CHAPTER 10

THE POST‑COLLEGE ADJUSTMENT PERIOD

“The Post College Adjustment Period” is a phrase I coined when I was a senior in high school, and I was sick of my older brother Paul’s acting superior (his first year home from Yale). Now I had to go through that same period myself. Englewood in 1937. I was home. I was 21. What lay ahead? Molly was on the staff of the First Presbyterian Church in charge of “Girls’ Work”. Paul had settled for a job with the Aluminum Company of America in Edgewater. He was anticipating marriage to Charlotte Cooley in September. John had finished his freshman year at Yale and of course Dick, about to enter his teens, was still in school. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could have gone on to graduate work. The goal in our family had always seemed to be to get your college degree because one needed an education to lead a happy life. After that one could learn anything “on the job”. Now I realize that I could have applied for a fellowship and gone on in art history, but at the time the idea of having a job seemed more appealing. Molly was working toward her M.A. in religious education at Columbia with the help of the church. But I didn’t see myself locked into the scene in Englewood.

Still I was very uncertain and moody about what would come next. Anna Prentice invited me to spend a week in Rockport, Massachusetts. I drove up with her and her mother and was entranced with the old‑fashioned hotel, the sumptuous meals, the New England scenery. During the week Miriam, one of the other sisters, joined us, and it was arranged that I was to drive back with her. The Prentice family had an air of infinite respectability and piety, and I’m sure the reason they invited me was that they charitably saw me at a turning point in my life and thought it would do me good. I sensed that Miriam was a little bit critical of her family ‑ she dressed with more style and had an air of discontent. On the long drive home I discovered that she was in a state of revolt. Again, the cigarettes that appeared as soon as we were out of sight were a reminder that interesting people tended to have a slight edge of wickedness. I was fascinated to hear her bitch about her family and to see that there had been a hidden agenda during the holiday.

Later when my friend Gladys Gott (who had graduated from Oberlin the previous year) invited me for a week in Boston where she had an apartment, I was eager to go. We spent the weekend at Gloucester with her family and beat our nude selves clean in a Finnish bath. Gladys spoke half a dozen languages and had spent her childhood in Estonia. She had graduated the year before me and was encouraging me to settle in Boston. I set out imme‑ diately to tour the employment agencies and the art galleries.

At one private gallery where I applied for work, the owner took me up into the storage area to show me some Corots. I remember remarking casually (trying to subtly display my Oberlin erudition) that I preferred the early Corots rather than the feathery ones he had on display. He informed me that that was part of the “modern jargon” and went into a lengthy defense of what he had to show. I did not get that job.

The next day I did get a job with the toy store F.A.O.Schwartz. I reported promptly for work, excited at the idea of being a part of an institution that had seemed wonderful from my childhood visits. On those rare occasions, I never remember buying more than a few small toys, for much of the merchandise was too rich for our blood. The manager explained to me that the reason they had hired me was that they wanted me to learn the business from the ground up—they had over 5000 different kinds of toys to learn and manipulate. One was not supposed to cultivate the people who wanted dollar toys or the “lookers”. One must aim for the big spenders. The future was unlimited, with stores to open in Palm Beach, etc., etc. They only wanted employees who would stay for at least five years and move up. I went back to the apartment that night with a heavy heart. The idea of spending my life ignoring the very kind of children I had been (a small spender), did not seem a bit appealing.

The next morning I reported at the regular time for work, but I told my boss that I could not keep the job because I couldn’t promise to stay long enough to make it worth their while. He was angry, grabbed the checkbook to pay me for the previous day’s wages, and was even more angry when I refused to take the check, explaining that I was afraid I would get in trouble with the agency that sent me there. End of my first job.

Back home I made feeble attempts to get a job. It was during one of my more discouraged moments that I remember my mother quoting Jesus saying, “To him that hath shall be given”.

She added words something like, “That’s a fact of life and it refers to things spiritual as well as physical—if you think negatively about how little you have, you’ll end up having even less; if you dwell on your assets you’ll gain—it’s the only way.” Mother was just fierce enough but deeply loving at such times. And the advice stood me in good stead.

Shortly after that Charles Langmuir offered me a position at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at 522 Fifth Avenue. The job would pay 50 cents an hour, 8 hours a day, and it involved the new experimental “Graduate Record Examination”. This was the beginning of trying to standardize entrance into Graduate Schools. Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia applicants were selected for the first tests. All of these tests must be scored and statistical work done to validate the results.

Commuting to New York involved over an hour by bus and subway plus walking daily past the burlesque houses on 42^nd Street through Times Square to the more elegant 5^th Avenue area.

I started as a scorer. Helen Orraca, my immediate boss, became a very good friend, and when she quit I took her place in charge of the scorers. She and I used to eat lunch together. She was working on her doctorate in psychology, and she was helpful in encouraging me to believe in myself. One day I remarked that I was an introvert and wished I were more of an extrovert. She laughed and said that it wasn’t bad to be an introvert—they had more sensitivity to things and often led far more deep and meaningful lives. I’m not sure whether she was right or not, but she was good at challenging my ideas and stimulating me.

Helen had been told by a fortune teller that she would meet and marry someone she saw on a trip to Puerto Rico. She had no plans to travel, but sure enough, the trip materialized, quite casually, and much to her astonishment the prediction came true. She married Cosme Orraca, a Puerto Rican lawyer, and he came to New York to live with her. This all seemed very glamorous except for the fact that Cosme found it difficult to adjust to various aspects of life in the U.S., and he had an incurable heart problem which gave him a life expectancy of less than a year. I always wished I could know what happened to Helen. Bob and I visited Helen and Cosme in Connecticut on our honeymoon. The next time I heard from her was a couple of years later. She had a new name, Mrs. Edward Gardner, and a cunning baby boy. She and her husband traveled all over the world, but suddenly the letters stopped. She never told us what became of Cosme.

Several of my artist friends settled in Greenwich Village. I would occasionally spend the night with Barbara Rowland or Martha Barry. There would be long discussions far into the night. I could never get turned on by the weird or radical ideas of some of their friends, but it was an interesting facet of my life. I also had a circle of friends in Englewood. I became chairman of the “Post College Discussion Group” at the church and had some casual dates connected with our activities there. I was also asked to teach Sunday School at $5 a Sunday, which at the time seemed a fabulous sum, and augmented my salary.

Charles Langmuir encouraged me to take a course in statistics at Columbia Teachers’ College. I did very well in the course and he was pushing me to get interested in the use of the punch cards that were the forerunner of the whole computer business. I often rode the subway from 5^th Avenue to do some work on the machines up at Columbia, elaborate and bulky, but that was the state of the art.

When Dean Langmuir, Charles’s uncle and father of my best friend Evelyn, asked me to do some special work for him on a Sunday afternoon, I thought of it only as a pleasant way of making some extra money. His wife was away somewhere , and he ushered me into the living room where he proceeded to dictate a long letter to his wife, among other letters. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t want to be married to someone who used his secretary to dictate letters to me. The letter was so cool and detached. I could never remember any communication between my parents that wasn’t tinged with a glow of affection. (Later Dean divorced his wife who made little effort to keep up with Dean’s new sophisticated tastes.) I think I did this sort of work several times, and then Mr. Langmuir offered me a job in his Investment Counseling firm at 90 Broad Street. He pointed out that I would learn a lot about economics and could have many advantages. So I resigned from the Carnegie Foundation, although I sensed that Charles Langmuir felt outraged at his uncle having “stolen” me away. Actually it was a poor time to enter the investment field for war clouds were gathering in early 1939 and the stock market would remain sluggish as long as I was there (through the end of 1942).

But I enjoyed my co‑workers, all of whom seemed more affluent and watched the stock market, I later realized, for their own investments. My immediate co‑worker, Peggy Prentiss, came from a well-to-do Litchfield family. She regularly dated an old chum, Dillon Ripley, who later became head of the Smithsonian. Lee Bottome Fisher was a ver,’ smart stock analyst. She occasionally drove me the length of Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge which shortened my evening commute. I remember how she would lean out of the window and curse at a driver who might crowd in, then turn back to our conversation as if nothing had occurred. Altogether there were 6 of us on the staff besides Mr. Langmuir. We worked hard, but we also stopped in mid-afternoon for tea, a practice that my brother Paul teased me about. I attended an AT&T stockholders’ meeting when the first stockholders’ revolt was beginning. One night Charles Crosby took me to the Starlight Room of the Waldorf Astoria to an Investment Conference. And there were some other pleasant elements in the job.

I was set to work making quarterly appraisals of the dents’ accounts. I was abysmally ignorant of the functioning of the stock market when I went there so I had much to learn. There were charts to follow and statistical procedures. I took courses at night at the N.Y.U. Graduate School of Business Administration in accounting and investments. I sat at the receptionist’s desk (until a new girl was added to the staff), and I saw the wealthy clients as they came in to talk to Mr. Langmuir. One young millionaire was named Lester Hofheimer. He had psychological problems and was undergoing therapy. Later he died in the war and willed a million dollars to be supervised by Mr. Langmuir and spent in the area of psychiatiy. This enabled Dean to tour the country, visiting the Menninger Clinic and other potential sites for the gift. The money eventually went to Vassar to support a Psychological Counseling program—and in the process Dean married Mar,’ Fisher who was in charge of that program at Vassar.

Dean Langmuir was an excellent employer and Helen Orraca later claimed that he was interested in me in other ways too. I found this very hard to believe. When he occasionally invited me to dinner, I assumed that it was in the same relationship of mentor (though we didn ‘t use that word at the time), and as the father of my good friend. He did take me to some ver,’ nice places.

A high point was going to the Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center. The gorgeous view, the elegant cuisine (it was quite new then), and in his typically curious way he suggested that we ask the resident palm reader to come to our table. I don’t remember the man’s name, but he had his PhD from the University of London. He proceeded to tell our fortunes from our palms. Dean was amazed and so was I at what he told each of us. He told me that I would do well in business and in art. He sketched for each of us unhappy periods and crises in our past and told me that I wouldn’t find my true happiness until after I was about 25. Dean observed that he either had some extrasensory power or an incredibly astute observation. He made me promise to come back and repeat the evening a year later. But a year later much had changed.

The New York World’s Fair coincided with the early years of the Second World War and I had a number of dates going out to visit the exhibits, but when Mr. Langmuir took Evelyn and me (and sometimes just me), it was especially fun because he spent money quite lavishly. He had a lot of intellectual curiosity and he enjoyed going to expensive restaurants and even inviting the musicians to come and play for our table.
I took advantage of my vacations: I flew for the first time to Boston, met Molly and friends and drove to Kentucky one year; another summer I went for two weeks to visit my special friend Jean Jollay in Florida. She seemed so happy, engaged to a delightful young man. And her father’s rich collection of rare books, their warm hospitality and beautiful gardens left glowing memories. I was sad when, some years later, after 3 children, Jean wrote so bitterly about her divorce. Then total silence.
Another vacation was spent at Silver Bay on Lake George. Dr. Charles Parlln, the well known attorney drove me up there. It took about 8 hours and when I asked him how lawyers could justify defending people they knew were crooks, he spent most of those 8 hours telling me the wonderful story of his firm’s defense of the famous Anastasia, who claimed to be heir to the Russian Throne. He said that even years after the trial, a famillar saying in that office was “Well is she - or isn’t she?’ In other words who does REALLY know the whole truth in the final analysis.

I was lucky to have such healthy adventures as I look back. I know the year in California had made me more adventurous and I had many good friends. Maxine Cooke was a classmate from Oberlin whose father was a close friend of Roy Howard (of Scripps-Howard Newspapers). She was on the staff of the New York World-Telegram with her own by-line as a drama critic, and she was delighted to find that I was available to go with her to many of the assignments she had to write about. This meant any number of theatrical first and second nights and sitting in the best orchestra seats. She and her father lived in an apartment hotel. Ordering meals by room-serv’ice, dashing off to the theatre afterwards seemed the height of luxur,’ to me. She made me “see” celebrities that I would never have noticed because I didn’t expect to see them.

Later she married a hard drinking businessman named J. Harrison Hartley and after she had twins 1 lost track of her. She liked going with me, she said, because so much of the theatre world seemed very phony and artificial, and she could trust me. Between the many generous invitations she provided, and the pleasant casual dates I had, I could hardly complain of anything, yet the “angst’ remained.

Another special friend was Helen Nicholayeff. Helen was a white Russian, amply built with enormous sad brown eyes. She spoke with a heavy accent that never improved, but her brilliant mind and vocabulary transcended the mispronunciations. She was the age of my parents, lived alone in a small apartment near the George Washington Bridge and had a fascinating life history. She and her husband were Russian aristocrats who had fled from the Communists at the end of the First World War. She had been trained in Moscow as an Oral Surgeon and during the war she had acquired expertise through treating the many soldiers sent back to Moscow from the Eastern front. I first met Helen when she and her husband and son were spending the summer in Englewood. Because she was unable to practice medicine in this country she had become an expert dressmaker and designed clothes for a private clientele and some of the elegant 5^th Avenue stores.

Her husband had never been able to adapt to American society•-l was told that at first he would not even leave the house unless he had the right perfume. He was tall, imperious and had the manners of a heel-clicking military officer. He felt superior to everything and everybody.

By the time I renewed our friendship in New York, Helen was separated from her husband. He had become very paranoid and had forbidden their son George to communicate with his mother, which was a major grief to her. Helen told me about her friendship with the Countess Tolstoy, of their perilous escape from Russia through Poland, and there were many incredible adventures. How I wish I had written them down! She made me a lovely silver blouse and a green velvet turban trimmed with Russian sable—they were both too elegant for my style of life, but her love for me was very tender and precious.

In 1942 the military were bringing seriously wounded RAF flyers to New York for treatment. This was all very secret, but Helen confided in me that she had been called in to care for some of these patients by a psychiatrist friend. Even though she could not legally use her surgical skills, she was invaluable because of her experience with similar cases in Moscow. Her patients were ones who had had their faces blown away and needed much psychological help as well as physical help.
The first case she treated 1 will call Victor. He was blind, totally disfigured, so he would never be recognized for what he had been. He was living in a Park Avenue apartment with his family but was lapsing into a catatonic state. When Helen first saw him, she learned that his family had moved all the furniture to make him more comfortable. She made them move it back. He must start to make his way on his own.

Helen told Victor he must face his problems honestly. Had he communicated with any of his friends? He couldn’t face it. She insisted. She made him pick up the phone and call his best friend in Philadelphia long distance. He must tell the truth. When Victor told his friend that he was completely disfigured, the friend laughed, thinking it was a joke. Victor had to make him understand that it was no joke. He had to explain his blindness and the fact that his face had been blown away and rebuilt surgically in such a way that none of his friends would recognize him. This was the beginning of his way back, and rehabilitation. This kind of total honesty in facing problems was more unusual then than it is today. And I was deeply impressed. There is no way to deal with a problem or sorrow until one has accepted the full implications. There were other stories, but the one I remember the best concerned Joe.

Some time later she was called to Joe’s home. Only this time the damage was far worse. Not only was Joe blind, but he was totally deaf, his tongue had been shot away so he could not talk and nothing seemed to be left of his nose. Helen said she prayed before she entered his room that she might be able to help him. When she opened the door she saw him lying where he had been for weeks, absolutely inert. She went out to ask his father if he smoked. He answered yes, but he had not smoked in the sickroom lest he disturb the patient. She urged him to light his pipe near the bed. The first gesture the boy had made in weeks was raising his hand toward the smell.

Then Helen suddenly remembered Victor. She phoned him and asked him if he knew Morse Code. Yes he did. Then she asked him to come with her to tap a message on Joe’s arm. Was there still a mind inside of that head? Joe responded by tapping back on Victor’s arm the message, “Where am I?” He had been in his own home for weeks and did not know it. This was the beginning of Joe’s rehabilitation which progressed to his being able to type and communicate, but it was slow and I don’t know the end of that story. I do know that Victor volunteered for espionage work and was flown into Czechoslovakia. He was never heard of again as far as I know.

Helen’s life touched tragedy at so many levels. There was all the sadness of her loss of country, family, tradition—and most sad of all her son. After 1 was married I learned that young George was in the army, and Bob was able to get in touch with his chaplain so that Helen was able to communicate with him on a very limited basis. She was pathetically grateful A year or so later after we had moved to California she phoned my mother and the conversation became something of a classic. ln her rich Russian accent she opened the conversation, ‘Oh Meeses Borrows, the most wounderful thing! - my husband is dead?’ Alas, it was wonderful, even though we thought it was morbidly funny. Young George immediately came back into his mother’s life, explaining that his father had threatened repeatedly to kill his mother and others if he dared to communicate with her in any way. I corresponded for several years after that and suddenly the letters ceased. 1 could only assume that she had died, but I was glad that she lived to see George happily married.

Commuting from Englewood to downtown New York took at least an hour. I could either bus across the George Washington bridge and ride the subway, or take the Erie Railroad and fern,’. The latter was particularly appealing when I rode with Don Field or Juni Scholl. (For a time I was quite smitten with Don Field. He was thinking of becoming a minister and I was thinking of becoming a nurse. We were good for each other in exploring ideas and goals - he married a nurse and I married a minister). But mostly I went by subway. At this time I was experiencing unrest in the purpose of my job. I took • to reading the Bible on the subway and succeeded in memorizing the three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount and several other favorite chapters and Psalms. I also went frequently to Trinity Church at noontime after a hasty nickel sandwich at ‘Chock Full of Nuts’. I was paying off my college debts and glad to be able to get off cheaply on lunch. Trinity Church had wonderful noontime services that lasted exactly a half-hour and included speakers like Robert Frost and William Lyon Phelps. I had done the same thing at St. Thomas’s when I worked on 5^th Avenue and loved the beauty of the church, but they did not have speakers that I remember.

One night about 1 1 p.m. I was lying in bed reading. I opened my Bible to the book of Isaiah and read all of it—into the wee hours of the morning. It seemed to describe what was going on in the Second World War which we were in the midst of. It stimulated me to more Bible reading. I turned from the King James version to an abridged version that allowed me to gallop through the whole Bible, and for the first time saw the Bible as a whole.

As a result of my spiritual ferment, I impulsively wrote a note to Dr. George Buttrick, pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, asking if I could come and talk to him. I wanted a new direction in my life. A couple of days later I received a phone call in the office from one of the associate ministers at that church. He said he had tried to reach me in Englewood and had been directed to call me at the office. He asked me if this was a “personal” call. I was filled with consternation and quickly said, “Yes, please don’t bother Dr. Buttrick...”

“Now hold on, don’t hang up,” said the voice, “Dr. Buttrick receives many phone calls for solicitations, and if it were for that I could handle it...”
By this time I was ready to hang up again, but he made me stay on the phone while he assured me, “If it is personal then Dr. Buttrick would like me to make an appointment for you to see him.” So I found myself, somewhat panic-stricken, being ushered in to see this great man. He listened while I told him that I wanted to do something better with my life than work on Wall Street. I also talked to him about the fact that I really wanted to be married, but I did not want to marry anyone that I was dating and 1 had decided to forget that part of my life and focus on doing something that had Christian meaning. He talked to me about prayer and how important it was to pray about your real thoughts, not just to make up pretty prayers to please God. God already knows what you are thinking, so it is pretty silly to pretend.
He asked me if I had read Aldous Huxley’s “Ends and Means”, or Gerald Heard’s book on “Pain, Sex and Time”. I acquired and read both books. I’m still not quite sure why he recommended them although I found that they confirmed insights I had already had from reading Alan Watts, “The Meaning of Happiness”. Huxley’s ideas about non-attachment and the blending of Oriental and Christian ideas appealed to me. I had several more appointments with Dr. Buttrick. He suggested that I spend my vacation at the Asheville Farm School in North Carolina. This was a Presbyterian Mission School which later became Warren Wilson Junior College.) They needed a person with my skills who could both act as secretary to the Director and also work in other phases of the program. Wartime travel was not too pleasant but I took the train through North Carolina and had an interesting experience.

The staff, particularly a Miss Annette Schaeffer, my roommate, an older woman, were most kind. The President and staff members urged me to take the job permanently. One day I went for a walk with a Princeton Seminarian who was working there for the summer. His name was living Diehl. 1 told him that I’d met one of his classmates the previous Easter when 1 was visiting at Princeton but I couldn’t remember his name. (The name was Robert DeWoIf.) When my vacation ended I had to tell them that I was not ready to become a missionary’. I’m afraid I equated it with going into a nunnery.

On my way home I stopped in the CPS Camp where my brother John was serving as a Conscientious Objector. John had some executive responsibility and I was proud that he seemed able to take charge in some areas. He had married Sally Lawson the previous March and she was working in Tennessee. He told me how hard it was for them to be separated and how hard it was for them not to have a child. Then he said in his most beguiling voice, “If Sally should have a baby the family would support and stand back of her wouldn’t they?” My answer made him very angry—I just said, “John, who do you think is the family?” At the time Molly and I were contributing substantially to the family income and I remember the overwhelming feeling that I wanted my own life—I didn’t want to just be an “aunt’ forever.
Their son Greg was born a year and a half later and Sally came to our house, and “the family” did see her through in a wonderful way. But by this time I was living away from home.

When I got back to New York, Dr. Buttrick offered me a job on the staff of the Madison Avenue Church. Meanwhile he encouraged me to continue my investigations of other areas that might be vocationally appealing. I investigated nursing but was advised that I would make a better doctor than a nurse. Meanwhile I continued to lead a rich life in terms of learning things.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I now believe that this period of unrest and deepening prepared me to be ready for meeting Robert DeWolf. The first time I saw him was on April 4, 1942. I had taken the train after work to visit David and Gerri Newhall in Princeton for the weekend. David was working for his doctorate in philosophy, but after I arrived Gerri told me he was sick in the infirmary. That night we were in the midst of preparing supper when the apartment doorbell rang. There stood a tall clear-eyed, sandy haired young man who was introduced as an old friend from Berkeley, a Princeton Seminar,’ student named “Dink DeWolf’. I remember we had four lamb chops we were cooking, so we gave him two and Gerri and I each ate one. He had dropped by to try out his Easter Sermon which he was to preach at a small church near Trenton the next day. I don’t remember anything in the sermon, but I do remember thinking what a nice sort of person he was.

The following September I saw him at a picnic with David and Gerri and I remember thinking that I agreed with him in the philosophical/theological discussions we were having rather than with David. Usually I agreed with David who had a way of saying things concisely and to the point. But Dink had more of a feeling for what lay beyond this life without being pompous or stuff,’ about it.

The next time I saw him was on October 24^th. I had been invited to a Princeton-Brown football game by a medical student whose name I don ‘t remember and had come down to Princeton the night before to stay with Dave and Gerri. Saturday morning dawned crisp and sunny. Dink dropped by and invited me to go for a walk. The trees were gold and crimson and the air sparkled—we were late getting back and I remember Gerri was frantic that I would be late for my “date”. I didn’t think of Dink as someone who might by interested in me, but just someone I thoroughly enjoyed.

On December 1^st I blew in from work near 7 p.m. Tired from the day at the office, the long subway and bus ride, I grabbed the mail and joined the supper already in progress. There was a letter from Dink and I remember I had the impulse to read it aloud, but when I saw that he had written a poem I decided not to. This is the “ditty” as he called it:

When the air starts getting crisper

And the leaves begin to swirl,

My young heart begins to whisper:

‘Brother, find yourself a girl!

‘Take her strolling through the orchard

Or along the countiy lanes,

And you’ll be no longer tortured

By those funny aches and pains

Just forget your Hebrew grammar,

Leave that sermon haif undone,

And absorb a bit of glamour

In the bright October sun.

‘Shove aside that Greek thesaurus,

Chase the wrinkles from your brow,

Lend an ear unto the chorus

Which the birds are singing now!’

So - I found the girl, the setting,

And pursued that vagrant hunch

(Even recklessly forgetting

to get back in time for lunch).

Well, the sermon was a fizzle—

To my sorrow and chagrin—

And I know the dean will sizzle

When my grades start coming in.

Still, my present sad condition

Only makes me more intent

For an early repetition

Of the same subilme event.

But my greatest satisfaction

Wasn’t in the scenery

No, I found the main attraction

Was your charming company.

So, regardless of the weather

I still breathlessly await

The chance to get together

For another tete-a-tete!

The letter continued, “The above is not exactly in the style of Browning, Keats, or Shelley; but there’s no doubt but what it’s original, and after all, what did these boys have that I haven’t got - besides talent and a reputation?.. There is something I have which those lucky lads didn’t possess, though: a full set of classes in the morning. So maybe I’d better wind up my literary lambencies for the moment ....

When I came to “lambencies 1 thought, Here’s a guy with a really rich vocabulary—I was already impressed with the delightful poem, and the rest of the letter showed a combination of seriousness and light-hearted humor that appealed to me.

I wrote back the next week inviting him to come up with Dave and Gerri for Christmas—we already had a houseful planned for, and one more wouldn’t make that much difference. Bobby Jacobs had asked to spend Christmas with us and my cousin Catherine Newhall Garrett and her Ensign husband Gene would be there too. It was a fun time. Dink fitted in so naturally. He wrote me another poem which seemed to just flow out of him. Sunday after Christmas, when it was time for him to go home, I rode in with him to New York on a 5^th Avenue bus so we could attend Dr. Buttrick’s Vesper Service. He seemed preoccupied (1 found out later it was because he was more interested in going to the powder room). It still didn’t occur to me that he could be seriously interested in ME, but when he invited me down to Princeton for New Years, I was sony that I had another date and so he suggested the weekend of January 8^th.

The train pulled in to Princeton. There was Dink looking his bonny comfortable way. We stepped forward to embrace each other but then we both drew back. It wasn’t until years after we were married that we laughed about it and confessed that it would have been a disaster if we had. In those days such “casual friends did not embrace. 1 would have thought, ‘What kind of a fellow is he?° And I don’t know what he would have thought.

He took me to dinner at a very nice inn and then proposed that we go out to spend the evening with his friend Charley Sayre and his girl-friend. We played Pit. Charley didn’t know how. to shuffle cards and it was very funny to watch him. The bitter cold, the starlit night, the balky car were the setting for what I would never forget. Dink chatted about Crosby and then he sang me some songs he’d made up—I was amazed. His true voice, the catchy tunes, the words so deftly turned with humor and sentiment. We sat in the freezing car until 2 in the morning chatting, and when he told me that he was. interested in more than friendship, even marriage, I was both swept along naturally and astonished at the same time. It doesn’t seem as if I slept at all that night. But I said ‘yes” and we kissed lightly without realizing fully how our lives would never be the same.

The next day there was skating on Carnegie Lake and so forth and so forth. I like to say “We got engaged on our first date. That’s true, but we knew each other in nice ways. When I got home and told my mother, she asked politely after a suitable interval, ‘What’s his middle name?’ I had to answer l don’t know.” I wasn’t even really sure of his first name. “How old is he?’ Again I didn’t know. I felt kind of silly. But when I looked in my diary from my year in California, I saw that I had been in the DeWolf home at a St. John’s Youth party in 1931, and the next week when we met in New York I was able to sketch what his living room looked like on a paper napkin, and we had a fine time finding out some facts about each other.

I had always run away from what were called “the come to Jesus-girls” in college. I couldn’t stand the superficial holier than thou kind of piety. But here was someone who was deep and serious and light and funny at the same time. 1 took a job with the Princeton Bank and rented an apartment on Nassau Street a block or two away. This was a period in which I felt very guided by God. I had gone to Princeton that weekend with the offer of the job with Dr. Buttrick in my mind, but open to what I might find in Princeton—wanting to get away from New York and away from home. Suddenly it was right and it all seemed to fall into place.
At first Dink and I did not tell anyone of our understanding except for our families. We had a lot to learn about each other. And at that time married students were frowned upon at Princeton Seminary. Dink belonged to the Benham Club, one of the clubs at the seminary. He took me there for dinner one night, not realizing it was the night when each man had to choose white or chocolate cake according to whether he was engaged to be married or not. I wondered whether he would conceal our engagement or reveal it, and I remember feeling proud when he chose the engagement cake and announced our status on the spot.

One day he told me that he thought it might be a good idea for him to transfer to Union Theological Seminar,’ in New York. Union was more liberal about student marriages and had apartments for couples. I hadn’t really thought about marriage before his graduation, but it turned out to be a good idea. He went to New York and got himself accepted. Then it was my turn to see if I could get a job near the seminary. I managed to get hired as secretary to the Social Studies Department at Teachers College, Columbia, an easy walk from Union. My boss was Dr. Erllrig Hunt, a bachelor who was much pursued by graduate students—and I think he welcomed having a secretary who was engaged. I also worked for Dr. Spieseke, Dr. Townsend and Dr. Renner. I went home to live for the summer and get myself established in the job so that we would have a smoother transition setting up housekeeping when Bob entered his Senior year at Union in September.

Wartime meant intense travel restrictions. Bob got a job for the summer and came to Englewood on weekends. The wedding was set for September 1 1, but we changed it to September 4^th so that his parents could come from California. Then Dick, his younger brother, aged 15, came down with polio so his parents couldn’t come after all. Because of the gas restrictions which did not allow anyone to use a car to go to a wedding reception, we settled on having the wedding at the little church next door. Mr. Elmore was still away for the summer and Rev. Sherwood (Squid) Wirt (younger brother of Williston Wirt—Dink’s beloved Scout leader and associate pastor at St. John ‘s) agreed to conduct the ceremony. Neither Molly nor John & Sally could be there. By this time Molly was in Arkansas with the U.S.O., and John was in C.P.S. camp. Tabitha Davis, the lovely black woman who helped mother with the house, was there, and her daughter sang “Oh Promise Me”; Nell Taylor played the organ and Helen Taylor arranged masses of beautiful gladioli. There was much laughter the rehearsal night. Wendell Wollam, the best man, made some light hearted jokes and suggested that in the reception line Dink might practice saying to each guest, ‘So nice to have you with us today.” What to do if the ring was lost down the register, and other potential calamities were anticipated.

Dink thought it would be nice to memorize our vows. I was a little apprehensive but went along with the idea. When he changed the wording slightly in the service, I followed along and repeated exactly what he had said, and Sherwood Wirt gave me a nod of approval, as if I might turn out to be a pretty good wife. (Sherwood later became Editor of Decision, Billy Graham’s magazine.

Then there was the reception. Suddenly I realized I was famished for I had not eaten all day in my excitement. And then I changed into my navy blue suit, and after being pelted with rice, Buzz drove us as far as the George Washington Bridge. We lugged our suitcases by bus and subway to the Prince George Hotel on 5^th Avenue. After dinner at Stouffer’s, we strolled through the warm evening and managed to cash a check for $75 that we had received as a wedding present from his family. When we got back to our room Dink flung the window wide open and announced, “I’m a fresh air fiend.”

Oh dear, thought I, “that’s the sort of thing you never find out until AFTER you are married.” What he didn’t tell me was that he was strictly a California fresh air fiend, and as the days of winter came on, and I would open to window 2 inches wide, I discovered that he was quite content with one inch!