This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Marge Jackson.  She was born Margaret Kurschat in the town of Memel in 1940.  Today, Memel is in Lithuania, but it was, then, still part of Germany. However, during World War II, it became occupied by the Soviet Union, which absorbed it.  Her family then moved to Germany, relocating to Hanover where some of her mother’s relatives lived.  Her father, who was training to be a butcher when World War II began, was drafted into the German army.  He was killed in Yugoslavia when Marge was two years old.  During this very difficult time, as bombs were being dropped all over the parts of Europe occupied by the Nazis, Marge’s mother did not send her to school.  She didn’t start attending school until third grade, after the war ended.  Towards the end of the war, her mother met a man who would become her second husband.  He was a Lithuanian, and this was a great advantage to the family as it qualified them to live in a displaced persons camp.  Marge remembers entering the camp and thinking that it was fabulous because it had food and clothing and all these things that had been so hard for her mother to acquire.  This man had an older brother who had moved to the United States before World War II and served in the United States Army.  He lived in New Jersey, and this brother had some connections that helped her family get a visa to enter the United States as agricultural laborers.  They took a ship from Bremerhaven, stopped in Venezuela, and then entered the United States in New Orleans. After a thirty day wait there, they took a train to 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia and then on to Turnersville, New Jersey.  This was in 1950, and Marge was very young.  She lived in Turnersville for a short period, then Camden for a year, and eventually settled in Grenloch in Gloucester Township, Camden County.  She attended several different public schools and graduated from Triton High School in 1959.  She enrolled at Glassboro State College in the Fall of 1959, graduating four years later where she had majors in social studies, English, and secondary education.  She began teaching history at West Deptford High School in the Fall of 1963.  She taught there for three years, then returned to Triton High School where she attended in high school.  From there, she took a job at Highland High School, teaching history there until she retired in 1996.  In 1983 or so, a new state initiative required that the state’s high schools to name a teacher of the year.  Marge won Highland’s first award in this program.  Among those that won this honor throughout the state, New Jersey selected two individuals to participate in a national conference hosted by State Department in Washington, D.C.  Marge was one of the two selected and represented New Jersey.  In the many years since retiring, she participated in various voluntary organizations.  joined the Black Horse Pike Regional School District Board of Education and travelled extensively. She also participated in the activities of the Delta Kappa Gamma – Iota chapter, a professional society of women educators.  Because her husband served in the Marine Corps, she continues to do work with veterans today, helping those who have struggled to reintegrate into society after their time of service.

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Once my family reached the United States, my main goal was to assimilate.  I didn’t want anyone to know about my German background.  I worked hard to not only learn English but to lose my accent. There was much anti-German sentiment when I was young. I remember being asked to read some German in elementary school, and I told the teacher I couldn’t read it, even though I was, of course, fluent in German. 

David Towers in my junior year at Triton High School inspired me to want to go to college and to study history.  I had always been good in mathematics, perhaps because it was easy to transition from my German mathematics instruction to my American math classes.  It was not as different as the other subjects.  However, I always loved history, especially the parts of it that had to do with international relations.

I never considered any other college than Glassboro State College.  It was strictly economics.  I had no other option.  I could not afford any private college or even to live on campus. So, it was either GSC or no college at all. I commuted from home all four years, carpooling with my fellow high school classmate Tim Lamey, another social studies major.

I had good study habits, and I was a good student before I arrived on campus, but Glassboro State opened up the world to me.  We had courses on all these parts of the world that my high school education had largely ignored, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. 

I remember taking Sidney Kessler’s course on the history of the Middle East.  I was embarrassed that I did not even really know where the Middle East was located when I started that course.  I remember having to really listen closely to Mr. Kessler since all these places and events were so new to me.  I had learned about the ancient world and Mesopotamia, but I had learned nothing about the recent or contemporary Middle East.

Dr. Kennedy taught the Far East.  He was a historian who knew the past, but he was very much interested in what was going on in the contemporary Asian world.  I believe that he had been a television news anchor in Peoria, Illinois.  He had a commanding presence, but he was not overbearing.  He was just someone that you respected because of his obvious knowledge and demeanor.  We learned much about China and Taiwan.  He covered Japan and Korea as well.  He did not focus on Vietnam, as it was not yet nearly as important it would be after I graduated.  Yet, he still covered Vietnam so that when it did emerge in the news after the Gulf of Tonkin episode, we who took him knew more about it than most people.

I had Dr. Porterfield for a course on African history.  I remember that it was very challenging because all of the information was so new.  Moreover, it was a time of great change in Africa due to decolonization. I remember Dr. Porterfield having us change our previous class notes because of revolts that overthrew colonial governments and established new countries that had not existed when the course began.

Dr. Harold Wilson was extremely knowledgeable and thorough as a teacher. He paid special attention to details.  I remember that as he was lecturing, he would tell us to write “TQ” on the margin, indicating that this bit of information was a potential test question.  Another important aspect of Dr. Wilson’s teaching was his advice about how we should comport ourselves in the larger world once we graduated.  He told us that society would expect different things from us once we were college graduates.  This was still a time when only a small percentage of the population went to university.  One example of this that I remember had to do with occasions in the future where we might, because of our college degree, be expected to offer grace at a function.  He said in those cases that they would not want us to give the standard grace that we offered at our nightly meals.  They would expect something different, reflecting our college education.  He then gave us some examples of what to say.  As you can see, he was trying to prepare us for more than just teaching.  I remember that at the end of the semester he invited the entire history class over to his home in Pitman.  It was the only time that any professor at Glassboro State College invited me over to their home.  I believe that his objective for this evening was to further our education outside of the classroom. He wanted to help us understand what one should do when invited to such events and, also, by example, how we might host similar events in the future when we became teachers.  I think that Dr. Wilson did this because he knew that almost all us at Glassboro State were the first in our families to go to college.  He certainly knew that, for most of us, our knowledge of middle-class society and the larger world was limited.

I remember Dr. Marvin Creamer for two reasons.  First, he greatly expanded my geographic knowledge of the world. There were many parts of the world that I knew too little about.  He used this technique of integrating economics into his teaching of geography.  He explained how different countries produced different types of goods for the world economy.  For me, it made it much easier to understand and remember.  These countries produced rice, these countries produced cotton, these countries manufactured industrial goods, etc.  It not only helped you remember the country, but it taught you something more about how the world worked.  Second, his classes were peppered with his love for navigation.  His excitement was contagious.  As he discussed how to navigate without instruments, he was able to transport us to these earlier times when humans accomplished great things without our modern technology.

Dr. Vivian Zinkin was an excellent professor of English literature.  She was the best English teacher that I ever had, from high school through college.  She had extraordinarily high standards.  She gave two grades, A or F.  She believed that poor grammar or poor style was a product of carelessness.  She believed that if students focused sufficiently, they could write and speak properly. This made her unpopular with those students who struggled with communication.  I remember that a fellow student talking to her about her desire to write and speak correctly.  She explained that she had been brought up in a neighborhood where she did not learn proper grammar.  Dr. Zinkin explained that she understood and acknowledged that her weakness in this area was not her fault.  But she said that she was just going to have to work harder as she still needed to learn proper grammar as she wanted to be an English teacher.  I felt so much sympathy for this student as I had struggled with being a non-native English speaker for so many years.  I wish that I knew what happened to this student, if Dr. Zinkin’s high standards helped or hurt her in the end, but I do not know.

I believe that I was more sensitive to discrimination than others of my age.  The Nazi Party’s horrible treatment of Jews and others was a shadow over all of us who came from Germany.  There were still many who held negative attitudes towards Germans and the Japanese when I was young.  This was one reason I wanted to assimilate so much.  In any event, I had one very shocking interaction with American race relations during my very first weeks in the United States.  Although our final destination was in New Jersey, my family had to enter via New Orleans and stay in Mississippi for at least thirty days as a result of our visa.  During this time, I attended a local elementary school in Alligator, Mississippi.  Of course, the school and almost everything else in Mississippi was segregated.  While I don’t remember all of this clearly now, there was one moment during this time that has stayed sharp in my mind all these years later.

In Germany, we had school on Saturday mornings, so I went to walk to school one Saturday morning.  We were living in a sharecropper’s house, and we had a neighbor family named the Scalas who lived near us.  They were also European refugees.  Mrs. Scala, who was name was Elfreda, saw me walking to school and ran after me.  She caught up to me just as I had reached the top of a bridge across Alligator Creek.  I still remember this moment so well because there were a number of white boys beating up a lone African American boy on the other side of the bridge.  I did not know why they were doing that.  Elfreda told me that there was no school on Saturday, and we turned around and went home.  Later, she told me that they were probably beating him up because African Americans were not supposed to be on the bridge at the same time as a white person.  While this bothered me quite a bit, especially because I don’t think there was even any way that he could have seen me when he started on the bridge as it had such a rise that one could not see to the other side until you got to the top.  I had a hard time comprehending this situation and did not fully understand it completely for several years.

I only remember Mr. Lester Bunce a little bit.  He was low key and gentle.  His classes had no tension whatsoever, but he had neat little stories that I still remember today.  It is strange the things that I recall.  For example, I remember him telling us about the high incidence of kidney problems among bus drivers.  I also remember him telling us about how teachers were emperors of their classrooms, which led them sometimes to have anxiety on the one day a year they were invaded and observed by their supervisors.

Professor Livingston started Operation Uganda, but he really gave it to us as students to run.  I liked Professor Livingston so much because he had an uncanny ability to assess people’s talents. He would select tasks for us that were perfectly calibrated so as to be something that we could do but at the same time enough of a challenge that we would grow from the experience.  It was like he pushed us into the water and forced us to learn to swim.  I remember thinking, “how can he ask me to do this?  I have never done anything like this before?”  Because I had not grown up in the United States, I did not know lots of things in popular culture that others knew.  Even after I arrived in New Jersey, I was focused so much on acculturating and learning the English language that I didn’t pay too much attention to the larger world.  What this meant was that there were many things that I simply did not know.  Sometimes, Professor Livingston would say, “Check to see if this person can attend.”  I would nod and agree, but I had no idea about the individual, even though it was clear he thought I would know them.  So, I had to go over to the library to look them up.  I am not sure, but I somehow think that Professor Livingston somehow knew that my role in writing these notes would be just what I needed to grow.  In any event, the entire experience was life changing.  I have loved volunteering ever since, and it all began with Operation Uganda. 

I was transformed by Operation Uganda.  It has been a long time so I don’t remember as much as I wish I did. However, in the Spring of 1962, I was part of the International Relations Club which visited the United Nations in New York City.  The students on this trip were my close friends, including Betty Bowe and Mary Olive.  I think Jack Gillespie may also have been on this trip, but I am not sure.  I also remember Barbara Hafenmaier, but I can’t remember if she was on the trip.  In any event, on the return from New York City, we decided that we really wanted to do something to make the world a better place. I can’t remember how it all came together, but I am confident that it was Professor Livingston who suggested that we support Uganda in its transition to independence.  We loved his idea of helping to build a school, stocking it with books and equipment, and staffing it with volunteer teachers.

I remember there were many informal meetings at first.  These sometimes took place in the Co-Op.  We brainstormed about what we would need, who to contact, where we would store supplies, who would take on what tasks, set up a tentative schedule, and so on.  We were doing all this while still going to class and all of the other activities of our lives.

As best I remember, my main role was to write letters for the project. I wrote to politicians, local businesses, and local schools.  I corresponded with donors and replied to queries from those interested in the project.

Once donations started coming in, I remember being amazed by the generosity of our donors.  One moment that has stayed with me was an unusual one because it did not involve used books.  It was the donation of 2,000 brand new ballpoint pens.  I remember thinking how much these would cost and being just really taken that someone who make this gift to our project.

I wish that I remembered more of what we did during this period. I know that we met with Governor Richard Hughes, but I no longer have specific memories of the meeting much to my frustration. In any event, I also know that we did a ton to prepare for the big event in October, but my specific memories of it are gone sadly.

I also know that we travelled to Washington, D.C. to speak to politicians for their support, but I likewise have little memory of this. One thing just came to me.  One of the politicians that we met was Sargent Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law.  I was reserved, as he was going around and shaking hands. Betty, however, was at ease, and introduced herself with confidence.  She was a perfect leader for our project because of this ability. 

Betty took two trips to Uganda.  The first one took place in October of 1962.  For whatever reason, I don’t remember the details on this trip though I know that she went on Air Force One as part of the official United States delegation to participate in the transfer of power from Britain to the new Ugandan government.  I remember her second trip, sometime in the summer of 1963, much better.  This was the one that she took so she could fulfill her pledge to teach in Kampala for two years.  I went with Betty, her mother, her father, and her sister Janet.  I believe that Mary Olive was there too, though I am not certain.  Such trips were very uncommon at this time.  Most young, unmarried women did not travel alone even to other parts of the United States much less to newly independent countries in Africa.  I remember that everyone was concerned about Betty’s safety and her welfare.  She was travelling with the East Africa Teacher’s group, which was more unknown to us than the United States government or even the newly formed Peace Corps.  This anxiety was, however, strictly beneath the surface.  In our conversations, we all tried to be as upbeat and positive as possible despite our worries.

Once Betty arrived in Kampala, we only communicated through letters.  We wrote to each other regularly.  I remember her telling me about her many experiences in Africa.  If I remember correctly, and I need to check as I think I kept those letters somewhere, she struggled to a certain extent as a woman.  I think that she would have had an easier time as a man, that her students would have been more initially accepting of her.  I am also certain that she told me she played on a field hockey team.  I also think that she hiked Mount Kilimanjaro.  I also remember my writing to her about local reaction to the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy.  I can remember telling her about how quiet it was during his funeral, as everyone was watching. I remember having to make a trip to the store during the funeral, and I was the only one driving on the Black Horse Pike, an unprecedented experience in the middle of the day.  I believe Betty later wrote to me that she had shared my letter with a local newspaper that had printed it so that those living in Uganda had some sense of American reaction to Kennedy’s death.  When Betty returned after two or so years, I remember attending a reception for her and her new fiancé, Donald Castor, whom she had met while travelling.  I also remember Betty coming to the party after my son’s baptism.  We have seen each other periodically over the many years since, sometimes at Mary Olive’s home.  She was Mary Gillespie by this time, having married Jack Gillespie, another social studies major who was involved with Operation Uganda. 

My horizons broadened at Glassboro State.  I had always been a good student, but I had been so focused on assimilation that I was not thinking about the world beyond southern New Jersey.  I had only known of school as what one did in the classroom. I now understood that you could learn so much outside of the classroom. Once I became a teacher, I always included field trips to places in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, Connecticut, and Virginia. I have so many good memories of opening the minds of these young people, watching them as they saw the Capitol for the first time for example.  When the district made it hard for me to include over-night trips as part of the experience for all my students, I formed a history club.  This was really a history travel club because it allowed me to organize these trips and to continue this important aspect of my teaching.

In fact, I think that my greatest accomplishment as a teacher was this club, which was directly inspired by the work I did at Glassboro State and on Operation Uganda.  It became the largest non-athletic extra-curricular activity at Highland High School.  Besides sponsoring political awareness events, the members attended conferences in Trenton and Washington, D.C.   Members participated in Congressional workshops and State Department events.  I remember one memorable time when my students were able to listen to a speech given by an ambassador from China.  I also took students to Bill Clinton’s first inauguration where they heard not only Clinton, but Maya Angelou recite “On the Pulse of Morning.”  I should note that none of the students had to pay for any of these trips.  We raised the money each year by selling concessions at soccer games, running a haunted house, and various other activities.  I also required that students participate in at least 85% of our local activities to be eligible to go on the trip, which insured good participation.

At Glassboro State, I became attuned to the importance of connecting the study of history to current events and politics.  For this reason, I always urged my students to get involved in their communities.  The history club, in particular, spurred students to become more interested in history and in modern politics.  As a result, a number of my students attended political rallies on their own, became interns in the offices of legislators, or volunteered for the political party of their choice.  I specifically remember that many of them attended President Ronald Reagan’s rally in Hammonton, New Jersey.  Several went on to become history teachers in the public schools themselves.

Another impact of my time studying at Glassboro State and my experience with Operation Uganda was my focus on global affairs. I urged that the particular projects undertaken by my students be as international as possible.  One of the ones that I remember the best was what called “Project Vietnam.”  This took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The idea was to send packages of materials to the soldiers in Vietnam to let them know that, despite all the controversy over the war, we understood them as human beings in need of support in a stressful time in their lives.  The students, in partnership with the Veteran’s Affairs division, decided what to send to the soldiers.  I remember that these packages included magazines, gum, candy, crackers, pens, white socks, and envelopes.  In retrospect, I was copying what Professor Livingston had us to do with Uganda. 

Also from Operation Uganda, I learned that not only was there no downside to asking politicians to be involved in your work with young people, often they responded positively. So, I always invited politicians to visit my classes at Highland.  I also asked that they meet us when the history club came to Washington D.C.  Someone almost always greeted us when we visited D.C., including Congressman Rob Andrews on one occasion and Senator Frank Lautenberg on another. Many politicians also visited Highland. Some did not come, but so many did.  Senator Bill Bradley came on three memorable occasions over a period of several years.

While Bradley’s visit was a delight, it was not the highlight for me in working with politicians. That came in 1988 when Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, agreed to come speak at my high school, Highland Regional High School.  We had only a few days to prepare, and it meant that the students had to come in on the weekend and on Columbus Day to get the school ready.  It was a fabulous event for my students.  I am most proud that, like Professor Livingston, I stayed in the background even though the event had been my idea. I let the students take the lead.  Operation Uganda was directly responsible for this as it showed me the importance of extra-curricular events, how to reach out to politicians, and how to involve students in this type of work.

This event would have been a watershed moment in my career even without what I found in my mailbox when I came back to my school office after the annual state teacher convention.  I discovered a telegram from the lawyer of the winemaker W. Kenneth Sheffield.  The Bentsen visit had been covered by many media outlets.  In fact, we had to give up 300 seats in our auditorium to reporters.  It was a major story in that week’s U.S. News and World Report [Editor: November 7, 1988].  I selected two of my history club students to be interviewed for that story, and they had said that drugs, the topic of Senator Bentsen’s talk, was not a big problem for them and their friends. Instead, they said that the cost of higher education had reached the point where it was very challenging for the middle class.  They did not qualify for need-based financial aid but could not afford to go to the colleges they wanted to attend.  Mr. Sheffield read this story and was moved.  He had a history of philanthropy.  When I called him after reading the telegram, he offered to cover all four years of college for both of these students. He also paid for them to apply to five schools and gave them a small living allowance, which I believe was $100 a month.  Interestingly, I had picked those two students out of the many students in my history club who were helping out with the event because a reporter had accidentally locked them in the library, causing them to miss the beginning of the talk.  The two students were Brian Giampapa and Larry Zeiser.  As a result of Mr. Sheffield’s scholarship, Brian enrolled at Yale University and Larry attended Notre Dame University. 

I often think that Glassboro State had a profound influence on my life. Of course, GSC helped me have a successful teaching career.  Not only did they train me for the job, I remember that they had an excellent placement service. I had a job offer at West Deptford High School by November of my senior year.  GSC also shaped the things I did outside of the classroom.  In fact, one of the most important lessons from my time in college was the importance of learning by doing.  From Operation Uganda and other work outside of the classroom while in college, it became clear to me that classroom learning alone would not maximize the potential of students.  I believed this all my life.  After I retired from teaching, I became involved with the New Jersey Education Association’s retiree division and became President of the local branch, the Camden County Retired Education Association.  I organized lots of trips for this group, which were successful in bonding the retirees and in visiting many wonderful places. I think that even this work of mine can be traced to what I learned at GSC.

One important thing that mattered a great deal to me was that during my time at GSC, my German accent could no longer be easily detected.  This allowed it to be my choice whether I would or would not reveal that I was an immigrant. It is hard to explain how important this was to me.  This combined with the fact that there were so many opportunities for me to display my academic ability and to get positive feedback for my work.  This built up my confidence tremendously.  By the time I became a teacher myself, my personal transformation was remarkable.  I had tremendous anxiety in high school about my accent, my background, and my struggle to fit into American society.  By the time I stood in front of my students as a teacher, I was confident, happy, and comfortable. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_all/project_100/