<Begin Segment 55>

AI: So just before our break, you had started telling us about Ralph Hayes, and how you, you met while you were both working in the Rosenwald House in different, in different organizations. But I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you started seeing Ralph socially.

EH: Well, at the, at the Rosenwald house, one of the things that happened was every morning at ten o'clock, these housekeepers would bring in our coffee, and we would move out of our own offices into a more spacious, semi, must have been a den of a kind. And we always had coffee brought in, something to munch on. And, and there again, we had interesting visitors, just casually. These, this wasn't more than a fifteen-, twenty-minute break. And one, one day Ralph said, "I want to see such-and such," some movie, and he went around the room, and everybody had some excuse for why they couldn't go, so I finally said, "Well, okay, I'll go." And started seeing a lot of him.

Even spending Saturday nights and... and pretty soon I took him home for dinner a couple of times, and, and the other thing I was doing, we, my mother and I joined -- well, the whole family joined Lakeview Presbyterian church, which, which was on the north side of Chicago, fairly close to Cubs field. And I began teaching Sunday School there, and then I think maybe I dropped that and I had a youth group, late Sunday afternoon. And in the summertime we would do things in parks, even little discussions, and in those times Ralph would join us. And, and sometimes they were playing volleyball or things like that, and he got along well with the kids, and the kids kind of got a kick out of him. He was older than they were accustomed to having, but the minister found out about it, about Ralph, and I think he came... he came to see us at the park one day, and didn't say much, but then pretty soon at church, he, he wasn't willing to -- he was, his words were, "I don't approve of your seeing that young man," or something like that. And I wasn't (going to) let that bother me, but I knew better than... Ralph wasn't, Ralph knew better than come to church. The kids certainly didn't mind, and I, Ralph didn't stop coming, and I didn't stop seeing him, so finally he got to my mother, and said, "I want to come and talk to you about that young man your daughter's seeing." So he came, and my mother said, "He's very nice. You should, you should talk to him, you should get to know him." And, you know, so that didn't stop and he finally stopped harassing me. But I think in the wintertime, maybe we didn't do that much. I know I took the kids to see some specific movie that we were (going to) talk about. But that kind of ended that issue.

<End Segment 55> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.