Choosing Brooklyn
Phyllis LeShaw— It was nearby and it was free. And I was a very good French student so it got my marks all the way up just to make it under the wire to get into Brooklyn College. My sister went to Hunter— I don't know, for whatever reason. And all my friends from grade school— I went to P.S. 92— they all went to Brooklyn College.
Frances Koral— I went to James Madison High School and then I went to Brooklyn College. This was a free college and all we had to pay for were our books and certain student fees. I couldn't go if we had to pay.
Marion Greenstone— And then it came time to go to college and I decided to go to Brooklyn College because my cousin who lived in Brooklyn was a student there. He was just a couple of years older than I and he used to invite me to various happenings and encouraged me to go there. And it seemed very nice. I didn't believe in separate education and Hunter College was just for women then. So I schlepped all the way from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Brooklyn practically, every day. But I'm none the worse for it.
Marjorie Brockman— Actually, I had been accepted at Hunter and decided go to Brooklyn College, because my family wanted me to go to Hunter. I was naturally defiant. I would go to Brooklyn College even though I lived near High Grant Circle in the Bronx and I had almost a mile walk to the Lexington Avenue local to get down to 125th Street where I met all my other friends and we traveled on out to Brooklyn College from there.
Elliot Levine— I'll never forget. One day my father, out of the blue, said, "why don't you switch to a paid college." He seemed to think that a place where you had to pay was a better school than the one I was going to. Then, somewhere along the line, there was a basketball scandal and some classmate of mine said, "the Brooklyn diploma isn't going to be worth anything because of that scandal." So I got an idea of switching to Syracuse University where a friend of mine was already going, a former Brooklyn student. And it didn't work out. I went there. I was enrolled there. But within the first week or two it turned out that I would not be able to graduate in four years for some technicality of the curriculum, and I didn't want to stay an extra semester. I went home and went back to Brooklyn.
