Elizabeth W. Fox

CE:      This is an interview with Elizabeth Fox. The date is August 15, 2010, the location is 314 S. Philip Street, Philadelphia, PA, and interviewer is Cynthia Eiseman.

[Tape is turned off, then on again]

CE:      Let’s begin. Would you give me your full name, please?

EF:      My full name is Elizabeth Williams Fox, but in the time we’re going to be talking about it was Elizabeth Williams Schall.

CE:      And what is your address now? (1:00)

EF:      333 South Third Street, Philadelphia.

CE:      And your date of birth?

EF:      6/20/41.

CE:      When did you first come to Society Hill?

EF:      We moved to 231 South Eighth Street, which was an apartment, now a fancy bed and breakfast, in August of 1961, and then we bought at 518 Spruce in 1963, probably the fall of ’63.

CE:      And what prompted you to come to Society Hill in 1961?

EF:      I don’t remember. I guess we found a nice apartment. We already had some friends that lived in the general area. Some of them worked at N.W. Ayer and J.B. Lippincott, and my husband George [Schall] was working at J.B. Lippincott. No, that’s (2:00) wrong. He was working at Curtis Publishing Company. It was easy walking distance.

CE:      About a block? You rented on Eighth Street and then you bought 518 Spruce.

EF:      Right.

CE:      And what was the condition of the Spruce Street property when you bought it?

EF:      Five eighteen Spruce had been owned by a young couple who were artists, and they had bought it maybe five or six years before. They had fixed it up into apartments. It had maybe a livable first floor, which had a living room, sort of dining area, kitchen, and a back room that led off into a garden, which was mostly a cement garden at (3:00) that time. Then it had two apartments on the second floor, which rented for $60 and $65 a month apiece, and then a luxurious apartment on the third floor which rented for $85. And we rented out two garage spaces for $15 or $20 a month in 1963.

CE:      You lived on the ground floor.

EF:      We lived on the first floor. There was also a cellar with a washing machine and dryer.

CE:      Did you do any fixing up or restoration of the house when you bought it?

EF:      We didn’t immediately. After I guess our first child, when the second one was on the way, we realized there wasn’t really enough room; the back room had been the nursery, but it was quite small. At that point we borrowed some money and made it (4:00) into a single-family dwelling. We recreated the beautiful curved stairway that went up the middle of the house. It went all the way up. There was also at the very top two bedrooms that we didn’t use at the time, the fourth floor, but we used later on. But the main thing we did was break open and put in a stairway as we believed it had been before.

CE:      And when was the house built, do you remember?

EF:      1831.

CE:      When you bought the house did you buy it from the couple that owned it? You didn’t have any dealings with the Redevelopment Authority?

EF:      No, we didn’t have any dealings with the Redevelopment Authority. We bought it directly from the couple that owned it, who were friends; so it was a very smooth transition.

CE:      You say you borrowed money. Did you get a mortgage from a bank?

EF:      In the beginning, we had a mortgage when we paid for the original house. (5:00) It was backed by my father-in-law. Then when we borrowed money later, we borrowed from a good friend of my mother’s, a Dr. Warburg, who liked to give money or lend money to needy youngsters, and we fit the prescription for that completely.

CE:      Warburg. And he was a friend of your mother’s?

EF:      She. She was a friend of my mother’s. They had been cadaver partners in medical school, and they were both psychiatrists.

CE:      You say when you originally borrowed, you got a mortgage backed by your father-in-law. Did you get it from a local bank? Do you remember? (6:00)

EF:      Yes, but I don’t remember from which bank. It was a payment that was pretty much covered by the rents of the three apartments.

CE:      Did you have any difficulty getting a mortgage?

EF:      Not as long as we had somebody backing us. We could not, on George’s salary at Curtis, which was around $6,000 a year, we could not have gotten a mortgage.

CE:      What about any evidence of red-lining that you were aware of?

EF:      The only thing that I was aware of was that we were told, point blank, that even though I was going to be working, for a small salary, they would never count my salary as long I was of child-bearing age.

CE:      Do you remember what you paid for the house?

EF:      I’m thinking it was $25,000, and we put another $15,000 in it. (7:00)

CE:      You don’t have any idea what real estate taxes you paid at the time?

EF:      No, they were included in the mortgage from the beginning so I really was unaware of them. I don’t think they were high.

CE:      When you did the renovations, did you do the work yourselves, or did you have a contractor?

EF:      No, we had a contractor, mostly a carpenter, who basically came when he could and built this stairway and broke through. They weren’t such renovations that we had to move out of the house. We lived with sawdust and – [Laughs]

CE:      Plaster dust [Laughs] and all that stuff.

EF:      Three or four months, and then it was done.

CE:      Now, when were your children born, what years? (8:00)

EF:      My children were born in ’64, ’67, and ’68.

CE:      And their order is?

EF:      John was ’64, Peter was ’67, January, and Alec – Alexander – was born in ’68.

CE:      And where did they go to school?

EF:      We started off – John actually went to nursery school at 49 th Street, Pennsylvania Hospital, which was way up at 49 th and Market, which was basically for observation of ordinary kids. And he went there for a couple of years. Then Peter came along, that had changed a good deal, and he went to the Jewish Y at Broad and Pine.

CE:      For kindergarten?

EF:      No, when he was three and four. Both John and Peter started – and Alec –       (9:00) all started at kindergarten at McCall School. Alec’s early years were spent at a new kindergarten or a new nursery school which was started by the neighborhood under the auspices of Old Pine Church, and that was originally a cooperative school where there was a permanent teacher but there was a parent helping every day. That was in the basement of Old Pine Church.

CE:      What was that called?

EF:      That was called the Old Pine Nursery School. And later it became Three Steps –

CE:      That’s what I was thinking of.

EF:      – and was transferred to the Community Center when the Community Center was started from the basement of Old Pine. And they all three started at McCall School.

CE:      And then?

EF:      And then, John about second grade went on to Durham School, which was (10:00) one of those free thought, free action [Laughs] progressive schools –

CE:      [Laughs] Free spirit.

EF:      – but run by the Philadelphia School District. It was at 17 th and Lombard. He did pretty well there. Peter went there as well and did very well. Then when Alec came along, in First grade he proclaimed he wanted to sit at a desk and learn how to read. He stayed at McCall School, where he did really well too. John switched to St. Peter’s – a disastrous switch – in the Seventh grade. He by then was falling behind at McCall. He was – they called him hyperactive then. They have initials for those kinds of children (11:00) now, but he was a child who couldn’t sit down, couldn’t finish a thought. St. Peter’s wasn’t a good place for him, as it turned out. Then Peter finished Eighth grade at McCall and started at Central High School, and that turned out not to be a good place for him at all. He eventually went to Chestnut Hill Academy and then eventually went to Friends Select. John finished Eighth grade at St. Peter’s, although he did not graduate. They didn’t give him a diploma, and he went on to Friends Central, which was a wonderful place for him. And when Alec came along, he went to Friends Central. Actually, Alec and Peter both switched to private school the same year, because there was a school strike in (12:00) Philadelphia. Schools didn’t start until almost November that year.

CE:      I was going to ask you about the school strikes and how they affected you and what you did with your kids during the strikes.

EF:      The first school strike we all banded together, and Peggy Davies actually took on a number of kids. That was a wonderful experience for them. The next time, my kids were older, and it just didn’t – I didn’t want them running around on South Street by themselves. I had just started the practice of law, which is not really an eight-hours-a-day practice, and I was concerned that they were running around free. That’s when I quickly pushed them into – two of them went to Friends Central, and the middle one, Peter, went to Friends Select. He and Alec are so close in age and very competitive, and I didn’t think they should be in the same school. They would have been on (13:00) every one of the same teams. It wouldn’t have worked well. But Chestnut Hill Academy didn’t work very well for Peter.

CE:      Now, did you have a car when you were living here?

EF:      We had a car. We had a wonderful Volkswagen bus that we took the middle seat out of and used to transport bicycles and camping gear and that kind of stuff. I could sit on the floor of it and nurse a baby without being on view for the whole world [Laughs], which I did quite steadily during the ‘60s. And then later we got one of those Volkswagen–sort of like a pretend Jeep. It was a fun car. But when George and I divorced, I got the Jeep and he got the other car, whatever it was at that point. And I sold the Jeep (14:00) to pay for a year of law school, which turned out to be a very good bargain.

CE:      But you don’t drive, do you?

EF:      No. I did pass my test at that point.

CE:      Your driver’s test, not the bar exam? [Laughs]

EF:      [Laughs] I passed the bar exam, too. That was harder.

CE:      You and George split up, what year?

EG:      I guess we split up in ’75. The divorce came somewhat later.

CE:      But you stayed on at 518 Spruce?

EF:      I did.

CE:      I know that you were active in neighborhood politics. When did that get started?

EF:      I guess that depends on what you call neighborhood politics. In terms of the politics as in Democrats, Republicans, local elections, our first, George and I, (15:00) introduction to politics was campaigning for Tom Gilhool. I’m not sure what year that was.

CE:      I can ask Tom.

EF:      Yes, and that was a –

CE:      He was running for what office?

EF:      He was running for City Council, whatever district that is. I forget what district it is. It is the district on the east side, by the river, up and down. [First Councilmanic District.] And we campaigned in South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia and Society Hill. Went with him. We got a lesson from Greg Harvey. I remember sitting and listening to Greg Harvey talk about what you can and can’t do at the polling place. We poll watched for Tom. That was my first introduction. (16:00)

CE:      Why Tom? Was he a friend of yours?

EF:      I’m not sure who it was. We knew by that time a number of people, the Brownes [Stanhope and Elizabeth], the Denworths [Ray and Joanne], people like that in the neighborhood who were politically connected, and they all I guess knew Tom and there was a great feeling. Tom was Yale Law School, Tom was a real liberal. This was the ‘60s. Tom had all kinds of new ideas, and without really knowing who his opponent was, we knew he certainly never went to Yale Law School [Laughs]. That was the clear difference, right there.

CE:      Who was his opponent? Do you remember?

EG:      I do not remember his name. I have a feeling he was a mortician. [Laughs] (17:00) He was there for a long time, and he remained a long time after Tom lost. That was the first lesson in Philadelphia politics, that being smart and going to the people wasn’t enough. Joanne Denworth once told me that the amount of money put into his campaign was worth an incredible amount per vote that he actually got in the election. It was a disaster, but it was a wonderful political beginning for many people.

CE:      That’s how you got started?

EF:      Right.

CE:      And then what happened? What did you do next, after Tom’s loss?

EF:      Next thing I remember was the fall when we had – it may have been (18:00) the spring – when we had the beginning movement in Society Hill and in Wash West to go back to basics and elect enough committeemen to get rid of the chairman of the Fifth Ward, who was Pete Camiel. Your husband, Jim, obviously, was very involved in that.

CE:      And why did you want to get rid of Pete Camiel?

EF:      Well, Camiel was an old-time beer distributor who didn’t live in the Fifth Ward, and who we believed was, to the root, dishonest, and was – he was actually not only head of the Fifth Ward but very high in the Democratic party and was part of the old crony system that we saw in operation, where people were not elected because they were good; were elected because they had friends, because they had done favors for people. (19:00)

CE:      They weren’t because they went to Yale. [Laughs]

EF:      No. They certainly weren’t. [Laughs] But I believe to this day he was really corrupt. He did actually go to jail, but then his sentence was overturned, and true politicians in Philadelphia still believe he never did anything wrong. I don’t believe that. I think he was truly, truly corrupt just to the very core.

CE:      So there you are. You’re relatively new residents of the neighborhood, and you’re organizing to get rid of an established – what? machine? – Democrat. How did the – how was this received by some of the other Democrats in the neighborhood?

EF:      Well, it’s hard to tell. My view of it was that I worked strongly with Gretchen Niedermeyer, who was running, and in our Division, the 25 th Division of the (20:00) Fifth Ward, we had – well, it was really sort of run from Delancey Street, and the west end, the 500 block of Delancey Street was McCall School and Lou’s Delicatessen, and that was the Jewish end of Delancey Street. And the other end of Delancey Street, which bordered on Fifth Street, was the Irish Catholic part of Delancey Street, and there were a few families in between, the Pappajohns, the Noyses, but not many. Later Sally Williams; I don’t know when she moved in. There was typically one committee person, whose name I can’t conjure up [Abe]. He was a Jewish one. He was kind of a weak sister, not effective at all. The other one, whose first name was Bob – (21:00)

CE:      He was the Irish one?

EF:      He was the Irish one, an Mc name. I can’t remember it. He didn’t live there at all. His sister lived there. She was a perfectly nice lady, but needless to say, all of Delancey Street was up in arms about our attempt to defeat these two.

CE:      These two were the Democratic –

EF:      They were the Democratic committee people –

CE:      – and you and the other newcomers were trying to overturn.

EF:      Yes, and it was basically me and Gretchen. I wasn’t running, but I was helping Gretchen. She did a really good job. She did a lot of door-to-door campaigning. She realized right away that these old people, even if the guy didn’t even live (22:00) in the neighborhood, were firmly cemented on their side, and that she would have to get enough votes from new people, or people who were not part of the early neighborhood. It was quite close, but she lost.

            And then, there was a wonderful contest. Marc Sonnenfeld, who is still a lawyer, and I can’t think of [his firm]. At that time I think he was still at a new law firm, but he was a very bright guy, a Penn graduate. And Janet somebody, who was at Drinker Biddle and Reath, had run along with Gretchen, and what he did was to send a petition or some kind of legal paper saying that the person that had (23:00) defeated Janet, this Irish guy, didn’t live in the neighborhood, and also saying that Pete Camiel didn’t live in the neighborhood. But Pete Camiel did have an apartment on the 400 block of Spruce Street, and they were not able to unseat Pete Camiel for political and factual reasons. But this other guy really didn’t live in the neighborhood, and his sister did. He definitely had a wife and kids going to school in the suburbs, and a lot of things you could prove that he simply didn’t live in the neighborhood. At the hearing – apparently, I wasn’t there – he testified that he was separated from his wife and that he lived with his sister. And that was a patent lie. And actually Janet was installed (24:00) as committee person. What I can’t remember: I think Gretchen may have won outright her seat, and Janet was defeated, and then they were able to get rid of the Irish Catholic guy who didn’t live there. They were both elected. It was pretty successful.

            One interesting thing that happened was, at the same time that Society Hill and the Civic Association people formed their new group to try and get rid of Pete Camiel, another group was also forming, which also fielded a bunch of candidates, and that woman’s name – she’s Arlene Fickler’s cousin – I can’t think of her name [Sharon], but her daughter eventually was one of the candidates who got into Central High (25:00) School, when they challenged the fact that Central was all boys. Anyway – and oddly enough, Sharon eventually became the chief counsel to the Democratic party, in other words, the chief counsel to Pete Camiel. But her initial start in politics, it looked like she was on the left side. And they tried to meet with these people and say, “We can’t compete against ourselves, because there’s an entrenched group here that we want to defeat. If there’s two different liberal groups running, we’re going to be soundly defeated.” And I think that some accommodations were made. I think that some people were willing to drop out. It just shows that the problem was – all the new people knew there (26:00) was a problem, but they couldn’t even come together and make good sense of it and work together. The old people probably – well, when the vote came, I believe Jim [Eiseman] was the one who ran against Pete Camiel, and he was not elected, and it wasn’t close.

CE:      I know that he did run against him. You don’t remember what year this was?

EF:      No. Certainly after the ’60s [and before 1976].

CE:      Do you remember if Jim was living in the Towers at the time? Because we moved into this house in ’73.

EF:      I think Jim probably was living in the Towers. I don’t know that for sure. But I do know that at the time, Jim was single. I remember later, when Gretchen (27:00) became single, she told me she was having a party just for single people, and she was distressed because she had invited Jim, and he said, “No, I’m not coming to that party, because I’m not single. I’m married to Cynthia.” [Laughs] Which was a surprise. I don’t think at the time he was married to you. I think it was before you were married. [Laughs]

CE:      [Laughs] What were some of the political organizations you were involved with? Were there organizations, or were there just sort of loose groups of neighbors who were trying to oust the old-timers?

EF:      The ADA was certainly there, and I was not involved with the ADA till later. We were aware of it, and certainly the ADA supported the efforts that went on in (28:00) the neighborhood to make a more Democratic voice. The Civic Association was clearly a force in the neighborhood. I’m not sure when I got involved in the Civic Association, but as a person going to meetings, it was probably after the Tom Gilhool time. But it may have been by this time.

CE:      What about the Fifth Ward Independent Democratic Caucus?

EF:      Well, I guess that was the name that was given to this group of people who were trying to elect people in the Fifth Ward to get rid of Pete Camiel. I didn’t go to their meetings, but I heard about it pretty much from Gretchen Niedermeyer, who was my almost next-door neighbor. (29:00)

CE:      Did this competition between the newcomers and the machine Democrats create awkward situations in your daily goings-about the neighborhood, the schools, the SuperFresh? I guess it was an A&P then.

EF:      As you know the A&P was built in 1968, because I remember it coinciding with my being pregnant with Alec. Before that, we had Lou’s Delicatessen right on the corner across from McCall School. I guess that was Sixth and Delancey. We went for all of our quick purchases of food to Lou’s, and he did very well. He shut his doors permanently on the day the A&P opened its doors. I always thought that was a very sad thing (30:00) that he felt he had to do that. I think he had a lot of money by then. He did very well. The other neighbors – hard to tell. I was good friends with the Pappajohns and the Noyses, and our children ran wild between Cypress and Delancey Street, through all those four houses, and the Niedermeyers’s as well. And it was a little tense, especially on the Jewish end of Delancey Street. I remember some kids there really disliked us, and later on, when we got into the low-income housing fight, that group was very vociferous against us. And the Irish Catholic group was less well consolidated and not so noisy, but they clearly disapproved of us in every way. We felt that disapproval all the time. The kids, (31:00) however, my sons had many friends among the kids of those parents. That did not seem to bother them. A little later. It certainly didn’t bother them at school, at McCall School. And now the nursery school that we started at Old Pine had no old residents’ children in it. It was completely new residents in it. And it had some people from beyond Society Hill, from Wash West and other people.

CE:      I’m going to read you some names, and tell me if they mean anything to (32:00) you, and if you worked with them or against them in any of these political activities. Nancy Beere and Dennis Waterman.

EF:      Well, Nancy Beere I knew well, in fact I saw her today. She lived in the Towers. I guess she was elected in that first election but I don’t know if she –

CE:      As a committee person.

EF:      As a committee person. And she taught at Temple.

CE:      Dennis Waterman?

EF:      A very familiar name.

CE:      I’m not trying to put you –

EF:      I have a feeling he may have worked for CLS. Is that right?

CE:      I don’t know. Jim thinks he may have succeeded him as committeeman at the Towers.

EF:      That I don’t know.

CE:      He asked me to ask you that. We talked about Pete Camiel. Then there (33:00) are the Church-Parkers? Mary Church-Parker and her sister?

EF:      I did not know them. They lived further down, on Third Street.

CE:      OK. Joel Cohen?

EF:      Oh, Joel Cohen was a fixture. I’m just thinking about Jill Shusterman, too, who was involved in politics.

CE:      She’s on the list.

EF:      Oh, is she? I don’t know why I put those people together. But I remember Joel Cohen well. He was also involved in the new movement.

CE:      Do you remember where he lived?

EF:      No. I don’t think I ever knew where he lived. When I saw him he would be on Spruce Street talking to Jill or talking to Gretchen or somebody.

CE:      The thing I remember about Joel is that he was the first person I knew who had a telephone answering machine. (34:00)

EF:      Oh, really?

CE:      Yes, and he would change his outgoing message regularly, frequently, and they were always very funny. I would call him just to hear his outgoing message.

EF:      I never called him. I’m sure.

CE:      Ralph Ottaviano, or anybody named Ottaviano.

EF:      I knew all the Ottavianos. I knew them well, and their daughter Susan lived on our block, with her – what was his name? She, of course, was Italian, and he was Irish. But in any case, starting with Ralph, Ralph was the political one, and he was just very connected. I remember John Smith later ran against him and was unable to beat him. Ralph had done favors for everyone in the neighborhood, and he –

CE:      What kind of favors? (35:00)

EF:      You know, who knows? But probably got some people jobs one way or another in the political hierarchy, you know, gone to bat when somebody got arrested or somebody got a ticket on their car. All those things were Ralph’s job.

            Peggy Noyse told me a funny story about – she went because she got a ticket on her car that she didn’t think was right. She went up there [to the Parking Authority] by herself. She made her arguments, and when she was through she walked back. And this man came up and said, “I’m Ralph Ottaviano. If you’d just told me about this I could have taken care of this for you much more easily than you doing it yourself.” [Laughs] She was kind of startled, but as soon as he heard her address, of course, he knew that she was in the Fifth Ward and therefore that he could give her some help. I never knew Ralph personally very well.

            His brother – one of his brothers (36:00) was a builder, who was a very scary guy, a big fat – and he had had some kind of a breaking off with the other two brothers, a lifelong, very, very difficult…. He built one of the houses on the 500 block of Cypress Street, which is where our garage was. When they first came to build the house, they rode in with a huge, front-end loader and just smashed a big tree. We had all planted some trees on Cypress Street and were very excited about trees growing on Cypress Street. People came out and screamed at him. He had his son, who I think still lives on Third Street, on this front-end loader, and everybody was screaming, and it really looked as if people got in the way they were going to (37:00) be knocked down or demolished by this front-end loader. And he did it. He knocked the tree down, just tore up everything, and they built a house that was a magnificent house. He was a great builder. Dan Barol once commented to me that the two houses next to him were built by a less quality builder, and he said to me, “You know that Ottaviano house is holding up those other two.” [Laughs] So that’s Ralph. And during this time –

CE:      But you say it’s his brother who was the builder.

EF:      Yes, not Ralph, his brother. What was his name?

CE:      Well, there was a Fred –

EF:      I’ll tell you about Fred in a minute. His son, the builder’s son, who was also a builder, was renovating a house down on the 300 block of Delancey Street, (38:00) which is where Delancey Park is, and he fell in love with the woman in that house who eventually divorced her husband and married Joe, Jr. So the son lived on the 300 block of Delancey Street, and I now see him around in a wheel chair. He has some real problem. But anyway –

CE:      There is no 400 block of Delancey Street. Delancey runs between Third and Fourth and then it runs between Fifth and Sixth. It must be between Third and Fourth.

EF:      It’s between Third and Fourth, the 300 block. It’s the one with Delancey Park.

CE:      Three Bears Park.

EF:      Yes. I don’t know what house it is, but that was a big scandal in the (39:00) neighborhood, because it was clearly the old people marrying the new people. That had not happened before, and I don’t think it happened much. Then the third one was Fred, and Fred was a barber and had a place over on Pine Street. Fred’s daughter lived on my street. She was sort of half old and half new, but I was friends with her. Her boy was not especially friends with my children. Fred, interestingly, was very much against us, truly against us. When we were in the low-income housing problem, I think there was some kind of an election, and he was poll watching, and I was poll watching, and we stood together for a full day, (40:00) and during that day he told me his life story. We became fast friends. Very odd. He was a sweet, sweet man, and he adored his wife. When he died, that wife cried for a year. She’s still alive. I’ve seen her in the last year or so. And he was definitely the dumbest of the three.

            You know, he was just a barber, but from a political point of view, he had – he knew everyone in the neighborhood because he was the local barber. Everyone went to him. And his son now lives on Fourth Street, complains about the neighborhood continually, is still the committee person on Fourth Street, and again, another bridge between the old and the new. It’s a funny thing, just a day standing at the polls could make a difference, but it did.

CE:      Sam Rappaport.

EF:      Of course I knew and still know Sam Rappaport. He was City Council – not City Council, State Representative. He was again a person between two worlds. He was a Columbia Law graduate, a very bright guy. We always called him Sneaky Sam or Sam the Snake. He always came with a foot in each camp so he could shift the right way when the time came. He was very dedicated to Pete Camiel, but he very much understood what was going on with the new liberals and was not going to be left out of that (42:00) group. When Pete went to jail, Sam became head of the Fifth Ward and continued to be very sneaky, very secretive. He’d tell certain people certain things that he’d never say in front of the whole Ward meeting. He eventually was defeated as State Representative by Babette Josephs, whom I had known since – I was very involved in Daisy Day for Children’s Hospital. I was actually babysitting so women could go out on the street and sell daisies for the hospital. This woman came in and she offered me her 2-year-old. I had a 2-year-old, too, there, and her name was Babette – what was her last name? I can’t think of it, but I’ll tell you who she was married to. She was married to a (43:00) lawyer who wrote the book on class actions [Herb Newburg] and who had been at that time a member of Berger and Montague. She had this kid, who she told me was very bright. She told me we didn’t need to put him down for a nap. When he was ready for a nap, he would curl up on the floor and go to sleep. And that’s exactly what happened. [Laughs]

CE:      [Laughs] A mother’s dream of a two-year-old child.

EF:      And she was a lawyer. I’ve forgotten – not one of these well-known law schools. But a bright, active person, and certainly well left of Sam Rappaport, and managed to defeat him, with the help of most of the community I believe. She lived on – I’m not (44:00) sure where she lived – but she lived –

CE:      She lives west of Broad Street, doesn’t she?

EF:      Yes, I guess that district went – that district has been re-districted a lot of times. I think it still has three sections in Society Hill, three Divisions in Society Hill. But at that time she probably had half of the Divisions in Society Hill.

CE:      But Sam, didn’t he help – also have some position in the Fifth Ward?

EF:      He was the second in command, I forget what they call it, in the Fifth Ward when Pete Camiel was around. When Pete went to jail, Sam became head of the Fifth Ward.

CE:      That’s right. You said that. (45:00)

EF:      He was the leader of the Fifth Ward, and when Pete came back, he was the titular leader, but Sam clearly ran the Fifth Ward until two or three years ago.

CE:      Yes. I had a few run-ins myself with Sam in our polling place. Beverly Slovick?

EF:      Beverly Slovick. She was married to an architect whose name was Slovick, who actually designed Old Pine Community Center. Neat guy, nice guy, and she was nice, too. They lived in the 600 block of Addison Street or somewhat up there, or down there, across there. She was very active in politics. I knew her. She was active in school politics and neighborhood politics, and definitely of a left bent.

CE:      Reds Westlick?

EF:      No.

CE:      No. Jill Shusterman? (46:00)

EF:      Jill was my across-the-street neighbor and close friend. She was very involved in politics. She was married to a lawyer, and he didn’t seem to be so involved. I never knew quite what he did. He was very strange. But Jill and I were good friends. I’m trying to remember what she actually did, but she was very involved.

CE:      Harry Schwartz?

EF:      Of course, I knew Harry Schwartz. I guess I must have met Harry Schwartz in – Tom Gilhool ran for City Council again. I met him either in that context or possibly at Stanhope Browne’s house or somewhere in the neighborhood. Harry and Rinda later belonged to the Society Hill Club, which is right across the street from me. I spent a lot of time there. I ran the snack bar there for one summer, and Rinda was there a (47:00) lot with her kids. And my kids were there a lot. I got to know them pretty well.

CE:      But it was Harry, not Rinda, who was active.

EF:      I don’t think Rinda had a political bone in her body. [Laughs] She was a doctor, through and through.

CE:      And they left here in ’76.

EF:      They left here – I remember the going-away party, and it was right after Ned Wolf had died, and everybody was very upset about that. And later, of course, I met Flora in law school.

CE:      Were you and she in the same class?

EF:      We were in the same class in law school.

CE:      Well, then, along came Frank Rizzo.

EF:      Ah, Frank Rizzo.

CE:      Were you involved in the anti-Rizzo efforts in this neighborhood? (48:00)

EF:      I was deeply involved by that time. Actually, in the – I guess it wasn’t a campaign – This was much later. He wanted to run for a third term.

CE:      Right.                                                                                     

[End of first side of tape. beginning of second side of tape.]

CE:      We were talking about the charter change, Rizzo trying to run for a third term and change the charter so he could do it.

EF:      Right. And I did poll watching some place in South Philadelphia. It was a terrifying day. Feelings ran very, very high. The tradition is South Philadelphia was that a man and wife went into the polling place together and into the booth together, and the man voted for himself and then he voted for his wife. Then out they came. We had one or two people in our polling place who insisted on that, and it was really a tough thing to say, “No, you can’t do it.” Mike Marmel and his wife, Ruth, were very much of that sort. Mike expected to vote for Ruth, who happened to be a pretty bright woman. (1:00) In any case, I was in the depths of South Philadelphia, where that was the practice, and it was scary, telling people they couldn’t do it, and enforcing it. But we were able to do that because they were all primed for it, and they knew it was the law.

CE:      How did the wives feel about this?

EF:      You know, I only know Ruth Hormel simply accepted it as the way women ought to behave with men. They were Jewish. The Italian women were very much under the thumbs of their husbands. I never heard anyone say they didn’t approve of it or that they rankled under it. That was just the way it was. We were appalled by it, of course. (2:00)

CE:      Yes. Did the women even know who to vote for when they went into the voting booth by themselves?

EF:      I don’t know.

CE:      I’ve often wondered that. I’ve always wanted to ask somebody that question.

EF:      In the Marmel case, Ruth Marmel ended up being Sam Rappaport’s secretary. [Laughs]

CE:      Oh! [Laughs]

EF:      She became politically very astute, [Laughs] though not on my side. But she wasn’t an unreasonable person. She was smart, and the way Sam was. As I say, Sam always had a foot in each camp, so he could sway the way it was expedient for the moment.

CE:      Now, you talk about the behavior in the polling place in South Philly where you were poll watching for this particular election. What about the polling place behavior in this neighborhood? [sound of telephone ringing]

EF:      I was the committee person for the 25 th Division, which was in McCall (3:00) School, and it was an interesting dynamic. A guy named Sam Tanz was the Republican committee person, and he essentially ran the polling place. I don’t even remember who the Judge of Elections was, but Sam knew how to do everything. And because of that – and nobody else seemed to know. We didn’t know how to work the machines, how to turn them on, how to turn them off, all that stuff. He was able to throw his weight around in the polling place in a way that we didn’t know how to correct. He was also one of these people that did lots of favors for people. He had a little group of Republicans, not very big, but he was the old-line Republican group, who ran the group. It was sort of appalling. There were some, obviously; Ray Denworth was a Republican and (4:00) a lot of other high-end Republicans around, and they cannot have approved of Sam Tanz. He was smart –

CE:      Did he let men go into the voting booth with their wives?

EF:      He certainly had. By the time we got there, even the first time, things were cleared up at our polling place. We made it very clear, and there was just no issue about it at McCall School. People who had done that before didn’t do it again. We’d had Greg Harvey’s lecture. We knew exactly what we could do in that sense. We didn’t have the mechanical knowledge of how to do the machines, which was a little scary, because you never knew what kinds of changes he would make in the process of pulling off the numbers (5:00) and the votes. He really still ran the polling place, but we could get our people elected. And changing the Charter was certainly not a problem at McCall School. That was a – And even the Rizzo elections, there were not all that many Rizzo people by then at McCall School.

CE:      What do you think was the turning point in this part of town? Where the reform Democrats sort of took over from the machine.

EF:      It was probably during the Rizzo years. It was really offensive. I remember there was a picture of him in a tuxedo with a cummerbund and a pistol tucked into his cummerbund. (6:00)

CE:      It was a night stick.

EF:      A night stick. OK. It doesn’t really much matter. And Rizzo was – I don’t know if you ever shook hands with him.

CE:      No. I only remember that because Jim and I once went to a costume party during the Rizzo years, and he went in his tuxedo, dressed up as Frank Rizzo, with a night stick stuck in his cummerbund. He would not have carried a pistol. [Laughs]

EF:      [Laughs] No, I don’t think he would. But Rizzo was beyond the bounds in so many ways.

CE:      No, I never met him.

EF:      He was a huge man. When you met him, he was taller, wider, his hands were huge. He just gave that feeling of overpowering physical strength. Even though he was fat, he wasn’t very fat. He was a powerful person, and he had a big voice. And I guess, (7:00) you know, he seemed to be tough on crime, and there certainly were people in the neighborhood who were very scared about crime. We had the three low-income towers on Washington Avenue. Those kids came up and stole a lot of bikes from our kids. People were – still, many people in the neighborhood were scared. Rizzo was an answer to that. On the other hand, he was so obnoxious and – as it turned out – so incredibly dishonest, that I think that turned the tide generally in the neighborhood. Also, the older people were getting old. They were getting used to us. There were many more of the kind of encounters of the kind I had at the polling place, where people got to know (8:00) one another and came to respect them and like them and vice versa. By that time, I would say pretty much the neighborhood was liberal Democratic, if that’s possible. But not as much as you might expect it to be.

CE:      Now, you moved from 518 Spruce Street to 333 South Third Street in what year?

EF:      I think ’87.

CE:      And you were a committeeman when you were in the 25 th Division. When did you become a committeeman the 18 th Division?

EF:      I was. Soon after I moved, Sam asked me if I wanted to. Somebody left. Jan Stephano was the other committeeman, and she’d been there for many, many years. Her partner – I never knew him – left, and Sam asked me if I wanted to become (9:00) the committee person. And I said yes. Sam and I were always on speaking terms. I don’t know if you’d say he respected me, but I wasn’t the kind of person who was so doctrinaire that I refused to speak to him, and so from his point of view I was safer than the kind of person he might have gotten if he hadn’t put in his own stooge [Laughs]. I was elected and have been the committee person there ever since.

CE:      You and Jan together.

EF:      Yes.

CE:      Once Rizzo was out of the picture, has there been any excitement in –? (10:00)

EF:      Well, yes, there has. There was a three-way contest that I’m trying to remember. Charles Bowser was one of them.

CE:      For Mayor.

EF:      For Mayor, yes. I’m trying to remember who the others were.

CE:      He just died.

EF:      He just died, yes. We’ve had a bunch of internal contests. We’ve always had the problem of Vince Fumo, and nothing you could do seemed to be possible to get rid of him, until he got himself into jail, which was a blessing for everybody. But there’s been a [Laughs] –

CE:      [Laughs] I think he’d take issue with your choice of words, Liz, “Got himself into jail.” I don’t think so. (11:00)

 EF:     [Laughs] Of course, they’d tried to get him into jail before. I’m sure that he was guilty, but they didn’t have enough evidence. But this time they had overwhelming evidence. He really did get himself into jail. But he was always the – Sam would never oppose him. Sam did not like him at all but would never oppose him, because he was too powerful. The Fifth Ward always supported him, although nobody liked him at all – that I knew of. Maybe Fred Ottaviano liked him. I don’t know. There’s been a lot of little skirmishes, but nothing as big as Rizzo. Of course, Sam Katz came along and (12:00) seemed to be a very appealing candidate. And many in the neighborhood did support him, as Jan and I did. We were pleasant about it, and did not incur the wrath. They could, I think, have removed us as committee people for supporting a Republican over a Democrat. I forget who he ran against. Who’d he run against?

CE:      John Street.

EF:      Yes, John Street. We had our – we supported Thatcher Longstreth over Rizzo originally and didn’t get in trouble for that either. I’m trying to think, Thatcher Longstreth – I may have still been up at 518 Spruce in the 25 th Division. (13:00)

CE:      Do you think that Society Hill has become more Republican in the last 25 years?

EF:      Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. Many Republicans in the Towers. We have many more Republicans in our Division, the 18 th Division, now than we’ve ever had. That’s registered Republicans. Of course, we tell people that they should register Democratic, just because it’s the only chance they get to elect many officers, because the real election is in May and not in November. I think people, even if they do not agree with us at first, realize after a while that it’s true, at least for some offices, it’s really not worth being a lone Republican. But the Republicans are much stronger now. Many of these young people, my children’s generation, there are many more Republicans (14:00) among them. And of course if they’re living here, it means they’ve made a lot of money very early, or had a lot of money, and there are certainly things; the Republicans don’t like to pay these high taxes that Democrats seem to like. [Laughs]

CE:      [Laughs]

EF:      Or Democrats like what you can buy with the high taxes. Republicans just don’t like to pay. Yes, no doubt about it, and the registration records certainly do show that.

CE:      That’s certainly my sense of it.

EF:      There’s not as much of it in Wash West as here, because real estate is much more expensive down here.

CE:      Yes. How do you think this neighborhood has changed since you first moved here?

EF:      Well, it’s interesting. The neighborhood, of course, as I see it, was very young then, and is now pretty old. My friends, of course, are all in their 60s and 70s, and (15:00) 40 years ago, they were all in their 20s and 30s. And it seems to me that the kinds of stuff we were doing at 20 and 30, really enthusiastically making changes, I don’t see that in the 20- and 30-year-olds who are living in the neighborhood now. They don’t seem to be aggressively making changes at all. They seem to be interested very much in their – now they may be in the schools, but I don’t even see that. I don’t know. They’re much more interested in sending their children out to private school. But of course, we – you didn’t have to be very rich to live in this neighborhood in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and you (16:00) do now. There’s no way you could buy a house now for even what is the equivalent of $15,000 today; it would be less than $100,000, I would think. And there’s no houses available for that price here. It’s a different group. The young people are all very accomplished, to the extent that there are young people. Typically they are people who made a lot of money in the Internet craze and had an IPO and went away with a million dollars. It’s a different group of people. That’s one change. I guess the emphasis of the great expense of having a house in Society Hill separates out a different class of people than was coming in new in the ‘60s. There really were; there were a lot of (17:00) artists at N.W. Ayer. There were a lot of lawyers. There may still be lawyers.

CE:      A lot of architects.

EF:      A lot of architects. A huge number of architects. And there were a lot of real liberals here; now you probably would find them in Powelton Village or somewhere like that. East Mount Airy, West Mount Airy, that are not attracted down here now. They see it as a bastion of expensive housing. Which it probably is.

CE:      Which it is.

EF:      Establishment. It’s a big change.

CE:      Anything else you’d like to tell me about your experiences living here, political or otherwise?

EF:      Well, there’s a whole – the Civic Association is a whole different area. And there were many serious clashes. The most memorable one was the low-income (18:00) housing. And I remember the night that started. Sam Maitin, who was a dear friend, and his wife Lilyan, who is also a friend – Sam stood up and said, “There’s this woman, Dorothy [Miller], who lives at, I think, Sixth and Lombard, and she lives in a housing development that’s run by Quakers. And the Quakers are about to put her and all her black friends out, because they’re going to remodel it and make it into expensive housing. And we think that this is terrible, and we think that low-income people ought to live here.” And that was the immediate speech, made in Sam’s inimitable way.

            There was talk, and people said different things, but it ended up that a group of the most (19:00) liberal got together and said, “We’re going to have low-income housing for these people who have lived their whole lives on Lombard Street, and their church is right there. They’ve been faithful members of the community. Dottie [Miller] was a crossing guard for McCall School. And we’re going to make sure they get housing.”

            And there was a Civic Association election between Paul Putney and – Gene DiRe was running, but he wasn’t the highest person running. The other one was Axilbund. I forget his first name [George]. Axilbund was a big real estate company in the city. He lived up in the 600 block of Spruce Street in those houses that are built around Hopkinson House, which (20:00) were designed I think by Oskar Stonorov, who was a well-known architect. And DiRe lived across the street from him, in an old house, but he had a couple of apartment buildings.

            They were both violently against low-income housing in Society Hill. Their main argument was, as soon as you put low-income housing in, you get lower prices, and your houses will be worth less. The neighborhood was sharply, sharply divided. Dick Ostrander was running on our side, and his wife, Elizabeth, Liz Ostrander, who is also a dear friend – they’re both dear friends and very old, now – she was against low-income housing. They lived on Sixth Street just below Lombard. They (21:00) lived in an area that was a lot more iffy, in terms of the price of their houses, than others.

            The neighborhood was sharply divided. It wasn’t just old people, new people, although by and large, the old people were against the low-income housing, and the people who had been the liberals beforehand were all in favor of the low-income housing. Eventually, Paul Putney won the election, and I was elected to the Civic Association board at that point as well. It was an incredible thing. We had people going house to house making people members of the Civic Association. I remember Lilyan Maitin, just over and over again, would come in with just five names, six names, just steadily throughout this period. And I was very active going into places where new people were (22:00) moving in: St. James Court had a lot of new people moving in, going house to house and signing them up. We had a bunch of people doing that. Very interesting.

CE:      Paul became President of the Civic Association –

EF:      Paul became President of the Civic Association.

CE:      – and this race for the Presidency was going to determine what was going to be the outcome of the battle over the low-income housing?

EF:      Not necessarily. But certainly there was then a group in charge of the Civic Association who believed that the low-income housing should be built. And then there was eventually a Civic Association election, and that election – I guess the Presidential election was held at Old Pine Church – as was the Civic Association. I believe (23:00) that that led to a rejection of the low-income housing eventually. There was a vote. And after that, there was an effort of a group of pros and cons, people to meet. And we met in Alan Halpern’s basement, at least every two weeks. And Wilson Goode was involved. I don’t know why. Wilson Goode was not anyone famous at that point. But a strong advocate, obviously, of low-income housing, but a moderate sort of person. He wasn’t offensive in any way. He really dealt very well. Tilly Speck was involved on the con side, but she was reasonable. (24:00)

CE:      She lived in the neighborhood?

EF:      Yes. And I can’t think of who else. I was on that committee. But there were other people who met. We met for a long time. We actually hired architects.

CE:      And you say this was a group of people on both sides of the question, and you met regularly to try to work things out?

EF:      Right. Gene DiRe was on the con side, and I was there on the pro side. I’m trying to think if Lilyan Maitin was still involved or not. And Alan Halpern was there, I believe. It’s not clear what side he was on, as is true of Alan Halpern for many years. We met. We got a little agreement.

            We hired a really fine architect, an Indian, a south Asian (25:00) type Indian, who drew very nice plans. The plans were nice enough so that it would be very hard to say that it was going to hurt the neighborhood in anyway. But eventually it was shot down. The people on the committee who were against it just would not agree, and we needed to have virtually unanimity. So it went away.

            Then Wilson Goode became Mayor, and I saw Dottie [Miller], and she said to me, “Well, Wilson’s Mayor now, and we’re going to get our low-income housing.” And I said, “I know you are.” And they did. The low-income housing was built after Wilson Goode became Mayor. There was no vote or anything. It just happened. Ironically, going by it last night, driving by, (26:00) I realized that one of those houses on Pine Street is now boarded up. Apparently Section 8 Housing apparently didn’t work somehow. Or people abandoned it.

CE:      It’s been boarded up for a quite a long time.

EF:      A while.

CE:      Maybe a year. I noticed it some time ago.

EF:      I don’t know if it hurts the value of houses on Pine Street or not. I think it’s still pretty solid on Pine Street.

CE:      I think it would be pretty hard to tell right now what would be hurting property values, anywhere.

EF:      Yes, my perception is that property values are not going down in Society Hill. It’s harder to sell houses, but two houses have just sold on Delancey Street, for big numbers. Another one is for sale now. And over time, a lot of houses have sold on (27:00) Delancey Street and Third Street. They seem to still be selling, although some have been on the market a long time.

CE:      But some sell very quickly.

EF:      Yes. Delancey Street is very nice.

CE:      It is.

EF:      I’m trying to think what else. The other big furor that we had on the Civic Association was the Black History Museum. This was before 1976, and everybody was getting ready for ’76. There was an effort to put the Black History Museum on the corner of Fifth and Pine, maybe. Somewhere in there, which is now where the low-income housing is.

CE:      It’s at Sixth and Pine.

EF:      Sixth and Pine? By and large, the neighborhood was sympathetic to there (28:00) being a Black History Museum, but very much opposed to having a big institution in the middle of the residential area and the thought of school buses and a lot of stuff on weekends and a very big building on a small lot, and was not happy. There was a big fight about that. Eventually we were able to divert them to the much larger and more appropriate spot up where the Constitution Center now is.

            And then there was another thing, a huge battle, which was the battle to put I-95 underground. That was a very political battle, headed by Stanhope Browne, with a lot of help from the (29:00) community. Really very, very artfully put together, and eventually successful. I always thought Stanhope Browne was going to be Mayor of Philadelphia after that. He was so effective in that particular fight. Again, that – it is hard to tell how that spread in terms of politics, because the whole community saw that as an important thing, and the way it was focused was as a whole, the city needs this access to the Delaware River. To put an open highway there is just devastating to that part of the city. Interesting, something Boston realized and put all of its stuff underground in the Big Dig.

            That was big, (30:00) and that almost immediately led into the problem about Headhouse. What was the name of that project? [NewMarket] It’s now a huge, ugly open piece of ground around Second and Lombard. But that was originally a big project by a life insurance company, but almost immediately – Sally Lou Buell and some others who lived in the 200 block of Lombard Street were very much against that. It was supposed to be neighborhood commercial, which would mean drug stores, dry cleaners, that kind of stuff. (31:00) As it turned out – or as it was planned – it was never that. It was to be a big shopping center, a copy of what they have in Baltimore.

CE:      Yes, Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, is what I always hear.

EF:      Yes.

CE:      A pale shadow of Ghirardelli Square.

EF:      And the litigation, which the Civic Association started, crushed that simply from the cost of the litigation. But by then it was so badly funded and badly done that it was ineffective, although I enjoyed it. But of course I lived on Fifth Street, so it didn’t affect my home. Eventually it failed completely.

CE:      But as it was, my perception on it, and I live closer, was that it wasn’t (32:00) really all that big. What was eventually built there was not all that big. I think the people most affected by it, obviously negatively, were the people who were directly adjacent to it, who lived in the 100 block of Lombard, whose properties backed up onto the development and had to listen to the diners being paged and told that their table was ready at the restaurant, and all the noisy bars with the music going until two o’clock in the morning. They really suffered.

EF:      Yes. And Sally Lou Buell was a loud voice, and I guess the Halperns [Alan and Bomie] were involved and very much against it. The Civic Association did vote to oppose it, and we’re the ones that originally filed suit against it. In fact, Stuart Dalzell came to the Board meeting of the Civic Association. He was a young associate at Drinker Biddle, and he explained how the litigation was going to be and showed us some of the papers, and I sat there and I thought, “Gee, I can do this. I can understand this. Why aren’t I a lawyer?” And some years later, I went to law school, and I’ve always wondered if Stuart Dalzell, who is now a judge, ever had any idea that he had made – [Laughs]

CE:      Made such an impression on you. [Laughs]

EF:      Right. That was an area where the neighborhood was pretty much unified against it. And sadly, everything that has been proposed there since has been voted down, and we have been left with a very ugly spot of land.

CE:      A hole in the ground.

EF:      Yes, with, no doubt, rats. It’s not a pleasant part of Society Hill. It (34:00) probably does affect property values. So I’m trying to think if there were other battles in the Civic Association, but I think those were the major ones, and they coincided with the Republican-Democratic battles.

            The McCall School battles, too, which were, again, the neighborhood people and the new people coming in and saying, “We can help run this school better.” The original principal – I’ve forgotten his name [Tobias] – but he was an iron-hand man, and he did not want Peggy Davies or Liz Fox – Liz Schall at the time – or any other mother telling him how to run his school. Now eventually he retired, (35:00) and we got a new black principal, and he was very interested in having all the help he could get from the neighborhood. That improved McCall School. McCall School had a lot of good things about it. Every child learned to play an instrument, which is not true in any other public school I know about, although it must be true in some places, because they have all-school orchestras. They had a lot of beneficial stuff there. Every child started with Chinese. My grandson now has a lot of friends who are Chinese, because he is good in math and so are they. [Laughs] He knows a lot of Chinese words.

CE:      Did he go to McCall?

EF:      Yes, he did. My grandson, Jacob, went to McCall through Fifth grade, and then he went to Masterman. He had a very good time there. He’s the kind of kid teachers love; so [Laughs] that’s always a big help. He’s always been the kind of kid who’s smart (36:00) and, at that time, endearing to teachers. He went to McCall.

CE:      What years was he at McCall?

EF:      He left McCall when he was 10. He’s 16 now. He was there around 1998-2004, something like that.

CE:      Is he still at Masterman?

EF:      He is. Of the people who were in the middle school who get into the upper school. (37:00)

CE:      Well, good for him.

EF:      Yes, he’s doing well. He’s very adolescent now. [Laughs] Not always such a good thing.

CE:      [Laughs] Not always so endearing to the teachers as he was when he was younger?

EF:      No, it’s true. They either adore him or they hate him.

[End of interview]