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Ms. Rosskam: ... I've got to go back to our work for the Philadelphia Record.
There was a fellow named Roger Butterfield, who was one of the editors. Edwin
had said that if ever took a job like that on a newspaper in Philadelphia, it
would be for one year and that would be it. He didn't want to stay there long
because he had too many relatives in the Philadelphia area! So he went to Roger
Butterfield and told him he'd really like to get out of the country. He asked
him if he could have an assignment somewhere else. Roger told him they really
did need someone in Puerto Rico. They were having some sort of a revolution
there, and there was a fellow named Pedro Albizu Compos, who is leading the
revolution. He told Edwin he could go down there, photograph him with his
cohorts, and get it back as soon as he could. The intended publication for the
photos was LIFE magazine.
We didn't know anything about Puerto Rico, but Edwin had this way about him to
"find a lead" always. We found that Mark Antonio, a politician in the Upper East
Side of New York, was connected with Italians and Puerto Ricans. So we went and
got acquainted with him. We just called him up and told him we had to go to
Puerto Rico, and we asked if he could give us some information. So went up
there, never having met him before or anything, and he was a delight. He bought
us cannoli, do you know what cannoli is?
Mr. Saretzky: Yes.
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, boy, they were wonderful. He told us that if we went down to
Puerto Rico to photograph the nationalists, of course we wouldn't meet their
leader. But he said that other people were there, and if we really were
sympathetic and wanted to know what was going on, then he would give us the
names of some people to contact. So we went down to Puerto Rico. Of course, we
felt that we couldn't get in touch with the nationalists if we were on an
assignment for LIFE magazine, because we felt they would just tell us to go
home. So we met the Governor and told him we wanted to take a little vacation
for three weeks, because the United States already had a program going, and
that's what we were going to photograph. We met these friends of Mark Antonio,
and they were nationalists. See that picture there on the wall? That is when he
got so sick later, and he painted his memories. Those were Puerto Ricans in the
plaza in the southern part of San Juan, Puerto Rico. There had been a
demonstration. The leader of the revolution and his followers wanted to have a
demonstration, and they got permission from the Governor. They went to this
plaza, and the Governor rescinded his permission. So the army was called out,
and they shot at these kids, who were only seventeen or eighteen years old. They
were very enthusiastic and they wanted independence for Puerto Rico. So a bunch
of them were killed. And the worst of it is that the army came in from two
sides, so some of the army people were shot as well.
Mr. Saretzky: So they were shooting at each other.
Ms. Rosskam: So the other young nationalists were put on trial, and they were
convicted. These people in the painting were the parents of the nationalists'
kids who had been shot.
Mr. Saretzky: I can see in the painting that there are bullet marks on the wall.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, Edwin took a photograph of them. I didn't take that, but he
did. So it was pretty hectic.
Mr. Saretzky: Where does Eleanor Roosevelt fit in?
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, I forgot. We both started to do a lot of photography in Puerto
Rico. We had a lot of pictures of the conditions there. The reason the
nationalists wanted to get rid of the United States was because the United
States was being impossible. Horrible things were going on. So we had a very
interesting collection of photographs. The man who became the Governor of Puerto
Rico later, who at that time was a politician, saw the pictures and helped us a
lot. He got to be very friendly with both of us. His future wife and I got to be
very close. We also became friends with Ruby Black, who was a friend of the
Governor's. She was a newspaper woman. Later she became Mrs. Roosevelt's
secretary (or she had been before, I don't remember which way that went). But
she told Mrs. Roosevelt about these wonderful photographs and the terrible
conditions. So Mrs. Roosevelt saw our photographs. When the book was to come
out, Edwin said to this publisher, "You know my name is nothing, and the book is
going to be interesting. But it won't sell without some name, and you have to
get at least a preface by somebody." And the guy said,, "Well, who do you think
you're going to get, the President?" And Edwin said, "No, but maybe the wife of
the President." So Ruby made a date for us, and we went to see her. And that's
another whole story. The night before, we printed a dummy that we were going to
show her. We used a kind of developer that makes your hands all black, and both
of us had black hands. Marion Post, the photographer whom we had met through Roy
Stryker, came to see the dummy. And the night before we were to show it to Mrs.
Roosevelt, she dropped a cup of coffee on it.
Mr. Saretzky: Oh no!
Ms. Rosskam: So the three of us were up all night long, printing the new dummy,
which was about twenty pages long. The next morning we arrived at the White
House with black hands. (Laughter) But Mrs. Roosevelt was lovely, she really
was. She invited us up to her sitting room. She asked Edwin if he'd like a cup
of tea and...[transcriber unclear about what was said here] then she said, "I
think the young man would like a table." Anyway, she looked at the dummy. There
was one picture in the book of the Washington Monument, and way down at the
bottom of it there is a little couple hugging each other. She said, "Isn't that
charming?" And Edwin asked if she'd consider doing a preface for us, and she
said, "Of course. I think I would love to do it." And Edwin said to her, "Mrs.
Roosevelt, I've never hired anybody in my life. This is a professional job, and
I don't know how to approach you." And she said, "I'll do it for love." So she
did, and she wouldn't take any money. So that's how we got that preface.
Mr. Saretzky: In Jack Hurley's book, Portrait of a Decade, he wrote that
Sherwood Anderson did the Face of America series. Now that isn't untrue, is it?
Ms. Rosskam: No, that's not true. He just wrote the text for Home Town, one of
the books in the series. I don't remember Jack Hurley.
Mr. Saretzky: So it was Edwin who really did the Face of America series.
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, yes. Edwin's name was on it as editor, on all of those books.
But anyway, Sherwood Anderson was another nice story. Of course, by that time,
Edwin had been editor for Farm Security and worked with the photography file. It
was the real face of America, it had all sorts of... He liked the name, Home
Town, but then again, he had to have somebody launch it...somebody who was well
respected. Obviously, it was Sherwood Anderson, because he had written Winesburg,
Ohio and all sorts of other things. I have his biography, by the way. It was
interesting.
Mr. Saretzky: So first there was San Francisco and Washington. They came out
about the same time?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. And in the meantime, the publisher went broke.
Mr. Saretzky: And was the next one Home Town? Or was it As Long As the Grass
Shall Grow?
Ms. Rosskam: As Long As the Grass Shall Grow came out in the spring of 1940 and
Home Town, which was about a small, midwestern town, in the fall. After he
decided that he wasn't going to be able to do a book on every city because the
publisher went broke, Edwin decided to do a book on every minority. As Long as
the Grass Shall Grow was about Native Americans. The last one in the series was
Twelve Million Black Voices, published in 1941.
Mr. Saretzky: For Twelve Million Black Voices, Richard Wright wrote the text.
Oliver La Farge did the text for As Long As the Grass Shall Grow.
Ms. Rosskam: And Helen Post did the photography on that. You know, later we went
back to Puerto Rico and lived there for eleven years. Both of our children were
born there. And we had to leave and go to the States because Edwin had been
working for the government of Puerto Rico for a long time. Luis Muñoz Marin was
then running for Governor...or maybe he was already the Governor...I forget what
the politics were. But Edwin had been in an outfit which was interested in
native Puerto Rican culture. One of the things that they did there was to make
little statues. They are little things that Puerto Ricans would put up on a
little altar and pray to. They were all hand-carved and wonderful examples of
local craft. Edwin had a friend who collected them. By that time Edwin was the
head of an organization called Community Education, which tried to get each
community to try to work out its own problems instead of depending on the
government. And they made movies and little booklets and so on.
Mr. Saretzky: Let's just try and get the chronology down a little bit. That long
period that you spent in Puerto Rico, that was after Edwin worked for Stryker at
FSA?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. After Stryker had already gone into Standard Oil.
Mr. Saretzky: Let's go back to the earlier period when Edwin joined the Farm
Security Administration staff as an editor.
Ms. Rosskam: At that time, Edwin really couldn't get out to take photographs
much. Both John Vachon, who was the other editor of the File, and Edwin wanted
to be photographers. But Roy said they couldn't go out taking pictures because
he needed them in the File. I had a job then. I really was a photographer then
by that time.
Mr. Saretzky: And who were you working for?
Ms. Rosskam: When we first got started, I set up a darkroom. I was trying to
just take some picture because I was always interested in kids. I had taught at
a progressive school and so forth. I found an old friend who had a toy shop in
Washington, who needed some photographs of his little girl. So I did a whole
little study of his little girl. He put it up in the shop to show how nice it
looked. And then I began to get requests to do this one, and that one, and this
one, etc. So I did about fifteen or so of those. I always had the family give me
a week's access to the house so I could come back and forth at any time such as
in the morning, or when they went to bed. So I had a little study of each child.
Then I would bound them and give them the extra prints. I charged $100 for each
book, but I hated to have all these extra prints when they would like them, you
know. So instead of charging for them, I would just give them the extra prints.
Mr. Saretzky: And these were all Washington families?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. They were all very interesting people. But Edwin said my
profession was costing him a fortune! (Laughter) So one day I got a call from
somebody on Collier's, that there was an old sea captain coming in, and they
couldn't find a photographer. I told them I couldn't photograph sea captains,
and the lady told me to just bring my equipment and they would work it out. So I
went. By that time I was using a speed graphic with a (4 by 5?) back and a lot
of lights. Every shot had three lights because I wanted a back light, a
highlight, and a fill-in light like this. Anyway, I had all this wire and junk.
I got up to Washington with all this stuff, and here was this delightful old sea
captain. I got all set up, you know. And he said to me, "Young lady, I think you
should take the slide out of the back of your camera." (Laughter)
Mr. Saretzky: He was right!
Ms. Rosskam: But I did get the picture, and that was the first really
professional thing I did. Another time General Stillwell came to Washington, and
all the press was there. They were all doing black-and-whites and Collier's
wanted a color cover. So here I come after all these "hot shots" with my little
Nikon, and I had a way of holding the flash way off so it wasn't flat light. So
I came last because they were all finished, and he was still standing there. I
mean I was terrified, really terrified because this was a color shot. I had to
dream up a colored background, and I didn't want to have a flag, you know. I
forget what I did, but I had something in the background. He was very tired and
annoyed, and he didn't like the press at all, so I thought I had better say
something to him. So I said, "General, when you were out there, did you ever
think of a big, fat juicy steak"? He said, "What?" And it was awful, but when
you are getting started you make mistakes. I mean I really was not a real
honest-to-goodness photographer. Kids were fine because you could play around
with them and all that, but generals? So afterward, I did a lot of work on my
own without Edwin, because he was busy over at FSA.
Mr. Saretzky: You said that he had some frustrations working with Roy Stryker
because he wanted to go out and take some pictures.
Ms. Rosskam: That's right.
Mr. Saretzky: If I might ask, didn't he also want to give directions to the
photographers?
Ms. Rosskam: Oh yes, he wanted the photographers to take shooting scripts. They
didn't like that.
Mr. Saretzky: But Roy wanted to do his own directions.
Ms. Rosskam: Well, Roy had a different idea. He didn't believe in shooting
scripts for people to follow. He thought that might frustrate them when they saw
things on their own. They wanted to get the "feel" for things and didn't want to
have to go back and ask permission to get the shot. Roy didn't think that was a
good thing to do.
Mr. Saretzky: Did Edwin ever actually prepare shooting scripts?
Ms. Rosskam: He did, but they got to be sort of... I think they all exist
somewhere... but Roy had another way of influencing people completely. He would
just talk. He had them read stuff, like this book called Storm. Everybody had to
read Storm. He was really amazing. But Edwin was very much more organized. How
Roy ever got anything done, I don't know, because he was totally unorganized.
Edwin was used to discipline, but they got along well. Some of the photographers
didn't like it if Edwin wrote a shooting script, so they just didn't follow it.
Mr. Saretzky: Do you think Edwin would have liked to have had Roy's job?
Ms. Rosskam: Oh no, never. Never in the world...absolutely not. When Roy worked
for Standard Oil later, we were in Pittsburgh. We were in a very fancy hotel
because the Standard Oil people thought you had to live well. It looked like the
wood was black. They hadn't taken all the soot out of the steel works yet. Even
the cats on the street were black, whether they were white cats or gray cats.
And the phone rang. We were sitting by the window feeling kind of gloomy, and it
was Roy. And he asked Edwin if he wanted to go to Puerto Rico because his friend
Rex Tugwell was Governor down there, and he wanted to start a File like theirs.
He said Edwin was the only one that could do it. So Edwin asked when we would
go...he didn't ask what we'd get paid or anything.
Mr. Saretzky: This was when Roy Stryker headed up a documentary photography
project for Standard Oil of New Jersey, which I think is now Exxon. But at that
time it was Standard Oil. Just to review a little bit about the sequence here,
Roy Stryker had been the Director of the Historical Section of the Farm Security
Administration. There he had engaged in a documentary photography project for
the federal government. Then he, along with the FSA photo file, was transferred
to the Office of War Information. And then after a relatively brief period, he
left the federal government and got another position working for Standard Oil,
where again he had the opportunity to hire photographers, some of whom were the
same photographers he had worked with before at the FSA.
Ms. Rosskam: That's also when I was hired as a photographer.
Mr. Saretzky: After Edwin left the Farm Security Administration, you two went
off and did something else for awhile. As I understand it, Edwin came back and
worked with Roy at FSA, then at OWI. Roy went to Standard Oil and asked if both
you would like to work for him at Standard Oil.
Ms. Rosskam: At Standard Oil, we worked for over a year. We really traveled
together, and I did a lot of photography.
Mr. Saretzky: In his interview with Richard K. Doud, about thirty-five years
ago, Roy Stryker said that you and Edwin worked marvelously together as a team.
Ms. Rosskam: We really did. We were always a team. Edwin was basically the idea
man. He had been a painter and knew how to look at things, and I was sort of
into the analysis because I had done that kind of thing at work. So when we went
on a story, we were like one person, like a team. I don't know how to explain
it. For example, if Edwin was doing something that needed three flashes, I would
hold one and he would hold another, and we had a signal system worked out.
Everything was coordinated in our lives. The same thing was true even when we
traveled. When we were out in San Francisco, for instance, I know we had a
darkroom and a Murphy bed. You would open the Murphy bed in the closet, you
know, and it made a perfect darkroom. And I could set up a darkroom in
half-an-hour. I kept justifying this to my daughter all the time. She said Pop
was always the big shot and I just followed along, but that isn't the way it
worked.
Mr. Saretzky: Now the largest project that you did for Standard Oil resulted in
the book Towboat River, which really is a classic
photo documentary book.
Ms. Rosskam: Well, what happened was the Standard Oil Company had a magazine
called The Lamp. And every issue of The Lamp had some photographs in it. We had
some photographs; all the photographers did. Once we happened to be in Memphis
and we saw these towboats using a lot of oil. And Standard Oil shipped oil. The
towboats weren't really towing anything, they were little stern-wheeled boats,
and they actually pushed a bunch of barges. And the barges had to be all
connected so that they could be dropped off along the way down south. And that
was all together a very complicated operation. It was absolutely fascinating! So
we got on one of those boats, I think it was in Memphis or somewhere along
there, and we went all the way down to New Orleans. Edwin, who was a really good
writer, wrote the story. And it was published in The Lamp, and it got such a
reaction that we thought it really could be a whole book. So Edwin made a
dummy...did you see that dummy?
Mr. Saretzky: Yes.
Ms. Rosskam: And he took it to a publisher, and they took one look at it and
thought it was great. They gave us a big advance, but we were no longer working
for Standard Oil at that time. We were both off the payroll at that point, so
Standard Oil had nothing to do with the publication of this book. There is one
picture in it that shows "S.O." but other than that, there is no reference to
the company. We went over to Pittsburgh where they were building these towboats,
and I think there are some pictures of those. Then we went back up the Ohio
River for awhile and then up the Monongahela River, where the big iron and steel
companies are. And then...I'm trying to think how the oil got into the barges.
What the barges did was to deliver the oil to various places all along the
Mississippi and Ohio. But how did the oil get in the barges? There is a picture
of it in there.
Mr. Saretzky: How long did you spend working on this?
Ms. Rosskam: Two years. Two full years.
Mr. Saretzky: And during a lot of that time, you were riding on these towboats?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. We would get on a towboat in Pittsburgh, for instance. Then
we'd go down maybe to...I'd have to look at a map. Then we'd get off that
towboat and get on another towboat, until we got all the way.
Mr. Saretzky: How did you persuade the captains of these boats to take you on
board, host you and feed you, and let you live on them for such a long time?
Ms. Rosskam: The captain of the boat was always getting paid for his work by the
Standard Oil Company, because they contracted with these barges to be delivered.
So we always had an introduction from them. I think...I don't know.
Mr. Saretzky: It sounds like, "Well, let's go to work on this boat for a couple
of years, and it's like a free hotel room, and we'll see the world from this
boat." And you said the food was marvelous and the people were great.
Ms. Rosskam: You know, I honestly don't know how we did it! But obviously they
gave us introductions because when we started in Pittsburgh, our introduction
was to the shipbuilders who were building boats. Now the Standard Oil Company
didn't own those boats, but they did own the barges.
Mr. Saretzky: So you had that helpful connection.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, that must have been the connection.
Mr. Saretzky: Now one of the aspects of this project that I find really
fascinating is that you also recorded their voices. You and Edwin really were
pioneering oral historians.
Ms. Rosskam: Well Edwin was, because he drew that up. He had worked with Roy
Stryker on the Historical Section, which had similar objectives. When we worked
for Standard Oil, everywhere we went, we really tried to get the feel of what
the people were talking about and how they were living. But we never recorded
anything then. When we started Towboat River, Edwin thought we really never got
to remember everything the captain said. So he went to some sort of business
company, and he asked how their stenographers recorded what they said. Of course
by that time, they weren't taking shorthand anymore. There were these round
discs called "Soundscribers." He asked if they were really reliable, if you
could really transcribe them on a typewriter. They asked him if he wanted to
hear it, and they demonstrated it for him. And then he told them he needed three
microphones, and they told him that would require an awful lot of wire. And
Edwin didn't care, so he got them to make a setup where there was a recorder
with three microphones. He had one, I had another, and the captain had the
third. This way three people were always recording. Sometimes it was just the
captain, or maybe it was just Edwin, and sometimes I just said what I was going
to have to do. But it worked out fine. We had all these discs and soon as we got
to a place where we could hire a stenographer, we had them transcribed. By the
way, I don't remember how we got paid for all that time. At Standard Oil we got
so much money that we didn't know what to do with it all. So I guess we used
that money to do this book, because each of us got a hundred and fifty dollars
week, and at that time it was just a fortune. We didn't use it because we didn't
really need it, so we probably put it in the bank or something.
Mr. Saretzky: So in a way, Standard Oil indirectly funded this book.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, that's right. But I don't ever remember getting paid while we
were doing it. I know we got a big advance, and then we got royalties. So that's
how it must have been, now that I think about it.
Mr. Saretzky: When this book came out, the reviews were marvelous. You shared
some of those with me, and I was so impressed by reading the reviews. They just
raved about this book! It was interesting to me to see that at the same time
another photography book came out by Clarence John Laughlin, Ghosts on the
Mississippi, which was about the old mansions. And they compared your book to
his book, and they said your book was a superior book. And that book has been
reprinted a number of times and is well known today. Why did your book never get
reprinted?
Ms. Rosskam: I don't know, it would be great. Of course, it's way out of date
now. We never even thought about it, we just loved the whole two years. It was
marvelous. We didn't have any children then, so we could do it. Life on the
boats was absolutely incredible. Sometimes you could walk all the way out on the
tow to the very end, and I used to love to do that at dusk. You'd hear the
boilers swishing and the lights along the shore...it was like another country.
Mr. Saretzky: Looking at those books, this one being really the last in a series
starting with San Francisco and Washington then the one about the Native
Americans and then Home Town and Twelve Million Black Voices, and then this one,
they are all wonderful books. But to me, this one is kind of a peak. You spent
two years working on this book, and it shows. It is a wonderful book. Why wasn't
there another one after this?
Ms. Rosskam: By us you mean?
Mr. Saretzky: Yes.
Ms. Rosskam: Because you couldn't find another one like that, that would be in
any way like it.
Mr. Saretzky: Wasn't there ever another topic about which you got enthusiastic
and wanted to do a book about?
Ms. Rosskam: Well, let me try to think where we were. I'm trying to think why
there wasn't another topic.
Mr. Saretzky: This book was published in 1948.
Ms. Rosskam: Then we went back to Puerto Rico, that's why. We got totally
involved in life there, not only the life but the politics there. See we had met
Luis Muñoz Marin before when we left the Philadelphia Record. We had met him and
he and Edwin hit it off right away. Once we got into Puerto Rico, it was such a
totally different life. We also got involved in the politics there.
Mr. Saretzky: You didn't first go there as a result of Roy Stryker?
Ms. Rosskam: No, not at all. We went there from the Philadelphia Record, we were
there just for two months.
Mr. Saretzky: That was a short time.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes.
Mr. Saretzky: But then you went back.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. The reason we went back was not because of Roy but because of
Rex Tugwell. You see Roy and Tugwell were professors together.
Mr. Saretzky: Roy reported to Rex in Washington. Rex was the head of the FSA.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. That's right. Tugwell got down there on this own. He had been
in politics in Washington. When he went to Puerto Rico, first he was Dean of the
University. Then he was appointed Governor. He wasn't elected, he was appointed.
And he was the first decent Governor they ever had. He and Muñoz Marin got along
very well, but they were on two totally different levels. There are stories
about that that are just fascinating. Anyway, Tugwell was a very pompous kind of
guy. He was brilliant, and handsome, and all of that, and he was super
organized. He instituted the Planning Board, which they had never had before.
Before, somebody would say to the Governor that they wanted to be the head of
this department, and that was it. But Tugwell really organized their economics,
which was a disaster. Muñoz tried to keep people happy. So I remember one night,
Tugwell made a speech and he was picketed. Muñoz made a speech the next day, and
they loved him. There was a story about that...I wish I could remember the
wording. Muñoz said, "Why are you picketed and I'm not?" But anyway, I forget
how the rest went, but that was the difference between the two men. Everybody
loved Muñoz and adored him, and people resented Tugwell, although he made their
life possible.
Mr. Saretzky: Maybe he was cooler?
Ms. Rosskam: He was organized and used to government organization where you have
a....
Mr. Saretzky: Bureaucracy.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, a bureaucracy that works a certain way, and that was the way
it had to be. The Planning Board was what he organized there, which was
wonderful. But the people hated it.
Mr. Saretzky: So when was it that you came to Roosevelt, New Jersey, here in
Monmouth County?
Ms. Rosskam: Well, after we had gone down there and gotten so involved because
Edwin had started that whole government photography file there, he and Jack
Delano worked together. Jack's wife, Irene, worked with them too. They started
this sort of a propaganda outfit, really. It was not supposed to be run by the
popular party; it was supposed to be run by the government. They set up an
organization which was called Community Education. The idea was, and they sold
this idea to Muñoz because he hadn't thought of it yet, to get the people not to
be dependent on the government for everything. Jack, Irene and Edwin thought of
this. They wanted the people to be able to organize themselves and get things
going for themselves. The problem was, they didn't know enough to do that. There
would be people who had never left their little town to go the neighboring town
in their lives. So the idea was to show the people a bigger picture of their
lives, really...not just their tiny, little town or home. They set up little
organizations in the little towns all over the island, and somebody was the,
well not the mayor because that would have been too official, but perhaps would
be a local teacher. They would produce material for that person to use. They
made these little booklets, and they made movies, and they made posters. They
would go around with an electric generator, and Jack was the one who made all
the movies. Edwin tried to hire local writers, but he never could find any
writers so he had to do most of the writing himself. The photography was done by
all of us. They would take a generator and go up to a little town. First they
would put the posters up that there was a movie coming. Then they distributed
these little books, because the kids could read them to their parents. Then the
night came when they were going to show the movie, and they came with their
generators and screen and everything, and all the people would be coming from
all around.
One of the first ones they did was on boiling your water because there was so
much dysentery around. So they showed this water in a big can being boiled, and
then they showed these big flies which carried germs. The very first one that
they showed, the people said, "We don't have to worry about that. We don't have
big flies like that." (Laughter) So they had to learn a lot about making movies
for so-called "primitive" people. Anyway, they worked on that for ten years. And
all that time Muñoz was the elected Governor. The first elected governor there
was Jesus Pinero. Then Muñoz was elected. Community Education was getting a
little worried because in order for them to get funding, Muñoz had to put them
into the sports and recreation department. They should have probably been in the
university, but the university didn't want them. The university wanted their own
funding. For about five, six or maybe seven years they were in the sports and
recreation department. Then they decided that, since they were an education
organization, they really ought to get an educator because none of us were
educators. We didn't really know what we were doing. We just did it. So Jack,
Edwin and Irene decided they should bring in an educator. They found this guy
named Fred Wale, whom I think was at Columbia. They invited him down and showed
him what they were doing and all, and he got fascinated and accepted the job.
But sooner or later, he took over. And he ousted Jack, Edwin and Irene. And that
was a disaster. I mean it was a disaster for Jack, Edwin and Irene.
Mr. Saretzky: And then you came back?
Ms. Rosskam: No, we didn't come back right away. Muñoz got very sore about the
whole thing, and he insisted that Edwin move into the Governor's Palace and run
his publicity. So we stayed for a few more years. Jack became head of the Puerto
Rican National Television Station, and Irene started the Tourist Guide. It was
beautiful...you never saw one like that before. I have lots of copies of it. And
I had two children.
Mr. Saretzky: Were your children born in Puerto Rico?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes.
Mr. Saretzky: What are their names?
Ms. Rosskam: We didn't want them to have names that didn't work in both Spanish
and English. The first one was called Susan Emma Rosskam, and Emma was her
grandmother's name. Everybody there called her Susa, which is bad because it
means "dirty" there. But we didn't realize that. And Anni's name was Anita
Louise Rosskam. "Anni" is the way you would say her name in Spanish.
Mr. Saretzky: So after a few more years working Muñoz, then you came to New
Jersey?
Ms. Rosskam: Well, what happened was, things began to get very politically hot.
Edwin's organization was really trying to show people their own work, See those
little statues over there? They are called "Santos," and the people would make a
little altar and that's where they would pray. And they would make these statues
themselves, and it's a real art form. Now they are collector's items. One of the
people who was a very good friend of Jack, Irene, Edwin and myself, made a
collection of these statues. So we all thought that this would be a very good
thing to show in the art museum. It would show that the people could produce
things themselves. They didn't have to go to the store and buy them. So they had
a wonderful exhibit but unfortunately, at the entrance of this exhibit was a
large "Santo" of Jesus, and he had a very big penis! (Laughter) So there was a
Catholic guy there who was violently anti- Muñoz. He absolutely hated Muñoz. He
came down to this show, and he published a big article in the paper that Muñoz
was sponsoring pornographic images was against the Catholic Church. Oh, I tell
you, it was a disaster! They accused Edwin of being a Communist, and the whole
thing kind of broke loose. So by that time this new head had come in, and Edwin
was really working for Muñoz. Muñoz was running for Governor on the third or
fourth term, or something like that. We thought we were really standing in his
way. We were very, very, very close friends. Edwin decided we better think of
going. There were other reasons too, including our daughters. Life for girls
there was very formal. You have to move with important people, you know, and all
their girls "come out" at the age of fifteen. They have to have gowns that cost
$500, and we didn't think that was going to be good for our girls to grow up
that way. So that was another reason that we wanted to come back. We wrote to
everybody that we knew in San Francisco, and we wrote to Ben Shahn, who was a
friend of ours by that time. And his wife Bernarda answered immediately. She
told us to come to Roosevelt, that it was a wonderful place in New Jersey. She
said there was beautiful scenery and we wouldn't have to worry about our
children if they got lost in town, somebody would bring them back. She also said
that down the road there was a pre-fab factory, so they could build us a studio.
We considered all the other ideas, and we felt that this sounded the best. So we
came here, and it was really complicated. The house they had found for us wasn't
for sale, and we had to park our children in Atlantic City at my sister's house
while we hung around here to try to find another house. And that's how we got
involved in Monmouth County.
Mr. Saretzky: And this was in the 1950s?
Ms. Rosskam: This was in 1952. By the way, at first we thought the scenery was
horrible. It was all flat and we couldn't find any ocean, so we went swimming in
a big lake down the road. But anyway, we did begin to get adjusted to it, and
people here were so friendly. After we had lived here quite awhile, Muñoz' older
daughter married somebody who was working in New York City in the slums. It was
very bad for those children because they weren't allowed out on the street, so
they decided to move here near us. This would mean their children could be free.
And that was funny because the children had never actually played with other
children before. They used to have to sit in the window and watch everything
going on like sniffing gasoline out of the tanks of cars, swiping stuff, and all
that type of thing. So the first thing they did when they came here was to
decide since all these cars were sitting around with the keys in them, they
could get stolen. In New York, you didn't leave your key in your car. So they
took all the keys out of the cars up and down the whole street, and they threw
all the keys away. (Laughter)
Mr. Saretzky: They threw all the keys away and nobody could go anywhere?
Ms. Rosskam: That's right. It was awful. They had been caged up there on the
fourth floor where they lived, and the children across the street were allowed
to go out. They had a bird, which was in a cage, and when everybody was out one
day, they decided to release this bird. They thought it was mean to keep
something in a cage. They felt they had been in a cage for some time, so they
released it. Of course, there was all heck to pay, and luckily the bird didn't
fly away. He flew up into a curtain rod, so they got him back. Our friends, the
Muñoz family, would come to visit all the time.
Mr. Saretzky: Their parents.
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, and they came with their bodyguards. They had a car in front
and one in back. He liked to drink a lot, too. One night he was sitting right
here, and he drank a whole bottle of Irish whiskey. But he wasn't an alcoholic,
he just liked drinking, I guess.
Mr. Saretzky: Did you have a very active social life here in Roosevelt?
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, yes.
Mr. Saretzky: Was everybody going to everyone else's house?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, absolutely. It was very open. As a matter of fact when we
moved into this house, it had venetian blinds that I didn't like. So I asked a
neighbor, who was helping us, how I could get other blinds. So she said to me,
"What do you like, privacy?" So we never did get any other blinds. So that's the
way it was. People were very friendly. The whole town was friendly. Of course,
now it's different, because it's a whole new generation. At that time, there
were only about three or four non-Jewish families in the whole town. It was the
only town where there was no church but there was a synagogue. And that was
active. We had never been very religious. I hadn't been as a child and Edwin had
been in Germany and wanted to forget the whole thing if he could. It was a very
traumatic thing, you know. I suppose that should have made us want to be more
Jewish, but we had lived a very free life of artists, writers, painters and so
on. And we never really thought about being Jewish, although we didn't say that
we weren't or anything like that, like my older brother did, whom I resent to
this day. Down in Puerto Rico, the big holiday is Three Kings Day. The children
put something under their bed with some water, and the Three Kings come and eat
the treat, drink the water, and leave a gift. It's like Santa Claus, except it's
the Three Kings. Then when the Americans came down, Santa Claus started coming
around, so they started to have Christmas trees. Then came Hanukkah, for
everyone who was Jewish. So there were three holidays. When we came here, we had
a Christmas tree the first year. Ani had a little friend that lived up the
street. She came into the house and said, "I didn't know you had a Christmas
tree. I thought you were Jewish." So Ani told her she was half Jewish and half
Christmas! (Laughter) So that's the way it's been really.
Mr. Saretzky: Did you and Edwin get at all involved in the government of the
town?
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, yes, sure. I was on the Board of Education, but Edwin never ran
for anything here. The first year when we first came up, he really went into a
decline...a real decline. He just could not adjust to leaving Puerto Rico, with
the situation and the politics there. He just couldn't seem to do anything. It
was very serious. But luckily he had a wonderful, old friend we had known for
years and years in New York. He was a doctor, but he was also a psychiatrist.
Finally, I told Edwin he had to talk to Frank, that it was getting ridiculous.
So Edwin went in and started to have talks with him. His name was Frank Safford.
Frank told Ed that he was a writer and shouldn't be sitting around. He asked him
if he had a typewriter, and Edwin told him yes. So Frank told him to go home and
write. This was a year after we got back from Puerto Rico, and so then Edwin
started to really write. He wrote Alien, a novel about Puerto Rico.
By that time he was fine, and I was working at the school. And he was still
doing jobs for Puerto Rico. More and more Puerto Ricans were coming up to the
States. The first thing he did was a movie on how to prepare people to and what
you would need when you got here, like having to need a coat and all the ways to
adjust to being up North. So that took quite awhile. Then we went back to Puerto
Rico for a whole year, because Muñoz wanted Edwin to do something for the party.
I think it was a movie they were going to make. So we stayed there for a whole
year. The kids went to school there. We traveled back and forth.
Mr. Saretzky: And you kept the house?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes. We had a friend who used it as his studio. He was writing a
book. It was such a close community here. Dave Martin lived across the street,
we'd go back and forth, and it was like one family. Maybe it was mostly the
writers and artists, but the other people were just as friendly. By the way,
since we're here in Monmouth County, Ben Shahn had told me how beautiful it was
around here. I used to go driving around and think it was beautiful, but it was
so flat. But then I began to notice the farming, and it was really an eye
opener. In Puerto Rico there is just a burst of color all the time, and the
farming is mostly growing sugar cane and tobacco, but nothing that you could
eat. Driving around here, it took me about three years to be able to really see
Monmouth County. Gradually it got to be so interesting that I began to
photograph vegetables, farms, and things like that. And then the real turnabout
was...well I guess I didn't tell you about when Ben died. That was just horrible
for everybody. He used to like to stay up late at night. He would come and sit
here, and he liked some of the things I used to make like little fruit tarts. He
and Edwin would just talk and talk, and they got to be so close. It was almost
like one family. Their daughter babysat for my kids, and Bernarda and I got to
be very close friends. We had our own little group. And then Ben got cancer, and
it was a very long illness. First his liver went on the blink and he was in the
hospital in New York. Anni used to work for him in his library. He liked Anni a
lot. She used to draw, and he let her sit in the studio and draw for him. He
asked Anni one summer what she was going to do, and she told him nothing. So he
told her he'd give her a job. He told her to come to the house every morning at
ten o'clock, start at one end of the bookcase and go all the way down to the
other end, and put a little mark on the outside what it is. But he told her that
she had to look at all the pictures first. That was pretty decent of him. That
was when she wasn't even in high school. So she went over every day and looked
at every book, and she put a little mark on the outside. Of course Bernarda had
a fit about it, because she felt it spoiled the cover. But that's the way it
was, and then he died. It was just awful. Anni was at Solebury School at that
time, and I thought she would have a nervous breakdown. She was so fond of him.
And Edwin was devastated. And that's when Edwin got the idea to write the
Roosevelt book. First he wanted to write a book about Ben. He went to the
publisher he was dealing with and suggested the idea. That was Dick Grossman of
Grossman Publishing. But Dick thought it was too soon, that he shouldn't think
about it yet. He told him to think about something else about Ben to write
about, so that's when Edwin decided to do the Roosevelt book, where he taped all
the people's conversation.
Mr. Saretzky: Tell me about Roosevelt, New Jersey: Big Dreams in a Small Town &
What Time Did to Them.
Ms. Rosskam: He wanted to do a book really as a tribute to Ben. Ben was like the
king around here. But he didn't want to make the book just about Ben, so he
decided to think about the town itself because Ben had introduced us to
everything about the way the town started, etc. Edwin thought there were a bunch
of people around there he didn't even know. So he got a tape recorder and
started asking people if he could tape their stories about how they got here and
how they felt about it and so on. I've got a great bunch of tapes in here that
he did. Sometimes they would come over and sit here, and sometimes he would go
there. He taped about seventy people at least, including Bernarda and other good
friends of Ben's that had ideas about him. By that time, I was teaching in the
school, so I didn't have much to do with all of this. I didn't even always read
everything because if I had, I would have cut out one sentence -- one woman got
so mad that she never spoke to him again.
Mr. Saretzky: Was it true what he said in that sentence?
Ms. Rosskam: It was absolutely true, but it was very derogatory. Then he had a
neighbor of Ben's transcribe the whole thing. She wrote down everything, and
then out of that he made the book. He had to work from that. We had gone to
Venice. I had gotten sick and thought I would have to have an operation, but it
ended up I didn't have to. So Edwin asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate,
where I would like to go. And I told him to Venice, never giving it a second
thought. He went and bought the tickets, and we went to Venice. We stayed there
for a few months, and in that few months this book came out. And our name was
mud. The residents of Roosevelt got angry if they weren't in the book, and they
got angry if they were in the book because they felt they were misquoted.
Sometimes they weren't even quoted and they said they were misquoted! In the
book, all the names were changed. And when we got back, we found out that they
were circulating a dictionary that told who the names really were. So it was a
little difficult.
Mr. Saretzky: Why was it decided not to use the real names of people? Was it
because it was too frank?
Ms. Rosskam: Yes, it was too frank, and it was almost like fiction. I don't
think he could've used their real names. He would have had to get releases, of
course. Actually one person came to me and said Edwin had done this whole tape
on her, and she wanted to destroy it. She wanted me to get it for her. I did and
took it over to her. She was the mother of four girls and evidently, she didn't
want the girls to read what she had said. So I destroyed it right in front of
her...tore it up and threw it away. That was the only one that had an objection.
Mr. Saretzky: But Ben Shahn's name was used.
Ms. Rosskam: Oh, yes. He had died but Bernarda talked a great deal about him,
and so did a fellow named Ed Schlintsky. Did you ever know him?
Mr. Saretzky: No.
Ms. Rosskam: Well he was a big character...a fascinating character. He also has
died, but his former wife still lives here. He was a marvelous, unusual artist.
He did papier-mâché caricatures. They were big ones, and they were wonderful.
And he also painted and drew, and Ben influenced him a great deal. He loved Ben,
and Ben was very fond of him. So Edwin interviewed him a long time about
Ben...the two of them talked about Ben. That was really the high point of the
book, I think.
Mr. Saretzky: Let's go back to the pictures that you were making of Monmouth
County. You did some barns.
Ms. Rosskam: It was after Edwin died, which to me was like the end of the world
because we had never, ever been apart. All those years we were always together
and always doing something together. Even if we weren't doing something, we were
together. I mean we had one little "up and down" point, but everyone has that.
Sherwood Anderson solved that problem. I was getting very dependent on Edwin
when we were first together in New York. I was just following him around. Edwin
just moved up to a hotel, so I decided I had better start doing things on my
own. It was a wonderful chance because PAC, the Political Action Committee, was
very active. And that's where I really got to know Ben and David Stone Martin
and all. I started photographing these lines of people waiting to vote, and one
of them is now in the Library of Congress. They bought it. So I really got out
on my own then. That's when I took the picture of the man in the zoot suit,
later used in Twelve Million Black Voices. But one night, Sherwood Anderson came
over and asked me to go to dinner with him. I said fine, and we went to
Charles...that fancy restaurant. Did you ever know that restaurant in New York?
Mr. Saretzky: No.
Ms. Rosskam: Anyway, we spent a nice time talking. And then we went the five
flights up, and he took me all the way home. As we got to the door, he told me
he thought I should call Ed. And then he walked down the stairs and said
goodbye. So I wondered why he said that...he saw Edwin every day. I thought
maybe he knew something, and so I did call Edwin. And he was back at the
apartment in about fifteen minutes. That was the end of that problem. But really
the thing was, it had gotten me out on my own. I went out with a camera without
Edwin, and I found out I could do it. That was really the beginning of my
getting up the nerve to really do photography.
Mr. Saretzky: What happened when Edwin passed away?
Ms. Rosskam: He had been sick for six years, and I just never left the hospital.
I was there all the time. Before that, though, he had started to paint. He
painted his memories, and he hadn't touched a canvas from the time he got
divorced. It wasn't the kind of painting that goes on these days, but to me they
were wonderful. Every one is somebody I know and that he knew. Finally he had
lung cancer, and I was at the hospital all the time. And Anni was there most of
the time, too. One day the doctor told me he didn't think Edwin had a chance, so
I said we were going to take him home then. They told me I couldn't handle that,
but Anni and I got in the car with Edwin and came home. Luckily we were involved
in a thing they call hospice care, so the nurses came. This one particular nurse
told me that whatever happens, day or night, just get on the phone and call me,
and I'll be right over. She lived in Monmouth County somewhere. And really they
are angels! They are wonderful. So really I couldn't handle it anymore. He had
been in bed all afternoon, but a whole bunch of people came over because they
knew how sick he was. And we had an intercom system set up. And all of a sudden
we hear, "Hey, what the heck is going on in there"? So one by one everybody went
in and talked to him. I didn't even know that he could even say anything at that
point. But anyway, that night he died at about four in the morning. That nurse
stayed. The Monmouth County nurses are unbelievable. We could be right with him,
Anni and I, and the nurse. So it was very hard.
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