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nice letters in their own handwriting, you know, not even typed, that becomes part of a packet. A huge packet of materials! You should see the proposal that we submitted to the endowments. It was a proposal of about ninety pages plus documentation, plus letters from everybody. A letter from Coretta King, a letter from Andy Young. I was pulling out every stop, you know, every big name I could get -- Governor Carey's letter -- on how important this is. So it was, you know, a big time thing.

Anyway, I'm backing and forth but the big problem -- oh. George Weissman sent me to the Rockefellers -- Elizabeth McCormick of the Rockefeller Foundation. She represents the third generation. She was very interested. Someone worked with her and met with me and tried to help but it didn't work. Madeleine Lee, Lydia Bronte, at the Rockefeller Humanities Foundation was helpful. Oh! John McGuire at Westbury -- Jack McGuire is the guy. Then at the United Hospital Fund we got a grant of forty thousand dollars for conferences on health care that are part of the proposal -- you know, “Patient Care -- The Workers' Responsibilities,” a series of conferences in different hospitals. Once starting in the union, and then spreading to hospitals.

The big problem came with the question of NEA. I never knew what was happening there. I never could tell if we were in or out, and Jack [Golodner] was meeting with people and calling me, and I was calling him and “What's happening?” -- it was a puzzlement. David -- what was his name? He was the assistant to Biddle. I'll come across his name again. He was very excited and interested and he said, “We'll have to do something, we'll have to try, but it's difficult, it's difficult.” Meanwhile we're running in to late August-September. The project has to start in January. We've got no funding commitments from NEA. NEH is quite clear that we're going to be all right.

As a matter of fact NEH came through on the day I was having -- was meeting -- I held a meeting with Arthur Sackler. Sackler Museum at Harvard. Millionaire. Stanley knew him. He was a left-winger when he went to college. Finally I went to meet with him -- he was double talking me for a long time -- and I went to meet with him in his home. He gave me a thousand dollars. But this was a meeting in his board room. Someone came in to the board room and said, “There's a message for you to call Lynn Smith.” I said, “I'll call her back.” When I called back -- I got out, the meeting was finished, I called back -- Lynn Smith said, “Moe, 350,000 for two years -- we are so excited. We are so happy, but you must not say a word about it to anybody. It's not yet official, but that's what you're going to get. It's wonderful -- we're celebrating here. We got it.”