Univcnity of California Berkeley REGIONAL ORAL HISTORY OFFICE Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California History of Bay Area Philanthropy Series Sally Lilienthal FUNDING PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR With an Introduction by William Mat son Roth An Interview Conducted by Gabrielle Morris in 1987 Copyright (T) 1989 by the Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the University of California and Sally Lilienthal dated November 12, 1987. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Sally Lilienthal requires that she be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sally Lilienthal, "Funding Prevention of Nuclear War," an oral history conducted in 1987 by Gabrielle Morris, the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1989. Copy No. SALLY LILIENTHAL FORT MASON, SAN FRANCISCO 1987 Photograph by Borensztein TABLE OF CONTENTS Sally Lilienthal PREFACE i INTRODUCTION by William Matson Roth vil INTERVIEW HISTORY ix BRIEF BIOGRAPHY I FAMILY AND YOUTH 1 Childhood in Portland, Oregon 1 Teenager in San Francisco 4 II SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE, 1936-1940 8 Eastern College Expectations 8 Literary Exposure 9 Political Currents: Lincoln Brigade and Anti-Semitism 10 One-on-One Teaching 14 Phil Lilienthal in New York 15 III WITH THE OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION, 1941-1946 17 Family Troubles; Advertising Job 17 Observing Germans in South America 19 Asian Broadcasts and Study Programs 19 Owen Lattimore as Head of OWI 23 IV COUNCIL ON CIVIC UNITY, WORLD FEDERALISM, 1950s-1960s 24 Early Civil Rights Efforts 24 Communist Take-over Attempt 25 Tom Cohen 26 Minorities in the Bay Area; Fears of the Atom Bomb 26 Anti-communism Issues; Loyalty Oath 29 V CAREER IN THE ARTS 31 Studying Sculpture 31 California School of Fine Arts; Helping Minorities 33 San Francisco Art Commission; Harold Zellerbach 34 Neighborhood Arts Program 36 Revamping the Art School; Art Auctions 38 Art Commission Politics 39 VI DEVELOPING SKILLS IN ORGANIZATION AND INNOVATION 42 Art Institute Symposium 42 Collecting Art; Raising Children 44 San Francisco Art Museum Board; Performing Arts Program 47 Creating New Audiences 49 VII MUSEUM OF MODERN ART RENTAL GALLERY 51 Support for Young, Unknown Artists 51 Business and Other Clients 54 Aside on Ploughshares Meeting in New York, September 1987 56 VIII GIVING AND RAISING MONEY IN THE 1960s AND 1970s 60 Fair Housing Legislation 60 American Civil Liberties Union 62 Budget Needs vs. Innovation: Sierra Club and ACLU 65 Writing and Reviewing Grant Applications: San Francisco Foundation and Ploughshares 67 IX AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, 1972-1979 70 Fundraising in the East 70 Early Interest; European Organization 71 San Francisco Adoption Groups; Freeing Fernando Flores 74 Urgent Action Network 77 Nobel Peace Prize, 1977 79 Adding Public Relations Staff 81 Starting a Northern California Group; Cloak and Dagger Adventures 87 National Board Member 87 Direct-Mail Fundraising: Pros and Cons 88 Adoptee in India 93 Lilienthal Family Views 94 Managing Policy 96 Philanthropy in San Francisco; Advocacy 98 X CREATING THE PLOUGHSHARES FUND, 1979-1980 100 Preliminary Thoughts and Discussions; Personal Concern About Nuclear War; Scarcity of Donors 100 Personal Giving 103 Organizing Meetings/Group 105 Advisers and Early Board Members 109 A Public Foundation; Initial Support and Staff 112 More on Advisers and Their Role 115 XI DEVELOPING GRANTS POLICIES AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT 121 Considering Applications 121 Accessibility; International and Individual Grants 123 Working with Other Foundations 126 Women's Leadership Development; Affecting Public Decisions 128 Donor Growth 130 First Executive Director, 1982; More on Grants to Individuals 131 XII BROADENING PLOUGHSHARES' IMPACT 134 Strengthening Grantee Organizations 134 Nuclear Issues in the Foundation World 136 Retired Military Advisers 138 Narrowing Granting Focus; Replacing the Executive Director 140 Responding to World Events; Treaty Verification 143 XIII EVALUATION: SOME SIGNIFICANT PROGRAMS 145 Monitoring Grants and Applicants 145 Political Education, 1983-1984; Other Strategic Concerns 147 Qualifications of Applicants, Site Visits 149 The Nuclear Issues Community: SANE, Freeze, etc., and Funding Sources 150 Stock Market Drop, 1987; Grants Budgets 152 Women at the US-USSR Summit; Some Reservations 153 Need for Visibility 154 Nuclear Countdown Press Kits 156 Global Security: Future Plans 158 XIV ORGANIZATIONAL CONCERNS; PERSONAL PRINCIPLES 160 Board Selection, Small Grants Committee, Washington Office 160 Public Foundations: Increasing Individual Involvement 162 Continuity and Effective Giving 163 Women and Charitable Giving 165 TAPE GUIDE 168 APPENDIX Brief biography - March 1987 169 "Ploughshares' never-ending crusade," Caroline Drewes, San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, November 10, 1985 170 "Peace: A Role for Philanthropy," Sally Lilienthal, Women and Foundations/Corporate Philanthropy, Spring/Summer 1986 172 "World Class, Sally Lilienthal: Turning swords into ploughshares," Albert Haas, Jr., San Francisco Magazine, July 1987 174 INDEX 177 PREFACE Northern California Grantmakers and the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley are pleased to present the first installment of a series of twelve oral histories documenting the growth and development of Bay Area philanthropy during the last twenty- five years. It is our hope that these memoirs will both preserve a record of the experiences and philosophies of selected senior members of the philanthropic community, and encourage greater understanding and discussion of the traditions of charitable giving. The starting point for this series was an earlier project of the Regional Oral History Office, completed in 1976, which documented Bay Area foundation history in the 1930s and 1940s, and the evolution of issues and leadership in the 1950s and 1960s. The new series will focus on the significant changes which have occurred since that time, including the tremendous growth in corporate giving, changes in the role of the government in supporting the arts and human services, and increased collaboration among grantmakers. Selection of prospective interviewees for the project involved many hard choices among outstanding persons in Bay Area philanthropy. The final selection was made by The Bancroft Library, arid reflects the broad spectrum of grantmaking organizations and styles in the Bay Area. The guiding principal has been to preserve a record of the thinking and experience of men and women who have made significant contributions in shaping the philanthropic response to the many changes which have occurred over the last twenty- five years. 11 Overall guidance for the project has been provided by an advisory committee composed of representatives from the philanthropic community and the U.C. Berkeley faculty. The advisory committee is particularly indebted to Florette White Pomeroy and John R. May, whose enthusiasm, leadership and wise counsel made the project possible. The committee is also grateful to the eleven foundations and corporations which generously contributed the necessary financial support to conduct the project. Members of the advisory committee and the contributors are listed on the following pages. The director for the project is Gabri'elle Morris, who conducted the previous project on the history of Bay Area foundations. Willa Baum, head of the Regional Oral History Office, provides administrative supervision, and overall supervision and much helpful guidance has been provided by Professor James D. Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library. For the advisory committee, Ruth Chance Thomas Layton April 1989 San Francisco, California iii HISTORY OF BAY AREA PHILANTHROPY SERIES Herman E. Gallegos, Equity and Diversity: Hispanics in the Nonprofit World. 1989. Roger W. Heyns , Collected Thoughts on Grantmaking and the Hewlett Foundation. 1989. Sally Lilienthal, Funding Prevention of Nuclear War. 1989. Mary C. Skaggs and Philip Jelley, Specialized Granting with National and International Impact. 1989. Morris Doyle, in process. Leslie Luttgens , in process. Madeleine Haas Russell, in process. iv Bay Area Foundation History Series June, 1976 Volume I Introduction to series John Rickard May, Building a Community Foundation Volume II Ruth Chance, At the Heart of Grants for Youth Volume III Daniel J. Koshland, Responding to the Flow of New Ideas in the Community Philip S. Ehrlich, Sr., An Attorney's Twenty-five Years of Philanthropic Service Josephine Whitney Duveneck, Working for a Real Democracy with Children and other Minority Groups Marjorie Doran Elkus, Recollections of San Francisco Private Agencies and Foundations, 1935-1950 Dorothy W. Erskine, Environmental Quality and Planning: Continuity of Volunteer Leadership Florence Richardson Wyckoff , A Volunteer Career , from the Arts and Education to Public Health Issues Burnett Gamaliel Solomon, A Corporate Citizen's Concern for the Effective ness of a Community Foundation Bill Somerville, A Foundation Executive in Training, 1961-1974 Volume IV Frank Sloss, Tradition and Change: Continuing Education of a Foundation Board Member Edmond S. Gillette, Jr., Smaller Foundation Trusteeship: Obligations to Friendship and the Community Charles Clock, A Sociologist Comments on Getting, Using, and Making Grants Jean Gerlinger Kuhn, Balance and Order in a Community Trust William Matson Roth, The Tradition of Voluntary Solutions to Public Problems Richard Foster, Avoiding Institutional Entropy; A School Superintendent's View Orville Luster, Growth of a Grassroots Youth Agency in the 1960s Obie Benz and Peter Stern, A New Generation of Grant-making Ideas Volume V Milton Salkind, New Vitality in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music E. P. (Red) Stephenson, Transition: White Man in a Black Town, 1950-1967 Caroline Moore Charles, Development and Dynamics of Volunteer Organizations Arabella Martinez, The Spanish-speaking Unity Council, Inc., and Bay Area Foundations Ira DeVoyd Hall, Jr., Community Resources: Turning Ideas into Action Sam Yuen, Philosopher and Community Agency Administrator For additional oral histories on philanthropy and nonprofit organizations, consult the Regional Oral History Office. HISTORY OF BAY AREA PHILANTHROPY ADVISORY COMMITTEE Ruth Chance, Co -Chair Rosenberg Foundation (retired) Thomas Lay ton, Co -Chair Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Marcia Argyris McKesson Foundation Walter A. Haas, Jr. Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund Susan Little San Francisco Foundation (resigned 1988) John R. May* San Francisco Foundation (retired) Florette W. Pomeroy* Consultants in Philanthropy Bruce Sievers Walter & Elise Haas Fund Caroline Tower Northern California Grantmakers U.C. BERKELEY FACULTY ADVISORS Richard Abrams Department of History William R. Ellis School of Education Paula Gillett Graduate School of Education James D. Hart The Bancroft Library Ralph Kramer School of Social Welfare *Deceased during the term of the project vi The Regional Oral History Office would like to express its thanks to the following organizations whose encouragement and support have made possible the History of Bay Area Philanthropy Series. Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Foundation Miriam and Peter Haas Foundation Walter and Elise Haas Foundation William and Flora Hewlett Foundation James Irvine Foundation Walter S. Johnson Foundation Northern California Grantmakers David and Lucile Packard Foundation San Francisco Foundation L.J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation Wells Fargo Foundation vii INTRODUCTION To read the table of contents of this oral history and to be reminded of the range of Sally's activities, is a lesson in humility. Her early and continuing interest in painting and sculpture, her commitment to her family and friends, co-exist and are a part of her active involvement in liberal causes. Within it all, there is a consistency of purpose and vision that gives her life coherence and force. To whatever she does, Sally brings not only compassion and care, but discrimination, common- sense, and humor. Rare qualities indeed in the social and political mine-fields in which she has operated. In a position to give both of her resources and energies, she has done so in generous measure. The American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International come especially to mind. Her ability to be innovative as well as practical can best be seen, however, in those organizations that she herself founded. As a member of the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she discovered that a rental gallery, squeezed into inadequate space, was not serving the function it might in promoting the work of younger artists. She sought permission to move the gallery to Fort Mason where, under her active guidance, it became an exciting and successful addition to the City's art community. Ploughshares, that enormously successful enterprise, also was formed to meet a need. Although there had been for some years study and activist organizations concerned with arms-control, defense policy, relations with Russia, etc., their work was underfunded. Sally and her late husband, Phil Lilienthal, established a foundation to fill that gap. Aware that not all the individuals and groups working in these areas were knowledgeable or effective, they asked a panel of distinguished experts in foreign affairs, science, and government, to serve as advisors. In addition, they chose a well balanced board of directors to ensure that projects were screened for their practicality, their chance of success, and the examples they might set. In spite of the able assistance Ploughshares has received, however, the foundation's energy, its achievement in raising funds to match Sally's own, and its strategies have depended and still depend upon her own unceasing drive. Her fundraising letters are masterpieces informative and persuasive. Professionals would blush with envy. What Sally has accomplished has required not only concern and initiative, but imagination, as well. There is indeed a connection between her interest in the arts, her work as a practicing sculptor, and an activist career in community and national affairs. There is no shrillness viii in her approach, she is never doctrinaire. She is open to new ideas; she listens. Sally is balanced in her judgments, knowing that there are other dimensions in her life and in the lives of those she works with that must be fulfilled. This is perhaps why over the years, her family and her friends have been so important to her. In tragic times and good, she has confronted the complexities of marriage, raising children, and friendship with good humor, affection, and courage. She is an adventurous lady, and will take chances, pushing not only herself, but others in the pursuit of difficult but desirable goals. In a way, Sally's house on Vallejo Street, designed by Joe Escherick, forms a base for her efforts, both actually and symbolically. It is a simple modern structure with a garage and one story showing on a street of Renaissance and Tudor homes. Wooden stairs descend to the front door and to the living room whose balcony extends over the cliff below. It is a simple and elegant room, with marvelous art. Although Ploughshares now has its own offices in Fort Mason, it was organized and initially operated out of Sally's home and this space remains, as does its owner, the heart of the enterprise. William Matson Roth July 1988 Princeton, New Jersey ix INTERVIEW HISTORY "Of course you can do it if you want to," was the reply Sally Lilienthal got when she asked for advice about starting a foundation dedicated to the prevention of nuclear war. "Yes, dear, why don't you." In the following oral history, Mrs. Lilienthal relates how she and a small group of cohorts in 1979 went ahead and created the San Francisco- based Ploughshares Fund, which in less than ten years time has come to be a significant vehicle for people seeking a way to be involved in encouraging new avenues to world peace. Although she does not consider herself a professional person, this slender, stylish woman's preparation for undertaking the myriad challenges of national grantmaking included a dedication to human rights and a variety of demanding experiences in voluntary organizations. As she tells of these activities with warmth and enthusiasm, it becomes clear that through them she was becoming increasingly skillful in the practice of philanthropy. Among friends who shared her interests were Martha Gerbode, Clarence Heller (known as Clary), and William Matson Roth. When one of these friends came across a person with a project of importance, he or she would be sent to talk to others of the friends, one of whom frequently put up some money to get the idea into action. Underlying her public-spirited interests is an artistic sense that goes back to childhood, when she was expected to be "creative." As a young matron in San Francisco with five young children, Sally as she is usually referred to began studying sculpture, and soon became a member of the board of the San Francisco Art Institute, where she staged auctions and symposia to raise funds and sought ways to encourage young, minority students. On the board of the Museum of Modern Art, she created a neighborhood arts program which showed the work of young African and Mexican Americans and brought their families and friends into the museum. Appointed to the city Art Commission, she encouraged similar efforts and, a story she tells with humor and understanding, challenged established ideas on how the commission should be managed. During this same period, the 1960s, she sat on the board of the local ACLU chapter and set up a fund in memory of her first husband, Tom Cohen, at the San Francisco Foundation to be used for improvement of race relations. By the 1970s, she was deeply involved with Amnesty Inter national, chairing several local political-prisoner support groups, organizing a northern California chapter, and going on the national board. Some of these acquaintances, she notes, joined the cause when Ploughshares was created. As time went on, says Sally, "I came to understand that one needs to be focused in what one does." One focus continued to be art, which she had collected widely for some years. In 1978 she turned this interest to founding a rental gallery for the Museum of Modern Art, which became an immediate and lasting success, again providing a profitable showcase for young artists. The other focus was world peace. Having become unhappy with the management of the endowment for race relations and more alarmed about the threat of nuclear war, she decided to concentrate her personal giving in this area. In no time, she recalls, she called together an ad hoc group of friends with personal philanthropy and foundation experience and shared her ideas. "They said a foundation was a great idea and the first thing we should do was hire a consultant." "It did occur to me that you couldn't hire a consultant to find out whether one could do something that's never been done and that the consultant himself didn't have experience in." What follows in the oral history is a detailed and exhilarating account of how this small group pooled their considerable skills in the ways of foundations with Sally's growing knowledge of the community of people working to find alternate routes to peace and global security, and created the Ploughshares Fund. Within its first year, the fund had 62 donors and made grants of $150,000. For 1984-85, 950 donors contributed $625,672 which went to 86 grantees. By 1986-87, the grants budget was a million dollars and rising. Still not describing herself as a professional, Sally does say she works closely with Ploughshares' executive director, meeting with contributors and working with grantees and applicants to develop the agenda for the board. Enthusiastically, she credits the board with creating flexible policies and shaping the focus of the foundations 's encouragement for "programs to affect opinion, which in turn one would hope would affect government opinion." Reading the oral history provides an immediate sense of the creation and operation of a vital and effective philanthropic venture. Speaking with Sally Lilienthal off tape, one hears a vibrant flow of new experiences and ideas as Ploughshares continues to develop. One of Sally's skills is a capacity for taking pains with details. She knows many grantees personally, and delights in contacting other funders to pass along suggestions about a particularly promising prospect. Mailings from Ploughshares are usually carefully written by Sally herself xi and reflect the immediacy of her concerns. When she agreed to do this oral history, she cleared space on her busy schedule for regular interview sessions, usually two hours long. When she received the rough- edited transcript, she went through it with a stern editorial eye, removed several passages she found vague or irrelevant and tightened up others to be more specific. Readers will feel that they have, indeed, had an invigorating conversation with Sally Lilienthal. Gabrielle Morris Interviewer-Editor February 1989 Regional Oral History Office 486 The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California Room 486 The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Your full name (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) S =l U Date of birth +* i Birthplace i l 1 ' 1 Birthplace fov-H*.**, O Father's full name Occupation Bx/ *''** J * U **' A _ Birthplace fe-MH,A. Mother's full name ft ~ ^ H. Wg.1 J < ,'^> *- * ^ ^ > "t* ~*~ Occupation j-)ov>fc- QJ .' fc~ Birthplace ^*v S^c'jeo t -* ' ' i- j I..-* ku-'U-J Your spouse___ - ,_. /-k.-'f Your children Tu >. A. C*>L*~ , L^-re, Co la.h M* Where did you grow U p? Present community *->4 h^^C^t^ C^ t.' f- Education ($t\; O a y Occupation (s) . Areas of expertise <>u 4^^. <> Other interests or activities T >>' J. Nl;4-i' 6 .. s Organizations in which you are active o< (v^^'jv Muj+y^ |- I FAMILY AND YOUTH [Interview 1: August 17. 1987] Childhood in Portland, Oregon Morris: Why don't we start with early influences on your life? Sally L: As I began to think of this interview a little last night when I went to bed particularly being desperate, because I'd lost the outline you sent I thought, oh my goodness, I'm going to fail this exam! > Morris: No, this is not an exam. Sally L: I know. I wondered I'm not very interested in the workings of my psyche; I've never been very interested in it. But the minute that you begin thinking about these things, then you begin to think what were the psychological influences. I don't know how much of this is interesting actually to you. Let me give you an example and maybe you can answer me. It is very clear in thinking about it this morning, but I've seldom thought of it before in my life. My mother [Amy Dinkelspiel Lowengart] gave two strong messages in her life. And they have influenced me enormously. But I would say it's psychological rather than anything else it's not factual in a sense. Morris: Subliminal almost? Sally L: Yes, and I don't know if that sort of thing is interesting. Morris : It is. It is indeed, particularly since you remember thinking about your mother. Sally L: Yes. Morris: So what were the two messages? ##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 168. Sally L: Well, the two messages were: one must be different and yet one must conform. Morris: That's sort of a conflicting message. Sally L: Yes. And it has influenced my life enormously. My mother, who came from San Francisco, moved to Portland, Oregon, was a great beauty, and she felt herself come from the big city. Her husband, my father [Sanford Lowengart j , came from what was a substantial and well-known family in Portland. Her family, I think she always felt, was not quite up to the top of rich Jewish society in San Francisco. So that makes it sort of a dichotomy in her own thinking, because I think although she looked down her nose a bit at Portland, Oregon, at the same time she was rather a queen in Portland, Oregon, where here she would have been aspiring to greater social heights. Morris: An upper echelon that she perceived. Is the San Francisco Jewish community larger than the Portland one, or older? Sally L: The San Francisco Jewish community, I think, is one of the really old and prominent ones in the country. I think it compares to I'm not very good on Jewish history at all, but yes, I think there's no question about it. And, of couse, Portland's a much smaller city. But people like the Haases and Lilienthals and and Koshlands and Morris: have been here since the mid-1800s. Sally L: That's right. And then there were the Hellmans and the Hellers and all these people. My mother's friends, I think, in school were the daughters and sons of those people, but her own family was a cut below in social and economic terms. Isn't it awful? She never talked about her family. For some reason my mother's family was very uninterested in their past. I really don't know how far back it went. For instance, I don't know when her father or grandfather would have emigrated from Germany or moved to San Francisco. I think my grandfather was sometimes a successful businessman, and often he was not. He was up and down in his luck, and I imagine his wife's family was the same. Joe and Sally Dinkelspiel, my grandparents, were cousins second or third I believe. Morris: The way most of us are up and down in our luck. Sally L: Most of us are, except those families that we're talking about. like my third husband's family. They were solid citizens forever from the point of view of Jewish society. Morris: Had your father's family had connections with San Francisco ? Sally L: No, his connections were in Portland. They were certainly one of the two or three top Jewish families. So there was that difference. My father's father had moved there when he was teen-aged or younger. His very successful business was started there. So there was that difference. You see the problems were in my mother's mind. Morris: Right. Was your mother also interested in the arts? Sally L: Well, that brings me back to where we started. The message from my mother was that I had to be creative. She was a writer, or, rather, she thought of herself as a writer. I don't think she ever published anything except a poem in a tiny poetry magazine, or maybe two. She always thought of herself as a writer, and she always thought of herself as more literary and artistic than other people in Portland, Oregon. I don't really know that she was, but [laughs] So _! was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be a writer from the time I was four years old, or even three. I dictated poems to my governess. And they were kept. I was to be a writer. My clothes I could list all kinds of things that were very different than my friends'. My clothes were sent from Paris by an aunt of my father's. Much shorter way up to here. They were "chic." They were much shorter than what the other five-year-olds, six-year-olds, seven-year-elds were wearing, I imagine. I went to a different school than the people in my neighborhood a progressive school they don't call them "progressive" anymore. It actually is an excellent private school that is still in existence. And I had a governess, and certainly nobody else had a governess. Morris: Was your mother, for her time, a suffragette? Sally L: No. No interest in political things at all. Not at all. So you see there was this difference of always having to be different, and that was a thread that went through the pattern f my life as long as she was alive. It went on through college. Morris: Wasn't that a burden for a little girl? Sally L: Terrible. And it has been a burden ever since. [laughs] Yes, it really was a terrible burden, Morris: Are you the only daughter? Sally L: Yes. Just one sibling older brother. Morris: Did he also have to be creative and 2 Sally L: No. Morris: That's interesting Sally L: And sexist. My mother took great store in physical appearances because she herself had been just an extraordinary beauty. And she was very interested in beauty and always made me feel as if 1 were tremendously unattractive had a great deal to say about how unattractive I was, which really wouldn't matter very much except that this was very important in our household. So. I had to dress, quote, "differently. " You can imagine how one felt as a child dressing differently than other people. So I've had this problem all my life. I want to do both things myself be exactly the same, number one, and be different, number two or, more likely, number ten. Morris: How about your father's influence what kind of messages did he send? Sally L: He adored me. He sent a message from the time I was about four years old on that I was a woman. A woman a flirtatious girl reacting to men. I don't think that my mother liked that very well. My mother and father really did not get along much later got a divorce Morris: Was it a big shock to move to San Francisco, or was this eagerly awaited? Sally L: I can't say it was either thing, that I can remember. There were different societies for a child. Those were the days of neighborhoods, and I lived in a neighborhood in Portland. We did all these things together, but I just felt slightly different. It's funny because many years later, when I've gone back and seen those people, they didn't see it that way at all. [laughs] Sally L: For instance (and it was not like my friends), we Lowengarts went to Europe for six months, with our governess. It was a different style for instance, we had a chauffeur, and the chauffeur, among other things, drove me to school. Hateful! [laughs] Teenager in San Francisco Morris: Was that pattern different when you moved to San Francisco? Sally L: Not originally this was really because my mother couldn't tell the wonderful nurse we had. who'd been with us for so long and was so fond of us. that she had to leave. So I still had a nurse when I came here. Morris : The same devoted Sally L: The same devoted nurse, yes. Even though that was after the De pression, and the Depression really was very, very hard on my family. Morris: Because of the European connections? Sally L : No, because, I guess, of my father's investments I don't know. You know, in those days people never talked about money. Particularly not to children, even probably to each other. It was never men tioned. You asked in this outline, though, about and I tried te give it a little thought charitable giving and so forth. I think that my parents somehow, particularly my father, inculcated in us a feeling that one does give to charity. However, I don't remember ever even, quote, "helping the poor." I was trying to recall what civic work they did. My father at one point was president of temple guild, although my parents were not religious. I don't ever remember them going to temple except on High Holidays. I had to go to Sunday school for a year or two. Other than that I don't remember they must have given money to what was then called the community chest. Morris: Which was just getting started. Sally L: It was just getting started, yes. Morris: That's around World War I in San Francisco. Sally L: That would be just about right. But I had no idea what people did about philanthropy. It would be interesting to read what they did tend to do. We know something about people like the Mellons or the Rockefellers but I mean ordinary well-off families. Morris: Right, but you did not get involved in passing cookies at charity bazaars and things. Sally L: No. Not at all. Morris: Were there any people or things special about your early teen years in San Francisco? Sally L: Oh yes. Again I was coming to a place where I felt like an out sider. My father wanted me to go Burke's school. It was very, very difficult to get into Burke's, actually, because I think it was very anti-Semitic, but, of course, I didn't know that at the time. But he knew a Mr. Dohrman who got me in; but you see. it wasn't just going to school, it was getting one into a school. And there, as it said in that article that you read. I wrote a note * *See Ruth Arnstein Hart, Concern for the Individual, Regional Oral History Office. University of California, Berkeley, 1978, p. 42. Sally L: Yes, I had an elder brother who I absolutely adored, just idolized. He'd sometimes teach me dirty words, [laughs], heaven pure heaven! See, here I still was with a governess and with these very short skirts it's too ghastly te think about. The girls were probably two years older than I. I kept skipping grades. Morris: Were your friends, Ruth [Arnstein Hart], Carol [Walter Sinton] at Miss Burke 1 s tee? Sally L: Ruth wasn't at Burke's. you see. It was Carol who was probably my first close friend I'm sure she was; she too had a nurse. Morris: So you had somebody who understood the pluses and minuses of ? Sally L: Yes. Actually somehow that all worked. My nurse went back to Switzerland finally. So it didn't last. The girls in that class were many generations older than I, although in reality only two years, and they were reading dirty books behind other covers, you see: books about sex. So they knew about all these things well, the difference between being a highly protected twelve year-eld and being in the big city at thirteen and fourteen! So when I passed this note, as Ruth said, I was summarily fired. Morris: They were very stern. Sally L: They were very stern. It really was very anti-Semitic, that class. I remember whatever history we were studying, if there was any question that had to do with Israel or Jews, this teacher would turn to me and say, "Now. you know all about Jews. 11 Though Carol was Jewish. I don't think that there were ether Jewish girls in the class, but Carol's two older sisters had gone there, and they're very charitable to the school and se forth. Morris: Did you and Carol live in the same neighborhood, in Pacific Heights? Sally L: Actually, yes. Morris: Did many people go to boarding school? Sally L: No. Although I did eventually. There were other things that made me feel like an outsider. For instance, we all went to dancing class a Jewish dancing class. It's funny to think of things being so segregated. Strange. Coming from Portland, you see, where they were not segregated at all. Going to a dance and being told to wear old clothes, and my mother decking me out in a maroon satin evening dress and everybody else wore blue jeans. I was taller than everybody else. Oh, dreadful 1 Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful years I [hoots] Morris: It sounds like it may have been difficult to communicate with your mother on some of these realities. Sally L: Oh, really truly said. Yes. we were very different characters. I think. Morris: Did you have a say in going to Sarah Lawrence? Sally L: Yes. that was of course much later. After I was expelled from Burke 1 s, I went to public schools, and that's where I got to knew Ruth so well, because we both went to Roosevelt Junior High School. Then we went to Galileo [High School]. After a year of never opening a book at Galileo, maybe longer, I was sent to Santa Barbara Girls School, where I went for two years. And that was boarding school. Morris: Why didn't you open a book at Galileo? Sally L: Because I guess I was rebellious, and you didn't need to. You could get all A's and not open a book Morris: Did you and Ruth and Carol have a pact to see how long you could get through without reading ? Sally L: No, Carol was at Burke's. And after I was expelled, her mother wouldn't let her speak to me. Morris: You were expelled, but she was not. Sally L: Well, I wrote the note. This is all extraneous but many years later, when I was a freshman at college, the president came out to give a presentation about Sarah Lawrence for prospective parents. There was a film of the school and it described how Sarah Lawrence had something called "contracts" rather than exams or papers. And Connie Warren, the president of the college, picked me out of the crowd of people to ask, "Sally, you were a freshman this year. What was your contract about? What was you major contract?" And I said it was the possible influences of Freud on Karl Marx and vice versa. And from the back of the room came Barbara Burke's voice, "I could have told you about that girl." [laughs] It's really funny, because I then became, through college and afterwards, a solid citizen. And whenever I met her at a solid- citizen party, a civic group of some sort, she literally turned away. [laughs] Morris: You were marked for life because of that one indiscretion. It makes one wonder I assume that sex education was not mentioned at Burke's. Sally L: Oh, heavens, I can't imagine it was. And at home, my mother always said that sex was extremely dirty disgusting in fact, [laughs] 8 II SARAH LAWRENCE CCLLBGE. 1936-1940 Eastern College Expectations Morris: How had you heard about Sarah Lawrence? Sally L: When I went to Santa Barbara Girls School, my first boyfriend's sister-in-law lived in San Francisco. He came up to see me over Easter vacation, and I went to this grown-up couple's they were about 21 or 22 years old house for dinner, and they treated me like an equal. Imagine! They didn't make me sit at the children's table. They had a baby. Oh, I mean it was thrilling. And she was witty, warm, and had gone there. I think that was what made me focus on Sarah Lawrence. Morris: Were you interested in going east? Sally L: Definitely interested in going east. But in those days, there was almost no limit. If you were in the highest seventh of the class then you could go to anyone of the "sister colleges." Until I think I met Dale Clyde. I was going to go to Vassar or Wellesley. Then, having become interested in Sarah Lawrence, and, I suppose, writing away for information they sent out, I tried to fit myself more into the picture of what would be a Sarah Lawrence girl. That you see. again fitted into what my mother liked on one side of her: creative, and artistic, and different. Different is the word that was used a whole let. Morris: Did Dale (Hyde fit your idea of different, as well as being friendly and welcoming? Sally L: Yes. Interesting. Morris: Okay, interesting means "different," or the result of being different is that you're interesting? Sally L: [pauses] I don't know. It probably didn't go beyond being friendly, elder, and interested in books and world events. My best friends Ruth and my other Jewish friend in San Francisco were not at all Sally L: academic. Ruth wasn't even slightly academic. Not a bit. She went to more of a finishing school. And I was much mere interested in things like reading, although I was never academic. Morris: Was your reading on the school-approved list er did you pursue this on your own? Sally L: I really don't remember, but I don't think I had any academic interests at all. But I was definitely more interested in going to college. The girls that I knew here (and by that time, of course I had been at boarding school for two years) led such a sort of a narrow life. They expected to get married and have children and not think about college. In fact, I don't think many of them did go to college. Carol, for instance, didn't go to college. Morris: So you were the only San Francisco girl when you got to Sarah Lawrence? Sally L: No. There was a girl I knew, actually there was another [pauses] Funnily enough, Jim Hart's wife, Connie. She only went one year. She was totally non-academic. Anyhow, I don't really know what the influence was, but it just sounded exciting and interesting. The president at that time was a New England lady named Constance Warren, who believed in progressive education but who wore white gloves and a tailored suit. She was about 65 years old and very proper. She came to see my parents about the schools and quickly disproved their ideas about what education at a place of that sort might be. Because already its reputation was beginning to spread and about how independent its students were and how un traditional. Literary Exposure Morris: Did you find that the academic work was more satisfying or was satisfying, once you get into it at Sarah Lawrence? Sally L: Sarah Lawrence at that time, which is not true anymore, was undemanding in that education was so individualized that I could go through college by writing stories. I was supposed to be a writer. There was no choice in my career. I had to be a lady and a writer. And definitely was net to have sex with a man before I got married. Those were the three rules in my life. Oh. dear. It is funny. Morris: So did you do a lot of writing? 10 Sally L: So I did. But I didn't learn very much, and I've regretted this terribly all my life. Actually Sarah Lawrence was a good and bad influence on me because I never learned to take notes; I never vent t a lecture they didn't have lecture courses in those days. I learned to be something called creative but never learned facts or theories or history or science er anything else. Morris: Looking back on it. were you thinking in terms of finding a little discipline, or intellectual ? Sally L: I didn't think I was then. I think I was looking in terms of finding the right man, actually. [laughs] And fitting in. I went east, and I was one of the few westerners at Sarah Lawrence, and I didn't know anybody in the east. I was Jewish that was in those days eastern colleges were very anti-Semitic, although Sarah Lawrence less so than others. But I had one after another demeaning experience. M Sally L: There were a lot of smart people there, but for somebody from "* the west who felt insecure anyway, it was not a place that gave one much security. In fact, I'm very close to Sarah Lawrence. I served on the board for a long time, and I have been a buddy of one after another president of Sarah Lawrence, and my daughter went there. Actually, it is isolated for some reason or another shouldn't be; it's only thirty minutes from New York. So, again, I felt rather You asked me about academia, and I'm not answering you directly which is unfortunate, but I would say, if anybody asked, *Vhat was the greatest influence on your life?" I would say, "Sarah Lawrence." In fact, I have often said so since I don't know whether it's true today, but it certainly came through in those days, that you could learn what you wanted to in order to do what you wanted to do. At least I came out with that feeling. I don't know that I even thought about it> Morris: And it sounds like it also gave you a lot of self-confidence. Sally L: Well, I never I had any self-confidence, but it gave you the feeling that if you worked hard you could do anything you wanted. Anybody could. Pol i ti cal Cur rents; Lincoln Brigade and Anti-Semitism Morris: That's marvelous. Did you think of staying on the East Coast after graduation? 11 Sally L: Oh, yes, I did. Also, politically too. Sarah Lawrence had a great influence politically. But as far as staying on the East Coast, I desperately wanted to stay en the East Coast. I got a jeb at Harper's, which was oh, God, wonderfull But I couldn't take it because my parents made me come home. Morris: Oh, dear. Let's go back and do the political influence. Sally L: Well, of course, this was 1936, and what was happening in Germany through the period that I was there, what was happening in Europe was a passionate interest. Although our social lives it's very strange again there was a dichotomy, because people drank like unbelievable. We'd go to men's colleges on the weekends that was the whole purpose of life. People would compete to see who could pass out. I mean, it was incredible. On the other hand, during those four years the Lincoln Brigade was going to Spain, and some of our friends were going from Princeton and got killed. I guess by my junior year, every Thursday night we had a cheap dinner. We had carrot and raisin salad. I remember, instead of meat, and macaroni or something, and the money went to the Lincoln Brigade. This was at Sarah Lawrence. Morris: College-wide decision? Sally L: Whoever made the decision, I don't know. I can't imagine that it was Connie [Warren] though. I don't know. Morris: Was there a student government? Sally L: Yes. there was a student government, but it was of no importance at all. Those were the days that it was all right, as you very well know (and not only at Sarah Lawrence but other places, and I think fewer at Sarah Lawrence because most people were highly protected folk), to carry a card of the Communist party. That was true of all colleges and universities with which I am familiar. Morris: Had many of the girls ? Sally L: Not that I know of there. Morris: Cautious about it Sally L: Whether they were or not, I doubt that they were, Gabrielle, but I know a very, very prominent judge who died a couple of years ago who was a member of the Communist party when he went to Cal. I mean, there are a lot of other people who at the time that's before the war, after all. The Russians were still heroes in eur minds, I guess. I don't even remember anything about Russia. Morris: The Lincoln Brigade seems to have had an emotional appeal separate from the Russians. 12 Sally L: Oh, totally. It was anti-fascist, to do with Russia at all. I don't think it had anything Morris: John Reed came from Portland. Did he register en your consciousness? Sally L: No, no. Interesting people came from Portland. They certainly had liberal political or even radical views. But since I wasn't interested in politics or history or anything useful, that must have just sifted through my consciousness. And my best friends there weren't interested in such matters. Morris : Sally L: Morris : Did the Lincoln Brigade appeal to you because young men that you knew were ? It appealed to everybody. This was simply what the school did. I did happen to know one person from Princeton who went there but wasn't a close friend, no. It is interesting. I wish I could pin it down. People have often asked me, certainly at Sarah Lawrence, but I can't Do you suppose that it was the influence and leadership of some of the faculty? Sally L : Absolutely, absolutely. Morris: Who might it have been? Sally L: My own don. At Sarah Lawrence there were dons. It's a little different now, tightened up somewhat, but then one would see the don every week for two hours. I think, and he would guide your academic, as well as, if you wished, your emotional and social life. [laughs] And my den, whom I had for three years at Sarah Lawrence was so close a friend that he was just the biggest influence, on my life. He was a writer. His name was Max Geismar. He was just ideal for what a young woman would think was ideal. He had a permanent pipe coming out of his handsome, thin face, and patches on his tweed elbows. He was sardonic and brilliant, just absolutely full of charm. He was a writer, you see. and he'd say, "Don't be a writer. It's a terrible profession. You must not be a writer, you must be a " So, of course, it would make Morris: It would make you want to be one. Sally L: Oh, of course. And he certainly was someone who had radical political views, although I know that because I know what he wrote, and I know of what he did since that time and his involvements. But I don't remember anything he ever said, you see. directly. Morris: Or that he was somebody involved in this carrot and raisin salad ? 13 Sally L: No, I wouldn't I don't know who or what was. But there was just generally that feeling, at least it came wafting down to me. My friends at Sarah Lawrence were not necessarily interested in political matters at all. But it did take with me. Now, the other thing I should have said is that, ef course, being a Jew, and what was happening in 1938 Jews were moving out, and they certainly were moving against the Jews so of course. that was an enormous thing in my life, although I imagine not talked about very much. My parents were very involved; my father was involved in getting Jewish relatives out of Germany. But at Sarah Lawrence as a Jew, that feeling of here I am, horrible things happening, was a really important thing in my life and not talked about. Perhaps it was talked about to Max Geismar or to another professor, but not to my friends. None ef whom were Jewish. None of whom had those interests. So, this was a kind of disguise. You certainly weren't hiding the fact that you were Jewish, of course, but felt it was always a big thing in my life very, very big thing in my life. Morris: Part of the sense of feeling different and ? % Sally L: Feeling different, because people looked down on Jews, and I had one after another dreadful anti-Semitic experience really and then the awful thing of being at a party or something and someone saying something derogatory about Jews, and my not speaking up and saying, "But I'm Jewish; don't say that." Then feeling guilty. Isn't that funny. Just saying that I haven't thought of it for a long time, but I mean, I feel the guilt right now ! Morris: What do you do? Sally L: What do you do? And then you do it. I can remember instances when I did say, "I'm Jewish," and having someone get up at a formal dinner table and say, "I've never sat next to a Jew and never will," or that kind of thing or being in a car with lots of kids in Nashville when I was visiting my roommate, and everybody stopping in a nightclub, as they had in those days out in the country. There was a lighted sign saying, "No Niggers or Jews allowed." And I didn't say then to the ten people in the car, "No, we can't go here because I'm Jewish." Morris: That would be a terrible feeling. Sally L: So all this goes back to Morris: So that the news of what was going en in Germany was Sally L: [unclear words], yes. Morris: been very, very personal. 14 Sally L: Yes. it was not because of relatives really, but it was very personal. Yes. again, because it's a split feeling, a dichotomy. Difficult, I think, because, here I'm a Jew and it's not happening to me. but also I'm not a Jew because I'm trying not to be a Jew. I mean. I'm not trying not to be a Jew, but I'm sort of a disguised person. You see. people didn't recognize me as Jewish from my name or face. I always had to tell that I was Jewish to non-Jews. Although a Jew might know that I was Jewish because my name was Lowengart. Morris: It's also German then? Sally L: It's also German, and so I would always have to tell. I think all that influenced my political life later, that's why I'm going into all that, yes. One-on-One Teaching Morris: Were there other people on the faculty besides Max Geismar who were helpful or open to ? Sally L: Oh, yes. The most fantastic faculty. Not in political ways, for instance, but there were great literary luminaries. There was a poet; his name was Horace Gregory; he was great. And a Marxist, woman author named Genevieve Taggard who led the May Day parade every year in New York City. It's unbelievable to think that there were four students in a seminar with four professors, if you can believe it. and I was one of them. Can you believe it? I'm ashamed to even think of how wasted the teachers were. Horace Gregory and Genevieve Taggard were among them. I think Max may have been one of them, and then there was a fourth writer whose name I can't remember. Morris: And were you one of the four students? Sally L: Oh. yes. I wrote stories for the teachers to critique. The reason I remember this is because you said, 'Look through and see if don't you have any mementos." So I went through my desk Morris: Did you save some of those stories? Sally L: I have a whole file of the stories, yes. Morris: Good for you. They're painful to read, aren't they? Sally L: I didn't read them, because I was in a hurry looking for other mementoes. 15 Morris: Don't throw them away though. I don't need them. [phone rings in background] That would be unduly prying, but your children would be enchanted with them. Sally L: Well, there they are. They've been sitting there for years. Se. you see these marks all ever I mean, how carefully these devoted teachers read them. Oh! [laughs] Too aw full Morris: What an incredible experience. Sally L: It was an incredible experience. And then there was a very, very well-known composer and teacher. His name was S chum an, who went from there to be the head of the Juilliard School of Music very, very famous composer still today. Anyway, he led us in chorus, and my don. Max, said I didn't know anything about music. And in fact, I wasn't a bit interested. So Max said, "Well, you'd better learn something about music." So, Franz Schuman, once-a-week for I don't know how many months, met me at the Brenxville tavern to talk about music. Mostly what he told me was how much he hated Wagner, and how he had to [laughs] We were surrounded by these absolutely wonderful minds. Morris: Incredible. You really would get an appreciation for Sally L: for the fun of knowing something Morris: And talking to people like that on a one-to-one basis. Sally L: Yes, just talking, yes. Morris: It sounds like they were approachable and accessible. Sally L: Oh, very. Morris: That's really striking when you think of the concerns for the last twenty years of students that the Great I Am may be an incredible brain, but he's lecturing to a class of two hundred, and you don't really have any sense of personal contact. Sally L: Right. And the Great I Am is usually not teaching undergraduates at a place like the University of California. God knows, at Harvard they were. But that was very different then. I mean I've compared notes with Phil [Lilienthal] , for instance, since then, how close he was even to his Harvard professors. Phil Lilienthal in New York Morris: He was at Harvard when you were at 16 Sally L: He had just graduated when I went to Sarah Lawrence. Morris: Did your don or anybody else suggest that you do something with the other arts? In other words, that you get your hands into clay? Sally L: Yes. he did. I took a painting course when I was a freshman. It was just terrible. Thirty years later when I was on the board at Sarah Lawrence I was asked by the then president to do something about the art department which needed complete revamping. And the teacher was the same terrible teacher who spent his life trying to keep the studio clean when I was a freshman. He's still there. [laughs] It was funny, you see. Anyway. I stayed in the painting courses a very, very short time. I was not interested in art at Sarah Lawrence, which is kind of interesting considering that I spent the next twenty years being a sculptor. In fact, as to the cultural riches of New York I believe I went to a museum twice in four years. Both times taken by once by Phil and once by another man. neither of whom had enough money to take me out on a more expensive date. [laughs] Can you believe it being in New York? But really, from Sarah Lawrence we were only allowed to stay in two hotels, and the hotels cost six dollars a night, which was a rate for colleges. (I imagine it was eight dollars for other people.) [laughs] We'd go out we'd get six of us who would go and stay in the one room because the managers didn't know who came to visit in the room. We'd sleep across a double bed, and whoever lost pulling the matchsticks had to sleep in the bathtub. Imagine all for six dollars. Morris: Did Phil stay in the East? Sally L: No. That year that I met him he was in the East working. miserably unhappily in the insurance business. After graduating from college, he had been going, expecting to go into graduate school and become an academic, although he always said afterwards that he was glad that he did not do so. His father died and his mother made him come back to San Francisco; so then the following year and by that time we were in love, more or less he took his small patrimony and spent a year on his own in adventures in Asia. That's how he became so involved in Asia studies. So then when he returned, we broke up and Morris: Then many years later you did marry. Sally L: Well, many years later, yes. Not that many years later I was working for the Office of War Information. 17 III WITH THE OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION. 1941-1946 Family Troubles. 1940; Advertising Job Morris: Right. How did you get connected with the Office of War Information? What were they doing in San Francisco? Sally L: That's a good question, Because it was the western office from which broadcasts were sent by short wave to Asia. The New York OWI broadcast around to Assam, and from San Francisco we broadcast around to Assam the other way. Morris: Good heavens. So you were preparing material that was then translated into Asian languages. Did you have to take a civil service exam, or go through security? Sally L: No, no. You'd think so, but no. I can't imagine anybody listening to any of it How I got into it in the first place? As I said earlier, I was teld by my parents to come home to San Francisco. It seemed a real tragedy to come home, but I was forced to. Morris: Because the daughter alone in New York was just ? Sally L: No, no. Because my mother wanted me to be at home. My mother always was always in very bad health, both emotional and physical. Whatever I did against her strong wishes made her ill. She had to go to bed and sometimes she was seriously sick because of my obstinancy. So therefore I had to come home after college or ruin her health permanently. That was in June, and the following November, my brother got married. The day after the wedding my father told my mother that he was leaving her. So then, I was really stuck. Noway out 1 Morris: What a horrendous year. This is all in 1940? Sally L: Yes. So I was stuck there until I got married. 18 Morris: That's a strong reason to get married. Sally L: I didn't for years. Morris: But it was all right to go out and start a career, go to work? Sally L: Well, if I was not getting married. Actually my mother made it very clear that she did not want me to get married and leave her. I was responsible for her and without me she would be alone. Morris: But you were also supposed t grow up and be a writer and get married. Sally L: And be a writer as you said. Although what I wrote she didn't approve of at all. So. I had to do something. I guess. I don't think I was encouraged to have a career. But I felt I had to get a job certainly, but I wasn't particular encouraged nor was I discouraged. Since I had not been able to take the job at Harper's in publishing, the next best thing was advertising. At that time there was no trade publishing in San Francisco. So I went to secretarial school to learn to type. My beau at the time was in advertising, I believe at Roos Brothers. [laughs] He later became the head of John Deere Company. Anyway I got a job for $75 a month in an advertising firm. Then when the war broke out, I left to work for what was called the "war effort." But before all that, in 1940 when I first came home I do like to tell this story my father told me that if I voted for Roosevelt, or if I kept the little kitten I brought home with me. I would have to leave the house. Of course, my children wouldn't live at home after they graduated from college. Unheard of today, but in those days, isn't that strange? It's hard for me to believe. But anyhow, I did vote for Roosevelt and found out about the privacy of voting booths. I did have to get rid of the kitten. I was just 21. I guess then I must have been somewhat a little bit interested in politics. I certainly was passionate about Roosevelt or I wouldn't have dared disobey my parents. I was very obedient. Morris: I'm interested that things were being broadcast to Asia by the OWI as early as 1940. Sally L: That started in 1941. after Pearl Harbor. Morris: After Pearl Harbor? Sally L: Oh, sure, that's when it started. 19 Observing Germans in South America Sally L: When I left the advertising agency. I went to on a trip to South America with my mother, which was interesting. That was politicizing, because one kept meeting real live Nazis who wore swastikas on their sleeves. It was in Argentina. Brazil and Argentina and Chile; Argentina and Chile particularly. Morris: In uniforms or civilian clothes? Sally L: Both. Lot of civilians. Morris: Really? And people in German uniforms. Sally L: And people in German uniforms, but a lot of civilians. And the civilians wore swastikas. There were German clubs. There was a place we went to up in the mountains of Chile where they were all German-speaking people, all wearing swastikas. Morris: Did you speak German? Sally L: No. My parents did a little bit, when they didn't want us to understand them at the dining table. I'm afraid I'm being much too long winded. Morris: Last time when we talked you mentioned Martha Gerbode and Bill Roth as people you worked closely with on social issues. Sally L: Oh, that was much later. They were not friends yet when I went to the OWI. Well, I had known Bill at Santa Barbara Girls School, because he went to Gate School; I had known him before that I don't know why. Anyway, Bill came too to the OWI, but he soon went off to Alaska, and finally to Assam. He worked for the OWI with the army. Asian Broadcasts and Study Programs///^ Sally L: I was there for I don't know how many years 1940 to 1944, or something. 1941 to 1944. Morris: You stayed for pretty much the duration? Sally L: Oh, yes. Morris: One of the articles I read mentioned that you became concerned about the problems Chinese in the San Francisco OWI had finding housing. Sally L: Yes, because the Chinese 20 Morris: Were these immigrants? Sally L: They were people mostly who were here in China when war broke out. They were mostly wealthy sons and daughters of Mandarins who were here having an education and couldn't get back. I don't remember anything about minorities at all when I was growing up. Nothing about that, so it was a shock to me that they had a hard time finding a place to live, and that they were not accepted in white neighborhoods. Morris: Was there also the question to most Caucasians it was difficult to tell a Chinese from a Japanese. Sally L: Oh, yes. But I think most people who are honest with you tell you that often it is hard to tell. Actually I used to ask Phil about that often. He worked with Chinese and Japanese for many years on a daily basis, and he said that he often made mistakes between Chinese and Japanese. He could tell by a name. which I couldn't have when I was at the OWI. That implies that the Chinese couldn't find a place to live and were discriminated against because they might have been mistaken for Japanese for the enemy. Morris : Perhaps. Sally L: Actually, they were thought f as lower beings. After all, they were brought here as almost slave laborers to build the railroads. I think they were discriminated against, period. Morris: Enough so that growing up here you really weren't aware of Asians at all? Sally L: At all. As I say, I wasn't aware of other minorities except that, of course, in our household my father would use all the time, "noblesse oblige," and I think that's what one would've been expected in other words, it would be a lesser human being, someone with dark skin, I think, or Asian. But you know that can't be true, because my father had a lot of business in Asia. He used to go to Japan quite often. But I never heard of him knowing a Japanese in this country. Interesting. Morris: That must have made a real impact on his business during World War II. Sally L: That must have, but I don't Morris: By then did you stay in contact with him 7 Sally L: Oh. yes. Oh, sure. But I don't remember anything about that. But I just know in my childhood that he went to Japan a number of times. Morris: Okay, back to the OWL Was much of the staff ? 21 Sally L: Chinese in my department? Morris: Yes. Sally L: Some of it was Chinese, yes. And I became very, very close friends with a woman who was Chinese. Morris: One of these students who couldn't go home? Sally L: Yes. She came from a very prominent, wealthy family in China, and who wrote this is a radio play the kind of thing that was written to be sent by short-wave radios, which weren't allowed. She wrote a, what you might call a soap opera about an American woman, young woman the point of it being to show how patriotic young Americans were about this war. And I was the model, and so she wrote about me, because my fiancee, Tom Cohen, was on a battleship, and I was working for the war effort. In China, people of her social and economic background were not working for the war effort you know, the privileged Chinese were not [laughs] Can you believe it? [laughs] Morris: This was the period when the U.S. was pouring tons of money and supplies into the Chiang Kai-Shek regime Sally L: That's right, absolutely. Owen Latti more was trying to tell people about this, and Owen, you see, became the head of the OW I here. And Owen and Phil were pals in spite of their age differences, because they had worked together in an organization that promoted research and industry between the United States and China between the western world and Asia, The Institute of Pacific Relations. Morris: In the 1940s? Sally L: In the 1940s and the 1950s. It was closed after the war by the [congressional] McCarran Committee, because there were people in it who were considered politically left wing. Then Phil had a terrible time getting a job. But Phil worked there for years, and that's where he originally knew Jack Service and all those people. Of course, I didn't know them then. During the war at the OW I, I was just working for Phil. I certainly was not an Asian scholar. I knew nothing about Asia until that time. Morris: You became engaged when you were at the OWI? Sally L: Yes. And just like in a popular magazine story, Phil and I announced our engagement to two different people on the same day. In retrospect, that too was like a soap opera. Morris: Yes, I can see that. 22 Sally L: So, at any rate, as you well know, later in the 1950s, Jack Service, like so many other people, was dishonored and removed from his j ob. Morris: He was then in the Foreign Service? Sally L: That's right. In China. The Institute for Asian Studies involved both businessmen and scholars and was supported, I guess, by grants from foundations. You see, this is all in a period I didn't even know Phil. The whole period he was in Asia or working on Asian issues. I didn't know him at all. Morris: Because he was out of the country a lot? Sally L: No. I didn't know him from the time we broke up until the time he came into the office where I was working one day and took over as the head of it. He couldn't get into the war, because his eyesight was so bad. So he worked on the docks. Everybody wanted to get into that war. You're too young to remember that, but So, Owen pulled him off the docks and put him in as an ., assistant. He came in as the head of the Chinese department, where I was working. But you asked about the Chinese. Of course, that's what Owen was trying to say, and that's what Jack was trying to say: "You can't trust the folks in power. Chou En Lai is going to win this business, and he's the person you should be looking to." But to start with, I didn't know anything about the war between China and Japan. And I knew nothing at all about China. I mean, I knew nothing about Asia at all. I was just there at the OWI at 111 Sutter Street. It just happened that I got a job in the Chinese department. Morris: Did you write some of ? Sally L: I was supposed to be the assistant to a drunken Hollywood writer who would come in with a hangover every morning and tell me what girls he'd been with the night before. And I was supposed to write his sit-com once or twice a week. One wrote about what a Chinese family was doing here, anyway. Can you imagine people sitting in the hills trying to get away from the Japanese listening to this junk? It was written as it would come out of Hollywood. But he had too much of a hangover to write these things, so I would write them. 23 Owen Lattimore as Head of OWI Sally L: Then whoever it was, and I don't know who it was in the government, decided it was not being run as a propaganda agency should be run, although I don't think they knew what a propaganda agency was. At that time, they brought in Owen Lattimore, and they kicked out the guy who came from Hollywood who was running the show here. Now I don't know who ran it in the East Morris: What did Owen Lattimore do with it? Sally L: In the first place, he made the important programs and the news programs that went out. I'm ashamed to tell you, Gabrielle, but I don't really know what he did because I didn't pay that much attention. I did my job, and I worked very hard, but I really don't know the details. I left it before the war was over, briefly, because my fiancee [Tom Cohen] came back after two years and we got married. So I left OWI because I thought he'd stay assigned to his ship in dry dock at Hunter's Point. But he didn't. So then I went back to work and I worked there for I don't remember how long, until he came back. I worked until after the end of the war until Tom came back. 24 IV COUNCIL ON CIVIC UNITY. 1940-1950; WORLD FEDERALISM Early Civil Rights Efforts Morris: When did you start your interest in sculpture, and some of those ? Sally L: After the war I was interested in the problems of what we then called "race relations," perhaps sparked by this business about the Chinese. And I got very involved in something, I think I mentioned to you, the Council of Civic Unity. However, I found out through a very embarrassing circumstance that I could not give a public speech. I had been doing research that nobody else had done, which was on black employment in the Bay Area, which had dramatically increased during and after the war. I was supposed to give a report on the research and I couldn't say a word; flushing and stammering and eight months pregnant, I couldn't say a word. So I decided that indeed my mother was right, and I had to go back and be creative. Morris: Was this when Dan Koshland was head of the council? Sally L: I'm not sure that he was at that point. I guess he was. I guess he was. Isn't that awful? I knew Dan well, but I can't remember him sitting up there as being the chairman of the board. And, of course. I was not on the board. I subsequently went on the board. I worked there as a member of the staff; I was a volunteer. Morris: And did they have a staff director then? Sally L: Oh, yes. A man by the name of Ed How den, whom I became very, very close to. Those were very political times, because we had, after all, dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. And how to feel about that? Morris: [Very close, because we] were on the West Coast. Sally L: But more than that, it saved my fiancee from having to land in Japan. It ended the war. So, was it right or wrong? At that time, of course, we did not know obviously what the atom bomb 25 Sally L: could do. Shortly after that, when finally the war was aver. Tom shipped home; his battleship had been damaged and he was the engineer. It had been torpedoed. So we were married. Then how did we feel about this the terrible fright of what would happen under nuclear bombs. World Federalism was just getting started. We were all World Federalists. And there was something called the American Veterans Committee, which was made up of veterans wh wanted to have equality in the armed forces and ether places. They were appalled at the way blacks were treated during the war, and I'm not sure whether they wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons or not, but nuclear weapons certainly figured in this. I can't remember what their other deals were, but they were a very progressive lot, and it was a national organization, very strong here in San Francisco. Communist Takeover Attempt Morris: Was this Amvets? They're still around. Sally L: ^ I don't think so. No, because it went out of business in a couple of years, taken over by communists Marxists who really didn't want this progressive movement which was gathering force in the United States to grow in strength and power. A very different day. The Marxists wanted to be the leaders in the progressive movement. That's why they tried to take over, and I could read you chapter and verse en that, what they did in the board of the Council of Civic Unity, for instance. Morris: Were they local people? Sally L: Oh, yes. What happened in ether cities, I can't tell you, but the Council of Civic Unity fought it off very cleverly. But they didn't in the American Veterans Committee, and it soon went out of business. Now what it did nationally, I don't know. But Tom, my husband, and Ed Howden immediately became very close buddies. They went to meetings constantly I did too, when I could, although by that time I had a baby, and also women were not as welcome. [laughs] Pretty typical of the times. Morris: What was the issue around which this takeover of the Council of Civic Unity ? Sally L: Well, it was not over an issue particularly, although I think they wanted to and I really can't be sure of this they wanted to do more and bigger demonstrations in order to effect change, as you might imagine. This is just the beginnings of the civil rights movement. And we wanted to do things more by law, I think, by trying to change laws. Civil disobedience seemed very radical indeed. We were very involved. Tom and I I'm not good on the 26 Sally L: dates of this but Governor Earl Warren was influenced a let by the Council of Civic Unity; in the second term he put in an equal- opportunity law. In his first term, as a matter of fact, he wasn't at all concerned with these issues. It's interesting because of what happened to him after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Tom Cohen Morris: Would Mr. Cohen and Mr. Howden have gone to Sacramento and met with him? Sally L: No, but Mr. Cohen, Tom, was in the law firm of Jesse Steinhart. who was one of Warren's advisors. See, all these people we mentioned the ether day, and there are lots of others, were involved in the Council for Civic Unity. I should have said Tom was a political person too. He came from a wealthy, prestigious, conservative, Park Avenue Jewish family, who I think probably thought he was not living up to the tradition, to marry somebody from the West. In fact, there's no question about that. Morris: And so he came out here to join the Steinhart firm. Sally L: Yes, although on the way to a California law firm, he was disowned because he was leaving his family and law firm in the East. According to his father and others, this showed that he had become a coward during the war. Otherwise he'd stay in the East. He was told that one couldn't practice law that far from Wall Street and Washington. Morris: There were so many servicemen who had been through San Francisco who came back to settle here after World War II. Sally L: That's right. I was dying to live in New York, oh, heavens, to get away from my mother! Ohl Oh, heavens, I shouldn't say these things. [laughter] Morris: Oh dear, you can't win. Sally L: But anyhow that's the truth right there. Minorities in the Bay Area; Fears of the Atom Bomb Morris: It sounds like the Council for Civic Unity was a rather thriving organization. 27 Sally L: Tremendously so. and for years. Morris: Several hundred members or ? Sally L: Probably several hundred, I don't even know who knows the history about it. It would be a very interesting news piece. Because, as far as I know, and Gabrielle, I may be wrong, but I have never known of any organization in the country that worked on these problems any earlier than this one. And it was fun. We were young and passionately concerned. I mean the people who were involved with it were mostly young. Unlike today when people who work for things are mostly old the same people by the way. [laughs] Morris: Were there other Councils of Civic Unity in other communities, for instance, in the Bay Area? Sally L: I don't know. Morris: Dan Koshland, in his oral history, mentioned that in the early seventies it was barely surviving. They no longer had enough money to hire an executive director. Sally L: No. but somebody else took over from Ed Hew den, his name I've forgotten. He was there for a long, long time. Morris: During the war you said you hadn't been aware of Asians living in San Francisco. Sally L: I knew there was a Chinatown, but I didn't know any Asians. Morris: Was it a really visible change in the number of black families and black people? Sally L: Oh. yes, because as I remember, I believe it's true that there were only four thousand black families before the war living it can't have been in the Bay Area, but I think it was. What changed it all was the shipyards. It multiplied just immensely, [next sentence unclear] [laughs] Morris: They too were having trouble finding places to live 7 Sally L: Yes, but I didn't know that because they were Morris: They weren't involved in Sally L: You're right, nor in my protected little life, until the war was over, and then this became a passionate interest of all of ours. Well, and then, of course. Roosevelt had been interested in these issues to a degree, a little bit I think. Minorities, yes. I think so. 28 Morris: Mrs. Roosevelt? Sally L: Mrs. Roosevelt, certainly. Mr. Roosevelt, no. Mrs. Roosevelt certainly, and of course she was our great heroine. Morris: And the young men that you knew coming from the service? Sally L: Yes. were terribly upset over the fact that the blacks were not well treated. In the American Veterans Committee there were some blacks, but as I said, that was very short-lived. Boy. it was short-lived. I'll never forget that because these people were so clever. It's not so obvious today, but here we were, innocent. Tom was four or five years older than I. but Charles Garry, a prominent radical attorney even today, would get up and talk, and he'd talk for three hours and close everybody out so that those who held other opinions were exhausted and de-energized. That's a very simple ploy. [laughs] Morris: Do you remember anybody else who was active in the American Veterans Committee? Sally L: No. not except, Ed. Tom and Ed are the only people I can remember. But then we were all involved with the World Federalists too. We'd go and hear Norman Cousins. Morris: He would come out to San Francisco often? Sally L: He'd come to San Francisco. Yes. he did, and then a man. whose name was Cord Meyer, who later became the head of all the CIA operations in Europe. That's quite a jump isn't it? Morris: Was a World Federalist? Sally L: He was the head of the World Federalists. The World Federalists very definitely are still around. It's never going to fold up because while there are few of them they exist, and a lot of them are wealthy. I know this because I get letters from people saying. "We can't support Ploughshares because you don't support the World Federalists," or "I am World Federalist, and I've always been a World Federalist, and that's what I give my money to." And they do exist financially, very definitely. Also, we have. I think only once or twice gotten proposals from the World Federalists for something or other. Morris: Was peace an issue? Sally L: Oh. yes. I don't know how soon we became absolutely terrified of an atomic bomb. Maybe you can remember that brief and dramatic part of recent history when people were building bomb shelters? Morris: There was a resurgence in the early 1960s 29 Sally L: It was long before that because I remember so well 1946; I can remember two or three or four years later, at the most, talking to Tom. "We've got to do something," or "What are we going te do about it. I'm so scared." and his saying, "Forget it." [laughs] "Work to stop the cause of wars, but you can't do anything to protect yourself from a bomb if it's going to be dropped." We then built the house that I live in today. The house started being built about thirty-seven years ago. I remember there was talk about building a bomb shelter, for just a moment. #f Anti-Communism Issues; Loyalty Oath Morris: Was the anti-communist tide that sort of swept over the country a part of the Council of Civic Unity's concerns? Sally L: No, that was quite separate, I think. Tom was caught up in it from the point of view of being anti-communist himself. We were just all involved with civil rights: everybody should have the right to believe what he or she wanted, and to have a voice to express it. Morris: Were there any charges of "You must be pro-communist if you are for encouraging all these people" who had not been heard from much before? Sally L: Yes. When we were first married, Tom and I were very close to Dave Jenkins, who was the head of the [San Francisco] Labor School. Louis Weiss, an attorney in New York, was a big friend of Dave's and had told Tom to look him up. We used to go out to lunch with him, and Tom one day unbelievable, this is, I think, in 1945 asked, "Dave, are you really a communist?" And Dave said, "Oh,no, of course not." And we made a contribution to the school. In those days we didn't have much money and, anyhow, people weren't that charitable, particularly in support of causes. I remember we gave $25 to the Labor School. But at the time it was generally assumed that Dave was a member of the party. Anyway, Tom was then about to be a lieutenant commander or commander, I forget which, in the navy reserve. The only reason he wanted the promotion was for the extra dollars he would have been paid. But he didn't get the promotion because he gave the $25 to the Labor School. Morris: How did you learn that? 30 Sally L: I guess that whatever agency looked to see who the donors to the Labor School were also looked into the records of those reserve officers. I forget how we found out. Morris: That was about the time of the loyalty oath controversy at the University of California, which went en for years and years and years. Sally L: Oh. that's right. That was a sticky kind ef thing. Morris: Did that have reverberations over here in San Francisco? Sally L: Yes. of course we didn't do anything it was what we talked about all the time. And we knew the attorney who wrote, I guess the brief for those members of the faculty who wouldn't sign the loyalty oath. But it was all over the United States. It happened that Harold Taylor, who was the president of Sarah Lawrence at the time, was very much involved. This affected all the universities; it wasn't only the University of Calif or ni a, after all. Although it seemed that this is where it was more widely known than any place else. At Sarah Lawrence, there were people and organizations particularly the American Legion who wanted the college to fire people who would not sign a loyalty oath. By definition, those who wouldn't were considered members of the Communist party. Harold would not ask the faculty to sign any oath at all. It was a cause celebre. But Bronxville. New York, is not Berkeley. I remember Tom and myself being tremendously involved emotionally with this and talking about it all the time, but I think we could have had no effect whatsoever. It happened that Harold Taylor was a hero because he had stood up against powerful forces for the constitutional rights of academics as we saw it. Morris: You must have had a baby every eighteen months or so? Sally L: Oh. more than that. Morris: That must have cut down your time and energy for Sally L: Well, I was at home with the children. But I was an artist back then. I wasn't a civic person. These were just my interests, [laughs] Morris: I see. If you're now an artist, why don't we stop there for the day. 31 V CAREER IN THE ARTS [Interview 2: August 27, 1987] ## Studying Sculpture Morris: What we're to talk about today is your life in the world of art. Had you already had all those children when you began studying sculpture? Sally L: No, I think I had one when I started studying sculpture, and then I went on studying sculpture in between delivering babies. It was a wonderful profession. Morris: What interested you about sculpture? Was it somebody particular who was ? Sally L: No, I came to sculpture because I didn't want to write. And as I said last week, I was supposed to. I couldn't give a speech, so I couldn't go into public service. So, what was left? I had to be, as my mother told me, "creative," so I knew there was an art school in San Francisco. Not knowing anything about art at all, I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and there was a free place in a sculpture course in the basement. That was really how it happened. I went into the sculpture course, and I knew so little that at our first assignment I said, "Do you do the front as well as the back or the back as well as the front?" Morris: But it obviously took. You found Sally L: It took, and I enjoyed it enormously. And I must have worked at it for [stops to think how long] Morris: The notes I have say you were actively sculpting for fifteen years. Sally L: I think it was probably more than that because it was certainly 1950 when I started. It was probably more than that. Oh, I'd say twenty years off and on. But some of those years were learning. 32 Morris: Yes. Did you study just with people in San Francisco? Sally L: Yes. and I really didn't study very hard because of all those children. I took some sculpture courses and I really used the school as a studio more, but I never learned the basics, which is one of the reasons I gave it up. I never learned anatomy, hew to draw, how to master different materials. I didn't even study the history of art or aesthetics of any kind. Today one doesn't have to learn those things, but I think that's wrong. [laughs] Everything I learned, I'm afraid I learned by doing, really, and so. could not. after giving up sculpture many years later, go back to it and pick up my skills. Those I had were based on hard work and determination, not on acquired knowledge. Morris: Did you work in clay? Sally L: I started by working in clay and learning how to cast things. That's because that's what they were doing in that course. And interestingly, at the art school at that time were some of the artists who have become, without any question, the top artists in northern California today. And they were there then. Morris: Who were they? Sally L: In my sculpture class was a man whose name is Manuel Neri. Bob Hudson was in one of my classes. I don't know if these names mean anything to you, but they're I really can't think. Oh. yes, a man who is no longer alive a man named Alvin Light. Morris: Did your parents approve of sculpture? Sally L: Yes. They didn't take it seriously. Morris: Were there specific kinds of things that ? Sally L: I sold some of what I made and had a gallery exhibit, but it really didn't make me a professional. Or did it? I don't know; I still don't know. [laughs] It's awfully hard to tell what's a professional and what is not. Morris: Making something that pleases somebody else obviously Sally L: In those days, they had all over the United States in a very major way here competitive exhibitions at museums. And the Art Association Annual, so-called, was a nationally known show. I would get in it. Sometimes I would get prizes, you see. Morris: This is a juried show? 33 Sally L: Juried shew, yes. And anybody could enter. I guess, if you were not a student. By that time perhaps I was not, although I'd go to school to use the studio. But then you could compete against the best artists. Everybody would send their stuff into the Art Association Annual, and as I say I often got in, and often sold, and so forth. So that made me feel like I was making some progress. Morris : Kind of exciting. Sally L: Yes. Whether you're a professional or an amateur, it's a little hard to tell, when you have success. [laughing] Morris: But if you were pleased with what you were doing and other people were, you know, selling is one measure of acceptance. Sally L: Yes, without any question. Morris: Were there any particular teachers that broadened your education? Sally L: No, I really wouldn't say so, no. That first course I took was sculpture with Robert Howard, whose father built the Campanile. He has been in art circles in northern California forever. I could name you who the teachers were, but it isn't that they were particulary inspiring. I guess just working hard and enjoying myself and finding I could do it was exciting. Morris: And then did you go en to hammer and chisel? Sally L: Oh, I never went on to hammer and chisel, but I did go on to learn how to weld. I did very little welded sculpture, then I went en to making things directly out of certain kinds of materials, but never out of stone. California School of Fine Arts; Helping Minorities Morris: How did you happen to get involved in the art policy? Sally L: After a few years I got involved. At the time, the art school was called the California School of Fine Arts, and attached to it loosely was an enormous group of artists who were members of what was called the Art Association. It didn't take any quality control to be a member of the Art Association. There were certain benefits, and I forget what. My first involvement, really, with art policy-making, I think, was being elected, for some reason or other, to whatever kind of board of directors they 34 had. Along with a number of really good artists. I tried to make this into a real professional organization. That meant excluding a number ef Sunday painters. 90 percent of the whole [Interruption phone call] Sally L: So I became very involved in that. I think we now we've moved up probably to the 1960s. I got very involved in the education committee and tried to improve the quality of education in the school. Then I got tremendously involved in trying to help minorities let me say minorities, because all those people who couldn't afford to go to this school proved to be minorities how to get them into this school, which is very expensive. And so I developed a plan, and I'm trying to think who was involved in it besides myself. There must have been others besides Fred Martin, who was Dean of Students, I believe. I involved someone from the Art Commission in this. Yes, that's right. The Art Commission in the meantime, through a series ef circumstances, had become involved with the neighborhood arts, and it wasn't hard to put the Neighborhood Arts people together with the administration of the ^ Art Institute Morris: Which by then was the Art Institute? Sally L: I really don't know the date it changed. It was just a name change, not a but then students could get credit have their tuition paid by working in neighborhood art centers. And it became a very big project actually, so that they worked all over town in the art centers that the Art Commission was really paying for the Art Commission and then ether foundations. I didn't know Ed Nathan at the time (I don't know if Ed was there at the time), but the Zellerbach Foundation got very involved in that. San Francisco Art Commission; Harold Zellerbach Sally L: Well, Harold Zellerbach was the head of the Art Commission, and that's a whole ether story, which I have to get into.* That sort of was my program in doing that. Morris: Was this commission related to some of the work you were doing also with the Council ef Civic Unity? *See Regional Oral History Office interview with Harold Zellerbach 35 Sally L: No. no. The Council of Civic Unity was long in the past. Morris: Were you coming in contact with young black kids and Asian kids? Sally L: No. not really. It was philosophical, political. But net altogether, I mean I certainly did come into contact with some after I got this started. I don't know whether it goes to this day, but that's a long, long time ago, but Morris: There are still neighborhood art centers. Sally L: Oh, I know there are, and actually a while ago I went to, of all things, a benefit for the best of them, at Hospitality House down on Ellis Street. A man, to my surprise, got up and introduced me, saying, "There is the person who started all of this." And this is twenty- five years later. Morris: Wasn't that nice? Sally L: Actually I got an honorary degree from the Art Institute a couple of years ago for this program that I put in. Otherwise they've only given that degree to artists, and I was not known as an artist at that time. Also I was very much involved, actually, from the outside and then from the inside in trying to get a neighborhood arts program going in the Art Commission. Later I was put on the Art Commission, but this is all before. Morris: The Art Commission wasn't doing anything about ? Sally L: Not until a conference was called together in the early 1960s sometime. It's awfully vague in my memory. Mr. Zellerbach got really turned on by some of the people who were involved in neighborhood arts and brought a strong, important program to the Art Commision, and it still exists. Sally L: Ed Nathan fits right into this, although I did not know Ed at that time at all. He is a model for the whole country and what he's done in it. But it all started, of course, because you saw Harold Zellerbach absolutely fall in love with this very gutsy lady, Becky Jenkins, the daughter, by the way, of Dave Jenkins. His eyes were just opened at this meeting. It's very interesting. Harold Zellerbach wanted to expedite a certain plan for rebuilding the Civic Center in San Francisco. He wanted a symphony building, and I forget what else. You know, they would have been the Zellerbach buildings. He would have put a lot of money into it. He was, I don't know for how many years, the head of the Art Commission, There was a bond issue which was voted down, and quite correctly. Quite correctly. Morris: Really? It was too much money? 36 Sally L: No. It was so badly conceived. It was just terribly badly conceived. At this time, and I'm not sure which went first this is what I can't remember whether this meeting he called went before the vote or whether it went after the vote. In the meantime, I was asked to be on the Art Commission. When I walked in to the commission on that first day, he said to me, " Of course, you will back the bond issue for the Civic Center." And I said, "No, Mr. Zellerbach I will not. It is badly conceived." And he said, (and it was the first time by the way. although I've been called it since) I was called a "traitor to my class." Neighborhood Arts Program Sally L: Anyway, I'm not sure whether it was before or after this, but really Mr. Zellerbach and that meeting he called started the neighborhood arts program in San Francisco. He called some very high level things eastern consultants here to San Francisco in those days those were not done to analyze the needs of the arts in San Francisco. And it was very obvious well, in fact, we got to know the people very well who ran it that they were to come out with the answer that they needed all these buildings the civic center, the symphony hall and whatever they needed done to the opera house, and so forth. So Harold called all these representatives from the arts together. The meetings went on for weeks. The meetings included people like Elise Haas, and somebody from the opera and the symphony and all the museums. There were those of us who were asked (who they thought were not going to be traitors to our class) who insisted that there be some artists there, you see. [laughs] Morris: Of course. Sally L: Of course. You say. of course, but in those days that was not Morris: Well, the Art Commission says it will include some artists, and some poets, and Sally L: That's right, but they weren't very powerful artists and poets, I'll tell you. at that time. So anyway, he was doing this separately. It wasn't an Art Commission thing, although he was head of the Art Commission. He was doing it privately. And we asked him. "Do you think there'll be some minorties there?" Of course. You wouldn't think that was surprising. But anyway, out of this came a woman who was working at the Art 37 Sally L; Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally L: Morris : Sally L : Morris : Sally L; Commission who was simply brilliant on the needs for neighborhood arts. And this is what turned Harold into his passionate interest in neighborhood arts. The history of it is really quite amusing. I'm sure that Ed Nathan will know all this. In other words, the neighborhood arts commission became appealing to him so that it Oh, I don't think there was a neighborhood arts commission then. Or program. The program was new. It had not yet been thought of. Where does Ruth Asawa come in on this? She is really a rather separate thing, schools, you see. Right. And that's different? She worked through the Very different. It was really different. I am extremely bad in telling you this about which years, one goes after the other, and it all sort of froze into a mass for me. By now, in saying that, I'm up to the late 1960s. I'm sure that business that I did for the Art Institute was in the late 1960s, too. So, I don't know what happened between 1953 and 1960. [laughs] Let me see if I can nail this down. Mr. Z ell er bach wanted what finally became the Davies Symphony Hall to be the [speakers overlap, unclear] he would have liked it be a Zellerbach Symphony Hall? No, it wasn't exactly that hall. It was a different architectural plan. And it was a very bad architectural plan, not useful, so I was told I'm not, obviously, an architect by people I respect. And the bond issue failed. It was to be put up with the proceeds of a bond issue. And then he would have put a lot of money into it, sure, and then it would have been like Mrs. Davies it would have been Zellerbach. Morris: Was that before or after he decided there would be a Zellerbach Hall at the Unversity of California? Sally L: See, this is a different Zellerbach and that's the point. Morris: Okay, that is so hard to remember. Sally L: Because Jim Zellerbach, his brother, was the ambassador to Italy. And maybe Harold Zellerbach put money into Zellerbach philanthropies. But he was in competition 38 Sally L : with this very wonderful citizen, his brother. Not that Harold wasn't, but he was also a wonderful citizen, but I think not quite Morris: It sounds as if he had a fairly strong idea of how he wanted the Art Commission to run. Revamping the Art School; Art Auctions Sally L: [chuckles] I'll go back to the art school, because there were a lot of other things that were happening at the art school. It was a very interesting time in education generally, of course, but art education also. You asked how I was involved in political things while I was in arts. One of the things was that I thought as Fred Martin did (He's the dean today, academic dean. I guess by this time, of course. 1 had been for a long time on the board at the art school.) that there should be teachers and students represented en the board. Now, of course, minorities. Morris: Good for you. Where had you gotten that idea? Sally L: [laughter] I have no idea. And then I remember Fred and I went to a meeting in Chicago of educators in which there were a lot of students. Of course, what happened is that it boomeranged. Oh. I think so, because over the years, there's just an enormous percentage of students who really have ideas that are not necessarily in the interests of the school. Morris: A student member of the trustees? Sally L: Yes. Or they want someone decisions on personnel become a popularity contest. A person who makes us work the least perhaps. [laughs] So. I think that's been a very great problem for the trustees. Anyway I worked hard for the school in a financial, way too. I went on the board when the school was in terrible financial straits. It almost had to close down. In fact. Harold Zellerbach, same Harold Zellerbach (and this was long before I went on the Art Commission) was chairman of the board, and he really saved the school. He'd go around and pound on people's desks and say they had to give five thousand dollars, which in those days was a lot. And I gave an art auction, the first of what became a series of art auctions. That also helped. Morris: Was that a new idea then? 39 Sally L: It was sort ef a new idea, although I don't think it was the first time, or even maybe the second time, but it was the first local art auction ef any size. They used to have political ones, but this was the first one of any size. It was dene at the Legion of Honor, I think; I mean, it was big stuff. Morris: When you say art auction, was this members of the Art Association who would donate their work? Sally L: Yes, but you'd be very careful about which ones you picked and so forth and so on. Morris: Right. What exactly Sally L: The ones that weren't selected went back to the artist. Morris: Would that be a matter of distress? Sally L: Yes. I've really quite forgotten. Yes, I think it would have been. A matter of more distress, as I saw it, was how those who ran the event would choose and refuse art that was offered te the auction. In later years, I did two very large art auctions, both for political candidates. These were very big ones. Morris: How much money were you hoping to ? Sally L: Oh, twenty thousand dollars or something in those days. On one we made sixteen, I think, and that was enormous. But then later, we did one for [Presidential candidate George] McGovern [1972], We did one for Bill Roth when he ran for governor [197 A]. Of course, those raised twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars, maybe more. There were those of us who would buy something in one auction and then sell it back at the next auction. The University Art Museum is filled with art that Phil, my husband, who always had a lot to drink at these events, would buy and give to the University Art Museum, with which he was deeply involved. Morris: That is an interesting kind of combination of sociability and good works and politics. More on the Art Commission Sally L: There were a lot of other things to do with the Art Institute. But speaking of political involvement the next thing that happened was that when there was a new mayor, I was net reappointed to the Art Commission. You always resign as a commissioner and then, in those days, you were simply reappointed. 40 Sally L: Well, it was pretty clear that Harold Zellerbach had talked to Jee Alioto, the new mayor. It wasn't just the bond issue. The executive director of the Art Commission had finally retired after many years. Harold had someone he thought should be appointed, but there were lots of us who thought that there should be a national search, because the Art Commission had to do important things in those days; much less so today. So, with Alfred Frankenstein of sainted memory,* I said we thought a director should not be appointed until there was a national search. H Sally L: We lost, by the way. It was not the first time. But by then, Mr. Frankenstein and I were very much involved and we would meet with other people in trying to see to it that two per cent of the money spent en public buildings go to art. And it did and it does. We did get that through and felt very good about it. Morris: How did the art in public buildings program come about? Sally L: First of all we had to get the Art Commission to agree, and they did. Then it had te be organized so that the board of supervisors would pass it get spokesmen to present the problem and it passed. Actually, by the time I was there, it was not very much of a struggle. Morris: Was there a struggle over what art would go in what building? Sally L: No, that was the Art Commission's purview. The struggle was to insist that contractors spend that much money. Morris: How did you and Mr. Zellerbach get along as people? Sally L: We didn't go in the same circles. It wasn't that we disliked each other; we just disagreed. I don't think he was used to people doing that. Morris: Did you feel that the results were worth the effort that went into being a member of the Art Commission? *Frankenstein was for many years the nationally respected art critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. 41 Sally L: It wasn't an extremely exciting commission because there was net very much discussion. It was somewhat interesting being on a commission. 42 VI DEVELOPING SKILLS IN ORGANIZATION AND INNOVATION Art Institute Symposium Sally L: From 1960 to probably 1968. I was very much involved in the Art Institute. The biggest job I ever did was to organize and chair a national symposium here, and I have to say that was a smash success. Top artists in those years came to it artists who never came to San Francisco before people like Frank Stella and CLaes Oldenburg and on and on. It was wonderful. It was just a terrific symposium. Morris: Any specific subject? Or was this a ? Sally L: tuess what modern is doing today" probably. It was at a high point in modern art history when American artists were the leading artists in a very art-conscious world. And these were the very painters and sculptors or some of them that came to the San Francisco Art Institute's Symposium. Morris: Did you have to lobby to get San Francisco selected? Sally L: No. wejust put it on. But I guess it was my idea, and I got the Art Institute involved with it. It was an Art Institute project. One thing that happened was that the coordinator there was only one person on the staff for this (Gee, when I think of things that we used to do!) and a month before the thing went on, she ran away with a man who was not her husband and disappeared. [laughs] A major crisis it seemed at the time! Mortis: Leaving you with all the ? Sally L: Well, I couldn't possibly. I didn't have the necessary skills or the time, considering the other responsibilities of the symposium. But Fred Martin's wonderfully competent wife jumped in and took over. It was a disaster. You can imagine the paperwork involved in a thing like that. And the fund raising. It's just amazing we couldn't get it directly funded. I ran around and got people to guarantee A3 Sally L: ticket sales. I think some people would tell you. if their memories are long enough, that it was the biggest art thing that's ever happened ever happened in San Francisco, from the point f view ef the people who came. Morris: I can believe it. Sally L: And it was at the Fairmont Hotel. It was jammed it was just absolutely jammed. Morris: How fun that must have been. Sally L: It was wonderful. We had small workshops with the top American artists meeting informally with students and art lovers here outside the school! Then the big speeches with delicious and outrageous statements. It was very exciting. Morris: Did you have to also run around and find places for all these artists to stay? Sally L: I don't remember that, but I think so. I think they ended up staying in expensive hotels, don't you imagine? Yes. Morris: Well, not if you didn't have the money to Sally L: Well, we had to. We had to find it somehow, although on the other hand. I don't think artists took honoraria. Morris: Did Ben Swig provide some space for ? Sally L: I think he did. I don't know that he did at the hotel. Now that I don't know. I really don't. Actually I'd have to look up so many years ago 1 really would have to go through the files of the artists, which I don't even keep for myself. Morris: Did the symposium have an effect on art sales in general, in galleries in San Francisco? Was that a spin-off? Sally L: I don't think so, and I'm trying to remember who was head of the museum. I don't remember. Morris: Well, I think this was earlier, but there was a reference to Grace Morley as being a great influence on your work. Sally L: That was the silliest you must have gotten that out of that article.* *Albert Haas, Jr., "World Class," San Francisco Magazine. July 1987, pp. 94-95. 44 Morris: Yes. Sally L: That article is so strange. It's wrong. Morris: Hew long did it take to organize something like this symposium? Sally L: It took a long time. I would say it took probably a year to do. But that was really exciting because it was first-class. We hadn't really had first-class, big-time artists here, outside of those who lived here. Collecting Art; Raising Children Sally L: By the way. I also, in the meantime, in the 1960s began collecting art. Morris: Local artists or people who came ? Sally L: No, I had bought a little art before, and then I bought quite a lot, although today I don't have mere than what's on the walls of my house. One reason is that a house in Sonoma that we had was thoroughly burned down, and the art with it, of course. The other reason my collection shrunk is because I've sold a lot to support organizations in deep need Sarah Lawrence and Ploughshares among them. Morris: Well, that must have been quite something to part with what you collected over the years. Sally L: Well, you knew. I have quite a lot of art. It's not a lot, but when I say "collected art," yes, I guess people would say I have collected art. I have some very so-called important art, which was net important art when I bought it. Morris: That must be very satisfying. Sally L: Oh. it is. In fact. yes. I mean. Tom and I, oh God. in the 1950s, bought a piece in France for $500 that turned out to be a major painting worth a $100,000 today, or something. Years ago I gave it to the museum because it is a Cubist painting, and there is so little art from that critical period in our Museum of Modern Art. Anyhow, we just sort of didn't think of collecting art at 11. Morris: Were you picking things because they would look well in the dining room, or because you thought this was ? 45 Sally L: I think when we started, Tom was not particularly interested when I first bought paintings. I don't know what detail you want me to go into. I don't think that's really of interest. Do you? Morris: Yes. Sally L: What I bought? Morris: Why you bought it. Sally L: Okay. When we first bought things, they were to hang in the house, but net match anything or to be any certain place, but they were certainly to hang or to stand somewhere. At the end of the time that I would say was the period of collecting, they didn't have to hang in the house at all. Morris: You were collecting them because of the quality f the work? Sally L: I always collected them because of the quality. But for years I didn't buy to hang do you see what I'm saying? I had an art closet in which more than half of what I owned was kept, and I'd change things around, or they'd be on loan a lot. Morris: To muse urns? Sally L: To museums, yes. But today, I've sold a lot. Morris: Most of what was in the closet? Sally L: [Laughs] Well, there are things that changed in the closet, or I gave a lot of it to museums. Morris: You were collecting, buying mostly younger artists, or lesser known? Sally L: No, no. In the 1960s I guess it was at the beginning of their careers. They weren't young necessarily. The prices were very, very different. Morris: Were they people that you knew? Sally L: Not usually. When I began to sculpt. I also began to look at art seriously, and I really became interested. I had never looked at it before. Oh, I didn't know the artists personally, no. I knew who they were. Certainly I have bought, and I continue to sometimes, artists like that one whom nobody ever heard of in their lives, like that one [nods at painting of seascape on the office wall] which are very atypical actually of the kind of art I like. But it's Morris: Appropriate for the setting. 46 Sally L: That's right. And I certainly have bought artists that are young emerging artists. But the artists that I really began to buy in a different way are artists, yes. are very well-known artists. Most of them have become much better since, but they were well-known. Morris: Right. Well, that's the thing to do is buy them before they get well-known. And to what extent was it an investment? Sally L: None. Absolutely none. Morris: Would you go to the people at the Art Institute and ask their advice* or in working with them, learn who was doing what in the field? Sally L : No. Morris: I would imagine it takes a tremendous amount of thought and reading and moving around on your part just to know who painters were. Sally L: _ Well, if you're in the art world and aware of what is going on. it seems like second nature. I used to go to museums and travel and go to galleries. I didn't take it as seriously as I should have, perhaps. I knew there are people who spend their life collecting art. I did net take it very seriously at all. Morris: But you enjoyed it? Sally L: Oh, I loved it. And I had enough money to take chances and to buy a bit. My children were more or less grown up by then. I remember the one that was still at home, before she left to go te boarding school or college, felt odd in front ef her friends to see those awful things hanging on my wall. [laughs] It's one of those things you have like if you have a good ear like one of my friend's one of those things I just have luck or I guess what's called an eye. Things turn our. It happened. Morris: And your kids, you didn't take them along to galleries 7 Sally L: No, I could never get them to go. although every Saturday morning it was suggested and hooted down. And art was not my husband's great interest. Phil liked art. but I took him too seriously when I got married. When he said there were two paintings he didn't like and I sold them, that was stupid of me. The things one does in the first blushes of married life! I think he became more interested in contemporary painting over the years. He was always intrigued by European painting of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries. And I have to say my very favorite painting is one that he picked out. It's called Men with Bottle." painted by Phillip Guston. It's outrageous and wonderful. 47 Morris: So eventually you came to a similarity ef tastes? Sally L: I think we did. He just wasn't interested in collecting. It was a very enjoyable part of my life, and if it weren't for Ploughshares, I'd certainly go on with it today. Morris: How about your kids during the art phase. Did you have a nanny for them? Sally L: I had a nurse for the children up until [long pause] until the youngest ones were four or five. Maybe. I had a nurse originally from the time the babies came home. Then they became sort of housekeepers; I don't know what else to call them. I did have help. Eventually, there was a housekeeper and an au pair girl. Morris: So that there was somebody to lend a hand ? Sally L: No, no, no. All the time always. No, I couldn't possibly; no, I had a perfectly luxurious time. Morris: Did the kids go to the Art Institute at any point? Sally L: Only one of them. They were all interested in music, which I'm not at all. San Francisco Art Museum Board; Performing Arts Program Morris: Then, is there anything else in ? Sally L: About the arts yes, a lot of art things. Oh dear, I didn't realize how much. Along there in the 1960s I had a one-man show, which was a big deal for me, at a gallery. And then I had a lot of other things I was involved in, but then I got married, which was in 1970. Before that I was on the [San Francisco] Art Museum Accessions Committee even before I was on the board. Then I was appointed to the board, and my pal. Bill Roth, was the chairman of the trustees at that time. Bill and I felt that this place should not just be another place for white, upper middle-class people. Old story new setting. [laughs] Morris: You wanted some light added to this ? Sally L: Darker skin, people of different colors and different economic backgrounds. Morris: And how did you go about ? 48 Sally L: So, I started there a program, which was for so-called "neighborhood artists," and that of course was a term that really meant poor minority artists, but one used the word "neighborhood" rather than "inner-city" or anything that neared the truth of "slum." And so we started the program, and I'm fortunately not going to bore you with details about it. It was really a hard project to accomplish. I could never have done it without Bill Roth, because the board was horrified to think of this happening. Morris: That there would be a neighborhood program? Sally L: Yes, that there would be hanging in museum walls paintings. drawings by people from the neighborhood. But a special gallery was finally made for a series of changing exhibitions. We produced ethnic concerts which brought people to the museum who had never come before. It really was an exciting project, and I was able to get the first funding from the San Francisco Foundation before the program became a line item at the museum. Although there was nobody from staff or board to actually staff this with me. I was somewhat surprised when, with Bill's encouragement, it actually came off. I started by trying to get cooperation from the black community and the Chicano community and so forth. That was the summer I was a "mother-fucker." I was a "mother-fucker" all summer. [laughs] Morris: You went by yourself? Sally L: By myself, yes. I was trying to find out if these "neighborhood" artists would take part in this program, that is if they'd be willing to show at the museum. Morris: Who were they? Sally L: I remember one thing, that I didn't know many of the artists. I started at the Galleria de la Raza in the Mission. And then there was a group of black artists very political black artists some of them still were Black Panthers. They had sort of a public gallery, very small, in someone's house. And the place I knew to go was the San Francisco Foundation. I talked to Lew [Llewellyn] White there, who was tremendously sympathetic, and the foundation did fund it. And so. the board couldn't turn it down, because they couldn't turn down the money. They were dismayed, at the board, that anything like that happened. I don't think they were always because (even though it exists) it did become a very successful program. I'm not saying necessarily aesthetically. At the outset every other Sunday there was a concert or a performance that would have been interesting to Sally L: neighborhood groups, was put on by neighborhood groups. It was a tremendous amount of neighborhood talent, particularly in the performing arts. I got a lot of help from somebody who had a program of this kind, wonderful museum person by the name of Walter Hopps, who was at the Corcoran at the time, now is running a museum in Houston. I don't remember who else I talked to at the time well, I'm sure the people in the Art Commission and the people who were working in the Zellerbach Family Fund or were working in the neighborhood arts somehow. Morris: Ruth Asawa, was she somebody that you worked with at all? Sally L: No. Ruth was different. Ruth has done the most extraordinary job. I think she's terrific, but, although she has spread out a little bit lately, her program was always in the schools. However, she's my friend and is a role model to us all. it Creating New Audiences Sally L: My program, the museum's program it became, was to give an opportunity for people to actually present themselves in public, outside of their neighborhood. Well, once they got a feeling of empowerment that they could show in a museum, what happend out if it is that it really happened; through that, I think, you began to see different colors of skin in the museum, a lot more people who were informally dressed. That was really the major purpose, to bring an audience into the museums; that the museum was really something for the community as a whole to enjoy rather than just one middle-class and upper-class part of the community. Morris: Were the deYoung and the Palace of the Legion of Honor watching with interest what you were doing? Sally L: I doubt it. I don't know anything about that. We started it and we just sat there until we could get somebody to run the thing. The whole point was, heavens, that it finally was taken on by museum staff, hired to run the program. One of the things that happened is that the director of the museum, Jerry Norton, just paid no attention to it at all couldn't care, just didn't care, just didn't care about it at all. But his assistant, Mike McCone, did. And finally, I can't tell you how many months later, the museum hired a curator for this program. 50 Sally L: The program has now ended totally. But the major thing that it did, and it is still true, it changed the audience widened the audience enormously, and that was the point. It became known that this is a place that welcomed people of different color. The reason why I was called "mother-fucker" in the first place, over and over again, was not, I think, personal ("mother- fucker" became a generic term); it was because of the museum. The museum meant to these minority groups that it was just a snobbish overgrown place for the rich honkys. That is what we wanted to change, [laughs] Now, you see what I'm saying; to a degree we did change it. yes. There were things that developed out of that, though. One very nice thing that came out of it was a program run by the Galleria de la Raza for the museum. The museum owns a great collection of Mexican art, particularly Mexican drawings. The museum was able to put together a program, and get it funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, to send to small museums. It has always been a crusade of mine an untaken crusade [laughs] that museums should lend out what they have. Doesn't it annoy you when you go to a museum and you see the things that they own and they never lend them to anybody? I guess the National Endowment for the Arts paid for having the things put in frames or whatever, and we got this crowd from the Galleria de la Raza to be in charge of sending these shows around to different community museums in California that were particularly interested in Mexican art; in other words, where there is a large Mexican population. That's a beautiful program. That's what I would consider, in its teeny way, wonderful. And it also, of course, is very beneficial for the Mexican community. It gives visibility and eventually, you know, helps the museum itself. Heavens, it's looking for grants all the time. It's a nice thing to have that on your record. 51 VII MUSEUM OF MODERN ART RENTAL GALLERY, 1978 Support for Young Unknown Artists## Morris: Then you got involved not terribly long ago in starting a rental gallery. Sally L: Oh, yes. Now that will be nine years old in November. That became a big, big deal. Morris: As a revenue-producer, or as visibility-enhancer? Sally L: Well, it became a the museum asked, when I had the idea of doing it, whether we would become part of the museum. Henry Hopkins did. In starting it, I didn't think of it as part of the museum, which had had a rental gallery up until about ten years before that, and which we as a board of directors had voted out of existence because it didn't pay for itself. Most museums have rental galleries, and ours was one of the oldest in the country. So, in starting this, I had no intention of being part of the museum. Then Henry asked if it would be. It was not started to get support for the museum. It was started to get support to young, unknown artists. Morris: Through the San Francisco Art Association or just Sally L: Just as a free-standing. I mean that was our idea in the first place. But immediately Henry asked if it could be a part of the museum. Everything has changed, by the way, since I have left this. I should say it changed in that originally we were to give a very little amount of money to the museum, which did nothing for us, by the way, at all. I paid for having this building redone [at Fort Mason] into a gallery. What happened is that it became almost immediately very successful. And within four years some graduate student did a paper, can you imagine, on rental galleries in this country, and it was far and away the most successful 52 Sally L: rental gallery in the country. And today it is I think we got something I shouldn't say "we" because I'm not active in running it any more something like about two and a half million dollars into the artists' hands. That's not an exact figure. I shouldn't really give but it is very, very large today. It's enormous. It's got a staff of five people. All who have to be paid in museum wages, because it's part of the museum. The museum doesn't pay for any of it. We pay back the museum, but the museum is unionized so it's more of a problem. In other words, the rental gallery can't pay anybody to sweep the floors less than six and a half dollars an hour, if I remember rightly. Anyhow, it is tremendously successful. It's just amazing. It's much more successful since I left. Morris: So do some of the artist sell their work through shows at the rental gallery? Sally L: Selling is why the rental gallery is so successful, because Morris: You rent to buy. Sally L: You rent to buy, yes. [pause] Morris: The gallery was kind of in at the beginning of Fort Mason too, wasn't it? Sally L: Yes. it was. It was the first space that was redone in Fort Mason It was nine years ago that we opened. We opened in November 1978. Morris: What was it like being part of Fort Mason in the beginning in this community? Sally L: Well, we really didn't involve ourselves at all, and I'm afraid never have. I think there are lots of people here who have involved themselves with the whole community. We were so busy keeping our heads above water, I think, in those days. It was a black, greasy machine shop. Have you ever seen it? It's closed unfortunately now very, very nice. It really is. We really did a very nice we redid it extensively. It's terrific. Morris: I have known a number of people in industry who have maintained that warehouse space is very efficient, and that a creative person can do remarkable things with it. Sally L: Well, an architect, my partner's ex-husband, redid it. And I was there for a long time. I started Ploughshares, you see, while I was there. I didn't stop working for the museum entirely until last September, because I loved it. I mean, I'd 53 Sally L: go out when I started Ploughshares. I worked there all the time. And then three days, then I went to two days, and then I went to two days a month. Morris: In the rental gallery, did you set it up so that there was a review panel that made the selections? Sally L: No, Marian and I selected everybody; the museum had nothing to do with it all. I'm angered because they take so much money from us today that they shouldn't. Morris: Why did you agree to Sally L: I didn't because I'm not the head of it any more. I wouldn't. Morris: It's a recent decision for it to be a part of the museum? Sally L: No, it was a part of the original decision that ten percent of what we made over cost would go to the museum. Morris: As your donation? Sally L: As our donation. Today they give more than that. The museum wants everything that isn't expenses to go to it. If I were there, but I'm not running it any more I would not have allowed that to happen, because I think it's terrible. Morris: And your partner was Sally L: Marian Parmenter, who's still there. She runs it, yes. Marian was an old friend. I asked Marian to come in and support me, I mean to j oin me in the start. Morris: The two of you started it without a board of directors? Sally L: Well, the board of directors is the San Francisco Museum, who's never been there. They treated you as if it were Sally's cute little toy. Morris: That's what I'm trying to get clear for the record. It was started as a part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Sally L: Well, it was started as part of the San Francisco Museum, with the board as the San Francisco Museum. It's an adjunct of the San Francisco Museum. However, the museum never had anything to do with it. Once a year, as a board member of the museum, I would give a report, and everybody would smile and say, '"Oh, it's so cute down there. I've got to go," they'd say. That's why I don't care that they come, I don't care anyway. What I object to is that now the museum's getting all this money without ever having done anything. Well, does it really matter? 54 Morris: And all the artists are from San Francisco? Sally L: They at least started by being all artists from the Bay Area, then we vent as far up as Sacramento. But we couldn't keep it supplied. so we went to other places and now most of it comes from the Bay Area, but once a year (this is what we spend money on) we go and bring a show from some place else. I think the first show was from Santa Fe. Morris: From their rental gallery? Sally L: No, no. We would go to the galleries and go to the artists and pick out the show. Bring it from there. There's a show every month. It's like any other gallery. It's run like any other commerical gallery. There is a show, a gallery opening every month. Almost nothing is rented at the openings, although the openings are jammed. Isn't that strange? Morris: Very. Sally L: And that's always been so. Business and Other Clients Morris : Where did the customers come from? Sally L: They are not people who wander around Fort Mason, and you'd think they would be. They come there because they want to rent art. Over the years they'd come from people like myself and often young people who are just getting started, or people who've just gotten their first apartment, bachelors and women. And I think quite a lot, more than half , of their business today comes from businesses. It started off, I think, with law firms. And there's one after another. All the big law firms, with the exception of McCutcheon the biggest law firms in the Bay Area certainly come to us. Not McCutcheon, because they did a beautiful job in collecting art many years ago. But those that don't have collections have all come to rent art. Morris: All business from San Francisco or from ? Sally L: The Bay Area. Under the Gerbode grant, there's a woman who works just on businesses. Morris: Developing business customers for the gallery? 55 Sally L: Yes, or hanging them. That's another thing we always did. We would go to a business, still do of course, and look around and decide what they need, and then you just can't Then bring them out there and show them what they need for this spot and that spot, and hang it, Morris : You've made a real contribution to the artistic taste of the area. Sally L: I don't know, because I would say it's very eclectic. I don't know to the artistic taste, but there is no question that it has made just tremendously helpful to young artists tremendously helpful. But it made them teach about it in all the courses in the University of California and more than the universities of California. There's a course which tells you about our rental gallery, because it has been a place for young artists. I don't know how many artists have gone from what I call "us", for the moment, to commercial galleries, one after another just this one and that one. Morris: But that means that there has to have been a corresponding increase in the market. Sally L: Well, there is a great increase in the market, but it also is that Marian and I well, I didn't take a salary. One year I did take salary, yes, but usually I didn't. The galleries can't afford the gallery personnel to go around all over the state and look for .art. So they could come to us and go through our stacks and see what they thought was good. I can't speak for any paintings there now, because I don't pick out the art any more at all. Morris: Did you go out and look for Sally L: Oh, yes I did. Morris: That's a tremendous amount of energy. Sally L: Yes, it is. It's tiring, but it's terrific, yes. That's why I actually kept up doing it; until this September, I would at least twice a month go out with Marian, and look at art, pick art, and I'd always hang the shows. Every third Monday of every month the show has to be hung. Morris: How did you learn about hanging shows. I'm told that is quite a skill. Sally L: Marian had worked in and owned an art gallery, actually, and long been a fan of the arts. I don't know. Do you know all the people in the world who hang out their shingles, "Art Consultants," and they don't have any background at all, at all. I used to hear them hold forth to their clients when 56 Sally L: they came in. They all had one rule: don't give the client what he wants. [laughs] These heads of banks would come in and they'd say sort of shyly to their horrible little art consultants, "I really like that painting. It has flowers in it." And she'd say. "No. no flowers." [laughs] Can't you hear it? Oh. it's funny. Anyway, I worked there, as I say, up until very recently, up until very recently. Morris: That sounds to me like a professional commitment. Sally L: Yes, well, when I started Ploughshares there wasn't any Morris: When we started this discussion you said, "What is the difference between a professional and a " Sally L: Oh, I see. Oh, yes. My profession as an artist. That's right. I don't know what is professional. I prefer not to know. Morris: Well, there's a certain classiness to being a very productive non- professional. Sally L: Do you think so? Morris: Yes. Sally L: I always wanted to be a professional, and I never have been. Morris: But some people, as you say the "art consultants" Sally L: Pseudo-prof essional si I know I'm not professional in what I do today. Morris: Is there anything else we should include about your experiences in the art world? Sally L: No, I've had so much pleasure in the art world. Morris: Why don't we stop here for today. Aside on Ploughshares Meeting in New York, September 1987 [Interview 3: September 29, 1987 ]## Morris: You were telling me about the Ploughshares party in New York. Sally L: Yes. We were faced with our own success is all I can tell you. It's embarrasing even to admit this. This event was so successful that it was jammed. I think I may have told you that we had to 57 Sally L: write to something like 800 people and tell them they couldn't come. I don't mean that all 800 would have come. I'm only saying that before they could answer their invitation we had to write them and say they couldn't come, because ten days after sending the invitations, there were 280 acceptances, and we could only have 150 be there. So, that in itself, you think, "How wonderful. You know how hard it is to get people in New York to come to see Ploughshares. Who's ever heard of Ploughshares? They had heard of, many people certainly had heard of the person at whose house it was held, but what happened is that the crowds were such limousines drove up and drove away! And it was so crowded that you couldn't talk to people. I would hear Morris : Did you get to make your ? Sally L: I made my little tiny speech. Everyone was stacked right up the middle of this enormous living room. Then the next day, I called in two very generous contributors to Ploughshares, who gave me bloody hell because nobody had made a big enough pitch. And Lew and I, we make money, I think by being earnest, good friends [laughs] never directly asking for it. I don't know. There's something about both of us. Do you know Lew [Lewis] Butler? Morris : Certainly by reputation. Sally L: Yes, yes. Because he's been in public life forever, and a public servant forever, and certainly had to raise money, but he's never directly asked for it. [laughs] Morris: That may be a technique to be studied. Sally L: Well, it obviously was not in this case. We certainly could have gotten one of our big contributors to get up and say, "I gave to Ploughshares, because I think it's the place where you can invest your money and prevent nuclear war in the most practical manner." But nobody said that. [laughs] So did we make any money out of it I don't know. And that was the point. Morris: That's too bad to have more people than you can really buttonhole. Sally L: Buttonhole! I couldn't say hello to people, as you know. The other thing is, my staff is too young to know what radical chic means, but many people around the room said, "I haven't seen radical chic like this since the sixties." And it was. Morris: And it still exists? Sally L: Oh, it still exists. There were college presidents there I don't know there was the head of the public library; Paul Moore, the bishop of New York, etc., etc. All these, and a lot of sort of society not society, but people who appear like the president and his wife of the Metropolitan Museum, things like that. And 58 Sally L: then there was the Council of Foreign Relations and his wife people who are really personages in New York. But I couldn't talk to any of them. Now that's not true. Of course, I talked to one or two. Plus the reason I won't go on and on about the reason one contributor gave was very, very droll: "I've never seen three such rich realtors in one room." [laughs] I didn't even know who they were. I later learned what their names were. Morris: This sound like people that were not necessarily on the original guest list. Sally L: Oh yes, they were, but they were people whose names had been sent to us by one or another person. I didn't know who they were. If you're a big outfit if you're the University of California, you've got a, even The Bancroft Library Morris: You have a research group that puts together lists of people for such gatherings Sally L: [agreeing sounds] Morris: > and information about them. Also flock of lesser luminaries who are assigned to go out and buttonhole the important guests. Sally L: Yes. Morris: Obviously you're going to have some fascinating follow-up work. Sally L: Well, I've done the follow-up work. Yes. We're going to have some fascinating follow-up work, there's no question about it. Morris: Obviously they wanted to come. Sally L: Well, I think they wanted to see the house. They wanted to hear Tom Wicker speak, who gave a terrible talk. I've heard him talk very well; I think he just gave a canned speech. Anyway, we'll see. This one man said, and he was so positive I don't mean to sound like a country girl, I'm not, but I'm not used to very, very large offices. I've never been married to a businessman, I don't have any businessmen friends, and that was not my milieu particularly. So when you get into some of these offices, and there are literally miles, miles of young men sitting at computers doing something before you finally get to an office, but in this case it's got absolutely priceless art. In the middle of our conversation somebody comes in with a takeover. Morris: Oh. marvelous. Sally L: That this company has been able to effect. I don't mean that it was taking over that 59 Morris: One that it has succeeded. Sally L: It succeeded. And this man said, "I'll give you," I mean he's so tough, "I'll give you $25,000, that'll pay to do the thing right. But you do it within six months." My God, well, we can't possibly do it. [laughs] Oh, dear. I don't mean to sound like Cinderella, but it's funny. Morris: That's nice to have somebody Sally L: Oh, it is. Oh, it is. No, he won't give it to us unless we do it as he says within six months. I could never get the board you know, our board, busy board of professors and what-not to come East again to do this in six months? No. Morris: He was giving you the money to do the Sally L: To do the party again the way he said. Morris: I see. Maybe he wanted his bright young men to organize it. Sally L: Maybe. That's an idea I never thought of. It's a little late. [laughs] Morris: Well, people knew you were in town, anyhow. 60 VIII GIVING AND RAISING MONEY IN THE 1960S AND 1970S Fair Housing Legislation Morris: I wanted to go back a ways this morning and pick up with some of the things you were doing in the civil rights, civil liberties areas. We talked a little bit, but I don't think it was on tape. In 1964, you were interested in the fair housing legislation to do away with red-lining? Sally L: Yes. Morris: How did you get involved in that? Sally L: I think when one's involved in an issue, you know, someone you know phones and asks how interested you are, then you're asked to go on a committee and do, and then you go around to your friends and try and raise money for it. It's as simple as that. I don't think it's not in any policy aking way at all. Governor Brown was the head of that. Pat Brown. Morris: Yes. He was very much interested in it; he had campaigned for the fair employment legislation that was passed in 1959. Sally L: Isn't your memory just wonderful. I meant to take these notes out this morning. We had a crisis around here that's stopped me from doing things that Morris: Had you known Pat Brown when he was attorney general or here in San Francisco? Sally L: No. I hadn't. I think he took my name off a list. Morris: I see. From some other committee, the Council of Civic Unity or something like that? 61 Sally L: Think of what a small community it is. In those days it was really a small community of people who were interested in these issues, and who had a little money. Morris: Do I remember this was the time you said somebody told you to write a check? Sally L: That's right. We went to a meeting, a very small meeting. I mean, maybe there were fifty people there to talk about raising money for the effort. I remember that occasion really well. I guess everybody there was asked what they could give. And I gave $250, and my pal nudged me and said, "Come on. Give $500." And as I said, that was the first time I ever gave $500 away. Morris: To a political cause? Sally L: To any. I really think in a single shot. That may not be true; to the community chest, I think I always, always, always it was called the community chest in those days always gave $1000, whatever it was. Morris: ~ It's kind of like paying taxes. Sally L: That's right, although I subsequently, not many years later, learned something that is important to me, which was that one could be a good citizen and decide what one wanted to support rather than necessarily supporting the UJA [United Jewish Appeal], for example, which I was never very interested in. But as a Jew, certainly, I guess I just wrote my $1000 check. Instead, really stick to what one is focused on. Morris: That sounds like you didn't become active in the community chest as a committee lady or Sally L: I think my first no-no. Never. Morris: For many people that's the beginning of their civic awareness. Did anybody ever ask? Sally L: Oh yes. I mean, when I first became a young matron, or whatever you call it, I'm sure I was asked, and I think I did spend a year going around asking for money. I think one was supposed to I totally forget get $200 from someone. And someone would say, "I'll give you $10." And I'd say, "What can I do for you?" [laughs] I realized that charity began to take on some flavor after a while. I wasn't just something that one did. Morris: Because it was Sally L: Because it was the right thing to do, yes. 62 Morris: Did you do the Junior League too? Sally L: No. because they didn't at that time, they didn't take. interestingly, they didn't take Jews in the Junior League. In fact. I have no idea, Gabrielle, how long ago they began to do so. or whether they even do so today in San Francisco. I know they didn't for many years. In fact, I had a friend who resigned or made a cause celebre out of it. and then resigned because they wouldn't. She used me as an example. American Civil Liberties Union Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally L: Morris : Sally L: But you did go on the board of the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]? Much, much later. That was in the early 1970s. What was going on then with the Early 1970s probably 1975. What was going on then is interesting. I was on it and found, to my absolute horror, women were not encouraged to speak in the board meeting. And lawyers were not encouraged I shouldn't say they weren't encouraged to speak, lawyers talk so much, vieing with each other on legal niceties but there was nothing talked about in policy. Virtually nothing. This is entirely differently than the ACLU had been traditionally in San Francisco. There is a lawyers' committee that meets, I think, frequently to go through what lawsuits they should take up. That was my next question, which person they What the board's role is in deciding As I understand it, and I resigned after two or three years because I found it was fruitless. As often in my life. I've done my little piece and then gone away. I did my little piece there I'll tell you in a minute. But there is a lawyers' committee and I really can't speak for what happens there today, although I'm very close to Dorothy [Erlich], who is the absolutely superb northern California director. I'm sure that she. as a non-lawyer, sees to it that it isn't only a legal discussion there. I don't know how interested you are in but among the members of the board there was a man by the name of Anthony Amsterdam. I don't know if you ever ran into him. He was a professor at Stanford. Yes, he's a famous lawyer from Stanford. Famous lawyer from Stanford. He's now back East articulate, and long-winded. And for the legal profession, essentially the progressive or left-wing legal profession to be in the room with 63 Sally L: him, and to be able to show off to him is ultimate ambition. So that's what the meetings consisted of. If Tony came, he'd make a speech and all the other lawyers there would vie to show that they knew as much as he did, or they understood what he was saying. But you can picture this, I think. And women, I found well, there was one woman, who's in education. I can't remember her name Dorothy wonderful, wonderful black woman. She's married to Chuck, who was actually chair of the board at San Francisco Foundation until recently. She's an educator. Morris: Patterson? From Oakland. Sally L: Patterson. I just can't believe your memory. Dorothy Patterson had been there many, many, many years. She's a very smart, attractive, able human being wonderful lady, wonderful lady. She totally it had taken her about three years or more to figure out how she as a non-lawyer could interject herself in the conversation, bring it back to essentials and be listened to. But I wasn't able to spend the three years, nor was I bright enough, [laughs] Morris: Did she pick some particular issues? Sally L: No, it wasn't that. It was just that she wanted see, the way it's set up, and it's years since I've resigned, is that there is a lawyers' meeting, and it takes place very often. At which point they decide the legal issues of what what it should be is policy is set by the board, and then the lawyers decide whether there is a legal suit in it, who's going to take it up, and how it's going to be done, and all the strategy. And apparently they enjoy that enormously. I can imagine they do. But it shouldn't then go to the board to go through the same stuff. Obviously they can go on and on and on you know how much they enjoy . So policy was not discussed, at that time. The chairman was probably over ridden too by the lawyers. Morris: Who was the chairman at that time? Sally L: Dick Delancy. Morris: Was this when Ernest Besig was director? Sally L: No, you see, and that's exactly what changed it. Now Ernest Besig had been out for years, and when Ernest Besig was there, I think it was a very different cup of tea. It was there though, I believe, that I met, or at least cemented a friendship which is of enormous meaning to me. He is now one of my closest friends, who was the second-in-command at ACLU, a man by the name of Tom Layton, who runs the Gerbode Foundation, that is one of the team to put this project together to do oral histories of people on 64 Sally L: foundations. And Tom is on my board, and we have an infinite number of common interests, including traveling together. But that is where we first became very, very, very good friends. He had been the head of Coro Foundation when he had come there. Morris: Was he a Coro graduate himself? Sally L: I don't think so. But Tom, as you may know I don't know anybody who knows him nationally who doesn't feel that he is one of the extraordinary people in the foundation world. I'm sure that there's simply no question that he gets ten times as much money into worthy and innovative causes from organizations and individuals, and starts ideas way beyond Gerbode's level of giving. He's an extraordinary person. Now he is someone that should be interviewed. [laughs] Morris: I hope we'll be able to. Is your perspective that its his ability to get other people to come in on a good idea or is it more his ability to say, "This really needs doing. "? Sally L: Both. Absolutely both. He is the most interesting, and intelligent, and broad-gauged person, who is really without ego. I don't think I've met anybody like that. He seems to have this odd characteristic I should say unique characteristic of being selfless. He really just wants the best for whatever he sees needs it. His mind is always working on trying to find a way around to do something for somebody and get other people to support it as well himself. Morris: Was this his role on the ACLU board? Sally L: No, I think his role on the ACLU board was fundraising actually, and administration, because there was an executive director, which he was not. He was an assistant to the executive director. I never know what titles are. Morris: He was on the staff of the ACLU? Sally L: He was a staff. But he is an absolutely fascinating person. Morris: That's quite a distance from the Coro Foundation to the ACLU. Sally L: I don't think so really. No, I don't really think that is true. No. Well, maybe it is somewhat, except that you'd say that civil liberties is an important thing for the civic servants to have under their belt. Morris: I was wondering if the years that you were on the board, the ACLU was working on any aspect of the death penalty? 65 Sally L: Yes, but the ACLU here, and you know I just hesitate to say. because I don't know what's happened in the last ten years. I support it heavily, but I don't follow exactly what they do. I think the death-penalty projects are mostly taken care of nationally, or mostly worked on nationally, coordinated nationally. But I know that there is someone in New York who for decades has been the head of the department working on the death penalty. What I did when I was there that was at all useful, feeling outraged at the way women were treated and also, probably, again like a debutante, from personal pique couldn't think of anything smart enough to say what was I going to sit there for? The meetings lasted six hours. They're always at night on Market Street. We'd be there from eight to one, drowning on legal language Morris: Staying awake was a chore. Sally L: Oh, staying awake was a chore. And I do have to say that one after another woman, some of whom I suggested be put on the board, has had this same problem for years. But we did (and that was my part in it) a few of us (and I'm not going to remember their names) put together a program for women, which they had not had at the ACLU equal rights for women. There was a law professor, she was at San Francisco State. There was a committee of us that finally were able to talk the board into having a special section on women's rights. And then I went down to raise some money for it, or helped raise the money for it, which we got from the San Francisco Foundation. Those were the old days. Morris: What was the project to do take cases and ? Sally L: Yes, and hire somebody on staff. Budget Needs vs. Innovation: Sierra dub and ACLU Sally L: I needn't tell you, all these things are wonderful to give vocal and written praise or support to these things by institutions, but it's the budget that counts. Recently, I hope I don't diverge too much, a [Ploughshares] grant that I'm very pleased with, which we just gave in New York for years, members of the Sierra Club had been trying to get their board to take a position on the prevention of nuclear war as being an environmental issue. And with spotty success, I would say. 66 Sally L : Morris: Sally L: Yes. they would sign the papers saying the Sierra dub was against nuclear war because of nuclear winter or something that's equally bread-and-water. Or they'd I think last year, I know they did because they used our information they sent out to all their chapters information on the comprehensive test ban. and said that they were behind putting out a comprehensive test ban. It was a very strong committee within the Sierra (Hub here in San Francisco that has been trying to work on this process over the years, without great success. Finally they talked the board into polling the membership as to whether this would be a member- supported thing, which means: would there be something taken from a very large budget to work on this issue, and the answer was no. So. without going through the intricacies, this wonderful committee was able to get the board to agree to say. Okay, we'll put in a lobbyist, in their very large and very competent office in Washington, if you get somebody outside to pay for it. In other words, it won't come out of That is like the ACLU. We had to go out and raise the money from the San Francisco Foundation. It didn't come out of the ACLU. Do you follow ? What you're saying that it's hard to get an organization to take money out of the existing budget to That's when they really have real commitment to something is when they're going to take it out of the Morris: Cut down something they're already doing or Sally L: That's right, or they have to raise money for it, which they did in this case. H Sally L: The fundraising department quite correctly doesn't want the mother institution, or a group from the mother institution to go to same foundation that the mother institution is going to for general support. Isn't that right? I had that experience a lot in my life. How to get around that in art situations too recently. Ploughshares in its last board meeting was thrilled to be able to pay for this lobbyist. Morris: Having tried to get the Sierra Club to take this position for sometime? Sally L: Well, yes. Not actively. I mean there's no way we we're not representative of the Sierra Club. Funders really shouldn't try and influence people, except [laughs] you know, I mean not in a direct way. I think it is a mistake. I really do. Certainly it's a mistake for funders to dictate programs. 67 Morris: It's an interesting area, though, when you're in the business of funding a particular kind of activity, people will One of the questions I wanted to ask you about later is the kind of ongoing relationship that develops with an organization that one has had a funding relation with. Sally L: That's a very delicate thing. Morris: Well, going back to the ACLU Sally L: So, sure, that was an instance I was just giving the Sierra CLub as another instance of the same thing, that ACLU wouldn't pay for a women's program. By pay for a women's program, it meant hiring an administrator and giving some office space and, I guess, some back-up. I don't remember, I think, I think a secretary, I forget. Morris: Yes, you started with Sally L: I remember yes, one staff person, with an enraged feminist Morris: These were the clients? It was also difficult working Sally L: These were the feminists on this committee that I don't recall exactly what. I just recall my husband being enraged because his secretary had to go through some kind of clearance to show that she was clean enough as a feminist. You know, that her politics were absolutely perfect, pure. She'd never gone out with a man [laughs] or whatever. Never worn a bra. [laughs] Nonetheless, that was what happened out of that, and I don't even know if the program still goes on, but for a while it was very successful. Writing and Reviewing Grant Applications; San Francisco Foundation and Ploughshares Morris When you were looking for funding, did you have to do a formal proposal ? Sally L: Yes. Morris: or could you just go talk to John May, who knew your reputation? Sally L: I think we did a formal proposal, but in those days, as I recall, and I don't recall in this one, but I do on others, they were wonderful about saying, "This is the wrong way to write it." I believe so strongly that one shouldn't judge a proposal on how it's written. Don't you? 68 Morris: You must have gotten the idea across, even though it wasn't written in the best of grantmaking style. Sally L: Yes, for them. But you know when you are after money, very often you write in a proposal and it's discarded by some foundations because it's not written in exactly the form they like, or it's boring, or it's over-written, or it's too long, too short Morris Or it doesn't tell them what they want to know. Sally L: B ut it often has to do with the writing, rather than the actual facts of the case. Morris: Is that your experience now? Sally L: Oh, yes, it is definitely my experience now. Although, as I think I m ay have said to you before, we are so lucky on the board in having Tom Lay ton and Lew Butler, who are so experienced as foundation people, and Bill Roth when he's here. Because, being so experienced they are able to be entirely flexible. They insist on flexibility; although the legal processes have no flexibility whatsoever, or the ethical ones, or the way one treats one's clients. That's probably a whole other subject. But we have been told often that we're unlike most foundations in the way we treat our clients. Morris: If you see something of merit in that proposal Sally L: Go back to them and say. "Do you really mean this? " or "Do you really mean that?" or "Couldn't you write it more clearly here." And actually since we rewrite, which is different from many foundations, though many of them do; since we rewrite each proposal for the board, we write a docket. (Not all foundations do that. So, obviously the board doesn't have to read through all that material) and put it in place showing why it's important in the whole scheme of things, which a prospective grantee couldn't possibly say. couldn't know Morris: Couldn't relate to the other proposals being considered. Sally L: Yes. That's right. All the issues of the whole international global peace movement, probably not. Some could, of course. The Arms Control Association could, but the Kansas Freeze couldn't. Anyway, yes. We certainly do what the San Francisco Foundation did in those times, although we don't ever see the person face to face, which makes it easier, and ask them to write it in a w ay that this fact is possible and that fact is possible, because often you're turned down because you haven't, in certain foundations, because one hasn't put in a fact of importance. Morris: That exists. 69 Sally L : Morris : Sally L; Morris: Sally L; Morris: Sally L; Morris: Sally L: Which exists. Or if it doesn't exist, one should know it. But in those days, I think I've said this to you before, the San Francisco Foundation (I know I did) on many occasions I went to them with groups, usually kids, with practically illiterate and Let them tell the foundation what they wanted to do? I would have talked to them, and I'd go with them and try and explain it a little better. Then John or Lew White would be helpful in what kind of, usually very brief, proposal had to be written to get into that docket. Do I have this right, that you would take the kids and go to the foundation at the inquiry stage? At the inquiry stage. Now, in this women's thing we did write a proposal before we went in to them. The inquiry stage, yes, you could do it. Maybe that's because--! don't know, of course I like to feel important, but I think it is also conceivable it was because I know Lew and John very well. But just anybody could have done it. Probably so. But they knew that you were likely to be involved in something interesting? Yes, I was a friend. W as it a matter of saying, "John or Lew, you people really ought to take a look at what's going on in this area"? Yes. And "Here is a group. This is really a new idea. This is a group of people who don't know exactly how to put it together. Can I bring them in to talk to you. They'll answer your questions. " 70 IX AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. 1972-1979 Fundraising in the East Sally L: And when I keep thinking you must tell me when I'm getting off the point to stop when I started the board for Amnesty International here, a western board, John was on it. I'll never forget John warning me and saying "When you go east, you're going to find a very great difference in foundations. Don't think it's like the San Francisco Foundation." He'd tell me this over and over again. And, wow, was he right. Oh! Morris: Really? How so? Sally L: My experience then was that it was almost impossible to get in to see someone in a foundation. And you couldn't make an appointment three weeks early. They'd be much too busy. That's not true in Washington, but it's true in New York. It's not true in Boston, it's true in New York. I think it is still true now. My experience is not that today, because now Ploughshares is okay. Ploughshares makes a number of grants and is in the newspapers, [laughs] So, every foundation was there, by the way, at this overcrowded reception. I wish we hadn't asked them; they came. Morris: Really? Sally L: They just took up space. But. yes. now we can get appointments. But when I first went east for Ploughshares (not even to ask for money, though I guess sometimes I was) you'd think you were getting an appointment with the president. And it's terrible, Gabriel le, because those people you're not talking to the president of the board, who may be busy doing takeovers, you're talking to someone who's paid. Morris: And was it because Amnesty did not have the status that Ploughshares 71 Sally L: Oh, no. Ploughshares didn't have it at first; this is just now that we can sometimes do it. I guess what I'm saying is that small or unheard-of or barely-heard-of organizations have a hard time getting in to see the program officer. Morris: So what was the breakthrough with Amnesty? Sally L: Well, I didn't do that much about that, very much of it, although nobody else on the board was doing any of it. John told me about somebody at the Sherman Foundation, who (the man who ran it) had been a refugee himself. I can't recall his name. I was able to get in to see him, but most people were not. Now that's when Amnesty was very new. Early Interest; European Organiz ation Morris: Sally L: Morris : Sally L; Morris: Sally L: That was what I was thinking, because 1961 was what I came across as the organizing date. Morris : Sally L; And I got involved ten years later. Right. Or eleven years later. What was there about Amnesty that appealed to you as a place to put your energy? Simply reading an article about it, and being so lacking in knowledge. The fact that there were people in prison that nobody had heard for years, the fact that there were people that were tortured. I think it's something that you put out of your mind so that you don't even dwell, think about it. This was back eighteen years ago. Of course, I think the first thing that ever came across my thinking of it I'm sure embarrassed at my naivete was, after the Second World War there was an art contest, a major international art contest conducted in London for a sculpture for the unknown political prisoner. I only mention that because I think it's one of the things that made a big emotional pang. My God, the unknown political prisoner still not found! Oh, what an awful thing. Where is that statue? It's in London, but I can't tell you where. I can't even tell you the name of it. I can see it in my eye, but I can't tell you the name of the artist. I guess I was 72 Morris: You were still sculpting at that point, weren't you? Sally L: Yes. I guess that's why I was interested Morris: Did you Sally L: I suppose so. Oh, no. No, these are major artists. Morris: I know you were concerned about refugees during World War II. Sally L: Yes. Always. Morris: I wondered if there was a logical extension. Sally L: I think everything is, it's just that you don't' think about it. Morris: I came across a couple of interesting articles about Amnesty. One of them said that there's less of an organization in the U.S. than in other parts of the world. Sally L: In Amnesty International? Morris: Right. Sally L: Bet I can tell you the reason. Morris: Okay. That 1 s why I'm asking. Sally L: Yes, there's a lot of reasons. First of all, I should say that Amnesty is, and particularly was, the size organization It has never been able to process the political prisoner, enough of them to satisfy the consumer, which is a terrible thing to say. The membership can't grow until the membership grows as far as giving money, but the actual groups, which is the adoption groups, can't grow until they have prisoners. And the prisoners can not be allocated until they go through a tremendous amount of research, before they're adopted as prisoners. They can't be criminals, all kinds of things. That institution isn't really big enough to actually do the research that it in other words, there could be many more groups than there is ability to do the research, although it's being done all the time. Any country I'm really talking about something that I shouldn't talk about, because it's something like nine years, ten Morris: I'm interested in what it was like in the 1970s. Sally L: In those years it was, particularly as a group, there was no way that the London office could do the research on enough prisoners to satisfy the number of groups that wanted to be formed to work. 73 Morris: To lobby? Sally L: It's more than that to work, in their very focused way on getting those prisoners out of prison, or keeping them from dying. And the major place, when I was there, is Germany. And that's understandable, isn't it? West Germany. Of course, these were the Morris: This is people in West Germany, who wanted to work for release of political prisoners in other countries? Sally L: That's the rule. In Amnesty, you could only work with prisoners in countries other than your own, because it would be dangerous, particularly then. It was dangerous to work for political prisoners in your own country. In Spain, Greece, and in Russia they were also thrown in jail. Actually, Amnesty International chapters in Eastern European countries had been in prison. Morris: For trying to ? Sally L: Work with prisoners in other countries. So, I was very disappointed when the American section took up capital punishment in this country. In fact, that was one of the reasons I resigned. Because to me, it loses its strength if you work within your country. I don't think we need to be telling the rest of the world that they can't work in their own country, and doing it ourselves. At any rate, that's a very small point. You said you read that America was slow to start. But the guilt of Western Europeans was such that I shouldn't say that, I hate to blame things on guilt, but sensitivity to these matters was such that you could have, I'm told, every other person would belong to Amnesty International. When I was there (I do not know that this is true any longer at all. and I don't know how long this law existed) a traffic ticket in West Germany for a number of years, I don't know for how long, you could either pay off to the traffic court or you could give the money to Amnesty International . Morris: As a matter of public policy. Sally L: Yes. And now Scandinavia, I think in both Norway and Sweden, and I'm not sure about Denmark those places were very, very active in Amnesty International. They have a long traditional, after all, of helping refugees and the politically oppressed. The government gives a large amount of money to Amnesty International. It's almost a government institution in Scandinavia. And their involvement is so powerful. Now in England, it's always been extremely strong. When I was in England and met many of these people, they were elderly pensioners or elderly academics 74 Sally L: mostly. Sort of fuddy-dud English pensioners that's changed a lot, but it was a very, very active group in England, and very large. San Francisco Adoption Group: Freeing Fernando Flores Morris: Did you become part of an adoption group? Sally L: Oh. yes, I was the head of an adoption group, here in San Francisco. Morris: Did you have any say as to who was assigned to your group? Sally L: No. No, except that I was in an executive committee on Amnesty International and very, very much involved. I worked there full- time. We were given a very interesting prisoner. I'll just put it that way. I think maybe that's why. An extraordinarily interesting person. Morris: It is appropriate to say what country ? Sally L: Oh, yes. I'm very proud of it. This Amnesty group got Fernando Flores out of jail. He was a minister in the Allende government who had two posts. We did everything, everything you could imagine to get him out of prison. And he is a cyberneticist, an internationally known cyberneticist, who among other things, and I don't understand how one does this at all, put the economy, or had a plan for putting the economy of Chile of computerizing the economy of Chile. He is actually an international figure in this field. He was put away in a prison on an islandl Highly educated man, and had been in many international conferences. Tremendously well-thought of. I think he'd been hired to cyberneticize the economy of other countries, the Netherlands [laughs] I don't know. So, you could get letters to get this man out of prison from the entire faculty of Harvard, and all kinds of people. We couldn't move it. We did everything that you could possibly think of. We hired someone to work on senators. We got Alan Cranston to go over to the Chilean embassy, and we got this one and that one to I forget I think Proxmire. I forget how many senators and congressmen. That's the sort of thing that we did. One of the things we did which is an interesting idea, is we called you can make a long-distance call, person-to-person, and if you don't arrive at the person, of course, you don't have to pay for the cost. So every day. we would call President Pinochet's office, and we would get his secretary, because the 75 Sally L : call came from California. Every day, we would say. we would like to speak to President Pinochet, in English, of course; we didn't speak in Spanish. She spoke English. And "Why do you want to speak to President Pinochet?" like any good secretary. "Because we want to talk to him about Fernando Flores." And she said, "I'm sorry, the president is in a meeting." [laughs] And we did this every day, every day, every day. And finally one of our members to our horror got the president on the phone. [laughs] Well, I don't think that's what got him out, but it was a miracle and we did get him out. He's now made a million dollars or more in San Francisco. He came to San Francisco? He came to San Francisco and we helped him a lot, because he had a whole family. And we didn't stop there. We got him food, we helped get him a place to live. Phil helped him to get taken on at Cal. We didn't stop at bringing him here. That must have been tremendously satisfying. This is the most extraordinary thing, to work for Amnesty and get a prisoner out. Imagine 1 In the matter of the Allende government, was the question of possible American influence on overthrowing that government I like the way you put it. Of course, we gossiped about it, just like we're gossiping now on who is really making up their minds on the INF Treaty and what is the payoff to Richard Perle, but we had information; that's just our gossip. Morris: At that time was it discussed at all? Sally L: No, just as I'm telling you, as gossip I think in Amnesty, you just try to keep your mind on your business and get that prisoner out. I will tell you, though, it takes a kind of patience that is Job-like. I am no one to talk, because I was only there I ran a group, maybe three or four groups, for only three years maybe, and then someone took it over, because when I became vice chairman I didn't have time because I had to go east once a month, and do the accompanying work, and help run the office here. How many years ago let me say it's eleven years ago, I was interested in a prisoner we had, a poet in Korea. I should remember his name, but I don't. We worked on that prisoner. We Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: 76 Sally L: wrote letters. Every opportunity we had, we sent something. You never know whether it gets there. You never get a reply. You never know whether the person's alive. The family can't get back to you. You write to the family. You send things to the family. You do all these things, never to hear a word, and often you don't know whether the person's alive. You can go on for fifteen, twenty, thirty years. Well, in this case, the reason I bring it up is. of all things I read in the paper about three months ago that this man was let free. And I'm not sure it was through Amnesty at all. He had been a principal journalist and poet, and he had written against the government. It is amazing how people work for this. Morris: In getting something going in northern California, did you start with the adoption groups, or did you start with the information and membership? Sally L: I think information and membership. Early on there were a couple of groups. One of them extraordinary group was run by Kay Boyle 41 H Sally L: I really don't know how she became involved, because it was a separate group. I don't know. It really takes devotion, a tremendous amount of devotion, to do these things, to do them right. You can imagine when you don't hear from them, when there's no sign of anybody. I've heard stories (and I only hear a few) of people working on imagine a prisoner in South Africa. Never hear from him. You could be sending that letter once a week or once a month and clothes and food and whatever, and never ever, ever hear from that person. Morris: When Senor Flores was released and came to San Francisco, did you talk with him at all? Sally L: Oh, yes. Morris: As to how much, if any, of the things you'd sent he received? Sally L: I don't remember that we sent him anything. I think it was inappropriate for some reason, I forget, to send him actually food or I think we couldn't get in. His family received it though. We sent it to help his family. Now he came from, actually his wife came from a wealthy family. But we sent her food for her small children. Morris: Was he aware while he was in prison Sally L: Oh. yes. Morris: that you were working on his release? 77 Sally L : Morris: Sally L; Morris: Sally L He was, I think, once somehow. There are all kinds of leaks in these prisons, somehow a letter or word or something gets through. I'm sure you've read those things about Amnesty. They are heart rending. Imagine being in prison. Imagine being in solitary confinement, or in prison, for years and years and years, not knowing that anybody knows that you're alive. And then getting a word that somebody in a country that you don't even know is working for you and cares about you. It's pretty powerful stuff, I'll tell you Has there been any thought of expanding the research side of Amnesty, so that more ? It's expanded enormously. You know, I can't answer anything, Gabrielle, about what they're doing today about it. But there is a very, very powerful, thoughtful, hardworking international committee constantly working to improve and expand Amnesty's services. Research was, while you were active, it was all done in England? It was always done in England. While I was there, we grew in the United States from a one-person office to what was probably by the time I left, about a 13-person staff in offices across the country, and now there are many, many more who are paid personnel. Urgent Action Network Sally Morris: Sally L ; Morris: Sally L: And one of the things is that there was an enormous what do you call it a network that can immediately contact, through its computers, all kinds of people all over the United States to work on behalf of a prisoner Urgent Action it's called. That was developed in San Francisco, actually, by somebody who was here in our office, first of all as a volunteer, and then an extraordinary staff person. And he runs it from a mountain in Colorado today with his family. Do you remember his name? Yes. I do. Scott Harrison. Now how did that idea develop? I just can't remember how those things evolved, extraordinarily useful for instance, let's say prisoner's a doctor. A prisoner is often a professional person. Think how many places in the world with an oppressive government political prisoners are professionals because so often activists It's that the 78 Sally L: are intellectuals. All the doctors on the Urgent Action network are alerted to write their medical associations in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Chile, whatever Morris: American doctors writing to Sally L: Writing to their counterparts there, for instance. That would be an example. Or writing to members of the government. But, of course, then there's an Urgent Action where everybody ought to write to keep somebody from being killed, or somebody who's being horribly tortured. And that information comes instantaneously through the computers Scott mans on that mountaintop in Colorado. It comes by telex from London. Morris: And the Urgent Action is normally addressed to a government? Sally L: It is normally addressed to a government, right. Morris: I gather there have been cases when governments on the receiving end of Urgent Action appeal to the sending country saying, "Stop the letters." Sally L: Yes; oh. yes. The one thing about government officials everywhere is that apparently they don't want to be embarrassed by the rest of the world knowing that they're beasts. No matter how they behave, they apparently don't want to be so recognized. Not that torture, imprisonment or murder has stopped. Morris: I wonder if there is any sense that the numbers of people who are tortured are fewer today than they were fifteen years ago? It seems as if when things alleviate in one area that it pops up in another. Sally L: I think it alleviates it for individuals that can be identified, but certainly not for numbers of people. Interesting places Amnesty International has been able to go. Originally, how could they do any research in China? But they do today. Morris: Has any research been done in the United States? Sally L: Oh, yes. Morris: Have there been cases ? Sally L: Oh, yes, of course. Some American Indians who are in prison have Amnesty groups working for their release. Anybody who's in prison for a political reason and Amnesty makes that decision. Now there are not very many political prisoners in the U. S., and they are not mistreated after all in a physical sense, that is. 79 Nobel Peace Prize, 1977 Morris: Were you involved when the Nobel Prize was awarded? Sally L: Yes. Morris: Twice in three years is unprecedented, isn't it? 1974 Sally L : No, there was only one. Morris: No, there were two. Sally L: Not for Amnesty International. Morris: Yes. 1974 and 1977. Once was to the Irish foreign minister, who was then chairman of Amnesty. Sally L: Sean McBride. Morris : Right. And Sally L: Well, that's right. Sean McBride was, but he was down for a lot of other things too. I'd forgotten that he got Morris: Then in 1977, Martin Ennals, who was also secretary of Amnesty. Sally L: Well, Sean McBride, I'd forgotten, got it for a lot of things, I think. But Amnesty International itself got it in 1977. Martin Ennals was the head of it, but Amnesty International got it. And let me tell you how they received the news of the award. One of their staff members was in Sweden. I'd like to say he was calling on his girlfriend. I think it was true, but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, he was in Sweden, and he found out that Amnesty was going to get the award. And he found out maybe five minutes before it was announced. So he phoned the office in London. He got Martin on the phone, and he said, "You won the Nobel Peace Prize." And Martin said, "Really? I must tell the people around here." In those days they worked in an old house. I have not been to their new offices, but you just couldn't believe the original one. It was one of those centuries-old English buildings where you can't ever find the staircase or the offices. Each little room is directly off the narrow stairs that's the kind of a place. So Martin got the word around came into the office and said, "Did you know it was just announced over the television that we won the Nobel Peace Prize?" And immediately everybody was back working without a break. It's so typical. It is so typical. 80 Morris: Well, somebody has to submit to the Nobel committee Sally L: Oh, yes. I don't know how it's chosen, but all kinds of crazy people are submitted, I'll tell you. I only know because, of all things. I have been submitted. The only reason I know is because a couple of people have written me letters: "We have submitted you and Mr. Gorbachev this year." Ridiculous 1 So it must be some important group that suggests them, I know, because it can't be j ust Morris: You and me deciding Sally L: Me deciding, no! No, no i't can't. Morris: There's quite a sizable financial award that goes with it. What did Amnesty use the money for? Sally L: I have no idea. Put it right back into administration, I'm sure. Morris: Who goes to Stockholm? Sally L: Martin Ennals, I guess, went. And the chairman of the board, but I don't remember who the chairman of the board was then. I've totally forgotten. Morris: The chairman was Thomas Hammarberg. Sally L: That's right. Oh goodness, your research is wonderful. Who comes from Sweden. Morris: Right. He later became secretary general. Sally L: That's what I call the executive director. Yes, the secretary general. Morris: Right. But the chairman Sally L: Martin Ennals was the secretary general. Tom Hammarberg was the chairman and then he became the secretary general, and somebody else became the Morris: Is that usually for the chairman of the board to become the staff administrator? Sally L: No. I don't think so, no. It's an interesting arrangement. Well, he was a newspaperman. He was a journalist. He was working at his profession while doing a full-time volunteer job for Amnesty. 81 Adding Public Relations Staff Morris: As a jounalist, was he useful in developing the visibility of Amnesty? Sally L: I don't think so particularly. I know very little, really almost nothing, about the workings of our international office. I could tell you what happened on Sacramento Street. I'm afraid that's my role in life: I don't know what happens in the big city. But I do remember very well when we hired in New York a public relations person, and what a lot of difference that made. Morris: Did it really? Sally L: Oh, yes. It reminds me, although it's a little different it's such a completely different thing and its dynamic is different totally of what Ploughshares is today (what Amnesty International in this country was when it was five years old.) Can you imagine our having a public relations person? And Amnesty International, in those days, didn't make any more money than we do here, than Ploughshares does. Morris: So, was the PR person hired before a director? Sally L: No. By that time there was a large staff. Starting a Northern California Group; Cloak and Dagger Adventure Morris: Sally L; Morris : Sally L; Morris : Which did you start with? they The Northern California group, and then Well, we started with the Northern California group and then this wonderful woman, Ginetta Sagan. who really is the person who started it in Northern California and who I worked with and who was the one who sucked me in very hard. She's irresistible, or was in those days particularly. She herself was a political prisoner at eighteen. She was Italian, wealthy background, who worked with the underground in the Second World War, was in prison, tortured, freed in a hay wagon or laundry wagon I forget which. And she has spent her life on human rights. Was she then living in San Francisco? She lives in Palo Alto. She does today with her doctor husband. Had she been and her husband been active in Amnesty elsewhere? Or had they started when they came to the Bay Area? 82 Sally L: No. she had always been involved. She got married to him very, very young. She was sent over to this country from Paris. Her parents were murdered. Anyway, she became involved in human rights, and kept or political prisoners and she kept very, very close ties with all of her underground acquaintances all over Europe. She worked on an international basis. By the time I knew her, she had been working with Amnesty and with other human-rights groups there just as an individual, working on human rights for years. But she wasn't on the board. She had done absolutely extraordinary work but they'd never heard of the West Coast in New York where the tiny U. S. office was. Morris: That's the story I'm interested in the Amnesty organization didn't think of the United States as being a place for their activities? Sally L: I don't think so. It didn't think that way, no. It didn't. I don't remember. I really don't recall where there were chapters, except that the biggest one of all is on Riverside Drive, in New York City. I think there were others in New York and there probably was one in Connecticut, and I don't know where else. I just don't know how many there were. But, because we lived out here, we decided there should be some Amnesty work out here. The first thing we did together was, in retrospect, absolutely insane. Ginetta talked me in I cannot imagine how I could have done such a thing to going to Greece with her This is Greece under the colonels; you can remember torture and murder and awful things that were done to try and free some prisoners and drive them out of the country at night, out of Athens at night to a safe place. Now I can't even drive at night, Gabrielle. And of course, I can't speak Greek, but she needed someone to go with her. She had been there a number of times. Her contacts, all over in this netherworld of good people. who were trying to help so-called prisoners of conscience was enormous. And it was enormous in Vietnam, in which I got very involved, to try to get people out of tiger cages. All right. And then later, we, in fact, had an underground railroad, I don't even think I should say this. Well, of course, it still exists, I imagine, out of Chile. We had a lot to do with that. Anyway, these were all like cheap thrillers. How could I have gone? To this day I can not imagine. I had sleepless nights. I was scared, absolutely to death, I was scared to death. Morris: Can we go back to Greece for a minute? Sally L: Yes. that's what I mean. I was scared to death about going to Greece. Morris : Sally L : 83 Were these people you were going to drive out by night going to go in and personally spring the lock? -were you No, the lock was going to be sprung, and they were going to be brought to some place. And they were going to go in our cars as we were going to zoom through the night, two separate night Morris: Waving your American passport. Sally L: Waving your American passports or something. It was never made clear to me. Morris : It does indeed sound like Sally L: The craziest thing you ever heard in your life. Fortunately, we never got to Greece or I surely would not be here to tell you the story. I have a feeling that somehow it wasn't quite as sewn up as she thought, although she had been to Greece quite often. We got to London first. She had never visited the Amnesty International offices. There we met the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Morris Sean McBride? Sally L: Sean McBride. And Sean McBride told us about two Frenchmen who had been put in tiger cages, because they had put banners all over Saigon talking about how great the Viet Cong really were. etc. I won't elaborate, but you get the picture. After some years, the French communists and also the French government itself had been able to get these people out. By the time Ginetta and I arrived in London the two young men had come back to Europe, and were living in France. And wouldn't it be wonderful for political prisoners in those tiger cages, if one could introduce to Americans former prisoners who had actually been there. Well, said I. we will tour them around the United States. Morris: The people who had gotten out? Sally L: These two Frenchmen, who are now in France, who will tell their story of what's happening in the tiger cages. That's the time when I put some money down to get them to the United States. I'll try and be brief, but these stories are all so [laughs] I don't know. And we did. We did, we did. They came. And Ginetta toured them around this country. She is tri-lingual, having spent her young adulthood in France. Her godfather in France took her in after she was freed from prison. And so she was brought up and went to college in France mostly. She is absolutely irresistable. this woman. Yay high, very round, rosy cheeks, passionate speaker, I mean she makes. Helen Caldicott look like nothing. 84 Sally L: Anyway, she toured them around the United States. I vent ahead of her and tried to set up some public meetings. Ginetta jetted me back ahead of her. Morris You did advance work for their tour? Sally L: A little bit. in a few places, like Minneapolis. doing? Oh. what was I Morris: Was it contacts with Amnesty people there? Sally L: No, because there weren't Amnesty people. That was the point. At that point. Amnesty was just one office of one person in New York and a couple of groups. This is the way that it spread I was really telling you this long intricate story because this is one of the ways Amnesty International began to spread in the United States, when you see some people that have been through even though they don't speak English. I think one of them did, a little bit. Because of those French former prisoners, we didn't go to Greece. We went to Paris to meet them. Ginetta had loads of French friends, and I sat alone in the hotel in Paris waiting for what my orders were to be. And the Greek people, in the meantime, were freed by somebody else, and they arrived at three o'clock in the morning at somebody's apartment in Paris. This is the story of Ginetta' s life, though. It just goes on and on and on, year after year after year in this dramatically humanitarian fashion. This was my only adventure of this sort, fortunately. Morris : So you brought the Greek Sally L: I went ahead of her to come home and arranged the meetings in a few places. Then the French prisoners came, and she toured around the United States, I think mostly college campuses, or human rights groups, but not Amnesty groups peace and justice groups. or friends of friends Morris: How about United Nations groups? Sally L: I don't think we thought of it at the time. Although the United Nations became very involved with Amnesty, but I don't think This was just a little project of Ginetta 1 s and mine, you understand. Morris: Right. Well, between the two of you, it sounds like you had a good international Sally L: Well, she really. She knew what she was doing. I just followed along. Anyway, she did that and it got a lot of people interested in Amnesty International. Lots of them. 85 Morris ; Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Even though none of you at that point were active in Amnesty International? Well, we were members of Amnesty. We were in touch with the woman who was the person in the office, who we were not very happy with. And we were very much in touch with the chairman, who was not used to this kind of activity. [laughs] Who was a very-known professor from Columbia, Ivan Morris, a renowned specialist in Japanese sociology. Was anybody encouraging this touring around the United States? Oh, I don't think so. This was a good way to get some Amnesty groups organized? Oh. I don't think so. That's fascinating. I never thought of that. Gabrielle. [laughs] But obviously, you I'm sure they encouraged it. I'm sure they said, "Fine, if you can get some members." I don't remember any connections with anybody. I don't remember any formal connections with anybody. Did Professor Morris say, "Sally, I want you to organize I didn't even know him at that time. the Northern California committee? Oh, no. [laughs] No. It j ust grew I think they decided to start a California committee. By that time, and I don't remember what happened in between times, there were some groups that had started here. And Ginetta herself had a very active group in Palo Alto. Then I started a a group. By that time we hired somebody for the San Francisco office. Somewhere along the line, Ginetta and I went east and we said, "There's got to be a western office. We've got these groups out there. There are all these active people to raise some money for you right out here. " 86 Sally L: And they said. "Oh. what are you thinking about?" And Roger Baldwin the man that started the ACLU who was about 90 years old, and on the board I'll never forget. He said, "I don't want to hear anything about it." i Morris: He was on the Amnesty Sally L: The Amnesty International board. "I want to hear nothing from the West." [laughs] He was absolutely scathing about the fact that these two women would have the audacity to suggest [laughs]. Oh. dear. He later changed his mind, because everybody who ever met Ginetta fell in love with her. and then they became fast friends and what not. Fantastic woman. Joan Baez got very involved. I mean, who could resist these women? But anyhow, I don't recall* never recall, the institutionalizing of organizations [laughs]. I can't remember that part of it. That's awful, but I can't. Morris: Well, it's much more exciting to be working with Sally L: Yes, doing. So w e came home, and we put a board together out here. Morris : You and Ginetta. Sally L: Me and Ginetta. And got an office, rented an office Morris: With your own donations, or did you go Sally L: With donations. We'd gone around, shaken our friends down, and then we must have had them give money to Amnesty, because I had to be the funding agent. I guess they were willing. Morris: Do you remember how much you had to put together before you thought you had enough to start an office? Sally L: I don't. I asked Ginetta for some record of it. and she has no record of these things. I don't know. I really don't know. I do remember the foundation that I worked on. It's a funny name. But the person who ran the foundation was a woman by the name of Mary Anna Colwell. Morris: That's the LARAS Fund. Sally L: How can you Morris: Mary Anna is somebody that I really admire, and I got to know her when she was running that foundation. Sally L: W ell, so did I. I w as able to get som e m oney from the L AR AS Fund. I think that's what paid for it. Maybe Amnesty gave us some money for it. I really don't remember. And I think we probably started with volunteers. I don't know. 87 National Board Member Sally L: And then very soon, we both were appointed to the board. Morris: The national board. Sally L: The national board. Morris: I would think so. Sally L: Ginetta was such a firebrand. She was not on the executive committee, and I was appointed to it because I just said "yes" to everybody, I guess. Then I'd go east once a month for the longest meetings. I mean, the longest meetings, [laughs] Morris: Even longer Sally L: Longer than ACLU. Oh, yes, because they lasted two days. After the meetings there would be other meetings. There'd be meetings of the committees. And the committees! There was a f undraising committee, and we would meet to talk about fundraising. And people would take assignments; one man, who's been in the foundation business for years and who shall be nameless (and who was himself a political prisoner because he was a Vietnam ref usee) would always take these assignments because he ran a foundation. And he never ever, ever fulfilled his assignment I'll never forget this. It was just so unpleasant. Morris: Oh, that's bad. Sally L: And these meetings would be from when the other meeting was over at nine o'clock until one o'clock in the morning. Oh, my. Morris: Were your assignments to contact foundations or were they to talk to potential individual donors? Sally L: Yes. And people didn't really do it. In those days, Amnesty, the people in New York did not really raise money. They raised money through direct mail, and at the time when I say "at the time," I'm talking about in a span of five years, because I don't really know what's happened since. 88 Direct-Mail Fundraising; Pros and Cons Sally L: For some reason. Ginetta knew some young men in Santa Barbara, who were starting a direct-mail outfit. And they asked Ginetta if Amnesty International wouldn't be interested. And she brought that idea to Whitney Ellsworth, who was until just recently the publisher of the New York Review of Books. He's tremendously wealthy. Very active in Amnesty, in fact, today that's what he does. He's simply totally active. Subscriptions to the New York Review of Books were sold through direct mail. So he was the expert. We started this direct-mail project.and it brought in so much money. They never had to call the foundations or really work very hard on raising individual funds after that. Now today, I don't know what has happened. But I do know they never have had to have a fundraising board ever. Morris: What a relief. Sally L: There are those of us who think that it's not necessarily a very good way to run a board. I don't want to go over the politics of Amnesty International. I could, but I don't really I think there are problems there. Morris: Do you think board members who do fundraising have a different kind of approach? Sally L: I have an elitist idea, which I don't really like to have. I'm stuck with it. The board became over the years more and more and more until it is totally today a democratically elected board. That, in my view, results in popularity contest around the United States, not necessarily people who are the most knowledgable or effective as national board members. And this is a national institution, of course. Now that is not to say that there aren't those among them that are competent, and all are certainly dedicated. Originally, when I went on the board, we were appointed by somebody or other. Then over the years it evolved so that maybe a quarter of us were elected, then a half, then three quarters. And that's the way it should be, because, after all, the active people in it are the people who work in groups around the country. But there also have to be people who have national stature; in my view, there should be, for the good of the institution. And that would be considered elitist at Amnesty International, I believe without any question. Morris: But you would think in an organization of 45,000 members in the United States, that there's no way you'd know most of the people on the board. It would be because of their national reputation that you'd pick 89 Sally L : Oh. but you see what happens is that a large group of people from Berkeley as a matter of fact the chairman comes from Berkeley today. He's a black professor at the University of California. And one of the other board members comes from Berkeley too I forget her name. I just learned this. Morris: In other words, a bunch of people in Berkeley, for instance, could nominate Sally L: That's right, and push for it, and politick. When I was there, and beginning to leave although I was elected, I'm proud to say, just before I left. I wanted to see if I'd be elected nationally. Morris : Sally L i Morris: Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Had you already decided to leave? Yes, but I didn't want to leave because I wasn't elected. Good strategy. I would have left anyway if I hadn't been elected, but I wanted to see whether I would be; because, I guess, if your name's been there long enough, maybe you'd be elected, in some cases. But that becomes less and less so, I think, and, as I say, I don't like to be elitist. But I do think it's important to have on the board people with a national profile, because it's critical what Amnesty International as an institution has to say about events all over the world. And you can't pick up a paper for a week, a national paper, without reading what Amnesty International has to say about what is the condition of human rights in any country of the world. They say Amnesty International says this or that in Central America, or in China, in any place, it's I'd like to go back a minute to this direct mail organization in Santa Barbara. Do you remember their name? Yes. Anacapa. That's an island off the coast there. Now, I'm not even sure if Anacapa is a business any more, but I think it is. But it started its business with Amnesty International . And had the owners or the operators had previous direct-mail experience? I really don't know because I didn't know the personnel, feeling that they had had some elsewhere. I have a 90 Morris: Were they very creative, entrepeneurial ? Sally L: For them to go to Amnesty International? Morris: Right. Sally L: Well. I think [it was] a man by the name of Richard Parker, who later was involved with Mother Jones and a lot of other things, and later still had his own very large direct-mail outfit here, called Richard Parker, I guess, which made its enormous fortune on having Greenpeace. I was told once that direct mail I can't believe this is true is the second biggest industry in this country. Could that be true? Morris: Oh. I've read some articles about political direct-mail Sally L: f undraising. It is a million dollar-billion dollai profitable business. -it's a very Well, and when you think that political things are only half of it. and you look at you take what is on your desk every night. I mean when you think at how it's grown over the years. Just think what* s waiting for you in the mail when you get home. It became the most successful nonprofit institution. Morris : Greenpeace? Sally L: Greenpeace later did. Amnesty did. Raising money how am I putting this? It raised more money through direct mail than any other nonprofit organization at the time, for a certain period of time. They have, by the way, changed from Anacapa, so I guess Anacapa's not doing such a good job any more. But for many, many years it's a mammoth job. And, of course, it's an irresistible issue. I don't know if you've ever got any direct mail from Amnesty, but it's unforgettable. It really is unforgettable stuff. You can imagine how personalized you can make it. After all. you can give $5 and keep that person you can save that person from having his hand cut off. I don't know any other organization like it. as far as how well it was done or really how the material is appropriate for direct mail is an awful thing to say, but it is. I mean, to be able to personalize is very compelling. It's a very. very, very expensive way to raise money, sure did and does. But nonetheless it Morris: It gets you visibility overall, and the organization doesn't have to do the person-to-person fundraising and the proposal writing. 91 Sally L: No, I also have personally it may be ridiculous sort of ethical feelings about it. We don't do, by the way. Ploughshares doesn't do it. Morris: Doesn't do direct mail? Sally L : No. Morris: You think there are some ethical problems with it? Sally L: I have a problem with it. I have a problem with advertising in any way what you possibly can to get somebody's money. It's stupid. It's marketing, of course. We don't do it for a very good reason (although there are members of our board who think we should) because we'd be in competition with people we fund, who use direct mail. If they're big enough, they use direct mail. Certainly not all of them, but some of the grass-roots organizations that we fund certainly use direct mail, or all kinds of other f undraising techniques in the world. I guess one reason I think it's unethical is the way it's used. For instance, that business of Greenpeace, and its seal the baby seal that was thought up by somebody. Greenpeace has done almost nothing to save baby seals. That isn't really the organization's main focus. But I know how manipulative it can be. That's no reason, I guess. Greenpeace does do good work, but mass mailings can be manipulative. Morris: Well, you're saying that some direct mail is better than others. Sally L: That's right. Morris: There's a quality question. And the question also comes up that sometimes the people doing the direct mail the companies are more interested in the money than in the cause. Sally L: Of course. And I also know I've had now an experience looking at some of it in detail, where they tell you that if you fund such and such, such and such is going to happen. Then the direct mail outfit finds out that that's not a popular such and such, so that it is changed in the next letter that is sent to the so-called "universe. " Morris: I suppose somewhere you can go and take a workshop on how to take your issue and personally present it so that it will influence people. Sally L: I can give you the list of many places that you can go to learn it. But also many places that you can go to have it done for you my God. I don't know. It's probably silly of me. It's all 92 Sally L: f undraising in a way. I don't know that you can call mass mailings manipulative. But sometimes they are very straightforward. So. stupidly. 1 was against it at Amnesty, but I was certainly very, very, very wrong. My God, it's expensive, really expensive, even when you make a lot of money. It is Morris: In terms of the percentage that goes into the producing of the Sally L: Into the f undraising thing, yes. Particularly at the outset. It doesn't pay off for three years, typically. One time. Amnesty was kept off the Better Business Bureau listing of nonprofits for spending too much money on its f undraising. I remember this. And the bureau was actually right, because I am not sure of the figure, but I believe the figure was if you can believe it that if you spent more than guess what percent 50 percent. Imagine. And there are many, many, many, many organizations that spend 50 percent of their money f undraising. Did you now that? Morris: I know that foundations have been fussed at for the amount of money that it costs to run the foundation. The rule of thumb is something like 10 percent or 15 percent. I think. Sally L: Fifteen percent, I think. We spend, I think I was just looking at the figures, the rough, very, very rough figures, between what we give away we haven't gotten to Ploughshares, I'll tell you when we get to Ploughshares, if you want to know. Morris: Was there any special reason, question about Amnesty that made you decide to get off the board or was it that you were already involved in the early stages of Ploughshares? Sally L: Oh. in those years Ploughshares was not yet even conceived. No. there are numbers of things. One of the things is I am not. never was. never, never was a human rights specialist. There are human rights specialists, without any question. So again, just like in Ploughshares, like I told you at the outset, here I was a non- specialist caring about it. trying to make something work. And there comes a point where you really aren't needed any more. All I could do really was try and build the place, try and help get an administration. But as far as policy went. I wasn't really any better than the next person, and shouldn't have been making policy. I could make policy as far as trying to get the three prisoners I was responsible for. but that's all. Plus the fact, unless you are really a good specialist, it is such depressing business. It wasn't good to get up in the morning and know you were going to go to work Morris: What do the specialists do about the depressing aspect? 93 Sally L: I think specialists anywhere it's like none of us would like to do a cancer operation. It would be too terrible, but certainly not for an oncologist, no. Adoptee in India Morris: Who was your third adoptee? Sally L: Oh, well, we had numbers of them over the years. We'd succeed in getting them free, some of them. One was an Indian who was the mayor of a town there, when Mrs. Ghandi threw him into jail. That is unbelievable oh, dear! Tom Lay ton went across India to bring him some books. If you think I'm crazy [laughs] wait until you interview Tom. I did absolutely something terrible. In Amnesty you're not supposed to contact your prisoner directly unless you this is breaking the rules unless you get a clearance from London. You can contact him, but not see him. In fact, you're not supposed to do practically anything without getting clearance from London. So when Tom and Ginger were going (and Tom is nothing if not an adventurer), we knew, and I don't recall why, but this man needed some books, wanted some books. He wanted them on Marxist theory naturally, what else? It didn't have to be in Hindu, fortunately. I think it could be in English. I remember combing there used to be 'a communist bookstore down near the Mission to get him these books. Then when they got to India, Tom got on a bus. [laughs] He really should tell you this story, but that's all right it took him something like eight hours on the bus to get to this place. He went to the prison, went up to the prison, and whoever it was said, "What do you want?" And he said, "I want to bring so- and-so some books," and they pulled out a gun. He could have been injured, now that I think about it actually. So he went away, quite wisely. There were crowds, Indian crowds in white dhoties around the prison, and he ran into a man who was this mayor's attorney. The attorney said he would bring in his client's books, so poor Tom got on a bus and rode all the way back. He had correspondence with this man for I don't know how long. Oh, and then, I think it was on the same trip I'm quite sure it was a month or so later, so it was a long trip that Mrs. Ghandi was made to change her policy. And overnight there were parades. So fascinating, because they are the organized 94 Sally L: underground. How can you get 50.000 people out on parade with a band going and the costumes on overnight? And our mayor was let out of j ail 1 Then when Tom came back and reports his story, I got bloody hell from headquarters for having anybody go to see the prisoner without permission. Morris : London knew about it Sally L: I don't know how. I think maybe I wrote proudly You're supposed to report everything, you know. Morris: While you were on the board, were you aware of any effort to infiltrate Amnesty and take it over for political purposes? Sally L: No. never, never, never. I've never been on any board, with the exception of years ago, as we talked about, at the Council of Civic Unity, ever that I've seen an attempt to infiltrate, although I've known many people who believe in conspiracy and, believe me, there were those Amnesty people who constantly said that the phone was being bugged, and that files were being searched. I have never ever, ever seen that. But I think that maybe I'm not importrant enough. I never could even get blacklisted. Morris: Well, that was a mark of honor for Sally L: Of course. And I never have been. I've never made it. Morris: That's an absolutely fascinating story. Sally L: More fun than sitting in a board meeting, you agree? Morris: Oh, absolutely, even if you're shaking in your shoes. Lilienthal Family Views Morris: I'll bet your husband was very pleased when he heard that you did not go to Greece. Sally L: Well, I don't know that he was. Well. I guess he was. But. Phil never said. "No." He was back here encouraging me. Morris: Well, he probably figured Ginetta would have it under control. Is she still as active? 95 Sally L: Oh, yes. She is. Although she's not quite as active today. I think she's writing a book about her experiences right now. I think she's just off the board. I think she was the head, for instance, when they did, last year or the year before, this concert thing around the world for Amnesty International. Morris: Did your children get involved in your Amnesty activities? Sally L: No. My children are, as they would say, "politically correct," which is a term I always loved. They've given money, but none of them have ever involved themselves in politics. Isn't that interesting? I shouldn't say politics in things that have to do with activism or involvement with social problems. One of them does a little bit, but that's really her profession through something like journalism. No, not as an activist. Morris: Did they fuss at you about getting involved in such things? Sally L: No, I think they're proud of it. I was having lunch with a friend of mine who is a great expert, in fact a wonderful woman, whose name is Phyllis La Farge a great expert on what to do in educating children in the nuclear age. She was an editor of Parents magazine. She's really interested in children's education altogether, but particularly as far as it deals with traumatic experiences that are outside their own family situations. Every place I go in the country, people ask me as a woman, particularly young parents, what am I going to do about my teenage children, my youngsters who are frightened there'll be no future for them, etcetera. You can understand all those questions that might come up. And I asked her last week what she answers to such questions. She said that the number one thing is that parents are doing something about it then children feel all right about it, and may be able to go on and do something themselves. But it takes away their fears, and fear incapacitates. And during the course of it. you can go into how it affects people who take drugs, and how you can extrapolate easily from all that. I think my children I know my children were always proud of my activities particularly against the Vietnam war. My oldest grandchild is going to be fourteen tomorrow. She isn't involved in these things at all, but I heard her tell her little friends, "You know my grandmother is involved in peace." So that I'm taking care of it for the family. That's a terrible mistake. Morris: Why don't we stop here for today. 96 Managing Policy [Interview 4: October 13, 1987 ]## Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Before we get into the starting of Ploughshares, I wanted to ask a couple more questions about Amnesty. On the order of how much time did you spend on being on the national board and Northern California? It wasn't only that. I also ran a group, which took quite a lot of time. It's hard to know these things unless you keep office hours. I would say certainly more than half my time. Oh, easily more than half my time. That's a tremendous commitment to put into any one organization. Was your major responsibility in the fundraising and resource development? In building an organization, I think, getting people involved in the first place, and then in managing policy, helping to manage policy in the California office, which at that time was in San Francisco. Actually not very much in fundraising. Other people were doing that or the money just rolls in? The money rolls in. As I mentioned last time, they had the most successful direct mail, mass-mailing plan that at the time had ever been heard of. That began maybe two years after I began with Amnesty, but by that time it was a national institution. Before that it was an institution of wonderful egos like Roger Baldwin, but they really weren't trying to run this thing as a business and make it grow. They were worrying desperately about what was happening to individuals who were being tortured and killed around the world, but they weren't trying to build a national institution. Is that what you mean by managing policy? haven't heard before. That is a phrase I Yes. Yes. The way I would think of that is deciding what policy is, although in this case, in Amnesty International generally this is a little complex generally the policy is decided for you, because the rules come out of London, where the general secretary is. So there are certain fundamental operational rules Amnesty has gone by over the years, and the policy does not change. But management policy changes, because how many groups can you as an organization actually service in this country? And that is policy, that is management. 97 Sally L: Let me tell you just the opposite side of this for a minute. How are we going to get this prisoner out of wherever can be a policy decision too. Should, for instance, letters come from concerned individuals all over the world? If the prisoner is well known, you might be able to organize more protest from all over the world than if he is not. Let's say that you have, as I mentioned last time, a minister of importance in the Chilean government. What should our general policy be toward trying to do something about not only his situation but the horrible situation for all prisoners of conscience in Chile? I could go on about this. How does one case affect other cases where human rights are abrogated? Amnesty, it happens, doesn't join with other organizations. I don't know that it's unusual, to me it's rather unusual. While there are many human-rights organizations, this is by far the biggest, and arguably, I think, the most effective and certainly internationally the best known. It doesn't work with other organizations, so therefore it's making policy for Amnesty International . Morris: In the sense of supporters. Sally L: Yes, but the way Amnesty works is basically this. Groups of people are organized that meet at regular intervals. Each group is typically given three prisoners from different parts of the world, and it is the group's responsibility to do what it can to get those prisoners out of captivity, to stop their torture, or keep them from being killed. And then on to help their families. It can be a pool of things that one might do. It's the group's responsibility to do what it can. Now the group members get all kinds of technical help from the national and international offices, but group members do quite a lot of work. It's a responsible, hands-on job. That's the basis of Amnesty International all over the world. That's the way it is run. It's a marvelous organizing technique. It is fabulous because it's one of the few organizations I've ever known about, Gabrielle, that you as a participant are actually doing something besides either raising money or putting on a benefit, or Morris: They're doing what the organization Sally L: They're doing what the organization's about. I'm always trying to think of instances. In the peace field there are some and it would be like a hospital where people that are supporting it are really taking care of the sick, in a way. 98 Philanthropy in San Francisco; Advocacy Morris: Earlier on. you said that you had found that there were more people in other cities that were interested in philanthropy than there are in the Bay Area. I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that. Was it through Amnesty that you came to this conclusion? Sally L: It wasn't Amnesty. This is a few years of being involved in these things. Years ago. the United Crusade, I think at that time it was perhaps even called the community chest, used to send out a list of the people who gave $1000 and over to community chest locally. It was immensely surprising. Some friend of mine went through it one day and said, "Do you know that only three members of the Pacific Union dub are on this? This is a very funny list." There's a lot of money, of course, for opera and for the arts. For the major arts there's a lot of money. I don't know how it compares to other towns. Somebody was telling me today that there are about 45 billionaires in the United States. And when I hear about the kinds of gifts given to places like the Metropolitan Museum, I can't but think that San Francisco is small potatoes. Those are all prestigous kinds of gifts. Of course gifts that bring prestige to the donor. I think, in our little way. in San Francisco that becomes more and more so, in terms of giving by wealthy corporations or wealthy new investors. I don't know. When, every six months or so, I go to somebody's house like that. I'm just dumbfounded at the way they live. And that kind of money, I think, you should expect it will be given to the arts. Maybe to hospitals, I don't know. I would doubt it. Maybe in services, but I don't think so. As far as funding for social causes I don't think this is a city that is very charitable. I really don't. I think that there are some wonderful family foundations, but I wonder if there are many other philanthropists devoted to social change. I think that Northern California Grantmakers is the most extraordinary organization, but at the same time, there are not that many foundations that advocate. Well, I should step back a minute, because when I said that. I realized that it isn't true. Because the Hewl tt Foundation gives an enormous amount of funding for population control around the world. You'd say that was advocacy. And there's a lot of private money that goes from San Francisco toward population control. I meant more political advocacy. I guess. It's hard to separate it out, but I don't mean 99 Morris: You're talking about the public affairs. Sally L: I'm talking about public affairs advocacy. Now there are a few foundations here that do, but I think that's very unusual. It's interesting though, that there are very few in the United States. Morris: Well, there's even some debate about whether or not foundations in general should give funds to organizations whose stated purpose is to change public policy, which is an interesting situation. Sally L: But it wouldn't make any sense, of course. Then foundations couldn't give any money to AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome], or one couldn't give any money to the homeless, or to try and affect care of children grants designed to change the causes of the problems, not only the devastating symptoms. Morris: Well, the traditional charity in its older sense is that it's a good thing to provide food and shelter for someone who was in need. And then you get over into the question, making a judgment that it is not a good thing for the society to have homeless and hungry people. Therefore, the community should do something about it, and then you' re getting into the issue area. Sally L : Well, think of how many foundations there are that give money to minority youth training. Morris: But that's to help somebody help Sally L: This is to help somebody help themselves, yes. That's right. And then back up in the environmental field, I think the ten large environmental funds in this country have gotten extraordinary support, as you know, in the last twenty years, and from foundations. And those are certainly advocacy organizations, aren't they? 100 X CREATING THE PLOUGHSHARES FUND. 1979-1980 Preliminary Thoughts and Discussions; Personal Concern About Nuclear War; Scarcity of Donors Morris: Were your discussions about the need for more advocacy when you and Mr. Lilienthal first thought about starting Ploughshares? Sally L: No. No, they weren't about that at all. It was about the fact that it was really my thought. I don't mean that he wasn't supportive, he was. I don't think I thought about it that far at all. I just thought, as I'm sure I've said over and over again, that the best vay one could financially support the prevention of nuclear war, and there was no point in working on it anyway unless it was the prevention of nuclear war or I shouldn't say that, it's rather an exaggeration. That it is the most important thing that one can give money to. And there is no way, still there isn't, to make decisions on what were the best grants one could make to work on the worst problem of all, of knowing what is the research, what are the organized activities, what is the best way to involve a large public and its government in preventing a nuclear war and halting the arms race. Morris: How did you arrive at the conclusion that the prevention of nuclear war was how did you get from Amnesty to prevention of nuclear war? Sally L: Well, I guess that's obvious. There could be a bomb at any second, so there wouldn't be much point in trying to save one individual's life. Unfortunately, though, one always gets one's heart involved with one or another person or groups of people starving people, people in the streets, maltreated children. Actually when you're talking about something as cosmic as a nuclear war, it is harder to become personally involved emotionally involved. But through my own giving patterns, I had become more and more involved in supporting organizations working to reverse the arms race and end the threat of nuclear war. 101 Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L; To individual organizations? Yes, to individual organizations. I don't know that I gave so much away. I really don't know. I've never examined it, but I thought about it a lot. and talked about it a lot, and was interested in it. There weren't organizations that were that well known either in the '7 Os they just really began to get a wider audience in 1980. What about Carnegie and Rockefeller? going. Were you aware of those? They had some peace programs Well, they didn't in the same sense. There is the Carnegie Institute of International Peace. That's what Mr. Carnegie left in that wonderful will, in which he said see, that's just part of the Carnegie Corporation, but you know that. He said in his will that the money should go to it as long as peace has not been arrived it. When peace was arrived at. then that money should go to hospitals and libraries, etcetera. Rockefeller I don't know which Rockefeller you talk about but Rockefeller, the big one, has given very little money to peace as such. Peace is too amorphous a word to use in this connection. I'm talking about dealing with programs to affect public opinion, which in turn one would hope would affect government opinion. How to get out of the cold war try and alleviate at least the threat of nuclear conflict. The Rockefeller Foundation hasn't given that kind of money. Now the Rockefeller Family Fund has and the Rockefeller Associates. Both of these groups are made up of grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller Brothers Fund this is more than you want to know I'm sure gave very little money to support anti-war programs, compared to how much money it has. Actually there are very, very few foundations that give money in this area. Very few. And in fact, I don't know how many because no study has been made, but I've no reason at all to think that it's increased in the last six and one-half years since Ploughshares was founded and I became aware of foundation philanthropy in this field. Anyway, about the time we started Ploughshares, there was an article in Foundation News that said that only one cent out of every dollar went into the prevention of nuclear war or to Soviet- American relations. One cent of every foundation dollar. It's not the individual dollar. Nor is it the dollars from church groups. As you know, the largest amount of philanthropy money goes to and from church groups. Before the first meeting of Ploughshares, I went to a meeting which had been called in New York. It was called the Yacht Club Group, because Admiral Gene La Rocque had lent a room at the Yacht (Hub. And there were very few foundations there. There were some 102 Sally L: individuals who give money in this area we met. met. met. I mean, we kept going to meetings, and that was really valuable to me. You mentioned Rockefeller; a woman named Hilary Palmer, who ran the international part of Rockefeller Brothers, came to that first meeting because one member of her board had said. "Shouldn't we be looking at this nuclear threat?" She was so minded. Only one member of her board. She [Palmer] is an enormously capable woman. She kept coming to these meetings, and studying matters, and so forth, and finally. I think, I'm sure at least a year and a half later, she was able to convince her board to give one grant maybe, probably to some sort of academic research. There certainly were foundations that got into this field by knowing there was this center group that was meeting and discussing the problems and opportunities. But the giving is so limited. It's amazing. MacArthur has made a great big difference and will make more of a difference. Of course. I don't know what their plans are in the future. MacArthur tends to change policy from year to year. But, rather interesting, I understand, and tremendously important; they are looking at Europe I'm jumping ahead In Western Europe today (I didn't mean to get off the subject) there is much more real discussion among the eminent, from young people in government. Western and even Eastern Europe, about thinking on alternative security ideas on, for instance. nonpr evocative defense. Very interesting, because that's not true only in Western Europe, but also in the Soviet Union and also in Eastern Bloc countries. Its interesting, really. So I hope MacArthur does nurture these discussions with its enormous resources. MacArthur's almost been closed down for not giving a big enough percentage of its capital away in the past. Morris: What a remarkable situation to be in. Sally L: Ruth Adams, who runs that part of it has had a terrible time, although it's much better today. She's threatened to leave, so the board finally came around to a less chaotic way of grant- making. But the directors still tend to give grants in a hand-to- hand sort of way. I think one year, the year before last, they gave out. I think twelve or so grants of about $250 thousand each to universities to do a peace program without any planning at all. At the University of California, which is the place with which you're the most familiar, they still haven't figured out what to do with it. And Berkeley is certainly not alone in this. 103 Sally L: Carnegie does a lot of the same thing, which is very disappointing. They give big foundations like Carnegie and MacArthur and even Ford these enormous block grants to universities and the universities take half of them Morris: For overhead. Sally L: War/ peace issues are not a very popular field for most foundations. Morris: Is that why you decided to start your own fund? Sally L : No, I didn't know anything about foundations. I had never heard about these places, except for the biggest ones by name only, and the local ones which I had approached for grants for other causes. Personal Giving Morris: It sounds to me as if, excuse me, you had reached a point in your own activities where you wanted, instead of using your money to help good causes, you wanted to start turning your money around in ways that would make a difference in how- Sally L: No, it isn't quite that. By the time several, several years before, I had decided only to give money away where I thought it made a difference, except for token amounts. And I was working at something else, full-time. No. it just seemed to me that I didn't want to leave my money with by the way, it was not a particularly enormous amount to the San Francisco Foundation, to which it had been left. Although one can say in a letter, of course, I want it to go to whatever; but their board it seemed to me proved itself hardly exemplary over the years, and there's no reason to think it was going to improve. I don't want to leave it to them to decide, besides which they don't give in this field. And this is the way I wanted to give my money away. That is what I felt my money should go to work for, forever Morris: That's exactly it's a very clear Sally L: It would be laughable to talk about how much, but still. That thought, that I just didn't want the San Francisco Foundation giving my money away because they couldn't control it to go to the prevention of nuclear war that was the exact thought that brought about Ploughshares. Morris : And then what did you do? 104 Sally L: I changed my will a bit. [laughs] Then, immediately having that thought, then came about all the other things. Well, a lot of other people feel this way, and there is no place, and this much I knew. There is no place to which, and this is still true today. to which you could leave your money and know that it's going to go on working to prevent nuclear war in a responsible fashion. Except for Ploughshares, there just isn't. Morris: How long had you been in contact with this Yacht dub Group? Sally L: Oh, the Yacht Club Group is only because .there's a man by the name of Gene La Rocque. an admiral who runs something called the Center for Defense Information. One of the better peace organizations. Well, maybe I gave them a couple hundred dollars or five hundred dollars a year or something. It's not that I was intimately connected with them. He gave the yacht club to us to have the meeting, and so it was called the Yacht Club Group as a joke, because you can hardly imagine people who would be less likely to be in a yacht club the groovy-looking fellows who run foundations. Morris: Well, you don't think of an admiral, who has been trained for military service, being an advocate for peace. Sally L: But there are a number that are, but he's outstanding. He and his whole organization are either admirals or generals. They're very, very effective, and money pours in to them, by the way. Sally L: But anyhow, of course there were organizations I always supported. Let's say SANE and. of course, there wasn't the freeze in those days. I guess PSR [Physicians for Social Responsibility] had just started. It started long before that, but I mean, it had become effective again. I supported a few films that were being made showing what might happen in case of a nuclear blast. Most of the projects supported were represented by people who came to see me. Morris: What I've heard is that Bill Roth seemed to have been the magnet for people with good ideas, and he would say, go and see Mrs. Lilienthal. Sally L: That's true. That's absolutely true. It's true, but it's also true that Bill and I. and Martha Gerbode. during her lifetime she was long dead by then. Who else, I don't know on our side of things. Qarry Heller maybe although he's a bit eccentric would see these people. Bill does to this day we send people to each other, because it's interesting to talk to individuals with a project of importance. You know you can't get a date with Madeleine Russell. I'm not saying anything against Madeleine, but most people, most philanthropists it's embarrassing for me to 105 Sally L: talk about myself as a philanthropist when I put myself in this group are very hard to make an appointment with. It's ridiculous not to meet with them in person. You only talk to the people who have something to sell. Either say no or yes, but at least learn what's happening. Morris: Were these people who would write to you or that you'd meet ? Sally L: No, they would write. Maybe Bill put them in touch with me we did it for each other. Morris: That's fascinating that the three of you had a very good working network of Sally: Oh. there must have been other people too. Yes, Bill and I for years and years and years Organizing Meetings/Group Morris: And then what brought up the idea to put it into an organized plan? Sally L: All right. So what are you going to do when you don't want your money to go to the San Francisco Foundation, you want it to go on working against nuclear war? Could you start a foundation? Can you start a foundation with a little money? So, I guess I must have and I don't remember whether this was the first thing I did I probably talked to Tom, and I certainly talked to Bill. Who else? Probably just Tom and Bill. So then I went to see some foundations that I knew, that I knew because of raising money for the [NAACP] Legal Defense Fund or something of that sort. I went to see Ed Nathan. And Ed said. "Well, of course, you can do it if you want to. It doesn't matter how small a foundation it is. Just do it." He doesn't even remember saying that. I had lunch with Ruth Chance, and obviously, being Ruth, she said, "Hooray." We had lunch in a Chinese restaurant, and I got a fortune cookie that said, "You will best succeed in some profession consecrated to the service of humanity." I have it taped on my desk still at home. Anyhow, Ruth said, "Yes." Then I guess. Bill suggested he said he had just had lunch with Lew Butler and Lew. who has been such a wonderful public servant, and interested in so many things, had said to Bill, "You know, I've never" they were great friends and worked together "paid attention at all to the nuclear threat. I really think that I ought to do something about that. I've been involved in the environment, with health, with " 106 Morris: I've heard a number of people say that, that they don't know why it took so long to Sally L: Yes. I hear all the time that people just don't want to deal with it at all. Anyway. Lew said that, so Bill phoned and said. "Go see Lew tomorrow." So I did. I barely knew him actually. I knew him. but very slightly. He was still at the University of California [San Francisco] working with Phil Lee. I don't know if any of this means anything to you. And he was interested. He said he would come to ad hoc meetings. I knew Susan Silk. And Susan, Tom [Lay ton] , and I Morris: Brought her husband? Sally L: No, although Tom [Silk] put the original papers together for Ploughshares. But the ad hoc committee that sort of put this together I think Albie Wells could have been involved in this; I forget who else anyhow, we just talked about how to do a thing like this. As we talked we realized that there were people, just as you say. who don't know what to do about this issue and would like to be involved. Then we thought, there are going to be people of both political parties who are interested, of course, in global security, and who would be interested in giving some money toward this. Well, some funny things happened. I scotched the process . they suggested. Immediately, Lew and Bill (who sat on numerous boards in very important positions, great public citizens, you know. Bill's done everything in San Francisco, and nationally.) They said. "What you do is you hire a consultant for a year. You give him $40,000. run it through the San Francisco Foundation. He'll help you. and figure out whether it's feasible." And I did everything that anybody told me. because how did I know how to start a foundation and in particular one with no model. What I did was run an art gallery. So, I went down to see Martin [Paley] at the San Francisco Foundation. And he said. "Yes. we'd be interested. Sure, you can run it through us." We were all willing to put some money into a feasibility study. And then I thought I probably know as much about this as anybody does. There isn't anybody that can tell us whether we can make a foundation like the one we had in mind when there's no model. How can anybody tell you? Morris: You were already in touch with a number of organizations that were working in the Sally L: In the field, yes. To a degree. Yes, not any more than any other interested person. Years before I had worked very hard doing anti-Vietnam activities, and a lot of people I knew then moved on in one way or another to other war/peace issues. But there aren't 107 Sally L: that many progressive people in international affairs in San Francisco. Those few that are involved just sort of get to know each other. Also. I sat on a national board. Morris: Amnesty? Sally L: No, another national board small board I still do, called Center for International Policy. But there's so few people in these things that you do begin to know each other, or you know some people involved in them. Morris: How about connections or like-minded people from your art gallery work? Sally L: None. Zero. But when this was funny, because I wouldn't have dared say so to Lew and Bill, as good friends as we are, so eminent they have so much experience. But it did occur to me that you couldn't hire a consultant to find out whether one could do something, as I said, that's never been done and that the consultant himself didn't have experience with. 1 would have had to spend a year finding a person to do such a job. Morris: Well, presumably a consultant could tell you how to run a foundation. Sally L: Well, so could Lew. and Tom, and Susan Silk. There was no problem with that. But they couldn't tell you whether there could be a successful foundation which was raising money to support global security, and how you would put it together. I don't think they could. Morris: Were you acquainted with the people who started the Vanguard Foundation? Sally L: Oh, I've known Vanguard for years. That has nothing to do with it at all. Morris: True, but they sort of self-generated an idea and went out and did it. Sally L: Entirely different, yes, entirely different. Oh, I know them intimately. When Peter Stern and Obie [Benz] started it, they came and talked to me about it. Morris: Their idea is, as I've been told, was to train themselves how to Sally L: Oh, train young people how to be not to be so uncomfortable about having money. Morris: And also make some efforts in areas that they were concerned about? 108 Sally L: Oh. yes. Very different. The philosophy's different. In my view it's very different. I am very familiar with it. The board of directors of Vanguard does the research on grants and the grantees appear before the members to describe the program for which they want support. The grants are all local and are all below $5,000. At the beginning they were much smaller. Actually, except for the fact that Vanguard raises money in order to make grants, it's such a far afield analogy that it's not worth exploring. There are other foundations that are much more like Ploughshares than Vanguard. Morris: In the Bay Area? Sally L: No. Well, there's one that's something like ours and is involved with the nuclear threat and other war/peace issues. It started a little bit afterwards. It is like ours in that it's a public foundation. But to go back to the birth of Ploughshares, the funny thing about was this. After meeting with Martin, I called a meeting of our little group and said. "Okay, Martin's willing to run it through the San Francisco Foundation and, in fact, they will help put it on." And the group said, "No. Forget it, we're not going to have anything to do with them" So we didn't have to have a consultant after all. [laughs] I mean everybody had had pretty bad experiences with the San Francisco Foundation, you know, by then. Morris: They would put on a symposium on Sally L: Well. Martin said, "You know. I'm so interested in this that I'm going to see if I can't get the board to help support a consultant and maybe we will decide who it should be. I'll discuss it with them. " You know, it was one of those general conversations. A few months later, after Ploughshares really got started, or a year later when we had a executive director Martin said he wanted us to put on a seminar for the San Francisco Foundation for six weeks, training the distribution committee on our issues. We were obviously the people to do it. I don't mean me. but the people that we're in touch with that we work with. For instance, our advisors and friends at Stanford or at Berkeley those who are the experts on these matters. We can put together that program, because the experts are the people that we work with. I don't mean we would give the lectures ourselves. But in the end the distribution committee of the San Francisco Foundation didn't want the educational seminars. So, anyway Martin's suggestion wouldn't have worked in the first place. 109 Sally L: So that's how we didn't have a consultant. So then, Phil Lilienthal went with me. we went East and we saw a few people in foundations that I knew or. in one case, some few people who I had just heard of in Washington and New York, and asked them whether they thought this was a good idea. And they said, "Yes, it's a great idea." [laughs] The same kind of advice I give "Yes. do it. Go for it." Advisers and Early Board Members Morris: Who did you talk to? Sally L: They weren't all appropriate, I have to say, David Hunter, who at that time was sort of the guru of progressive foundations. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He ran the Stern Fund and he was called "Deep Pockets." because he advised so many people on how to give away money. Individuals, you see, who came to him. and whose money he gave away. So he was the natural person to talk to. I talked to a man with the name of Phillip Ruopp where is he? at one of the Middle-western big foundations. At the time there was a man with the name of Sid Shapiro who ran something called the Levinson Fund, since out of business; I talked to him, I'm trying to recapture One of the major people I talked to was a man who's well, there's probably nobody like him in America, whose name is Adrian DeWind, an eminent attorney, who is the chairman of the Natural Resources Defense Council and head of the New School. He's always been on the executive board of the Legal Defense Fund. I could go on and on and on. And he was also the head of the Bar of the City of New York. There's probably no private citizen in the progressive field in this country that even touches Bill DeWind. And I happen to know him. It's a funny, long story. I hate to be so long, Gabrielle. Morris: It's not long. Connections between people and how an idea grows after it's implemented are important. Sally L: My first father-in-law was a senior partner of a law firm, later he was of counsel, which became the famous firm of Paul, Weiss, Wharton, Rifkin I left out something. And Garrison. And I first met Bill DeWind when he was a very young attorney. My father-in- law had a party, I guess, for Tom and me. in the New York apartment. They had a lot of people from the firm. Over the years, in most of the organizations in which I've been interested, except for the art ones there Bill DeWind would be as chairman of the executive committee or somewhere on the top of the list on the stationery. Or when I was on the national boards, people would ask, "Is there any way we can get Bill. He's so busy." And I was 110 Sally L; Morris : Sally L: always way down on the very bottom of the letterhead, and there I'd look up and see [laughs]. And I thought, here's somebody who I'd really love to talk to, because he's involved in all the things in which I'm interested, all the things that I'm interested in in my life. He's a fascinating guy. I went to see him. Unfortunately that morning he could only see us for half an hour. He couldn't see us the day before because he'd been busy as the chairman at the New School of a meeting on the Mary knoll Sisters, and the White Paper that came out about the situation in El Salvador. Do you remember? Carlos Fuentes was the main speaker at that time. Fuentes even had a hard time with a visa. This extraordinary thinker and writer. And Bill was the chairman of the day. But, anyway, the next day he could only see us for a half an hour, because that damned George Bush had asked him to consult with him in Washington. And Bill is that kind of a person. He He's Is that his description of George Bush? No. I don't think his language is more eloquent than that, a very eloquent man. Morris: Was peace a progressive issue? Sally L: When we started Ploughshares? Morris: Yes. Sally L: Oh. yes. Oh, left-wing issue. You know it's a left-wing issue. Well, I got letters, when I first wrote letters, which was the only way I could raise money at the beginning, to friends. And I remember two of them that said the same thing. I remember one particularly that's a good friend, who said, "We supported you. Sally, when you worked for Amnesty International, but now that you're talking about peace, you're off the wall." It's a left-wing cause, and it certainly was in those days. It's much less so today. Morris: Because of the economic implications? Sally L: Well, you know, what's a peace activist look like. He has sandals, has long hair, and lives in Berkeley, and used to hang out at Sather Gate. Morris: Well, reading over the annual reports and looking at the board list and things like that, I was struck by the number of admirals and general*. Military people are generally considered conservative. They used to be apolitical. Ill Sally L: Definitely. But when we started let me go back. So how are we going to start this thing? The people in the East say. "Fine, go ahead." And we weren't looking for money. We were just asking them what they thought of this. And we asked a few places like, oh, environmental places that we knew. Oh, I know. Russ Peterson, who was at the time the head of the Audubon Society. Russ has always been interested in nuclear issues. He had been the governor of Delaware, and I knew him very well because we worked together in something called New Direc tions years before. Anyhow, everybody said, "Go ahead." I mean, why not? So then, the next thing was, I had to get a board, of course. How do we get a board except by phoning our friends, who are They had to be people who knew something about the subject. And so, we knew Owen Chamberlain, and we could get Owen, and we knew Jack Service very well indeed. We could get Jack. Morris: Had you worked with Jack? Sally L: No. Phil and Jack were old friends, and I was an old friend of Jack's too. Actually this is not his field, but diplomacy is. Morris: In the proper role of goverment? Sally L: In the proper role of government. Had been improperly used in his case. So those were very good people. Morris: Who's Albert Jonsen? Sally L: Albert Jonsen is a medical ethicist, and he did not stay on the board long. He was just a very smart man with international inter ests, whOjby the way, had been a Jesuit priest and at one time had been the head of the University of San Francisco and later gave up the priesthood to marry a beautiful girl. He was just somebody who Morris: That's another whole earth-shaking subject. And Brenda Brimmer? Sally L: And Brenda Brimmer came on later. That was a suggestion of Bill's. She had run a foundation. She was the first director of Ms. Foundation. She was interested in these subjects. She had worked for the UNA [United Nations Association]. She was suggested because we needed a board member from the east. She didn't j oin the board for a year and a half or so, I think. Bill knew her well because he had done a job in South Africa with her. She was a business woman by the time. Among the first board members was a woman whose name was Pat DiGiorgio, and Pat I knew. Her involvement was deep with the UN, and she resigned because her whole involvement was raising money for a library for the UN here in San Francisco. So some of the first board members were people who started it out. 112 Morris: On the organizing papers? Sally L: Yes, and came to the meetings, but for one reason or another didn't work out after a while. For instance, it turned out John May did not want to raise any money, although he said he would, originally. That was the main thing he could do for us, since he was not a specialist on international subjects. A few instances like that, you know. And so. what I'm saying is, it narrowed down. Al went to Oxford for the year, so he was no help. A Public Foundation; Initial Support and Staff Morris: What did the Internal Revenue Service think? Sally L: Fine. Tom Silk went through the papers no problem. Morris: Nobody questioned you about being a progressive, left-wing outfit? Sally L: No. Then, of course, there are all these other things which I didn't know until I went to Tom Silk, whom I had known for years, and asked him to put this thing together. Who said, of course, as a public foundation, you can give 20 percent of your entire budget for lobbying, .unlike a private foundation. Morris: So that's why you picked that? Sally L: No, because it had to be a public foundation. The whole point was that it was a public foundation. Because there are very few public foundations in this country, as you know, of that kind, public foundations that make grants. No models at that time, I'm told, and now I've gone to enough foundation meetings to know that there are few foundations with only one purpose: that only give to Jewish causes, for instance, or only to music. Most of them would be like Tides and Vanguard. That is they are partially or principally funding agents for donor-oriented philanthrophy. Are you familiar with Tides at all? Morris: It rings a bell, but Sally L: Tides works, in a way, like a community foundation. The way it runs is because people, individuals, give their money, give a block of stock, and the foundation takes care of spending it. It manages it. It's a managing foundation. Morris: It doesn't develop an endowment? 113 Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Oh, no, no, not an endowment at all. Let's say I want to give $50,000 a year to charity. I'd give the $50,000 when financially it's a good time for me to give it, and I want to give money to the community chest and the music school as well as to other institutions. And there are those who want to give it only to the environment, and would you please counsel us on how best to give it to the environment. So they hire somebody to look into how best to give money to environmental programs. But Tides is a very different kind of a foundation, and quite unique, and very successful, and run by my son-in-law, by the way. From your example? Oh, my goodness, no. He started it before Ploughshares. Heavens no. In going around and talking to all these people* were you in a sense seeking counsel about how to get other people to put money into peace and alternative security and things like that? Yes, that's the purpose of it. The purpose of the foundation was two-fold. Sure, to get people to put their money into By the time you went around talking to various people, you already preferred a foundation rather than alternative ways of getting money to projects for the prevention of nuclear war? Well, there was no alternative way. else but a foundation. We never thought of anything You said you were already in touch with various organizations that were working in the field. Oh, yes, but we were talking, for instance, about the Center for Defense Information. For a few years it's done great work, but for years before that it didn't do great work. We as Ploughshares never gave until this year money to the Center for Defense Information. It has a million dollars in the bank every year; it made so much money that it didn't need our money. But you don't know that when you get a letter from the center or from all those other centers or councils or coalitions. You know how it is in any of these things leave out what the purpose of it is. You have to look in and see what the administra tion is. Let's say, for example, there is an organization that is stony broke and still it's got forty people on staff and you don't know what the specific program is. I know one in the peace field right now that fits this description to a T. It's up to a founda tion to research these things. Isn't that right? That's the purpose of a foundation, I think, to find out, to do the research to see that an organization is not only effective, but is also well-run. 114 Morris: Yes, and develop some standards from the foundation's point of view. Sally L: Sure, every time you give a grant you have to look and see what the expenditures are, how it's administered, and whether it's effective. Morris: Did you start out with some pledges of some money Sally L: No. except for me. No. I think Bill must have given to us immediately. A few old friends gave some money. Of course, there was no overhead, because it was just me. I think there was no overhead at all. And I'm sure I didn't keep books that first year about paying for stationery, letterhead, or anything. It was run out of my study. Morris: On your own personal stationery? Sally L: No. no. I think I had stationery, but I paid for it. It was a great board, though, because they were interested, and I had told them they didn't have to go out and raise money. That was my job from the first. Otherwise these busy people would not have been involved and supportive. Morris: In the first annual report you put out you said that the board spent six months talking about how to proceed and Sally L: That's right. Then we met three times in the next six months. Yes, we decided to iron things out. I don't know that everything happened in the first six months. But, for instance, there were two things in that first year and a half that definitely were decided. Coming from a background of human rights,! wanted to give money toward human-rights activities, although I very definitely today think that I was wrong. We did give some human- rights grants. In fact our first grants were in that area. But I think I'm wrong. Morris: Why? Sally L: I think we should just stick with the prevention of nuclear war. But for that first year and a half. I lobbied the board to see if we couldn't give human-rights grants, and if we couldn't give grants in Central America to prevent conflict in Central America. In both cases, I was voted down, which I think was correct. Morris: So you're lobbying your board? Sally L: Yes. Morris: And the organization didn't listen to you. They, gave you a hard time? 115 Sally L: I couldn't really argue that we had the expertise to decide on grants on Central America. It was important to stick with what we knew how to do, and difficult enough as it was. Morris: Okay, so how long did you operate that way before you decided you really needed a staff person? Sally L: Maybe only a year. I did have some staff help. Well, I had a part-time assistant. I first realized I needed a secretary part- time. Well, very part-time because I was still running the gallery. Morris: Right. And you're still doing Amnesty things too? Sally L: No, no, no. I hadn't for years. I think it was a year until we got this extraordinary executive director. Morris: You found him on the east coast? Sally L: No, it's a "her". More on Advisers and Their Role Sally L: Morris : Sally Li I've left out one element out of this, which was very important. When I was in New York for that first Yacht Club meeting, I had (I think it was then) an appointment with David Hunter the next day to give me further advice. "We've got the board, David, now what do we do?" because David was, as I say, sort of a father figure in this area. There were these men from foundations in different parts of the country sitting around in his office, you know, before they took their planes to go back to Flint, Michigan, or whatever. [laughs] I thought I was going to have a meeting just with David. "What do we do now?" [laughs] "Get yourselves some advisers." And one of these men said, And I said, "Who do you suggest?" And they said, "Ha, ha." They didn 1 t think you were Although they said they were feminists, they weren't when it comes down to running a foundation. They said, "Get yourself George Kennan." Everyone laughed because it was saying "get the 116 Sally L: impossible." Of course George Kennan is the big name in this field, or was at the time. And it happened that I had an appointment with George Kennan that very day. Morris: You already had an appointment with Sally L: I already had an appointment to see George Kennan. So David still tells to this day how I was able to arrange it. It was not true. and he knows it. I mean. I had arranged it before I asked him. And George Kennan became our first adviser. So when he thought it was a great idea, oh, I was thrilled. Morris: Your list of advisers is very impressive. Sally L: And, of course, after George Kennan well, a lot of those came in later over the years. We cut out a lot of people I got in the first place. Morris: This is the list as it was published in the f oundations's first report. Sally L: And it was published in the first place. Morris: So there probably had been a little shuffling around. Sally L: Yes. Oh, there's been a lot, yes. Oh, I mean there's shuffling around now. Every time there's nothing to do around here, we improve the list. But know we can get anybody Morris: Yes, now it's probably a mark of honox Sally L: Well, I don't know if it's honor, but I'm pretty thrilled. I went to the capitol for a luncheon meeting that somebody took me to a couple of weeks ago, just for senators and congressmen to meet the ambassadors from Costa Rica, and El Salvador. My friend introduced me to a lot of people. And they said, "Are you the Sally Lilienthal from the Ploughshares Fund?" And that was pretty exciting. So that's very different than it was in the first place. Morris: One of your advisers was Edie Willkie? Sally L: Yes, do you know her? Morris: Is that Wendell Willkie' s widow? Sally L: No, she's a marvelous woman who runs something called Members of Congress for Peace Through Law. which is an organization which educates congresspersons on international issues, and also does some organizing, and helping to get though they're not lobbyists people who can give information to lobbyists. For instance, to try 117 Sally L: and improve international relationships. She happens to be a grantee of ours. I went to the summit with her last year; Reykjavik. She's a grantee because she puts on something called a Round Table, at which particularly junior congressmen come something like eight times a year to what she promises is a very good dinner. They are invited to bring their wives. And there they learn about Soviet and arms control issues, which they, particularly young congressmen, haven't a clue about. We give her a grant for that. Morris: I recently became aware of that organization in talking with a former congressman. He described it as kind of a support group. Sally L: That's interesting. Morris: Well, I was startled that a congressman normally only has two committee assignments, and otherwise is indeed sort of out in a large ocean not knowing Sally L: What's going on, yes. Morris: about the rest of the Sally L: Although he votes and he doesn't know, yes. It's a very useful thing. It's very useful. Morris : How long has it been? Sally L: I don't know. I used to support it for years, before Edie took it on. But this Round Table thing that she does, I think we've just supported for the third year; I think it's only the third that she's done it. It's growing enormously. She's Don Edwards' wife, by the way. You know, Don Edwards who is the wonderful congressman from San Jose who is particularly involved with civil- rights issues. She's wonderful, fabulous. Oh, I brought that up to say that things have changed. But that helped us a lot, having George Kennan. Morris: Once it had been suggested that you have advisers, what kind of a role did you see for them, or did you just go and pick their brains individually? Sally L: Well, I think that we hoped they'd be on the side of the stationery. In fact, George Kennan did really become an adviser. Marshall Shulman, who was head of the Harriman School (who Bill got for us), who was Carter's Soviet adviser and, again, one of the top five people in the country. I could call him for advice. We don't need to any more because we've got our own in-house Soviet adviser. Squidge Lee, Admiral John F. Lee, called "Squidge, " is definitely an adviser, particularly for conventional weapons. Some of them are advisers, and most of them 118 Morris: On the technical aspects? Sally L: When they needed to be. I haven't done it for a long time, but Squidge I have talked to about what he thinks about the build-up of conventional weapons in Europe. Not on a particular project as I can remember, but often something on the policy of the United States, which influences one's grants. Morris: In terms of a specific applicant? Sally L: Very definitely we could ask, and I've certainly asked George often and I've asked Marshall too. George sometimes writes us and tells us about a project in which he has an interest, or sometimes about one that doesn't think we should support. Or somebody is sending in a person he knows, and he doesn't think he's doing such a good job at such-at-such. He doesn't do that very much any more, because he's very old. I happen to have gotten to know him becuase he lives in Princeton, and I've been in Princeton quite often, mostly because I visit the Roths, but also we have a big support group in Princeton. Well, not so very big, but a very generous support group in Princeton, so I go there quite often. Morris : How about the head of the League of Women Voters? Sally L: Ruth Hinerfeld. Pat DiGiorgio got her for us because she was on the UNA [United Nations Association] board. I did not meet Ruth Hinerfeld until a year ago, and I've just seen her again, and now she's going to give a dinner party for us in Westchester. Morris: So that that's a good working relationship? Sally L: Yes. Some of them are and some of them aren't. Harrison Salisbury, who Jack Service got for us, has been as grumpy as he could be. When we had lunch a year or so ago, I could have kicked him. He is there for his name. Morris: And Joan and Erik Erikson. Those are names to conjure with. Sally L: Well, yes, those are names to conjure with. Erik is too old, really. They were put on because they're very interested in these things. Joan is particularly so. Well, Erik is too. I mean. they've got a long history of being interested in peace, and Joan has been helpful. Now that is all over, because they don't live here any more, but they used to. Some people do things for us, or would do things for us if we asked them. Morris : Marj orie Benton? 119 Sally L: Marjorie Benton definitely does things for us. She comes from Chicago. She's an enormous fundraiser for this and other issues environmental issues, women's issues. She is the American delegate to UNICEF. or no. I'm not sure that it's UNICEF or [pauses]. Well. UNICEF will do. She's sort of one of those national-figure type persons. She's married to Charles Benton. of Benton and Bowles, Encyclopedia Brittanica. And she is very helpful to us when we go to Chicago. I didn't know her in the first place. David Hunter suggested that I get her. Morris: Because he knew that she was interested in pushing for peace? Sally L: Yes. It's such a small community. Gabrielle, you can get to know all the people in the field. Morris: I can believe it. When did Adrian DeWind become an adviser? Sally L: Oh, yes, he immediately became an adviser that moment, as soon as we existed. He's been very, very helpful. He runs an enormous organization, NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], to which we've given one of our largest grants. Morris: How about dark Kerr? Sally L: Bill asked him. I've never met Clark Kerr. We asked him and we thanked him for his service. I've never met him. Morris: So you never convened all the advisers together? Sally L: No, they're like most advisers. Some of them are very definitely helpful. Jerry Smith, who's a new adviser, is ambassador to SALT I [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks], one of the eminent negotiators on the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty. He belongs to the so- called Gang of Four [Robert] McNamara, Jerry Smith, George Kennan, and George Bundy. Anyway, Jerry Smith is one of those very, very top people, and he is certainly very helpful to us. He just came up from Washington and spoke for us in New York. He gives us money that's good. He writes me nice letters all the time he's terrific. Morris: When were you ready to consider applications? Sally L: Immediately. I guess I was thrilled when we got applications, but it is amazing how word gets around. And how it did, I don't know. I noticed you had this question here and I scratched my head and wondered about it. Maybe at that first meeting that I went to? Maybe David Hunter said [to somebody], "Why don't you apply to these people?" Morris: First you're an ad hoc group, and then your board had been discussing the idea for a year or so? 120 Sally L: Before we started? No, I don't even think that long. No. I think maybe six months. Six months, right. And we were nowhere six months before. It worked quite fast. I think I had the idea a few months, perhaps talked to somebody over some drinks or something, but not 121 XI DEVELOPING GRANTS POLICIES Considering Applications Morris: And so by the time you had your first board meetings you already had some applications from people requesting grants? Sally L: Yes, yes. Yes, sure. Morris: Oh, that must have been very exciting. Sally L: It's interesting, some of those early grants. Of course, our policy wasn't formed, as I say. Some of these grants were not big; they were tiny grants and were unrelated to what we do today. I remember one of them was to study what was happening in Cuba. That was because David Hunter asked me to go to Cuba with him and some other people, the summer before we started Ploughshares. I was really interested in Cuba. I thought it was ridiculous that we should be Morris: Not speaking. Sally L: Not speaking. Well, Cuba was eager to speak to us and give up Russia and take on the United States as a trading partner again. Morris: Was that the sense of your experience? Sally L: Definitely, in a very nutshell way yes. It certainly was. Of course, there are all kinds of immense problems, and economically as you know yourself, it's not much better today than it was six years ago. Definitely, I think it is still true. Morris: Was there a way in which you could include Cuba under a policy of alternate ways of settling disputes? Sally L: We couldn't, you see. We wouldn't do that today. At that time, we all came back from the trip, especially the businessmen, saying at the Miami airport, "Now what should each of us do for Cuba?" 122 Sally L: Or not for Cuba, per se. but do something "about improving the situation in this country.' What are we going to do?" So I went home, and I made a grant to an expert journalist who had written me wanting to do a story to do about Cuba. We wouldn't do that today because it's outside our guidelines. But when we first started, we weren't that specific that it would only be for prevention of nuclear war, exactly that, not other international problems. There is a relationship, of course, between relations in Cuba and nuclear war, but I'm very glad that the board made that decision. I think it makes a lot of sense. I think it was a good decision of the board to narrow the focus. Two of them in particular, three of them in particular knew the foundation world so well, which I did not. If you do, you know how trendy it is and how the foundation will give Morris: There is a suspicion, but not too many people say so. Sally L: How could that be? I see it. If they go to Council on Foundations meetings, they can't help but see it. Well, really I don't know what foundations you've talked to, but in San Francisco there are marvelous foundations. I don't know if all foundations are, but I think some of them are just remarkable. But it is amazing; if you've ever gone to a Council on Foundations meeting it would be an eye-opener. I couldn't believe it when Tom and Susan and all told me about and it certainly is true the arrogance of some foundation people, who are giving away not their own money after all they're giving away money of others, and they take on the persona, you know, of the philanthropist or the corporation which provides the capital. One of the things about making this foundation, as a foundation, was the great benefit, the enormous benefit of having Lew and Tom, and Susan at the start, but Lew and Tom and Bill who really know foundation work and know enough, and know the legalities and the pitfalls of it to make this In certain ways it is an exemplary foundation, in all kinds of ways I would not have thought of. You know, many foundations, if you write for a grant, you don't know whether you'll get an answer. When the distribution committee has a meeting, the prospect isn't told whether he gets a grant or not, and on and on and on. At this foundation we see everybody that's got a project anywhere close to what we're interested in, even if we know they're Morris: You do try and see most of the people? 123 Sally L: We really do. We really do. And after a distribution meeting, immediately that very day. we tell people whether they get the grants or not. Accessibility; International and Individual Grants Morris: That's very civil. Sally L: We do make a special effort to be considerate. Because we give away the money and raise the money to give it away, we're not better than the people who come to ask for it. But you don't get that feeling when you go to foundations, mostly. But perhaps the major thing that the founding directors did was to fashion a foundation with flexibility. I wouldn't have known that certain limitations are somewhat traditional in the private sector. For instance, there's no legal reason why every foundation can't give grants outside the U.S., but many don't. Ploughshares has no geographical limitations. There's no reason that a foundation can't give grants to individuals. We pride ourselves on supporting individuals. And it's a very important thing that we do. We give grants to individuals sometimes just for doing a good job that we think is important. Sometimes these have turned out to be our most important grants. We really measure the successes. Morris: How do you deal with the expenditure-responsibility requirement? Sally L: They have to send us a report. Morris: And individuals are not tax exempt. Sally L: No, I know. They have to pay their income tax on the grant unless they are hired by us to do a specific project as a consultant. Morris: But otherwise an individual grantee has to pay a regular income tax on the money you give him or her? Sally L: Yes. Morris: Has that ever boomeranged? Sally L: Well, if they don't want a grant on which they have to pay taxes, they don't have to take it. Morris: No, but I meant that, reading the literature, the don't-give-to- individuals policy seems to come from some thought that somehow an individual might use the money on either living, and not do an in- depth study of whatever. 124 Sally L: Well, I guess that these three people on our board that I talk about particularly, who knew so much about foundations, say that if half the grants pay off like psychiatrists talking about analysis we're doing well. I don't think that's true. That's what Tom would say. but I think the percentage is much higher than that. I think in the time we've been in business, which is only six years. I can only think of two instances where the grants have not been used for what the person said they'd be used for. By the way. in neither of these two cases did the grant go to individuals. Every individual grant we've given has really paid off. It's unfortunate that one scientist who left his university post to work on something on his own did not. as expected, get a job at an institution, so he couldn't carry on his research. So his research really stopped at the $10,000 we gave him. So in that sense sometimes, they've been disappointing, in that what is a seed grant hasn't grown. But other than that. I can't remember an individual grant that we've given that's not been really useful. Morris: You mentioned that a couple have been used for something else. Was it something that the board felt was really out of bounds or was it just that the proposal as written, when it came to carry it out, didn't work out? Sally L: They used it for something else. Apparently that happens quite often with foundations' grants. I don't know. We've also gotten money back from an organization, I think twice. Once where they'd wanted to do a slide show. They just never got the personnel together, and some other crisis came up, and they didn't make the slide show, so they gave us the money back, or they said they would send the money back. And we said, because the organization is good (I'm thinking of one in particular) because it's a very, very good organization, which we wanted to help develop, we said then. "Well, let's give it to you for general purposes. " I don't mean all of these programs have had as much impact as I'd like, but the grantees use the money the way they said they would. Individuals have been absolutely fantastic. We've given some such interesting grants that have really paid off. Last year, for instance, we gave a grant to a woman who is in herself. not only through her work, such an inspiration, such a role model for others. I don't mean to say that in any sort of vague way; she is a very practical person as well as a visionary one. Her speaking is so wonderful. But we don't give grants nowadays for the kind of things she does. She puts together trips up mountains for Soviet and American young people, hiking together. 125 Sally L: We do give a lot, about 20 percent of our money, to Soviet- American communication, but usually not to that kind of citizen-to- citizen so-called "diplomacy." Cynthia Lazaroff was our grantee that I'm talking about. (There's a wonderful, wonderful film that's been shown everywhere, including the White House, about her mountain adventures.) She has developed a useful, small organization that advises many people and institutions on how to make Soviet trips that count. Last year, she was just down on her luck. She looked hungry and I knew she was out of money. So we gave her a grant. There's no reason not to do that. I'd say in two cases we have said to the grantee, you have to spend $1000 of this going East to raise money from foundations there. They've done it, and it's worked. In both cases, you see. the grantees came from California, which is somewhat unusual for Ploughshares. Morris: They brought home new funding? Sally L: Yes. But originally they hadn't wanted to spend the little money they had for their organization on taking a trip East. Morris: Is your experience that there's more money to be raised in the East than there is out West? Sally L: Oh, yes. Oh, sure. Then there are things like this [chuckles]. This was Wayne [Jaquith]'s* decision about one of the generals you mentioned (I can't even remember his name) who talks on Star Wars. Wayne heard him speak and thought what he had to say was very important. And he was a multi-starred general, from the South besides. That's the area in which he tours. He talks so badly that Wayne said the general ought to spend $1000 of our grant taking speaking lessons. Morris: That's very brave. Sally L: Well, he did. Wayne is marvelous telling people things like that. I wouldn't know how to say it. Would you? Morris: No. I've often thought that I would like to take a course in how to say important things tactfully. Sally L: If you ever find it, would you let me know? Morris: Why don't we stop there for today. Sally L: Good. I think I run on and on. Morris: You do tell a story very well. I don't think you go on and on. *Then Ploughshares executive director. 126 Working with Other Foundations [Interview 5: November 12, 1987 ]## Sally L: Have you ever gone to a Council on Foundations meeting? Morris: I have not had the honor, but it would be fascinating. Sally L: Well, they are usually not that interesting because the panels are often filled with bureaucatic speeches. A lot of individuals standing up and for half an hour talking about how great his or her program is and then making a few jokes about how people messed up by working in a foundation mode. But of course, the implications are there on the importance of the foundation in question. Morris: That was one of the questions I wanted to ask you about today is, in working with foundations jointly and just being in the milieu, if you have a sense that some of the people are more concerned about the glory of their foundations and about the people that they are working with. I've come across that suggestion in my reading. Sally L: In our kind of work I wouldn't really know except by hearsay, and of course. I hear that all the time. I do not find that true because there are very, very few foundations in the work of prevention of nuclear war. I mean, I think there are maybe ten maybe twenty, including individuals who run their own foundations. There are very, very, very few. So I don't know that. Honestly, my own experiences have been through excellent foundations. Morris: Do you use people at other foundations to check out applicants? Sally L: We work with other foundations all the time, all the time. Actually, in a way we perform a small service to foundations that are not in this field or who are just beginning in this field. There are two new foundations, oh. three foundations that are turning to this field. I'm sure more than that since we've been in business. There's one I think of particularly who calls us four or five times a year to ask us about what we think of different organizations. In a way. we do put out a service for them, because it's not only a technical field, but it's also a matter of experience and judgment in the political field, which we have really great expertise in because of Wayne. So that we really have as much of an overview in the field as, I think, any foundation does. In fact, probably more, because the very big foundations wouldn't even look at the small grants that we make. They wouldn't look at things like a $5000 grant. They don't give to something like 127 Sally L: North Carolina SANE, or a group in Eastern Washington that is worried about the nuclear reactor that is built like the one at Chernobyl. Morris: Is that because they know that you are now in the field? Sally L: No, because they can't afford to give grants like that. They don't have the staff. Big foundations don't have the staff to give small grants. It's really difficult, you know, if you look, and I'm sure you have. That is why a few foundations still make grants to us. It's one reason. Normally, I think I said to you, foundations do not support us because foundations don't like to give other foundations money. They don't want other foundations to make decisions for them. Of course, we're supported by a few foundations. I shouldn't say "of course," perhaps but that's the fact. Anyway, when we have served as an operating foundation, that's something else, and if they like the program they fund it. But for general support, I think less that 20 percent of our money comes from foundations. I don't really know the exact percentage. I could find out, as a matter of fact. This would be an important thing to do, because that's changed since the MacArthur Foundation; they gave us a generous grant for development. .The other foundations that support us there's one foundation that's given us $35.000 a year. Wayne, [calls to Wayne Jaquith who is passing by in the hall. Jaquith joins interview briefly] would you say 20 percent of our funds come from foundations (which is very hard for me to really believe nowadays) depending on what you include in foundations? Jaquith: Yes, something like that. Sally L: Would you then include things like Hardy as a foundation? And you think 20 percent comes from foundations? Jaquith: Yes, and from Muskiwinni, and a couple of others. Morris: That is a generous sum, a sign of confidence in your work. In general, do you go to them or have they ? Sally L: No, we go to them. The Kaplan Fund is a good example. Usually it doesn't give outside of New York State. They're a very big foundation. It's in one family. It gives us $35,000 because the , family wanted to give money to prevent nuclear war. Morris: So they made an exception to their own guidelines. Sally L: Right. Morris: Because you had become acquainted with some of the directors? 128 Sally L: Yes, the person who runs it. Very often. I'm afraid, all fundraising depends to a degree on personal communication. Yes. I became acquainted with Joan Davidson. And she became interested and became my friend. Muskiwinni, which Wayne just mentioned, is one of the Joint Foundation Support foundations, and I don't know who the family is that gave that money. Women's Leadership Development; Affecting Public Decisions Sally L: Of course, we tried to raise money for different programs, on occasion. In particular, there's a program called Women's Leadership Development because women are not well represented even today in the field of security and arms control, although it's extraordinary how many enormously informed women there are on nuclear issues. But we all know what a hard time they've had. women, getting in government. Even in the universities, particularly in this field. So often you find academics in this field with very small jobs in universities you've never heard of. Anyhow, we make a concerted effort in grantmaking to try and develop, enlarge the role of women. At the same time, it seems that's a good way to raise money to support this particular program area. That's what Muskiwinni supports, because they are a foundation that likes to support women and women's issues. Morris: So they see the Ploughshares program as a way to develop women's talents. Sally L: In this area. yes. I don't know what Muskiwinni gives to they don't really send out a report, but I do know that they give many grants to support women, equality of opportunity for women. Morris: I'd like to go back a minute to the comment you made that it's a political field. I was wondering if that was the primary consideration when you were looking for a staff person, that you were feeling that the grants you were making were becoming more political? Sally L: When we hired Wayne? No. I don't think we realized what we were getting. Wayne's leaving, by the way. I mean, actually he's not leaving us. He's going to be our East Coast director, but that's going to be half-time until we have a new director, who we do need full-time. Whether we can afford it, I don't know. I think when we hired Wayne, we were so new; we really didn't know how valuable that would be to us. But in these years, it has been extremely valuable, and he happens to be one of these people who knows every congressional district in the country, and people in them. It's been very useful. But he's always worked in the field of prevention of nuclear war. I shouldn't say that, he's an 129 Sally L: attorney; but he worked with the [Walter] Mondale campaign, really organizing peace groups for Mondale, so he knows many people in the field. Morris: The prevention of nuclear war it's not political in the sense that it's Democratic or Republican? Sally L: But it's highly political, because it depends on decisions both the Congress and the Senate are going to make as well, of course, as the administration. If one had to put what Ploughshares does in one line, and I don't like to do it, it would be educating the public to use democracy, the democratic form of government, to put pressure on their representatives to vote as the citizenry thinks they should. And we hope that citizens' groups see the supreme importance of avoiding nuclear war at all costs. So I think that's really the major thing we do. Now there are all kinds of ways of going about that. Just all kinds of paths to take, tasks to pursue, because we need research, as well as public education, as well as training organizers as well as journalists, as well as providing material to journalists all kinds of things. But, of course, our one major goal is to affect policy. We're in business for just that, in the final analysis. Morris: That's very brave. A lot of foundations stay away from that. Sally L: Exactly. And that's why they -are not, because foundations stay away from politics as much as possible. War/peace issues are political. You were talking about the Council on Foundations before. The subject doesn't even come up at its annual meetings any more. This year, for instance, at the council meeting, there was no one meeting no seminar or panel that dealt with this subject. Although one after another of the major speakers at plenary sessions say to the foundations, "You shouldn't be dealing with anything until you get rid of the threat of nuclear war." But that's the last that's always said about it, because foundations certainly don't like to be political. Morris: It can cause you problems? Sally L: Oh, yes. It did at first cause us this tremendous problem. because we didn't have any idea whether this thing was going to fly or not. Fly I should say crawl would be a better term for it. 130 Donor Growth Morris: I don't know that crawl is the word for it. Going through your annual reports, it looks like in three years your donors went from 62 in number to 950. That's a major achievement. Sally L: Actually we've doubled in size every year since. Morris: What were the initial strategies that you used to go out recruiting donors? Sally L: I think none of this would have happened except for the fact that Tom Layton and Lew Butler and Bill Roth were all so tremendously active in getting us started, not with dollars but with creative good sense. I truly think they didn't even consider that this would be more than a small kind of an organization a little local affair. They said so often. They had no idea where it was going, and I didn't have enough experience or knowledge, Gabriel le. to know that there were some of these strikes against it. I had no sense of it at all. They didn't say, Tom and Lew and Bill, with all the experience in the world in foundations, never said, "Well, you know, building a foundation has something to do with politics. It's going to be very difficult." They never said that. But they tell me every week that they can't believe what's happened. And I get letters from foundations that were in this field, from people like David Hunter, who was a leader of the progressive foundations for many years. They can't believe this happened. So I think everybody has been surprised. But no one told me and it wouldn't have stopped me anyway, of course that a foundation that deals with influencing government policy head-on is going to have a bad time. Morris: But apparently you struck a note in going out to donors, who also either didn't recognize that Sally L: Individual donors of a certain sort don't have that problem. A lot of people actually say, "One shouldn't have anything to do with influencing political decisions." Imagine! In this country. this democracy! Morris: Did they therefore not choose to support politics? Sally L: The people of my economic and social milieu did not and do not support issue-oriented politics very often. It's not because they don't believe in prevention of nuclear war per se. Everybody believes in that. 131 Morris : Sally L Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally Li And so what did you do in going out to your initial donors? they local or did you start with the mail? Are I had lists of some people who could be interested in international problems, and then lists of friends. We started locally. We got very little money from outside the Bay Area originally, although I served on other boards, two boards anyway, in the East Amnesty, and I served on my college board. I don't remember if those people supported me or not, but my name was slightly known in the field, among a small circle of people. So when I wrote a letter, it wasn't just out of the blue. And it was done very personally, as it is today. On a one-to-one kind of basis? No, I mean the letters were very personal. And we kept that style, I think, because it was simply started that way. The first letters that were written probably were typed out by me. They were asking for money, and I, of course, put money into it. So the first year we were able to give away we started in November 1981, and the first calendar year, I think, we were able to award something like $110,000. But there were administrative expenses. You were still operating I paid for what help we had and I worked part-time, for I was still working at the gallery. I had a part-time secretary. First Executive Director^ 1982; More on Grants to Individuals Morris: And you were still working out of your house? Sally L: Yes, until the fall of 1982, we hired a wonderful, brilliant executive director. She came to us actually from a big department at Stanford. I really talked to the board about the need for an executive director and what it would mean to Ploughshares. As supportive as the board was, they didn't think of it as an institution at that time. I don't think they thought of themselves as building an institution, and I didn't know in those days what building an institution meant. I think they thought, "Of course, we want to do something to stop war, and we know somebody that we like and have worked with before, who should be given a chance to try out this modest project." 132 Morris : You all thought of it more as sort of an ad hoc committee? Sally L: No, I think not. because there was an ad hoc committee to put it together in the first place. Then many members of that stayed, and there weren't that many members, but Tom was on it. And Bill Roth was on it, and Lew was on it. Quite a few people that were on it didn't stay. Susan Silk, at Columbia [Foundation] was on it. Okay, and I've forgotten that. That's important. Columbia gave us a grant the first two years, of $15,000, and that was because we gave money to individuals. Morris: Which they don't? Sally L: Which they don't. And it's very unusual, very, very unusual for foundations to give money to individuals. Because it's difficult to do unless a foundation is set up to do it. And that was of great interest to some people. The Goldman Fund also supported us; I'm not sure that it supported us the first year, but I think maybe they did. And they supported us quite generously for three years. That's Rhoda and Dick Goldman here. And a big part of that Columbia is definitely, because we supported the individual. Morris: And that was part of the original policy that you worked out in your ad hoc committee? Sally L: Yes. Gabrielle. I had no idea that it was unusual to fund individuals. I didn't know anything about foundations at all. But surely if you were going to do this, anything of this sort, naturally you'd want to fund individuals. Individuals are the people who make the decisions, who do the research, who can be in a leadership position. And often are in a place where they can't be supported and do the kind of work that we want them to do, that is important for them to do, unless there is a way to give money to individuals. Morris: Well, you would think that the people and the kind of research that you supported would be connected to a university or a think tank. Sally L: Not necessarily at all. Let me give you an example in the arts, for instance, where an artist, instead of having to teach for a year, is given a grant so that he can work in a studio. We have on more than one occasion given grants to scientists who have to be head of job responsibilities in order to do their own research. The last one was a scientist by the name of Earl Ettienne. who's a biochemist, and had a j ob in a university, but he'd done a lot of research on his own on how x-ray lasers can really poison the atmosphere and how there can be fallout on the earth. Nobody's looking into that. He had to leave his job in order to do the research, and nobody took him on. There wasn't a university that took him on, because it wasn't his field. So we gave 133 Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris : Sally L; Morris : Sally L: him $10.000 to do some research. Actually, it is unfortunate in this case (you win some, you lose some); Earl did not get taken on by an institution. We tried to help him do so. But he didn't. That happens . The idea didn 1 t Oh, the idea. I'm sure he's still working on, but we hoped he'd be taken on as a fellow by Brookings, or Institute of Policy Studies, or some other think tank. Did you set up some kind of a special process for handling the bookkeeping for grants to individuals? Yes. Yes. But it's so hard to do. I don't understand why, exactly. I don't really know about foundation law except about our own. I don't understand why other foundations don't support individuals. I've never understood it. It does take a little- yes. A foundation has to set up a special process for doing it. Also funding an individual without an institution behind him or her means taking a chance. For instance. Earl's grant was a gamble one of many. We hoped that Earl would be taken on, as I say, so that he could go on with his research. But we're happy his work went as far as he got, and the papers he wrote will be probably taken on by somebody else somewhere and built upon. We've had one after another experience of that kind. Just many, many experiences of that kind. Did you have somebody go talk to the attorney general's person on charitable grants or did they provide information at any point about ? Without any question about it. of course, we had to have an attorney. Tom Silk who is an expert in nonprofit law took care of all our requests in setting us up in the first place. Some individual grants are interesting. For instance, there is the retired major general who comes from an old South Carolina family of five generations or something. He goes around and talks about how Star Wars is never going to work, in the South, and that's an obvious grant. The guy checks out, and we've heard him speak, and you talk to him and you know that he actually does get the Rotary Club to listen to him and so forth and so on. You know, that's a pretty good grant for $5000. So we give that kind of a grant often. That kind of thing is quite simple to work out, if you talk to the person. Now did he come to you, or did you go to him? He came to us. 134 XII BROADENING PLOUGHSHARES' IMPACT Strenthening Grantee Organizations Sally L: We also have given the kind of a grant where we know that somebody's down on his or her luck, and we are supporting the person for the work that might be done with a boost, considering past accomplishments and the individual's energy creativity and dedication. I can think of at least two cases like this, ana they have panned out. Morris: No, it's very useful. Sally L: For instance, there's a wonderful woman, Cynthia Lazaroff. who speaks Russian, and who taught for a year in Moscow, then in Georgia. She's a wonderful young woman,. We first knew and supported her for a packet of information which she put together with a lot of people, and got published. It teaches grammar school children about what's happening in the Soviet Union, and has produced a lot of pen pals, and so forth. That would be a very natural grant for us to give, because she's a superb educator, and there are not very many people with her experience and leadership quality. There weren't a few years ago, anyway. She began this program, which perhaps you've heard of because it was filmed and then has been shown on many, many television programs. It was even shown in the White House. In it. a group of young people from the United States meets Soviet young people in the Caucasus to climb together the highest peak in Europe. It's a very, very moving film. Cynthia put that together. I think for three summers there were climbs in the Caucasus. Then last year, the Soviets came to the U.S.. and they did a climb with Outward Bound in the Rockies. Now we, it happens, do not fund that kind of an exchange. I'm not saying we wouldn't, but it's been the sense of our board that we only give to exchanges with the Soviet Union that really can affect policy changes. We don't fund children or young people's activities- 135 Morris : Sally L; Sally L: Morris : Sally L: Morris: Sally L: Morris: Sally L! Morris : Sally L; Morris : People-to-people things. Yes, and this is a people-to-people thing. But Cynthia Lazaroff is a national treasure. Because of what she did, because of her visibility, her office gets questions all the time, and she's able to help people who are putting on different kinds of exchanges. And she herself is a role model, and on that basis we were happy to make her a grant. fi She was really hungry, though. Her institution was gone; what money she made, she had to put back into her staff, you see. She was very thin, and she was looking very drawn, and I heard that she was having a tough time. So our board didn't hesitate to give her $7500, although (we've done this before) we said $1000 of it had to be spent for her to go East and go to foundations and get funded, because she'd never taken the money to do that. I noticed some of those grants in the annual report. It's a very interesting device. Well, we don't mind our own business at all. So that's a wonderful grant. Her organization got bigger and bigger, and now they're going to China, and now everybody's listening to her, and she's got.you know So that $1000 was enough to get her Foundations now support her. Foundations won't support you unless you go and see them. That's right. And sometimes it's difficult to see them, as you said earlier. We've done that twice, three times now. We've given a grant, and sometimes we've given $1000 on top of whatever it is to go East and raise money from foundations. Does that go with a letter from Ploughshares to whoever at East Coast foundations saying you should look at this ? No, it doesn't; but, perhaps, with a phone call. We're in touch with many of the foundations in our business in a very, very close way we talk to them all the time. Everybody likes to feel important, and the way I feel important is by phoning and saying. This is a good grant." It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job particularly when it works. Somebody that's gotten some support from you and needs more money 136 Sally L: Yes. Morris: to continue, or something like that? Sally L: Well. I think all foundations do. but I do it a lot. because Ploughshares gives more seed grants. I think, in this field than others certainly we take more chances. Just because we are small and because we have an overview of the whole field and expertise that grows every day. this is a service that the directors like to perform helping a promising project get started. In Cynthia's case it was a rescue grant till she could tell her story to other foundations. Morris: So this is somebody who's going on to another project and then Sally L: Oh. she's going to continue that. Her office is getting bigger, her projects are getting bigger. Oh, no. it's going to go on and on and on. By the way. I'm not saying that we don't sometimes make mistakes. I can think of a few instances where individual grants have not worked out as we hoped. Nuclear Issues in the Foundation World Morris: It sounds like you began making grants while you were still putting your foundation together and still developing your financial base. Sally L: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, we still are. of course. The making of grants to individuals was part of our policy from the first. We didn't realize how unusual it was. The ad hoc group that put Ploughshares together were all enthusiastic about the idea of it and putting together a flexible foundation process. But they had no idea how far it would go. I think they thought of it as sort of an experiment. Now, they scratch their heads in disbelief and say, "I can't believe that this has happened to this organization." Of course, they were very serious about the issue from the first, but most, like myself, didn't know much about it except what was reported in the newspapers. We did a lot of self- education, because it's a complicated field. Morris: Reading, or ? Sally L: Reading, and I would send them articles that I could understand myself ones that didn't depend on technological theory. All of us learned together. Morris: And some of your advisers are experts in 137 Sally L: Oh, yes, but the first adviser we got, and that helped us immensely, was George Kennan. Morris : Did he sit down with your ad hoc committee? Sally L: Oh, he shared with me personally, but he didn't come out to San Francisco. Through a great stroke of luck, I was able to go to Princeton to see George Kennan, who is hard to see. He's hard to see, because everybody wants to see him, and he's aged today. I told you about the first meeting of the Yacht dub group of so- called "foundations and funders" involved in global-security matters. It was in October, the year we gave our first grants in November 1981. This group eventually met at least a dozen times and became so institutionalized and bureaucratic that it stalled of its own weight. Morris: All of you were people interested in peace ? Sally L: That's right, and the nuclear issue. A number of them were thinking of changing, widening, broadening. Very interestingly this is the really interesting thing maybe the second meeting, or the third meeting, somebody came from Rockefeller Brothers, a woman whose name is Hilary Palmer. Rockefeller Brothers had never given a grant in this area. And (there's an end to this story) she said there was one member of her board who was interested. And she was able to get them to make some very good grants particularly in proliferation, which is a very, very hard field to so few people even want to deal with it. It's so terribly complicated, the spread of nuclear weapons. Anyhow, leadership of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation has within the last month changed from David Rockefeller Sr. to David Rockerfeller Jr., and he immediately announced that they were going to have, I believe, only two program areas, one of them the prevention of nuclear war, let's say global security, and I think the other is in the environment. So it went from nothing I'm talking about four years ago Morris: To a real Sally L: To a real commitment. Of course, there's a big change between David Sr. and David Jr., but still. Anyway, this group I keep getting off the subject. Anyway, I was there, a total neophyte. Oh, I think I had talked to some of these people about starting a foundation, and they said, "Oh, yes, dear. Why don' t you. " [laughs] Patronizingly, but kindly. 138 Sally L: And then they said. "Well, you should get yourself some advisers." You can't imagine anybody who knew less about this. So, one man smoking a cigar laughingly said. "Oh, go get yourself George Kennan. " not knowing that I had an appointment with George Kennan that afternoon in Princeton which was one of the great triumphs of my life. Morris: Oh. my. you already had the appointment. Sally L: I had already the appointment, so I went up and saw him. and he was very interested in the idea of Ploughshares and was enormously gallant. Since then we've become friends. And the moment he became an adviser, I mean we could get any adviser. Morris : Then people began Sally L: Take us oh. yes. Morris: think this is something we should work on. Sally L: At least they put their name on paper. Retired Military Advisers Morris: I'm interested in the number of military, army and navy persons among your advisers. Were some of those still on active service? Sally L: No. Morris: Were they people who had resigned from the military because of their concerns about nuclear weapons? Sally L: Are you talking about that in grants, or in people who are advisers of ours? Morris : Both. Sally L: I think we only have one who is an adviser of Ploughshares, though there are numbers of people in the Center for Defense Information. Gene LaRocque's outfit (which is made up, by the way, of retired admirals and generals) who believe in changing the nuclearization of U.S. defense policy, and have for a long time. We have funded a number of speakers, particularly somebody who was in charge of the space program for the navy, who goes around the country talking about the reasons that a Star Wars system will never work. He's very, very effective. He's a grantee of ours. Morris: He's a grant, but he is an active 139 Sally L: No. no. no. None of them are active. We have had a couple of retired, by the way, officers, who have applied for this job as executive director. Morris: Do you get a sense that there is a debate within the office ranks in the military? Sally L: I've never asked, and I don't know. I do get that sense that there is. I get a sense there is, but just like in all the countries that we criticize all the time, the military's pretty strong in this country. Isn't it? I mean there are a lot of careers that depend upon it. Morris: True. But there's more than one way to fight a war, presumably. Sally L: Yes, but if you're going to disagree with a policy totally, you aren't going to keep your job as an important officer, are you? If you disapprove of the fact that there are submarines carrying missiles that can wipe out a country in a minute and you say so, you're probably not going to be very popular with the Pentagon. Morris: One assumes that the military leadership is part of the decision-making process, and if you're talking about alternatives to global security, what sense do you get of what kind of debate, if any, is there within the upper ? Sally L: I can only answer you what I think personally. I don't know anybody in the army, in the navy, but this is the sense I get. In the first place it's well-known that the uniformed armed forces are as crazy about nuclear war than those in business suits. That is well known today. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of money is going to developing nuclear weapons that can never be used. It is being taken way from other weapons systems that, let's say, the army or navy wants to use What's it do to their careers? I'm really talking about it from a selfish point of view, not from the philosophical or ethical or anything else point of view, now. But one can imagine for the career officer that a nuclear area is not commensurate with what they've been trained to do. They've been trained to manage a war. You can't fight a nuclear war. So I'm not talking about whether you want to wipe out Russia or you want to wipe out the rest of the world. I'm not talking about any of those things you and I worry about. Just talking about the military from a career point of view. Morris: Is that the sense of some of the people who are now retired, who are working with places like the Center for Defense Information? Sally L: I don't know how many there are, you know, how many retired people there are who are involved with us. I sense there are quite a few, not professionally, but I sense there are quite a few who 140 Sally L: would agree. But those that I know about, and are known about nationally, are few. They're very effective spokesmen. On our advisory board is someone who is extremely active in this area Admiral John Lee, who has for years been retired and is a great scholar and spokesman on nuclear-war prevention. A lot of these people have a very different point of view than you or I might, you know. I mean, Squidge Lee, who, as you know, is a close friend [of mine], did a whole big study for years of officers from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization] after he retired on how conventional forces should be built up. Well, that's a terribly destructive theory. But you see, I don't know if he believes in that today. I haven't seen him in two years. I've been in touch with him. But you see what I'm saying: that might be a typical point of view, you see, of an army or navy officer from a professional point of view. I'm not accusing him; I think he is a highly idealistic man. But if it were your profession, you'd want to improve your forces, and you'd be involved with the traditional idea of a powerful military force being the only protection of your country. And that's not only in your own career potential, but your loyalty to the navy would want you to see that the navy is better-run, that your ships are in better shape, that your personnel gets well paid, and all that stuff. Wouldn't you protect not only your country but your navy itself without depending on nuclear weapons? Morris: I understand that the inter-service politics are quite a complicated subject of their own. Sally L: I know very little about it, but I think one of the things that would be most helpful. I guess it's pretty obvious, in this country is if the military services were all under one command. Morris: Unified? Sally L: Unified, yes. so they weren't competing for dollars all the time. Narrowing Granting Focus; Replacing the Executive Director Morris: What kinds of criteria did the board develop for selecting, making choices between one applicant or another? I guess before that, did you have the experience common to many foundations that there have been more proposals and requests for support coming in than the foundation Ploughshares could fund? Sally L: Well, of the proposals today that we get that we could consider, that are within our guidelines, probably something like 400 a yeai this year we funded 120. 141 Morris: That's pretty good. Sally L: A lot more come in, of course, that aren't within our guidelines. Morris: Was it that kind of numbers in 1979? Did you have to go out and put announcements out within the nonprofit world that you were Sally L: We were known quite fast. Of course, we got very few proposals, I guess, to start with, and besides which, we learned on the job. That first year, we gave a couple of human-rights grants before we decided but that's my background, before we Morris : Decided to narrow it down? Sally L: Decided to narrow it down. I had just gone to Cuba with David Hunter, and I gave a grant of about $1500 to a journalist who was going there to report on the threat, if any, to the United States. But that's the size grant we were giving, because we didn't have any money . Morris: What was it that brought about the decision to narrow the focus? Sally L: As I say, it was just meeting together and making decisions together and seeing what the need was, and seeing how we could be most effective. We made some hard decisions along the way. Human rights were the first thing to hit the dust, and then in 1983 I went east and spent some days looking into what was happening in Central America, to see whether we should get in the Central American field Morris: In terms of the political ? Sally L: Yes. In terms of the policy of the United States and the whole thing of intervention. But the board turned it down, quite legitimately. Morris: Really? Sally L: Yes, because they said we didn't have any expertise in Latin American affairs, which was true. They said if we could afford to hire an expert I'm not sure, at that time, whether we had our first director yet or not. Morris: What kind of background Sally L: She has a Ph.D. in what you might call a double discipline which is given at Columbia in nuclear weapons technology and politics and the Soviet Union. You can get a double degree in that at the Harriman Institute. And she was at Stanford in that biggest and best of all international security programs in universities (it's by far the biggest). It was one of the twenty that Ford started. 142 Sally L: It's enormous because it's received one after another very large grant. That's where she was at the time she applied to me for the job of executive director. She's an absolute brilliant young woman. Morris: So by the time she came on board you were already nrettv much focused in the nuclear Sally L: Yes. We always were focused on that. That was the whole purpose of the foundation. But it was hard it remains difficult not to address policies that foment conflict that could light the spark of war. It's not really very important whether it was after she came or before that I tried to make a case to fund Central America. I don't really recall. She came to work a little less than a year after we started. She was brilliant, very knowledgeable. She was really one of a handful of individuals with the capabilities for running a foundation and at the same time dealing with the complex issues on which we focus. It turned out it didn't work out at all. That was a tremendously painful and difficult experience, which makes us all think that if we could recover from that crisis that we could weather anything in this foundation. But we really had a terrible time. Morris: This wasn't the right kind of nonprofit work for her? Sally L: She really didn't know how to work with other prople and she was a terrible administrator. Terrible. It was a very, very painful thing. And all the time my husband was dying, so it was a real emotional trauma as well as an administrative crisis. It was a terrible mess. One of the things that happened (it seems in retrospect, I suppose, sort of funny) was that, after discussions with her, Ploughshares was being given a $350,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation to make small grants for general support. For us it was tremendous. But naturally, as in all cases, it's the staff that deals with the staff. It isn't the board that deals with staff. So she had done all the groundwork, which is normally true. It hasn't been in our case because I am partially staff, and in a couple of instances it has not been altogether true, or Wayne and I have been interchangeable. But that is normally, of course, what would happen. So we had to ask her to leave after some terrible stormy metings, before Carnegie signed on with the grant, because we couldn't fire her afterwards. It would have been unethical. Morris: Because she was a big part of the project? Sally L: Well, she was the person who had arranged it. So they didn't give us the grant. And they never have. In those days it was very, very hard to swallow, although, you see, Tom and Lew had a broader view of this, because they said they never expected that any 143 Sally L: foundation would give us a grant anyway. We've grown so much since then. In talking to you about it it seems sort of amusing to me, in the past. Morris: Growing pains, once they're over and you've learned from them, they're tales to recall. Then how long was it before you found Wayne? Sally L: Wayne. It was five months maybe, or so. He was working for Mondale until Mondale was beaten. It was in November [1984] that he came to work. We decided to hire him the previous September. Morris: Partly because of his national political experience? Sally L: His experience was enormous. He had been (I don't know if you're familiar with Physicians for Social Responsibility) he was their first executive director. And then he was the executive director of something called LANAC, which is Lawyers' Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control. He did that for about three years, and then he was the so-called Freeze coordinator for the Mondale campaign. Also he had done some work for Congressman Ed Markey. who is really the most prominent congressional spokesman in this field. So he had real experience. Morris: So he'd been in the field as long as you. Sally L: Much, much longer than I. And terrific, oh yes. We had a lot of applicants. I think we paid $30,000 to start. But he was the only applicant, I have to say, that seemed appropriate. He has done a wonderful job. Tommorrow he's leaving, you see. Responding to World Events; Treaty Verification Morris: Has he been helpful in further refining Ploughshares granting policies? Sally L: He has. but in this kind of a foundation, so much depends on what is happening in Washington, and Moscow, and Third World countries, and the world. It depends on the news. I can think of all kinds of instances. Very early on, before our second meeting, someone who I had hoped would give us some money and would be interested in our approach, was a very wealthy physicist I know. He called me on a Christmas Eve in 1982 and said, "I'll never give you any money because one can't verify the components of any treaty with the Soviets." And I didn't even know what he was talking about, at the time. 144 Sally L: So I did some reading and at the next meeting we had of the board, I said. "We've got to go into verification." And we did. It's a long story. But we were the first people, I think, to ever among foundations go into this area. But anyway, we did develop a program of research and writing for policymakers and the public on the political thinking that determines decisions on what can or cannot be verified in the compliance of arms treaties. Nations often make such decisions on bases unrelated to the treaty itself. Actually technologically a nation can verify almost any treaty today, as you know; but politically it not only doesn't trust the enemy, it doesn't trust its own technology. And the man that you read everywhere on this subject the person most often quoted is Michael Krepon. who we finally were able to identify, to hire, to work on this project. This was a very large program for us, over a two-year period. Morris: Involving Russian scientists ? Sally L: No. it only involved Americans, but the people Mike had as his team were all former CIA directors or former negotiators, etcetera, etcetera, who knew this field tremendously well. Anyway, we not only could not go on supporting it, but it is extremely difficult to be in any control from 3000 miles away. (He was in Washington, of course.) We didn't have a big enough staff to really be in constant contact and monitor such a project. So Carnegie took it on. which was wonderful. Morris: They haven't funded you, but they have continued some of your projects? Sally L: Well, actually it's different Carnegie the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. The Carnegie Corporation is what didn't fund us. Although now we're very good friends. I have phoned them and said, "Why don't you fund?" [laughs] And I have lunch with the chairman of the board. But the only reason for large foundations to fund Ploughshares is that we're set up to make small grants, to research and to monitor them. With a foundation that makes huge grants in the effort to reverse the arms race, why would it make a grant to little Ploughshares? Carnegie and MacArthur give several millions of dollars a year in this field. But they give a lot of it in big block grants, hundreds of thousands and million dollars, for instance, to a university to set up a program. The only reason such a foundation would fund us is because we give small grants and it could wholesale money through us. 145 XIII EVALUATION; SOME SIGNIFICANT PROGRAMS Monitoring Grants and Applicants^ Morris: How do you determine whether it's been a successful grant? Sally L : We do it like any other foundation, except, of course, one can count hospital beds. You pay for ten hospital beds, you see that you get them. We do the same thing as far as monitoring the donees. We have them report at certain periods. We follow what they do as much as possible although it's hard when you're funding nationally. In fact, we fund internationally, make grants overseas. Some day, if we do grow (with the stock market, maybe you doubt that) we'd like to have a program officer overseas so we could monitor grants, but we do have grants overseas. It's very hard to tell in this field, in one way. In another way, you've got a more daily check than anything I know of, except for those traditional hospitals beds. Morris: The daily press. Sally L: The daily press, exactly, where the vote in Congress this year the vote in the Senate is dramatic. The Senate up until last year has simply done what the president wanted. The change is really the result of grassroots involvement in these issues. Certainly one can say broadly of one's lobbying grants that lobbying can only be as good as the constituency behind it. Morris: Do you, does the staff stay in touch with some of the grantees while a project is going on? Sally L: Oh, yes. Yes. I mean, there's some who we don't. The small ones tend to send us information all the time, because some of the grassroots organizations or community organizations send out a bulletin; that's part of their business, to send out a bulletin on 146 Sally L: what they're doing. They send it to us. Because we're in this business only and because we give so many grants, we're often called about activities kept in touch simply by telephone. There are some places, there is no question, that we rarely see the people. I mentioned North Carolina before, that comes to mind. It happens to be the best SANE group, group of that society in the country. I've never seen the North Carolina SANE or its leader, but we know their reputation we know who the people are. Unfortu nately you know, the peace community is a small one, after all. As for research grants, we can monitor them by reading the results. And then there are some persons stunning grants we're proud of that have really had an effect. And those again you can read about in the daily papers. So that' s Morris: Do you have any contact with grantees who say this isn't working out. but I think if we change the plans a little bit ? Sally L: Yes. That's only happened three or four times. I understand from Tom Layton I used to be in constant contact with them [Gerbode Foundation] about these things that happen very often. It's only twice in what must be altogether at least 350 or 400 grants that Ploughshares has made, that they've actually done something completely different and never asked us. I remember once we got a letter from a grantee where she wanted to use the grant differently, a curious letter. And the board, I sent a copy to the board, the board was furious. I didn't know enough to be furious. They said you don't do that to a foundation, but there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Don't you hear that from other foundations? I mean, I guess if you're paying for something that 1 s hardware Morris: If you've funded somebody to buy a new heater and they chose to buy a stereo with it Sally L: That's right. Morris: You might question it. But the comment that I have heard is that quite often what you set out to do as a grantee turns out not to work as well, but with some modifications and advice from the granting agency sometimes you can produce a better ? Sally L: Oh, that's right. That happens very, very often. That happens very often. And believe me, some things don't work out, partic ularly in a program like ours which is largely devoted to public education which, in itself, is a somewhat immeasurable field of endeavor. But it's only twice that we've made a grant where people have misused the funds. And I don't mean that they pocketed the funds either, but, for example, that they used the money to hire a secretary rather than to write a leaflet or some such. 147 Political Education, 1983-1984; Other Strategic Concerns Morris: Could we talk a little bit about this program in 1983, when the board voted extra funds to do some political education during the 1984 election campaign? Was that a departure or ? Sally L: No, I think it's a way of focusing what we do. In times of election, groups involved in these issues have someone to talk to to try to influence their point of view on security. They've got candidates. That's all that that means. Already, this time around, we certainly have made grants making it possible for regional groups to address their representatives and the candidates. For instance, we supported the debate, which is referred to all the time now, of the Democratic candidates in Iowa when they talked about these issues. We will support other debates. Of course, you're talking about the Senate two years ago. We supported coalitions of peace groups in states where they could be effective in working to get out the vote or to help a candidate who was very good on these issues. Colorado is one that comes to mind. Timothy Wirth is very, very strong on global- security issues. And we fund the Colorado Coalition, which was really helpful to Tim in his [pause] speaking out on issues which were high on his campaign agenda. Morris: Now Tim is a candidate? Sally L: Tim Wirth became the Senator from Colorado, and he's a real star in this field. In some states we would not, for instance, supportthere are some states, and I can't name them right now, I could have last year, where we knew a candidate was very good, and he was very good on these issues. But then the voters in the state are not as progressive as he is or sometimes they are much more so. Morris: So he doesn't Sally L: That's right. So we're not going to support a local group whose activity will detract from the election of a good candidate. That's the kind of thing that Wayne is very good on. As a matter of fact, that's the sort of tactical information that is handily available to Ploughshares. Morris: That's a very delicate matter. Sally L: It's a delicate matter. It really is. Bob Edgar, who ran for Senate, and who missed, is just enormous on these issues. He was a very effective congressman. Strategically, in the part of Pennsylvania where he had to get the votes, it would have been a mistake to highlight our issues. 148 Sally L: There are probably fifty grassroots groups that come to us a year for funding from different states, from different areas. We would choose the ones where there's a swing vote, a legislative vote, or an electoral vote that would be affected by a well-organized activity. But these are exceptions. Again, let's talk about North Carolina, because it's a great example. We continue to support them because they have organized so brilliantly in that state. They've brought in people from all segments of society. We've given them $5000 a year. Morris: What is there about North Carolina? Sally L: There's nothing about North Carolina. But there's something about North Carolina's SANE group. It is so well organized and it sent out such good literature. And the people who run it are so smart, and they get such good media, and they do all the things about public education that you'd like a citizens' group to do. So. of course, we would support them, whether they had a vote or an election to influence. I don't even know who's running from North Carolina Morris: You don't think of North Carolina as being a terribly politically movable Sally L: No, but you think about what you want the electorate in North Carolina to know about this issue. In fact, we spent as much money as we could in the South, because that is the least educated region on this issue in the country. Morris: Are there nuclear plants in North Carolina? Sally L: Not that I know of. There very well may be. I don't know. There isn't a state that I know of that doesn't have either a Freeze or a SANE or some other kind of a group working for peace. But you can't support all of them. For instance, we support a number of groups, or have over the years and will continue to in Nevada and Utah, because so many of those people have been affected by radiation. Some of them by testing of nuclear bombs so there we can see a great deal of personal persuasion against nuclear testing, which is one of our major topics. So that's why one would fund in Nevada and Utah. Really all I'm saying is that there are reasons for funding in different parts of the country and there are reasons for not funding in different parts of the country, too. Morris: Strategic. Sally L: It's strategic, that's right. For instance, we don't fund very much in California because they don't need it. But I think, although there is a very big peace group in San Diego, I probably wouldn't fund a peace group in San Diego with the enormous 149 Sally L: industry that exists there. I don't think that peace groups are going to be very effective. I'm glad this is confidential, by the way. Morris: The house rules are that you get the first transcript, and Qualifications of Applicants, Site Visits Sally L: Oh, nobody would care. It's just that when people (I'm looking at the phone) there's not a day that passes without at least two phone calls from either an individual or a foundation about funding one or another organization or person or place. And I'm always tempted to tell them, if I know Morris: Why it's not a good area? Sally L: Yes, why it's not a good area to fund, or why it's not a good organization to fund. Sometimes I do tell, and sometimes I don't. You know, you don't want to criticize other people's work, but there are some organizations that are totally ineffective, and money for support is so very scarce. Morris: I read that in the nonprofit world that's a big concern that a lot of organizations with good instincts are not very well run. Is Ploughshares one of the foundations that puts grants into helping organizations strengthen their board and staff? Sally L: Oh. sure. We do all the time. Oh gosh, yes. But I'm just talking about the great example is that somebody from the great big MacArthur Foundation phoned us to ask about a grant for a proposal that had come to us too. Well, the proposal was for $150,000 from a peace group in San Francisco that I'd never heard of, and that's a little hard Morris: That's hard to believe. Sally L: No one had ever heard of the people on the board. Reading the resume of the man who would run it, he made one immediately suspect that he is unqualified. And he wanted $150,000 for no reason at all and no means of accomplishing it. to run a conference with all the best people in the world to come to his outfit and talk about peace. The MacArthur Foundation phoned and said, "Should we fund it?" Well, Ploughshares didn't even interview the director, even though he's right here in San Francisco. The program was built on sand, at least as it was described in the proposal. Morris : Sally L: 150 How many of the requests that are within your area do you actually have contact with, have them come in and talk to you about ? As many as we can. But we also make site visits. We don't normally make site visits unless we are in the area (and we are not usually) to grassroots groups. Morris: Yes. that would be kind of hard. Sally L: It would be kind of hard. I can't ever give you exact numbers or percentages because I don't think that way, unfortunately. We have seen quite a few of the groups that are in the western region. They make a visit frequently. Then, too, people tend to come to San Francisco even from grassroots organizations. I go to Princeton. Wayne goes to Chicago, other parts of Illinois, Pennsylvania. We both go to Washington, to Minnesota. Yes, it's true. We have seen many of them. Morris : The larger ? Sally L: And the larger ones, we have seen all of them. The Nuclear Issues Community; SANE. Freeze, etc., and Funding Sources Morris: They tend to be people that you work with over several years. Sally L: Yes, or maybe they come in. We just gave a large grant to someone who happened to be here, large for us, $35.000, to start an institution called the Pacific Institute for Peace and International Security, which researches and traces the social upheaval and possible conflict that is caused by environmental factors. Perhaps the most obvious is the decimation of the rain forests which forces populations to move in search of new farm land or urban jobs. The man, Ronnie Lipschutz. was in Berkeley, and he was highly thought of, and came to us through recommendations from people who knew him such as John Hoi den, at Cal, under whom he'd written his dissertation. That was taking a big chance that I'm not going to go into the thinking behind the grant, but yes, if we were going to give a grant of that size, certainly of that kind of risk-taking, we definitely would talk in great detail to the person, in person. Wayne has spent at least two weeks a year, more or less, in the East, most of it in Washington, New York, Boston. But I would say 90 percent of the people to whom we make grants we talk to in person. 151 Morris: By the time you've gotten around Sally L: To giving the grant. This is the process we've gone through and it's worked very, very well. Wayne and I go through the whole list of grants that are within our guidelines and agree on the ones to research. Then after much discussion, we agree on the ones to put on the docket before it ever gets to the board. We have paid a site visit if necessary. However, it is not always necessary because sometimes we are considering a grant to an organization that we know very well, and it's come up with a program that's important and has potential impact. That's happened very often. We haven't had to pay a site visit because we know the organization so well. Morris: You've watched the evolution Sally L: Yes, yes. Besides which, you see, our funding community is so limited. Of the people who make grants in this field. I can pick up a phone and ask one or another person who's right there on the spot about it, and also there's not a day that we don't talk at least two or three times to some political person in Washington. When I say political. I mean it in the sense of someone who really knows how votes in Congress and the Senate are being affected by one or another organization. Morris: Is that a person who's in elected office or their chief aide ? Sally L: It isn't somebody in office. It's somebody usually, or often, a grantee of ours, who's right there on the spot and who has a very broad view and has had a lot of experience, who could tell us what's happening. Or it's someone from an institution with common goals. That's really because of Wayne being in Washington and intimately acquainted with these people that we have had lines of communication, but now I know them too. As long as they're grantees, they will continue to give us information, of course. It's just tremendously interesting. For instance, we spent hours on something, and I don't know whether the results are good or bad. The two biggest peace organizations, the Freeze and SANE, merged this year after two years of talking and fussing about it. I'm not going to go into the details, because it would be confusing, but the foundations who have funded SANE and/or Freeze had talked together about the problems and what we should do to help, and how we could affect leadership, and what we should do over and over and over again whether we should or shouldn't fund them, maybe we should or shouldn't fund them we're still talking about it now that they've merged. Morris: That's really a tremendous step. 152 Sally L: And we used to, as I say. meet at those fundraising sessions. Originally, we were to discuss problems with other foundations. Recently the meetings have not been productive, in my mind, so I don't cross the country to attend. I have a wise colleague in Washington who thinks that the trouble is with hidden agendas. Since Ploughshares doesn't have one, I can't judge. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the inner workings of other foundations. Stock Market Drop, 1987; Grants Budgets Morris: Is this the Yacht CLub Group? Sally L: Yes. Now it's much smaller. And we're in the inner circle. We're very definitely in the inner circle. Wayne is going, for instance, to a meeting of no more than five foundations in this field about an emergency that can affect the movement seriously. What are we going to do, because money is drying up? And it's because of the stock market [September 1987 price drops] . I am absolutely appalled at what foundations are doing. I am appalled. But you've heard this, I'm sure, that foundations have stopped giving money. I just keep hearing rumors of this. Yesterday I heard that the Rockefeller Associates, as it is called, which is some numbers of millions, maybe five million; I don't know how much a lot. Anyway, the youngest part of the family gives their money away through a man of the name of Wade Green, and I heard yesterday that they weren't giving any money this year. That would be terrible. I don't know that that's true, but that was what I was told. And I do know that some foundations are cutting way back. One foundation that's been in this field has decided it lost fifteen million dollars in the stock market it's not going to give any money this year. So that's why there is an emergency meeting. How will we make our money count the most? That won't happen to us, because we don't depend on an endowment. It may happen to us next year. We may not raise enough money. We said we'd give away more than a million this year, and we will. Even if we are broke next year. Morris: Has your board had a meeting about doing something about the portfolio? Sally L: We talk about it all the time, but our portfolio is so small. In the first place, we originally talked about whether we should get a financial adviser, and decided our principal was too modest. No finmancial adviser would take it on. And now we're talking about it again. In the meantime we invest in such things as Treasury bonds, and our percentage 153 Morris: Secure. Sally L: They're so secure that we get. I think we probably get 6 percent across the board. But we just can't lose our money. Women at the US-USSR Summit; Some Reservations Morris: [unclear sentence] We can't not talk about your meeting with the Russian leaders in Geneva and Reykjavik. Sally L: I went along with a women's group that we had funded. So naturally I was invited to go. Morris: Is that the frosting on the women's leadership development ? Sally L: No, no. When we listed what we gave to women's leadership in our prospectus, we did list it, however. This is called Women for a Meaningful Summit and. by the way. we are not going to fund it, though it still exists; although we started it. Morris : You started the group? Sally L: We didn't start the idea. Somebody we know very, very well phoned with the idea and asked what we thought of it. This is someone Wayne particularly knew well. And we said it was a great idea, but you can't do it yourself (because she was doing another job in this field) unless you hire help, and we'll pay for the hiring of staff. We gave her $5,000. by the way. The organization really took off. We funded it three times, yes we funded it first for that person, gave money to an individual, which is the way we had to do it at that point, to serve as a secretary, and then an organizer, and we funded going to Geneva, and we funded the trip to Reykjavik. But we are not going to fund them this time. Morris : Why not? Sally L: We don't think it's effective any more. Morris: Because the ? Sally L: I'd have to go through all kinds of details of why I don't think it is I don't think you really want to hear them. But we don't think it's well organized. They haven't really come up with what they really want to do. I don't think it's very representative any longer. There's no leadership. Morris: And those have been changed since the summit trips? 154 Sally L: Well, the preliminary thing was to be an ad hoc group. It was a very, very good idea as an ad hoc group. Morris: And it didn't transfer into being a permanent organization? Sally L: It could have been, but I don't think it has been, not effective in going to Reyjkavik at all. I think it was Morris: Reykjavik itself apparently was not terribly successful. Sally L: No. But the fact that Women for a Meaningful Summit was there did nothing to push world peace an inch or two up the mountain. In going to Geneva, there were thirty-five of us. What was really helpful is that it got press and showed that there were women from all kinds of different organizations all over the country, who were not as [Secretary of the Treasury] Donald Regan said that was when Regan said, of course, the women that are here are only interested in what Mrs. Reagan is wearing. That was wonderful copy. Anyway, we got a lot of press. [Former Con gres sworn an] Bella Abzug was there and [writer] Jane Alexander. There were a lot of other people. Also, it afforded the women who went along, it gave them something to talk about on the platforms, either small or large, in different places in the country when they got home. And I think it was very, very useful from that point of view, extremely useful from that point of view. It was useful for the growth of Ploughshares. It was very useful for the growth of Ploughshares. Need for Visibility Sally L: You know it's the darndest thing. I just hate this sort of thing, but there's no way that you're going to get press for a foundation. Oh, that's not true. If you're a very large foundation, and you give a $5,000,000 grant in San Francisco, a $5,000,000 grant in New York, you'd get press, but you know. So we never had any press at all. at all. And when I went to Geneva oh, there were members of our board by that time who had been insisting, suggesting that we get somebody in public relations. I said it was ridiculous, what are you going to talk about? And then I was finally convinced that at least we should put our toe in the water. I have a friend for instance, a close. close friend who is a journalist who years ago said, "Let me do a story on Ploughshares." And we'd start talking about something else and that was the end of it. Well, then we got a PR person, and because we were paying the PR person 155 Morris: to get mentions in the press. Sally L: So then I did the story. Then we got quite a few stories. They were all personal Morris: The two or three you sent me are really interesting pieces.* Sally L: Yes. Well. I'll tell you that our funding picked up to where people gave us money who I know very well, but who never had given us money before. It's the darndest thing. Morris: Did you send out copies of these articles that the PR person had developed? Sally L: No I think we have sent articles out on occasion for some reason. I think Wayne has sent articles out when he's writing "Sally and I are going to be in your town." I once gave a speech at Harvard, and he had the speech, a little tiny speech, written up and sent around. Morris: You gave a speech at Harvard Sally L: Because Phil went to Harvard, and I was invited. Phil had died by that time, otherwise I never would have gone. He never would ever, ever have gone to his fiftieth reunion. I mean, absolutely. Morris: Did you go because it was a good place to make connections for Ploughshares? Sally L: No, because of a minister who Phil knew, who said he was a friend. But I don't remember Phil ever mentioning him, who I had once met because he was involved in human rights. He would come to the annual meetings of Amnesty International, and I was on the board. Anyway, he phones me in October to ask if I would appear in June, because he was in charge of the memorial services for the fiftieth reunion. And I said, "You've got to be crazy." I couldn't possibly My God. He said, "I'm going to phone or write you every three weeks until you say yes," and he did. He did. And it was five minutes or something. Well, I guess publicity does help after all. *See appendix. Morris : 156 Had Phil been particularly interested in what you were trying to do- Sally L: He was extremely helpful. Though it was not his field at all. He was extremely helpful. One of the things is, he used to chair the meetings for me. And to this day I've never chaired a meeting. I hate to chair meetings. Morris: Really? Oh, that's really devotion. Sally L: Well. yes. I mean, they were in our living room, in front of the fire with a drink. This was the start. This was the homemade organization. I was working at another job. Morris: That's the community Nuclear Countdown Press Kits Sally L: That's right. That's community activism. That's exactly what it was. For instance, once he was very, very helpful. We produced a big press kit that we were putting out and sending around the country. And Phil edited it for us quickly. And he helped me by editing the letters I wrote. He was very, very helpful, but not engaged in the sense that it was his sort of thing. Morris: Did he have some suggestions about organizing Ploughshares and managing it? Sally L: Not about organizing and managing it. because he wasn't familiar with foundations, either particularly. And you see. he never would run an organization. He was offered every press Harvard, Princeton, Columbia he never wanted to be an administrator ever. Morris: Wasn't he head of UC Press? Sally L: He was not the head, because he would never take the job. Morris: I see. Well, he certainly was thought of as Sally L: I know, but he wasn't, and he never would take the job running anything. He was very I don't know what the word would be he was always very much behind the scenes. Never would take a leadership job. But he was tremendously helpful, and he was also extremely helpful because there ws a lot of writing involved. He was retired, you see. Morris: So he had some extra time? 157 Sally L: Oh, yes. He had nothing but time, when we started Ploughshares. He was at home all the time Morris: That was the nuclear countdown press kit? Sally L! Morris : Sally L: Yes, we did four press kits, and actually we would like to do another if we had enough staff to produce it. It takes a lot of work. They're very, very successful. The first one we did was in 1982, which was As I talk to you,. Gabrielle, I could go on and on, because it seems there are so many funny stories. The reason we did all that business on verification, the very big item (you asked how the board makes decisions) was because of that Christmas call. Amazing. I said at the next meeting, "Listen, we've got to do something about verification of compliance with arms treaties." And then we certainly went out and found out what we best could do. But I told you about that. Now. the idea for that first press kit (which I did, actually, that first summer before Gloria Duffy came) came from a 2 a.m. conversation with Hamilton Fish, who at that time was publisher of the Nation. Ham said to me, "Notice that the small papers in this country have no stories about arms control and nuclear arms." I don't see small papers in this country. "Oh, really?" I said, about. I mean, it was not- And so that's how the press kit came A great light turned on in your head. Yes, and the board was just delighted to go ahead with it. Oh, thought it was a great idea, because we were you know Morris: Without a lot of superstructure. Sally L: Exactly. It is that kind of a board there's nothing they like better than to take a good idea and run with it. It was like when we were starting up I told you about that and decided we didn't need to hire a consultant to find out whether a foundation focussed on prevention of nuclear war was feasible. The board seems to be willing to raise the money, they have gotten the money. I don't think that has been a problem particularly, but we have never done things that way, or finding whether we really can be successful in putting out a press kit. At that time, by the way, the press kit was an unusual thing to do, and now many, many organizations have produced one like it since. They found it was very valuable. 158 Morris: Did Mr. Fish help with putting together the ? Sally L: Not at all. No. no. no. He was a journalist friend who sparked an idea and was totally immersed in his own projects. Morris: What did you do with it once you put together the press kit? Sally L: Oh, well, we found out where you get the list of all the small newspapers in the country. We hired Herb Gunther to find out. It's not hard to do. although the list wasn't that good. By the third time around we did a better, a more complete list. We improved things obviously. As a matter of fact, we did four, and one of them was done totally for us by the Arms Control Association. Morris: Mailed out to your list? Sally L: Mailed out to our list and their list and produced toally by them with our financial support and as a result of our suggestion. I mean, we discussed it with them, but they were Morris: You gave them a grant to do it? Sally L: They paid for half of it, and we paid for half of it, but they managed it. The other three we managed ourselves, although the last one, on the Comprehensive Test Ban, was not written by us. They've become better and better. We certainly would do it again. It's just that it takes so much work we just don't have enough staff. I was really only trying to give you an instance of the somewhat unpremediated way that process sometimes starts at Ploughshares. I'm embarrassed to say this because I'm sure most foundations consider this kind of spontaneity frivolous. But I can assure you that Lew and Tom Layton are very reliable folks, and the rest of the members of the board are in large part experienced in our field. So when they agree with enthusiasm, we go for it. Global Security; Future Plans Sally L: We have another one now that's really an amazing possibility. Tom and Lew are very excited about it. \ Morris: Do you want to talk about it? Sally L: I'll tell about it. but I don't know that it's going to happen. Last January, last winter. Gorbachev had a meeting of people to talk about global security. He asked 800 people from all over the 159 Sally L: world. Among them was David Hamburg, who is the head of the Carnegie Foundation. And Mr. Gorbachev himself, or Evgeny Velikov, said, or maybe David said. "How about having a foundation together, and we can both work on common problems. We can both put in money." Anyhow that is what is developing right now. Morris : A U. S.-U. S. S. R. foundation? Sally L: U. S. S.R., U.S.. and Sweden. I don't know the history of why Sweden got into it. They're talking about this. It may happen. If it happens, what they have been mentioning is that it might be done through Ploughshares. Well, when I told Lew this he said, "Of course, let's gol" So I don't know, Gabrielle, in mentioning this, this is just based on conjectural talk so far. One of our board members came in to talk about it, for he is very closely involved in the project. Carnegie and MacArthur are talking about putting up large funds after all the intricate protocol is worked out. In the interim, they're talking about running it through Ploughshares. We don't have enough money to be players in a game like that, but our set-up and our guidelines are such that it possibly could be run through us at the beginning. Morris: But you've got very good credentials in Sally L: In running it. Well, the fact that Carnegie, MacArthur, and the Soviets would say, "How about Ploughshares?" Little, teeny Ploughshares! Morris: That's pretty exciting. Sally L: Yes, so that is the way decisions get made around here. That's not true. Somebody comes up with an exciting idea, and if we can possibly make it work, we do. Now, there is another idea we had to pass up. There's probably more than one. There's one that's minor. Didn't work out. I couldn't get the staff to do it. I mean, I didn't even have enough money to hire staff to do it. 160 XIV ORGANIZATIONAL CONCERNS. PERSONAL PRINCIPLES Board Selection, Small Grants Committee, Washington Office Morris: But isn't it nice that there are these ideas around? Sally L: Ideas are cheap. As they used to say "creativity and a dime will buy you a cup of coffee." That's when I was in college and you could buy a cup of coffee for a dime. In this field, there isn't a day that you can't think of something if only you could manage to do it. But the exciting thing is, to me, that we have a board like this one that is so thoughtful and willing to take a chance. Morris: That may say something about the board selection . Sally L: It may, although that could be improved too. Morris: When there is going to be a vacancy on the board, does everybody sit around and make suggestions, or is that a separate committee. Sally L: Yes. [chuckles] We don't seem to have committees. It's the same people that are on the executive committee. We do have a so- called small-grants committee. I think I mentioned to you the way we're organized. There are four full board meetings a year, and four small-grants meetings, in which we give grants of $10,000 and under. Morris: Figuring that those are more urgently needed? Sally L: No, it's just that we don't like to have three months between distribution meetings. The projects are often timed to an immediate situation, one that may be critical in the international scene. The over-$10.000 [grants] are not necessarily more urgently given than the more modest grants. Morris: If you could, how would you improve the board selection? 161 Sally L: Oh, dear. I would improve the board a lot. Number one, I'd get another scientist who's really interested in arms control and global security. It's very difficult to get academics willing to give the necessary time, and most scientists are academics. Academics, though we need them desperately, aren't the best of board members, because their time has little flexibility because of teaching class or lecturing. You know, it takes a lot of time for board development. It really takes a lot of time. This is not like a museum board, which tends to involve people that are sort of half-retired or have so much money they don't need a job. With maybe two exceptions, everybody that's on the board is so busy that he or she really doesn't have a lot of time to spare. And yet they spend a lot of time on Ploughshares, take a lot of responsibility. The executive committee, for a long time, needed to meet every week, I think, or every other week maybe. Now it doesn't meet at regular times, but there are periods when they meet a lot more than most executive committees, I think. For administrative purposes, if nothing else, and, as well, for policy purposes. Morris: Is that why you decided to open a Washington office? Sally L: Well, the office happened to be in Washington. It didn't matter to us where in the East it was located. What we need is someone to help f undraise. purely for f undraising, although Wayne won't do all of that. It's impossible for us to do it only from San Francisco. Morris: In order to stay in touch with and cultivate ? Sally L: Yes. exactly, and mostly to find and meet with new prospects. Morris: The Washington location Sally L: Is only because the person happened to live in Washington, because it doesn't matter where the person lives as long as it's near New York and Boston. Morris: You think of that in terms of being accessible to policy-makers too. Sally L: But he wasn't a policy-maker. I mean, that isn't what he was hired to do. And Wayne is just as good at fifty miles from Boston as Steve was in Washington. Steve Coleman did not work out. It's an extremely difficult situation to work with someone across the country from the main office. That person is on his own, and the administration has to have complete trust that he's doing his job as agreed upon. Morris: I can believe it. 162 Sally L: It really is. It would work out much better now. Morris: Right. With somebody coming out of the home office here. Sally L: Well, because we trust Wayne and we know he is working for the benefit of Ploughshares, not to build his own prestige at our expense. He's not going to disappear for several weeks at a stretch. But it's difficult. I've been involved in other organizations, and Amnesty International's a great instance, especially when it was getting started. An institution where the head office is in one place and you've got people working for it in other places. It's awfully hard. Perhaps less so today, because of modern kinds of communication. Computers. I don't know how to use them, but we're putting in modems. Morris: All those marvelous computerized gadgets can contribute a lot. but it's different from being able to sit down and talk over a cup of coffee : what did that person really mean? Public Foundations; Increasing Individual Involvement Morris: We've come to the end of my immediate questions. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you think is important to share with people wanting to understand Ploughshares? Sally L: There are a couple of things that I would like to make clear about philanthropy as we see it two things. One is that there aren't many public foundations. In fact, I think they're considered an anathema. Other foundations are very kind to us, but I think it's because of our board members. Public foundations have been frowned on up until now in the Council of Foundations. But public foundations are extremely useful entities, I think, because they can get people involved in a serious way with an issue, or with a series of issues. Our purpose in starting, which sometimes we forget these days, is that we were really trying to get individuals who have no idea how to be involved, but want to play a responsible part in the struggle to end the threat of nuclear conflict. What's why we started Ploughshares. But it would be true of a lot of another instances. In public health, of course, there is a cancer fund, and a heart fund or something of that sort; that's why people give to those things, isn't it? But if you were dealing with a whole issue like environment, for instance; the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Fund, they are all trying to save the environment from all kinds of attacks and accidents. They don't cover only one environmental problem. So, for instance, I think it would be really useful to have a 163 Sally L : foundation like this one which could choose where the important things are happening in the whole environmental field. Obviously it would be important. Morris: That's an interesting idea, particularly if people are concerned, as Ploughshares is, to raise the level of debate and the visibility of the debate. Sally L: Yes, but also you think of all the environmental organizations of course. I want to support the issue. But what are the best movements, the best organizations that are doing something about trying to preserve against terrible odds the world's environment. And how do I know which are the most effective? The whole game of philanthropy, I think, is very individual. Someone who's serious about it is not just writing checks across the board. Yet it's so hard for a person to judge whether or not an organization is doing a good job and whether it's the most effective thing to do. Hunger is a similar thing, of course. I usually make most of my gifts to Oxfam, because I've happened to make a study of what group I think does the best in that field. But I really spend a lot of time on it, analyzing these things and talking to people about it. That's what foundations do after all, isn't it? But most foundations couldn't do that for you as an individual. Morris: Right. In fact, that's what they do in a variety of fields in order to do their grantmaking. Sally L: Yes. So I think it's a service to individuals, which is really why we started. Continuity and Effective Giving Sally L: The other point is this, and I mentioned it at the outset the thing about leaving a bequest. If you wanted to leave your money to alleviate world hunger, say, maybe it would be easier, because there are institutions that have proved their efficacy over many years' time. I don't know. But really it would be better to give it to a foundation that's going to make wise decisions on what's most effective in the field of your choice year after year. Morris: Rather than giving it to one organization? 164 Sally L: They might get a terrible board of directors or somebody absconds with the money. Who knows? You could give money to a community foundation, except that they are all over the lot and most of them don't make grants outside of their own community. Morris: Yes, they receive money from any sources, but they also respond to many things in the community. Sally L: And I don't like the local community foundation. That's where I took my money from to start Ploughshares. Before then. I gave my money through the San Francisco Foundation. But if I weren't alive to say exactly where that money should go. I would have to put my trust in a board of trustees in whose judgment I don't necessarily have faith. And you could say the same for a public foundation of the kind that this is. Why should you trust this board of trustees? Or why should you trust the next generation of trustees? The only thing is you've stated the exact purposes of your bequest very tightly. Morris: I suppose you could leave a lengthy letter, too, about what you thought about the role of the board and what sort of people they should be. Sally L: I guess, but what influence could you have? They might turn the idea on its head. I'd hate to serve on a board whose activities and point of view was governed by someone no longer extant someone with whom you could not reason and discuss. And what about changing times? The strength and the purpose of a community board is to be broad; and if somebody has a specific area that they are concerned about, whether it be peace or health or encouraging young artists, one could specify that in leaving money to a community foundation. But as I said before, if one is interested in a national or international problem one can't leave one's money to a community foundation and have control on how it's spent. They don't make grants that way unless you exactly designate it. You know how it works. I'm sure. For instance, they have to vote whether you can give your money to even such national organizations as the [NAACP] Legal and Educational Defense Fund, if it has its main offices in New York. It has to be approved by the board. When my first husband died, a fund was set up for him from which to make grants in the field of what was then called "race relations." The directors have no idea how to give money outside the Bay Area. It is not their business to do so. Let's say that your main area of concern is civil rights and you believe that the organization which has most impact and responsible history is the Legal Defense Fund. Even so. you might not want your money to be distributed to it after your death, for even the best of organizations do not necessarily continue in 165 Sally L: their leadership role for year after year. In the six years since the start of Ploughshares we have seen that happen in the arms- control field over and over again. And what could one expect the distribution committee of a community fund to do in that case? It doesn't have either the responsibility or the knowledge to take your bequest away from one organization and give it to another that is currently doing better work. So there is a very definite role for the kind of foundation that Ploughshares is. Women and Charitable Giving Sally L: With another life to live I would spend a lot of time prosylitiz ing women about taking charge of their own resources and making their own philanthropic decisions. Morris: That's what the Women's Foundation in San Francisco has been about. Sally L: Not really. It raises money principally from women for women, but it is raised in small amounts from individuals except in exceptional cases. And. of course, it is also supported by foundations. I'm talking about women of means making their own choices on substantial contributions. Most of the time, even today, women leave it to their attorneys, their bankers, their husbands or brothers to make choices in charity. I sometimes laugh bitterly when I see a men's gym named after a woman or some such. Actually, there are very few wealthy women who decide where their money should go, and their names are known all over the country. Morris: That's true. Does that go back to how women have been educated? Sally L: That's right. Well, I sometimes talk about that a little bit. It is in a tiny, teeny, teeny, teeny way that I am a role model in this regard; but I don't have a fortune, so my influence is extremely limited. It has affected some people's thinking on it. Because why shouldn't a woman make up her own mind? Morris: In other words, in speaking to organizations ? Sally L: Or more frequently in speaking to individuals. I have on occasion been asked by women who are thinking of setting up a foundation who are looking for suggestions Obviously I can't tell them how to go about it, but the thinking that yes, how to think about it, that it's possible to do. 166 Morris: And the trial and error of the work. Sally L: That's right, and to do it, for heaven's sake, rather than to set up a lot of institutionalizing. Morris: Amongst your own personal friends and acquaintances, do you find that more women are beginning to think in terms of taking charge of their own inheritances or putting a word into their husbands' thinking about what to do with the family assets? Sally L: The people that I know socially are not very much involved in these things, oddly enough, or those that are involved don't have any money. So it's people I've met through Ploughshares, and I have met and made some very good friends people who do have money. And we've talked about it a lot, and I think some of them do- Morris: And their consciousness has been raised? Sally L: This much [holds two fingers close together]. Yes. Morris: For some people handling money is as complicated as trying to prevent nuclear war, I think. Sally L: It needn't be. But why is it complicated? Morris: So you put all your money into somebody's recommendations for stocks, and while you're out playing golf, the stock market falls on its face, and what have I done to my children? Sally L: Yes. well, that's right. That's true. Handling money in that sense, but handling money from the point of view but you wouldn't do any better, except if you slept with it under your mattress, for instance, or if you had gotten out of the stock market as Sarah Lawrence did four days before the crash. Morris: Did they? How clever. Sally L: I didn't. It doesn't matter. Because I don't handle my own financial affairs. Morris: But you can spend as much time tracking stocks as in studying organizations to give money to. Sally L: Other people only do that. Isn't that right? Only do that. Only. only, only do that, and have for years. Men mostly. But what I'm talking about is deciding how to give away your money, not how to invest it. Many people make charity a very, very complicated issue. And I don't see why it should be complicated, do you? Mrs. Lilienthal, about 1968 in the courtyard of her San Francisco home. 167 Morris: No, It would seem to be something that would come from the heart and be worth some thought and consideration. Sally L: And enjoyment. It should be a pleasurable activity, don't you think? Morris : Thank you very much. Sally L: Thank you. I talked your ear off. [End of interview] Transcriber: Melanie Moorhead Final Typists: Chris Fenner, Keiko Sugimoto 168 TAPE GUIDE Sally Lllienthal Interview 1: August 17, 1987 tape 1, side A tape 1, side B tape 2, side A tape 2, side B Interview 2: August 27, 1987 tape 3, side A tape 3, side B tape 4, side A tape 4, side B Interview 3: September 29, 1987 tape 5, side A tape 5, side B tape 6, side A tape 6, side B Interview 4: October 13, 1987 tape 7, side A tape 7, side B tape 8, side A [side B not recorded] Interview 5: November 12, 1987 tape 9, side A tape 9, side B tape 10, side A tape 10, side B tape 11, side A [side B not recorded] 1 1 10 19 29 31 31 40 49 51 56 56 66 76 87 96 96 104 115 126 126 135 145 155 165 APPENDIX Brief biography "Ploughshares' never-ending crusade," Caroline Drewes, San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle. November 10, 1985 170 "Peace: A Role for Philanthropy," Sally Lilienthal, Women and Foundations /Corporate Philanthropy, Spring /Summer 1986 172 "World Class, Sally Lilienthal: Turning swords into ploughshares," Albert Haas, Jr., San Francisco Magazine, July 1987 17A 169 March 1987 Further Information: Shahnaz Taplin (415) 931-4613 Maureen Anderson (415) 775-2244 Sally Lilienthal Sally Lilienthal is President and founder of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grantmaking foundation dedicated to preventing nuclear war through arms control leading to -disarmament. In 1986 the foundation disbursed $904,000 to 105 groups and individuals working toward global security. Since its founding in 1981, Ploughshares has made grants of over $2,500,000. Mrs. Lilienthal founded the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery at Fort Mason in 1978 and served as its director until 1983. She was a professional sculptor for fifteen years and has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission and the board of the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1984 the Art Institute awarded her an honorary doctorate for her work in championing the rights of artists. For fifteen years she has served as a trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1973_ Lilienthal was acting Chair of Amnesty International/USA, after five" years as national Vice Chair, and for seven years she served as the coordinator of the Western regional office in San Francisco. Lilienthal was on the board of the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, and was founder and Chair of the Northern California Coiunittee of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1971-1977. She has also served on the boards of the Women's Campaign Fund, the San Francisco Bar Association Foundation, and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently on the board of the Center for International Policy. Lilienthal received an award for Exceptional Commitment to Working for Social Change from the National Organization for Women in 1985, and the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Distinguished Woman award in 1965. Mrs. Lilienthal v/as born in 1919 in Portland, Oregon and has lived in San Francisco for more than fifty years. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1940 and is the mother of five children. Ploughshares Fund Fort Mason, San Francisco, Ca. 94123 415/775-2244 170 Ploughshares' never-ending crusade It's a 'United Way' for the world disarmament movement By Caroline Drewet or nc EXAMVCR STAFF APOINTILIST painting of an infinite sea, a sea without any horizon, covers one wall of Sally Ulienthal's offices at Fort Mason. The work, by Tom Smith, has movement, a timeless quality. One might, in a flight of fancy, step into the painting, immerse oneself in the swells that must go on forever as, indeed. Sally Lilienthal has immersed herself in the endless work that is done here in these rooms, work that must go on forever. The presence of the painting is symbolic. She is tall, with narrow bones and luminous gray eyes. A woman of passion, purpose and, one suspects, limited patience, Sally Lilienthal is the founder and president of Ploughshares, a publicly supported chan uble foundation established four years ago to build a constituency of donors concerned with world security and the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust. The fund is unique, those involved believe it is an idea that has never been implemented before. It is also, its founder has always felt, a little difficult to explain. Ploughshares is not a grass roots effort; it is once removed from action. "We fund, we don't do." she points out. "We are also the first foundation to focus solely on the prevention of nuclear war, on this single issue. Ploughshares to pledged to peace for perpetu ity." Functioning much like the United Way, the fund receives donations and disburses grants to theoretical, technological, educational and legislative projects. Grants have ranged from $500 to Alexander Sakha- rov for an article analyzing the Soviet withdrawal from the Olympic Games to $100,000 for a two-year examination of the means of verifying compliance with arms agreements. Ploughshares supported this year's meetings of American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts to discuss joint peaceful space exploration. A grant paid last year's airfare for Yale University students attempting to resume an ongoing exchange with Moscow Univer sity after a 20-year lapse. Sally Ulienthal's diplomacy is also personal. On Nov. 19 and 20, she will attend the summit meeting in Geneva as the only San Francisco member of a private diplomatic delegation called Women for a Meaningful Summit. (Among others are Coretta Scott King, Bella Abzug and actress Jane Alexander). The coalition has requested formal meetings with the heads of state, with Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev. Its primary purpose, consistent with the work of Ploughshares, will be to urge both countries to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Lilienthal started her fund with such local leaders as William Matson Roth and Lewis Butler, former _ assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. r nd such experts on international affairs as former Salty Ullenthal co-founded Ploughshares In 1081 to fund peace projects Please see PEACE. S-4 171 PEACE From S-1 t - - diplomat John Stewart Service, and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ow en Chamberlain. George Kennan, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and onetime ambassa dor to the Soviet Union, assumed an active role when he became the first of the fund's distinguished list of advisers. During its brief life, the organi zation has been increasingly effec tive. In 1981-82, Ploughshares had 62 donors and awarded 29 grants, totalling $150,000. At the end of the fourth fiscal year, there have been 950 donors and 86 grants, totalling $625,672. "Until Ploughshares, there has been no way for the average person to determine which group or indi vidual in the field of arms control is the most effective," Lilien thai says. She feels this is her foundation's major accomplishment "Everyone is afraid of nuclear war or accident But people are confused about what to do. We have been able to provide one very real way for indi viduals to know their dollars arc being used most effectively." The name Ploughshares was sug gested by one of her five children. It is from Isaiah. "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; na tion shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." Sally was graduated from Sarah Lawrence and, during World War II, worked for the Office of War Information in the China depart ment Her immediate superior, New Yorker Philip Lilienthal, had been her first love and she, his. A long, long time later, after both had lost spouses through death, he was to become her third husband. Then, after 14 years of marriage to each other, Phil Lilienthal died of cancer a year and a half ago. Intense, determined and yet with a lighthearted side and a reti cent side she says she simply cannot make a speech Sally Lil ienthal is one of those people with the lovely ability to pick up and go on. She has a sense of purpose, she knows who she is and what must be done. And what a career she has had. Art and social change, civil rights and human rights, have been the strong threads in her life. She has been 1 vastly effective in both worlds, while protesting that she has had no real "expertise." She was a serious sculptor until 15 years ago, when she gave it up to concentrate on Amnesty Interna tional/USA, becoming vice chair man of that organization. Seven years ago, she started the San Fran cisco Museum of Modern Art's Rental Gallery at Fort Mason. Last year, the Art Institute awarded her an honorary doctorate for her work in championing the rights of artists. Her contributions are much, much more. But In Ploughshares she has found the ultimate cause. What else, she asks, is there? jExaminer * * * A section of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle/ Sunday, November 10, 1985 /SECTION GUEST ARTICLE PEACE: A ROLE FOR PHILANTHROPY SALLY LILIENTHAL. TRUSTEE PLOUGHSHARES FUND Editor's note Sally Lihenthal's article was adapted from her presentation to WAF/CP's ninth annual meeting. I think I have never met a woman who goes through one day ol her life without thinking about the threat of nuclear extinc tion. But the average woman may push back the fear because she feels she cannot do anything about it. She has been conned into thinking that, because she is not a tech nologist and because she is emotional about the destruction of the human race, she can not deal with the abstruse problems of world security. Military strategists cannot be emotional. What can we do, then, if we are not so- called experts? Experts in this field, I would remind you, are 99 percent male Congress- woman Pat Schroeder recently said: "the military establishment only defines as experts those people who agree with them." The fact is we are made to think that if we are not tech nologists whatever that means we can not deal with the problems of world security; that only technologists know the real facts about weapons systems and facts about mili tary strategy. I urge you not to accept that viewpoint. Wars are about conflict, not about laser beams, not even about throw weights. Conflict resolution is of interest to many foun dations today in the management of all kinds of disputes. Conflict between nations is usually based on political differences. The deep conflict be- 172 tween ourselves and the Soviet Union is political, not technological. Social, economic and ethical differences cause our hostile dis cord, not the arms themselves. Do we as women know as much about society, about economics and ethics as male experts? I do not think I have to argue that point to women and men in philanthropy. "". There are many opportunities for women to take personal responsibility for helping to avoid nuclear war and to make their work count in the struggle to end the threat of nuclear war. There are many organizations and alliances that need both followers and leaders. Also, there are opportunities that do not depend on organizations, but are acti vated by an individual's personal energy together with her identity as a woman either socially or professionally. Indeed, many of the most active and effective spokeswomen in this field use their professional base as the instrument for leadership. Helen Caldicott speaks as a pediatrician. Barbara Wiedner, with a large following among elders, speaks as a grandmother from Sacramento, Cali fornia. Joan Boakaer speaks to moms and dads all over the country as a former teacher and she is one of many. Jane Alexander and Joanne Woodward command audiences and the press because they are well known actresses who use their professional skills in pleading for peace. You do not have to be a scientist or strategist like Ruth Adams, Anne Cahn or Randall Forsberg. or a Congress- person like Barbara Boxer to do something significant. If you are not a physicist, a trained political scientist or a member of Congress, there is a profession you could choose as a base from which to have an impact. That is, of course, our profession, philanthropy. We have the power as members of the founda tion world that is given to few other women. We can contribute to changa That is our mandata "It >-OUNDATION CCNttb 312 SUTTEH STREET. ~c CLOOP SAN FRANCI6CO OA 94106 about supporting research and public educ tion on the dumping of nuclear waste? Since the 1940s, over 45 million cubic feet of radio active landfills near nuclear test sites and near research and manufacturing facilities are major hazards to people living nearby. Cancer and birth defects are considerations, too, for foundations involved with public health that probably are not set up to fund anti-war programs per sa Dedicated to doing good in the public in terest, with your mandate to help the poor and disadvantaged: is your foundation con cerned, for instance, about the 29 percent cut in the school lunch program? When you protest the cut in support for the handi capped or the welfare mother, you and your directors are not overtly working within the peace movement, but you are responding to the human cost of military expenditures. The welfare mother's life may well depend on a miniscule technological decision or whim about Star Wars and its funding. In 1986, 27 percent of total federal outlays was spent on national defense. Five years from now, one-third of all federal outlays may go to defense. What will that do to human services? Working in a foundation you might ask: "what can I do when my foundation or insti tution eschews politics and does not support advocacy as such?" Just as you did with other national problems, you can provide citizens with resources to form and act on their own judgements about military spend ing. It is your traditional policy to inform the citizenry, which, after all, is the engine that drives public policy fueled by your dollars for your own humane purposes. / wonder how many foundations here give grants to education in the belief that children, if they survive, should be prepared at school and at home for the problems of a nuclear world? We support teacher training and cur riculum development. We help teachers to loughshare* has only one mission. Its one fund- Ing program Is arms control leading to disarmament. It Is not woman's rights, but we would be falling our contribu tors and be delinquent In our duties If we did not seek to support the women of this country for their potential force has not been adequately tapped. Foundations as institutions tend to deal with the world as if it were a pre-nuclear world. They deal with problems of health and poverty as if the nuclear bomb had no bear ing on these issues. Peace is considered politics, politics is not, yet the two are inex tricably entwined. What I suggest to you are not peace is sues per sa but money spent wisely on grants in your program area that would have an effect on slowing the arms raca In giving you only a few examples. I am' sure you will think of others that more closely fit your foun dation. First, foundations that give grants to reserve and enhance the environment: how encourage school boards, both state and local, to include nuclear subjects in the cur riculum. We have supported the develop ment of packets prepared for school children about Russian history and culture and me distribution of educational films and slide shows. And what about student aid 9 That if certainly of concern to most foundations Un der Gramm-Rudman that is being pulled way back in order to fund the military, another ex ample of the human cost of nuclear weapons CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 Hf/ 173 PEACE: A ROLE FOR PHILANTHROPY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 that must be of concern to philanthropists. Here I would like to tell you briefly what Ploughshares is doing to specifically expand the efforts of women toward nuclear dis armament. Last year we started a program called "Women's Leadership Development." Toward this program we allotted 14 percent of our total budget. Let me mention a few of the grants. There has been considerable interest in a group called Women for a Meaningful Sum mit which took 35 women to Geneva. There, by good fortune, we had a meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev. I think this grant actually did help to develop women's leadership. Many of us have had a fresh op portunity to tell people that, as women, we insist that our government negotiate in a serious manner. We made a grant to Women, USA to sup port a media professional to create speak ing and writing opportunities for women listed in a new and growing directory of women foreign policy specialists. We en courage proposals from all over the United States and abroad to find relatively undis covered talent. A recent example is Marilyn Waring, a former member of the New Zealand Parliament. She brought down her government with one vote over the policy of harboring nuclear armed ships in New Zealand. Currently, she is on an extensive campus tour in this country. We fund both the political work and the media investigation done by Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (W.A.N.D.). Today, W.A.N.D. is as strong as any membership group in the field of arms control and probably as influential as any in dealing with Congress. We fund Peace Links, the group started by Betty Bumpers with the help of 90 other Con gressional wives. "Be a good citizen, be a patriot and wake up," says Bumpers. With this pitch she has stirred to action members of garden clubs, Junior Leagues and profes sional clubs, particularly in the Southern United States. Last winter we funded the travel of mainstream Soviety women who visited their counterparts in Southern com munities with Peace Links acting as hostess. J here are many op portunities for women to take personal responsibility for helping to avoid nuclear war and to make their work count In the struggle to end the threat of nuclear war. WRLTOASS BY ALBERT HAAS, JR. Sally Lilienthal: Turning swords Into ploughshares When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Cor- bachev held their first sum mit meeting in Geneva in November 1985, Sally Lilienthal was there. As one of a small group of Amer ican women who made up an unofficial delegation, she had a forty-five minute meeting with Gorbachev. When Reagan and Gor- bachev met at Reykjavik last October, Lilienthal was pres ent again. While the summit was a failure, it had a positive effect on her Ploughshares Fund, the United Way of the peace movement. Founded in the living room of Lilienthal's Pacific Heights home in 1981, the Plough shares Fund is a publicly sup- ported foundation that calls for arms control leading to nu clear disarmament. Since the Iceland impasse, Plough- shares' efforts to provide money to groups working to wind down the nuclear arms race has re ceived increasing national response. Be- cause only one percent of the philanthropic dollar is thought to be going toward pre- venting nuclear war, the relatively small Ploughshares has become one of the big players. And its potential is enormous. But what's a socially prominent, wealthy San Francisco woman, with easy access to countless pleasant and personally re warding civic activities, doing in the vanguard of the peace movement? Didn't former Chief of Staff Donald Regan sug gest that the average woman cares more ubuul diamonds than social issues? Lilienthal. sixty-eight, says that women are far more concerned and informed about the need lo avoid a nuclear holocaust than many men realize. The experts virtually all men who plan nuclear war strategy may impress one another with the irrhiKMTdiir jargon they pass bock ami lurid across the lunch table. Ixit one lor* not need to l>e a technocrat lo deal with wiirUI security. "Wars arr alxiul run- . 1 flict," Lilienthal says, "not about laser beams, not even about 'throw weights.' " Ploughshares Fund, she says, is the most important cause she has ever un dertaken. "It always bothered me that my participation in the peace movement had been confined to providing financial support." Through Ploughshares. Lilien thal is proving that when informed, highly qualified men and women team up to do something, even something as difficult as working for nuclear disarmament, big things can happen. Lilienthal's role in whatever she un dertakes is never passive. Lawyer Wil liam Coblentz remembers working with her at the Northern California Commit tee, which raises money to support the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, during the late seventies. "When Sally makes up her mind lo do something, she really sinks her (eeth into it. Like a bulldog." Then he adds what others say in one way or another. "She has an audilorv s all right, but sometimes she turns it off." Lilienthal readily admits that she can be impa tient, even blunt. She sets high standards for herself and oth ers. With a low tolerance for mediocre performances, she does not suffer fools gladly. She is, however, original and creative in her endeavors. Her commitment to Ploughshares was nationally recognized in March when she won the $10,000 Robert W. Scrivner Award from the Council on Foundations during its annual meeting. The award is made to the leader, chosen from among 1.800 foundation lead ers, who responded most cre atively to an important social problem. Lilienthal says she will use the money for her first trip to the Soviet Union, where she will discuss global secu rity matters from a bilateral point of view. "So many people are scared to death about what's happen ing, but haven't known what to do about it." Lilienthal says. "Until Ploughshares, there was no way for the average person to deter mine which groups or individuals in the field of arms control were the most effec tive. We perform that function. We give people the chance to support vision grounded in reality." Ploughshares' board of directors and its separate group of advisers are uncom monly qualified, with some of the most prominent Bay Area figures among them. The fourteen board members include Owen Chamberlain. Nobel laureate Berkeley physicist: William \latson Roth, developer of Chirardel I i Square: and Lewis H. Butler, chair of (he board, and former assistant secretary of Health. Education and Welfare. Ploughshares' twenty-three advisers include Glenn Seaburg. former chairman of the Atomic Energy Com mission and former chancellor of LC Berkeley; Rolxrrt Guheen. former prei- ilenl of Princeton University: and John Stewart Service, a career diplomat. i.n\TIM t.lin\ I'v.t. "I '"> -tN IX \M ! II Ull.l/IM II II H7 WORLD CLASS CO\TI\LKl) I- RIM PMK