MILTON “MILT” GORDON’S LIFE STORY 1930–1950
LAUNCHING Milt was born in 1930 in St. Paul, Minnesota, when his sister, Gladys, was three THE BUDDING SCIENTIST years old and his brother,
Irving “Irv” was eight. Milt‟s
mother and father referred
to her youngest son as
naches, a Yiddish word for
great pleasure. Milt‟s
mother adored him and
affectionately called him,
“mein Miltie and mein baby.”
His brother called Milt,
MILT GORDON, AGES 4 AND 6 “Bits.” (ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, 1934 AND 1936)
A childhood disease,
mumps, left Milt with double vision. He learned to use one eye at a time to prevent
seeing double. An optometrist who lived next door fitted Milt with his first pair of
eyeglasses at age four. He said the wire frames very uncomfortable.
THE GREAT The Great Depression began in 1929, a year before Milt‟s birth. Unemployment DEPRESSION, peaked in the spring of 1933 when twenty-five percent of the heads of American
EARLY 1930S households were out of work. Milt‟s parents lived frugally, only spending money on
essentials. When banks closed during the Great Depression, Milt‟s father lost his
savings. Eventually, the government took control of the banks and returned money
2/8/2008 1 to the depositors. Milt was too young to understand what was happening. He only
knew his parents worried about the cost of things. Being born during the
Depression laid the foundation of values, work ethics, and ambition that remained
with Milt throughout his life. It instilled a spend thrift mentality that stayed with him
and influenced his destiny.
The Great Depression was characterized by some people working for the WPA.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had created the Works Project Administration in
May 1935 to gainfully employ and provide economic relief to U.S. citizens who had
lost jobs. Milt had just started school when WPA workers built a playground,
swimming pool, and camp in his town. He recalls admiring steam shovels and the
sound of heavy equipment as he walked to school.
The economic slump of the Great Depression ended in the 1940s as the United
States prepared for World War II. Men and women worked at factory jobs and men
were drafted which in turn reduced the number of people in the labor market. In
October 1942, the War Production board spearheaded a campaign for 17 million
tons of metal. People were asked to donate scrap metal for World War II effort to
build machinery and bombs for the military. A truck drove through the
neighborhoods in his hometown to gather scrap metal that homeowners had put
on their front lawns. Teenager Milt and his friends collected the metal objects from
the front of homes and placed them onto the truck. Citizens, anxious to do
something good for the war effort, put out ornamental wrought iron fences, tin foil
gum wrappers assembled into a ball, virgin aluminum pots and pans, metal tools,
tin cans, guns, steel doors, and such.
TOYS AND The optometrist gave Milt a small kit of blocks with windows, pillars, and arches PLAY with which he built houses. Later, a small erector set occupied him for hours, as he
2 2/8/2008 constructed draw bridges, wagons, elevators, windmills, and other mechanical
things. His electric train only traveled in a circle and was of little interest. Finally, as
a child, a simple chemistry set and small microscope sparked Milt‟s devotion to
science.
THE FAMILY As a youngster, one of Milt‟s favorite CAT activities was watching the antics of
Putsch, the family cat, and teasing him
with a ball of string. Putsch relished
birds. He waited on the open second-
story window of the house and watched
for a bird to land on the apple tree.
When the bird arrived, the cat dove out
of the bedroom window to the apple
tree, trying to catch the bird in mid- MILT, AGE 7, AND HIS CAT, PUTSCH, AT CHILDHOOD HOME; MOTHER BECKY, flight. If Putsch failed, he went back in LOOKING OUT THE KITCHEN DOOR (ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, 1937) the house and tried again. Once in a
while he caught the innocent creature. Putsch had many lives and despite
disappearing for weeks at a time in below-zero Minnesota weather, Putsch
survived for seventeen years. He loved raw liver scraps donated by the butcher
and pieces of cantaloupe. The family never purchased cat food. If such a thing had
existed, the family would have considered it an unnecessary expenditure. Neither
did Putsch receive vaccinations or visit an animal hospital. Veterinarians primarily
treated large animals, rarely cats and dogs.
(Years later, Milt memorialized Putsch by having his picture painted on Milt‟s
favorite royal blue ceramic mug.)
2/8/2008 3 MORE PLAY The three Gordon siblings shared a small wagon and sled. Milt remembers cold
winter Minnesota days gliding down a snow-packed hill near their family home on
a sled with steel runners and steering with a rope tied to a bar. Sometimes Milt
sledded on a sheet of roofing metal, a piece of cardboard, or a playmate‟s
toboggan—a long board with a slippery bottom that held six children. Snow
provided hours of entertainment—fort building and sculpting snowmen, Exhilarated
and exhausted the children returned home when it was pitch-dark and settled in
the warmth of their house. Milt appreciated how nice the warm house felt.
The family owned a phonograph for 78-RPM records. It did not use electricity but
was operated manually. As a four year old, Milt‟s favorite record was a dance tune,
“Gavotte from the opera Mignon” by Ambroise Thomas. Milt loved the music so
when the player broke, he turned the record spindle by hand. (A sharp needle rode
in the groove of the record. The needle vibrated and fed into a little diaphragm in
tune with the plastic record. The vibrations filtered through a horn that was twisted
to fit in the wood cabinet. The opening of the horn at the front of the phonograph
amplified the sound.) Milt‟s father was irritated when the phonograph broke and
blamed Milt because he usually played it. Years later, Milt disassembled the
phonograph and saw a mechanism made of “beautifully machined brass.”
Relieved of guilt, he concluded brass is a soft metal and it simply wore out.
Milt built most of his toys. He used the end piece from a wooden crate to make a
play gun to shoot rubber bands at other boys who were likewise armed to shoot at
him.
4 2/8/2008
THE GORDON SIBLINGS: IRVING, AGE 12, GLADYS, AGE 6, MILT, AGE 3, AND BLACKIE, THE FIRST FAMILY CAT (ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, 1933)
THE Milt struggled in his early school years CHILDHOOD OF THE because English was not his first language. SCIENTIST, His mother spoke Yiddish, and when Milt 1930–1937 went to kindergarten, he did not know the
English words to ask to go to the bathroom.
Milt‟s older brother, Irving, motivated him to
BROTHER, IRVING GORDON, AGE 12 memorize the third-grade spelling MILT, AGE 3 assignments. Irving rewarded Milt with a test tube whenever he got 100 in spelling.
In the fifth grade, the breakthrough in Milt‟s academic success occurred when the
class discussed cars. Milt knew the answer and for the first time he raised his
hand. He liked automobiles, inventions, and science, and his teacher built lessons
on these topics to engage him in academics. Now that his teacher knew what
2/8/2008 5 interested him, she encouraged him to participate in class activities.
Students were required to buy their textbooks, paper, pencils, and a wooden stick
pen in which a metal point inserted. The school provided the ink, which often
spilled on the wooden desks and students‟ clothing. It was a hardship for Milt‟s
family to scrape together sufficient money to buy supplies for their three
schoolchildren.
Milt discovered a series of books in the school library: The Earth for Sam, Biology
for Sam, and Astronomy for Sam. These books stirred Milt‟s interest in science
and presaged his future career. In the sixth through eighth grades from 1939 to
1941, Milt was engrossed in comic books, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Planet
Stories. Milt developed a passion for science fiction and further pursued this genre
by reading pulp magazines Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction, later
renamed Analog. Every Sunday, Milt immersed himself in the ritual reading of the
newspaper comics. Tarzan, Prince Valiant, and Flash Gordon were his favorites.
SCIENCE In the 1930s and 1940s, people spun tales about traveling to the moon and
FICTION exploring planets. Some people believed that Mars had a civilization and a
network of irrigation canals to save the dying planet. They also described jungles
of Venus inhabited with beautiful Amazons. Milt and his father listened to hour long
adventure stories on the radio: “Superman,” “Tom Mix,” or the “The Lone Ranger,”
a program that had won an award for nonviolence, and of course, “Flash Gordon.”
Milt also was attracted to adventure tales such as “Captain Midnight” and “Jack
Armstrong,” the All American Boy; Mystery radio shows such as “Inner Sanctum”
and “The Shadow.” held his attention as he tried to unravel the plot. In addition,
humorous programs such as “Jack Benny,” “the Eddie Cantor Show,” and “Fibber
6 2/8/2008 McGee and Molly,” provided sheer laughter and comic relief. As a young teen, Milt
rigged up an extension loudspeaker from the radio in the living room so they could
listen while they ate dinner in the kitchen. The radio played all evening until Milt‟s
parents went to sleep. Milt said he could not get away from his mother‟s nightly
quiz programs.
PARENTS OF Milt‟s parents
THE SCIENTIST emigrated from Eastern
Europe. His father,
Abe, had apprenticed
in Russia as a tailor.
For his final Abe Gordon, examination, he age 20 (Belarus, 1914) fashioned a uniform for
an officer in the Tsar‟s Army. Abe arrived in
America in the early twentieth century before
1917 overthrow of the Russian Tsar. People
left Russia hoping for a better life.
Young immigrant men, thirsty for adventure
probably had heard that the United States
needed labor, and the country offered free land
BECKY RYAN, AGE 19 for homesteading in the Midwest. (ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, ABOUT 1918)
Abe traveled by steamship from Europe and worked his way as a tailor from his
southern Texas port of arrival, traveling through cities to New York City and on to
Minnesota. He attended English language classes and studied at the public library.
In St. Paul, Abe rented a room in a boarding house and married Rebecca “Becky”
2/8/2008 7 Ryan, whom he said was “the most beautiful” of his landlady‟s daughters.
THE WEDDING
OF MILT’S PARENTS,
1921
Becky Ryan and Abe Gordon (St. Paul, 1921)
MILT’S HOME
IN ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
NEAR MISSISSIPPI RIVER
RED STAR, WHERE MILT AND HIS PARENTS LIVED DURING HIS GROWING YEARS
8 2/8/2008
Milt and his brother’s bedroom Sleeping Porch
Dining room
THE ABE AND BECKY GORDON’S FAMILY HOME AT 2138 JEFFERSON, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (LEFT) SNOWY DAY (MARCH 1956) (RIGHT) MILT’S FATHER, ABE GORDON (1954)
THE FAMILY Abe and Becky Gordon had three children during their first nine years of marriage.
HOME In 1922 when they expected their first child, they moved out of their small
apartment and bought a two-story, wood-framed house in a low-density suburban
neighborhood near the Mississippi River in St. Paul, Minnesota. The home had
two bedrooms and one bathroom on the upper level. The bathroom had a tub
without a shower, a toilet, and a sink. Family members usually bathed once a
week. When Milt was old enough to light a match and wanted to bathe he had to
light the gas pilot to heat the water on the hot-water tank. He said he felt scared
when the match burst in flame as it hit the gas pilot.
A small kitchen, a dining and living room, and a screened-in porch were on the
main level of the house. The front door opened onto a sleeping porch leading to
the living room. The walls were painted and then textured with a sponge dipped in
another shade. The room was furnished with a couch and two oversized stuffed
chairs centered on a console radio. Family members often huddled around it. A
reddish carpet, a tapestry on the wall, and good lighting behind the chairs exuded
146 2/8/2008 warmth. Milt and his sister, Gladys, played leap frog
jumping between the living room chairs and the couch. By
the time they were grown and left home the couch and
chairs were threadbare. The family doted on the words of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he delivered his radio
“fireside chats” to the nation from 1933 to 1944. Roosevelt
died in 1945, just before World War II ended.1
Milt, the youngest of the three siblings, shared a bedroom 1930S CONSOLE RADIO with his brother Irving until Irving insisted on privacy. Next
Milt slept in his parents‟ room. On hot summer days, Milt preferred to sleep on the porch as homes did not have air-conditioning. On scorching unbearable days, he connected the hose used for washing clothes, from the basement laundry tub faucet to the ceiling to create a cold refreshing shower. The water ran out through the floor drain.
The kitchen held a table with space to sit for three family members who took turns eating. The table also served as Milt‟s study desk. During religious holidays they all ate at the heavy ornate wooden table in the dining room.
Becky cooked on a gas stove. The house had one electric outlet with heavy enough wires to accommodate the toaster or electric iron. The toaster required flipping slices of bread and removing the toast before it burned. The copper wires to other outlets were sufficient for light bulbs, but not thick enough to supply electricity for appliances needing high wattage. The refrigerator that replaced the icebox used in early years stood on the porch near the back door. Stairs from the kitchen led to the basement and from the living room to upstairs. The basement held, storage facilities, coal furnace, hot-water tank, semiautomatic washing machine, laundry tub, and coal bin, and in Milt‟s teen years, a ping pong table. The
2/8/2008 147 house was heated by a coal furnance and later replaced with gas.2 Once a month
in the winter, a big truck filled with coal stopped at the house, filled a bucket with
coal, and dumped it through the basement opening to the coal bin. The noise
terrified the family cat.
Garden and St. Paul summers were fertile and beautiful. Days were hot and nights stayed
Produce warm and summer rains nourished the soil. An apple and a plum tree and tomatoe
plants flourished in the backyard. Milt‟s mother preserved tomatoes, pickles, and
pears, peaches, and plums, which she stored in glass jars on basement shelves.
Milt introduced a recipe for sweet and sour pickles. He planted Yellow Pear
Tomatoes that grew so tall he had to stand on a ladder to harvest them. It was
economical for the family to buy hundred-pound sacks of potatoes and onions
after the harvest in the fall, which they stored in a sand-filled bin, a root cellar to
keep them cool and dry.
A lavender lilac bush, hollyhocks, yellow, red, and pink four-o‟clocks flowers
adorned the backyard. Milt‟s mother collected seeds in the fall and planted them
the next year.
Wage Earner During the Great Depression, when many wage owners who were heads of
households lost their jobs, Milt‟s father, Abe, retained his job as a tailor in a men‟s
clothing store, Richman Brothers. People who were still employed worked
especially hard, and Abe toiled longer hours for less salary. The retail business
slackened as most men had little money to spend, especially on clothing. In order
to find customers when the store did not have business, Abe followed the janitor,
an African American, to find male customers who were visiting houses of
prostitution. Abe and the janitor took orders for suits from the store where they
148 2/8/2008 worked. They split the commision, a mutually beneficial arrangement. Abe brought
along samples of cloth and measured the customers.
The store where Abe worked opened at eight in the morning. He was required to
be on the sales floor until it closed at six on weekdays and nine on Saturdays. He
was paid a salary plus commission for sales. A suit with two pairs of pants sold for
$21.50. Abe earned about one dollar when he completed a sale. (According to the
American Institute for Economic Research, the average annual income in 1930
was $1,428, and the average house cost approximately $6,396.3 In 1930, one
hundred dollars would equal $1,077 in 2002.)
Like other men in sales Abe dressed formally. He wore a clean white shirt each
day with a business suit and he wore two shirts on sweaty summer days. Abe
returned home from work about 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening and ate the dinner
which his wife had spent most of the day preparing. Sometimes Abe read the St.
Paul Dispatch before retiring. On Saturday evenings he came home at 10:00. His
conscientiousness was recognized, and he was promoted in charge of the tailor
shop. This new position required that he deal with irate customers. Zippers in
clothing, a modern innovation, were of poor quality, and consumers expressed
frustration when they did not work.
Through much of his career Abe spoke of leaving the salaried postion and starting
his own tailoring business. It was only after he was forced to retire at age sixty-five
that Abe took customers on his own.
HOMEMAKER Becky was a full-time homemaker. Milt remembers coming home and always
finding his mother at home. She insisted on doing all the housework herself—
buying groceries, cooking, laundry, making beds, and cleanup after meals. Other
family members were barred from the kitchen.
2/8/2008 149 Very few women drove cars. Instead of supermarkets, basic
food items were delivered to the home. The milkman brought
milk in reusable glass bottles, butter, hard cheese, cottage
cheese, buttermilk, cream, and other dairy products. The
vegetable truck delivered produce. Stores were small and customers ordered
what they wanted, and sales clerks gathered the items from bins. Goods were
unpackaged, and there was no self-service. The earliest food chain in town was
the A&P and Piggly Wiggly. Once a week, Abe drove his wife across town to buy
kosher meat prepared by the Jewish butcher.
COOKING Becky‟s greatest joy was preparing dinner, an activity that consumed much of her
day, with interruptions by phone calls with sisters and sisters-in-law. Becky‟s
phone line was centrally located between family members, so they phoned her to
avoid long distance rates and asked her to pass on messages. Sister Libby
Garelick phoned Becky and told her to call sister Dena Pincus and tell her that
Libby was mad at her. Becky relayed the message and then Dena told Becky to
call Libby back and tell her she was crazy. This unsettling communication of
insults interrupted Becky‟s dinner preparation and drained Becky emotionally as
she often burst into tears.
Milt enjoyed his mother‟s main dishes—roast duck, baked and roasted chicken,
broiled steak, pot roast, brisket, fish patties, kishke (stuffed gut),4 blintzes (crêpe-
like dough filled with cottage cheese), kreplach (dough stuffed with ground meat),
latkes (potato pancakes), and spaghetti and meat sauce. Pound cake and strudel,
a cookie dough rolled with fruit and nuts, were popular family desserts. Becky
prepared everything from scratch as frozen and semi-prepared foods, developed
in the 1940s, were not sold at her grocery store. They would not have been used
150 2/8/2008 by a “real homemaker.”
For Milt‟s birthday, he invited six of his best friends to a party. His mother prepared a yellow lemon birthday cake with chocolate frosting and served it with ice cream.
The boys liked to play marbles, a game that they were not allowed to play at recess at school because it was considered gambling. Milt and his friends walked two miles to the matinee movie for a treat—one of the Flash Gordon serials.
Becky performed a different household task every day of the week. Washing and ironing clothing, baking, changing bed linens, and shopping were priorities along with cooking. Dusting, vacuuming, and overall cleaning of rooms were lesser concerns.
Washing laundry was dedicated to Mondays. A hole in the hall upstairs led to a chute where the family dropped items to the basement for washing. Becky connected the semiautomatic washing machine to the laundry tub faucet with a garden hose to fill the machine with hot water. She made her own detergent by cutting slivers of one third of a bar of heavy-duty yellowish Fels-Naptha soap. She put it in a tub of hot water to dissolve and then added the dirty laundry. The washing machine cord plugged into the electric outlet, and items swished in the tub of hot soapy water for about ten minutes. Mechanical rollers attached to the washing machine wrung out the water. The washing operation lasted about ten minutes. Next, Becky inserted the clothes through the wringer to remove the soapy water. She was cautious not to catch her fingers in the wringer. The clothes dropped in the nearby metal tub. Becky lifted them from the tub, rinsed them twice in fresh water, and repeated the wringing process to remove as much water as possible. She hung the clothes to dry using wooden clothespins attached to a line in the basement or on dry days outside. The soapy water that remained in the
2/8/2008 151 machine was saved for another load. Only
Abe‟s suits were sent to a professional cleaner.
Becky ironed all the clothing and household
goods—bed and table linens, towels, and
under and outer clothing. There were no
permanent-press fabrics. She prepared a half-
dozen shirts for Abe each week and when her WRINGER WASHING MACHINE sons were older, she also ironed shirts for
them.
Whenever possible, Milt wore clothing his brother, eight years older, had
outgrown. Abe tailored them to fit younger Milt. But he preferred to wear white
cotton corduroy pants and soft flannel shirts. He did not like his brother‟s jeans.
HEBREW Milt‟s grandparents celebrated the Jewish holidays and observed kosher rituals,
SCHOOL AND BAR MITZVAH, although his parents observed Jewish customs to a lesser extent. Milt shined at
the Passover Seder. As the youngest son, Milt was required to read the four 1940–1943 questions: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” In response, his father
recited an abbreviated story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. When the family
opened the door at the moment for the figurative prophet Elijah was to enter, to
everyone‟s amusement the family cat, Putch, walked in.
Unlike his older brother who his parents thought could be a rabbi, Milt showed no
interest in pursuing a Jewish education. In fact, he resented the money his family
spent on it. Against Milt‟s will, his father enrolled him in Hebrew School at the age
of ten to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage at age thirteen.
Milt resented being confined after school on Mondays through Thursdays and
152 2/8/2008 Sunday mornings. Each session lasted ninety minutes and transportation consumed a chunk of time. The lessons kept Milt from playing baseball with the neighborhood boys. Even more disheartening, a bright yellow bus with HEBREW
SCHOOL written on it stopped at his house or school to pick him up, calling attention that Milt was different. He hated the lessons. His instructors taught him to memorize prayers and did not explain the meanings behind the blessings. The one creative thing Milt accomplished in that school was he wrote a simple play in
Hebrew about Sampson and Goliath.
Teenagers dressed formally on Friday nights and Saturday mornings for religious services at the synagogue. After the services, women served grape juice, pickled herring, dark bread, and sweets, the one thing Milt enjoyed.
To everyone‟s surprise Milt applied himself and chanted his Bar Mitzvah Hebrew reading flawlessly. His father beamed with pride and extreme pleasure.5 The community expected the Bar Mitzvah boy‟s family to take the boy‟s friends from the synagogue to attend a celebration at the family home. Milt‟s uncle, Abe
Garelick, transported the young teenagers in his open-bed truck. The boys huddled together to keep warm in the subzero February weather. Milt‟s mother prepared and served Milt‟s grandmother‟s simple dish, boiled potatoes with slices of hot dogs.
In addition, the Bar Mitzvah boy received gifts. When a friend invited Milt to his Bar
Mitzvah, Milt‟s mother supplied him with a used Big Little Book to bring as a gift.
(The popular book was 3⅝" by 4½" by 1½” and had 432 pages. It originally sold for a dime and later 15 cents.6) Milt said he felt humiliated when the boy‟s mother pointed out that the book was used. He was embarrassed his parents could not afford a better gift.
2/8/2008 153 After his Bar Mitzvah Milt abruptly quit studying Hebrew. He said, “Boy, was I
happy.” His negative experience with Hebrew School soured his interest in
Judaism. Throughout his life, he avoided any associations with Jewish institutions.
IRVING’S On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the
MILITARY SERVICE United States entered World War II. In 1943, Milt‟s two older siblings left home to
serve in World War II. Milt missed his siblings who were away supporting the war
effort in the armed forces, but he was happy for the first time to have his own room
instead of sharing a bedroom.
Milt‟s sister, Gladys, joined the Army Nursing Corps at the University of Minnesota,
and his brother, Irving, who had been in the Naval ROTC at the University, trained
as a corpsman in the Marines.
Milt‟s brother, Irving, was drafted after two years of college and ROTC. He was
commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps of the Navy. Milt‟s parents‟ hearts ached.
They were terribly worried about Irving being away when they could not
communicate with him. They were concerned about Irving‟s safety. He served on
the Japanese front as a corpsman stationed on a landing ship tank (LST). He was
the only medical officer on the ship of about one hundred men. The local women
indulged in sex with sailors in exchange for gifts. To avoid venereal disease, Irving
insisted that the men who went ashore on leave were equipped with prophylactics
and ointment.
Fortunately for him, Irving was hospitalized with appendicitis and missed the
invasion of the Japanese island Okinawa where many Americans died in battle.
Irving was spared from becoming a casualty. After the war, he was stationed at
Tientsin, a northern Chinese port where his crew was assigned to round up
Japanese soldiers.
154 2/8/2008 In 1944 during World War II, Milt‟s family and nearly twenty million Americans
planted victory gardens to grow and preserve their own food. This saved the
nation's resources for the U.S. and Allies armed forces.
Irving‟s military stint provided financial
relief for his family. He sent home
coats, hats, pants, scarves, and
gloves for his brother and sister. In
China, he bought trinkets and
souvenirs, which delighted his mother.
After his military service, Irving‟s G.I.
Bill supported his education and SLIDE RULE provided school supplies he shared
with Milt and his sister. Milt treasures the slide rule Irving gave him. It contributed
to Milt‟s achievement in math and science. He was the first of the students in his
class to have a slide rule. Milt said, “It made my calculations in physics a breeze.”
A calculator for personal use was not yet affordable.
Irving finished his education on the G.I. Bill and earned a Ph.D. in Organic
Chemistry.
FAMILY CRISIS When Milt was twelve, on an unforgettable Sunday morning in June 1942, his
IN MILT’S YOUNG LIFE father suffered a heart attack. Irving had already left for the navy and fear about
his son‟s danger contributed to Abe‟s stress. Milt‟s mother, who depended on Abe
for most things, became hysterical and cried for what seemed to Milt like forever.
Doctors treated heart problems conservatively and kept Milt‟s father in the hospital
for six weeks with an additional two months of bed rest at home. There was no
medical insurance. Hospital costs were minimal, averaging about $7.50 a day in a
2/8/2008 155 private room and $5 in a ward, less costly than a motel room. Workman‟s
compensation paid Milt‟s father only $5 a week, and since he could not work, this
left the family nearly destitute. (Five dollars equaled $55.18 in year 2002.) One of
Milt‟s maternal uncles paid the mortgage on the family home.
Like most men of his era, Abe smoked cigarettes, usually Camels. He smoked
until his heart attack when he quit after his children nagged and begged him.
Years later after his wife died, Abe began smoking again.
BUILDING When not at school, Milt kept his father company by his bedside. To entertain
MODEL AIRPLANES himself and his father, Milt built model airplanes in his father‟s room. He bought
kits for model planes, a spitfire and Piper “Cub Coupe.” The kit contained balsa wood
with components of the plane stamped on the wood. Milt cut the wood along the
marking with a razor blade. The kits came with stringers, a set of wheels, wire, and
rice paper. Rubber bands powered the planes. When Milt finished making the
model, he wet the thin rice paper and stretched it over an open section. When the
paper dried, it created a tight fit. The work required dexterity and fine hand
coordination, a skill Milt inherited from his father.
156 2/8/2008 World War II was in progress and Milt constructed war models of Piper Cub and fighter planes—Spitfire, P-
38s, P-39s, and Barton Paul
Defiant. He recalls on June 7,
1942, telling his father that the Battle of Midway in the SPITFIRE MODEL
Pacific was fought and won
by the United States. This
battle was a turning point in
the war. From building
models, Milt learned about
aircraft components, airplane
types, aviation history,
reading plans, blueprints,
PIPER “CUB COUPE” MODEL types of glue and gluing techniques, paintbrushes, and different types of paint.
A friend‟s mother saw Milt‟s constructions and wanted him to teach her son. But like most boys Milt‟s age, the lad did not have the required patience. From building models, Milt also learned about persistence, and beginning and finishing a task, and problem solving.
Milt does not recall going to a physician except once when he had a bad case of bronchitis and his father was recuperating from a heart attack at home.
Vaccinations for childhood diseases were given at school.
2/8/2008 157 DEALING WITH While Milt‟s father was recuperating from his heart attack, Milt set out on his own
MONEY SHORTAGE to obtain work. He knocked on doors in wealthy neighborhoods, offering his
services depending on what the house needed during each season—in the fall, he
raked leaves; in summer, yard maintenance, pruning bushes and edging
sidewalks; and in winter, he shoveled snow. After a big snowstorm, Milt said,
“Would you like your sidewalks shoveled?” Other times, he simply asked, “Do you
have any work?” Naturally, homeowners preferred that Milt name a price rather
than work by the hour. His average pay was 10 cents for an hour of work.
Minimum wage was 35 cents, which equals $4.41 in 2002. Inflation set in at the
onset of the war and costs and salaries rose. A loaf of bread cost 15 cents, a cup
of coffee, 5 cents, and a streetcar token 10 cents during Milt‟s youth.
Milt saved his money in a cigar box for college, but when the family could not
afford his brother‟s college tuition, Milt donated his savings of $40 to pay the fees.
“This represented a lot of work,” Milt said, “but I was proud to contribute.” The
savings equals $441.47 in 2002.
THE FAMILY Milt‟s father owned a 1930 Chevrolet touring car, similar to the following
CAR photograph, but his car had two doors and the passenger seat folded to make
room to enter the backseat. The family car did not have white sidewall tires and
had less chrome, and was not restored as the refurbished model in this
photograph.
158 2/8/2008
1930 CHEVROLET
LEARNING TO Milt‟s fascination with cars began at an early age. He watched his father drive the DRIVE simple floor shift car. Automatic shifts had not been invented. In 1940, Milt‟s father
bought a Chevrolet coupe with a shift mounted on the steering post. It cost about
$1,000 dollars. It was kept in their oversized garage detached from the house. Milt
learned to drive in this car. When Milt was twelve, he often sat in the car parked in
the garage and pretended to drive, pushing in the clutch pedal while shifting gears.
Sitting in the passenger seat while his father drove, Milt imitated his father
operating the clutch. Eventually, he figured out how to shift by feel when the car
was not coughing or chugging. Until Milt was sixteen, he only drove accompanied
by his father on isolated side streets. After Milt qualified for his driver‟s license, he
relieved his father from the weekly burden of driving his mother to the grocery
stores as she shopped for the best bargains.
Milt‟s father took the car to work every day except during World War II rationing
when people were only allowed to buy three gallons of gas a week.
DEFROSTING In subzero Minnesota weather, starting the car in the unheated garage was a
THE CAR
2/8/2008 159 challenge. The engine and working parts were frozen and needed to thaw before
the car would move. It took at least twenty minutes to warm the parts. The night
before the car was to be driven, Milt removed the battery and brought it in the
house overnight. He placed a cardboard sheet in front of the radiator to provide
insulation for the car in the garage. He detached the spark plug wires, wiped the
frost off, put them back, and then warmed the carburetor to vaporize the gasoline.
To start the car, Milt hit the starter at the same time as he pressed the gas pedal.
He pushed the clutch in to disconnect the transmission. The engine coughed and
sputtered while slowly revving to speed. The frozen metal parts screamed until the
oil warmed sufficiently to flow and lubricate the moving parts.
Milt‟s fascination with cars resulted in treks to the Ford Company Assembly Plant,
a mile from his house by the Mississippi River. He toured the automobile
production operations and when possible sat in the showroom and shifted a brand-
new Ford. The company generated electricity to run the plant by damming up
water from the river.
JOBS, Milt never got any allowance from his parents. He earned spending money from
1943–1946 occasional jobs—baby-sitting, day camp counseling, delivering newspapers, and
household chores, such as cleaning basements, painting garages. Milt said,
“Standing on a ladder to put up storm windows on a second story was the scariest
work.” He also delivered parcel post for the U.S. Postal Service. During the
Christmas rush in freezing Minnesota weather, the truck stopped at gas stations
for the delivery boys to warm up.
WORKING AT A Legally the government did not permit young people to work until they were
GROCERY sixteen. Milt reached adolescence and grew tall at an early age, which made it
160 2/8/2008 easier for him to find work when he was fourteen. The disadvantage of being tall was that he had trouble convincing the movie attendant that he should pay children‟s admission.
Most summers and Saturdays from eight until six in the evening, Milt worked in a grocery store, one of the few jobs available to teenage boys. First, he worked at a large supermarket for which he was required to join the Grocery Employees‟
Trade Union. His dues to the union were automatically paid, five dollars was removed from his bimonthly paycheck.7 Once teachers were on strike, Milt worked full-time for a month when school was out.
Milt bagged groceries and carried them to the shoppers‟ cars. The manager promoted Milt to unloading and trimming vegetables, separating the spoiled fruit and vegetables from the rest and displaying them attractively. Once Milt showed a customer ripe peaches on the top layer of a case. When the customer found rotten fruit on the bottom layer that Milt had not seen, the customer returned, threatening to throw the case through the store window. Milt also lifted heavy crates of ice-packed vegetables. Instead of carrying individual bags, for efficiency they formed a chain from the truck down a ramp, and threw the heavy bags at the next fellow in line. This assembly line turned into a game to try to knock each other down, a game that Milt thinks might have brought on his inguinal hernia.
Once when Milt was preparing to unload one hundred pound sacks of flour from a semi trailer, he opened the rear hatch and bags of flour fell on him, covering him from head to toe. When his boss saw this white apparition emerge from the rear of the truck, he was relieved that Milt was not smashed under the flour. Unhurt, Milt
2/8/2008 161 got up laughing.
Workers at the store had to package or wrap the food as it did not come
prepackaged. Milt bagged cookies that cost 50 cents a pound. Milt said, “This was
a perfect job for a growing boy with a big appetite.” His boss suggested he weigh
Milt in the morning and again in the afternoon after a two-hour lunch and see how
much he could eat and charge for the difference. Milt did not like standing on the
hard cement floor, so he covered the floor with lettuce leaves to cushion his feet.
When he finished, the garbage man, who raised rabbits, picked up the lettuce
leaves. While trimming lettuce, a repetitive task Milt could do without thinking, he
propped his calculus book in front of him and worked the homework problems. Milt
said, “One day when I was concentrating on a problem, the boss wanted me to do
another job immediately, but I wanted to finish the problem. He got mad and fired
me thinking I was being impudent.” Full-time union employees could request an
employer reinstate a fired employee, but, instead, Milt found another grocery job
that also paid 40 to 50 cents an hour, equivalent of about $4 dollars an hour in
2002.
One summer, Milt worked in an Italian market that specialized in fancy goods.
The clientele consisted of professionals, physicians, and politicians who worked
next door in City Hall. Milt was responsible for providing ripe cantaloupes for the
mayor‟s formal dinners. He used his sense of smell to pick out the best fruit.
Restaurateurs, dressed in high fashion, drove to the market in large black
limousines and left orders for delivery. Milt fantasized they were Chicago Mafia,
gangsters who found refuge in St. Paul.
162 2/8/2008 Fruits and vegetables were shipped in
inexpensive wooden crates. Beautifully crafted
labels adorned the ends of wooden crates to
identify the contents, place or origin, and the
packer's name. Packers made an effort to display
their fruit with colorful and attractive labels in order to generate business at the
local market. Figs and dates from Persia were shipped in crates secured with steel
bands. Milt had to use a crowbar and hammer to open them. One of Milt‟s jobs
was to mix dried fruit with corn syrup. This made the fruit less sticky and easier to
handle, also heavier and more expensive for the consumer. Two Catholic sisters
from an order requiring them to beg for food came weekly with large baskets. The
storeowner, also Catholic, filled their baskets with the best ingredients without
charge.
“The specialty shop was a nice place to work,” Milt said, “except that when angry,
the owner and his family cursed by calling each other a „dirty Jew.‟ Milt was certain
they did not know he was Jewish until after he left for college and his father came
to pick up his final paycheck. The work eventually earned him enough money to
pay his university tuition. From this store experience, along with his mother‟s
knack for finding bargains, Milt became an expert in evaluating the quality and
price of groceries.
MILT’S Quiet, studious, and gangly, Milt became interested in chemistry by reading the
INTEREST IN CHEMISTRY college textbooks his brother had left at home when he went into the military
service. Milt also studied synthetic chemical reactions in German journals of the
1890s at the local Carnegie Public Library. To further understand these new
ideas he began to experiment. He built a laboratory bench in his basement and
2/8/2008 163 set up a laboratory for synthetic chemistry. His cousin, Joe Garelick, a
carpenter, supplied the wood. Milt made indigo dye and plant hormones, auxins.
A laboratory company sold him chemicals, which he bought with money he had
earned from cutting grass and odd jobs.
HIGH SCHOOL, Students from Milt‟s grade school were funneled into a single school for ninth
grade, comprised of students from several elementary schools. Milt said the 1945–1947 large numbers of students was overwhelming. They stratified and formed social
groups. Milt met two friends each day after school to study math. All three boys
won medals for achieving the highest grades. Milt‟s attraction to science and
math enabled him to become an exceptional student.
Students spent their sophomore through senior years in a separate school
building. In Milt‟s senior year, one day when the math teacher was absent, the
principal assigned Milt to teach classes in intermediate algebra, solid geometry,
and trigonometry. While the subject matter was easy for Milt to teach, he said,
he felt frustrated as he attempted to get students to pay attention.
ACTIVITIES Milt was taller than his peers and his voice had already changed to a deep sound
OTHER THAN STUDY when others had not. Although he achieved adolescence earlier than most peers,
he did not pursue girls or date in high school. He learned about sex by reading
medical textbooks with a friend whose brother was a physician. Besides studying
and working, Milt ran “the mile” on the school track team. After school, he played
baseball. He preferred playing first base “because that position had continuous
action.” The neighborhood boys played baseball, football, and hockey on the
empty lots near Milt‟s home. In winters, they flooded a field by connecting garden
hoses from adjacent houses to build a skating rink. The boys also built a snow
164 2/8/2008 bank, to hold water on the school playground and firefighters flooded the area for
ice hockey. At first, there were several available vacant lots, but gradually, they
were sold. When the last empty lot had a FOR SALE sign, the boys repeatedly
knocked the sign down. They were determined to squelch the sale.
Milt joined the Boy Scouts, which at the time was leaderless and disorganized
since most young men had left for the military service. Milt also participated in the
AZA, a national fraternity for Jewish boys ninth through twelfth grades. (The
Hebrew letters, Aleph, Zadik, Aleph stands for the Hebrew words which symbolize
love, benevolence and harmony.) Although Milt did not like organized activities, he
wanted to hang out with his best friends. Sometimes the boys also went to
Saturday matinees and saw Flash Gordon. Admission to these movies cost only
10 cents.
Milt‟s friend Bob Strait, who became his future brother-in-law, had several rifles at
the family home. The two boys went in the uninhabited fields in Highland Park not
far from their homes. They tried to shoot pheasants. The birds escaped but the
boys got good exercise chasing them.
UNFAIR Segregation between Caucasian and Black people was a way of life because of
PREJUDICE unfair legislation until after World War II. The town was segregated and Milt had
never seen an African American until he was twelve when a boy who was a super
one-mile runner appeared on the school track team. Like other African Americans
he lived across the Mississippi in St. Paul‟s sister town, Minneapolis. Milt had had
a bad experience with Black teenagers who hung around outside the public pool
where he took swim lessons and life-saving class. Milt rode his bicycle to the pool
and chained the wheels together with a lock to a post. When he left the pool he
was astonished to see the teenagers run away. His bike was stripped of its
2/8/2008 165 removable parts—handlebar grips, seat, reflectors, and front light. He had never
heard of things being stolen. Money was dear, but Milt bought new parts and
attached them with glue that bound to metal. The experience left a bad taste in his
mouth, although he could still ride his bike home.
WINNING As a senior at St. Paul‟s Central High School, Milt synthesized indole, a precursor
NATIONAL HONOR AS of the blue dye, indigo. He wrote his first scientific paper describing this STUDENT SCIENTIST, experiment. He put samples of the intermediate stages of the reaction in glass
1947 tubes, which he sealed with a homemade torch. He used gas from the pipe in the
basement furnace and air from the vacuum cleaner exhaust for a “nice roaring
flame” which formed a seal. Milt said, “It was dangerous and I might have set fire
to the house if I was not careful. I had an inexpensive carbon dioxide fire
extinguisher in the room, just in case.”
Milt built a case to display his experiment and lined it with cotton on which he
placed the labeled test tubes. He stained the box with a mahogany varnish. In a
science magazine, Milt read about the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a
program to identify future scientists.8 Milt submitted his experiment and the
required five-page report, documenting what he had done. A friend‟s mother
typed it, but the terms were unfamiliar to her and to Milt‟s disappointment the
report contained multiple strikeovers.
A few months after his submission, reporters arrived at Milt‟s home and inspected
his laboratory, and interview him. Milt was late for school that day, but the
teachers had already heard the good news. The Westinghouse Science Talent
Search chose Milt to go to Washington, D.C., as one of the finalists among high-
school students throughout the United States. The organization sent him train
166 2/8/2008 tickets to Chicago and then to Washington, D.C. People did not travel much
those days, and Milt had never been away from his hometown.
AWARD- On February 28, 1947, the month of his seventeenth birthday, Milt left St. Paul for
WINNING EXPERIMENT Chicago. He followed the instructions the talent search team had sent him. He
traveled on the Zephyr Limited, a super-deluxe Milwaukee Road train in the Vista
Dome car. In Chicago, he took a cab to the New York Central Station where he
boarded a train en-route to the nation‟s capital. In the assigned Pullman car, he
was surprised to meet other talent search candidates and the chaperone. In
Washington, D.C., the students were housed at the Statler Hotel. Sleeping in a
hotel was another first for Milt, and he had never eaten in a restaurant up to this
point.
Several scientists and a psychologist interviewed the finalists—astronomer Harlow
Shapley, who researched questions about the origin of life in the universe;
astronomer Bart Jan Bok, the Dutchman who studied the Milky Way, and a plant
physiologist Autar K. Mattoo, who headed the Agricultural Vegetable Laboratory in
Beltsville, Maryland and experimented on plants and tomatoes. Milt was inspired
by Mattoo‟s speech about the powerful contributions that science and technology
can make to the world‟s food supply for improved nutrition, longer shelf life, and
resistance to harmful pathogens.
Accustomed to a quiet life of study and work in a small Midwest town, Milt said
the schedule was exhausting. He developed a cold that turned his voice horse.
Despite sickness, his adrenaline surged as he encountered the grandeur of the
nation‟s capital and important decision makers and found himself in contact with
scientists he revered. Undeniably, he was the first person in his family to
experience such an adventure and the memorable trip affected his future
2/8/2008 167 commitment and role in science.
The finalists met the young Warren Magnuson. In 1947, Magnuson was
advocating the creation of the National Science Foundation. Later it became a
reality and funded Milt‟s research when he became a professional. A local radio
broadcast an interview with Milt and the three finalists and Senator Magnuson.
They discussed the National Science Foundation bill that established support for
all types of scientific undertakings, including financing the education of future
scientists. They visited the White House, shook hands with President Harry S.
Truman, and posed for a group photograph. The president stopped and looked
at the science exhibits Milt and the other finalists had displayed. The trip
included sightseeing at Mt. Vernon, Virginia, President George Washington‟s
home, the National Zoological Park, and the Agricultural Research Center at
Beltsville, Maryland. Milt was particularly interested in research on tomatin, a
substance from tomatoes that promised to be useful in treating fungus infections
in humans. The Department of Interior showed photographs of Bikini A bomb
tests and the V-2 test. The aspiring young chemists visited the Library of
Congress and were awed by the presence of every organic chemistry book ever
copyrighted in the United States. In the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
building, they met Director J. Edgar Hoover. Dr. Samuel G. Hibben told the
students of work that needed to be done in utilizing wavelengths of
electromagnetic spectrum. Dr. Bart Jan Kok of the Harvard College Observatory
explained research he planned to undertake to study the Milky Way and
photograph stars at Bloemfontein, South Africa, where the constellation of
Sagittarius is overhead. Dr. Alfred Blalock of John Hopkins Medical School
discussed the “blue baby” operation, a surgery that connects a branch of the
aorta and the pulmonary artery beyond the point of stenosis when blood lacks
168 2/8/2008 sufficient oxygen resulting in blueness or cyanosis of the baby.
After a whirlwind of tours and lectures, talent search winners were announced at
the final banquet. Milt was assigned to sit next to the newspaper reporters.
Perhaps they anticipated Milt would be the frontrunner. A boy and girl, who were
children of prestigious scientists, won first place. Out of the forty high-school
finalists, Milt earned second place. He received a small cash award toward his
college education. He said, “I was surprised, excited, tired, and honored.” After
the banquet, the chaperones escorted the students to the train station to return
home. Milt‟s parents had already read about his award in the newspaper. Milt
was concerned about the schoolwork he had missed, but his school was more
interested in Milt‟s experiences in Washington, D.C. They organized a school
assembly where Milt told the student body about meeting the president of the
United States and other important scientists who were doing meaningful work.
GRADUATING Milt excelled in his favorite subjects—math, solid geometry, trigonometry, and
HIGH SCHOOL chemistry. He said his chemistry teacher did not know much. Milt restrained
himself not to correct his teacher, even when he knew the man was wrong.
At graduation in June 1947, Milt was first in his high-school class of over 450
students and was the valedictorian. He had received over ninety-five percent of
his grades as double A‟s, beyond A‟s. His father, and his brother who had
returned home from the Navy, were extremely proud of young Milt. His mother
did not understand the educational system. Her ambition for Milt was simply that
he become a truck driver like her brothers and live nearby home.
LAUNCHING A When Milt was not working, he and several friends who were interested in outer ROCKET SOCIETY space formed a rocket club. Despite the potential danger from explosion, the
2/8/2008 169 young men designed a regenerative-cooled rocket motor using liquid oxygen and
alcohol. They copied the model built by American rocket pioneer, Dr. Robert H.
Goddard, the 1926 inventor of the world‟s first rocket using liquid fuel. Later, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established the Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in Goddard‟s memory.
The boys‟ Rocket Society disbanded when Milt left for college before the project
was complete, but his interest in space travel never diminished.
THE MAKING In the fall of 1947, Milt entered the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Jobs OF THE COLLEGE were scarce. Many veterans, returning from World War II, benefited from the STUDENT government‟s free education on the G.I. Bill and attended university. Milt‟s classes
were loaded with up to 400 students. The professor warned them that half would
fail in order to reduce the class size for the sophomore year. Milt was not among
them, but it was an unpleasant introduction to college life. “This prophecy set a
bad tone,” Milt said. “Some teachers were unprepared.” A teaching assistant who
had trouble organizing taught Milt‟s math class, and his chemistry instructor was
not up to date on science. Milt‟s brother, Irving, helped him to plan his schedule to
graduate from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in three years. Taking the
minimum required courses and only one summer school session, saved time and
money. The Bachelor of Arts was a three-year program while the Bachelor of
Science was a five-year program with many liberal arts credits.
When the assigned experiments in quantitative analysis—identifying constituents,
as elements, ions, or functional groups present in a substance to several decimal
points—took longer than class time, Milt and his friend, Don Ramras, completed
the experiments in what Don said was “Milt‟s impressive chemistry laboratory.”
170 2/8/2008 (Years later Don was Milt‟s best man at our wedding.)
Commuting between home and university was long, arduous, and expensive. It required two tokens, 20 cents each way, about an hour of Milt‟s wages. The trip across town took over forty minutes including a transfer between bus and streetcar, a trolley with electric overhead wires. To save money Milt often hitchhiked home. Bus stops did not have shelters or weather-protection. In winters,
Milt often waited for the bus on a windy corner. It was twenty to thirty degrees below zero weather. This became less of a problem after his brother completed his service in the Navy, and Milt inherited the heavy Navy pea coat, gloves, hat, and black-rubber galoshes his brother had worn in the service. The university did not have air-conditioning and in summers, classrooms often soared to 100 degrees.
It was assumed that all young men would be drafted for the military. It was more desirable to become an officer than an enlisted man, so Irving encouraged Milt to join the ROTC, Reserve Officers‟ Training Corps, as a freshman in college and thereby become an officer candidate. The ROTC offered by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and Marine Corps trained qualified young men and women to become officers upon graduation from college. Milt was taught to set up a military camp, march, assemble and use a M-1 rifle, carbine, 45-caliber pistol, and parts of machinery used by the military. Milt was skilled in shooting accurately with a rifle, but his commanding officer criticized Milt‟s posture and marching skills. The assignment to memorize parts of a Jeep transmission took too much study time away from his other subjects, so Milt quit ROTC after a year.
In the spring of 1950, Milt graduated summa cum laude, highest honors from the
University of Minnesota with a B.A. The chair of the Department of Chemistry urged Milt to leave Minneapolis and attend a different graduate school. Minnesota
2/8/2008 171 required five or six years for a Ph.D. The chair provided Milt with a list of good
schools and arranged for Milt to receive a graduate school fellowship to pay his
out-of-state expenses.
The summer before leaving home for college, Milt wanted a job in a laboratory. He
landed a job in a battery factory doing quality control, checking and inspecting the
chemicals inserted into batteries. The sulphuric acid fumes and lead bothered him,
and he was happy to terminate the job prematurely.
In one generation Milt, this child of immigrant parents whose English language
was limited, was on his way up the academic ladder.
1 When World War II ended, the family loudly played the radio that blasted, “Round and round Hitler’s grave we go.” Milt said the family wanted their anti-Semitic neighbor to hear their joy.
2 Milt’s father, Abe, had the coal furnace replaced in the 1950s after Milt had left home. 3 AIER Cost-of-Living Calculator, American Institute for Economic Research
5 Milt’s father kvelled at Milt’s Bar Mitzvah performance. To kvell/quell is a Yiddish expression for an adult’s pride and extreme pleasure in a younger person’s accomplishment. Milt’s father kvelled at Milt’s chanting of his Haftorah, the portion of the Torah for his bar mitzvah. 6 In 1932, Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin introduced Big Little Books. Early newspaper comic strips inspired the birth of these books. Comic books had been published for a short period of time, and then these Big Little Books entered the marketplace creating competition. For ten cents, a child could buy a colorful hard cover book that had stories of radio, comic and movie heroes. Text was printed on the left page and a picture on the right page. Along with the colorful covers of exciting contemporary heroes, classic literary tales such as Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, and other favorites were featured inside.
7 A trade union is an association of laborers in a particular trade, industry, or plant, formed to obtain by collective action improvements in pay, benefits, working conditions, and social and political status. 8 In later years, they renamed the contest, omitting “Westinghouse” from the name.
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