What Makes an Hour Important?

I just spent ten days backcountry skiing in Colorado and then, back home in Vermont, spent a few days thoroughly enjoying my 13 month old granddaughter Elizabeth while her mother was away in Oregon. Those activities have helped me enjoy a strange winter here in Vermont, one that has teased us with snow several times, only to laugh at our hopes while thrashing us with ice or rain. The break has also rejuvenated my blogging ardor, so after a three week hiatus, here we go again.

My parents began their life together in wartime New York City. I’ve done a little research to help me picture their life in 1943. What were the streets like, the people, the traffic? I’ve found some images that help, including this one from that year taken on W 125^th street, a couple of miles south of their apartment in Washington Heights. There is a young woman in a fur coat nearing the lower left corner wearing a fur coat just like the one I can remember her wearing. It helps me imagine her there that November of 1943, 23 years old, energetic and full of expectations of her life to come, not yet full of the fear that would plague her a year later when Jim shipped out for war torn Europe.

In those days New York was a white city, in fact over 90 percent white. While there was a refugee crisis in Europe (sound familiar?) the United States adhered to strict quotas, harboring the same fears that are echoed today. The Lower East Side in Manhattan was home to a burgeoning immigrant population, but uptown where my parents lived was the milieu of the white, protestant families that dominated the city. Nearby Harlem was the center of the black population, and the scene of growing unrest. On August 1 and 2, 1943, a race riot erupted there in response to the shooting of a black man by a white police officer. Things don’t change much, do they?

For my parents, the city was a crowded, bustling place full of promise. My father knew it well from his years in New Jersey, and his parents maintained an apartment on lower 5^th Avenue, where Jim and Liz were frequent dinner guests. Rents were affordable for working families, and I’m sure the two of them must have been comfortable on their combined modest incomes. Both of their lives centered around the Columbia Presbyterian hospital complex. My mother had her first job as a medical social worker, while my father worked long and crazy hours at Babies Hospital. They grabbed moments together, occasionally meeting for lunch in the hospital cafeteria or one of the ubiquitous delis in the neighborhood. Their apartment was just a few minutes’ walk, so despite his schedule, my father was able to be home for dinner much of the time. Both of them came from households with a maid who did much of the cooking, so I suspect that my mother was learning on the fly, settling into a routine of cooking for her husband’s tastes, to which she catered for the rest of her life.

They knew the life they were building was temporary, and in March of 1944, ten months after their marriage, the inevitable happened when my father was called to active duty. He was commissioned as a First Lieutenant, and sent to Army Field Service School at Camp Carlisle in Pennsylvania, where a six week orientation for medical doctors took place. My mother kept her job in New York, but spent two weekends in Carlisle. Jim said the most important lesson he learned there was that there are regulations for everything in the Army, and no matter what a medical officer might need, somewhere there was a regulation permitting it. Jim was learning how to deal with bureaucracy, a skill that served him well throughout his career.

The next step in training was a six week stint at an army hospital to learn “army medicine”. Jim was assigned to LaGarde General Hospital in New Orleans. Officers were allowed to take their wives, so Liz took a leave of absence and the couple began six months of nomadic life, knowing their time together would end when Jim shipped out to an uncertain future for an uncertain amount of time. Every hour began to be important.

Fire, Love, and Medical School

My father, Dr. Jim McKay, had his first experience dealing with heavy casualties not in WWII, but in Boston during his fourth year in medical school. At 10:00 on Saturday evening, November 28, 1942, about 1000 people were in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, waiting for the floor show to start, when fire broke out. The main entrance was a revolving door, which quickly became jammed with people rushing to escape. The fire was hot and fast, and within a few minutes over 400 people were dead and hundreds more were piled in front of the exits with severe injuries. Firefighters got the fire out quickly, but then realized the magnitude of the tragedy as they tried to enter the building. They called in military personnel to help evacuate the injured, and Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital were inundated with urgent cases. There was a general call for medical personnel and my father spent 72 hours straight treating victims. This tragic event served as valuable experience for Jim and many other doctors who would soon serve in WWII.

The fire happened shortly after Jim had completed his practical training in obstetrics by spending three months that fall at the Florence Crittenden Home for unwed mothers in suburban Boston. That training would also prove useful in Europe, though delivering babies is not normally associated with the duties of an army battalion surgeon.

There was another event in 1942 that I cannot leave out of this tale, because without it I wouldn’t exist. That summer of 1942, Jim was sitting around with a friend on a Saturday, with nothing particular to do. They decided to get dates for the evening, and Jim thought of Liz Foote, whom he hadn’t seen in a few months. Jim called Liz at her home in Belmont, and she and a classmate, who was living in the Foote house at the time, agreed to go out. The four of them went to a beach south of Boston, where they spent the afternoon walking and talking. Jim and Liz had a wonderful time, began dating regularly, and soon fell in love. In December, they got engaged. This was a monumental commitment for Jim, who had dated an amazing number of women in his college and medical school years. He always told us that our mother (Liz) was the 19^th girl he had dated in medical school.

My parents were one of literally millions of couples who decided to get married despite the war looming on the horizon. Jim had actually joined the US Army Medical Corps reserve in the spring of 1941. From his experiences in Germany in 1935 and 1938, he was sure we would be drawn into the war, and knew that doctors would be in high demand. Indeed, medical school was accelerated beginning in 1942. By shortening the summer holiday a class of doctors was graduated every nine months. This continued until the war’s end in 1945. I never discussed with my parents their thoughts around marriage and impending military service, except that my father told me that they decided not to have children until after the war. I know from their letters around the time of their engagement that they were deeply in love. Here’s an excerpt from Liz’s letter to Jim on Christmas day, 1942, after they had just spent five days together with Jim’s family.

 

Jim, did you feel the way I felt yesterday, and have felt all today? I feel completely lost without you to share what’s happening & what I’m thinking with. God, if being separated from you after only five days of being with you can do this, what will I feel like when you’re not there after we’re married.

 

It’s an interesting experience reading your parents’ love letters. Most of my research involved a more objective search for information, but to really understand what this couple was feeling at this amazing time, their letters are priceless. Tears come to my eyes as I sit and read them, tears of happiness that they experienced such powerful love, and tears of sadness knowing that they would undergo a long and very difficult separation in the terrible war that was enveloping their entire generation.

The spring of 1943 was a whirlwind for my parents. In March, Jim graduated from medical school and in April started his accelerated internship in pediatrics at Babies Hospital in NYC. In May, Liz received her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Simmons College. On May 30, 1943, he and Liz were married at Kings Chapel in Boston by her father, Unitarian minister Henry Wilder Foote II. After a honeymoon fishing in upstate New York, the newlyweds set up housekeeping close to the hospital in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, with a view of the Hudson River. Liz was hired to do medical social work at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital (part of the same complex as Babies Hospital). And so, the married life of Liz and Jim McKay began, full of promise yet fraught with uncertainty, or rather the certainty that the war would soon catch their sails and send them in an unknown direction.

Tennis, Girls, and Med School

As I write, I am looking out the window at a brilliant moon in the early morning sky, with Jupiter as its bright companion. The temperature is in the single digits and the ground snow-covered. Since becoming immersed in the Battle of the Bulge and my father’s role in it, I can’t help thinking about him when I see such conditions. He and my mother often used the moon as a connection in their letters, as countless separated lovers have done for centuries. But in this blog the war is still in the future, and I must drag myself away from the moon.

In writing the book, I emphasized how formative World War II was to my father’s character. Yet, as I review his early life, I can see that a lot of his key traits were already in place. His independence, sense of adventure, desire to wring the most out of life, and an impressive self-confidence are clearly demonstrated by his experiences at Lawrenceville, Frankfurt, Princeton, and Munich. His easy willingness to lead emerged during his Junior Year Abroad, when he became president of his group. The skills of leadership would be learned in the army, but the willingness to step up was in his basic character. Jim’s outgoing social self was clearly there early. At Lawrenceville in his early teen years he was a 98 pound (literally, according to him) weakling with frequent bouts of sickness, yet he participated in everything the school had to offer with seeming abandon. I’m guessing that there was cause and effect. His strong will and sharp mind would have driven him to overcome any physical weakness. He would have recognized that he needed to throw himself out there to succeed, rather than hang in the background watching the bigger, stronger kids take the limelight.

Jim grew up, of course, and attained his adult stature of 5’ 9” and 145 pounds by the time he entered college. I know what that feels like because I am exactly his size. From his letters and his memories, it is clear that he was extremely gregarious. I don’t know what that feels like because I am just the opposite. Jim dated girls early and often and was happiest in a group of friends, preferably of both sexes. Having gone off to boarding school at the age of 12, he spent years living in dorms and rooming with others, being conditioned to the challenges of prolonged close contact. That experience would serve him well in the army.

My father’s sport was tennis. His father was an excellent tennis player, and I’m sure Jim found it a sport in which he could excel despite his small size. He also liked the class of people who played tennis. During the summer after his graduation from Princeton, Jim got a job as the tennis pro at an exclusive country club on Long Island, in Stony Brook. He became good friends with the daughter of the president of the club, Peggy Melville, who introduced him to the finer aspects of Long Island society.

Tennis match vs Count Igor Cassini at Old Field Club, Long Island, 1939, 6-4, 5-7, Cassini got blisters

Jim entered Harvard Medical School in the fall of 1939. That first fall was a whirl of hard work and parties. In letters home he describes the difficult work load to his parents and then in the next breath asks them to ship him his fancy duds so he can be stylish at the parties. Apparently Harvard med students were in demand for “Deb parties” in Boston. Some of these were at the Copley Plaza Hotel. Jim and his roommate Hathorne Brown, known as Brownie, attended these parties in their tuxes, top hats, and white gloves, arriving one behind the other on a motorcycle in full dress gear. Jim describes the doorman always saving a spot by the door for them so they never had to find a place to park. One can imagine the doorman getting a kick out of these young rakes on a motorcycle in tux and top hat. Jim described a weekend when he and his roomies were invited down to Smithtown, Long Island by Peggy Melville. It was a classy experience, complete with fox hunt and related parties.

By the spring of 1940 Jim was getting into the groove, his grades were improving and his social life under control. He was in the Lancet Club, one of the 2 social clubs at Harvard Medical School. Jim described a weekend of activity in a letter to his parents.

“We had lab until 12:30, then took the afternoon off. Played 2 hours of tennis, put the windshield on the motorcycle, got my new suit fitted, went to 3 beer parties, ate supper, and took Hennie Adams out dancing. . . . . Sunday morning I worked and played squash, then Dan [Jim’s brother] and I went out to Blackfans for a very enjoyable lunch. There were a couple of doctors there. Took Dan back to Tech (MIT), played touch football afterward and got back to the med school at 4. Worked until 6:30, took Hennie to an early movie on the motorcycle, and was in bed at 10:30. That completes the news.”

At one point my father told me he was dating 5 different girls at the same time, all of whom thought they were the special one. They soon found each other out, however, and Jim found it hard to get a date for awhile. One can’t help but think of Hawkeye Pierce from MASH (which, incidentally, was his favorite TV show in later years). Jim was in the habit of dating nurses on weeknights, because they had to be back in quarters by 10, which gave him some time to study afterwards. It is not entirely clear when he had time to sleep.

Jim was definitely in his element in medical school, academically challenged and socially fulfilled. He was well on his way to his ambition of becoming a doctor. But there was one cloud on the horizon. It was big and dark, and was approaching fast.

Princeton and Nazi Germany

There was no question my father would go to medical school in four years, and in the meantime he thought about how to use his time at Princeton to best advantage. Looking ahead, Jim understood he would get his fill of science in medical school, so he minimized science at Princeton. His other academic passion was languages, and in his freshman year he took English, German, and French. In November, his abdominal pain was finally diagnosed as chronic appendicitis, and he went under the knife before Thanksgiving of 1935. He recovered but found himself with recurring stomach issues for years afterwards. Jim’s health difficulties were a nuisance as he struggled to keep up with his classes. He passed them all, but not with flying colors.

Despite his academic trials, Jim was determined to pursue life to the fullest. A life-long tennis player, he played on the Freshman team at Princeton, but decided it distracted too much from his academics, and that was the end of his collegiate athletic career. His social life, however, never wavered. It was an easy train ride into Manhattan from Princeton, and my father claimed that during his college years, he saw every Broadway show and opera offered in the city. He dated constantly, and told me he was a popular companion with his group of friends because he always acted as the designated driver. I take that claim with a grain of salt, though with his extraordinary sense of responsibility, I don’t really doubt it.

Near the end of his freshman year, Jim applied for the Junior Year Abroad program. In order to participate, Jim piled on the courses as a sophomore, including adding Spanish to his retinue of languages. He learned that year how to organize his activities and balance his active social life with his academic determination, always with his eye on the next objective.

This was the height of the Great Depression. While the McKay family was relatively well off, with Jim’s father retaining a good job as a chemist for the International Nickel Company, everyone who lived through that period was changed by it. Since FDR’s election in 1932, Congress had passed unprecedented social legislation, culminating in the Social Security Act in August, 1935. The McKays were Republicans and not at all impressed with Roosevelt.

Jim had always been very conscious of money, and even in high school kept track of every penny he spent. At Princeton his father gave him an annual allowance of $2,000 to pay all his expenses, including tuition, housing, and everything else. All his life, Jim would track money closely. Even after becoming financially comfortable in his later medical career he scrutinized every dollar. He was often chided as a cheapskate, though I don’t really see it that way. He was prudent, but willing to spend or invest when he saw potential, whether it be a vacation with his family, a company with good prospects or a grandchild headed for college.

In the fall of 1937, my father set sail across the Atlantic, and once again he was headed to Germany. He and the other 25 students in his Junior Year group went to Maximillian University in Munich. At first, Jim boarded with 6 other students who were German, Scottish, and American. They paid 180 Reischmarks (about $45) per month for room and board. One of his fellow roomers was Wulf von Wulfen, a German med student. Jim bought a bike for about $12 soon after he arrived. Less than 2 weeks after his arrival, Wulf offered for sale his motorcycle for $75. His father granted permission, but the couple who oversaw the Junior Year program in Munich refused. Jim rankled under their leadership, and wrote his parents of his disgust at their saying no to the motorcycle, explained his reasoning, and then said “Hence I am going to get it anyway and they can stick their heads in the lake”.

Munich was a hotbed of Nazism. November 9, 1937 was a holiday in commemoration of the Putsch of 1923. There was a big parade in Munich and a speech by Hitler. Jim went over to fellow student Dave Mautz’s place to watch. Mautz lived at Princeregenten Platz 23. Although Hitler lived in Berlin as Chancellor, he kept an apartment in Munich at Princeregenten Platz 16, where Hitler’s half-sister kept house and where Hitler stayed when in Munich. Jim and Dave watched Hitler leave from the apartment for the rally. Jim liked Dave’s living situation and was becoming discouraged with his progress in speaking German. He felt that the group at his rooming house spoke English too much, so Jim moved to Dave Mautz’s place. It was here that Jim first experienced the terror of the Gestapo when they swept his building in preparation for a Hitler visit.

My father was elected President of the Junior Year group. All his life he was comfortable assuming leadership roles, and I can easily imagine him rising to the top in Munich. With some of his fellow students, Jim spent Christmas vacation in Italy, visiting many cathedrals, prompting him to write his parents “Italian churches . . . are not monuments to god, but to the power of the Church. They are houses of delusion, not places of communion with God.” Raised Presbyterian, Jim was growing to detest the trappings and promises of “big religion”, though he was not yet an atheist. It would take the war to accomplish that.

At the end of the school year in the spring of 1938, Jim met his best friend in Hamburg and they went on a motorcycle trip down through southern Germany and France, ending up in Paris for a month or so. Anyone tuned into the situation in Europe knew there would soon be war. Not wanting to be recognized as Americans, who were being stopped and questioned, they outfitted the motorcycle with a swastika flag on the handlebar. They would then roar up to a roadhouse with their leather jackets so everyone would notice the swastika, and swagger into the restaurant with Jim talking German. People assumed they were young Nazis and so kept their distance, which suited Jim and his friend fine, as they could then converse in English. The trip was yet another great experience, and in July Jim boarded ship for home. The next time he set foot in Germany would be in a very different role.

Finding the Time

“Oh, how I wish I had asked my father . . ..” I’ve heard that line from so many contemporaries. Well, I actually did ask him; my father, that is. After all, I had this box of hundreds of letters that he had written, full of references that only he could explain. And in 2010 I retired early, in part so that I could tackle this project. The only thing standing in my way was my father’s reluctance. He was never one to look back. He was a busy and productive man, and the letters were from a time he had tried to forget. But I was persistent, and he knew of my deep interest in family history and respected that interest. So he agreed to go through the letters with me.

My father was Robert James McKay Jr., known as Jim. He turned 93 in 2010 and was still a sharp guy, though he had slowed considerably and was frustrated at his inability to multi-task the way he used to. One day I arrived at his apartment with the box of letters, my laptop, and a small digital recorder. We sat down on the couch with the recorder between us, and I started reading the letters aloud. Over the next couple of years, I spent many days on that couch with him. The box contained not only his WWII letters, but also about 40 childhood letters which began in 1926 when he was nine years old. When a passage stimulated a memory, I recorded whatever my father had to say. As I read letter after letter, I watched him travel back in his mind to those long ago times, remembering people and places he hadn’t thought about in sixty years. When we would stop for lunch, he had to shake himself back to the present. After a few sessions, his reluctance to delve into his past had disappeared.

Jim McKay was a doctor to the core. He knew he wanted to be a doctor at the age of eight. His father was a chemical engineer in New York, and my father grew up in New Jersey in an upper middle class household. Jim was a precocious student and went to private school, graduating from Lawrenceville at the age of 16. His letters from that time are full of his eager participation in everything the school had to offer, as well as careful accounting of his young finances. His parents wanted him to take a year off before going on to college, and Jim wanted to become fluent in either French or German by living in Europe for a time. His parents thought France was too decadent for a seventeen year old boy, so they agreed that he would live in Germany for three or four months, and found a family that would board him. In January, 1935 Jim arrived at Frau Sauer’s house at Oberlindau 94 in Frankfurt. His exposure to Nazi Germany had begun, and I looked forward eagerly to his letters.

Was Your Father in WWII?

I’m looking for a group of people who I know exist, but don’t know where or who you are. I’m searching for baby boomers with fathers who were in WWII. I recently published a book which is a depiction of my father’s experiences as an Army Battalion Surgeon during and after WWII in Europe. There are literally tens of millions of us with fathers who lived through a collective experience that changed their lives, an experience that they almost never mentioned to their families. Most children of WWII vets know little about their service. You may not know the unit your father served in. Some of you don’t even know which branch of the military. Most of those vets are dead now, but it’s not too late. Perhaps this blog will entice you to find out more.

When I started the odyssey of writing my book, I was in the ignorant category. My father was still alive, albeit 92 years old at the time. I wanted to know more about him, and in particular, about a time that I knew must have been crucially formative in his life. That period was the 20 months he spent as a battalion surgeon in Europe during and after WWII. I had heard a few stories over the years, but I knew there was much more that my father didn’t want to remember, let alone talk about. When I found a box of daily letters he had written to my mother I knew I had the means to know my father much better. That box of letters was the seed, but my tree of knowledge about my father grew rapidly, nourished by research, personal conversations, and eventually by travel in Europe.

So why do I want to find others in the same situation? Sure, I want you all to buy my book, but I also want to connect and help others find their own father’s stories. I’ve met a lot of special people in my quest, and I have no doubt this blog will help me meet more.

I’m going to be writing about my odyssey including how I uncovered my father’s secrets, how our relationship evolved as we got deeper into the subject, why I decided to write a book about it, how I went about researching what really happened to my father’s unit in 1944-46, and my own trip to Europe to trace his experiences. Then I expect to get into the publishing saga, continuing into the current challenges of post-publication.

Over the coming months I hope my tales will help many fellow WWII children come to terms with what they don’t know about their fathers in those crucial years before they were born. I hope you read along and launch your own quest. Believe me, if yours is anything like mine, it will be the experience of a lifetime.