Interactions with Locals
Elliot Levine
— There were four of us housed in the Spater home in Morrisville. It was Irv Levinson, who ... who shared the bed with me. In the next room there were Herb Levy and Abe Nathanson. and I'll never forget in the morning Mr. Spater— we asked him to wake us up at some ghastly hour and he'd bang on the door, "six o'clock!" or whatever time it was. And one day he looked us over— we were already to go— and he said, "What's your name?" "Levine." "What's your name?" "Levinson." What's your name?" "Levy." "What's your name?" "Nathanson." And he went down the line. "Levine, Levy, Levinson, Nathanson." It was like he'd never seen creatures like us before.
Marion Greenstone
— It was a very tiny town. It was just barely a widening in the road, I think, and there wasn't, as I recall, much to do with so-called locals. I don't even think there was a store there. We were taken to a little town nearby if we wanted to buy something.
Frances Koral
— I also remember that there was an Army base near there and what we used to do on Saturdays is go to the Grange and go folk dancing with the townspeople. We had a marvelous time and it was all very nice. I guess there were some men there but it didn't matter. We just had a wonderful time.
Marion Greenstone
— There was an Army base nearby. And there was a dance one night and these soldiers all came and all us innocent little Brooklyn College girls didn't quite know how to handle it. Nothing happened but they expected things of us that we weren't prepared to do. And so that became a cause celebre for a little while. We were from different worlds. They were sort of country or rural people, as I recall, certainly not city people, and we were all from Brooklyn and/or the Bronx. And ... and I think probably most of us were Jewish and they weren't..
Frances Koral
— They were violently anti-Semitic and violently sexist. I think the base was at Colgate, which was another college. It was a military base and these guys came to the folk dance, knowing there were all these women. They talked about: "Oh, you're Jews," that kind of an attitude. "Boy, funny Jews." "We don't go much for Jews around here," "I don't want to dance with you. You're fat." That kind of stuff. It was blatant. When they swung you around, they swung you a little faster than they should have swung you around. Some people had a good time but most of us left. I mean, we couldn't tolerate that. But it was all part of life.