Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

on our committee had a very good old English name like Creighton or something of that sort. I always used to pretend that I got them mixed up and used to refer to Mr. La Flame as Father La Flame because he had such a good Catholic name. It was one of our little standing jokes that bound us together.

I got to know Mr. Woodin very well indeed because he was the President of the Merchants Association and they were the financial sponsors of this Council and also were participants in it. They underwrote the budget for one year, or maybe more. They were always the principal contributors. I got to know him very well. He was very delicate about not dominating the Council, but I always went down to confer with him about all kinds of things, talked about policy, program and so forth. He was always interested. I was interested that he was so broad-minded and so level-headed about the desirability, as I saw it, of getting groups of non-English speaking people together and let the suggestion for the starting of a class in English spring from them. Get them to be responsible for it.

New York is the most amazing city when it comes to that. I got to know the Spanish people for the first time.

I knew Woodin very well from that period so that we were not strangers in Washington as members of the same Cabinet.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help