 |
|
|
About Us | Exhibit | Education | Directory | Links | Contact Us | Site Map | Home |
|
|
Interview with H. Albert Young
The first part of the interview from 0-159 is inaudible. Therefore the date and place of the interview is not known among other information. The tape begins as follows: C: You mentioned when you came to Wilmington that you were very disappointed. What exactly were the conditions in New York? You said they were lovely but I thought people frequently lived in ghettos in new York. Y: No, well, you must remember times were entirely different and most
of the people that have succeeded and become affluent lived in neighborhoods
where there were tenement houses an because the very exclusive neighborhoods
did not permit Jews to live there even in Brooklyn. So, sometime when
I was about ...just before I was bar mitzvah maybe a year before which
would have made me about eleven or twelve, we moved to a neighborhood
known...a street known as Heart Street and that was in the Williamsburg
section near Bedford Avenue. In fact it was on Heart Street and Nostrum
Avenue, tree lined streets. A judge lived on the street. In those days
a judge was highly regarded and highly respected and I think maybe there
were two or three Jews that lived on that street. They were brownstone
homes and it happened that some individual Jewish who C: (Her question is inaudible.) Y: Well, we weren't immigrants at that time but we were in a strange city and as far ad we were concerned Wilmington was like a million miles away from New York. You know the New Yorkers are the most provincial people in the world. I remember years, not many years after that when I was acclimated and made friends in Wilmington, two or three or four years later and I would visit with some of my friends in New York, they'd ask me if it snows in Wilmington or do we have trolley cars. That's how ignorant and provincial they are. So, it was traumatic. I had no friends. I left my best friends and there was no way of visiting with them frequently so I was pretty unhappy the first few months and maybe the first year but then I made friends and of course I become president of the club and I took the leads of all the plays there and I had a very active and very interesting four years in Wilmington High School. Well, from there I went to the University of Delaware and I commuted the first three years but I must tell you about high school first. In high school I had among my classmates was a . . one man by the name of Topkis and he would come... this was something... C: What was his first name? Y: (inaudible) He was the youngest of all. He died at a very early
age. I'm talking about - not Williams' son - I'm talking about the one
who did so much for Jerusalem and Israel. He was the real pistol. I
think it was Jay. He would come to high school with a brief case and
you never heard of a brief case in high school in 1914 [1919] and another
thing I envied about him was that after school as we would walk down
Market Street he would go to one of the movies. His father and family
owned all the movies on Market C: What about your parents' grocery store? Y: Well, at first we had it at 3rd and Lombard Street and then we moved to Fourth and Walnut. Now that to me ...I loved working in the store but the one thing that I felt was humiliating was when I would have to go outside the store and pump kerosene while some of my classmates, the girls and the boys would walk by and I was in shabby clothes pumping gasoline and also making deliveries in a pushcart. I would deliver from Fourth and Walnut to Eighth and Rodney. We had a customer by the name of Gordon who owned the Gordon Jewelry Store and she lived in an apartment above the store on Fourth and Walnut. Chaiken was on one corner selling... I'm talking about... C: My grandfather. Y: Your grandfather and this was this big shoe store on the other side in which Lou Simon was a salesman at that time and they had these lovely apartments in those days and so Gordon lived there, moved to Rodney Street which was quite an elevation and they still dealt with us and I would deliver their grocery orders in a pushcart and can you imagine what it is to pull a pushcart.. .push a pushcart up on Third Street between Orange and West? I think that's the reason for the double hernias that I've got afterwards. But, I didn't mind that so much which was a very terrible thing but when I would meet a classmate, one of the girls in class, that I had, it was a very humiliating thing for me and so, that was my... that was ...but I still was happy in high school because I was active in extra curricular work and was a fairly good student so I did well. C: What was the University of Delaware like? Y: Now, when I came to Delaware. . .when I came to the University of Delaware, a Jew was looked upon as some animal from some unknown country. We had no fraternity and no Jew was invited to join a fraternity. In fact it was considered quite an honor if you knew somebody in one of the Gentile fraternities to come in just. . .not to an affair, just to come in and walk through the threshold. When I think of it it burns me up even today. Well, anyhow, a group of us got together, myself, Dr. levy, fellow by the name of Jacobson, fellow by the name of (inaudible) and a few others and we went to the Board of Trustees to ask them if they would permit a Jewish fraternity and they did and we organized one. In those days hazing was very prevalent in colleges and in Delaware and they would take.. .the freshmen have to wear caps and (inaudible), degrading, humiliating, second class students and they would then for some infraction if you didn't salute when an upperclassman passed by, they would then bring you before a kangaroo court and they would subject you to some menial duty or they would have you run through a line where all of the upper class students had paddles. I get the shivers now when I think of it and paddle you with all their strength and almost kill you. In fact, I never went through that and one of the reasons I never went through, I assume, is because I came heralded as President of the Dramatic Club and that sort of thing and was admitted in the freshman year which was the first time they ever admitted a Jew in any of the clubs, in what was then known as the Footlights Club of Delaware and there I also took part in many plays and I was a great friend of Judge Leahy. He and I before football games would give a performance where we would impersonate the president, deans, and various professors we had. Some were French and they were quite some affairs. So, I was not subjected to any of that but I would say, the classroom and some of the classes was absolutely something that you would read about maybe in Russia. When the professor would calls the names, for example, roll, Atkinson, Arthur; James, Cohen; Schline, you'd hear, Schliney! Coheny! out loud. C: The other students? Y: The other students. Well, there was one in our class by the name of Slonsky who was a very tough guy and a good actor and basketball. This went on day in and day out and the one day while during the roll call with all that (inaudible) and yelling, Slonsky got hold of the one that caused all this mimicry, grabbed ahold of him and almost killed him in class and the teacher, the professor had to pull them apart and while they did nothing to Slonsky (the rest is inaudible). The men in the university, the Jewish boys, did not date anybody at the Women's College. Not because they didn't want to date them but to be seen with; the Gentile girls wouldn't be seen with a Jew no matter who he was on campus. You tell me how the situation was in Delaware. The gratifying thing about it, those that were contemptible were the ones that wanted to sell me insurance when they got out of school. They were the ones that wanted me to speak at their different affairs and I guess they matured themselves. They were immature and a lot of them were from down below the canal that had never had any contact with Jews and Jews were animals. That's how the situation was then and then I would have to go back. I commuted and worked in the store and unlike the other boys that could stay over on Saturday and weekdays. Not that I did not have any dates. I had my dates all over the place. But not in Delaware - not in the University - in Wilmington, in Philadelphia, in Chester. C: When you finished at the University of Delaware you went to law school? Y: I went to law school at Penn and unlike the situation today, it was a question of where I wanted to go. It wasn't a question of what schools would accept me because given a good student, not brilliant, not outstanding, but average good student, you could go to Harvard; you could go to Yale; you could go to Michigan; you could go to Penn and as a matter of fact, Simon went to Harvard. He chose to go to Harvard. I decided... I was torn between Harvard and Michigan but I decided I'll go to Penn because then I could work and make my way and in the senior year at Delaware I also had a very traumatic experience because my mother was dying of cancer and I was very, very devoted to my mother. As a matter of fact, in the latter part of the senior year, 1926, I would study for my exams by getting on the train from Newark to Wilmington, getting off the train in Wilmington and then taking the train to Philadelphia where she was in the hospital with my books and I would read my books (inaudible.) So, I had a very unhappy time the last year. Now getting back to the hazing.. .you know you're getting me down to such details of the early years that we'll have to talk for a week. During the hazing period when I was a senior, a young fellow who decided... he lived in Newark, New Jersey, by the name of Phil Blank decided he would like to go to a small college and he chose Delaware and they... he went through this hazing period and a matter of fact, one day, one night, they took him out of his room and took him miles and miles away in Maryland and left him without clothes and he came back then the next day and he was ready to give up. He wanted to leave the school and I befriended him and the next thing I knew he brought his sister down to a prom which I did not attend and they got another date for her, Jacobson was her date then and I didn't attend because my mother.. you know my mother was then dying and my heart was not for dancing so I didn't go. But then, (inaudible) except in so many words "they tell me...that Phil kept saying to Ann and to his mother the...great ...to meet Hy and some day you'll meet him. Then when my mother died, I was feeling better and I would have the boys say Kadish at the fraternity.") So it was a mixture of happy days but a lot of sad days and then after my mother passed away I entered law school and when I entered the University of Pennsylvania Law School I then took a job ...I worked in the pharmaceutical division of Wellon's Drug Store. It was a famous drug store in Philadelphia where I would (inaudible). I had to carry cases. Did you ever see a case of (inaudible -- medicine.. .big bottles). And I would get out of law school and take the trolley and (inaudible) C: Where did you live? Y: Newark, New Jersey. (A portion here is inaudible - something about terrific competition with doctors) So I worked my way not only in the afternoons but in the summer I sold magazines the Victoria Review. C: House to house? Y: House to house. And I made enough money in the summer. I was one of the leading salesmen of the Victoria Review in the country and I would make enough in the summer to pay for my tuition and part of my board plus implement (inaudible) by working in the afternoons and I did that all three years and when I was graduated I had absolutely nothing but optimism and hope and I was courting Ann and we finally got married in 1931 and still married. C: (Question is inaudible). Y: Well, I got out of law school in 1929 and I went from office to office to try to get ...not a job because you couldn't get a job but permit me to hang my hat up and say I'm in the office of John Biggs, or Perc Green [Percy Green - former attorney General of Delaware] or Judge (inaudible) or whatever it might be, and it was very tough and I finally did get to Perc Green who became a judge and with Biggs who became the chief judge with the circuit court and I have ...I have it here somewhere but I read to the bar association of which I was president the agreement that I had to sign with Biggs when I came into the office and that was that I was permitted to use the desk in the outside office. The outside office looked like ...like a latrine; shabby, dirty, crummy, but it had a desk in it and that was my office in consideration for which I was to do anything they requirement me to do with no compensation whatsoever and to be terminated on thirty days notice. You know, when Biggs, the judge that was his father (inaudible). When Biggs, Chief Judge Biggs [son of Chief Judge Biggs], was at that meeting when I read it; he thought it was a fabricated document and then I showed it to him with his father's signature. It was almost unbelievable. So, I recall that when Biggs then, junior, was a referee in bankruptcy, we had a meeting with all these lawyers and people involved in the bankruptcy proceedings to come in and of course the first thing they'd do was.. .nobody took their coat and there was no receptionist. . .they'd take their coats and throw it on my desk and put their hats on the desk. C: (Question is inaudible) Y: (First part is inaudible). It was humiliating, frustrating. Now, when I first started to practice in that way, no compensation, and the few clients wouldn't.. .how do you pick them up? By having them hear about you or something. But fortunately Perc Green went to Europe and I handled his cases and acquired a number of cases and experience and then I was appointed by the court to handle a lot of cases; murder cases, manslaughter cases, for which there was a statutory provision that the fee should not exceed fifty dollars. C: And how long ...you started your work as a trial lawyer at that time? Y: that's when I started and but I made my living, you must understand, how I made my living. I couldn't make my living as a lawyer so I became a radio announcer with WILM and I not only was radio announcer; I would solicit the advertising; I would write the copy; I would put it on the air and I would collect it. Martin who then owned WILM said he's never had anyone like it in his whole lifetime that would bring in money from which he was able to pay me and that's how I made a living. And then I decided... and then I was getting clients and then I decided to get married but it really was a very courageous thing for me to do at the time with the limited practice that I had but it...even at the risk of being immodest, my reputation was being made as a trial lawyer and that's what I developed (inaudible). C: When you started your practice you must have given up your radio work. Y: Oh yes, but what was very gratifying was I had solicited such ads with such long term contracts that even after I left I was getting some money from like Oldsmobile, New York Fish Market, you name it so... C: When did you finally establish your own practice? Y: Well, I was working on my own practice from the day I got out of law school. But then my reputation began to spread as a trial lawyer, not only criminal, but civil and I've shown the boys here my books which I still have here ...my first year in practice I made bfive hundred and fifty dollars in the practice of law and... C: Did you become active in politics? Y: Yes. C: At that same time? Y: Yes, I used to attend political meetings and a judge of the municipal court, Judge Lynn, used to call on me to give them a pitch and make a speech and I was considered his boy and I never ran for office and I did seek one office at one time. I wanted to be assistant city solicitor which paid something like twelve hundred dollars a year, fourteen hundred dollars a year. I didn't get it because I didn't have the influence or contact that others had so I never (inaudible) and then I became attorney for the legislature. I was appointed to that in two different sessions I would come. I would drive to Dover every day, come back in the evening, take care of my clients at night and on Saturdays and Sundays and (inaudible). C: When did you become Attorney General of Delaware? Y: I was nominated in 1954 and I was elected in 'S1 and served from '51 to '55. C: Those were momentous day. Y: They were. I never dreamed of running for attorney general because I had a very lucrative practice and the attorney general's office paid seventy five hundred dollars a year. I charged more than seventy five hundred dollars just going on one case in the federal court and it was a decision that was very hard for me to make and besides it was a lot of feeling in the community at that time because it followed shortly after I was involved in that very famous or infamous rape case in which a girl in the DuPont Company was raped by three boys; McGuire, Jones and I can't think of the third one's name and I represented Jones and Hagner represented McGuire and Reinhart represented someone else and the letters to the editors were something tremendous. They said that.. .and letters to home... C: You mean slanderous letters? Y: Slanderous letters. How can you represent these rapists? What kind of a lawyer are you? You'll see your daughter in her grave and your wife will be dead before you even try this case because the fear was that this trial lawyer's going to get them off. Well, I remember my daughter was married in 1954 and it was ...alright, we're talking about the rape case. I'll get to the other thing next. So, that was carried over when I was running for attorney general and they said we can't have a man that has defended these fellows that were involved in the rape case run for attorney general because every rapist is going to get off. As a matter of fact, I tried to prove that the confessions, talking about my... the one I represented... confessions were fabricated. They were type written. They did not reflect what was said by the one I represented and that my boy absolutely was ...the boy I represented was absolutely innocent. The police officer that was involved in this particular night committed suicide and ultimately they were given pardons, these three boys and the story is a very interesting story and one that great (inaudible) .. The first side of the Young tape ends here. SIDE II Y: (inaudible) referred to the case as the story of a match and it was one of the most interesting cases that I have ever handled and had a terrific impact. In fact, it was reported that the circulation of the News-Journal increased something like thirty percent and some of the people that wrote terrible letters and some of the people that stopped me in the street and some of the clients that said, "Why do you take a case like that?", were the ones that waited for the first edition of the newspaper because it was the first time that reporters were permitted to record and report the testimonies that appeared in court and after the case was over, I got letters just in reverse of what happened, why it happened and how courageous I was to... C: Commendation. Y: Yes, it was complete reversal but it was something that I had to cope with when I ran for attorney general. In addition to having, for example, all the Catholics were told not to vote for me. She was Catholic and... C: Some of the boys were Catholic. Y: Yes, yes, but they were told not to vote for me. And then on top of that, the ...man by the name of Duffy...Ed Duffy, who was a career deputy in the office, was very anxious to become attorney general and he wasn't nominated and so everyone who thought Duffy should be the nominee, didn't vote for me and I was told that…not I was told... from my experience in knowing about politics in Delaware if you did not carry particularly the ninth ward in Wilmington or carry Wilmington, you could not win the election because no Republican carries Sussex County and nor Kent County so therefore the chances of winning were slim. As a result I did not concentrate in Wilmington at all. Well, I went to Sussex County frequently and to Kent County. I carried Kent County. I not only didn't lose Kent County but I carried it and I also carried Sus...Kent [obviously he meant Sussex] County. I lost heavily in the ninth ward where they were against me because of the rape case and also because Duffy was not the nominee and so I was elected attorney general and ordinarily being attorney general of the state of Delaware at that time was being... it was an ordinary position under paid, routine things that you would expect of an attorney general in a small state but one of the biggest cases in the United States in the history of this country broke and that was the segregation case. So, I had the good fortune to appear before the United States Supreme Court to participate in the argument of the segregation case taking the position which is contrary to what's going on now. C: This was as a result of the 1954 Supreme Court ruling? Y: It was not the result. This was what resulted into the 1954 decision. Separate but not equal-it's violate of our constitution. Now, I remember that one of the questions that was asked of me when I argued the case in the United States Supreme Court by one of the Justices, Black, and he asked me what my feeling was about it and I told him that ...at that time I told him that constitutionally, on strict legal grounds, that a matter of segregation in the secondary schools belongs to the states. They were to regulate it and not the federal government. But that if they are to have desegregation, is what we called it then, it should be gradual. You should have.. indoctrinate the youngsters in the first two grades, the next grades and so forth and so on and that you cannot do it as it proved to be with due deliberate speed and how right I was. It's something that should come about but it had to be done gradually. After the decision came down, a fellow by the name of Bowles came into town... C: What was his name? Y: Brian Bowles. C: Brian Bowles. Y: And he would get people to belong to his organization for five dollars each. C: What was the name of his organization? Y: National Association of White People and he immediately said that
we'll never have desegregation. Would you want your daughter to sleep
with a black man? Would you want your white daughter to get married...
you know, and all of that, the usual tirade and tripe that these racists
would dispense and then he had with him a pseudo-minister who was never
ordained and he would carry the cross and the bible and say that in
the bible it says that you can't mix the races and when I took his deposition,
I said, "Point out to me in the bible where it says that."
And he says, "It's in the bible." And that's it. It's like
a child. When you ask a child what's your reason he says because and
that was the answer. So, he came in and he solicited membership and
all and they had fires ...burnings of the crosses and meetings in the
fields around near Milford and when I came down to Dover to argue ...first
I argued before the court to void the charter of the National Association
of White People as being contrary to public policy and as a subservient
group of people. I didn't win that. They declined to rule in my favor
and then when there was an order to ...six children from the Milford
school, the colored school, were admitted into the white school and
they were there for about seven days when Brian came down again with
kind of boycotts and was going to burn the building down and that sort
of thing and I was asked for an opinion then and I said that ...my opinion
was to the effect that the Supreme Court had spoken and that's the law
of the land and that these children did not disrupt either the curricula
of the school; they didn't contaminate anybody; the walls didn't fall
apart and that they had a right to be there. From then on I was accused
that the reason I ruled that way was because I was a Jew and then they
referred to the name of my family, Yanowitz, of which I changed the
name and I had to meet that issue in there, but I didn't meet it. I...but
letters to the editor, vicious, scandalous letters. Letters at home,
threats. My daughter got married in 1954. We had a garden wedding on
Augustine Road and I had to have C: When did you go down to argue before the Supreme Court? Y: Well, the decision came down in May of '54. It might have been June or July. Now let me tell you about that trip. I went down with two police officers and a member of my staff and I came down and I was asked was I in fear. Yes, I was in fear, only about one thing. I didn't care if they killed me but I was in fear that they might tar and feather me. That was the thing that I feared because I...well , when I came down and that's where I made that very famous remark with respect to one of our high officials whose name [Senator John Williams] I'm not going to mention now. Maybe it will be part of a book and said that this is the law of the land and even if he, this official, has to lead these children by the hand into the white schools, they're going to do it. The irony about it all after having gone through all that I did and that my family did and when I read that the movie, what's the name "Guess Who Came To Dinner" or you know, the colored... that there's standing room only to go into see that movie. That instead of six pupils being in the Milford School, there are sixteen hundred colored in that. . .sixteen hundred mixed, colored and white, with more than fifty percent colored. There's no problem now and that I had to go through all that turmoil. C: But you had to go through all that turmoil so that it could happen. Y: Well, that's what they say. It was those things and of course then came great letters of commendation from all parts of the world of the courageous stand that I took. C: What were some of the comments that you had from people who were in Washington when you gave your.. .made your plea? Y: Well, there I was... C: Who were some of the people who sent you letters of commendation? Y: Oh, well John W. Davis who as you may remember, was Ambassador to court of St. James in London, England, and he was also president of the American Bar Association and he was also president ... candidate for President of the United States and he was also the leading lawyer of the United States and he wrote to me in 1953 when we made our first argument. We argued twice before the United States Supreme Court. He said, "I want to repeat..."Dear Mr. Young, I want to repeat what I said to you in Washington that I thought your closing argument of the series was most effective and just what I wished most to have said at that time. I renew my congratulations." Cordially yours, John W. Davis. I also got a letter from... I also got a letter from Robert McPhigg who was associated with the leading firm that handled the case for South Carolina. A member of which firm is now Justice of the Supreme Court, Powell, and he wrote to me and said, "I appreciate very much your letter of December 15th. It was indeed pleasant to work with you in our cases before the Supreme court and I was sincere in telling you after you had concluded your argument that I felt like standing up and cheering. As Mr. Davis said to me at that time, we could not have worked out a plan for a more stronger, more fitting conclusion in presenting the matter than the presentation which you made." Sincerely yours,. C: Well, it must have given you a great deal of gratification when it was over. Y: It did. It did and it's something which I never would want to ever experience again but which I wouldn't give up for a million dollars that an attorney general of a state the size of Delaware was able to argue one of the most important cases that's on the books of the United States Supreme Court. The Dred-Scott Decision with respect to the slavery rights was one and the segregation ...the May, 1954 decision to desegregation is the other. C: I'm very pleased that I'm able to interview you. What other honors have come your way? Other awards? Y: Well, I've received several awards and of course I've been elected to several very outstanding societies of the American Bar. For example, I'm a member of the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association. I'm a member of the American Law Institute which is the scholarly branch of the American Bar which is limited in membership. I'm a member of the American Bar Foundation which is also limited to membership. I'm a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers which has only seven are only permitted in this state and I was the second one. Morford, my former partner was the first to ever be elected and I was the second and I'm a member of the Board of Directors of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and well, I've been involved with Brandeis University. C: Yes. Religion has played an important part in your life. Y: Well, I was president of the Temple Beth Shalom and I've been very much interested in the congregation and I hope that I have contributed in some measure to the success of that congregation and... C: Brandeis University was also one of your... Y: Well, Brandeis...well, of course I lost a great, great companion, my wife, in '72, in July of '72 and shortly after her death, I established a chair at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School of cancer research known as the Ann B. Young Professorship in Cancer Research and the first incumbent professor is a young man by the name of John Glick who was the subject of a book written by Stuart Alsop called, Stay of Execution because of his competency, compassion and understanding of people suffering with this terminal disease and he is now the incumbent of that chair. C: You must be pleased that he is the incumbent. Y: Well, I was not only pleased but so were the faculty and the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and they're doing great work and I hope it's going to help people of the future because the concentration is on the detection of the kind of cancer that sometimes when it's detected it's too late like cancer of the colon which is one of the most horrendous things and then ...so that's.. .that was one thing that I'm very, very proud of and if we have a moment later I will show you what the University of Pennsylvania sent out when I established that very important professorship chair. And in connection with Brandeis University, I represented Hattie Kutz and Hattie Kutz came to me because she wanted to restructure her estate planning. She was dissatisfied with the way someone previously had prepared it and she wanted to do something that she felt was different and would give her great pleasure. This is one of the things that I am extremely proud of in the course of my career. Because, she depended on me on the way the division should be made with the funds that she had. In addition to that, I was able to establish these various bequests and gifts and have the things set up in her lifetime and increase her income at the same time. Now, people have said, how did you do it? What was done? Well, her whole portfolio in assets running into millions consisted of one kind of security, DuPont stock, and the DuPont stock at that time sold for two hundred and fifty dollars a share. I think it today is a hundred and sixteen. I gave ...I established trusts for various institutions with the understanding that she is to receive the income and on her death they get the corpus or the body of the trust. By doing that the beneficiary of the charity could sell the stock without paying any kind of capital gain so that they would invest it in tax exempt securities and her income therefore became greater than it ever was and she was able to go to Brandeis and see them put up the student center that ran into millions and the government gave matching funds and we established the school of biology. We gave to Technion. We gave to Weizman Institute. C: What's the Technion? Y: A Technion is the M.I.T. of Israel and Technion is such a great institution that the United States when it has anything to develop and in connection with airplanes resorts to the facility in Carmel. C: And the Weizman Institute is also in Israel? Y: Weizman Institute is another technical institute of a different kind more in chemistry and that sort of thing but technological and all that is-the M.I.T. is Technion. We went to the American. . .we gave because we have the bilingual auditorium in the University of Jerusalem, we gave ...we established a chair in American Archives in her lifetime in Cincinnati, the Union of Hebrew Colleges and we were there. Dr I just got a letter from him the other day... Dr. Jacob Marcus is a great Jewish historian and he's the professor that was established by Hattie Kutz. Now, all these divisions of how much to give and to whom to give it depended a great deal on my judgment and her willingness to do it and then don't forget the Kutz Home. We established... we gave them an outright gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars and then established a trust which I just gave their last check to which made possible the Kutz Home. So that I probably will go down as one of the unsung heroes. Most people don't know that I was responsible a great deal for the first of all the for the varied distribution and for the extent of the distribution to each of these charities. C: Well, it won't be unsung because... Y: Yeah, this will go down in history, O.K. Well, anyhow so that's what happened with the Hattie Kutz estate. C: You were also very friendly with people like J. M. Lazarus. Y: I represented Lazarus for many, many years. In fact, we still represent the family because of some holdings they still have in Wilmington here and we were friendly socially and my wife Ann and Gertrude and of course, we were just great friends and she died shortly after Ann did without any warning whatsoever. No, we were great friends. C: How about Dr. Barsky? Dr. Joseph Barsky. Y. Dr. Barsky was a great friend of mine. We used to have a group. It was Dr. Barsky, Mike Hendler of the Borden Company, Dr. Levy and myself and Saul Cohen and we would meet every Saturday when the club was on ...we would have lunch and play golf or they'd come to the house and I lived on Augustine Road at that time and Dr. Barsky and Mike Hendler were great friends of mine and of course Saul Cohen is still a great friend of mine. I must tell you also this; I think I was ...I don't know if I was abrasive but I was not lacking in the ability to speak up even in the face of some of my elders when I first started to practice and not with staying the fact that the first year I made five hundred and fifty dollars. The first Federation meeting that I attended... C: You're talking about the Jewish Federation of Delaware? Y: The Jewish Federation of Delaware; I sat there and they... someone from New York or someone from Washington I don't remember in those days. It was either.. .it wouldn't have been Sacher but it was one that had written Badge of Sufferance and I can't think; He was outstanding. Samuels, Maurice Samuels, and they'd make.. .these big men would make their pitch and we sat around in the hotel or we'd stay at the B'nai B'rith and all that and I would... these big shots would get up and they'd say I give x dollars. Well, even to me that seemed so picayune that I got up and I made my pledge. I think my first pledge was five hundred dollars and here's the big shot of town giving twenty five hundred dollars and I tried to shame him into giving more so I think maybe... C: Did you? Y: I think I did. Some were moved. Some were not. But later on I would make the pitch and of course Ben Codor who was then executive secretary of the Federation and the others have always asked me to assume the presidency of the Jewish Federation but I didn't want it. Believe it or not, I have been in many organizations and most of which I have been president or declined to be president and yet I'm not a joiner. I don't particularly like meetings. But I get involved. I just got involved just now as Sarita Gross got me into her dayschool. Well, I'll see what that's like. But it's been gratifying ...its been gratifying but I did and of course we used to have some great meetings with the Federation. I'd always be called on to make a speech and that sort of thing and finally I used to say, "For God's sakes, get someone else. They're going to get sick and tired of hearing every time its Hy Young. Get someone else to do it." But... C: You mentioned something about your name before. Y: Yes. C: Having changed the name. When was the name changed. What was it before? Y: Yanowitz. As a matter of fact, you know time's changed. Today, Yanowitz would be a fine name in your career. Jablonsky, Kilwaski, Frakowsky, all those good names. Bur in 1918, 1920, you want to have something that you thought a client could easily remember and so I changed it just before. . .just as I became twenty one and I changed it here in the Federal Court in the United. States and changed it in law school. C: And did you have any repercussions because of it? Y: No, none whatever except with Bowles who tried to say... I was trying to hide some fraud or some previous conviction. C: Is there anything you wish you had done in your life that you haven't done? Y: That's quite a question. That's that's quite a question. Of course I think this is my... this is the career that I had chosen for myself and I don't see how I could have done anything else unless... C: You are satisfied with it? Y: Oh, extremely, extremely. C: Would you give any advice to young people today? Young lawyers? Young men? Y: I can give just this advice. I'm on the Board of Bar Examiners and that requires my interviewing candidates who wish to take the bar exam and who want to become lawyers in the state of Delaware and I have found that if a youngster wants to do something but you know not just want and sit on his behind, if he wants to do something, if he wants to be something, he can do it. He must have absolute determination. I see some of the candidates here that I know will never make lawyers. I think they want to get in because today it's the thing to get in to do pro bono work for the good of the public, to get in with the community service and that sort of thing but I have seen examples of youngsters who have a will to become something either in a profession or a business and if they have that determination they're going to make it and I've got one great illustration and I don't mind mentioning his name. Andy Tollin is the grandson of Saul Cohen. He did very poorly in school. As a matter of fact they sent him to Petty which is a kind of school like send him to Valley Forge in the old days, maybe, you know, he may straighten himself out. When he got out, after getting out of school, out of Petty, he went to ...he got into fortunately he got into George Washington and when he got into George Washington, he did pretty well in four years at George Washington. He wanted to be a lawyer. So, he came to me and I...he wanted to go to Emory. I tried to get him into Emory. It so happens that I have a friend who is a judge out of Savannah highly respected and I thought with his influence; you know, you do need some push so I tried to get him into Emory and he wrote back and said, "No, with his grades, he cannot get into Emory." But we might get him into a school called Macon in Atlanta which is accredited but it's and they have some good lawyers that come out of there. So, I spoke to him and said, "Well, what do you think?" Well, he didn't want to go to Macon so he finally reapplied, all the law schools did not accept him, but he finally got into Sussex in Boston, second rate. He made Law Review. After the first year, he transferred to George Washington Law School; and got on Law Review. After he was graduated he got a job with the Mudge-Guthrie firm which was Nixon's former firm and Mitchell's firm, in that firm. Worked there for a few years, is now with the Federal Communications Commission as a lawyer in Washington. This to me shows this guy, this boy, wanted to be a lawyer. C: So, if you really have the push you think that's what it takes? Y: Absolutely, industry, push, you don't have to be the most brilliant guy. You don't have to be and but you can't say I want to be and that's it but you've got to knock on doors. You've got to do various things. C: Are you satisfied with the state of our nation now? n You've watched it now over these years. Y: No, I...it's disturbing. It's troublesome. I don't know where we're going. You know, I'm more aware of certain things that I never was aware of in my life before. Before Ann died, she used to tell everyone that it was a most unusual thing that I had never been in a supermarket. I never visited a grocery store. I didn't know... I still ...for some time even when even while Ann... I still was thinking of milk being ten cents a quart and bread being ten cents a loaf. But now, when I see the bills come in, when I look at the prices, where is it going? And when I look at people with fixed incomes living in apartments, that have to be increased year in and year out; when I think of a load of oil at only a few years ago costing eight hundred dollars and now eighteen hundred dollars, when I think of taxes when we ...I'm talking about 1401, when I think of taxes being forty eight thousand dollars a year; it's now a hundred and two thousand dollars, I don't know where we're going. I don't know what's going to happen and then politically, anything, I'm talking on the national scale, anything can spark a conflagration. It could happen in some little territory in Africa. If there's a conflagration somewhere in Africa it might upset the whole apple card and the weaponry and the arms and I'm worried about Middle East. C: You've had strong ties with Israel? Y: Oh, yes, yes. C: And you still maintain it. This is the end of the Young interview as the tape runs out |
|