Beth Campbell Short: Interview #4

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Knight: Today we're going to talk about the AP. I've even cut you off on stories in the past, when you started to talk. So tell me the story about how you came to work for the AP on the Washington bureau.

Campbell: The morning that I arrived in Washington to work for the APóand I had never worked for a wire service beforeóthe train arrived at eight o'clock. I started to go down the steps, and there was Sigrid Arne, this wonderful newspaperwoman that I had known in Oklahoma City. And she had become a feature editor for the AP and head of one of their big bureaus in New York City. Anyway, I wanted to say hello and welcome her, you know, and what she said to me was, "Do you know 'Silent Night?'" [Laughter.]

I said, "Well, I think everybody knows 'Silent Night.' Why?"

She said, "You're going to sing it at the White House tonight."

"I've never been in the White House, and I can't sing, but why?"

"Well," she said, "the Gridiron Widows always meet when the President goes to the Gridiron Club, and this year they've invited Mrs. Roosevelt to join them. Of course, whoever is the President is always the guest. But at any rate, Mrs. R. is going to invite them to come to the White House, and they always do aó" Well, no, I guess they didn't always. They were going to do a stunt party that night, like the Gridiron puts on a show. And one of the things, the Washington Press Clubóthen the Women's National Press Clubówas going to do was to sing "Silent Night," and I was going to be in the chorus or the choir or what have you. So I accepted that.

But then I was shocked again, because she said, "We'll have to hurry, because you're supposed to report at the office right away." Well, nobody told me that. That I should go to work that very first morning at eight o'clock, you know, seemed a little odd and strong. But at any rate, I hopped in her car, and we went off to the AP office, which was in the Washington Star building on 11th and Pennsylvania at that time. When she took me up to the third floor, I believe it was, where the Associated Press had very much like a newspaper office, with a circular table, a half-circle, anyway, and people sitting around, working hard, either a typewriter here, editing here, and she took me over. First, she took me and introduced me to the bureau chief in his separate little office. At that time, the one I had known once, Brian Bell, had gone to New York with Kent Cooper, and so this was Milo Thompson.

Then we came out, and she started around the room with me. After a couple of people, well, after one, I guess, she said, "And this is Joe Short, who's the deputy day editor." And that was the Joe Short who I later married. [Laughter.] I didn't know it, of course, then, but he looked mighty nice, I thought.

Then we went on to Ray Crawley. That was really bad, because he said to me, "Miss Campbell, I'm going to want a night lead on your Gridiron Widows story at two

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Washington, that meant that sometimes I covered congressional hearings, sometimes I covered what would have been society in a smaller town, but here it would always be officials, senators and Supreme Court justices, and people like that.

Oh, that was one of the things, too, that caught me when I first came. You don't want me to jump off of Mrs. Roosevelt.

Knight: Please go on.

Campbell: Well, this was Byron Price, who had been chief of the bureau for a long time, was still here. I said he moved. He was leaving that next week, and there was a party for him on Saturday night. He invited me into his office and said, "I know this is going to be hard, but you're going to cover FDR's second inaugural." They had just changed it from March 4th, which it had always been, and this was the first time it was to be on January 20th. So he said, "You know, you'll need to know practically everyone. You're going to have the ticket for the inaugural platform, where he will be, and where Mrs. Roosevelt will be. So you'll need to know these people. And the only way I can help you is that they're having a party for me tonight at the Willard," I guess it was. And he said, "There will be an announcer who will stand right by me and Priscilla (his wife) to say who everybody is. You'll get the name as the couple, or person, is introduced. You know, you can learn 500 people in one night, can't you?" [Laughter.]

At any rate, maybe I couldn't, but the very next day, I met Jim Farley, the postmaster general, on Pennsylvania Avenue, on my way to work. His office was right across the street. And he said, "Hello, Beth, how are you today?" You know, there had been all these stories about what a name-rememberer he was, but that out of all those peopleówell, anyway, I didn't remember. I knew sort of who he was, but I couldn't think of his name. Oooh

!So actually, the inaugural came along in those few days. I got here on the 21st [of December], and the 20th [of January] was the inaugural date. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt were up at the Capitol on this special stage that was built out there in front. I wondered how in the world, if anybody moved or had to say, "So and so did this," or "So and so did that," how I would know who he was or she was! But the first thing that happened, it started to rain, and Mrs. R. went to the edge of the platform and reached down to a couple of women who were down thereómaybe there were threeóand told them to come up on the stage. And some Secret Service men or some policemen or somebody helped them get up on the stage, and she took them over, and somehow there were seats for them that probably hadn't been there before. They were old friends of hers with whom she ran a school in New York City. So I didn't know their names then, but I found them out somehow. Then who else? Well, there were all these Supreme Court justices and senators, and I had learned a lot of them, and I was pretty good then. Oh, boy, I'm terrible now, but I could really learn the names of a lot of people quite rapidly, and I did.

So when it was time to go, I mean, when the thing was finishing, I realized, right before that, I had this envelope, a big brown envelope, where I had put my notes in it as I wrote a page, so the rain wouldn'tóI was using a pencil, and I knew I wouldn't be able to read a word if I didn't cover them up, so I had everything in this, including the tickets that the AP had given me, five of them, I think. There was one for this stage I was on, up above the inaugural platform; the next one was to get into the Senate Office Building and Capitol Building, where I could write my story, dictate it over the phone in the Senate press gallery, which was new to me, too; and then the next one was to get a taxi to go down so that I could watch the

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lieutenant governor of Oklahomaó-you see, I'm from Oklahoma originallyówalking from the place where they watched the parade go by, towards the White House proper. So I said, "Hello, Governor! How are you?" You know.

And he said,"Hello, Beth. How are you? What are you doing up here?" He said, "Come on and go to the party with me."

I said, "I'm not invited to this one, Governor. I'm sorry." But at least I walked with him up to the White House.

He said, "I insist that you go." You know, very important.

And I said, "Well, I just know they won't let me in, because I have an invitation for five o'clock, but not for now. Or I'd had an invitation for five o'clock." [Laughter.]

So we went up to the door, and Ray Muir, I think that was who was the usher then, said, "I'm sorry, Miss Campbell, you must have the wrong time, because you're coming at 5:00."

And the governor said, "She's with me, though. I'm So-and-so of Oklahoma."

And Mr. Muir said, "I'm very sorry, Governor, but she'll have to wait 'til five o'clock. You must come on in," said he, welcoming him. So I slipped off and went over to the U.S. building, where I could write a story, and I called up. After I dictated everything that had happened after what I had already dictated at the Capitol, I said, "And don't forget, you owe me $13.95 for a yellow slicker." [Laughter.]

Knight: It sounds like you were pretty much on your own.

Campbell: Oh, I was.

Knight: You were learning the ropes. How different was it from the newspapers that you'd worked on previously?

Campbell: I don't know how to say any answer to that, really. It seemed very different to me in a lot of ways, but trying to convince somebody that you have a right to be somewhere, when you know you do, it's not as if you were trying to fool somebody and were cheating. I think if you really believe what you say, that most people, whether they're in Oklahoma City or Washington, and whether they're police or not, are apt to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Knight: But the job itself, did anyone help you learn the ropes? Did anyone realize you'd come from a print background and not a wire background?

Campbell: Oh, yes, everybody helped me. Oh, that lovely Rags Ragsdale, who wrote a book about Presidents, a wonderful book, had the desk right next to me, was a lot older than I. And he just answered any questions that I had and knew everything there was to know and was just a delightful, lovely man.

Well, I think that there wasn't too much difference, but I may be wrong. I don't know everything. I didn't then, and I don't now.

Knight: You were the only woman there, when you got there.

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And the Daily Oklahoman, and earlier than that, the Springfield Leader, both of them, were Associated Press papers. I mean, they were in this cooperative. So you couldn't have the guy who was chairman or president of the cooperative able to tell everybody what they had to do, but if he got permission from a publisher or a managing editoróI think the rule was managing editoróthen he could take the person.

Knight: But he didn't necessarily have to discuss it with the reporter first?

Campbell: No. Well, the first time, I didn't know anything about it at all. [Laughter.] But about a month after this happened, or two months, Skipper called me over to the corner, where his desk was, and said, "Beth, would you like to go to Washington and work for the Associated Press?"

And I said, "Well, I'd have to think about it, because my mother just died, and my brother's here going to high school, and I'm keeping house for my dad." And you know, I was thinking aloud. Then I just thought quietly for a little while, and I said, "Yes, I want to go." I had figured out how I could arrange things.

And he said, "Well, I'm sorry, you can't. I told them no." And that was that. But then they asked again in another couple of months later, when he went to anotheróhe was in both the Associated Press managing editors' convention and the owners'. He wasn't an owner, but he went to a lot of those conventions, too, and he was president of the Sigma Delta Chi, which was an honorary journalistic fraternity in college. So he knew a lot of newspapermen, and he went to meetings all the time. So the next time they asked him, he said, okay, I could go.

Knight: Did you know who was wanting you, who "they" were?

Campbell: Yes. That had happened. Oh, dear. When I was on the Oklahoman, the convention in 1936, I guessówould that be a presidential convention? Philadelphia. And they were sending Luther Harrison, who was an editorial writer and about 78 or 79, you know, young like me. And they decided that it would be nice if they had me go, too, and that since Luther was going to be there, he could sort of chaperone me, you know. So they assigned me to go to the convention, and I did. It was just, oh, so much fun. I'd never done anything like that before. And when I got to Philadelphia, I met all sorts of big-shot newspapermen. This was before TV, of course, but a lot of them in radio I met, radio people.

And I went on from there to New York City to see my sisters, and one of them said, when I arrived, "Oh, there's a man at the AP who's been trying to get you, and he wants you to call the minute you arrive." But it was too late for them to get me in Washington or in Philadelphia. So I called him, and he asked me to go to lunch. He was the assistant to the general manager, Kent Cooper. And when we had had a bite to eat, he said, "This is really a business lunch. We've decided that the AP's regular weekly fiction continued story is no good, and we would like you to take it Over."

And I said, "I don't know anything at all about fiction. I couldn't possibly write you a continued story."

"Yes, you could, because we want you to use people like live in your town." Well, live in my town. He was talking about in Oklahoma City. "So the people really will read it. Sometimes the reason that people don't read these is that there's just no connection with themselves or any kind of life they've ever lived. And if you make it, even if you aren't a great fiction writer, that's what we want you to do,

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I said, "A man named George Olds, my city editor when I first started."

He said, "I wish I had him." So that was one of the nicest compliments I ever had, I thought, because he was a better reporter than I was, the man who said this.

Knight: Tell me about covering Mrs. Roosevelt. Tell me about one of her press conferences. What were they like?

Campbell: Well, they were always very natural and friendly. She made you feel as if you were her friend she'd invited over for a cup of coffee, except you just didn't have a cup of coffee. She always had [reporters] aside from the regular members here in Washington. At that time Emma Bugbee came down from New York and Kathleen McLaughlin, so we had two New York members who just came for that one day, and they were good reporters. It was good for me to see them and watch them work. She was,you know, we'd just say she was open for questions. We asked her whatever we could think of, and she always answered the best she could. She didn't always know the answers to questions, and that's always a problem, I think, with the first lady. She came to really know them better than most, but that isn't her business.

But she did get excited about the kinds of things that were going on in the United States at that time. For instance, down in West Virginia, the miners had had terrible times, and she helped with a furniture factory or something that they started down there. She got interested in why couldn'tóshe read someplace, I guessó-that it would be possible, if the scientists just knew how, to grow chicken with bigger chicken breasts, and to grow pigs with bigger hams. [Laughter.] And doggone it, when I was there covering her, I don't know when she'd gotten this interest, but she'd passed it along to the people at Beltsville, which was fairly new at that time. So the next thing we knew, the press conference went to where she said she was going, so we said we were going, too. We went to Beltsville and saw these chickens that they had grown with bigger breasts and pigs that had been grown with bigger hams, and they were healthy and doing fine, and pretty soon, they were on the market. She wrote about itóI mean, she told us about them, and we wrote about them, so there were stories about them all over the country. She did things like that quite often.

I remember once when she said she was going to a settlement house here in Washington. I didn't even know we had any; I thought that was New York. But at any rate, there was a settlement house here, and she was going to it on a given morning. And when I went there at the proper time, I was the only reporter who happened to come. That very seldom happened. But at any rate, her questions were so good. And I'd been with her on quite a lot of other trips she'd made to one organization or another, where she'd had to ask pretty general questions, because she didn't really know the details of how an operation worked. Well, my goodness, she knew lots more than I did about how settlement houses worked, and she asked wonderful questions. And the woman who was running it commented on the fact that she had been so helpful and had asked such good questions. Mrs. R. said, "Well, you know, there was a time when that was the only activity outside the home my family thought was decent for me to engage in." So she had worked in settlement houses for a long time.

That was the time when, going back to driving, she said, "As long as you're alone here, drive with me in the car." And so she went to the White House first, naturally, and then sent me on to my office. But while we were going, she didn't talk or chat; she just went through the mail, and she'd mark it for TommyóMalvina Thompson, her secretary, and say, "Yes," or say, "No," or, "We'll have to investigate

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And she said, "Well, I'll be glad to give you that kind of a story. If you want to come, you may come to lunch. When would you like to come?" And she set a date.

I said, "I'm speaking at Swampscott, Massachusetts, at a convention on such and such a date, and if I stopped here on my way back, I could see my husband for that weekend." [Laughter.]

She said, "That's just fine. You come to lunch," on whatever day that was going to make it right for me.

So I got up there, and the newspapermen were out at the big house with FDR. So I borrowed a typewriter from the Western Union. And I called her first to see whether I could come out then, and she said, "Yes," and lunch would be at such and such a time. So I got a taxi and went out to Hyde Park, and went to lunch, and it was just delightful, just the two of us. She was as real as one of my aunts or somebody, but never this familiar kind of thing that there had been indications in those first years. I never saw that in her at all, with me or with anybody else, except she had this business of calling everybody "darling" and "love" and "beautiful." [Laughter.] I don't know, it was just like Miss Hallidan, who lived next door to me when I was a little girl, always put nice names in front of the people, men and women. And she did that. But at any rate, we had a good talk on whatever was going on.

It turned out, she said, "Of course, we've had quite a discussion lately, but the King and Queen of England are coming, you know, this late summer, and we've invited them to come up here first, before coming to Washington. And I thought it would be fun (I'm not quoting her directly, of course, just the idea) if we had hot dogs, because it's so American. I don't know anybody in England who has ever had a hot dog," or something like that, you know. So apparently, other people thought it was a grand idea, but she said, "The only trouble I had is with my mother-in-law, who thinks that that's a little too informal. She suggests that if I want to have that kind and shape of meat, that it would be better to have little pig sausages." But she said, "I'm holding out for hot dogs." [Laughter.] "And we're going to have hot dogs."

I said, "Well, I think that's a grand idea."

She said, "Before the King and Queen get here, Princess Martha of Norway and her husband,"óI've forgotten; King Olan or somebodyóand anyhow, there were there different countries with royalty coming, and two of them before the King and Queen of England. And she said, "We'll have them all come here first and all have hot dogs, and then we'll go to Washington and have the usual formal things for them, so they won't think we're

Anyhow, so I said, "Well, that is a news story, Mrs. Roosevelt. I know that I didn't come up here to get a news story, but that's not what your summer's about. I'd like to write that just as a story, saying you've decided to do that."

And she said, "Well, that's all right."

So I said, "Just what you've told me now."

"All right."

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That business I told you about of covering the Christmas Eve service, it was as soon as the Christmas Eve program was over, Mrs. Roosevelt went out to her car. We'd all seen her schedule. She was going from that to the alleys. They were having a number of programs in Washington, in the D.C. alleys, for Christmas, and she was going to talk at whichever one she went to. So when we got outside, where the cars were, everybody else had called their offices and was told, "Well, skip this. After all, it's Christmas Eve." [Laughter.] But the AP, we always covered everything. So when she saw I was the only one, she said, "Why don't you ride with me in my car?" which was nice. We did go to these alleys, and she was very nice to everybody. This one Negro woman came running down the steps, with her hair in curlers, and wearing a robe, which she apparently had hastily pulled together, and sheó"Oh, I'd rather see Mrs. Roosevelt than anybody in the world!" And she, you know, thanked her for all Mrs. Roosevelt had done for people like her, she said.

So then we went out and got in the car, and she left at the White House, and I went on back to the office. I told the editor that there was one other thing, a service at a church on 16th Street. I've forgotten which one. But at any rate, at eleven o'clock. So I went and got a cab and went out to the service at eleven o'clock. I kept looking all around, looking for Mrs. Roosevelt. She was so tall, you could always find her. And I didn't see her anywhere. The service went on, and she didn't come in. And it was over, and I hadn't found her. I thought I just was blind and it was my fault. I went outside and looked at the people who came out, and she didn't ever come out.

So when I went back to the office, I said, "I'm afraid I've failed you completely, because I didn't find Mrs. Roosevelt at this church service." [Laughter.]

And the early editor, whoever was on duty, said, "Well, Beth, that's not unusual. We just had on the wire that Mrs. Roosevelt is in Albany with Franklin, who had an emergency appendectomy." [Laughter.] She must have just gone, immediately got on a plane after I left her, and gone up there. Anyway, she did go and take care of her children when they needed her, and she was very, very generally easy to work with.

Knight: Was there any tension between reporters who covered just Mrs. Roosevelt and reporters that had the broader beats?

Campbell: Oh, not really. I don't think so. Ruby Black was a good friend of mine. Of course, what she did, in addition to covering Mrs. Roosevelt, she had her own bureau and was covering all sorts of other stories, just like I was for the AP, but not with the same boss. It was much nicer, too. And there wasn't anybody else but me who had that kind of a setup.

Knight: Who did both.

Campbell: Yes.

Knight: Because Doris Fleeson was covering almost completely the President.

Campbell: Yes.

Knight: I ask the question because Esther Von Wagoner Tufty had said in her interview that she always felt that Doris Fleeson was a little "snooty" towards some of the women that only covered Mrs. Roosevelt, and I wondered if you had ever sensed

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Campbell: There weren't too many of us that were married, newspaperwomen married to newspapermen. But I always thought Joe was a lot better reporter than I was. I think that Ruby probably thought Herb was a better reporter than she wasóI mean, she was a better reporter than Herb was. [Laughter.] That was the only reason I could think of that anybody would want to keep her name the same.

Knight: You did join the Women's National Press Club as soon as you got to town?

Campbell: That night. I sang "Silent Night" with them.

Knight: How was the association with them? What value was it to you to join that group?

Campbell: Oh, great! It was the Women's National Press Club then. Very soonóI don't think it was the first year, but maybe it was, because it seems it was almost immediately, I was the guest chairman. So that meant getting a guest. We had meetingsóat that time, luncheon meetingsóonce a week, and the guest had to be somebody pretty important that would be a news story, so that editors would let you go. [Laughter.] So I don't know, I got Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, and I can't remember whether I did Helen Hayes or somebody else did. I remember getting to talk to her a good deal. You know, we had people, not only the ones I happened to mention in the entertainment world, but a lot of them were serious scholars, too. Of course, lunch was just 75 cents! [Laughter.] If you can imagine that! You really could go to lunch once a week and enjoy it very much.

But what else did I do with the Women's Press Club? Oh, I participated in all the shows. [Laughter.] We put on these shows, and one yearóI won't tell you about all of them, because they all were sort of sillyóbut this one was really funny. I was half of the time Mrs. Roosevelt, very tall and distinguishedóimagine me being tall; they didn't have any stilts for meóbut I also was the second half, Cleopatra. It was Cleopatra that I had the trouble with, not Mrs. R., because they didn't worry about my height, and they didn't worry about the way I said my lines. But they fussed aboutóI remember whoever was the director said, "Beth, has anybody ever taught you how to slink?"

Well, I said, "I thought I was slinking."

"Well, you're not slinking! You better learn to slink!"

Well, I went home. My brother was visiting from Yale at the time, and my husbandóboth thought it was awfully funny. They said, "We'll teach you to slink." We were going up to somebody in the neighborhood that night to see them, and they didn't say anything about it on the way there, but on the way back, after we'd had a drink at the Beaversóapparently this had all been planned between themóthey started, one on one side, one on the other, very tight, with their arms around me, and like this [back and forth]. [Laughter.] Well, pretty soon, Jack said, "Beth, you're really slinking!"

And Joe said, "I don't know whether I want a wife that slinks or not." But at any rate, they taught me to slink. And when I went to the next rehearsal, everybody just praised and screamed about it.

Oh, what else did I do in the Press Club besides slink? I think I had some other offices. I don't remember what they were. I never was top office. I certainly went to almost every meeting.

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the next available time, how she felt about that sort of thing, she said, "Well, it seemed so very absurd to me, because we know that we have the best government in the world, and if there are college students who are trying to somehow make government better and finding it not as successful as we did, it's because we're not doing enough of a job to teach them what the United States is about. And not only did I bring him to see you, but I've also gone with him to his own meetings." [Laughter.] Of course, that got another bunch of people mad at her.

But at any rate, he was due to testify before the committee which was investigating both fascists and communists at that time in the United States. So I found outóI don't know whether other people did or notóbut at any rate, that she was going up to hear him. And so I, of course, was going up to hear him, too, and I went up and sat a couple of seats behind her. She got a seat right on the front row. When he was called to testify, she was right there and smiling at him, urging him to do a good job, I'm sure. You couldn't have done a better job than she did, it seemed to me. She showed her support of the need for him to have a fair chance, by just being there. And she won. I mean, he became not only a good American citizen, but a very outstanding one. I thought that her decision with this boy, who was quite young, still in college, to try to make him learn what our Constitution is for, was very, very good. Somebody should help Ollie [North] find it. [Laughter.]

Knight: Not being able to join the National Press Club, what did you think?

Campbell: I thought they were meanies. [Laughter.]

Knight: Meanies?

Campbell: [Laughter.]

Knight: How did you feel? How did other people feel?

Campbell: I thought it was very unfair. I didn't want to be in a separate [group]óI had always felt that it was important to be on a newspaper as a reporter, just like a man reporter. And if they had to go do things that were hard in the middle of the night, you went and did things that were hard in the middle of the night. I never asked for any special treatment. So I didn't think what they were doing was fair. FortunatelyóI was awfully glad, because I would never have tried to influence himómy husband, who became president of the National Press Club, wanted women admitted, but it got turned down. That's about the only thing he lost, as I recall. He was a president of a great many things. He had important things, I remember, in the campaign to be president [of the Press Club]. He was for keeping the same kind of plates that they had at the time, where they had both a sprig of parsley andó[Laughter.]. Oh, and on the dessert, a cookie. There was a group in the National Press Club who claimed that the same parsley was used on every plate, every day, at every meal. And the same with the cookies! [Laughter.] That was very funny.

Knight: Did you ever talk to your male colleagues about not letting women in?

Campbell: Oh, sure.

Knight: What were their reasons?

Campbell: Oh, some of them just thought it had started as a men's club, and there was no point in changing it. President Taft or somebody had done this or that. Although they voted as if it were a real deep-set belief, in normal conversations, they never

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started with some medicine. He had doctors that were working on this. He wasn't tall enough for anybody of his other characteristics. And by the time I met him, he was 6'1". It just shows all sorts of things can happen, except I can't get taller now. I'm getting shorter all the time. [Laughter.]

Knight: Ruth Cowan Nash followed you at the AP?

Campbell: Yes.

Knight: You had followed Bess Furman?

Campbell: Bess Furman.

Knight: Was that a woman's slot, do you think, at the AP?

Campbell: Yes.

Knight: They knew they were going to hire a woman for this slot?

Campbell: Yes, I think they did.

Knight: Did you feel that that paved the way for you in any way?

Campbell: Yes, I think so. She [Furman] was a good reporter who could do anything, and I hoped I was. I didn't know Ruth before she came. She was in Chicago, as I recall. But I did know Bess, because she stayed here. Her husband, Bob Armstrong, was a correspondent for a St. Louis newspaper, and she started doing her own stuff, her own bureau, sort of, after her childrenóshe had twinsówere born. I was always very, very fond of her. I supposeóI don't think I ever talked to anybody about thatóbut I think that she had covered Mrs. Roosevelt for so many years. I saw a news story that she had sent me, that she wrote years later, but it mentioned how many years she had covered Mrs. Roosevelt, but I've forgotten what it was, but it was a lot. She covered it and went up to New York and covered her.

Knight: When you were replaced by Ruth, did you have any hand in selecting her?

Campbell: Oh, no, none at all.

Knight: None at all? Did you work with her for a little while before you left?

Campbell: No. No, I had told them that I had a baby coming, because they insisted that I must tell them. [Laughter.] They didn't want another surprise like Bess had given them, and if I was pregnant, I should notify the managing editor, the bureau chief. And I did. I told him. I asked them when they wanted me to leave, you know. I would leave that day. If they wanted to know when I was pregnant, I was pregnant already, and I'd just quit. And they said, no, no, they needed me a while longer, please. And so this was February. Maybe it was January; I don't know. Anyhow, the date we set was in February, about the 12th. I flew out to Toledo, where a sister lived at that time, and so I mean, it was all set. They knew when I was going. If they had wanted to bring her in, they could have, but they didn't. But she was a very experienced person like I was. She didn't reallyóand as you asked me, and I told you, all the men in the office were wonderful to me, to help me get used to things when I was new, as far as the things that were different in a press service.