Milton Reigelman

"I would like to add that I'm really pleased you're doing this. I will be really interested in what you find particularly about urban renewal. 'Cuz again, I was on the periphery. And we all are imprisoned by our own pasts and biases, and so I'd like to learn more about it."

Parts of this transcript were autogenerated and there may be errors.

Tovi: Um, hello, my name is Tovi Paivarinta. Um, and today I'm interviewing Milton Reigelman who was a professor of English at Centre College in the seventies and till later. Um, I am here with Bidhan Ghimiray, Jayden Gilmore, and Kyle Hankins, and a small group of people along with Professor Jeffrey Shenton. Um, today is January 13th, 2023. We are recording this interview in Danville Boyle County African American Historical Society. Today we'll be discussing Milton Reigelman’s professorship in the 1960s and seventies till today. Um, so to start off, um, what initially attracted you to Centre?

Milton: Well, it was, uh, well-known liberal arts school, and I, uh, needed a job. I was not quite finished my dissertation and my wife and I had twins, and, uh, we'd never been in Kentucky, but I, when I was offered the job, I took it with some trepidation. We'd always lived in large cities, but that ended soon enough. The trepidation.

Tovi: Um, when you moved to Centre, um, where did you live and like, why did you choose to live where you did?

Milton: There was not, at the time, this is before most of the industry came in, there wasn't a Norton Center and there wasn't, and we couldn't afford to buy anything, and there were very few properties available to rent, but down at the Henson Pond at the end of East Main, they were just finishing a little duplex there. The first duplex, it was nothing beyond it, not Heather Hills not anything. And, uh, we just happened at the right time and we were able to, uh, then rent, uh, a little duplex, small three bedroom, worked just fine for the first year.

Jayden: Uh, also you said that you lived in a few bigger cities before you came to Danville. Uh, like what, where, where were you living, like before you came or did you like, move around a lot or is there like anywhere?

Milton: My wife and I we both, grew up in the Washington DC area. I had lived in Philadelphia. Uh, we had lived in Baltimore, and I spent, uh, I was, I took no English courses, an undergraduate, but went back to Johns Hopkins and then did a PhD study at University of Iowa and Iowa City, which is a small town, but not, it's a university. It's a big 10 small town, so it's not like Danville.

Kyle: All right. So, uh, I guess this might not be the smoothest transition, but we can sort of transition a little bit to talking about, um, sort of the relationship that you observed between, um, Danville and the surrounding community, a little bit.

Milton: Do you mean between Centre and Danville, or

Kyle: Yeah, sorry, between Centre and the surrounding community.

Milton: Yeah, it was, uh, it was very close. Uh, this was, Ephriam McDowell Hospital wasn't the gargantuan institution that it has become as a lot of hospitals have. And again, there was almost no industry. There was a, uh, the Corning factory, and that was about it. Uh, and so the college was closely connected to the town and, and vice versa, a lot of the doctors and lawyers had been Centre grads who came back and settled, and some of that's still true, but as, as much different as Centre was a school of 700 students. Uh, and the town right now, it's, this county is about 30,000, town is about 17,000, probably half that big at the time.

Kyle: That makes sense. Um, I guess like. . . .

Milton: O one other thing, sorry. All of the faculty lived in town and all the administration lived in town. That's changed. Uh, a lot of the, none of the new vice presidents live in Boyle County now. Uh, the new ones, uh, and more and more faculty, uh, don't live in town, but still, you know, at the time it was a rarity when someone who worked at Centre didn't live in Boyle County and supported the churches and the schools and the civic clubs, and, you know, and that's become less true over the years, particularly in the last probably three or four years.

Bidhan: Um, so I think we could, uh, move towards talking about urban renewal in Danville. And the first question is, how did your perception of Danville change due to urban renewal?

Milton: Aha. Uh, when we came, I got involved in a, uh, with a group of, uh, Black folks over urban renewal. The, uh, head of urban renewal in Danville for 40 years was a, a, uh, a guy named, Guy Best. Okay. And before I came, when, when the president at the time came to center in 1957, Tom Spragens, he came with the proviso that he would integrate racially Centre College and a couple other provisos as well. But that was one, the main one. Okay. This is way ahead of, I had undergraduate going to William & Mary a state school. No Blacks were there. Uh, I grew up in Washington, DC uh, a mile from where Frederick Douglass had lived, uh, half a block from where Ezra Pound had lived. Ezra Pound's, a white critic. Uh, I had never heard of Frederick Douglass till I went to Penn. Okay. I mean, I, I guess I'd heard of it, you know. Uh, so for Tom Spragens in '57, he had come, president of Stevens College had been in Stanford with proviso, he was going to integrate in Kentucky. There were no black students at UK, for instance, there state schools or most other schools. Berea was the exception. Uh, it was pretty brave. And one of the things he did was where the Northside dorms are, and the new dorm, a Pearl Hall, that was a largely Black area. This was before I came in Urban renewal. Uh, took that and sold the land, I guess to the college. But as far as I could tell, did a decent job at the time. This was '57, it was a long time ago of, of, of placing, uh, Black families in into other places. Well, in '71, when I came, uh, there was a group that another professor Milton Scarborough and I got involved with. He was a young philosophy professor, and, uh, we went to meetings, Batewood Homes, which, which at the time was I think essentially all Black. Uh, we met at Batewood Homes, and they were concerned about what was happening on Grant and Russell Street, Grant and Russell Street are the streets on, uh, perpendicular to College that run into the football stadium. And there was a grant for urban renewal to, to invest in the, uh, structure of those houses, to keep them viable. New heating systems, uh, structural, you know, to stabilize those sections which were falling down. Uh, but the Black folks that I worked with, uh, were suspicious. You can understand why, uh, suspicious. And, and I remember I had to defend "Mother Centre". I called it <laugh>, even though I was just born, you know, uh, and to say no, because the Norton Center was being built. They said, ah, Centre is buying property, and they're gonna cut through and do away with Russell Street and Grant Street. I said, no, no, no, no. I talked to the president, Tom Spragens. No, we absolutely have no reason to do that. But they were suspicious. And this went on for a year and a half or so. Then I think they realized, no, the Norton Center was not going to cut through and take all those houses on, uh, on Grant Street. I think that was the first one. Second I think was Russell Street, but it was, so I, I sort of saw things from their point of view. Uh, this is though a president who had, who was extremely liberal. He was a, he went to Chicago as a Democratic representative from Kentucky in support of, of, uh, it was a George McGovern, and he, one of the presidential candidates that lost heavily to Republicans because he was way too liberal at the time. I think it was McGovern at the time, '72, I might be wrong. So, I mean, I knew that this, he, he was a Kentuckian and grew up in Lebanon. Let me come back to Kentucky, his wife from Oxford, Mississippi. But both were very progressive and, and in lots of ways, lots of ways, and particularly racially. And he did integrate Centre. And I saw the effort it took for center to get Black students at the time, and Black faculty. It was a, it was a real struggle at first, but he did things like almost personally recruit. Raymond Burse probably the most important Black person in Kentucky. Uh, later, he, he was a Rhode, graduated from center. He was a father, was a sharecropper and, uh, of course a full scholarship. And, uh, he then became a Rhode Scholar. He is gonna go to Harvard Law, gonna go to Harvard Medical. He went to Harvard Law, came back and was the youngest president of any college in Kentucky. He was president of Kentucky State University, historically Black college in Frankfurt at the age, I think it was 28. He then became, he was on the Centre board of trustees. The first Black person on the board, uh, became the head lawyer for GE. He went back twice to Kentucky State, the takeover when it was in dire straits. Okay. The state was gonna close it because in, uh, and it's, it's, it's been, it, it's been on the margins ever since. But Raymond Burse is the one that has stabilized it, and he's a proud Centre graduate, uh, one of the very first Black Rhode scholar.

So I-I knew that this was a good school, okay, and I knew that Centre wasn't trying to ruin the lives Back folks.

I think the opposite. So I-I was sort of, you know, I understood what that group, I forget what they call themselves, but, but Scarborough and I went to most of the meetings and and were sort of arbiters, and, yeah, so there there's the Black story.

Bidhan Ghimiray:

Um. So just as the follow up question, this ones that, um, when you heard about the idea of urban renewal, you were optimistic about that, right?

What was --

Milton Reigelman: The idea of, what in general?

Bidhan Ghimiray: Urban renewal.. Urban renewal?

Milton Reigelman: I'm sorry, I don't understand. I, Bidhan and I are good friends. He's so I-I can do that. Spell it.

Bidhan Ghimiray: the Urban renewal.

Milton Reigelman:Oh yeah, of course, Of course. We had this problem in refugees (?). Refugees with no, uh, I-I was not suspicious of urban renewal, partly because I came to think of Guy Best, who headed it for 40 years here, as a good person who understood and in fact, I think what they did when we were here, it was those streets were largely Black, not entirely, But it's really a good thing. Those streets are still viable streets. Uh, some Centre faculty live on those streets. Students, college owns a couple of the houses, and they would have become real slums. And so I-I knew that that was a good program, and it was well intentioned.

I wasn't here when the larger urban renewal took place, but part of that was to build public housing in different parts of the city and I've admired, I grew up in Washington, and it was, you know, you knew where the Black section was and and the Whites, uh, I lived in a section that became Black overnight. When, after board um Brown versus Board, there wasn't really a place for Black folks to go, because they were afraid to go to Virginia, which had massive resistance to integration, led by Harry Bird.

Uh, and so they came right through Southeast and whatever. So I-I knew some problems of urban renewal firsthand. UH, and I think Danville handled it pretty well. And when my wife started teaching in the public schools, some of the very best teachers that my children had, and she would say, were were Black folks, including she started teaching with a young guy named J.H Atkins. James Atkins, who today is our Mayor, and Tony Gray, the Chief of Police, grew up, in our house often, he’s a great friend of my daughters. And so I I've always felt that I've known the, what we would say, the middle class Black folks better than Black folks, generally.

But I don't know their whole sections at Danville, uh, White and Black, that I simply don't know or haven't had the luck or taken the effort to get to know. But a lot of Black folks.

Jeffrey Shenton: Do you know, did Centre as an institution put money into stabilizing those structures on Russell and Grant? Did they pay for any of that?

Milton Reigelman: No, that, that was entirely a urban renewal. There was urban renewal money, and I think quite a lot in the seventies that was strictly urban renewal. No, uh, Tom Spragens was, you know, involved in everything in the town. He became a city commissioner after he retired, and so I'm sure he had a lot to do with it, but that, I think, all of that was federal money.

Tovi Paivarinta: You mentioned a lot about how you had these interactions with a lot of the community. Did those interactions play a part in your teaching at all?

Milton Reigelman: Not so much. I-I-I there was a young economist at the time, and he and, I, uh. Centre didn't pay nearly as well as it does now. It never pays enough, but I-I mean, it really didn't pay much at all. And so all the faculty had to work in the summer. And he and I taught classes out at Whirlpool, and then Rexnord two of the . . . , and we had a divide, but it wasn't a racial divide there. It was a class divide because when Rexnord moved down from Elwood City, Pennsylvania, they were largely White, Catholic Union guys, whereas the middle managers before were Baptist, largely White, uh country guys from Boyle County, many from Lincoln County, Casey County. And so our job was to get those two people talking together. And so we call the communications or whatever. But I'll never forget one of the 1st classes, uh, we ask a general question like, what do you do when an employee complains about or something? And one of the guys from Pennsylvania says, “well, down when? When? When you got down at the mill?”

He's a Union guy, and a Kentucky boy said, “I thought the mill was where you grind corn.” And I realized they didn't speak the same language.

So the the divide that I was involved with in the summers, for the first few summers, was one of Northern, Union folks coming and working with Southern, non-Union Baptist. Their names were ethnic, were Polish, and, you know, whereas you know, the Kentucky names are are not that Caudill and Cantra, you know, stuff like that. Uh, Blacks were largely, uh, there wasn't a lot of interaction. UH, the churches tended to be all White or all Black. Uh, there were, uh, the Catholic Church had was more mixed, but that was, and churches still are.

Okay. The schools were, though, totally integrated and and some of the really best teachers my kids had were people like Jewel Lay, a Black science teacher, J.H Atkins. Our Mayor, Tom Riley, who still is well known in town, does repairs and all the computer guy. A Bob Trumbo. I see his sons, I guess thing is, there. Amelia, the best teacher in elementary school. My daughters have, I have twin daughters. Was Amelia Burton from Perryville. Incredible, incredible teacher, a Black woman. So, you know, there was integration here in ways there was not integration when I was growing up in Washington, D.C., uh, it didn't extend though, and it wasn't complete and I guess today is is a little different in town. We certainly have more Black students and faculty at Centre. It was a struggle to get Black folks to come to Centre then, and and Tom Spragens worked really hard. We had special, special scholarships, and a lot of those early Centre Black students have gone on to wonderful things. Some are on the board of trustees at Centre now, like Angie McDonald and Sheila Washington and so forth

Kyle Hankins: Was there any substantial pushback to sort of the integration of both faculty and students at Centre? Like, from anybody at Centre?

Milton Reigelman: There There no, no substantial. The faculty certainly has always been of a faculty, generally, generally, you know, liberal arts schools, has always been progressive and liberal and, you know, there even complaints about wokeness now. I just got back from Amherst and, man, we're not well compared to Amherst, I'll tell you that. At the really great schools. No and and the faculty was, again, there were very few Black faculty and Shirley Walker taught French, and she had, Brown University had a special program for talented Black kids and she went there and then got her masters and taught French. And she stayed here four, five years, which is great. She she was great. Everybody loved her. Uh, totally accepted. Some of the Black students, when they come back, have talked about how tough it was, and there's been a lot of that in recent years, and all of it's available, uh, but a lot of those kids, man, they have gone on to wonderful careers. And partly, I think, because they were talented, Centre recognized that. They might have come out of schools without quite the education of other students, but they, they made up for it. That's not to say that, you know, Black kids all went to bad schools. But in Kentucky, before integration, as as all over the country, it was, it was separate, but it was not equal. And you know who? The 1st person to take that saying on was? A Centre graduate, John Marshall Harlan. In a famous case, he was the one dissenter in 1892 or something. I can't think of the name of it now, but in Brown versus Board in ‘54, he was the guy, the Centre graduate, and Centre gave a whole a lecture on this. He was the person who they, they quoted as the philosophical underpinning of doing away with that false separate but equal myth. I'm very proud of Centre for that. I didn't know that when I came, I learned it after it came.

Jayden Gilmore: Did you ever find it like hard to either like create or keep relationships like with certain Black people that you worked with like around Centre? Especially like if they like how you said earlier they didn't really trust the urban renewal like process.

Milton Reigelman: Yeah, that the Centre students and faculty weren't as involved with that as I was. In that in that, you know they're they're students here for four years. How involved are you in the town? Well, maybe more so now. Maybe because of this class, but back then that that was not, as you know, as a bubble and the faculty, again there were very few Black faculty, very few. And they were not as involved in the town, so I don't think they understood or that wasn't on their radar. OK. A few of the faculty, White, were involved in Scarborough. Eric Melt, who was became the Dean of Students. He was a chaplain. He was very involved with the Black community and has stayed involved. In fact, he came. He lives in Louisville, but he came back for J. H.’s well, campaign and installation. Did that answer the question? Ok.

Bidhan Ghimiray: Did Centre provide any aid to people who were displaced by the urban renewal project?

Milton Reigelman: I don't know that, Bidhan. I simply don't know it. I know that again, I know that the administration of Centre and the President, particularly who came here only if he could integrate before any other place did other than Berea in Kentucky, he would have been concerned with it. I don't know how actually involved he was in kind of a practical way. OK, I know that the Spragens had a number of Black friends. And so, the Black community as a whole wasn't upset with Centre. Some were suspicious when the Norton Centre was built, and we bought a lot of that land. We exchanged the high the high school used to be where the Norton Centre is OK and where the Danville High is that was the women's campus, OK, and so I can understand and did understand why Black people would be suspicious of Centre. I think the suspicion, though, eased when they realized that Centre wasn't trying to displace them. Again, I wasn't here when when that neighborhood it's it's It's still was mostly Black neighborhood on the beyond the new dormitory. What do they call it? The new dormitory or whatever it is? What’s that big one?

Jayden Gilmore: Northside?

Milton Reigelman: Northside, yeah, that that's still a a little Black area and and one thing I liked and like about Danville is there was, again, this is growing up in DC and and knowing Baltimore and Philly some. There wasn't just one Black area, there were Blacks living mostly in little segregated pods, now that's pretty much ended there now, you know Blacks in even a Republican area such as Streamland. It tends to vote more Republican there than the rest, so I don't think there's a problem now. There I never realized or never understood, oh, Blacks are trying to move into Green Acres but no one will allow them. It just didn't occur at that time. And again, I think the the college being here made this a little different than, say, Lancaster or Stanford or Lawrenceburg, I don't know.

Tovi Paivarinta: When you were at the interim president of Centre, did you use your position at all to try to increase the community like engagement at all or something along those lines?

Milton Reigelman: Well, most of the time when I was I was just acting president for one year. And most of the time I was sort of desperately trying to keep the ship from sinking. No one expected me to do anything and I thought it was a month position that turned out to be a year because John Roush couldn't come for a long time. And I had been very involved in the community and stayed involved. I did try we we had a problem there when we took over what's today, the Rhodes House on Saint Mildreds and then and this is when I was not President, but Vice President for I don't know resources and planning or something they just gave me titles that no one else wanted and the people in Saint Mildred’s were very suspicious of Centre because we had bought those houses. We own almost to the curve now and we bought them because they were drug places and and the one still owned by local person is sort of still slummy. There's some drug activity, and so we were being defensive. You know buying things. Well, it was the Whites on the street that didn't want students there. We, we for that Fox Hall is it called still Fox Hall? The big apartment on the right of Saint Mildred’s? We paid $1,000,000. It's probably public record. We spent more than that. Fixing it up and had to be stripped into the into the studs. And so we basically saved that part of the street and including the Rhodes House there. That's pretty nice. You could only put three students in an apartment, and so so we paid like $2,000,000 at the time that today would be worth $6,000,000, no $5,000,000 or something to house 12 students crazy. But one thing I did immediately, I invited all the Saint Mildred’s Court people to Craig House for dinner. And you know to to obvious things and they were only suspicious though of Centre, particularly the ones on Saint Mildred’s that how to put this because some are still there. You know they they they didn't they didn't see the problem that I did and I think the college did with you you don't want a lot of drug activity right next to students, OK? You want students if they go, and again, drugs are very different today. I know that you know, but then it was it seemed more dangerous and you wanted students at least to have to cross the county line to buy their cocaine or, you know. So so so in that sense, yeah, we tried, but it wasn't with the Black community. But by then we had more Black professors and more Black students. So ironically, I was trying to mend fences but with the White neighbors OK.

Jayden Gilmore: Was there like any, like legal attempts to like limit like Centre's expansion like on Saint Mildreds or like even through the north the new Northside area or anything?

Milton Reigelman I don't know there were when we took over those two apartment houses and really fixed them up and made four apartments in each, OK. I don't think there were any legal attempts. I know that probably some of the same Mildred's people went to planning and zoning and said they can't do this while it was fully within the law to to rehabilitate and we had to be careful not to, you know, have more than three students living in things, but there wasn't. I never it never really made the newspapers that I recall. When we had a newspaper back then.

Professor Shenton: Question, so were were you aware or cognizant of the the West Danville urban renewal project that happened after 2nd St? Do you do you know anything about the process that led to that and was Centre involved in any of that process at all?

Milton Reigelman: I don't know of that Jeff. I just thought of one other thing though that Centre did and this was Milton Scarborough and myself. We we thought the local paper was really pretty good local paper but we thought it was too conservative and so we started a a our own newspaper. Well, it was a newsletter came out four times a year and cost $1.00. So we we actually ended up paying for it. But, and the Advocate wouldn't print to us, so we had to go to Columbia to print it. We had like 500 subscribers a dollar. You know you go to our and we did stories. There was not a sewer system in part of West Danville and so we made that a big kind of mission statement, and we and we really, we felt like we had something to do and that was a Black part of West Danville, something to do Cowen St. Cowan Street. Named for, I was the Cowen Professor, and J. Rice Cowan was a rather important person at Centre, as Cowan St. and and they had outhouses. OK. So, in the sense that we were from Centre, everybody knew we were from Centre, and we had this, it was called the Danville Quarterly newsletter. We were part of it like that. I don't know though I wasn't involved in the urban renewal over it. There's not much urban renewal over in West Danville that I know of. Is there?

Professor Shenton: So the the area where right around where the UPS station, the drop off there?

Milton Reigelman: Yes, yes.

Professor Shenton: That whole strip was actually take that was a series of Black homes down there and that was taken out with urban renewal money. As far as as far as our research goes.

Milton Reigelman: After 71?

Professor Shenton: Yeah.

Milton Reigelman: I just I wasn't I wasn't focusing there I didn't know it. But Cowan Street is beyond that and it was a Black neighborhood and then oh they did get and maybe that was urban renewal as as part of that. I don't know, I suspect it was because because they had money for infrastructure.

Professor Shenton: Yeah well, so the the research that we that Mike Dennis has done has pointed to that as being kind of the the least successful of the urban renewal projects in that they promised to put sewer lines out there and then never did. And so they people weren't able to get their houses their lots back because they never hooked up the sewer lines and so that became zoned for for, for businesses and then they they sold a whole chunk of those lots back to a White guy.

Milton Reigelman: Ok

Professor Shenton: And there was there was a big lawsuit over it that went into the 80s so.

Milton Reigelman: I just wasn't aware of that. I know that there was at some point and I guess Cowan is down a little bit. At some point there was a sewer line there, but that's further down more like across from Danielle's Drive Away Cafe or something so but I just wasn't aware of it. But that sounds like a good thing to research because. I was away some too. I had Fullbrights and was away a year and then 1/2 year and stuff. Other questions yes.

Kyle Hankins: This is something I was wondering so when they do the urban renewal I know like in some cases land would be like eminent like they use like eminent domain to seize land.

Milton Reigelman: Yes, yes.

Kyle Hankins: I assume like the college would just be buying land outright. They wouldn't have any sort of power to to like to.

Milton Reigelman: I again I don't know. The specifics of the the thing that I did, I just know that in that that had been a Black area. In fact, Tony Gray. The Chief of Police, a really fine Chief of Police. His grandmother lived, lived there in that street that now looks down it's higher, looks down on, uh, on Northside dorm. And I remember this, uh, we knew his grandmother, Maddy, very well. And, uh, she said that when Tom Spragens, the president, brought in some important people, he wanted them to stay in the community. And, uh, her husband was a drywall expert and had his own just little company, him and two other guys. So they had a, you know, it's still a, you know, a nice house. Not fancy, but they housed some White Centre guest at their house. Uh, so I know that some of the Black people who lived right there adjoining were very, you know, had no problems with, with the college and vice versa. But again, I wasn't here, so I don't know how Centre got that, uh, uh, through urban renewal. Uh, but I know they did get it and that they, and one way to put it, and it's a terribly biased way, but a way that I came to sort of have belief in, that it really did improve that area. You know, all colleges, all institutions, have to protect their flanks, protect your flanks. And so that was a pretty big flank, flank and there was a lot of money. Uh, what I hope, and I hope y'all can find out, is if the folks were treated fairly and well there, and again, you know, when, when I got involved there was, that was in the background. No, I never heard any of those folks we met with, and at times it might have been 20 people, sometimes 12 or something. It wasn't a big thing. I never heard them. They were suspicious, but I never heard them say, oh my God, you should see what that those people did to this family. And I don't know, I, I, I wasn't here then. I wouldn't think it was horrible though. Okay, that's just my opinion.

Bidhan Ghimmiray: Um, what were some ways in which the students of Centre College were impacted by the urban renewal?

Milton Reiglman: I don't think they were impacted hardly at all. Okay. For one thing, uh, in '57 and in the early '60s when this happened, I guess, uh, there were very few Black students at Centre. You know, to, to have, uh, at, at one point I think there were, well, there were, there was a first woman in the first two and they came back. And then when I got here in '71, there were probably 15 or so different classes. But I don't know that they were impacted at all, uh. It, it might mean that, that it probably meant that they had better living spaces. The dorms were new at that time, and they'd been kept up. Okay. Those Northside dorms, you know, they, we had to totally redo 'em and, uh, about, uh, '90 or something, and then they just, but you know, they're brick, they're, they're okay. They're not slums, and so you could say, well, the Black students were here benefited in that they had little better quarters, but I can't speak to the folks who were most affected.

Jeffery Shenton: Are any other questions about this topic? That's fine. I know Tovi had some questions about your, about your career that he was interested in asking you. Is that okay?

Milton Reiglman: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Go ahead.

Tovi Paivarinta: Um, well I just read that you, uh, taught past the Iron Curtain and I was just wondering if you could tell us about that, cause I thought that was…

Milton Reiglman: I did, um

Tovi Paivarinta: That's very interesting.

Milton Reiglman: We spent, uh, 79-80 living in Warsaw. Uh, where I taught American Culture, uh, and, uh, we were followed of course, phone was tapped. We had a fifth floor walk up. We have three kids. Uh, it was a great year for us. We spoke no Polish, but it was the safest place we've ever had and, uh, then I spent a half year in Kyiv. When my daughters were off at college with our 11 year old son who didn't much want to go. Uh, but in both cases, uh, we were treated like royalty, and I, you know, American literature is subversive. All, all the, there's an official system in both countries. Communist, then there was the real system. The Catholic church had a lot to do in Poland with the real system. They would go to Catholic school on Saturday and really learned Polish history. So when, and the Pols started it, we left in late July of '80 Lech Welesa climbed over the fence at Gadańsk in August, started Solidarność, Solidarity, which was really the first, you know, the elephants under the tent that led, uh, in '91 to the fall of the, and so, because Walesa, once I left, he started the first free trade union, and once we left Kyiv, December '87, Gorbachov. I was able to go to Kyiv. I was the, we were the first American family to go and live there for a semester. They had had a few scholars come in, uh, the Iron Curtain then fell, and the wall came down, so I claimed, that I was the cause of both, [laughter] actually, I, I'd been in Army intelligence and my students, some of them still, believe that I was there as a spy. Uh, I was not, although I think the way to do an authoritarian system, so, uh, authoritarian socialist in the worst sense of it, uh, is to teach them Ralph Waldo Emerson self-reliance and, and my teaching in both, I could take books in and they, they, they let me take in what I wanted. Uh, it wasn't meant to subvert the system, but it really was. I, I mean, I guess I intended it. You cannot read Moby Dick and be a Communist. You cannot read Emerson or Emily Dickinson or Hawthorne and believe in a system that absolutely, viscerally, gratuitously is failing, because everybody had a job and no one worked. Okay. And so, I mean, I, I've always been interested in Communism. I've never been a card carrying Communist, but you can't live under Communism, and think of it in an ideal way. Uh, so it was really interesting. And Kyiv, uh, it was called Kiev at the time cuz they spoke Russian, now they speak Ukrainian. Uh, I had a, I would give some open lectures and, and my, my main class was young men who were gonna be translators for the Ukrainian army, and I've lost track of all of them, and some are dead and they're all fighting. They'd be 55 now. Okay. We've kept up with some, and it's, it's a horror story. Even the ones who are Russian leaning for the next 500 years, they will never go to Russia. My, my closest friend, we were still in close contact there in Toronto, and he was, he was simultaneous translator: Russian, English, and Ukrainian and Arabic. And, uh, his wife was Russian. I got the most horrible letter I've ever gotten after . . I mean, I said, how are you doing? Every Ukrainian for 500 years will hate the Russians. It's the stupidest thing Putin could have done. I think he's, I think he's a not only a psychopath, he's a mad man, and an idiot. Anyway, I, I don't mean to get into that. It, it was fascinating, I, it, it was just, I just loved it. And because we spoke English, uh, everybody wanted to, to take lessons from my wife and it was just, it was just wonderful. We were treated like royalty and we saw an . . . opera cost less than a dollar so we could get the best seats. We had dollars and they had their own currency so we were millionaires. Saw 33 operas in one year. Uh, the students would work. I had a hard time adjusting back to Centre. Because we didn't have enough books, we'd pass 'em around and all the students were taking so many courses doing military training, some had jobs. I don't know how they did it. They worked harder than any students I've ever had. Uh, and so it, it took me a while to get used to this country and how spoiled we all are and how big our houses are. Oh God. Uh, we, we got to know some very well and they'd say, well, tell us about your house. And at one point we wouldn’t show a picture, cuz this is before the nicer house we live in now that Bidhan knows. But I had a diagram and I had a kitchen and I had a dining room and a living room and three bedrooms. He said, okay, well who sleeps in the kitchen? Well, no one, there's just five of us. Well, who sleeps in this room, The dining room? And I, I couldn't say we only use the dining room at Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays. I just, and I walked in a, a grocery store and I just broke down. I couldn't understand how we could have all this stuff and all the space, and it just, and the students seem to me like spoiled brats. You know, I got over it, but it was a hard shift back, particularly from being away a year and, and Warsaw hard shift back to Danville and students. I got used to it after a while. Sorry, I shouldn't have gone on, but it was really important, important to my family, I think. There are 12 of us and we all stay really close. I think because the 5 of us had that. Forget about email, in one year we made one phone call, it cost us like $30 for three minutes at Christmas cuz Sandy's parents were, you know, old. So we were totally no news at all. Totally on our own in this different country. And it's still, I, I still love it.

Jeffery Shenton: Well, we are at three 30. Uh, is there any, are there any final questions or anything that you would like to add Dr. Reigelman?

Milton Reigelman: I would like to add that I'm really pleased you're doing this. I will be really interested in what you find particularly about urban renewal. Cuz again, my, I was on the periphery. And we all are imprisoned by our own pasts and biases, and so I'd like to learn more about it.

Jeffery Shenton: Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ah,