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Interview with Alan Green Jr

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Interview with Alan Green Jr Library of Congress Interview with Alan Green Jr. Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project ALAN GREEN JR. Interviewed by: Jim Strassmaier Initial interview date: April 20, 1999 Copyright 2003 ADST Q: This is an oral history with Alan “Punch” Green, and the date today is the 20th of April, 1999, and the interviewer is Jim Strassmaier for the Oregon Historical Society. To start out, I wonder if I could simply have you state your fulname and the date and place of your birth. GREEN: Yes. It's Alan Green, Junior. I have no middle initial. My friends call me Punch. I don't know what my enemies call me, but I'd just as soon not find out. But I got the nickname from my father who was nicknamed Punch, and he got it from Michigan where he was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and I asked him how he got the nickname Punch, and he said, “None of your business.” So there you have it. In the 1920s, an informal organization was active in Portland. They were known locally as the Hoot Owls - I believe they broadcast on radio once a week (Saturday night - 11:00 to 12:00 midnight) from the old Oregonian Building at 6th and Alder. Interview with Alan Green Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000442 Library of Congress I mention this because the names include Charles and Forrest Berg, Frank Sardams, Harry S. Grannatt, Homer Welch, and Alan “Punch” Green, Sr. - the Grand Song Master (my dad). It's my understanding Dad had to come up with a song every week. He had the natural talent to do this. I don't have it, and I've yet to see it in my children or eight grandchildren. The Hoot Owls are important to me because on or about May 1, 1925, I was made a member - I guess that makes me the only remaining Hoot Owl sans the talent of my illustrious predecessors. Now, I was born on May the 1st, 1925, in Portland, Oregon, and mmother was Helen Corbett Ladd, a prominent family in Oregon. Q: Could you tell me something about the traditions, beginning with the Ladds, your mother's side of the family, and what you knew of them, and what you heard from your mother about the family? GREEN: Well, actually, it's really kind of a sad story. The Ladds did an awful lot for this area, and W.S. Ladd was one of the founders, for example, of the Arlington Club and was a banker, Ladd & Tilton Bank, which, of course, established the U.S. National Bank here. They went under, under the tutelage of my grandfather, Wesley Ladd, and I think it's Charles Ladd, and it was a bad trip. Going from rich to poor is very difficult, and combined with the Depression - this even happened before the Depression. But my mother lost her hearing, and Dad, I think, lost his nerve. He was a marvelous man; I don't want anybody to misinterpret. I love my father very deeply, but he lost his nerve, and he turned, I think, to booze. He handled it pretty well, but I was young. But I knew that he had a problem, and Mother lost her hearing. I mean, I went to Ainsworth School, and she was the cashier in the cafeteria, and I have a feeling that - I was never aware of it, but I think that that's how I got fed - so she didn't have to pay for the lunch for me. Interview with Alan Green Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000442 Library of Congress She had some awfully good staunch friends, and Dad did, too. But I was aware that we didn't have any particular money, but I also wasn't that aware because I was a boy, you don't realize those things when you're a kid. Everybody was broke anyway in the Depression. And we had some marvelous people living across the street from us on Talbot Road on Portland Heights by the name of Octy and Roberta Graham. I asked them to be my godmother and godfather, and they accepted to my joy. And they had a dog named Jiggs. We couldn't afford a dog, so I adopted Jiggs, and they had two of the greatest sons I've ever known, Clark Graham and Douglas Graham, and both of them have passed on. But they were certainly my boyhood friends. And I remember Aunt Bob Graham gave me my first pair of long pants for Christmas, and she's been a dear friend of mine ever since. I love her dearly, and she's 101 years old. And I just last week, Jim, saw her, and her main concern was getting the Master's Golf Tournament on television. I mean, that's, when you're 101 and you have that sort of interest. Her eyesight is leaving her, but I gave her a “Books on Tape” mechanism and she's utilizing that, and the state of Oregon provides Books on Tape free of charge, you just return them. It's a marvelous service that I wasn't aware that they do. But that's, I think, filled her day quite a bit. But I played the usual things, football, baseball. I was a track man, surprisingly enough. At Lincoln School, I almost had the record for the - I had the record for the quarter mile, but then I twisted my ankle chasing Sol Menashe because he'd stolen my lunch, and I slipped and twisted my ankle, and I couldn't get my speed back in time to get the record, and that's something - it's a funny thing, all my life I've kind of regretted that becausLincoln, you know, we didn't have any really good football team; we had good baseball teams, but, you know - and basketball teams, we had good basketball teams. Interview with Alan Green Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000442 Library of Congress Q: I wonder if we could sort of go back to your family for a bit.You say your dad lost his nerve. About what time -? GREEN: Oh, I think when the Ladd estate went down the tube, and that sort of thing. I think he was a broker, and I think he would have been tremendously successful if he'd stayed with it. He had that kind of personality. But it just didn't work out, and I can remember Dad - well, I suppose it's all right to say - picking up the telephone and talking about some business thing, and I picked up the telephone and the line was dead on the other side. I mean, that sort of thing. You know, it was sad. But Dad, I tell you one thing he did. During World War II, he took a job in the shipyard, and you know, the people I was going with were pretty fancy, and Dad was, I think, a timekeeper down there, and he'd take the streetcar home. And I'd be on the streetcar with him sometimes, and you know, I'd go over and sit with him, and he'd say, “You don't have to sit with me,” you know, so I'd be embarrassed. And I said, “Dad, I'm proud to sit with you.” And then Mother, she had a tough time with it for a while, an awful tough time. But Lord, the more she came on - and maybe I'm jumping ahead, and if I am, I'm sorry, but I think one of the biggest pleasures of whatever success I've had is the fact that I was able to take care of my mother at the end. She didn't have anything to worry about, and it wasn't tough for me to help her. Well, we'll stay with this, but I do want to put in right now that the most important decision I've reached, ever reached in my life is the girl I married, Joan Irwin. She was right with me all the time, and through the booze and the whole thing, and if I'd taken another drink, I wouldn't be married to her - and justifiably so, I might add. Go ahead. Q: Well, you're having a really full picture of your life, going back. But that makes a lot of sense. Interview with Alan Green Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000442 Library of Congress GREEN: Yes. But I do want to get in early on that I would not be a success without Joan. Joan had some money, too. Her father was a very successful lumberman. We didn't use it particularly; I was able to make money. But I used her guarantee a couple times. That was very helpful because the bank wouldn't go along with me, but they'd take it with her guarantee. But we never had to - it never cost her anything, and she did very well because I put her name on the certificates. But anyway, that's jumping ahead on you. Q: What was your father's background, his family background? GREEN: Well, they were in the timber business, the lumber business in Michigan. Very prominent. As a matter of fact, I went to see Dad's home in Michigan, and now it's a mortuary, in downtown Saginaw. They had a place at Higgins Lake, and they had timber.
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