Eleanor Elkin Interview Transcript

Eleanor Elkin Interview Transcript

Chapter 1: Childhood, Marriage and Family

Lisa: Eleanor would you tell us your name please?

Eleanor: (01:04:59:27) My name is Eleanor Scott Elkin.

Lisa: And where were you born Mrs. Elkin?

Eleanor: I was born in Philadelphia in the Logan section.

Lisa: (01:05:13:24) What are some of your earliest childhood memories?

Eleanor: (01:05:17:14) It’s hard to say what my early childhood memories are because some I remember because I was told. But I do remember one of my sister’ boyfriends riding my kiddy car and breaking it. I must have been pretty small but I was very interested in her friends because they were older. My sister was ten years older than I and I adored her and I thought all these people that came are so interesting. I remember my grandfather and his name was Steven Manderson and he had been ill and came to stay with us for a brief time. And he was having difficulty walking. He didn’t have a walker then. He learned to walk again by pushing my baby carriage. So I’m told. I of course don’t remember it. But he walked me all over, he even found a farm somewhere near Logan. I guess that wasn’t too hard then. And so we saw chickens and cows. He made friends with the children in the neighborhood and he would take us on trips. I do remember going down the river to I think it was called Riverview Beach. It’s on the New Jersey side. And it had a merry-go-round and it had a beach. We would take our lunch and go there and we would have a nickel to ride the merry go round. He would give us an extra nickel to go get ice cream and we would come home. He was a very interesting gentleman. I’m not sure what he did for livelihood because when he would get better he would disappear. I know he went to Saratoga so I suspect he had a gambling streak. Maybe that’s why I like horses now. We would send my brother and sister and I we would get a huge rolled up package every once in a while and they were funny papers. Comic books were not around and the different papers had different comics. And oh boy when new would get that big roll of comics we were in heaven. It was great fun. And on my birthday I would get a five dollar gold piece. Now that was a lot of money. My father would put it in a bank account for me so I had a bank account practically all my life. Other things I remember about my childhood are we lived in Logan and the house had steps leading to an enclosed porch which was the way we went in. We would play games on those steps and whisper down the lane and various games on the steps. I remember that- I don’t know why they liked our steps better than the others but they seemed to like our steps a lot. And that was fun. I’m running out of things from my early childhood. Is that enough I hope?

Lisa: (01:08:45:09) So Eleanor you mentioned your very lovely grandfather and you mentioned a sister. I wonder if you can tell me who the other members of your family were?

Eleanor: (01:09:15:27) Well there was my younger sibling was my brother Bob who- my sister was 10 years older than I and he was 6 years older. I was the baby. He was old enough when I was born, he was in school, and he would come home and meet me when I came home for lunch or whatever. So they tell me about my birth. Oh you know what I looked like which apparently was pretty bad. So I was so little they could put my head in a tea cup. So in case you wanted to know what’s wrong- it started at birth. But they were both fun. My sister, I mentioned and I adored her, and she used to make up projects and do work with me and we’d do doll house stuff together and paper dolls together and design dresses. And Bob was the main tormentor. He liked to tease me. But he never hurt me or anything- he liked to tease me. And he went off on his baseball, he had important things to do like baseball with the kids in the neighborhood. We lived on a street that had four corners and that was where the baseball field was and I’m sure other neighborhoods around did the same thing. My sister began to date and that was pretty exciting and my brother-in-law who was one of her early boyfriends, from high school time even, often teased me about how I used to put my sticky hands on what he called his boiled shirt when he was dressed up to go to a dance. Cause he used to play with me and he was tall and slender and he would make a seat with his hands and I could sit on it and he could swing me between his legs. I thought he was just the best boyfriend she could possibly have. That’s things I remember particularly about Margaret who became you know- she was my sister and my friend all my life. We stayed together. We didn’t live in the same place. She lived in New Jersey and I lived in Pennsylvania but we always were together and our families were friends which were very nice.

Lisa: (01:11:53:18) Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, Eleanor?

Eleanor: (01:12:08:04) My parents- they were wonderful parents. My father was a builder. He built schools and hospitals; big buildings not houses. My mother was a stay at home person she was not employed at any time. She was employed before they were married and she was very proud because she was a college graduate. She graduated from Philadelphia Normal School and that was quite an achievement and she was then certified to be a teacher. She taught sewing in Philadelphia schools and was very, very clever at designing things. She could get a piece of material and wrap it around and make a dress out of it. I never could do that but she did teach me to sew for which I was very grateful. I didn’t like it when I was little because she made me do what they call samplers. You’ve seen pictures of them- they’re still doing them and it was no fun. But at least I learned how to do basting and over-casting and blanket stitch and so forth, which was useful later. It was great that she could do that because we could design clothes and I could have something that I couldn’t have bought in the shop, which was wonderful. And my father was very supportive of most everything. When I got in trouble and I was sent to my room sometimes at supper time when I couldn’t have any supper- of course I always got it somehow but he would come home from work and he would come up the back stairs- back stairs are wonderful, they don’t have many of them anymore they are so nice. He would come up the back stairs and come into my room with goodies and say how are you, you know, what are you doing in bed. And he would help me make peace. One day he came in and I was sick and I was sitting up in bed- you know they used to make you go to bed when you were sick- they don’t anymore. So I had been put to bed and he came up and he said, “feel in my pocket” and I felt something soft and he put his hands in and he brought out a little white puppy. We named her Fluffy, she was an Eskimo Spitz. And my joy you know- but that was the type of thing my father did but always supported me all my life. All my life he was always there for me and so was my mother. Not that we didn’t have disagreements- every family does but they were never serious disagreements. I always knew that I could count on them. I never worried that I’d hear about crashes in stock markets and people not having enough to eat. I never worried about it and I guess we did have hard times but it never affected my life I always felt secure. That’s an accomplishment for parents to do I think. I think about it now and I thought I guess we weren’t kind of hard up. My father lost his business and he found some work here and there. He always managed to do it in construction so eventually you know he got back up but in that time mother never made us feel- you know she never said you can’t do this or that we haven’t any money. I never heard that. She always had some tucked away somewhere. They were great parents I was very fortunate.

Lisa: Thank you. They sound like wonderful parents.

Eleanor: Yeah, they were.

Lisa: How would you describe your childhood?

Eleanor: Happy, naughty- a very good childhood. Lots of opportunities, friends, neighbors. Was that enough?

Lisa: Absolutely. Do you remember when you were a little girl what your hopes and dreams were for the future did you know what you wanted to be or do?

Eleanor: Well I’ve changed my mind several times. One time- well I was quite young and I was going to get married and I was going to have a farm full of animals. And another time I was going to be a veterinarian and I never thought I was going to be a teacher or anything like that. That sounded terrible to me. That was a fate worse than death if you had to be a teacher; because my mother was always pushing it. But I always wanted to have- they used to ask what do you want for your birthday and I’d say a lamb and a bear. And I wasn’t talking about a stuffed animal. I wanted the real thing. Of course, I never could have it and I knew that but that’s what I wanted. So I always liked animals and I really wanted to do something with animals. I never did but when I was little that was the way I thought about growing up.

Lisa: Can you tell me a little bit about Mr. Elkin?

Eleanor: Oh, he was wonderful. Phil- my husband was a very fine man. He was fun he was very firm. When I married him I thought I was marrying a big shoe tycoon. His father had a shoe factory and they made high style ladies’ shoes. Very expensive “$19.95” they were very, very expensive. And beautiful, beautiful so I always had my shoes [laughs]. But the war Phil decided for a number of reasons that he was not going to be a shoe tycoon and he went back to college on the G.I. bill. He had quit in his junior year at Lafayette because the time- the economy was low and he said I’m not learning anything here that I can go out and get a job tomorrow. He was helping in the student place where they went in to get jobs. He looked at the best job he could find and put himself in it and it was a great job it was pushing stock in Woolworth’s in New York where his mother lived. And so he did that for a while and then his father said enough of this, if you’re going to be outside come and learn the business. So he made him learn to make shoes from the ground up. He made him go to leather factories to learn about tanning, he went to learn about dyes, he learned about cutting, he learned about lass and how you put a shoe with the leather on the lass to make a shoe. He had to go through every one of those and then he sent him out on the road to sell after he had learned to make a shoe. I met him when he was just starting out on the road and I always said his father sent him out on the road to get him away from me- I don’t think that was true [laughs]. But he went from that to deciding that he was going to do some work in insurance because his father had a fancy trust, his father had died at that point it was after the war and Phil said if he’s going to learn how to do about this trust and save the family business and so forth, he better learn something about it. He went to Penn on the G.I. bill and took some courses in business. And they convinced him that he should stay in the field and be a professor and teach for them; which he did. It was actually a very good thing because he then continued- he had gotten- he had finally graduated from Lafayette 15 years after he started. On the G.I. Bill. And then he was at Penn so he took his masters and then his P.H.D. at Wharton School which was- by that time we had children. I took the kids to his graduation which was kind of fun. I’m not sure they thought so but I did. He continued as a professor and he was- I know I’ve met students and sometimes I had them in my house lots of times. But later when they were not his students when they had graduated they would say he was a tough professor. He was the toughest one I ever- I think they either loved him or they transferred. He was tough. He demanded them- you know, not perfection but to do the work. If they came in unprepared he made them leave and that wasn’t nice so he made some enemies. He said learning’s painful. I still hear from students and I have two that take me out to dinner every so often- separately. They know each other but they live different lives. It’s very nice. It’s very nice to hear from them at my old age.

Lisa: Well it speaks to your husband’s legacy.

Eleanor: You never know who’s life you are touching.

Lisa: Do you remember the first time you saw Mr. Elkin?

Eleanor: Oh sure [laughs]. I was- I had a heavy date on Saturday night. Friday, I went to the hairdressers and that was when they set our hair in pin curls- you probably wouldn’t know about pin curls. [To Lisa] You do know about pin curls. I had a head full of pin curls and that gooey stuff they put on and I wouldn’t let her comb me out because I had this heavy date the next day and I didn’t want it to be all out of curl. And I knew how to comb it so I had a head full of pins and a bandana and I had been to work but I didn’t want to get anything on my work clothes so I had on what you would call a housedress. So I came home- I had sneakers on, bobby socks, and a house dress- oh I was great. My friend and her boyfriend and Phil were sitting in my living room at my mother’s house- where I lived and they wanted a fourth for bridge. So, we played bridge. And I was kvetching and I thought he seemed like a nice guy but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. He asked me afterwards for a date, I don’t know why. But it went on from there but that was when I met him in my own house and it was just great I mean he liked me. Apparently I played bridge okay. It just went on from there I continued to date other people, I wouldn’t go steady and not all my friends did- now you know you have one boyfriend and that’s life or death- not then, not then. It was much more fun. Of course you always had the problem if somebody was going to ask you out on Saturday. But it was fun.