Library of Congress Interview with Ms. Helen Weinland The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project HELEN WEINLAND Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 2, 2009 Copyright 2009 Q: Let's start at the beginning; when and where were you born? WEINLAND: I was born in Manhattan on July 28th, 1941. My family at that time lived just over the border in Westchester County, in Yonkers. I actually grew up in Chappaqua, New York, where Bill and Hilary Clinton now hang their hats. Q: Let's start on your father's side; where did they come from, what do you know about that family on that side? WEINLAND: My father was Richard Douglas Weinland. He was born in 1910 in Springfield, Ohio. His father was an engineer and had graduated from Ohio State. My father grew up in Springfield and went to Miami University of Ohio. After he graduated, (I think he majored in chemistry), he went to work for the Continental Can Company, which no longer exists but was a major American packaging company. He went to their operation in Cincinnati, where he met and married my mother. As soon as they married, they moved to New York City and he worked for the rest of his life with Continental Can Company in New York City — for the rest of his working life, I should say. Interview with Ms. Helen Weinland http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001662 Library of Congress For a good part of that time my father was in the international division of Continental Can Company which had a whole number of licenses for some of their patented systems with overseas companies: in France, in Germany, in Great Britain. (I guess the German connection was after the war.) One of the interesting things he did after the war was over was to travel with the chairman of the company, a man named Mr. Conway. They took a nine week trip both to Europe and then to various parts of Africa, the North African French colonies and South Africa where the European companies had subsidiaries. So they took a long trip to renew and renegotiate all those licensing and cooperation agreements. Growing up in that setting was really very interesting because from a very early time I can remember foreign visitors in our home. They would come out for Sunday dinner or something if they were visiting New York. As a young child, I recall struggling to understand foreign accents, talking to the people about their children, where their kids went to school and sometimes starting little pen pal relationships and so on. So I was very early on exposed to an international life in that way. Q: Let's move to your mother's side. What do you know about her side of the family? WEINLAND: I actually know more about my mother's side. My mother grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where her father was a lawyer, had been a district attorney. She went to Vassar College and graduated with a major in mathematics, and then went to work for Proctor and Gamble, which was, of course, a major company in Cincinnati. She lived at home. She met my father when he was working at Continental Can. She did not work outside the home for quite a long time after we children were born. Eventually she went back first to work as an assistant in the local library in our town and then, at about the age of 60, turned herself into an extremely good nature photographer. Some of her photographs are in Audubon guides and things like that. She is still living. My father died almost 17 years ago. Interview with Ms. Helen Weinland http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001662 Library of Congress Q: Let's talk about growing up; did you spend most of your time growing up where? We are talking about up through high school. WEINLAND: We lived in Chappaqua, New York, and I went to elementary and junior high school and the first year of high school in the Chappaqua public schools. Then the last three years of my high school life, I went to boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, at the Dana Hall School. Q: Let's talk about Chappaqua. What was Chappaqua like growing up as a kid? WEINLAND: It was a very small village in those days. It's now got a Starbucks and all those standard establishments, but in those days it was a very simple place. The parkway that came from New York ended right there, so we were safely able to cross over into the village from where we lived and go shopping at the five and ten and all the other small merchants in town. It was an entirely white town, there were no minorities living there that I am aware of, certainly no kids in the schools that I went to. When I was fairly young, it even had restrictive covenants to prevent Jewish people buying homes in certain parts of the town. That was not the case where we lived but it was the case in a number of housing developments. So looking back on it, of course, I realize that we grew up in this bubble of white privilege and exclusivity. Q: Looking at the religious end, where did your family fit? WEINLAND: My mother and my father were both Protestants; my mother, Presbyterian, my dad, Methodist. For a while they went to the Congregational Church in Chappaqua that was the largest Protestant church in town. There was also a Catholic church. There was a fairly sizable Catholic population and also there was a small temple that has now gotten bigger. And there was an Episcopal church. My parents stopped going to church when I was about eight or nine. Interview with Ms. Helen Weinland http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001662 Library of Congress I then began to go to the Episcopal Church in the next town over, Mount Kisco, with my next door neighbor who was like a grandfather to us. I was confirmed an Episcopalian and grew up my final formative years in that church. I am still an observant, practicing Episcopalian. Q: What about your family in the political field? Where did they fall? WEINLAND: Well, they came from Ohio. When Hubert Humphrey was defeated in 1968, I called home and said, “Ohhh, the world is over,” my mother said to me, “That's what my father said when Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932.” They fit very comfortably into what was then a very moderate, New York State Republicanism. As the Republican Party of that era began to be marginalized, they drifted and ultimately registered as Democrats, so they both finished their lives as Democrats. Q: Republicans like Senator Javits, were very solid liberal center of republicanism. WEINLAND: I would say my parents were very — well, my mother is still — tolerant people and so anything that smacked of exclusion (of course, we lived in an exclusive neighborhood, obviously) but anything that smacked of prejudice and disliking people for their political or religious or other views was not acceptable — you didn't hear that in our house. Q: It was a period when, as you say, there were restrictive covenants, trying to keep Jews out. There was an anti-Semitism that was pervasive. Did you feel that at all? WEINLAND: There was some of it even in my house, not in the sense of disliking. I mean, my father had personal relationships and working relationships and many of our neighbors were Jewish, but there was this sort of, “Well, of course, so-and-so is a Jew and so he's got this kind of sense of humor,” sort of thing. Certainly, I heard it at the bus stop when a Interview with Ms. Helen Weinland http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001662 Library of Congress couple of the kids would start teasing another kid who was Jewish. So, yes, that was in the town, certainly. Q: Also, probably, it may have been changing but in many of these communities there was not necessarily anti-Catholic feeling but there was division between Protestants and Catholics. WEINLAND: It was very strong. Q: You know, Protestant boys aren't supposed to date Catholic girls and vice versa and that sort of thing. Was that around? WEINLAND: Upper Westchester County, where Chappaqua is, has a large number of people of Italian descent and that was true in Chappaqua. These were people whose ancestors very often had come to the United States as stonemasons in order to build a lot of the dams and highways and bridges and things, beautiful stone bridges, in that part of the country, and so many of them settled all through northern Westchester. There were quite a large number of families, relatively speaking, in our town and in our school. We mixed, at least in elementary school, we mixed easily. I don't know, I didn't finish high school there, so I don't know what the dating situation was. Q: How about school? How did you find school? WEINLAND: Chappaqua was known as having a very fine school system. I feel I got a very good grounding. I enjoyed it for the most part until I got into high school and I began to dislike the kind of teasing I got because I was a very good student and so that made me very unhappy. Socially, I wasn't one of the cheerleader, popular girls. So that was one reason I was happy to be able to go away to school.