Family Life
Marjorie Brockman— I came from the East Bronx. My parents were born in this country, of Russian and Polish origin. My father, who had been in World War I, was a very taciturn sort of strange man I guess, but a nice guy. And from him I acquired a passion for baseball. We used to go to the Catholic protectory which before Parkchester, that huge metropolitan project was built in the Bronx, that was the Catholic protectorate, famous because the Lindbergh kidnapping money had been exchanged in that area, and also famous when I was growing up because the House of David and the Negro Baseball League used to play there. I'm probably the only person in your archives who saw Satchel Paige pitch before he joined [the major leagues].
My mother was a dissatisfied housewife. She'd been a legal stenographer before she married. I was an only child for nine years and then they had another child, my brother.
My father worked in the restaurant equipment business. He worked with his brother-in-law. He was a salesman and during the Depression he used to collect what was owed to them in goods. Mostly he serviced restaurants in Sheepshead Bay and we had lots of lobsters when I was a child 'cause he would come home with sacks of them. And when I was a child people used to boil their clothes so they had large copper pots that sat on the stove. And he would fill that with water before my mother came in from wherever she was and drop the lobsters in it. He was a salesman. and their place was right opposite what used to be Wannamakers, which is now K-Mart, where the Astor Wine and Liquor Store was. It was called Atlantic Restaurant Equipment Corporation.
My grandfather, when he came to this country he started a small manufacturing business. You probably don't even know the word any more. He manufactured mitty blouses. Do you remember mitty blouses? They were white broadcloth shirts with a V-neck and a square collar with a dark blue star in either corner in the back design. And people wore them to school. It was the school uniform, a dark skirt with a mitty blouse and that's what he manufactured. He was not a terribly successful entrepreneur.
I used to tell people that he was a militant atheist and my grandmother was a militant snob because she wouldn't meet anybody who was an immigrant and who spoke with an accent. and they lived in the Bronx and she managed to avoid anybody in her building. But she was, in her way, a charming woman.
We went to a farm in a little town called Holcut Center which was about a hundred and forty-five miles from New York City and we boarded with a ... a family that was mythical. It was really a nineteenth century English and Irish origin farm family named the Griffins and the Reynolds. And I learned how to milk cows and pull carrots and square dance and do all the things you did up there. I ... I was mad for that place and it went on for a long time. So that was a very powerful influence on my youth.
Marion Greenstone— I was born on March 30th, 1925. I was born in Brooklyn.
Newberg was the big town and Beacon was the little town, Duchess County, in case you're not familiar with that part of New York State. And so when I was eight years old we moved up there and I went to a little South Avenue school, walked to school, and had a nice childhood. Belonged to the Girl Scouts, played baseball, softball. Tennis was my real love.
My father was not involved in the business in Beacon and he got tired of commuting. And the business wasn't doing too well and my grandparents were getting and I guess we sold it, I think. I don't remember now. And so we moved back. [My father] was a salesman in an interior decoration company and a designer as well. He was a very talented man but he never got the education he should have. He didn't even finish high school. but he was very verbal and literate and had a wonderful sense of humor, and it was a pity that he didn't get more education.
[My mother] finished high school and I think maybe she had a little bit of business school. I don't remember anymore. But her brothers went to college. One became a doctor, the other became a dentist. But girls didn't have to go to college. Things have changed a bit.
My grandparents were sort of religious and when we live with them my mother observed ... Well, she was more religious. My father was totally non-religious. And I am not religious at all. I mean, I'm an atheist. I said it.
