Richard T. Alexander

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE KNOXVILLE AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD THOMAS ALEXANDER FOR THE VETERAN’S ORAL HISTORY PROJECT CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WAR AND SOCIETY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY INTERVIEWED BY G. KURT PIEHLER AND JAKE WHITE CANTON, NORTH CAROLINA APRIL 4, 2003 TRANSCRIPT BY JAKE WHITE REVIEWED BY PATRICK LEVERTON GREGORY KUPSKY KURT PIEHLER: This begins an interview with Richard Thomas Alexander, Jr., in Canton, North Carolina on April 4, 2003 with … JAKE WHITE: Jake White KURT PIEHLER: … and Kurt Piehler. I just want to begin—you were born on October 5, 1917. RICHARD ALEXANDER: That’s correct. Nashville, Tennessee. PIEHLER: Nashville, Tennessee. And who were your parents? ALEXANDER: My father was … Richard Thomas, Sr., and my mother was an Andrews. PIEHLER: Grace Elizabeth Andrews. ALEXANDER: Yeah. Grace Elizabeth Andrews Alexander, and they were married in 1916. I was born in ’17. I was born at home, because of the flu epidemic during the time. I lived about 150 yards from the Vanderbilt hospital. (Laughs) But the doctor didn’t take maternity cases unless it was absolutely essential in ‘17. My sister, also, was born in ’19, was born at home. My father was professor at George Peabody College for Teachers, and he was there from 1914 until 1924. He was the one that started the Peabody demonstration school, and was the first director. And he took the job there at Peabody in 1914, when they opened up the new campus where it is at the present time, right across from the main Vanderbilt campus. PIEHLER: What are some of your earliest memories growing up in Nashville, and also growing up so close to Vanderbilt and Peabody? ALEXANDER: Well, it was—I was always a faculty brat. ‘Cause after my dad was at Peabody for ten years, he went to Columbia University for the rest of his career. And I started school at the demonstration school there at Peabody, when it was very, very simple…. I remember we lived right across the street from the campus, the social religious building, on 21 st and Highland. 21 st goes out Hillsborough, and Highland is the cross street that no longer goes through the Vanderbilt campus, but it’s right there at the entrance of the emergency hospital. I remember a military parade that they had there. PIEHLER: Was this during the … ALEXANDER: This was—I’m sure it had to be … after the war. I was about two, maybe three. It was some kind of a victory bond. It was not a war bond; it was a victory bond. They were getting ready to sell bonds. I was about—probably going on three, two and a half, three years old. I remember that. Peabody women’s team had a very fine basketball team at the time, and I was the mascot. I remember that vividly. PIEHLER: So you would go to games? 1 ALEXANDER: Yeah, my dad used to drive me along. He was sort of the manager and the faculty advisor for the team. I went to Memphis a couple of times with them, and went into Arkansas once…. It was before I left in ’24, when I was seven. Lived down in Belle Meade later, and I was interested in our conversation the other day … when they were talking about Luke Lee. My dad was … PIEHLER: Your dad knew Luke Lee? ALEXANDER: Oh yes, yes. My dad bought property out there in the Belle Meade, and we lived just off of the course of the Bell Mead country club. We lived out—I remember the burning of the crosses on Nine Mile Hill in the early 20s. The Ku Klux Klan, you know. They put them up there on the—Nashville is like a bowl, and … Nine Mile Hill was nine miles from downtown, and Belle Meade was about halfway out, and they would burn these crosses up in the woods on the hill. It’s all developed now, but its … PIEHLER: It sounds like it’s a very distinct … ALEXANDER: I remember that very vividly, because, you know, it was very spectacular to see a cross burning. I guess it was a tree they had peeled and burned. I remember that. I learned to swim there. I remember they had a swimming pool when they built the—that was after we had come back in the summer. But I learned to swim there in Nashville. Peabody had a swimming pool. Peabody demonstration school had a pool. I have been back to Nashville a good deal over the years, because I have a lot of cousins, my mother’s side of the family. My grandfather was … PIEHLER: Do you know why your father took the job at Peabody? ALEXANDER: Yeah. He wanted to make a living, first of all, and he had done his graduate work at Columbia…. He did his undergraduate work at Columbia. Before he went to Columbia undergraduate, he did normal school in Kirksville, Missouri, and graduated in the class of 1905. [He] taught for two years after finishing the normal school in Missouri, and then he went to New York, and enrolled in Columbia, and finished—he was supposed to finish in 1909, but he didn’t swim across the pool as he was supposed to, and that was one of the requirements. He didn’t think it was very serious, and so he didn’t, and they didn’t give him his degree until he swam across the pool. So his actual graduation year is 1910, although he was working then. PIEHLER: He just had to learn how to swim. ALEXANDER: Well, I think he could swim. I think he just didn’t think it was worth the time to go down to the pool. What did that have to do with his education? (Laughter) And there were several other people. If you read any of the biography of Mortimer J. Adler, [it] was the same thing. He never graduated. PIEHLER: I have heard about several schools that require swim tests. 2 ALEXANDER: Yeah. And you had to do it by a certain date, and if you didn’t do it by a certain day in April or May, you didn’t graduate in June. My dad had something more important to do, and so he said, “To hell with it,” and then he graduated in the class of 1910. While he was there, he started his graduate work at Teacher’s College and he was a graduate assistant to Thorndike, Dr. [Edward Lee] Thorndike. Also, Dean Russell, who was the first dean of Teachers’ College, this is James Russell. His son, Will Russell, who later became dean at Teachers’ College when I was there in the ‘30s, was a very good friend of my dad’s. He was teaching at Peabody, and they—a whole bunch of them were teaching at Peabody. PIEHLER: So there was a real connection? ALEXANDER: Oh yes, yes. There were four or five of them that were bachelors. Will Russell and my dad. Let’s see. James Tippett was down there, and then he went to Columbia later. There were two or three others that went there. Dr. [Hollis] Caswell went up there later on, and the McMurrys [Drs. Frank and Ruth] had a relationship at Peabody, and Columbia was always getting some of the better ones that they could get. So they would go to Peabody first, and that’s how my dad got the job. He knew James Russell when he was at Peabody, and James hired him … back to Columbia…. He went there in ’24 as a member of the International Institute, which was an institute. Its major function was to study international—education in other countries. Comparative education. And my dad was selected to be the expert on Germany, Prussian education. That had been his doctoral thesis, was in Prussian education. By ’24 of course, the First World War had intervened, and he had gone back and had done some work on education in the new republic, Weimar Republic. He stayed on the rest of his career. Not—the international institute was no longer there, was no longer operative. But he was at Columbia until he retired in the ‘50s. He went back to Germany in 1945, just after I got home, and was on General Lucius Clay’s staff at A.M.G.U.S., the military government, US. And he was in charge of the education branch of A.M.G.U.S., and was there five years helping restructure the German education in the American zone of occupation. He left about a month after I got home…. He then worked—he retired from Columbia, and then worked part-time at Adelphi University. It had something to do with his social security quarters. PIEHLER: Mm hmm. So he very much liked being an educator? ALEXANDER: Pardon? PIEHLER: He very much liked being an educator? ALEXANDER: Oh yes, yes. He taught—his last teaching he did was at Indiana University. He was a very close friend to the late chancellor there, Herman Wells, who died just three or four years ago. But anyway, that was—he was in teaching all of his career, starting out at the normal school. PIEHLER: How did your parents meet? ALEXANDER: My mother was a sophomore at Peabody, and I think she had a class with him, and then she dropped out and never finished. (Laughs) 3 PIEHLER: And she never worked outside the home? ALEXANDER: No, no. Well, no, no. Not gainfully employed. PIEHLER: No, no, but I take it take it she had a lot of volunteer activities.

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