essentially, till the time I was 22 when I went into the Navy. And shortly after, I spent four years in the Navy.

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Shortly after I got out, we married during the time I was in the Navy, about the last year and a half that I served in the Navy. What year was that?

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1944? 1944. Then we moved to California, where I went to school on the GI Bill. And we stayed in California until 1961, and then moved here. Well, we rented for a while in the DC area, actually lived in

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Virginia for almost a year. And then while we were looking for a permanent home, I moved into Bannockburn in early. We bought the house in '62 and moved in in '62.

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Were you at Berkeley, or were you in college? Went to USC. What did you study? Engineering.

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I'm an electrical engineer, retired. And Jill, you were born in? I was born in New York.

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And I lived there all of my life until I left home to follow my husband. But early part of my life, from the time I was about seven years old till I was ten, I lived down on Long Island.

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And then we moved back and I spent the rest of my growing up years in New York. Went to high school there. Oh, I'm going to get in a plug.

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I went to music and art. Did you? Wonderful. Yeah, I was a music major. Then we got married when I was 20.

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And meanwhile, I was working. I managed to not do well at college. So my father said, you're going to

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go to business school and go to work. Where were you in school? At Hunter College. And then I went to Packett business school and I went to work.

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And so when we got married, I stayed on for a while at work. I worked at CBS as a secretary. And then I decided there was no future there, but there might be a

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future if I followed my husband around, so I did. And we, the next year and a half actually, about next year, I followed him around. And we spent the end of the war in

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Hutchinson, Kansas. And then in December of '45, we departed for California. Understand that we left all of our

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family back east. And that was my mother and Herb's mother were best friends. Oh, yeah.

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Large family, but they were two sisters that were particularly close. Yeah, they were married within two weeks of each other.

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That's wonderful. What work did you do in LA? Or did you start to have kids? Oh, no. I didn't have kids for 10 years. I went to work at Warner Brothers.

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I went to work at an advertising agency at Warner Brothers, secretarial work, but in the publicity department while Herb went went to school and then it was my turn and all along there I had been going to night school I

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went to NYU and I went to USC and I went to UCLA at night courses and discovered that psychology was where it was at. And so when Herb got a job in Sacramento, I went back to school. And I was 26.

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What school? I went to the American River Junior College, and then I transferred to the newest addition to the California State College system in Sacramento.

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I only had junior and senior year, so I went in. And so that's where I graduated from.

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That's now the California State University in Sacramento. In Sacramento. And it was great because there were only 200 in my class total,

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and I had really tutorials in the last parts of it. But then we moved back here after we had a really very nice life in Sacramento. What work did you do while you

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were there? While I was there, after I graduated, I worked as a school psychologist. And what work did you do? Well, I worked for the Department of Interior first as an electrical engineer.

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And then I transferred to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which is a publicly owned electric system that operates the electric distribution system in the city of Sacramento and the surrounding area.

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And it's one of the largest publicly owned electric systems in the country. And then I came to Washington to be the technical director for the association that represents municipal electric systems, the

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American Public Power Association. Did you work there for the rest of your career? Yes, really did. I spent about 25 years there.

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When did you retire? 1985. And did you go into private practice right away? No, not right away.

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As I said, I worked in the school system in Sacramento. And then when we moved here, it was not easy to get a job. And I worked for NIH in some research projects. And then I went back to school for my master's and I what was an

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interesting program It was a special fellowship. It was probably one of the better ones in terms of the social sciences at University of Maryland and I got a degree in counseling there.

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And then I went back for a PhD program, which is not complete. It's all but dissertation, but everything else is done.

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And that was in adult development counseling. And so did you start a practice after that? After that.

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Actually I worked in schools. I worked in schools. I worked for the District of Columbia in their special programs.

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And then I worked for Leon... Eberhardt. Eberhardt. The Eberhardt School.

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I worked as a psychologist there. And Leon lived here. I remember. Yeah.

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And then I went into private practice. And you still are. I still am.

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I did get my clinical training in terms of I, it was a sort of quid pro quo. I worked up at the Rockville walk-in clinic. And the psychiatrist in charge there met with me every week.

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And I worked there for seven years, once a week. So in a sense, it was a quid pro quo. I got my clinical training that way. How did you guys hear about Bannockburn?

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I didn't. Matter of fact, I think we saw newsreels in Sacramento about the picket lines in Glen Echo. But it didn't really register when we moved here.

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We were simply looking for homes. But we had actually put down a deposit on a house in the middle of Bethesda. But it was on a Friday, and the deposit was due to run until

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Saturday morning. But the people didn't accept our offer, which was lower than their expectations. And so we had the weekend to do a little more looking around.

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So we came over here and found this little house, which was on the side of a hill. And it had none of the features that we were looking for in a house.

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Had a whole long list. And this didn't have any of them. But it had the side of a hill and a beautiful view of the hillside. The Palisades.

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Palisades. You could see Virginia. Yeah. And Mary Hurling was selling the house.

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She was the agent. She was the agent. We didn't know her. What did she say about the

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community? Well, we talked a lot about the community. After we talked about the community, we were convinced we wanted to move here.

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Really? And Mary was very worried about having a deposit over at this other agent, because we had said, well, it was very definitely gone. But she really was very loathe to

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write up a contract for this place until she was sure we had our money back. And then we went over to her house.

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And Jack and I got into a conversation while Mary was drawing up papers. And it turned out that Jack was writing a book about the great electrical conspiracy.

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And the utility that I had worked for was suing several of the major manufacturers Westinghouse G some of the others for lots of money involved in that conspiracy and so Jack and I spent hours very hard for million dollars the prize away

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from talking about that and get back to selling the house. What did she say to you about the community? How did she describe it? Well, she talked about its experience as a cooperative.

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Mary had her own little peeves about why it didn't complete. She thought it was largely as a failure of her by some of the founders.

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She was there to fight it out to the very end, but they finally exerted their authority over her and made her sell the property back to the members, in effect. But she's kind of telling us about

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her experience as an aide to Norman Thomas and as a boyhood socialist. And actually. I voted socialist.

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She pushed all the right buttons. Oh, yeah. But I want to comment also, it was not a newsreel.

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It was an item in the Sacramento Bee about this group of people who picketed in order to integrate the swimming pool at Glen Echo. Was that considered unusual?

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Yes. Yes. Well, we were a lot of people who we knew, their children. We were unusual among the friends that we had because we didn't have

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any children for 10 years after our marriage. So much of our friends had children that were quite a bit older than the children that we had. And some of them were going off to college, a couple of them were

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going off to college and things like that, getting very involved with the student... Oh, that was later. That was before we moved here.

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No, it wasn't. Yes, it was. Because the pre- There was some sit-in.

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We were talking, even with the Rudys at that time, about the impact. This was before you knew much about Martin Luther King or anything.

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But at Berkeley and at, I was very much aware of the student movement. Well, we were aware of it. I thought they Carmichaeled us.

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He took part in that. That was here. That was here. But we were watching from out

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there. What about what she said, Strucker-Bellekin? Tell me a little bit more about your backgrounds and why it appealed to you.

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Well, we come from, both of us come from homes where I would say Vaguely, very much liberal, vaguely socialist in outlook, but probably thought that the Roosevelt's were the prime example of the greatest.

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But nevertheless, with very good feelings about socialism. And we were children of the Depression, and I was, more so than in some ways in bubbles,

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because she was younger and maybe less affected by it. I graduated from high school during the Depression and had great difficulty finding God before getting drafted. And her brother, Bubbles' brother, was a very close friend of mine.

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And he was older. And he had a great deal of difficulty after he graduated from college as a journalist. So we formed a lot of our political beliefs during the

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Depression. So finding people like the Harlings were telling us about their work with the Industrial League and all of that, and working on trying to get refugees

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out of Germany. Had you been involved in movements or in ideas? Yeah, well, I was. I remember the writers' ionists in California.

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In California, before we came here. But during the Depression, I had been with a number of left-wing theater groups. The stirring performances of Barry

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LeBette and Star Price and other places in New York. And how about you? Oh, Mickey. My brother was more active. My brother wrote plays for the

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theater. But I was really too young to be active. The only thing, and this is

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brackets around, during the war, I thought the best way I could help would be in Russian orally. That was my bet. Until I discovered I was reciting choral chants about waving wheat

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and cutting wheat. I thought, what am I doing here? I stopped. Thank you very much.

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I think it's better. OK. I'll have the chipmunk. Right. Have either of you done anything

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in a cooperative kind of a... Oh yes, we belong to a cooperative in Los Angeles. Tell me about that.

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What was that like? Oh, let's just say we were young and married. I was going to school, Bubbles was working, And we were living very close to where the new Dodger

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Stadium now is. But at that time, there was a park up there. And it was a sort of a mixed poor

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blue-collar neighborhood. But there was a small co-op. A food co-op. A food co-op, wow.

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A food co-op. A little like the Bethesda co-op, but nothing quite as nice as that. But it was a lot more volunteer

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work by the members We bought a share Like the Beltsville Co-op? More like the Bethesda Co-op. Yeah, you get in the old co-ops. It was very much like that.

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So we belonged to that, and we became active in the labor Zionist chapter down in Los Angeles. What did you do with that? What kinds of things? Well, it was primarily in support of the labor movement in Israel in

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an attempt to, they were at that time the dominant party. And we were interested in the development of Israel as a socialist state. That was the avowed belief in the

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labor Zionist movement there. Did you go? Did you visit Israel? No, we're going to go this year. This is our first visit.

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Isn't that right? 1986, we're going to go. 1996, we're going to go. Finally.

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But we do have friends and relatives who are there. We were supposed to go over as a group of young engineers and physicists.

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But the plans fell through. We were hoping to be supported by the Histor Drut in at least getting there and helping us out. But that did not materialize, so we never went.

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Were you active at all in religious organizations? Not really. I'm sort of basically an atheist in any way.

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Although we did in Sacramento help found a little humanist fellowship. And that, of course, drew the same kinds of people that would be attracted to a community very much like the old community that

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Bannockburn was. But that was part of a town and gown group from people who were at the college. And it was people, I would say it was a mixture of liberal Jews and

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liberal Unitarians, if that's not a... It's a redundant thing. But there were Unitarians who were very...

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Like an old formal type and Unitarians that didn't. And so some of those who felt more that they were humanists than they were anything.

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I said that was a good experience for us. One of the things we've always maintained is our Jewish identity. We celebrated Passover every year with two other families, and we rotated the Passover Seder at a different house each year but we

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celebrated it every year and Hanukkah and I lit candles on Friday night and challah just simply art because our kids needed to have some kind of sense of what are some of the things that make up a Jewish life we may not believe in in the religion per se

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but there are sort of some things that are traditional. We added our own tradition on Friday night. We lit the candles, read it, drank wine, and we put money in the JNF box.

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That was our contribution. And so it was important to me. I assume it was important to her. But our kids had some identification with being Jews,

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not necessarily religious Jews. When were they born? Let's see, Josh was born. 1954 and 1957.

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Judy and 50s? Yeah, Judy and Josh. So after you moved to Bannockburn, what were the neighbors like? What were your impressions in the first year? Well, we made some very close friends here.

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I suppose when your children reach, after your children reach a certain age, you don't make the kind of friends you make when they are very small. But we made very close friends

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with the Chases and the Tourans. And later on with the Volkoff and the Bensons. And the Richardsons.

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And the Richardsons. The Danville experience brought us into a lot of friendships with people. Tell me about your participation in that.

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Before we get to that, I do want to comment that, as I said, we had a very good life in Sacramento and we left our extended family in Sacramento. We go back just to see the people

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there. Still. Still. We made the closest friends.

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As young married people. As young married and with small children, but as young marriages. Those are still people.

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I mean, the painting and some of the sculpture you see around here are made by some of our friends. They're professional artists. Now, Here, oh, a dangle was an interesting beginning, really.

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That occurred in 1962? Yeah. Yeah. Are you familiar with this story? Yeah.

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Well, The idea was, of course, that the kids came up to Washington in 1963. Yeah, but before that it was really Nancy Carrows. Nancy Carrows being incarcerated, right.

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And as a matter of fact, I ran across a picture of me holding a sign in the spring show. It was the Ballad of Ben down at jail.

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That was 1963, wasn't it? That's '64. Yeah, that was June Valenza's show.

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So you got involved in the show right away? Very early on. Very early on. I had one line in that show.

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That was it. And, but what happened was that Nancy Carrow went down there, and she got jailed. And I'm not sure the sequence of events, but they invited us down

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as a thank you for putting up all those kids. Was that before we put up the kids or after? Way before. What did you two do?

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What was your personal role? Bubbles went out. I went to Danville. She went to Danville. Most of the people who went were the women.

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There were a few men along. We stayed behind to run the house here. We had meetings at great length

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before we went. Lou Schwartz was very much involved in making sure that there were no untoward events. He got in touch with the Danville legal department and the peace

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officer, and we were protected when we went They were mostly the women who went I think I'm a junior and both went I'm not sure And so I went and heard the kids stay home And we were put up at the homes of various members of the black community.

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And we went to church on Sunday. John and I had a couple of kids, it was a very interesting experience. I had them take me around Vandal because I wanted to see I'm a

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pokey and there's a baby. I want to see the bridge which the old '89 '97 '90 all '97 They took me around We were followed by a police car.

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I don't know whether they were protecting us, or just wanted to keep track of us. But we were being followed, and that's OK. Everybody was cool.

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Did you have any involvement in any other civil rights? Oh, yeah. We got flat feet from parades. We went on a lot of the marches.

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We came here after the fight over Glen Echo, the place we were here. But when Mary talked about it, then it brought back the memories of what we had read about. But that was the beginning.

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There were a whole string of demonstrations in Washington, small parades and larger. We put up a lot of kids who came to march at the end of the 60th.

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I stayed home with our kids. But we also went under the banner of the Washington Ethical Society. Yeah, we became members of the Washington Ethical Society. At one time we had a fair number of members of the Washington

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Ethical Society here in Bannockburn. The McEntires, the Chases, the Turins, they were all former presidents. Mary Ellen Sayer, which I

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remember. Did you join that right away? Well, what happened was I was trying to find something like the Humanist Fellowship that we'd been associated with.And so I wrote to

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the American Humanist Association and asked them if there was anything like that in Washington, and got back a response that gave me a name of people who were forming a humanist group here in Washington.

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And I called, And they said, yeah, we're just in the formation. We're going to have a luncheon meeting.

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And so I went to that. You had '62 or right after that? About 1962. Wasn't too long after we'd come here. I think it was in '62, or in the fall of '61.

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And I came back from that. Helped to tell Bubbles, well, it's a nice group. But out of the 20 people or so

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that were there, about 20 of them were all people who had just left the Catholic Church. And I had a feeling I was at an AA for ex-Catholic.

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And I didn't really think I had enough common man. But I did meet a young man who was not in that core group.

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I talked about that phenomenon. He said, well, he's the leader of the Washington Ethical Society. I'd heard and known about the ethical culture movement in New York, but I didn't know it was national.

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And They had a society here. And then we went to visit it and met a number of our needs. One thing, our children were just

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about old enough to think a Sunday school would be a kind of a good thing if it could reinforce some of our value system. That turned out to be a good idea. And so we met a lot of friends

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through that. And we were still looking for a circle. Well, I've been a member of the,

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we've both been members of the ethical culture movement since then. And I've been an adjunct leader of the Washington Ethical Society for almost the past 14 years.

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Are you president? Have you been president of the organization? No, I'm an adjunct leader, which means like I'm an unpaid employee. And I'm also been a board member

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of the American Ethical Union. And I'm the director of all on pay. You get a newsletter, don't you?

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Oh, I get a newsletter. I'd like to see it. Oh, yeah. I get out a newsletter.

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It's a political action newsletter from the Washington Reports Club. And many of the societies use it in their newsletter. And it's basically urging people to write letters on certain things.

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I'll go get a copy of it for you. And were there other activities, other organizations? Well, I was president of the pool one year, been on the board of BCC a couple of times.

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I think this is my third time. And I've been on BCI board. So I think I did my stints on bubbles down on several boards, too.

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We've done our community activity functions. Your kids were too old to be nursery school candidates when you got them. Everybody thinks we're nursery

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schoolers. They were just past the age. In fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to move to Maryland from Virginia.

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And another reason was that one of the reasons was because of Maryland having kindergartens. And Judy was just getting to be, would have, would just be the age to go to kindergarten.

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So she went to kindergarten at Bannockburn School. Were you a part of the teaching team? No. I was not.

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I was in that school. I did a lot of part-time work and a lot of volunteer work. During those years, I did a lot of

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work in a district because I work in the what's the saying of reading is fundamental. Oh and I worked in a classroom and a classroom in a teaching.

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And So that's what I did a lot of, and then I went back to school. Hello. Oh, right.

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I believe we are recording now. Oh, good. Thank you so much. So you volunteered in school programs or in...

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Yeah. I volunteered as a psychologist in Sacramento. I became very aware of the fact

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that children, a lot of the children that I was testing and discussing with teachers and parents, were boys, for one thing, who were not doing well in school, and the reading was a big problem. So I became very interested in it.

00:30:28.440 - 00:30:41.260

And because I still didn't have a job and I had a young family, I did mostly volunteer work and that's why I did that. I volunteered in the district to

00:30:41.920 - 00:30:49.140

work in on the reading program. I did something that was very interesting. I played guitar.

00:30:50.460 - 00:31:02.080

And in Sacramento I had worked a lot with nursery school music and with young children. In fact, I worked on TV for schools.

00:31:03.340 - 00:31:13.080

And so I could use my guitar for the kind of training that you give little children for reading readiness. And one of the things that I did

00:31:13.080 - 00:31:29.180

do was I was asked by the then acting superintendent of schools, Ben Hanley, he died last year. I remember. To join him on Saturday mornings.

00:31:29.180 - 00:31:35.140

He had what he called Saturday schools. Are you familiar? Oh, I remember that.

00:31:35.140 - 00:31:42.440

Yeah. Well, he used to drive me around with my guitar. Oh, yeah. And I would train the parents how

00:31:42.440 - 00:31:54.120

to do finger plays and how to read to their children while he did other things. But that was a remarkable experience simply because I was with a remarkable man.

00:31:54.400 - 00:32:11.240

Were you involved at all in the bringing of kids from the district out here to go to school? No. We were not. As a matter of fact, I was very dubious about it. To be quite honest, I saw an awful lot of noblesse oblige involved

00:32:11.240 - 00:32:19.700

there. I certainly didn't discourage it. I was not an active participant. The Freiboms were very much

00:32:19.700 - 00:32:39.120

leaders in that program. But it meant a lot to a lot of the parents whose children were involved in that program. And I know in one of the shows we had a little sketch about the

00:32:39.120 - 00:32:55.660

experience and the sadness of the breakdown of that program. Emily Dexter was the little girl and the other little girl who was her friend, wasn't it? And who was it? I think Joey Schwartz and Josh Sang.

00:32:55.760 - 00:32:58.720

You have a friend. Oh, really? Huh. Yeah.

00:32:59.680 - 00:33:13.040

Have you both been in the shows every year since you got here? Virtually every year. I directed, beginning in I directed, beginning in 1969, I directed a lot of the shows until

00:33:13.100 - 00:33:23.200

1986. That was about the last one. That was the last one I directed. For a while, I directed a number

00:33:23.200 - 00:33:33.500

of them in sequence. Then I sort of alternated with Al Reifman. And then in the last couple of few

00:33:33.500 - 00:33:46.360

years, we just sort of agreed that it was a joint effort and we did it that way. Because he really is a marvelous organizer of getting people to that brought them.

00:33:46.560 - 00:33:57.340

But I like to concentrate on the direction itself. Is there a show like this anyplace else? Oh, I think there are, but there's nothing quite like it, I don't think.

00:33:57.340 - 00:34:09.640

I think ours is somewhat unique. Now, we stayed. When we were renting a place in Holmes Run Acres in Annandale, they had a community and they had

00:34:09.640 - 00:34:14.860

a community show. Did they? It wasn't as elaborate as ours. It was much simpler.

00:34:15.440 - 00:34:41.620

But it was, and I think there are probably some other places that do do it But I think ours is if not unique. It's certainly a outstanding one In 1965 and '67 I think if you ask people one of the things they remember is my belly dance.

00:34:42.180 - 00:34:47.690

Well, I think I remember it, too, because that's the first show I came to. Sandy Robner brought me. Oh, OK.

00:34:47.690 - 00:34:57.380

I think I remember that. I certainly remember the photographs in the paper Yeah, and the--and Hoagy played the drums. It's really quite something but

00:34:57.720 - 00:35:11.820

actually that so I said I had one line in the '64 show and I had a belly dance in the '65 show. But we've been in, I think there are probably two shows we haven't been in.

00:35:12.260 - 00:35:18.080

You're away. Yeah. Do you think your lives would have been different if you lived in any other subdivision? Oh, yeah.

00:35:18.080 - 00:35:29.220

Oh, yeah. How do you think it would have been different? Well, I think it's hard to say because lives are shaped a lot by the environment.

00:35:29.860 - 00:35:39.220

You are who you are. And I think we were more or less fully formed when we came here. But nevertheless, the opportunity

00:35:39.720 - 00:36:03.580

to be ourselves in the way we are and to have an encouraging number of friends around who had enough joint values that we have. It's something you don't find in too many places, outside of a place that's actually founded for that purpose.

00:36:04.280 - 00:36:25.400

Like a commune or a cooperative organization or a religious organization might set up a retreat kind of a colony. And this was, in a sense, almost unconsciously, because they had people who thought enough alike when they were trying to find a

00:36:25.400 - 00:36:30.940

place. Turned out to be just a very compatible place for us. It was very fortuitous.

00:36:31.340 - 00:36:47.840

I mean, as far as we knew nothing about Bannockburn. And I would say that quite a while before Lou Brown wrote her song about it being a state of mind, that's how I describe Bannockburn, as being...

00:36:47.840 - 00:37:03.660

It's more a state of mind than an actual place because you know about the history of crazy Lane and admittance into the charm circle. Yeah this was That took place before we came here, but this

00:37:03.660 - 00:37:15.070

street was actually the boundary between the old Bannockburn track itself is down the street. Is down the street? Yeah, and this street was not.

00:37:15.070 - 00:37:28.100

I mean, We're actually... We were part of the Fairway Hills subdivision. But for some reason, for some reasons which are a little obscure to me, there were some problems with some of the people who lived

00:37:28.100 - 00:37:41.240

on this street feeling that they were uncomfortable in the Fairway Hills subdivision And they petitioned, I guess, to become part of the Bannockburn community. Was that because of bad feelings

00:37:41.240 - 00:37:48.400

from the past? It may be. It may be. I don't know. You don't know? I don't know.

00:37:48.400 - 00:37:56.200

I'm going to interrupt us to see if, to play this back a little bit. Just to follow up on that a little bit, what do you think you would have been like if you had stayed

00:37:56.200 - 00:38:15.140

in Sacramento? Well, we had a good life there and we had very close friends. And I had a ñ I was comfortable in my position and probably would have been retired a few years

00:38:15.140 - 00:38:26.430

earlier than I did now. And permanently out on your sailboat? I wouldn't have had a boat because I didn't know how to sail.

00:38:26.600 - 00:38:42.180

Oh, you didn't know how to sail in the Delta? No. I didn't know how to sail. So we probably would have been up in the mountains a lot or in San Francisco a great deal But that's what we did when we went for go

00:38:42.180 - 00:38:51.920

for recreation. We went up to the high Sierras which we camped a lot. Oh, I did myself dirt by moving.

00:38:52.540 - 00:39:12.160

Professionally, you mean? Yes, well, Bubbles would definitely have been... I never recovered from it. She was sort of almost on a grease pole, a grease track for her graduate degrees and all, and with a lot of people that she networked

00:39:12.280 - 00:39:22.080

with, undoubtedly, from that standpoint. On the other hand, we think that it was a very broadening experience for our children. There was a sort of a cocoon-like

00:39:22.900 - 00:39:32.640

effect. Even though Sacramento's grown to be a big city, it was nevertheless a sheltered, much more sheltered one.

00:39:33.080 - 00:39:51.640

So following the track of some of our friends' children who stayed there, they've had a mixed experience by the fact that they did stay there, too. Some of them done very well, some not so very well.

00:39:52.280 - 00:40:02.440

So I don't know what the impact would have been on them. I don't think economically we would have been better off staying right there. But I was getting a little bored

00:40:02.440 - 00:40:21.820

doing the same thing I'd been doing and the fellow I've been working for became the undersecretary of interior briefly but so it always seemed like a great idea to make the move. Yeah, I think if I were to do it over again, I would stay.

00:40:22.120 - 00:40:40.580

Really? Oh, yes. And it did influence my attitudes in my counseling. One of the things, especially a young woman talked about making changes, I said, you make sure you are going to something.

00:40:41.440 - 00:40:57.740

Do not make a move where you don't know where you're going to be or what you're going to be working on. You know, that permanently influenced me, because I think it was a major setback for me.

00:40:57.740 - 00:41:08.300

I had good things happen here. As I say, I had an incredible fellowship, a two-year fellowship, for my master's degree. It was something that you don't

00:41:08.300 - 00:41:24.140

get very often, and that sort of thing. And certainly this is a very lively area, but I would have done just as well in Sacramento. What about your political

00:41:24.140 - 00:41:39.440

awareness? Do you think it would have been different? I was a Democrat in a carpool of a five-person carpool where the other four were right-wing Republicans.

00:41:42.800 - 00:41:56.880

I always remember the day when I broke the news to my carpool that I was going to be leaving. Very nice fellows, but it was like an interminable argument about everything.

00:41:59.060 - 00:42:07.810

And one of them said, I'm going to miss our stimulating discussions. I said, "Stimulating discussions? I thought I was fighting for my life."

00:42:08.480 - 00:42:21.660

Like, everything. So as I said, I think we were fully formed in terms of political attitudes. Was there a civil rights movement in the country?

00:42:21.660 - 00:42:32.540

It was growing at that time. It was growing and our kids would have been part of what was going on there. Some of the children of our friends there, one of them went to

00:42:33.720 - 00:42:37.260

Greensboro. Selma. Selma. Went to Selma.

00:42:37.360 - 00:42:44.880

They were involved. So they were either lapsed Jews or Unitarians. What are your kids doing today?

00:42:44.880 - 00:42:58.580

Where are they and what are they doing? Well, Josh works as a film person out in, for the B'nai B'rith International. He's their whole audio visual

00:42:58.580 - 00:43:06.760

department. And he does whatever films they do, he does them, and does whatever. And where is he? Down on 16th Street.

00:43:06.760 - 00:43:18.000

He lives here. Yeah, he lives in Sower Spray. He lives in Sower Spray. And Judy, after she went to Reed

00:43:18.000 - 00:43:44.040

College, and then she moved up to Seattle. And after trying to figure out what she wanted to do when she grew up, She somehow or other went to work for a bank, although she was a French literature major, and took some courses that were being

00:43:44.040 - 00:43:57.800

offered by the American Banking Association, and discovered to her incredible surprise that they were interesting to her. And she went on to get an MBA. She has just completed her work as

00:43:57.800 - 00:44:14.850

a certified financial advisor at CFA. And she also works as an economist for the city of Seattle, City Light. It's their electric system.

00:44:17.520 - 00:44:23.300

Oh, cool. It's a municipally owned. So she's doing some of the work that I used to do for years. Isn't that funny? But it came as, I'm sure, an

00:44:23.300 - 00:44:32.060

enormous surprise. But she's an interesting combination. She's a dancer, as of my vocation.

00:44:32.360 - 00:44:43.480

She certainly likes it. She belongs to a French club. And she's married. And they have a house in Seattle.

00:44:43.580 - 00:44:53.360

How do you think Bannockburn affected your kids? How do you think it all... Oh, I think it strengthened... I think it helped to strengthen by the friends that they made or the

00:44:53.360 - 00:45:05.800

people that they made and the acquaintances they made, it strengthened the value system that they got from us, from the Ethical Society. And I think it was a very, my

00:45:05.800 - 00:45:20.980

daughter became very active in the, what's the name of the organization? Amnesty International. She was the contact person. For a while she was editing their

00:45:20.980 - 00:45:29.360

West Coast newsletter. And they've sent her to do organizing work, check which chapters to develop. You know, so high.

00:45:29.380 - 00:45:38.220

She's small. Short. I think you might tower over her, or she may tower over you, but it'll be an inch either way.

00:45:42.360 - 00:46:05.360

And Josh and his wife Karen are members of the Ethical Society, and they are liberal people. I think both of our kids have carried on in their own way I would say both the moral and the

00:46:05.360 - 00:46:22.960

political concepts that are important to us. Is that because you are their parents or because they, or to what extent Does it have to do with their growing up in Bannockburn? Well, I think it's a combination.

00:46:23.760 - 00:46:49.280

But I think parents are the most powerful influence on children. But if they get no positive reinforcement from their peer groups, then that sets up much more of a difficulty. Because our children went through the same rebellious period that

00:46:49.280 - 00:47:05.320

most children do. But when they looked around for their peer support, they were still finding people who had similar values because they were fortunate to be in an area that

00:47:05.500 - 00:47:14.880

didn't reinforce them. Did they participate in Bannockburn activities? Oh yeah, they both did shows, Bannockburn shows.

00:47:16.260 - 00:47:20.320

Oh, Josh directed five of them. Did he? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

00:47:20.660 - 00:47:31.640

And I, worked on a number of things. They were... They both were scouts. Oh, yes.

00:47:31.640 - 00:47:39.340

Judy was a Girl Scout. Girl Scout. We used to have a little summer... The Y camp in the valley.

00:47:39.340 - 00:47:45.140

Camp, day camp. I heard about that. And they both were involved in that at one point in time.

00:47:45.140 - 00:47:54.360

But Judy went to it for a couple of years, as a matter of fact. And Judy has kept track with just one or two people.

00:47:55.680 - 00:48:06.700

In fact, she saw Cheryl Rippey just two weeks ago. Cheryl Rippey used to live right down the block here, and is her contemporary.

00:48:07.720 - 00:48:17.540

Now lives in Missoula, Montana. Now lives in Missoula, and she was sent to Missoula to a conference, so she made sure she looked up Heidi, which was her nickname.

00:48:17.540 - 00:48:33.580

Were there a lot of kids on the block when they were growing up? There were a number of kids. You know, it happens that both classes had... Both Josh's class and Judy's class had a number of interesting kids.

00:48:33.940 - 00:48:47.260

Our kids were not necessarily caught up with all of them. For example, Steve Zisell and Josh were in the same class, but they were not buddies. But Josh has hired Steve to do

00:48:47.260 - 00:48:49.880

voiceover now. Really? Yes. Oh my gosh.

00:48:49.920 - 00:48:54.260

Because Steve is an amateur. Well, Jerry Zizo is a very close friend of mine. Yeah.

00:48:54.380 - 00:49:09.720

It became very close because we lived here. And the Sigels became good friends because we lived here. We never would have met them otherwise. Do you think a Bannockburn would be possible in this day and age,

00:49:09.720 - 00:49:26.680

or does it take women who stay at home? It's interesting you ask that question, because back in the late 50s, when we were living in Sacramento, there was a small movement we were almost just barely aware of, but we were

00:49:26.680 - 00:49:44.480

exploring it a little bit in the humanist group, where people were buying a bit of land somewhere out in California, with the idea of a community of work where they would live together and try to do things.

00:49:45.180 - 00:49:56.180

The commune movement hadn't really begun then, but it did take off for a while and flourished for a while in the '60s. And we were aware of that, and

00:49:56.180 - 00:50:14.200

several of us were somewhat interested in that. And I think our previous attachment to labor Zionism tapped into that interest too as a nice way of living and non-competitive life.

00:50:14.540 - 00:50:27.480

I don't think. But I don't know that it would have gone anywhere. The friends who were the most active in searching out that ultimately emigrated to Israel.

00:50:29.060 - 00:50:46.840

Yeah, but No, I don't think it would be possible to start one now. I think the state of mind is quite different. I think the generation that started Bannockburn was of a

00:50:46.840 - 00:51:00.860

different turn of mind. I am delighted to see that there are so many newcomers here who are active members and active participants in the in the community.

00:51:02.320 - 00:51:16.800

I'm not aware of the political activity at all. There was, I mean, you talk to Estadela Plain, she and Mary, what was her name, Mary Lou Munce. I mean, they organized things like

00:51:16.800 - 00:51:26.420

crazy. I mean, when we had World War kids downstairs for the march, it was Mary Lou and Esther Della playing that spark plug thing.

00:51:26.660 - 00:51:39.360

So there were people here who were politically oriented. I don't, and activists in a very grassroots sense, I don't think that obtains today.

00:51:39.400 - 00:51:55.080

The unifying movements aren't there, are they? No, no, not at all. But there is also the fact this grew out of a great need for housing that had been cranking up

00:51:55.080 - 00:52:07.440

during the war years. People couldn't afford, couldn't build houses and there was a great shortage. And there was also not much available yet for the people with

00:52:07.440 - 00:52:11.180

modest means. I think that's come back.