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TI: So, Roger, let me summarize this to make sure I have this straight. So July 1, 1960, is when you were finished with your dissertation.

RD: That's right.

TI: But your advisor was traveling. And it was August 1960 where you decided to marry Judith?

RD: Well, I think we decided to marry each other. [Laughs]

TI: And you waited until, you said October? Two more months you waited.

RD: Well, we waited, and actually, it got very complicated. Once we waited, they wanted to have a big fancy wedding and on and on, we were going crazy. And I said, "Listen. We either got to get Cecil B. DeMille to run this thing or get rid of it." Her mother had this stack of invitations all printed and everything else. Used them as bridge scores for years. But they hadn't gone out. So we got married in their living room with her mother, her father, her brother, their maid, the rabbi, the rabbi's wife, and Judith and I. And a chuppah, we had a portable chuppah. Do you know what a chuppah is?

TI: No.

RD: A chuppah is a, in this case, a portable stand with a top on it, and the couple is supposed to be standing under that for some reason or another when they exchange their... so that was done.

BN: And where was this?

RD: In Los Angeles on Holman Avenue if you know where that is. It's very close to UCLA.

BN: Was she also a student?

RD: She was a graduate student, but we never had classes together and we met... I wasn't a TA but I was to finance, as a university scholar they let me keep my desk. And she came to see someone there, she had been, she was doing her undergraduate work at Barnard and got ill and came up and finished at UCLA and had a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in history, and was studying. And she came to see somebody, and we met and had our first date just after the Fourth of July. So it wasn't a whirlwind romance, but it was pretty quick. And "marry in haste, repent at leisure." Well, we've had now fifty-three years to repent and haven't yet, but you know, repentance will come maybe someday.

BN: It seems, I mean, if my math is right, you seemed like you completed your whole PhD program in basically three years.

RD: Less than three years.

BN: And then got married fairly...

RD: I got married, I got an MA, a completed dissertation but not approved, and a fiance in less than three years. But I had some advantages that most doctoral students don't have. I was older, I had been a professional writer, I knew how to write, and I was a fairly quick organizer and writer. The current book, for instance, which is some ninety thousand words, was actually begun last January and completed in November. No, I'm sorry, it was completed in early December, which is pretty quick. Now, most of that was based on research I'd done a long time ago, but there was new material all over the place, and I was able to discover all kinds of oral history materials, some of which were associated, I got at Densho. I'll never forget the video of Gordon's that you sprang at that meeting for the coram nobis thing. It was just...

BN: Did you charge him the fees for that?

RD: No, we don't charge each other. We take each other to dinner, etcetera.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.