Had you and Mr. Ryterband made plans to marry at that time?
Well, don’t think we hadn’t discussed it, Mr. Skinner. But we weren’t officially engaged, or anything like that. We were both people who liked to take our time about things like that and make sure we were doing the right thing. I get so upset by the way young people today have to rush into Yes, ma’am. Now, in nineteen forty Charles Ryterband joined your brother in Anchorage.
I’m sorry. Yes, we had a letter from Harold telling us about his new business up there, and he invited Charles to come in with him. Charles jumped at the chance, of course. It was less than a week before he’d left his job at Martin and packed his suitcase and was off to wild Alaska-and in those days it was wild, believe you me. I remember Charles couldn’t bear to part with his Cord roadster. He could have sold it, you know, but he left it in my charge instead. I didn’t drive, of course, but we kept it in my yard and the children from the neighbors used to come over and polish it and keep it shiny clean for the day when Charles would come back for it.
The people there generally liked Mr. Ryterband, did they?
Oh, indeed, yes. Charles had a great deal of charm, you know. My sister used to say to him, “Charlie”-she called him that, I never did-”Charlie,” she’d say, “I swear you could charm the quills off a porcupine.” But I don’t mean to suggest for one minute that he was a slicker or anything like that.
No, ma’am. But he was popular and well-liked. I take it.
He certainly was. I counted myself very fortunate to have a beau like Charles. He was in his late twenties then, of course, and he’d come down the street in his open Cord roadster as dashing as you please. The young people admired him tremendously.
He worked in Anchorage with your brother until the beginning of the war, isn’t that right?
Yes. Then naturally the both of them went charging right off to enlist in the Army, right after Pearl Harbor. In Alaska at that time, of course, they weren’t sure but what the Japanese would invade Anchorage at any moment. It was much closer to Tokyo than any other American city, you know.
But Mr. Ryterband was rejected by the Army.
As a child he’d had rheumatic fever and very bad asthma. That was why his parents had moved to Southern California-for Charles’ health. By the time he grew up he wasn’t sickly at all, of course, he was the healthiest man I ever knew-never sick a day in his life. But of course he still had scars in him from the rheumatic fever and the Army wouldn’t accept him. Later on of course, in the last years of the war, they were accepting anybody who could walk into the recruiting office under his own power, but by that time Charles was doing very vital war work even though he was a civilian, and both he and the draft board felt the same way-that he was far more useful where he was than he’d have been in a uniform. Charles wasn’t a coward, Mr. Skinner, but he was a sensible man and he knew that foolish masculine pride wasn’t as important as doing your best in the job for which you’re best suited.
Yes, ma’am. Now, in nineteen forty-two Mr. Cray croft went off into the Army, but Mr. Ryterband remained in Anchorage and continued to operate their partnership.
That’s correct. Actually by about the middle of nineteen forty-two the company had become what I called a quasi-military organization. Charles wasn’t in the Army of course, but he was providing all manner of maintenance and invention services for the Air Corps units that were stationed in Alaska. We tend to forget there was a very hard-fought campaign that was waged up there during the war, under appalling conditions. The Japanese had invaded North American soil there, you know, and it was up to our men to throw them back into the sea. And I daresay Yes, quite. Mrs. Ryterband, you understand that the reason for my questions is to try to develop a picture of your brother and your husband-try to compose a sort of psychological portrait which may help us to understand how they came to do the things they did here in New York. Naturally this has to be rather painful for you, and we’re all deeply grateful that you agreed to give us your voluntary testimony in this matter. Now, I’d like to keep moving right ahead, if you don’t mind, and perhaps we could skip over some of the time periods. Your brother served in the Army Air Corps during the war, and I gather you didn’t see much of him…
Well, I saw him in nineteen forty-three, of course.
After the end of the campaign in the Aleutians?
Yes. He was transferred to an air base in Nebraska to train army air mechanics-the ground crews.
You still resided in Cincinnati then?
Yes, sir. My sister had gone to work in a war plant, but I was still teaching. We still had to educate our young people, you know, war or no war.
Do you think any important changes had taken place in your brother’s personality as a result of his experiences in the war in Alaska?
Well, I’d have to think… Yes, I think you could say he’d become more impatient.
In what ways?
Well, you’d have to have known him, really. You’d have to understand the way he was.
That’s what I’m trying to do, Mrs. Ryterband, and perhaps with your help we’ll be able to get closer to it.
Harold was always kind. He was thoughtful toward my sister and me. But he wasn’t the sort of man who ever brought little gifts for you or remembered your birthday. My goodness, he rarely remembered his own birthday. Things like that were of very little importance to him-none at all, in fact. My brother wasn’t given to ceremony. And he didn’t-oh, dear, it’s very difficult to explain just what I mean…
Take your time, Mrs. Ryterband.
Yes, sir, I’m trying my best.
You said he’d become impatient.
With people. He’d always been indifferent to people. Not unkind, you know. Not rude to them. But Harold wasn’t what you could call a social animal. I’d have to admit he was a single-minded man-very wrapped up in his work.
Obsessed with it, would you say?
To a point, yes. But not in a cruel way. I remember more than once in the shop in Cincinnati there’d be one of the young men they’d hired, one of the junior mechanics, who’d make some mistake, and Harold never got snappish with them. He wasn’t impatient with ignorance, you see. He’d explain very carefully to the young man what his mistake was, and why it was a mistake, and how it should have been done, and why. Harold would have made a marvelous shop teacher, I always thought.
Then what was the nature of this “impatience with people”?
I think after he’d been in the Army awhile he developed a great dislike of the men in authority. The brass hats. He resented being placed under the command of people who didn’t know half as much as he knew about airplanes.
That’s hardly an unusual situation in the military.
It isn’t unusual anywhere in life, Mr. Skinner. Harold had experienced similar frustrations when he’d worked at Ford. That was why he’d quit his job there. But during the war it was different, you see. He was trapped. He couldn’t very well quit his job, could he? And he didn’t want to turn his back on the boys who were flying his airplanes. Harold was as dedicated to wiping out tyranny as any American was, in the war. That was why he became so resentful-so impatient. Because we were at war, and he felt that the men in power were fools who were wasting many lives.
By “the men in power” do you mean his immediate superiors or the men who made the important strategic decisions?
His immediate superiors. No, Harold wasn’t an armchair strategist. He didn’t think in those terms, you see. He was a man who’d been given a job to do. What made him angry was that his superiors prevented him from doing that job.
Because of their stupidity.
Yes. I believe Harold developed an abiding hatred of authority during that time. He began to regard it as axiomatic that men in authority were incompetent.