D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A Frederick Albert, a German Nazi soldier who was an American prisoner of war encamped outside Phoenix, Arizona, met the woman, Elinor Powell, a young lady from New England serving as an U.S. Army nurse in the prisoner of war camp. Ms. Powell also happened to be a woman of color. “Happened to be” is putting it mildly for those times 75 years ago, when black/white relationships were practically verboten with the Jim Crow attitudes prevailing. Most people today, even those who shout “racist” about others than themselves, have no idea what people of color had to
deal with just to get by in the Jim Crow era. It was openly, deeply oppressive, 24/7. As bad as it is today in these harried times, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., brought us out of Jim Crow and closer to real world of All as One. However, Ms. Powell and Herr Albert had the natural fortitude and became a couple and eventually a family. The road to, and along the way, was predictably difficult. But you have to read Alexis’s book to find out what happened when “love conquers all”—when it does naturally in so many, if not all, relationships, for the duration. From the outside looking
in, they were a courageous and admirable pair for taking the chance of going up against the Zeitgeist of those times. It’s a compelling story on how they got there, and good for all of us, because like any couple entering a marriage relationship, two different points of view do not always conjoin copacetically. Alexis began the project with multiple grants from the Ford Foundation for her research on African-American nurses in World War II. She first wrote about the topic in 2013. Some of the guests who came to Cathy Graham’s
were: Susan Fales-Hill, Deborah Roberts, Boaty Boatwright, Tracey Jackson, Amy Fine Collins, Karen Phillips, Jacqueline Decter, Olivia Flatto, Charles Fagan, Elizabeth Peabody, Carlos Picón, Maurice and Andrea DuBois, Charles Atkins, and Shirley Madhere. I’m devoting the rest of this Diary to a talk that I unfortunately didn’t attend but later learned about and was given a copy of. A few weeks ago, on a Thursday over at Hunter College, our friend Larry Leeds (Class of 1941 Hunter College Model School) was honored with the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award.
D O U B L E S H O STS S U M M E R W H I T E S A N D R O S É J U N I O R PA R T Y
Emily Hottensen and Katherine Parker-Magyar 30 QUEST
Claude Shaw and Lara Meiland-Shaw
Ginny Moore and Ned Lord
Amanda and Marcus Bellows, Elizabeth and David Darst, and Fraser and Robert Maloney
Mercedes Barba and Briggs Elwell
Sana Clegg and Anika Yael Natori
A N N I E WAT T
Claire Hardwick, Rebecca Regan and Kathy Kim