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Bill Swire
November 26, 2008: VERY EXTENDED FAMILY
We prided ourselves about how inclusive we were about our Thanksgiving guest list until this week when we dined with friends in a local Albany restaurant. Since November was just around the corner, the subject of Thanksgiving surfaced. Our friend Sally reported that this year her son John and his wife had invited sixty people to Thanksgiving dinner at their home in Connecticut. They had rented a tent for the occasion. Now that's inclusive.
Thanksgiving has a long and honorable history in the United States. Lincoln nationalized Thanksgiving in 1863. Long before that, Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that "No citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving day". The holiday caught on and gained in popularity. It arrived without baggage. Selecting gifts for every member of the family was not a prerequisite. It didn't have, for many people, a religious connotation. Thanksgiving is associated with the harvest, an age old time of commemoration. Finally it's linked to family celebration.
That's the way we looked at it. By the middle of the 1960s, we expanded our Thanksgiving dinner to include all of our local extended family -my mother, my wife Stevi's mother and father after they moved to Albany from West Virginia, visitors from foreign countries whom we invited through the International Center in Albany, and close friends who happened to be distant from their own relatives - perhaps 14 in all. My sister Judy, who lived in Worcester Massachusetts, and her husband and three children joined us every year and set up camp for three nights in the Americana Hotel, now the Desmond, on Albany Shaker Road. The Worcester contingent arrived the night before Thanksgiving. We gathered at Jack's restaurant, 11 of us at first, later more than 20. That tradition lasted more than 15 years.
Fast forwarding ten years, our children's and Judy's children's college friends joined us. By this time, we were well over twenty in all. Then the marriages. Then the grandchildren. And then, the newly beloved in-laws on our side and sometimes the in-laws from Judy's children's family. Frequently, we were 35 in all. That's when Stevi said - "That's enough". Traditions abounded. Thanks to the example of the Massachusetts Kennedys, we hosted a Thanksgiving morning touch football game at the Loudonville School until some of us aged out. It was universally agreed we had lasted far beyond what prudent judgment indicated. Each year, while final preparations for dinner were underway, some of us joined together at the top of the heavily wooded steep ravine near our house for a hike designed to keep the children and grandchildren sufficiently challenged until the 3 PM dinner time. Finally there was an annual moving up to the adult tables from the children's table when it was mutually approved safe for all parties.
Of course there were memorable incidents retold with increasing embellishments by the family as the years went on. For a few years, Stevi, who was a talk show host on radio station WQBK, was assigned Thanksgiving and Christmas day to conduct a two hour call-in program. She left instructions for my sister Judy and me regarding what she wanted done for dinner preparations before she returned. We were fine about mashing enough potatoes for over thirty people but we didn't know how to locate a bowl large enough to put them in. Judy and I were at a standstill. Stevi couldn't be reached off air. Judy called her while the program was in progress to find out where we could find the needed bowl. Her audience was amused. It was a break from the serious discussion about the news of the day. The following year on Thanksgiving Day the State Health Department called the station about contaminated turkeys from a specific vendor and urged advising the public to dispose of them. During a news break, Stevi called us to shop for a replacement turkey. Saved by the bell.
Incidents abounded. One year, a fifteen inch Thanksgiving Day snow storm, another year a fire in the woods from sparks from our fireplace. The fire department came to the rescue. Our electrician saved us one year when the lights went out while we were gathered in the dining room. One year son Peter took five children aged six to ten on a walk to keep them occupied. For additional excitement, he hauled out a ladder so all could climb to the garage roof for a bird's-eye view of the neighborhood. It went fine until one of the mothers sighted her precious child looking over the edge and let out a cry of protest heard round the neighborhood. All survived intact.
I could go on. No doubt you could too. Thanksgiving - remembrance of good times past.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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November 12, 2008: A TALE OF TWO ALBANYS
The only time our family was forced to sleep on the streets in Albany occurred when we were 3000 miles from home. It was in Albany, California. We were sleeping peacefully there in our motor home after the police in nearby Berkley, rapped on our door at 3 AM and demanded that all occupants immediately emerge from our motor home with hands up. Perhaps they suspected drug dealers hanging out near the University campus. Who knew! After coming out and submitting identification, they were sufficiently satisfied that the five Swires, Stevi, Bill, Peter, 12, Andy, 10, and Amy, 6, were harmless. They explained we were in violation of local ordinances that prohibited parking vehicles overnight on University grounds. Their suggestion -- continue to Albany, California where they said "Anything Goes". That sounded like the Albany, New York we were familiar with in 1970. It was after 4 AM before we arrived on the streets of Albany and found a remote neighborhood to turn in for what little there was left of the night.
The whole trip was an adventure. Our three week Western tour began in mid-June in Colorado Springs. Our only previous motor home trip had been to Montreal's EXPO '67 with three other families, each in a twenty-six foot motor home. We worked out the inevitable snafus on a group basis that time. On this trip, we were on our own. Neither Stevi nor I came with any noticeable skills in solving mechanical problems for any kind of vehicle. And problems there were. Were it not for fellow motor home veterans we met along the way, I would be writing this from some remote village in the great Southwest, the permanent victim of our own mechanical inadequacies.
We picked up our motor home, and headed for Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. At 8500 feet, one can contemplate views that span over a hundred miles. We immediately signed up for the walking tour of the amazing cliff dwellings that included climbing rope ladders from one level of to another. It was too far along the tour to send 6 year old Amy back to where we started. Bill in front, Stevi in back, up we went. Stevi held out one hand intended to save Amy if she started to lose her grip. It wouldn't have done any good if she fell but Stevi's choices were few. Amy made it. Deep breaths all around.
The Grand Canyon came and went. When there, the children stared down and quickly returned to the motor home to continue their 3 state card game of War. It was always unpredictable what would spark their interest. The flat tire we had on an Indian reservation in Arizona got their attention. The temperature was nearly 100, the air conditioner inadequate to cut the heat, and was it not for a remote service station that suddenly appeared on the horizon, family ties might have been eternally severed. Arriving in Las Vegas, we stopped only long enough to buy 5 Orange Juliuses, raced through the town that at that time was small change compared to what it is today, and headed to California. Disneyland was another whole thing. The kids loved it. Our two day stop over with friends in Los Angeles provided a luxurious break. It was fun to pull up to a fancy restaurant and turn the motor home over to a delighted parking attendant.
I was intimidated driving the coastal route to San Francisco. Two lanes wide and continuously winding, plus multiple sights of crashed cars that had landed on the precipitously steep banks leading down to the ocean would scare anybody as inexperienced as I was driving a twenty six foot motor home. Stevi applied cold packs to my neck, Amy went back for a nap, the boys played cards. We made it in one piece in one afternoon. More deep breaths all around.
On to Salt Lake City and then, heading north to Logan, Utah where I had worked in the Rocky Mountains for three months collecting specimens for a geologist who was completing his research for his PhD at Yale. It was and is a picture book Mormon town - welcoming, in perfect order, lawns green, houses white and freshly painted. Happy memories. I loved revisiting that town. The children labeled the Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming "Daddy's Disneyland". We settled down in a campsite for three glorious days -- hiked each day to a different destination in the mountains, slid down on our rear ends on snow above the tree line, cooked out each night, listened to ranger stories at nightfall. Heaven. I proposed to Stevi that we move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She declined with grace.
Back to Colorado, back to Albany, back to work. Still remembering almost forty years later.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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November 5, 2008: VERY EXTENDED FAMILY
Chances were that if you double parked on State Street in Albany in the 1970s when Erastas Corning was Mayor, you had a good chance of not getting a ticket. If you did, and if you had any political clout, you also had a good chance of getting it fixed. That's was indicative of how an old fashioned political machine ran the city.
Ten years later, when Tom Whalen was Mayor, if you double parked anywhere downtown, you promptly paid the ticket or knew that further penalties were in the offing. Ticket fixing was over.
A straight man was in charge of the city. He set his line in the sand from the first day he became Mayor in 1983. Renewal of civic pride and spirit became Whalen's mantra. He spoke of "resurgence, renaissance, and revitalization throughout the city". He recalled, on taking office for the second time in 1985, "those dark days when Albany's residents, along with its industry and commerce fled the scene…every aspect of our lives is bullish; you can feel the excitement in the air and see it on people's faces".
Dan Button wrote in "Take City Hall" about Albany's regaining lost self respect, an acceptance of citizen participation and responsibility through a renewed confidence in the integrity of the city's Mayor and his policies.
How was this accomplished? Dan wrote " Through taking the initiative in mobilizing people for participation in the process of change, encouraging a sense of collective identity… which in turn brought stronger feelings of self-worth. In Tom Whalen's case, instead of exercising power over people, he inspired followers". Community leaders felt liberated. Their ideas were encouraged. He sought their advice and heeded it.
Building confidence in the community was no easy undertaking. As James MacGregor Burns wrote in "Transforming Leadership" -- "shaping the social future through genuine change is a long tortuous process…The formidable challenge is to build a community wide sense of efficacy in people who have come to regard many of the aversive aspects of their lives as beyond their control. Building collective efficacy from the grass roots up-as people convert self interests into common purposes, as activists learn to challenge the power structures around them, as leaders give heart to followers by showing how obstacles are surmountable….. is crucial to achieving far-reaching social change".
By late 1985, under Tom Whalen's leadership, Albany was rebounding and enjoying an unparalleled cycle of commercial investment and development. Both officials and private executives gave credit to him for the upswing in business resulting from his aggressive community development programs. He was an important factor in the commitment of Norstar Bancorp to restore the decaying Union Railroad Station and for a major new building in downtown Albany as regional headquarters for Keycorp bank.
He fostered a climate in which the arts and culture played a prominent part in the city. He was a strong supporter of the founding in Washington Park of the Park Playhouse and Shakespeare in the Park and instrumental in establishing an annual New Year's Eve "First Night" in the downtown Albany area that attracted thousands of regional residents. During his administration, the city secured Whalen's support for sports events as varied as "Cityski", when 700 tons of man-made snow was temporarily dumped on State Street for local skiers, including the Mayor, to try their luck at staying on their feet during a 550 foot run from Eagle to Howard Street, and to the Empire State Regattas on the Hudson River, which attracted rowing competitors from near and far. Albany's Tricentennial, in 1986, celebrating 300 years since Governor Dongan awarded the city its charter, topped off a string of successes for Mayor Whalen that led to a surge of pride in the community that had been missing in the years before he came to office.
When Albany was declared an All American City in 1991, it was further evidence of how an outstanding politician of unchallenged integrity can reverse a downward urban trend that seems beyond repair. Any community anywhere needs the kind of leadership that Tom Whalen provided to Albany. We were fortunate to have him as our Mayor.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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October 29, 2008: BREATHING SPACE AT LAST - II
Chances were that if you double parked on State Street in Albany in the 1970s when Erastas Corning was Mayor, you had a good chance of not getting a ticket. If you did, and if you had any political clout, you also had a good chance of getting it fixed. That's was indicative of how an old fashioned political machine ran the city.
Ten years later, when Tom Whalen was Mayor, if you double parked anywhere downtown, you promptly paid the ticket or knew that further penalties were in the offing. Ticket fixing was over.
A straight man was in charge of the city. He set his line in the sand from the first day he became Mayor in 1983. Renewal of civic pride and spirit became Whalen's mantra. He spoke of "resurgence, renaissance, and revitalization throughout the city". He recalled, on taking office for the second time in 1985, "those dark days when Albany's residents, along with its industry and commerce fled the scene…every aspect of our lives is bullish; you can feel the excitement in the air and see it on people's faces".
Dan Button wrote in "Take City Hall" about Albany's regaining lost self respect, an acceptance of citizen participation and responsibility through a renewed confidence in the integrity of the city's Mayor and his policies.
How was this accomplished? Dan wrote " Through taking the initiative in mobilizing people for participation in the process of change, encouraging a sense of collective identity… which in turn brought stronger feelings of self-worth. In Tom Whalen's case, instead of exercising power over people, he inspired followers". Community leaders felt liberated. Their ideas were encouraged. He sought their advice and heeded it.
Building confidence in the community was no easy undertaking. As James MacGregor Burns wrote in "Transforming Leadership" -- "shaping the social future through genuine change is a long tortuous process…The formidable challenge is to build a community wide sense of efficacy in people who have come to regard many of the aversive aspects of their lives as beyond their control. Building collective efficacy from the grass roots up-as people convert self interests into common purposes, as activists learn to challenge the power structures around them, as leaders give heart to followers by showing how obstacles are surmountable….. is crucial to achieving far-reaching social change".
By late 1985, under Tom Whalen's leadership, Albany was rebounding and enjoying an unparalleled cycle of commercial investment and development. Both officials and private executives gave credit to him for the upswing in business resulting from his aggressive community development programs. He was an important factor in the commitment of Norstar Bancorp to restore the decaying Union Railroad Station and for a major new building in downtown Albany as regional headquarters for Keycorp bank.
He fostered a climate in which the arts and culture played a prominent part in the city. He was a strong supporter of the founding in Washington Park of the Park Playhouse and Shakespeare in the Park and instrumental in establishing an annual New Year's Eve "First Night" in the downtown Albany area that attracted thousands of regional residents. During his administration, the city secured Whalen's support for sports events as varied as "Cityski", when 700 tons of man-made snow was temporarily dumped on State Street for local skiers, including the Mayor, to try their luck at staying on their feet during a 550 foot run from Eagle to Howard Street, and to the Empire State Regattas on the Hudson River, which attracted rowing competitors from near and far. Albany's Tricentennial, in 1986, celebrating 300 years since Governor Dongan awarded the city its charter, topped off a string of successes for Mayor Whalen that led to a surge of pride in the community that had been missing in the years before he came to office.
When Albany was declared an All American City in 1991, it was further evidence of how an outstanding politician of unchallenged integrity can reverse a downward urban trend that seems beyond repair. Any community anywhere needs the kind of leadership that Tom Whalen provided to Albany. We were fortunate to have him as our Mayor.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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October 22, 2008: BREATHING SPACE AT LAST
My wife Stevi and I didn't see it coming. Mayor Erastus Corning died in 1983, after 40 years in office. Hand picked by Corning, Tom Whalen, President of the Albany Common Council, succeeded him as the lawful inheritor of the mayoralty. We expected more of the same in local politics - machine dominated municipal mismanagement, vote buying, an assessment racket deeply imbedded in the fabric of the community, corrupt purchasing practices, and a patronage system that was based on who you know and "what can you do for me?". As William Dowd wrote in the Knickerbocker News "the city commonly accepted that the machine will provide, the machine would guide, the machine will decide". Given our 20 years of political activist work fighting the machine's corrupt practices, we feared that Mayor Whalen would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor while Albany would continue to further sink into its statewide reputation for corruption, and its rating by credit agencies as a failed financial entity.
Just the opposite. Under his administration, the city was set free in moral and ethical terms for the first time in over fifty years. Breathing space at last.
Thanks to former Congressman Dan Button's book about the Whalen administration titled "Take City Hall", we have a detailed description of how Tom Whalen brought the city from virtual bankruptcy to much admired fiscal reliability. He writes that "Whalen inherited an autocratic municipality. His administration exemplified a classic example of reform". Further, "Albany regained a lost civic pride, an acceptance of citizen participation and responsibility through a renewed confidence in the integrity of the city's Mayor and his policies".
Whalen said "When I came to office, I believed that most Albany citizens wanted reform. I could anticipate that my biggest hurdle in changing things was most likely to come from within the party. Fear was a big factor in Albany politics during the O'Connell period. If you didn't do the things the way the organization wanted them done, you could be banished politically, never to surface again".
On taking office, Whalen was immediately informed by New York State's Comptroller Edward Regan, that "Albany was in "financial crisis" and needed immediate reform in the city's fiscal policies. He indicated a need for stringent controls to be imposed by the State. Albany was taking on long-term debt to illegally fund current requirements. Mayor Erastus Corning was regularly taking money that had been borrowed for construction and other capital purposes and improperly diverting it to make up for the shortfall in income for current operating expense". "He overestimated how much money the city could expect to take in, underestimated how much he intended to spend, and included among anticipated revenues purported "surpluses" that did not exist".
On taking office, Mayor Whalen took immediate action to correct that practice as well as a host of others that had been characteristic of the machine for almost 40 years. He hired a Budget Director, Daniel Klepak, with instructions to establish budget controls that realistically dealt with incomes versus expenses, reestablished lawful bidding practices, assured taxpayers of fair assessment policies, and worked to rebuild the municipal infrastructure and the services at all levels. The result - by 1993, the last year of Whalen's ten year tenure as Mayor, Albany enjoyed an A rating from Bond agencies that had previously placed the city at the lowest investment grade during the Corning administration, built a $30 million surplus as a cushion against economic turndowns, and held property taxes 9% below the 1983 tax rate.
In 1989, the United States Conference of Mayors singled Whalen out to receive the highest national award for fiscal management, "The Mayors Financial Leadership Award", for "rescuing Albany from economic doldrums and restoring it to financial prosperity". High praise for an outstanding leader. He honored us all with his presence.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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October 15, 2008: BREAKING NEWS
Friends from Yarmouth, Maine visited over-night this past week. During our conversation about the reeling economy, they told us about the appeal in their local newspaper to send money to the town hall for the benefit of people from their area who would be unable to pay their heating bills this winter. Our discussion expanded into how each of our families was or was not affected by the Great Depression. Our friend Chuck, whose family's construction business weathered well during the Depression, remembered how his father took him to Keelers one evening. Before entering the restaurant, they were approached by men selling pencils and apples on the street. At a time of overwhelming joblessness, that was the only way they could eke out any income. Seventy years later, he visualized the incident as though it was today. His wife Mary, whose father was an obstetrician and relatively unaffected by the Depression, was pre-teen in the 1930s and was not aware of the economic devastation going on around her. My wife Stevi's family were retailers in the women's clothing business in Parkersburg, West Virginia and survived the Depression in relatively good shape. She heard about the Depression at the family dinner table but it hardly impacted her life.
I was born in 1926. It wasn't until the middle 1930s that I realized my family was going through very difficult times. My father loved the real estate business. He intended to parlay his success in the retail furniture business into a real estate enterprise that would allow him to expand on two fronts. His dreams seemed to be coming true in the late 1920s.
During that period he built three two family houses on two acres in the Delaware Avenue neighborhood. We lived in one of them. In the center of the property was a former estate house with enough space to divide into luxurious, for that time, apartments. It was all beautifully landscaped and included 15 attached garages. By the late 1930s, he lost that property and every other property, and there were many, acquired in the 1920s with the exception of the one where our furniture business was located, and the home to which we had moved in the Pine Hills neighborhood. My parent's dinner table conversation in those years was about survival strategies in depressing times. Following those grim days, the Great Depression bogeyman never left my mind. I was unwilling to invest in any property other than the one in which we lived or the business property in which I worked. Further, I was determined in my business years to avoid any layoffs in our business during recession times, having seen the relentless stress unemployment caused to families in the Depression years. I felt that somehow we should adjust to difficult times by keeping our workforce together. It worked to our mutual benefit overtime.
Presently, the official agency in charge of declaring that the economy is in a state of recession is the National Bureau of Economic Research. They define recession as "a significant decline in economic activity lasting more than a few months". For this reason, the official designation of recession may not come until we are in a recession for six months or even longer. Before the current crisis in 2008, there were six recessions between the end of WWII and 2003. They were in 1953, 1957, 1973, 1980, 1990, and 2001. Typical duration of each was from 12 months to as long as 25 months. Each took its toll in terms of lost jobs, family hardships, increasing homelessness, and emotional insecurity - adding up to a host of negatives affecting as many as hundreds of thousands of Americans. Because we were in a seemingly endless growth period, most of us could lead our lives without sensing the growing gap between the less fortunate and the more affluent portion of our society.
We are fortunate in the Capital District region that we have more than 30,000 New York State employees as our base of employment. Unemployment figures are almost always lower here than in any other part of New York State. Underneath those figures, however has been the decline, since 1960, of industrial jobs, particularly at the blue collar level. Those jobs were not replaced. The repetitive recessions caused many longtime local residents to move from this area to other regions of the country as factories closed or cut back substantially in workforce numbers.
Challenges continue to move on inexorably. We've come a long way since the Great Depression. We still have a long way to go.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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October 8, 2008: Management Revolution
Returning home to Albany from my five day management training course in Chicago in the spring of 1969, our family - Peter,11, Andy,10, Amy, 5, Stevi and I, sat down to dinner at our home. Our nightly dining routine included each of us describing our day. When it was my turn, I was bursting with information about Frank Edward's stimulating discussions about Management by Objectives. I was applying my new business vocabulary to the family, and, as their eyes glazed over, I realized how challenging it was going to be for me to gain proficiency in communicating these new ideas to my fellow employees. Older employees, and there were many, might wonder "What's he up to now?" and younger employees, in that Vietnam period, might well have questioned a CEO with their catchphrase "don't trust anybody over 30".
Frank described how ineffective managers ran from one crisis to another in the course of managing their businesses. He warned that managers should avoid the 'activity trap', getting so involved in the day to day activities that they micro-managed everything going on around them. Unfortunately that was a perfect description of how I was attempting to run our family business. Sensing my lack of organization, I engaged Frank to help me find my way out of the tangled maze that I helped create. I was leading by inspection, not paying attention to emerging problems until they reached the crisis point. I skipped from one predicament to another.
On his first visit to Albany, Frank helped me define our company's mission. In our case it was to grow steadily by satisfying the wants and needs of an increasing number of customers in the Capital Region by building a lasting reputation for taste, value and the capabilities of our stores.
To achieve our goals, we needed to define objectives for each employee and then compare and direct performance against the targets which we had mutually defined... Management by Objectives includes continuous tracking of progress and providing feedback to help reach the objectives.
It all started with a system of planning that would be used effectively by each employee. That included everyone from the president of the company to everyone employed by the company. No exclusions. When we started this process in 1969 we had less than fifty employees. By the time the business closed in 1990, there would be nearly 100.
To implement this program, each department head sat down with each person he or she managed and mutually worked out a plan for the coming year, in general, and action plans for the next three months in particular. The company's mission was tied to the employees' mission. It was not a top down process. Through continuing review of the plan, the flow of information both to and from each employee, allowed the company to move forward in a coordinated fashion. Because we were highly computerized, we could measure our results against plan on a continuous basis.
Were there still problems, emergencies and sometimes failures? Absolutely. The frequency of breakdowns was measurably reduced as employees gained increased understanding of how important each was to the success of the business.
Teamwork replaced individual ego trips, employee frustration declined, customer satisfaction increased. Management by inspection was replaced by management by objectives. Management's job was to get work done through other people. With clearly defined standards and objectives for each employee of the companies, "grey areas" disappeared. It wouldn't have happened without the help and encouragement of Frank Edwards. He taught us how, in many ways, to maximize our collective talents.
Our story was repeated from the 1960s through to the end of the 20th century. Small business people were introduced to management tools never before available to them. Computer information systems aided in myriad ways by providing up to date reports previously not available on a current basis. It was true that downtown retail Main Streets were replaced with newer suburban Main Streets in the form of shopping malls, but the numbers of small businesses continued to grow all during this period. The management revolution in how to envision one's organization opened new doors to people who lacked only the exposure to the methods that could measurably change their business lives.
Thanks, Frank.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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October 1, 2008: HELP IS ON THE WAY
First a confession. When I returned to Albany in 1949 and joined the family furniture business, I had no idea what I was in for. I had completed a college education that included no business courses; my senior thesis was on New York State Governor Al Smith, which indicated strong interests in political science and history and none in accounting. As a college wrestler, I was as prepared as anyone my age to use my body in any kind of physical labor but formal preparation for running a business was totally lacking.
Fortunately my first assignment was to manage the company's warehouse and delivery department. I benefited from working alongside the employees in that department, learned how to cope with the physical challenges of the job, drove a delivery truck with some frequency and enjoyed solving customer service problems.
Within a few years my duties expanded. My father was in his seventies and was tired of dealing with day to day problems. He encouraged my taking on more and more responsibility. It didn't take long, however, as frequently happens in father-son working relationships, to realize that we had very different approaches to managing the business.
The problem was that recognizing what I objected to was not the same as knowing what to do about it. In the 1960s, if you wanted to keep pace with what was current in the economy, new methods were necessary to manage your business.
Everything was happening at a faster pace. Inner cities were going through a decline as formerly undeveloped space on the outskirts became rapidly developing population centers. Attractively priced new homes were available to people who only dreamed of comfortable single family homes just a generation before.
New downtowns in the form of massive shopping centers quickly followed to become part of the suburban sprawl. New was the operative word. New products and services were introduced daily. Televisions in new family rooms replaced radios in old living rooms as the center of family life. Women, who formerly stayed at home taking care of the children, were newly involved in the workplace rather than the home-place. American society was changing fast.
I turned to the National Home Furnishing Association to acquire management skills lacking in my background. Whenever possible, I enrolled in executive training programs designed to help young managers upgrade their capabilities. Management training was a discipline typically offered only by national or international mega businesses. Now, help was on the way.
In 1969, I enrolled in a five day management training course given by our Home Furnishings Association. It was held in Chicago. Our leader was an émigré Englishman named Frank Edwards. He was both impressive and imposing. He arrived each morning dressed to the nines in a charcoal grey suit, formal tie, crisply starched white shirt, and black shoes shined to a mirror image. His military bearing was reinforced by his perfectly clipped English accent. No notes in sight. His lectures each day were delivered completely from memory. Thick course books were delivered to us the first day. We were instructed to decipher them and expect to be tested about them at the end of the week.
Classes started at 8 and concluded at 6 with infrequent breaks. The fifteen participants in the course were given assignments nightly to augment the information blizzard during the day.
What was all this about? Many of the management courses in the 1950s and 1960s were based on training techniques developed during WWII. At that time it was necessary for the armed services to quickly train hundreds of thousands of officers with little or no experience in dealing with the disciplines required by large organizations. They, in turn, commanded millions of servicemen who were equally unprepared to absorb the regimens of service life. It was a gigantic undertaking and a miracle so many survived. It was a miracle of sorts that I survived Frank Edwards week long course in Management by Objectives that had been first outlined by economist Peter Drucker in 1954. I engaged Frank to come to Albany to study how I might best manage our business. Thus began a twenty year management consulting relationship that enabled us to keep pace with the business world so rapidly changing before our very eyes.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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September 17, 2008: Change Agent
Late one Friday afternoon in 1969 Dorcas and Elsie were filing their last batch of folders before going home when I arrived at our Mayfair interior design store on Central Avenue in Albany. One by one, they were filing the folders that had accumulated that related to sales, special orders, accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory and financial statements. All paper files. Filing corporate information by hand went on every day, every week and every year. It was essential to the continuation of the business. The same process was going on in our Swire Furniture store on Central Avenue on the outskirts of town. Dorcas and Elsie were valuable employees. They were bright and energetic; important to the success of the business. Seeing them underemployed in the throes of filing folder after folder, my mind turned to the Galbraith family who had spent their lives studying the most efficient way of utilizing productive employees in businesses. What Dorcas and Elsie were doing, hours and hours of filing every week, could surely be improved upon both to their, as well as the company's benefit.
Find the way to upgrade your record keeping processes, I said to myself. You're keeping separate records that are climbing the walls for each of your businesses and slow the ability to manage the enterprise. By the time the monthly financial reports are produced, it's the fifteenth of the month, sometimes later. Reaction time to correct problems could take weeks when it should take days at most.
Perhaps we could buy a computer system that will help us keep pace with the rapidly changing business world. Search it out. My business reading emphasized that major American companies were converting, in greater and greater numbers, to full computerization. The retail furniture industry, always a bit slow to adapt to new trends, had not, to that date, produced a computer system to fill the specific needs of our business.
We hired a comptroller, Mike, who, like me, was fascinated by the opportunity to develop a fully integrated system for our companies. He, in turn, hired a highly skilled computer programmer, Barbara, who understood the idiosyncrasies of the computers available in the latter part of the 1960s and the early 1970s. Without them, creating a cohesive system would have been impossible. Their job was to relate the information system requirements with the technical limitation of the computers, to get past the difficulties programmers had in translating their talent for understanding the computer's capabilities into how their programs might best satisfy the everyday needs of the employees, and how to help employees absorb new ways of performing their jobs.
My part of the development of the system was to detail in minute detail the kinds of work we performed. In order to break that down into understandable bits, each night I diagrammed the various tasks of each employee in each department and turned it over to the comptroller and programmer. It was the part of the creative process that I best understood.
Our goal was to complete the programming in twelve to eighteen months. How little did we know! It took us six years. Our story was a common one in those days of how long it took to develop the software necessary to achieve an integrated system. Risks were high. Many nights I wondered if it was worth the extraordinary effort knowing that failures were more common than successes. Development costs far exceeded original budgets. Once started, there was no easy retreat.
Our job was a more complex one than in other retail industries. If a woman needs a new sweater, she goes to a store, makes her selection and walks out with her first choice. The same is true selecting toothpaste in the drugstore. A home furnishing retail operation does not fit that mold. If you need a bedroom set, the decision making process is typically much slower. It's a long term purchase. You probably won't carry it home. You frequently decide to special order the merchandise you selected. It could take months to finish the transaction. The system had to take all that into account.
It was finally completed in 1975. IBM selected our system to distribute to other home furnishing stores across the United States under a beneficial contractual arrangement.
Final note. Dorcas and Elsie thrived years after the completion of the system. Their heretofore hidden talents were respected throughout the company. We benefited in many ways from their capabilities. Best of all - no more paper files.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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September 10, 2008: European Odyssey In Five Days
There are 11,000 lakes in my father's native country. In 1905, he immigrated to the United States from a town called Swir on the banks of one of those lakes in Lithuania. When our nephew David invited my wife Stevi and me to join him and his 14 year old daughter Elana on a whirlwind 5 day trip to Vilnius, Lithuania and Prague in the Czech Republic, the temptation to participate in a new adventure was too great to decline.
David, who teaches at the Harvard Business School, was engaged to lecture for a full day at the Baltic Institute of Management in Vilnius. The day before his lecture, we were taken on a tour of that lovely city that was founded in 1323. It's a bustling city of 600,000 with one of the oldest and most charming Old Towns in Europe. Before WWII, there was a Jewish population of over 200,00 in Lithuania, almost all of whom were murdered by the Nazis during the war. Today, the Jewish population in all of Lithuania is barely 5000.
Stevi and I intended, with our great niece Elana, to visit my father's home town of Swir. Europe's complicated political history being what it is, the village was now in northwest Belarus and obtaining visas was difficult. With great effort, our guide secured them. Once done, off we went -- driver, guide, and the three of us.
The lake at Svir was beautiful. The Catholic Church, which has survived over 500 years, impressive. The town, except for the few wooden colorfully painted Eastern European houses was unremarkable in any way. The only sign of the Jewish community that had lived there at least 250 years before WWII was the cemetery on the lakeshore. We searched for signs of my father's family and indeed found gravestones with the Svirsky name on them. The name had been changed to Swire when my father came to the United States. Missing completely was any indication of the thriving Jewish community that I had read about in a book about Svir published in 1959. Included were photos of soccer teams, a 20 piece band, a bicycling club, and ice skating on the lake in winter. All signs of the Jewish community --- gone.
Before leaving, we found a plaque, installed on a new iron fence in 2004, by Michael Lozman, an Albany, New York orthodontist who has been rehabilitating Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe for five years with the help of college students, most recently from Siena College.
Next stop Prague. On arrival we were met by nephew David's wife's cousins, Bob and Elsa, and were introduced by these charming people, over the next two days, to a different piece of European history -- the Czech Republic. They lived in Prague during both the German and Russian occupations during and after WWII. Bob, during the Russian occupation, was sent to Russia as a technical specialist in the transportation industry. Elsa, whose family lived in that area from the 12th century, trained as a physician during the same time. Somehow, life went on. They never lost touch with their Roman Catholic faith during those trying years. They cherished their Czech history. We walked with them along the streets packed with tourists from all over the world. Through Bob and Elsa, Czech history -- the monuments, bridges and castles -- came to life. The Prague Castle, constructed in the 9th century, is the largest ancient castle in the world. The wonderful St Vitus Cathedral's foundation stone was laid in 1344 in late Gothic style and was finally completed in 1929, almost 600 years later, with renaissance and Baroque details. The history of the Jews in Prague is recorded in the synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, which was first founded in the 10th century. Each outstanding building, art gallery, and neighborhood brought up an anecdote from our hosts that switched on a light illuminating the history of those times.
We recognized that in two days one can't do justice to the histories of that complex culture. But how rewarding it was to experience these moments of history through the eyes of Bob and Elsa.
On day six, we flew home. It felt good to get back - to return to our own space and our own town.
Albany has its own unique history which dates back to 1686 when it received its city charter. The Hudson Valley has a special charm that is as engaging as any area of its kind in the world.
I question whether I can give as authoritative a tour of our region as Bob and Elsa gave us. It's time to study our own history with the same enthusiasm as we were shown on this trip. We all might think about that.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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August 27, 2008: THE MAN WHO CAME AFTER DINNER
The Worms (meaning Book Worms) convened on Thursday evenings once a month. Jim Colton was our leader. He was our Latin teacher at the Albany Academy when most of us were in high school in the early 1940s.
In 1958, he invited six of us to expand our intellectual horizons by choosing a mutually interesting topic each year and, through reading and discussion, share our views on the chosen subject. Over time the group expanded, though never beyond ten, to include Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, business and professional. The purpose was to discuss reading we had done, plus reading which we would not have done except for this group. Some topics of the early years of the Worms included - the Old Testament, the New Testament, far-eastern religions, Greek philosophers, and great plays from Job to O'Neill. In 1969, eleven years after founding, we decided to examine mythology. We discussed it in terms of Genesis-Exodus, in Greek and Roman society, and the American political scene. In our view, there was no better place to observe the art of politics than Albany, New York and no better person to share his observations on local mythology than Albany's "mayor for life" -- Erastus Corning, who was first elected in 1941.
We asked him to address myths about the O'Connell political machine. Established in 1921, the machine turned out lopsided victories year after year. Legend had it that it was indestructible. The machine's political boss, Dan O'Connell, had become a folk tale in Albany. Indeed his reputation as a political wizard had expanded country wide. When Erastus Corning met with us in December, 1969, we anticipated he would provide us with insight into the world of this political power-house.
He started out with a description of how the Albany Democratic party maintained its popularity in the city by attention, in minute detail, to the needs of its voters; house-by-house, block-by-block, district-by-district. If someone was out of a job, the Alderman helped find one. If there was a recession or, indeed, during the Depression in the 1930s, insure that the neediest were provided food or clothing. Never lose touch with those who needed help. There was always someone to turn to.
Erastus Corning discussed his responsibilities as mayor. Keep the line of communication open at all times. If someone called on the telephone and asked to speak to the Mayor, he was there to answer the call, whether it was a complaint or a request for assistance. Someone in the mayor's office was assigned to follow-up.
Although Albany's population was well over 100,000 during his 42 years as mayor, it was run like a small town with all the accompanying benefits. The Mayor was available day and night for the hundred and one demands for personal appearances and endorsements for local non profits, religious organization, and large and small community events.
In response to questions about why Albany was seemingly so slow to adapt to the changes that were going on in the era of explosive growth in the 1960s in many American cities, Mayor Corning responded that Albany was a State Government town that employed thousands of people who were satisfied to work for lower wages as long as they received higher benefits in health, and retirement than would be available from private industry. It wasn't change the public wanted. It was assurance that the certainties of the present would continue in the future. The Albany political machine recognized the need not to rock the boat.
Erastus Corning was clearly comfortable while he talked to us in that quiet, non-confrontational living room environment of the Worms meeting in 1969. Although most of the men in the room, including myself, had worked for various reform movements that were opposed to the O'Connell machine during the 1960s, we, like so many others who had been in the presence of this complicated, brilliant man were taken with his charm and assurance. No wonder they were so hard to defeat.
The O'Connell myth lived on, even after Dan O'Connell's death in 1977. Erastus Corning was still mayor when he died in 1983. Albany would have to wait for Tom Whalen to assume the mayor's office for reform to take place.
Meantime in 2008, the Worms outlasted them all. We still meet to this day. Any ideas for next year's discussions?
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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August 20, 2008: CELEBRATIONS
“When the experienced explorer Henry Hudson set out on his sea voyages in the early seventeenth century, his mission was to find shorter trading routes to Asia.
In 1609, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, Captain Hudson set sail out of Amsterdam on a small 80-ton .. triple-masted vessel, called Half Moon, with a crew of 16, half Dutch and half English ….. and headed west toward the coast of America in search of warmer weather. Hudson believed he would find a strait somewhere between New England and Virginia that would lead him to a passage to the Pacific….. In September 1609, he found an entrance into the Hudson River, which a mate on the Half Moon called ‘as fine a river as can be found’. The crew traveled up river to just south of Albany, but when Hudson realized the passage to the Pacific did not exist, the Half Moon returned down the Hudson River, through New York Harbor and out to sea, arriving in Europe in November, 1609. While Hudson did not find the passage he sought, he was impressed by the land around the Hudson River which he reported to be ‘the finest cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon’. As a result of his discoveries, the Dutch established the settlement they called New Netherland, later New Amsterdam, and later still New York City, a decade before the Mayflower landed in New England.
Dutch settlers brought with them a deep tradition of tolerance, which became a hallmark of its diverse and multiethnic colony….Their progressive spirit of enterprise in many ways provided the roots for the character of New York as we know it today.”
In 2009, the Henry Hudson 400 celebration will commemorate Hudson’s voyage. Present local plans include exhibits at the Albany Institute of History and Art and the New York State Museum. Seventy seven years after Hudson’s historic voyage, Governor Dongen signed the city charter for Albany, New York in 1686, making it the 4th oldest city in the United States. As William Esmond Rowley wrote in his doctoral thesis entitled “Albany, A Tale of Two Cities” --- “200 years later, in 1886, Albany celebrated it’s bicentennial with a week long marking of its pluralist tradition. The Irish, Germans, French, Italians, Dutch, English, and Scotch, marched on a “Day of all Nations.”
Each Christian denomination and the Jewish community had its bicentennial service but the grandest religious spectacle was the military mass at St Mary’s Church, the first Roman Catholic church in Albany founded in 1797. Father Walworth, described by Rowley as a Yankee convert priest, told in his sermon of how, 240 years before, Albany’s first Protestant pastor, the Dutch Domanie Mega Polensis had given haven to the Jesuit missionary, Father Issac Jogues, in his flight from the Indians and how the two men had “joined hands with no bigotry in that grasp”.
Thirteen years later, the story was retold by another convert priest from Albany’s most aristocratic Dutch family - Father Henry Van Rensselaer. He was a lineal descendant of the first Albany Patroon.
As William Rowley wrote “There were two characteristics of Albany society that remained constant all during the years of economic and ethnic change … a conservative outlook that survived from the feudal days of the Dutch Patroons and a tradition of tolerance, an acceptance of pluralism in the community, that was inspired by genuine liberality of mind as well as political realism.” The “Two Cities” that Rowley described in his thesis were the early Dutch and English settlers of Albany, who had banded together to control the power structure in the community-city one, if you will. The second Albany city he describes was that of the Irish immigrants of the 1830s and principally the 1850s who represented almost 1/2 of the population of Albany by the 1880s. The Dutch and English old families realized the necessity to accommodate to the new immigrants and together with them formed a political alliance that has survived for over 100 years.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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August 13, 2008: BREAKTHROUGH
When Dan Button resigned his job in 1966 as executive editor of the Albany Times Union, to run as Republican candidate for Congress, he knew that the odds against his winning the election were indeed high. The 29th Congressional District was considered Democrat territory. In the city of Albany, Republican enrollment in 1965 was 3,135 versus 46,688 enrolled Democrats.
There were, however, promising signs. Recent redistricting included Schenectady County as well as the towns adjacent to Albany that had voted Republican almost as overwhelmingly as Albany city residents voted Democrat. That changed the odds from "impossible" to "maybe" with a big question mark.
Dan was one of those rare people willing to run for public office, no matter what the personal sacrifice, to right the perceived wrongs in American politics. Where do they come from? No telling. They materialize from different backgrounds, different professions, different political parties. They can't stand corruption in public life and, at some magic moment, get on their feet and shout STOP. Maybe not shout in Dan's case, as no one ever reported hearing him shout, but his intentions were clear -- throw out the rascals from the O'Connell political machine.
Adlai Stevenson's campaigns for President in 1952 and 1956 influenced Dan to appreciate the importance of politicians whose ethical principles survived intact in the very tough business of fighting political battles. And, as I have recently learned from Dan, he had been inspired by a young New York Congressman named John V. Lindsey, who several years earlier had fought his county's leadership and won the Republican nomination for Congress. For a Lindsey biography he was writing , Dan researched his Congressional records and realized how often he had steered his party's membership towards policies closer to his own independent positions.
Dan was not received with open arms by all Republican town leaders who considered him a possible threat to their long time "one hand washes the other" arrangements with Albany Democrats, who left them alone in the towns as long as the Republicans left them alone in the city. He had enrolled as a Republican for the first time in 1966 and that worried them. Newly elected Republican County Chairman Joe Frangella, however, saw no reason for anemic campaigns with passive candidates. He backed Dan and the race was on.
Button immediately appealed to Albany County Independents who had fought their first political battle against the machine in 1961 when CURE fielded a slate of opposition candidates.. Although they lost that election, in the intervening years their enthusiasm for reform never faltered. What was missing was a candidate whom they could enthusiastically endorse. Dan Button filled that need. He had clearly committed his future to a successful Congressional bid. He combined his determination to win with a platform of reform on issues that were in the forefront of American life in the 1960s.
Momentum intensified. As an act of political genius, he set off on an unprecedented fifty mile house-to-house handshaking tour of his election district that put a live face on a heretofore unknown candidate. Volunteers, many of whom came out of the Independent movement, were increasingly involved in raising money, assisting with mailings, distributing literature and organizing poll watching at election time - the hundred and one things each day that are the lifeblood of winning political organizations. They were joined by the endorsements of the Liberal Party and AIM, the Albany Independent Movement.
He won in 1966 - with a 16,000 plurality. He won again in 1968. In that election, five of the O'Connell machine 's six major candidates went down to defeat.
Following that election former Democratic congressman Leo O'Brien was quoted as saying - "if there's one lesson we've learned … it is we need a youth movement in our party… the one issue in this campaign was "The Machine" in capital letters … when people went to vote, anyone who was running against "The Machine"… was Sir Galahad."
Not so fast. By 1970, the O'Connell machine had engineered a redistricting of the Congressional district that added a number of towns heading west from Schenectady that virtually guaranteed Democratic Congressman Sam Stratton a victory over Dan Button in the 1970 election. Much had changed - but indeed, much had stayed the same.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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August 6, 2008: BUILDING MOMENTUM -- III
On November 5, 1968, five of the six major Democratic Party candidates in the region went down to defeat. It was totally unprecedented and unexpected. The O'Connell political machine had dominated the region since 1921. The local myth was that it would win any election that included the city of Albany by sufficient numbers to offset the Republican pluralities in the surrounding towns in Albany County. At one point, Dan O'Connell was reputed to have said --- "You see that dog? We could even run him and elect him if we wished. For that matter, we could probably run the hydrant and win."
Not quite - in 1968. The end of the dominance of the machine in the region was going to happen someday. It was only a question of when.
"When" started with the formation of an Independent party called CURE in 1961. A group of twenty independents from Albany and nearby towns banded behind Bob Hudnut, a 27 year old Protestant minister, to conduct a vigorous campaign to elect Hudnut Mayor of Albany. It was a mixed group of political amateurs that included men and women who were Democrats, Republicans, or unenrolled voters who had one goal in common - the defeat of the O'Connell political machine.
The twenty members of the CURE Executive Committee included people from widely diverse backgrounds. None had run for public office before. To name a few -
Charles M Liddle III, insurance executive, who was Cure and Republican candidate for President of the Common Council, James H. Martin, Vice President of the Martin Business Furniture Company, Dr. Levon Bedrosian, Matthew Bender IV, Secretary of the law book publishers Matthew Bender and Company, Allan Silberman, research associate for the United Papermakers and Paper workers Union, Benjamin Brewster, insurance executive, Jeanette Kunker, lawyer, Walter Langley, lawyer, who would later serve two terms as a Republican in the New York State Senate, Dr. Robert King , Dentist, Frederick S. deBeer Jr., executive in the J. deBeer baseball manufacturing Company, Gren Rand, campaign manager for Cure, a well known Radio personality, James N. Panagopoulos from the Elton J. Morrow architectural firm, Stanley B. Ringel , Estate Planning Executive, and candidate for city Treasurer, Victor A Lord , lawyer, and my wife Stevi Swire, who was balancing community activist work with raising two children under the age of four.
This group of community activists fought a losing political campaign in 1961 but it was a start of a movement that in subsequent elections in the city showed increasing gains in voter support for reform candidates.
The list of reforms needed included the way the city performed its function of ensuring competent service for road repair, snow removal "God put the snow there and God will take it away" Mayor Corning was quoted as saying, building code enforcement, garbage disposal, maintenance of the public school system, and traffic control. Even though the city had "the largest municipal workforce in the nation and one of the lowest paid." , lax management permitted corruption at all levels.
Further, around ten thousand people were paid for their vote in every major election, police cars and police motor cycles sported bumper stickers for O'Connell candidates, urban renewal was discouraged, State and federal funds for anti-poverty projects were rejected, an assessment racket insured political control of local taxes, sizable manufacturing companies were discouraged from establishing headquarters in Albany, real estate developers were unable to obtain building permits to construct large apartment complexes for concern by the city administration that the tenants would vote independently since they were no longer personally subject to local real estate taxes and thereby free to vote their own minds.
All through the post World War II years, independent political movements were forged in cities across the United States in protest to corrupt political machines that had dominated in the pre-war years. In some cases, acceptance of change was rapid. In Albany, it was a slow process but finally, the expansion of the population beyond the city limits to the adjoining towns brought about, on county as opposed to the city level, the ability to see the changes that reform leaders had been seeking since 1961. The 1968 elections were symbolic of the long overdue breakthrough in public demand for better government.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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July 30, 2008: BUILDING MOMENTUM -- II
In a July 21, 2008 New Yorker article entitled "Making It - How Chicago shaped Obama,, Ryan Lizza writes about the importance of Chicago's community volunteers in initially supporting Barrack Obama in the 1990s. They provided both financial and organizational assistance that contributed substantially to his success. Reformers had become a serious political force since the mid-1950s. They campaigned on the issue of change, emphasizing the need to confront Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine that dominated Chicago politics from 1955 to 1976.
Independents emerged after WWII to challenge the closed patronage system that controlled Chicago. They continuously searched for talented candidates for public office who would represent their liberal views. When Obama arrived on the scene, only a few years out of Harvard Law School, he was an ideal candidate. He was young, well educated, extremely verbal and full of energy to right the wrongs in society.
The combination of being an attractive candidate plus the enthusiastic endorsement of an Independent movement enabled Obama to establish local, state and finally a national reputation as a change-maker who appealed to voters, many of whom longed for a fresh, optimistic view of how to reform a society that seemed dominated by cynical, morally corrupt politicians.
The coalition of willing candidates and increasingly well organized independent organizations changed the face of American politics in the 1960s.
Political machines dominated much of American politics in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their powerful organizations provided jobs, favors, low taxes, and ward-by-ward, block-by-block, and door-step by door-step entryway to millions of immigrants who were grateful for the close attention paid to their needs in their new country. They were loyal voters who never forgot the party that gave them a lift-up to the American dream.
After WWII, with the coming of massive Federal expansion of Social Security benefits, welfare, Medicare, urban renewal programs plus an increasingly well educated, mobile, affluent society - the importance of old fashioned political machines diminished.
In Albany, a group of thirty-somethings agreed that the city would never be in a position to benefit from the rapidly expanding growth in the American economy as well as the inclusive social compact that was being extended to all classes throughout the United States, as long as the city was controlled by the O'Connell - Corning political machine. It was time for a change. The question was - how to make that happen?
Developing a path for an Independent movement was slow going. Inertia was deeply embedded in the politics of the community . The machine's control over every level of city life made it difficult to build momentum. To help break the lethargy endemic in the community, independent-minded leaders needed a bridge in the form of fresh new ideas as well as candidates for public office who were capable of effectively expressing them.
By 1961, when Bob Hudnut, a young, attractive, well educated, and extremely verbal Assistant Minister at Albany's Westminster Presbyterian church made known to local independent-minded leaders that he was willing to run for Mayor of Albany, despite enormous odds against his being elected, he set in motion a movement that, during the next ten years, would change the face of the region's politics.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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July 23, 2008: BUILDING MOMENTUM
When Jim came into my office, one day in 1957, his wide grin was that of a salesman who had just closed a big sale and was very pleased with himself. He had previously boasted about his friendship with important Albany politicians. Now his connections to the Albany city Democratic machine had paid off. He believed our company, as well as himself, had benefited as a result of his contacts. A city purchasing agent had just dropped off the official paperwork confirming a sizable order for our South Pearl Street furniture store, founded by my father in 1912.
Impressed, I congratulated him. I shouldn't have. He added that he needed cash to reward the purchasing agent for the order. I asked why. He responded that he had raised the price of the furniture purchased to cover the necessary bribe for this transaction thus insuring no loss of profit to the company on the deal.
I was indignant and told him so. He responded that his whole reputation was at stake and if I refused to give him the cash, he would take it out of his own pocket. Checkmate. I was damned if I did -- damned if I didn't. I gave in. He got the cash - I wound up with a guilty conscience that went up on my personal scoreboard as a major defeat.
I told Jim we wouldn't be doing any future business with the city of Albany. He was furious. My coming into the family business as the boss's son had resulted in a loss of face, as far as he was concerned. I couldn't help that. But I could act to prevent future actions that reflected unethical business practices. We needed written standards that applied to everyone in the business - no exceptions. It wasn't necessary to fire Jim or anyone else. Many of the employees had been with us for up to twenty-five years. My job was to reinforce their better instincts with well understood ethical rules. It became easier to make morally sound business decisions when everyone respected firmly established new guidelines.
As for Albany, it was all part of learning how the machine operated. The assessment racket was another long established process. Our South Pearl Street property's assessment was raised each year. The choice was to appeal it ourselves, which was a frequently unsuccessful quest, or hire a well-connected lawyer to arrange to have it lowered to the previous rate. Thousands of dollars were paid to a lawyer every year to have our assessment reduced. We weren't sure that part of the legal fee was ultimately passed on to the machine but we suspected it might well have been. Further, the men in our warehouse looked forward to election days. They counted on being paid five dollars for their vote when they arrived at the Albany polling place. It was no secret. They weren't ashamed of it.
The effects of these illegal and unethical practices permeated the entire community. It wasn't limited to local businesses. Branches of national companies learned to deal with the unique conditions they found necessary to do business with the local machine. Even some local banks, it was reported, engaged in unethical practices in the handling of public funds. It was all blink-blink, nod-nod. It was no temporary abrogation of moral codes. It was ongoing. The O'Connell machine came to power in 1921 and held political control until 1983 when Tom Whalen succeeded Erastus Corning as Mayor.
I was increasingly angered by what was going on in Albany. Others were too. By the end of the 1950s, it was time to turn indignation into action.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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July 16, 2008: SURPRISE
The telephone rang just past 11PM. In our house, if the phone rings after 9:30 it's either bad news or a slightly tipsy old college friend who suddenly decides we haven't talked in three years and wants to catch up. After 11 PM, its trouble for sure.
A reporter from the TIMES UNION, whom I knew, was on the line. He asked my reaction to the State of New York's acquisition of nearly 100 acres in downtown Albany to build a huge office complex. It was to be announced tomorrow. I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. He had my complete attention when he said that our furniture store property was included in the project. He asked for a quote. I responded that I'd be happy to give him a detailed one tomorrow but, in the meantime, if it meant upgrading that much of a rapidly deteriorating downtown, I was all for it. And then to bed but certainly not to sleep. I sensed our lives were in for a major change.
Next morning, March 27, 1962, the headline, in bold-black type across the entire front page, in the Times Union proclaimed -- STATE BUYS 40 BLOCKS IN HEART OF ALBANY and went on to describe the plan to construct State offices and other culturally oriented buildings in a park-like setting as "the boldest single stroke of urban renewal in the nation's history." The seven thousand people who lived there as well as the 350 businesses "will need to move in the next few years. The land, valued at $20,000,000, will be completely cleared. Finally, within a few days, teams of State workers will visit property owners and negotiate prices on the properties appropriated."
How did this all come about? Joseph E. Persico in his book The Imperial Rockefeller quotes the New York State Governor on his discomfort the day Queen Juliana of Holland visited Albany to celebrate the anniversary of the city's founding as Fort Orange: "The Queen was riding with Mayor Corning and myself….I could see the way the city was running down and what this lady might think. Here was a great Dutch city built in the New World and then she comes to look at it, never having seen it before. My God!" Rockefeller resolved to build "something monumental, fitting the grandeur of his administration, so that foreign dignitaries could pay calls without having to see the slime and grime of a typical Northeastern city."
Eighteen years and nearly $2 billion later, the South Mall was as complete as it was ever going to be. As Bill Kennedy wrote in O Albany, "Governor Rockefeller described it as "the most spectacularly beautiful seat of government in the world -- a project that could prove to be… the greatest thing to happen to this country in a hundred years."
Meantime, many of the nearly 7000 people affected by the South Mall construction had relocated to the suburbs, and the 350 businesses either had either closed down, or moved to the newer shopping areas on the outskirts of town or to major new shopping centers in Colonie, Latham or Guilderland.
In my case, I hired a real estate agent to examine what was available on North Pearl Street or Broadway in downtown Albany on the mistaken theory that thousands of State workers would begin shopping downtown when the South Mall was completed. It was never going to happen.
I was inspecting the Danker Florists' building on North Pearl Street when Fred Danker suggested I drive out with him immediately to a two acre piece of property his family owned near the newly built Westgate shopping center on Central Avenue near the town of Colonie. I asked the Dankers to hold the site open while I searched for financing.
In those days, it was still possible to have a close relationship with bankers who knew you personally and understood your problems. We were still in negotiation with the State of New York on our South Pearl Street property and lacked the capital needed to finance the construction of a new building on Central Avenue. Our banker, Don Slingerlands of the State Bank of Albany, backed up our projected plans for the future, thus making our move possible. I've been forever grateful for his support.
Ours was just one of hundreds of stories about how Governor Rockefeller's vision for Albany changed not only the landscape of a deteriorating neighborhood but provided new energy to families and businesses seeking better surroundings more conducive to the changes taking place throughout our nation.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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July 9, 2008: CHANGE AGENTS
Rapid worldwide changes, full of contradictions, were taking place in the 1950s. Ideas, as well as ideals, about how the post-war world would evolve required constant updating. It had been difficult before the war for President Roosevelt to arouse the attention of Americans to the threat of Germany, Italy and Japan. Now that the war was over, people turned inward to focus on their personal problems. They hoped that the post-war world would be a peaceful glide into the future. It didn't happen then. It has never happened since.
One crisis tumbled over the next. When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, the decade was off to a brutal start. The United States was drawn into a war that no one wanted in a far-off land where the harsh climate and rugged terrain made fighting extremely difficult.
In 1952,headline news in super-size type proclaimed the detonating of hydrogen bombs by both the United States and, shortly after, the Soviet Union. Alarm of worldwide Communist expansion swept through American society. Fears of Communist infiltration in American institutions led government, industry, and the media to institute loyalty oaths and blacklists that destroyed the careers of people suspected of left-leaning sympathies. The anti- Communist hysteria was fueled by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy whose reckless accusations led to widespread government harassment of college professors, liberal activists, writers, and others. The 1950s' nuclear arms buildup caused rampant fear of atomic war to surface in American culture Many people reacted by building backyard bomb shelters in the hope that they could survive a nuclear blast.
Headline news impacted the decade in meaningful ways. Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, sparking a Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. It didn't end there. The battle to end racial segregation inspired an entire nation to take notice that it was long overdue in attending to widespread discrimination at multiple levels.
At the same time, the suburbs exploded, thanks to low interest loans provided by the G.I Bill. Between 1950 and 1960 over one-third of all Americans moved into newly built suburban homes. They got to and from those homes in "huge gas-guzzling, chrome-plated, multifinned automobiles, sometimes two per family". Understandably so. Mothers of tens of millions of teenagers were relegated to transporting their children to suburban schools, play-dates, sports events, and a whole host of activities that evolved from their new lifestyles. Women, who were so critically important to the workforce during the war, had now adapted, under social and economic pressures, to the idea that their most important role was to marry, stay home, and raise families.
When people had a few hours to pause in their increasingly busy lives, they watched television. No new middle-class home was complete without a family room decorated around the placement of a television set. Viewers were offered two or, at most, three channels. The impact on American culture and lifestyles would powerfully influence the last half of the 20th century.
Indeed, many changes in the 1950s. Louis Menand in the preface of his book American Studies writes --- "On History --- The critical massing of conditions that enables a particular way of life to come into being is almost always impossible to detect while it is happening and so is its deterioration. The world just rolls over, without anyone noticing exactly when, and a new set of circumstances is put in place. But the impulse to hold onto the past is very strong, and it is often hard to understand why things that worked once can't continue to work."
Louis Menand grew up in Albany. Although his book was not centered on this region, the statement reflected attitudes, particularly in the case of the O'Connell- Corning political machine in Albany, about holding onto the past while the world around us was moving in entirely new directions. It seemed that we Albanians were living in an impenetrable bubble almost oblivious to the dynamics of the newly emerging American society. The net effect of the machine's control held the city in a state of suspension for much of its 50 plus-year history until Tom Whalen became Mayor in 1983 and, thankfully, reenergized the entire region.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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July 2, 2008: PAUSE
In May, 1946, I was transferred to the U.S.S. Okaloosa out of Norfolk, Virginia. It was an attack transport used primarily to carry up to 1000 troops at a time from one port to another. When I arrived at the Norfolk Navy Base, however, my ship was on maneuvers in the Atlantic Ocean and would not return for a week.
The day after arriving, I was assigned to help clean out the inside of ships' hulls. The ships had returned to home base after completing duty all over the world. Their hulls had accumulated many things that require no detailed description. Since one can spend a limited amount of time at this on any given day, we were free after lunch to do as we wished.
Norfolk Navy Base is the size of a small city. Interspersed with the myriad shops and administrative buildings were small parks. The warm May days were perfect for stretching out under century old shade trees. It was a fine time to dip into some thoughts squirreled away in the back of my mind during my brief Navy career.
What about religious faith, I asked myself? When did Man recognize the need for some higher authority when struggling with the forces of nature? Man identified the forces of nature, gave them names, invented personalities, ascribed powers to them, and attempted to influence them by worship and gift.
Does it matter what religion I adopt? It does, but whether in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity or Judaism there are possible philosophical conflicts with my belief that we must somehow find better ways to get along with each other in this world. There is much good in all of these religions, but history seems to bear out that in the name of religion we have killed, raped, tortured and destroyed whole civilizations. Will there ever be a time when the world will be at peace? We're already escalating a conflict with Russian Communism, a different kind of religion. Once again orthodoxy, which I was exposed to in childhood and strongly opposed, has raised its ugly head. A new "Right Way", in this case a "Left Way", has challenged matters of faith. How long will it take before we destroy the world during a nuclear holocaust?
All is not negative. Religions have helped us in differentiating between good and evil, developed moral and ethical codes that elevated Man to a higher level of conduct, and deified great mythological figures who inspired followers to act for the benefit of all mankind. Do the books balance? Each person must answer that to his own satisfaction. As for me, I haven't decided whether they balance or not, at least not yet. I have time. I'm only 19.
I'm not ready to accept an unqualified belief in God. I'm equally not ready to deny the existence of God. Give God some time. Expand my superficial knowledge about Judaism. Expend the kind of dedicated time I was willing to spend on repairing radars to repairing the gaps of knowledge about my own religious heritage. And then, put the same, or preferably even more time in studying other religions. Where are they alike? How do they differ? Admit what I don't know. Talk with people who will challenge my conclusions. Be prepared to change.
We are all prejudiced. It comes in many forms - religious, racial, group, just to mention a few. Admit it. No-one is guiltless. We acquire our prejudices from our parents, out on the street, in our education, in our social life, anywhere and everywhere. It's not so much that we should be taken to task for our weakness, it's what we do to combat it. Much of this disease results from our frustrations and confusions with what seems like a universe that is either cruel or indifferent. Like any disease, prejudice will not disappear unless we study it, confront it, and never stop trying to eliminate it. It's a worthy battle.
The afternoon moved on. It was time to go. In a few days I would join my new shipmates. The days would once more be filled with working on the radios and radars I had been trained to repair. The inner thoughts generated were put back into mental storage for another day. They were no more than a start and would need much, much more attention.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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June 25, 2008: ABOUT RABBIT
In the early 1950s, Albany’s downtown was still important. Although the exodus from the city had begun, it was in its early stages, if you wanted to see a movie, visit a bank, contact your lawyer or accountant, dine at Keeler’s, Jack’s or any other major restaurant, shop for clothes or furniture in your favorite department or specialty store, most of which were locally owned --- downtown was the place to go. The State Capital was there. State office buildings, libraries and museums were clustered all around. The most important hotels, including the Ten Eyck and the De Witt Clinton were major gathering places for the region.
The city neighborhoods were alive and well. People saw their neighbors on the streets daily. They were street smart and understanding of the various activities that were both legal and illegal going on around them. City Hall was sensitive to the prostitution trade that was centered mainly in the South End of town and tolerated it as long as trouble was avoided. That was up to the owners. Some of them were expert businessmen. Especially Rabbit.
Rabbit was short and dapper and always immaculate. My mental image of him includes his warm smile. In our casual, neighborly conversations, I can’t recall a cross word or nasty gossip. His brothels had a good reputation. Not a lot of drinking was permitted, no stories about violent behavior surfaced. The feeling that his prostitutes were well cared for was applauded in the neighborhood.
Rabbit approached me about decorating a whorehouse just around the corner from our store between South Pearl and Green Streets. He placed no financial restrictions on the cost. Interior decorating decisions were left to the Madam. As far as I could tell, he had arrangements with his Madams that, once they achieved their basic profit goals, they could request, and expect to have approved, funds for redecoration.
A few days after Rabbit and I met, the Madam involved made an appointment to meet me in the store for a preliminary walk around. She said that that her taste in home furnishings might differ from our typical clientele. She liked strong colors, red being a favorite, and furniture that was sizable and visually impressive. She was particularly drawn to our selection of French Provincial wood-framed sofas and chairs, covered in figured tapestries or decorative damask fabrics. The only reservation was how well they would hold up under constant use in the main lounge reception area. We concluded it was worth the risk. Her selections were based on the highest quality, longest lasting products available, including for the private bedrooms.
On my follow-up appointment at her business, I sketched out possible arrangements for the new furnishings and suggested color schemes for the walls, carpet and window treatments. The resident prostitutes, who were parties to the consultation, were enthusiastic about the choices. After Madam’s endorsement of the plans, Rabbit reviewed and approved the costs.
It was my first decorating assignment. It was a success. I was proud of it. The customers liked it too.
All this reinforced my belief that interior decorating need not be an intimidating process for the customer. A few years later, I gambled on the need to expand our services to include complementary in-home decorating advice at our mid-priced furniture store. As far as I know, we were the first in the country to offer this at our price level. It meant initiating a major educational program for anyone involved in sales, including enrolling (at our expense) and finishing one’s studies in a correspondence course from the New York School of Interior Design. It turned out to be a major contribution to our customers’ satisfaction, sales growth, and positive image in the region.
Thanks, Rabbit.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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June 18, 2008: NEW WOMAN II - CONTINUED
For three years in a row, 1935 through 1937, our family enjoyed a month's summer vacation, in a rented house in Lynn, Massachusetts. Mother was the "Mother-Hen" to four nieces and nephews plus my sister Judy and me. We ranged in age from nine to seventeen. As usual, whenever mother was involved, order was established from day one. Each of us was assigned duties that were updated weekly on the house bulletin board. They included making beds, setting the dinner table, washing dishes, and assisting with general house cleaning.
The spacious rooms provided us with privacy when we split- up for reading as well as terrific places for hide and seek. Since I was the youngest, the cousins were always kind enough to play "kid's games".
The house was rented from Reverend Howe, the local Presbyterian minister, who was glad for the extra income during those difficult Depression years. Best of all, from mother's point of view, the house was just a block from the beach on Ocean Drive.
Life consisted of well-defined routines. After morning chores, everybody donned bathing suits and walked to the beach. Unless it was really raining, every day was beach day, be it sunny or cloudy. Mother believed that if you were on the beach each day from early morning until late afternoon (except for a quick lunch break), you would store the healthful sun rays in your well tanned bodies for the long winter days to come. That was the way to avoid winter colds. This was years before exposure to the sun's rays was considered dangerous.
After returning to the house, it was reading or game time until dinner. Several times a week, after dinner, we walked along the lighted beachside to one of the first Howard Johnson's open-air restaurants. To our delight, it featured a choice of twenty-eight ice cream flavors! How might a child define unadulterated joy? For us, that was it.
The days flew by. We depended on each other for entertainment. We invented beach games and played multiple house games that were both repetitive and competitive. Endless hours were spent writing and practicing our jointly created original play written in anticipation of the extended family visit on the closing week-end of the vacation. The supporting props were important. Our curtain consisted of two sheets attached to a clothesline. Recordings of popular songs provided background support to what we considered hilarious lyrics. We called our company the "Royal Order of POOFS", which stood for the Professional Order of Family Stars. We were never bored. Anyway, boredom wasn't included in mother's agenda.
There was one dark day. The town of Lynn had a beach law. It had to do with uncovering your torso at the beach except for when you were swimming. Mother wouldn't acknowledge that when male children took off their tops, it amounted to "uncovering". As for the girls, she felt it wasn't wrong for them to remove their beach wraps in front of the general public. After all, they were hardly topless. Topless was not a suitable subject for discussion in Lynn, Massachusetts in the 1930's. The town policeman assigned to patrol the beach warned mother we were breaking the law. He threatened arrest. His choice for setting an example to the beach crowd for what was and was not acceptable was problematic. Mother explained, in her precise way, that this was all about her children's health. Therefore, covering-up was not an option. After several days of conversational sparring, he arrested her.
Mother requested an immediate interview with the local town judge. She marched all of us down to the Lynn courthouse in our beach attire, covered up for the occasion. The policeman and the judge awaited us. The policeman outlined his case. Mother responded with her "children's health" argument. She was courteous but determined. The judge gently suggested a compromise. He ruled that if we stayed in one place during our beach visits, it was permissible to uncover as before. If we unperched for any reason, we had to cover-up. Mother agreed. Case dismissed. It was our first lesson in American justice at ground level. Justice done, we returned to the beach. Mother, thereafter, greeted the policeman every day, inquired about his family, and shared town gossip. They became good friends.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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June 11, 2008: NEW WOMAN II
My mother Mae's life was carefully regulated in the 1930's and 1940's. Daytimes, she worked at the family furniture store. Evenings, after work, she focused her considerable energies on her two children, her various causes and her lifetime interest in the local, national and international news. Somehow, there seemed to be time for everything.
Her daily to-do lists included reminders for the children, her fellow employees, and her appointments' schedule. Once completed they were filed by date. Why? "You never know when you might need to refer to them".
Because food was more a necessity than a source of potentially tasty pleasure, she created a list at the start of each year with a menu, often the same as the previous year, for every dinner for the ensuing twelve months, and that was that till the next year came around. Each week she telephoned the grocer with the family's current needs. The order was delivered and turned over to the housekeeper. Shopping was not her thing.
Time was a manageable item. Every evening during the school week, she set aside time to sit quietly with each child and review the state of our world. The conversations ranged from our general frame of mind, to social plans, to progress, or lack of it, at school. If a theme was due, she edited the first draft for content, punctuation and grammar. There was always a second draft, and my sister and I were frequently probed as to how thoroughly we had thought out the essay's content. All in quiet good humor.
After meeting with us, Mae listened to important radio news broadcasts. This was the wartime era, in the 1940s, of commentators such as Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, Elmer Davis and H. V. Kaltenborn. They were intellectual giants in describing the horrific events of World War II. If time permitted, she read the two local newspapers, the Knickerbocker News and the Albany Times Union in addition to the New York Herald Tribune. Included in the weekly mix was the latest copy of Time magazine. She tore out the pages she wanted to keep and added them to the myriad newspaper articles that she considered historically important. The collection all wound up in the attic, filed in perfect order. Mae was an unapologetic news addict.
Another outlet for her energy was membership in the City Club of Albany. Founded in 1919, their literature read "a body of women of all parties, organized to create an interest in public affairs and furnishing a means for making that interest felt…. there can be no civic health until each individual recognizes her own share of civic responsibility". Unquote. At its peak, there were 1600 members. They held monthly meetings at their clubhouse on State Street, published a monthly news bulletin, and carefully reviewed each item in the annual city budget. They were an important force in the community. The City Club lasted well into the 1960s. On their 40th anniversary, in 1959, Olga Hampel Briggs' poem spelled it out:
PRE-Nineteen-Twenty -- let no one forget,
Each woman was at heart a suffragette;
With bloomered stride or hobbled petticoat,
We knew that what we wanted was -- THE VOTE!
Adventures in citizenship we've shared these forty years;
We've known the taste of triumphs, failures, fears
Yet NOTHING more important has come to Albany
Than when our club came to be---
And we could start to do our part
To CLEAN UP ALBANY.
When the war ended in 1945, the world sighed. There were many new battles for Mae to fight in her living room chair-side news station. An aggressive Soviet government, believing that communism was the answer to humanity's problems, replaced Nazism and Fascism as the American enemy. Mae returned to the battlements. She deeply believed in the virtues of democratic government. The Malden, Massachusetts schools had rigorously taught her the importance of the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Because of the New England emphasis on the Protestant work ethic, the moral and ethical principles of her own Jewish faith, and the battle for women's rights, Mae was always ready to fight for freedom of choice for all Americans. She continued working in the business on a part- time basis until the day she died at the age of 82. Her funeral was attended by a broad cross-section of the community. Mother had many admirers.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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May 28, 2008: To See The World
January, 1945 was cold and dark. Especially in upstate New York. I was on a bus, along with fellow Navy recruits, that was taking us to Sampson Boot Camp, near Geneva, New York, on Lake Seneca. I was humming "I Joined the Navy to See the World and What Did I See, I Saw the Sea", even though Sampson was 300 miles from the nearest salt water. Thus, I was introduced to the first of what turned out to be hundreds of incongruities in my rather short but glorious (sic) service experience.
Sampson was no small establishment. There were 22 barracks, each holding 240 men. At any one time, there were 26,280 men spread among five separate units. In the period from October, 1942 to May, 1946, 411,000 men passed through Sampson. The only Navy camp larger was Great Lakes in the Middle West, which was even further from the sea.
In the first 24 hours, there was a constant swirl of activities. Much was done to convince us that we were not home anymore. A rigorous physical exam was followed by immunization shots. Hundreds of recruits passed out at the sight of enormous needles being prepared for their arms and rear ends. Crew haircuts and uniforms followed, thereby wiping out the last evidence of civilian life. We were assigned to barracks, fed in a giant mess hall, and experienced our first lights-out.
The next day, the Chief pulled me aside. He had reviewed the background information of the men in our barracks. My records indicated a history of a high school military program plus some college ROTC training. No one else had any military experience. He appointed me company leader. In the next hour he outlined my duties before taking off for other assignments: maintaining discipline at all times, leading calisthenics following the 5:45 a.m. reveille, making sure we arrived promptly for all of the day's scheduled appointments, and teaching close order drill and the manual of arms. He emphasized maintaining discipline. Little did I know.
Much of what we did on a daily basis was repetitious but necessary. Most of us were barely eighteen, with virtually no experience in responding to a variety of sometimes confusing orders including close order drill, handling rifles, and absorbing completely new nomenclature for almost all of our daily tasks. The Navy understood the confusion, but tolerated no deviation from all of the above.
Soon after my assignment as company leader, barracks mates informed me that their locks were being snapped and their lockers emptied of their money. It was petty theft, but serious nonetheless. What to do? I brought the company together and told them that the stealing had to stop. I said I would put twenty one dollar bills in my unlocked locker, and anybody could take whatever money they felt they needed. They could repay the so-called "loan" or keep it. When the first batch was fully "borrowed", I promised more. That took away the bragging rights for who was the most accomplished crook. Nobody touched my money, or anybody else's after that. Gradually, we went from clumsy, to ragged, to reasonably well drilled. Pride began to replace resentment at our loss of autonomy. Classes in a variety of Navy requirements filled our days, from tying knots to intensive fire drills.
Every recruit had to pass a swimming test that required being able to swim 50 yards in deep water. For many of the men in our company, swimming was a frightening new challenge. Thankfully, classes for the non-swimmers were initiated. In swimming, as in so many other things in the service, status symbols of accomplishment rewarded the more skillful while putting the less proficient at a disadvantage. Important elements of more egalitarian practices were emerging during the war, but the Navy was still tradition bound as the war ended.
It was the lack of choice in determining my future in the service that bothered me. I had been exposed to a wide band of options at home, in high school and at college. I imagined myself in the thick of wartime battle as a signalman on an LST landing craft somewhere in the Pacific. Instead, my future depended on whatever the Navy lacked at that time in the way of trained personnel in a given area. I was assigned to Radar Technicians School in Chicago on graduation from boot camp. It was focused on how to maintain and repair radios and radar. This time I was the one who was frightened. I had no confidence that I could fix anything.
Ready or not, I was on my way to Chicago. It was 500 more miles away from the sea than Samson. Would I ever get aboard ship? I could only hope so.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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May 21, 2008: LITERARY INDIGESTION PLUS GAS PAINS
My wife Stevi came into the room while I was struggling with the zipper of my overnight bag. It wouldn't close because I had tried to stuff too many books and magazines into it in preparation for our Memorial Day weekend vacation in Vermont.
"Three days Bill" she said quietly.
She had it right. In my heart I knew I was overloading the bag with reading that had been piling up on my desk for months in anticipation of this pause in our busy lives. I didn't want to risk leaving anything behind. EVERYTHING was important.
What to read first? I felt that once we arrived at the Basin Harbor Club near Vergennes, I could touch each piece of literature and God, or somebody, would send a message indicating where to start. Among the choices --
- Eight copies of THE NEW YORKER magazine, each about 100 pages. Total - 800 pages.
- Four copies of THE ATLANTIC magazine, each about 135 pages. Total - 540 pages.
- Steven Pinker's the blank slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature. I had started it on a trip to Florida during the winter. It was tough going. I switched to something else after reading 157 pages, promising myself that I'd finish it another time. Still to go - 277 pages.
- Saul Bellow's Herzog. I managed to avoid Bellow's masterpiece for over 40 years. I promoted the book at our book club. The majority voted affirmatively for Herzog. Apparently they hadn't read it either. As the discussion leader of the next meeting, I felt an obligation to give this one an especially good read. Total - 371 pages.
Total available reading for our three day weekend - 1988 pages, not counting Allen Penfield Beach's 115 page book entitled Lake Champlain as Centuries Pass which we were handed when we registered. The Beach family owned the resort through four successive generations. They were proud of the history of the region, and the people who shaped that history. Plus Stevi's two books, five unread New York Times Magazine sections (she always has a substantial backlog), and the daily newspapers. As we settled into our comfortable accommodations, I was perfectly happy surrounded by stacks of unread reading material. There were only good choices ahead. There were no city sounds. We could take our time.
Our habits on "escape" holidays were established long ago. There's very little conversation during the day. We're both into our own reading. We emerge at dinnertime. Sometimes we talk about what we're reading, sometimes about the children, sometimes about the news of the world. Our conversations are frequently non-directional. There's no telling where they'll wind up.
Our Saturday night dinnertime conversation began by discussing an Atlantic article entitled "Gas Pains" that examined the difficulty of servicing 27,000 American vehicles in Iraq. In the country with possibly the second largest oil reserves in the world, American forces must still import huge quantities of fuel from Kuwait, Turkey, and Jordan. The problem centers on the terrible gas mileage of armored Humvees, armored utility trucks, Bradley fighting vehicles (which get less than 2 miles per gallon), and the M1 Abrams tank (less than one mile per gallon). When will we realize in Iraq that fuel costs are exorbitant, the promise of victory illusory, and sue for divorce to extract us from a marriage with little promise for future success? That's what Stevi thinks. We differ on some of this but we're still talking.
That concluded dinner on the first full day.
The reading continued on the second day. I started Herzog (92 pages completed), followed by a long nature walk in that beautiful country. At dinner that evening, we surmised where we thought our children's lives were headed at that moment, and, later, proceeded to the bar where we were entertained for over an hour by the bartender. He poured the most generous Courvoisier cognac ever, extolled the virtues of the resort, life in the mountains, and even the winter snows. We packed for the return trip late afternoon the next day, Memorial Day. The same literature that came up - went back.
Hopefully, there'll be another pause, someday. The reading was great, the conversation stimulating, the naps delightful. What more could one want?
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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May 14, 2008: STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE
Lee Iacocca wrote, "In a truly rational society, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest would have to settle for something less."
The Hunt Commission on Teaching And America's Future, in 1996, dealt specifically with how we might put that thought into effect when it listed six ways we could stimulate major changes in teacher education programs and public policies that advance teaching. They were ---
- Provide salaries for the real world
- Make teaching a preferred position
- Create multiple pathways into teaching
- Close the diversity gap
- Fix the math and science crisis
- Invest for success now, rather than pay for failure later
The United States has had a troubled love affair with its teachers, particularly at the elementary and high school level. Some of it is about recognition, some about respect, and surely a lot is about how they are paid for their services. We all want our children to have the very best education, but when increases are proposed for school budgets, they are periodically voted down at the school district level.
By contrast, teachers are held in high regard in Western Europe. Teaching is an honored profession. In our slam-bang competitive world in the United States, however, material success is king. We assume our teachers value something higher than crass financial rewards. Therefore, we pay them less than their true worth. It isn't that we devalue learning. It's about what we value more.
When well regarded figures in the business and professional world are asked what contributed to their success, they often cite teachers who influenced their lives. It's frequently someone from the liberal arts world who struck a chord that stimulated their interest in a broad range of subjects. It's not a gender thing. Rather, it has to do with opening one's eyes to uncontemplated worlds.
This isn't limited to the classroom. A good teacher can also be a good football coach. When you're taught to cut back against the grain on an option running play, that's eye-opening too. In the process, you're building a memory bank that prepares you to respond successfully to new challenges when they are presented in unfamiliar circumstances.
So it was for our son Peter who attended the Albany Academy from 5th grade on. He did well academically from day one. Not a natural athlete, however, Peter was encouraged by my old Albany Academy classmate Bob Olcott to go out for the wrestling team in his sophomore year in high school. Bob taught wrestling in the gym with the same patience and encouragement as he taught math in the classroom. He always had extra time for confidence raising whether it be a struggling athlete or student. Under his tutelage, Peter went from being a hopelessly clumsy wrestler to modest success in interscholastic competition.
Bob opened Peter's eyes to the idea that there's always the possibility of doing well even when a goal seems unreachable.
Bob spent forty-three years teaching math and coaching at the Albany Academy. When I returned for periodic reunions, generations of his former students would gather around him and quietly exchange memories and personal histories. Clearly he had importantly affected their lives. He had their respect and gratitude.
I recall certain teachers who strongly influenced my ideas in my formative years. I may not be able to quote them line by line but I can emotionally quote how I felt in the learning process - a combined feeling of excitement and appreciation. In my imagination, I can see their faces, remember how they looked as they moved about the room, and recall fragments of their lectures. Good teachers are magicians. They can, as Joyce Kilmer wrote "spark an immortal flame in the hearts of men." Best of all, they can repeat their magic year after year.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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May 7, 2008: A HUNDRED ACRE SPREAD
The bus trip from Albany to Georgetown in New York State's Cherry Valley took two hours. I was headed for the Brown's farm for a month's stay between my sophomore and junior year in high school. It was 1941.
Mother arranged it with Grace Chait. Grace was born in Georgetown. She worked in Albany as my Cousin Bill's dental assistant. They married and she left her family's farm far behind. When the subject came up of "what to do with Billy this summer?" Grace suggested that her middle-aged parents needed a helping hand on the family farm during the summer growing season.
The bus stopped only at special request at Georgetown. It was that small. Frank Brown, Grace's father met me. He drove a vintage early-1930's pick-up truck. Their farm was three miles from the hamlet's center. His wife Emma welcomed me warmly when we arrived.
Their Victorian house was located about a hundred feet from the road. In the back were the hay fields, the vegetable gardens, and the barn and silo. Across the road the cow pastures extended farther than the eye could see. Their farm totaled about 100 acres. At night, there was no din of city traffic. The only sound was from crickets. My first night opened up more questions than answers. Can I fit in? Is this all a mistake?
The next morning Frank awakened me at 5AM. I joined him as he drove his truck across the road, rounded up his 25 Holstein cows with the help of their loyal dog, herded the cows into the barn and started the milking process. It was a seven day a week routine. After morning milking we herded the cows back to the pasture, and cleaned the barn. Afternoon milking followed the same pattern.
After a few days, Frank let me round up the cows by myself and return them to pasture. He also let me drive the pick-up even though I didn't qualify for a license. I felt very grown up. Not everything worked perfectly. The day after I arrived, Emma handed me a pail and told me to water the chickens. I filled the pail with water, the chickens rushed over to be fed, I dumped the pail of water on them, and they dispersed, mad as hens, to the far corners of the chicken coop. The Browns enjoyed that. My helping hands had gone astray, though not for the last time that summer.
There was no wasted time. We were always fixing something -- the tractor, the fences, the broken cow stalls in the barn, or the block and tackle that hoisted hay into the silo.
I learned that farmers understand the need for mutual cooperation. There are so many things that can go wrong. It could be weather, cow diseases, or any number of other catastrophes. Small family farming is a difficult business; only the strong survive. To offset the many risks, the Browns depended on their farmers' cooperative to sell their milk.
Farmers need friends. When it was time to take in the hay, the neighbors met at different farms each day. We worked 'till noon, ate a huge dinner prepared by the farmer's wife, went home in time for afternoon milking, ate supper and climbed, exhausted, into bed. This continued until all our neighbors' hay was stacked and drying in the fields.
After morning chores on Sunday we dressed for church and drove into Georgetown. Given my Jewish background, it was my first experience with Protestant services. It was an important learning experience. Then it was back to the farm for Sunday dinner, afternoon milking, and a quiet evening at home.
My memory bank is full of pictures of grazing Holstein cows, the trusting conversation of families that had lived comfortably near one another over many generations, and the Brown's nonstop support of a somewhat bungling fifteen-year-old-boy exposed to a new world he would never forget.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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April 30, 2008: Over There
America has traditionally compensated its veterans for their services. In 1636 the Pilgrims declared: "If any person shall be sent forth as a soldier and shall return maimed he shall be maintained competently by the Colony during his life." Early in the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress created the first veterans benefit package, which included life-long pensions for both disabled veterans and dependents of soldiers killed in battle.
During the post WWI period, however, the United States changed direction in regard to its soldiers returning home from the war. Defective legislation for veteran's benefits harmed the nation.
Paul Dixon and Thomas B. Allen, in their book entitled "The Bonus Army" addressed that question in their description of World War I veterans who had been promised federal funds in recognition of their wartime sacrifices. These veterans came home as heroes to discover that "the Keys to the City had turned out …to be a pass to a flophouse." They came back jobless, unable to pay their taxes and in danger of losing their homes. The promised government funds were not payable until 1945, 27 years after their release from service. Veterans nicknamed it the Tombstone Bonus, since the easiest way to collect these payments was to die.
In 1932 the veterans decided that their presence in the nation's capital would help further their cause. They set up impromptu Washington shantytowns, including one half a mile away from the White House. They were built of cardboard egg crates, wrecked cars, and bedsprings. Using tear gas and a cavalry charge, government troops, under the command of army Chief of Staff General McArthur, assisted by George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, drove the 45,000 man Bonus Army away from Washington. Its legacy was of great importance to World War II veterans whose homecoming was very different from the hardships and indignities of the 1930's.
Post-war planning in the 1940's countered the negative after-effects of the Bonus Army's ill fated experiences. There was much concern about a reoccurrence of a major Depression after the war if consideration was not given to how 15,000,000 veterans of World War II could successfully return to civilian life. Congress passed the "Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944", better known as the "GI Bill of Rights". The nation was grateful to those who served in the military. There was also concern that there were not enough jobs at home for millions of returning servicemen. One way to show thanks and reduce conflicts in the workforce was to entice veterans to go to school.
The GI Bill provided six benefits:
- education and training
- loan guaranty for a home, farm, or business
- unemployment pay of $20 a week up to 52 weeks
- job finding assistance
- top priority for building materials for VA hospitals
- military reviews of dishonorable discharges
The Veterans Administration managed the program. It paid up to $500 a year for tuition, books, fees and other training costs, plus a subsistence allowance of $65 a month (as of 1946). Allowances for veterans with dependents were higher. In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49% of all college enrollments. Almost 8 million people were trained including:
- 2,230,00 in college
- 3,480,000 in other schools
- 1,400,000 in on-job training
- 690,000 in farm training.
Millions who might well have flooded the labor market opted for education, thus reducing joblessness. When veterans entered the labor market, most were better prepared to contribute to the support of their families and society.
In 2008, proposals are forthcoming on how to compensate veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act (S.22) is intended to raise GI bill benefits to a level similar to those received by WWII vets. A supporter, Senator Frank Lautenberg said "Helping those who served our country is not just our responsibility, it's our duty". Will the bill pass? I hope so. We'll soon see.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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April 23, 2008: Albany In Transition
Albany was growing at a rapid pace in the last half of the 19th and the early 20th century. The population in 1865 was 62,000, 90,000 by 1880 and peaked at 127,000 in 1930. It was indeed an impressive city in many respects. In 1899 the New York State Capitol building was completed at a cost of nearly $30,000,000, twice as much as that of the nation's capitol building in Washington. Nearly all the granite in the construction of the capitol, indeed there was much of it, was hauled up State Street on horse drawn cars over the tracks of the Albany Railway. Many of the pieces required twenty four horses to haul them up the hill.
Albany was a leading city in the United States by 1900. As a transportation hub it was a natural port for commercial as well as passenger ships coming up the Hudson River. The Erie Canal connected Albany to Buffalo and the Great Lakes beyond. It was an important rail center, with trains moving east to Boston, and west to a rapidly growing Mid-West. In 1910, Glen Curtiss, seeking a $10,000 prize, flew from Albany to New York City, covering 137 miles in 153 minutes. In 1928, Albany built the first city-owned airport in the United States.
Most importantly, however, Albany was the capital city of the most powerful state in the Union. Political leaders from New York commanded respect if for no other reason than where they came from. Prominent Albany families had connections in New York and Washington. When President Lincoln was shot at Washington's Ford Theatre, his personal guests in the box at the theatre were from a well known Albany family. The city was a manufacturing center, a distribution center, an agricultural center and, above all, a government center. It was a power in national politics. What happened in Albany mattered.
In the early 20th century, there were 25 parks and recreation areas. Important landmarks were built during this period, including the nationally famous Delaware and Hudson building, completed in 1918, that was modeled after a Flemish town hall.
In 1930, Codman Hislop wrote in his book "Albany - Dutch, England, and America," Albany has the largest factories in the country producing electric car- heaters and door operations, embossed blocks, checkers and dominoes, composition billiard balls, paper towels, toilet paper, carbonic acid gas, college caps and gowns, papermakers' felt, and blankets.
The Depression in the late 1920s changed everything. The seemingly endless prosperity in the region ground to a standstill. Factories shut down, unemployment figures rose, construction came to a halt, banks suffered losses on mortgages and were forced to foreclose on all kinds of properties. The value of all goods made in Albany fell from $52,000,000 in the first year of the Depression, 1929, to less than $35,000,000 three years later. It didn't stop there. By 1937, the Albany Council of Social Agencies provided Christmas dinner for 5,525 families. The saving factor was the thousands of jobs provided by the New York State government during the Depression period. The number of people employed by the State continued to grow. Subtract those numbers from all other jobs in the region and the depths of the Depression would have been even more devastating. As the industrial base declined throughout the rest of the 20th century, Albany depended more and more on New York State as the primary source of regional income. By the early part of the twenty-first century, the number of people employed by the State exceeded 50,000. The economy was bolstered further by the subsidiary business and professional positions created in the course of serving the State's needs.
No history of the region is complete without notice of this reality. There were two Albanys - the one dominated by the State Government, the other, a city that functioned almost as a separate entity existing in the shadow of a giant enterprise. It was always a battle for the second Albany to come out of the shadow and establish its own place in the sun.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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April 16, 2008: FAMILY AND OLD FAMILIES
As the Depression deepened in the 1930s, my mother went to work full time in the family furniture store on South Pearl Street in Albany. Since she was away all day, she was concerned about my arriving home from school at about 2:30 pm. She searched for a private school that would keep me on campus until late afternoon. The Albany Academy headmaster agreed to find a way to engage me in study hours until 4:30 PM. The two hour difference was important.
My neighborhood friends were replaced by a new group of boys that studied together, played together, and socialized together. It was like joining a new family. Three classmates, David, Jim, and I, visited at each other's homes on a rotating basis each Saturday. Two of our homes were well-equipped for fifth grade students-- good-sized backyards, plus plenty of play spaces inside. Jimmy's home, an imposing house facing Washington Park, however, had nothing for sports enthusiasts but a perfectly manicured back lawn, which we managed to scuff up when we were there. David and I brought our own sports equipment when it was his turn to be the host.
Saturday lunch was usually about noon. We were hungry by that time. At Jimmy's home, we were ushered into his family's cavernous dining room to be greeted by his older sister regally ensconced at the head of the table. At lunch, a formally-dressed servant served each of us a cup of bullion with one slice of bread, a glass of milk and, later, two cookies with a second glass of milk. Following this, we were driven home. When I reported this to mother, she said Jimmy's family was regarded in Albany as a distinguished "Oldfamily". This was a new term and came up sometime later when there was a party at one of my high school classmate's home. It was a narrow, three-story house on State Street, with twelve-foot high ceilings, minimal lighting, and somewhat shabby antique furnishings passed down from previous generations. "Oldfamily", people said. No question about it.
When I was at Yale, after the war, there were "Oldfamilies" all over the place. Some lived in early 18th century houses with creaky floors, some in castles on the north shore of Long Island. Indeed they enjoyed, suffered, succeeded, and failed at similar rates to everyone else. Often the family fortunes had been created sometime in the past. It left the present generation choices -- active commitment to the community at large or sealing themselves off in gated enclaves and joining exclusive clubs that made it unnecessary to encounter people who might not share their views. In some cases, the money was on the verge of running out. "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations", Andrew Carnegie once commented. New energy was often needed to rekindle the family fire. Sometimes it was forthcoming, sometimes not.
"Oldfamilies" popped up everywhere in my life. In Logan, Utah, where I spent three months with a college classmate helping a geology Ph.D. candidate search for trilobites and other puzzling geologic specimens, the wonderfully warm Mormon residents of the town talked about themselves as "Oldfamilies". They were referring to members of their family who came across the country with Brigham Young in the 1840's. I heard about "Oldfamilies" in an exclusive country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1948 when talking about members of the club, whose backyards had been successfully drilled for oil ten years before, thus insuring that it would be unnecessary for them to ever work again. We should include our California friends' family who went into the real estate business in Los Angeles in the 1920's and struck it rich. They were California "Oldfamilies".
When our children were growing up and asked about our family history I replied "No kings, no queens, no dukes, no duchesses, but we come from a very old family -- everybody in the world comes from a very old family. We study history, sociology, anthropology, and religions to learn about family formations. It helps us better understand one another."
I was introduced to a prominent psychologist at a small gathering many years ago, "I want to know everything about you", he said, "Your family background, your educational background, your career--everything. Then I want to forget it and focus on where you are today -- this hour -- this minute. The rest is history".
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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April 9, 2008: BUILDING BLOCK
"Don't get pinned". It was all I could hope for. I was on my back during the final minute of a wrestling match against Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. My opponent was the best in his class. I was over matched and outclassed. Somehow I was able to emerge without both shoulders pinned to the mat. I never forgot it.
There were many days during my first two years in my family's furniture business on Albany's South Pearl Street that I had the same feeling. I was assigned building maintenance and supervision of the warehouse and delivery operations. The crises seemed endless. Sometimes it was the ancient passenger elevator inexplicably stopping in mid flight as though it had a mind of its own, sometimes it was a series of shorts in the electrical system, shutting down the lights on any one of the six display floors. Driving to work was a shoulder tightening experience in anticipation of the next disaster. It reminded me of my Navy ship's radar that had infinite ways of going down at the worst possible time.
It was the people problems that were the most puzzling. So many actions and reactions seemed random at best and left me with a sense of dysfunction rather than driven by a sense of teamwork. It was like a football team with the backfield headed in one direction and the linemen going off in multiple directions. I couldn't fit the pieces together. I needed help. Where to get it? Furniture store operations were a mystery but I did know something about libraries. So I went to the library and the card catalogue listings under "Management". It was slow going until I encountered a book about the Gilbreth family - Frank and Lillian. Early in the 1900s they collaborated on the development of time and motion studies as an engineering and management technique. Frank Gilbreth, in particular was much concerned with the relationship between human beings and human effort. He was a brick layer who later became a building contractor and a management engineer. His early work involved improving brick-laying in the construction trade. He observed that workers developed their own ways of working and that no two used the same method. He noted that individuals did not always use the same motions in the course of their work. These observations led him to seek one best way to perform tasks.
He revolutionized brick-laying. A scaffold he invented permitted quick adjustment of the working platform so that the worker would be at the most convenient level at all times. He equipped the scaffold with a shelf for the bricks and mortar, saving the effort formerly required by the workman to bend down and pick up each brick. He had the bricks stacked on wooden frames, by hod carriers, with the best side and end of each brick always in the same position, so that the bricklayer no longer had to turn the brick around to look for the best side to face outward. The bricks and mortar were so placed on the scaffold that the brick-layer could pick up a brick with one hand and mortar with the other. As a result of these and other improvements, he reduced the number of motions made in laying a brick from 18 to 4 1/2.
Lillian Gilbreth wrote of her husband "The things which concerned him more than anything else were the what and the why -the what because he felt it was necessary to know what you were doing, or what concerned you, and then the why, the type of thinking which showed you the reason for doing the thing and indicated clearly whether you should maintain what was being done or should change it."
The Gilbreths coined a phrase "scientific management" to describe their belief that work simplification could be applied not only in a business environment but also at home and school, hospital and community, in fact life itself. It was something that could be achieved only by cooperation - cooperation between engineers, educators, psychologists, economists, sociologists, managers. Most important - at the core of it all, there was the individual, his comfort, his happiness, his service and his dignity. A book (1946) followed by a movie (1950) entitled "Cheaper by the Dozen" captivated the Gilbreth's family life.
After Frank Gilbreth"s death in 1924, his wife Lillian continued their work. She extended it into the home in an effort to find the "one best way" to perform household tasks.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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April 2, 2008: THE SIXTIES II: TURBULENCE - TROUBLE - TRIUMPHS - TRANSITIONS
President Johnson -- speaking before Congress regarding "The voting Rights Act of 1965." "The cause of Black Americans must be our cause…. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."
The demand for the expansion of freedom was in the air in the sixties. The Civil Rights movement was hugely important but it was not limited to that. Add women's' rights, student rights, labor unions' rights, religious rights (and left) --- you name it. The accumulated pent up emotions of a whole generation of Americans exploded on the bedrock of declared American rights giving rise to the whole country becoming alert to impending change.
Where do these movements start? Do they gather momentum under the public's radar until people activate long-felt anger or a desire to mend the world? Or both?
Racism in the United States did not begin in the 1950s and 1960s. It had been alive and well since the founding of the country. What had changed?
A lady named Rosa Parks gets on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, refuses to give up her seat so a white man can sit there, is charged with a misdemeanor, found guilty, and fined $10. Eldridge Cleaver later wrote, "somewhere in the universe a gear in the machinery had shifted."
An unknown Montgomery twenty-six-year-old Ph.D. and Harvard trained clergyman named Martin Luther King helped organize a boycott of all city transportation. He emphasized passive resistance and noncooperation as a way of opposing mistreatment. He said of the boycott ---- "This is not a tension between Negroes and whites. This is only a conflict between justice and injustice. We are not just trying to improve Negro Montgomery. We are trying to improve the whole of Montgomery. If we are arrested every day; if we are exploited every day; if we are triumphed over every day; let nobody pull you so low as to hate them."
The rest of Alabama began to watch Montgomery; then the rest of the country; and then the world. The struggle for racial equality was on.
William Manchester wrote "The conscience of the nation's great white middle class had been aroused - and its indignation had become a solvent eroding barriers of law and custom which had endured for generations."
MEANTIME ……
Albany was not immune to the civil rights movement that had captured the attention of all Americans, either favorably or unfavorably. The Black community developed new and younger leadership. Demands for political recognition were initiated. The regional churches and synagogues formed action committees. Community Chest budgets included greatly increased allotments to help fill long neglected needs of the Black population. Recognition of the need for public housing to replace hopelessly declining neighborhoods gained hesitant interest from machine politicians
My role in the Civil Rights Movement was almost accidental. I had been appointed to the North Colonie Board of Education to fill an unexpired term.
Board meetings were held monthly. The meetings in the sixties were very intense. The school populations were rising and parents were increasingly involved in controversial issues. At one spring Board meeting in 1967, the Finance Committee reported that the maintenance costs of the recreational fields were rising steeply. I suggested that Federal or State funds might be available to bus inner city children to our playing fields that summer on the condition that professional supervision would be provided by the city of Albany. My motion was tabled until the next meeting.
Our next door neighbor, hearing of this, was greatly agitated. Bill Swire was proposing something that would bring Black people into our neighborhoods, ultimately insuring that Blacks would buy our houses, thus reducing our net worth and ruining our lovely lifestyle.
My motion to increase the use of our playing fields failed. I was, however, asked to run for a full four year term to the Board of Education. Opposition committees formed. Teas and coffee hours were held. Pamphlets were distributed suggesting that I supported some very bad things for our school district. My opposition candidate was another neighbor.
School Board elections rarely draw a majority of the electorate In this case, the power of a single issue pressure group to swing an election took its toll. It was the difference between victory and defeat and indeed I was defeated.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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March 26, 2008: OPENING A WINDOW HOWEVER SLIGHTY II
The day Dan O'Connell came to visit he never bothered to introduce himself. My father and I were standing in front of our furniture store on South Pearl Street, discussing a new sign on the front of our building, when a car pulled up on the opposite side of the street, letting someone off on the no-parking side -- then driving away. The famous fedora pulled over the most famous face of the most famous politician in Albany, New York was a tip off that we were in the presence of local Political Boss Number One But what for?
Dan O'Connell stared at our building. It was six stories high. You couldn't miss it. Everything around it was half as tall. Five minutes later, he was picked up when the car returned and was driven away.
I know why he's here, I thought. The morning Times Union has a front page article about the largest financial contributors to CURE's 1961 campaign against the Democratic machine. Bob Hudnut is CURE'S candidate for Mayor. His family has been generous. The Swire family is listed among the top contributors just below them. How come? The Swires are a new name on the political scene. He could check with our local alderman later, but there's nothing like a property inspection to help determine if there's a next move that might discourage future straying from the party.
CURE is the first challenge the Democratic machine encountered in ages. Nobody takes the Republican Party seriously. He knows everything about their capabilities or lack thereof. That's why they endorsed CURE. He recognizes the names of several prominent Albany families on the list of contributors. It's his business to know what's going on in his town. It's worth five minutes to see the Swire property. You never know. Maybe a tax boost will lower their enthusiasm for reform movements.
As for the generosity of the Swire family --- a large group of friends whom we approached about contributing to CURE responded affirmatively on the condition that their names would not become public. We were credited with their cash contributions. The machine had many ways of retaliation -- raising assessments on property, discovering heretofore so called "undetected" violations of building codes, declining to repair street defects near business properties, and attaching a social stigma to those who challenged the status quo. Even those who lived in the suburbs were as vulnerable as city residents if they had business connections in the city.
Returning to Albany after college, I volunteered to work for the Democratic party. My local Alderman made it clear no help was needed. Conversation over. Not in my mind, however. Nor my closest friends. We objected to the methods of the Corning/O'Connell machine. Albany resembled a Middle Ages European town ruled by minor royalty who maintained power indefinitely by whatever means possible whether beneficial to the community or not. It seemed to me that was one of the deciding reasons many families emigrated to the United States in the first place.
My wife Stevi's approach mirrored my own. She had been active in liberal political movements throughout her college years. She joined the League of Women Voters a month after she arrived in Albany and was soon appointed to the Board. When CURE was organized, she was appointed to the Executive Committee.
On many evenings during the summer of 1961, we went from house to house ringing doorbells to secure signatures for nominating petitions principally in homes where families had never before been asked to sign anything that was remotely connected to a political reform effort. Many were welcoming. People knew about the machine's long history of control and were at least willing to listen to what we had to offer. They didn't confirm they would vote for CURE candidates but they listened. Frequently, many women said they would have to check with their husbands before signing the petition. Thankfully that kind of dependency is now long gone.
Volunteering in the political arena was, for us, an education in how democracy worked. We never regretted the effort. Learning to listen to the people that we encountered in our citywide effort was an important contribution to our understanding of what was significant in our community. It was time to pay more attention to those voices.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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March 12, 2008: THE SOUTH END AGAINST THE WORLD
People from other sections might say
That the Old South End has seen its day,
But each one knows down deep in his heart,
It's the same South End where he got his start.
But it's not yet time for the final kick;
South Enders don't give up so quick.
In '17 with flags unfurled,
We pitted the South End against the world.
With a record like that, it will never die,
It has done its duty in days gone by.
Virginia Bowers, Albany City Historian, included this poem in her book "The Texture of a Neighborhood-Albany South End 1880-1940". She interviewed over 100 people to help record the history of the neighborhood.
Bordering on the Hudson River, succeeding generations of Albany's immigrants' first dwelling place in the United States was in some part of the South End. It was a community of blue-collar workers, small shop owners, tradesmen and public employees - including many firemen and policemen. Doctors ministered to the sick without questioning when payment would be received. Grocery stores provided families food on credit. The O'Connell political machine supplied food and fuel for people in need. Ward leaders provided jobs. Entertainment ranged from neighbors meeting nightly at one of Albany's 239 bars, listening to popular radio programs, or attending church functions. Newspapers were closely read for local news.
It was a neighborhood of two and three story row houses, with multiple flats in each house. Front stoops were popular gathering places on warm summer nights. In back were modest green spaces with the potential for a small garden if the outhouse didn't take up too much room. Indoor bathrooms, consisting of a toilet and sink, succeeded the outhouses in the early 1900's. They were typically in old hall closets. The kitchens were equipped with a large galvanized tub for a once a week Saturday night bath.
People got along. "The Irish, who had suffered a famine, tenant ownership of land, and religious persecution in Ireland 50 years earlier, understood the plight of their neighbors" Though they stayed close to their neighborhood Catholic churches, they aligned readily, especially for political purposes, with the Germans, both Lutheran and Catholic, who represented between 25% to 30% of the population in the early 1900's.
The Catholic hierarchy responded to the needs of non-English speaking immigrants by establishing National parishes in ethnic neighborhoods so that services could be conducted in the language most familiar to the congregation.
The Italian immigrants, for example, arrived in significant numbers at the turn of the 20th century. They felt less welcome than the Irish and the Germans. There were language difficulties as well as cultural issues. They felt most comfortable in St. Anthony's church on the corner of Madison Avenue and Grand Street where services were conducted in Italian. The church attracted families not only from the South End but from neighboring cities. Polish and French Canadian immigrants joined other National parishes.
Jewish immigrants also started in the South End. The German Jews were the first to come in the 1840's to 1880's. They founded their first Reform temple in 1846. When Jews from Eastern Europe arrived in the late19th and early 20th century, they started orthodox synagogues in the South End that remained in the neighborhood until the late 1950's.
Ethnic groups divided along craft lines. The Irish were day laborers, and civic employees and were the dominant saloon keepers. The Germans were craftspeople and shop keepers. The Jews were storekeepers or owned small manufacturing businesses. The Italian men were masons, day laborers, and factory workers; the women worked as cleaning help, and labored in the local factories that produced shirts, baseballs, soap powders, and textiles.
As immigrant families prospered, they moved away from the river. They purchased homes from families of Dutch and English backgrounds who chose to move further uptown to the Pine Hills and Western Avenue areas. Many of their homes were early- and mid-19th century dwellings that had important architectural features that would later attract the attention of community leaders interested in preservation.
As throughout American history, we are quick to leave the old for the new. By mid-century the South End had deteriorated. Its glory days were over.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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March 5, 2008: The Sixties Turbulence - Trouble - Triumphs - Transitions Part II
January 19, 1961 -- Washington, DC
President John Kennedy's Inaugural Address:
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans… tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage."
My wife Stevi was 28, I was 35. His address struck a responsive chord. We felt his energy. We were the "new generation" and wanted to be counted in.
John Kennedy was the flag bearer for this emerging generation. His election was a triumph for those of liberal bent who sensed that their historic moment had arrived. Joan Swallow Reiter wrote "He was our President, the first born in our century, the youngest man ever elected to the office and, we were sure, certain to be one of the best."
But even as his administration was organizing to enact its ambitious programs, trouble loomed. A radical plan, developed long before Kennedy was elected, envisioned an American backed invasion designed to terminate Castro's control of Cuba. It was to be manned by Cuban exiles but secretly financed by American funds. Kennedy reluctantly approved of activating the plan just weeks after taking office in 1961. It was a farcical misadventure. Lives were lost, reputations were ruined, and President Kennedy was viewed world-round as an inexperienced, misguided, and trigger-happy leader.
The Bay of Pigs disaster led the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to conclude that Kennedy was weak. He believed the Soviets could dominate and control the direction of world events. Particularly in Cuba. He ordered a build up of Soviet arms in Cuba during the late summer and early fall of 1962 culminating in installing nuclear tipped missiles that could reek catastrophic destruction should they be fired in the direction of major American cities. This time Kennedy was prepared. He executed a brilliant counter to the Soviet threat. Khrushchev backed down. The missiles were dismantled. The crises passed. The world took a deep breath and moved on.
As many as twenty thousand home furnishings dealers gathered in High Point, North Carolina in mid October, 1962 to attend the ten day, semi-annual International Home Furnishings Market. It was a region of too few hotels, too few restaurants, too few facilities for social gatherings - too few anything, but hundreds of manufacturers from all over the country displayed their products in a 17 story, skyscraper that dominated the landscape. The visiting dealers were captives of their suppliers. Once in High Point, there was no place else to go.
We watched the 11 PM television news on Saturday evening October 20. A crisis was building in Cuba. It was something about Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at the United States.
Sunday, October 21, was a furniture market day, despite the objections of the High Point church goers. Business co-opted religion. Nothing trumped business at least that day in that town. President Kennedy spoke at 7PM to the nation. Kennedy warned Khrushchev that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring full retaliatory measures. Khrushchev blinked. By the time the furniture market ended, the crisis was over. The hotels emptied, the overbooked air carriers delivered their passengers to their hometowns, and the thousands of reunited families moved on to their family concerns.
My wife Stevi related that while the Cuban missile crisis accelerated, it was the first time she had been afraid since the beginning of the Cold War. She was at home with our two infant children, and had no idea how I would get back from rural North Carolina in the event of an attack.
Mass communication speeds multiplied enormously during the sixties. We knew more, faster, than ever before as one world crisis followed another. Our lives were so intertwined with our families and careers that important news was thrust at us even as we carried out our daily tasks. We were numbed by the velocity of national shocks. There was a lot to digest. We were beginning to feel defensive in an increasingly combative world.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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February 13, 2008: A Tragic Day for the United States - the Sixties Turbulence - Trouble, Triumphs, Transitions
The 1964 Presidential election was just a year away. The highly organized Kennedy political machine had already geared up for a tough battle for reelection to a second term of office. The previous election had been close. Official returns in December, 1960 gave Kennedy a plurality of 112,881, less than two-thirds of one percent of the popular vote. Not enough to assume that the 1964 election was going to be a runaway success.
Two factors, one positive one negative, influenced their planning. The positive - the Kennedy family had captured the imagination of the American public. Whatever the President said or did was reported in extraordinary detail by a supportive media. He was young, handsome, and extremely verbal. His wife Jacqueline emanated style. She was young, beautiful, and gracious. Her clothes, her hair style - everything about her - were of national interest. Their children's activities were reported daily.
If the Kennedys played touch football at their Cape Cod family compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the national press reported whatever details they could garner from family members or staff as to who did what to whom in order to win or lose. The Kennedy's were news. Their positive image boded well for the upcoming election.
On the negative side, the John Birch Society, The Dallas National Indignation Convention, which had convened in 1961 and 1963 to proclaim their members' Americanism in the face of left wing radicalism, and anti-Communist groups, had elements of extremism as well as supposed respectability that cloaked anti- Kennedy bias. During the Kennedy Presidency these groups increased their outlays from $5 million to over $14 million annually to publicize their propaganda.
Every political calculation in 1963 was made with an eye to positively affect the outcome of the upcoming election. The President decided to travel to Dallas, Texas to make peace between two feuding Democrats, the liberal Senator Ralph Yarborough, the and the conservative Texas Governor John B Connally Jr. He invited Jackie to join him. She accepted. She was an asset to the President on any trip. Texas would welcome her, if not him, warmly.
Non-Texans were unaware of the trip until the first news bulletins appeared on television or were heard on the radio. The President had been gunned down by a sniper while riding in a downtown Dallas motorcade. Americans collectively held their breath. Within an hour he was dead.
I frequently lunched with my friend Ferdie Levison at his Hugh Dennison restaurant in downtown Albany. In a gutsy move, he had opened the upscale restaurant in the middle of a deteriorating downtown area mainly because he had inherited the property from his family and had no prospects for selling it to anyone else. Ferdie was fun to talk to. Our lunches went on for quite a while. On November 22, 1963 we were engrossed in conversation when one of the waiters, at about 1:40PM, interrupted us to say that TV reports were pouring in that President Kennedy was shot and his survival was questionable. We immediately moved to the restaurant's television at the bar and stayed rooted to it until the news of the President's death was reported at about 2 PM. It was all so fast. It was incomprehensible.
Ultimately millions of Americans recalled exactly where they were on that day when they heard the news about the President. The Camelot fantasy suddenly disappeared out of sight. Not out of mind - out of sight.
I returned to the family furniture store on South Pearl Street. My head could not get around the tragedy. My ability to logically sequence events was pushed aside because of the shocking news. I thought about my family, my country, the future without John Kennedy, how it would affect our business - even a mental list about what I needed to accomplish the rest of the day. At least that provided a form of escape. It all added up to disconnected thoughts jumbled together in a few moments of disassociation.
Sometime before our store closing Stevi and I talked on the phone. More speculation. More uncertainty. We both wanted to see each other and the children as soon as possible. We wanted to be together. The effects of the day were building.
The next three days were a blur. The television at home was never off. Five year old Peter and four year old Andy kept watch for us while we completed household tasks. When the next horrific news flash appeared on the screen, they ran to find us wherever we were and reported on the latest events.
We all reacted in our own individual ways. Our son's art teacher at the Albany Institute of History and Art reported that Peter entered a "black period" the following week. Every figure was sketched in black. When questioned forty-four years later, he could, without hesitation, bring back the details of the weekend.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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February 6, 2008: Opening a Window However Slightly
Young Americans, between the ages of 20 to 40, were ready for action in the early 1960s. For men, it took into account WWII veterans who had been educated in the 1950s under the auspices of the GI Bill, and were ready for increased participation in the decision making processes in their communities. For women, it included a rapidly increasing number of well educated young women who were fully capable of taking a more important place in American life the way.
John Kennedy's election in 1960 signaled that the shift of power in the American landscape was moving from the older to the younger generation. The word "New" replaced "Tried and True" in the lexicon of the day.
This new revelation reached into the psyches of the citizens of one of the most conservative bastions of political life in America --- Albany, New York. It took an out-of-towner to bring it to the surface. Possibly it was only a question of time before the town awakened from its forty year hibernation while the world reconfigured. Whatever the reasons -- the possibility of opening politically sealed windows to allow fresh air to circulate in Albany was long overdue.
In June 1959, Robert K. Hudnut arrived in Albany fresh from his graduation at Union Theological Seminary. As a twenty -seven-year-old Protestant minister, he quickly analyzed the community and spoke out about the objectionable conditions he found in the city. He discussed people's fear of having their taxes raised for opposing the Democratic machine, the buying of votes with five-dollar-bills, plus all the tales of corruption that native Albanians discussed only in the privacy of their homes. He went into specifics about ill-paved streets, low pay for city employees, and lack of urban renewal. He blamed one-party rule, and called for action at the ballot-box to reverse existing conditions.
After a year in Albany, he led a meeting of ten young men at his home. They were an group of native sons, newcomers, and business and professional people who shared a desired to "do something" about Albany. Agreeing that the "something" had to be focused in the political arena, the ten scouted for support in the community after confirming Bob Hudnut's willingness to run against Erastus Corning for Mayor of the city of Albany. Responses came on an inverted scale: the older the prospect, the less he promised to contribute to a seemingly radical cause. But, the ten young men found twenty more (all under forty) to join them. "The Reverend Hudnut named the group, the Citizens United Reform Effort or C.U.R.E. On June 2, 1961 Albany learned from the newspapers that a third party had arrived on the scene. Cure never had an infancy. It sprang full-grown into a race whose finish line was at the polls in November."
"Amateurs" said many. "What chance would a young Presbyterian minister, just arrived in Albany, have to be elected Mayor in a city with a largely Catholic population. The entrenched O'Connell political machine, in power for 40 years, fully supported Mayor Erastus Corning, who was seeking his sixth four year term in office. It's true he was an Episcopalian but his family had lived here for generations. No bets were being taken in CURE's favor.
Despite all seeming disadvantages, six weeks later the local Republican Party endorsed the CURE ticket. They had few alternatives. In June they ran ads in the Albany newspapers asking for "the help and advice of all citizens who desire to become candidates... to communicate with our County Chairman". Not one leader, business, civic, or political considered running for Mayor against Corning.
Dedicated CURE volunteers, motivated by ideals of right and justice, were disbursed throughout the city to knock on doors delivering the CURE message to voters' homes. By August 1961, CURE submitted 3027 names on their nominating petitions to the County Board of Elections. That was twice the minimum required to get on the ballot.
On Election Day, 65,136 people went to the polls to elect a Mayor: 49,195 or 75% of them voted for Erastus Corning. One small consolation for CURE was that it outpolled the Republicans. There were 8,310 votes on the CURE line against 7,402 on the GOP line. Robert Hudnut, having finished the normal three year term as an assistant Presbyterian minister, left the city within six months after the election.
The legacy of CURE - the idea that private citizens could and should concern themselves with politics and government lived on. Young reformers, committed to the region,continued to hone their skills at communicating their message of progressive government. Elections that had heretofore been landslides for the Democrats became closer contests, some undecided until the last votes were counted.
CURE lost -- but the citizens of Albany won. The window had opened just enough for a needed breath of fresh air.
Bill Swire has been active as a community volunteer for a number of years in Albany, New York.
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