Oral History Interview with Frank Burke

ETHEL WHITE: This is a conversation with Frank Burke. We are at his office at Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs in the PNC Tower in Louisville, Kentucky. It is October 9, 2000. My name is Ethel White. Mr. Burke, if I could just interject for a minute, that we’ve agreed that this will be what I call a full oral history. We will include a focus on civil rights, but we’re certainly not going to be limited to that. And if we could start with your beginnings? Starting with, perhaps with your pre-beginnings, that you and I talked about off tape last week.

FRANK BURKE: Well, we did talk about the pre-beginnings. And what we were talking about was the development of the community of Louisville and surrounding areas during the mid and late nineteenth century. I think that we have all become familiar 1:00with the history of this community, beginning at the Falls of the Ohio, and those who came from Virginia and Pennsylvania and the Revolutionary War and so on. But I think maybe little attention has been paid to the fact that during the middle nineteenth century, both before and after the Civil War, Louisville became essentially an immigrant community. There were great tensions which we won’t go into: the Nativists and the immigrants did not always have the same interests. We all know about the unfortunate events of Bloody Monday, which we won’t go into, but Louisville was essentially at those times, an immigrant community. The largest number of immigrants, and I have no descent from them, were Germans, who came to the United States, following 2:00the eighteen forty-eight revolutions in Germany. Those people in history are known as “Forty-eighters”, and they were the largest immigrant group who came here. Probably next largest were the Irish, but there were also Italians, there were Lebanese, there was a large and significant Jewish community, many of whom came from Germany and the Baltic states. But they contributed to make this an immigrant community. And I’m a product of those communities. All of my grandparents were born in Ireland. My father was born in England. My mother was born in Louisville. We’re sitting in my office, as Ms. White pointed out at the beginning of this, looking out toward the river. And if we looked real carefully, we could see where my father worked for more than fifty years at the Carter Dry Goods Company at Eighth and Main. And 3:00even before that, if we looked right where the entrance is to the new Hillarick and Bradsby parking garage, we can see where my grandfather had his tailor shop, beginning about eighteen eighty-five. So...

WHITE: Could I just quickly ask you...

BURKE: Sure.

WHITE: ...to say the names of these two men? Your father and your grandfather.

BURKE: Sure. They had very similar names. (Laughing) My grandfather’s name was Michael J. Burke. He was born in Ireland in the eighteen fifties. My father’s name was Joseph Michael Burke. He was born in Manchester in Lancashire in eighteen eighty. Both my grandmother Burke and grandfather Burke had come from Ireland to England some time before that. They worked in the same factory in Manchester, where uniforms, British uniforms were made. They were married and my father was their oldest child. 4:00They had two children before they left Manchester to come to Louisville. They came over here about eighteen eighty-five.

WHITE: Okay. And could you describe a little bit, you mentioned about the different parochial schools in the immigrant groups and how one group....well you tell it.

BURKE: Yes. Well we probably don’t already know....

WHITE: Because was that when you were...?

BURKE: No.

WHITE: This was before then, okay.

BURKE: No, this was before my time. I was born in nineteen twenty, which is a long time ago. But we were talking earlier about the fact that not only was this community made up largely of immigrants prior to World War One, but also they brought their immigrant cultures with them. And we were discussing the fact that among the schools and churches and so on in Louisville, until World War One, there was a great ethnic distinction. 5:00I will point out some of which I know, because I am a Catholic and these are Catholic institutions, but it was equally true among other religions and their institutions. For example, a number of the parochial schools and therefore the parishes in Louisville were German speaking institutions. I will name some: Saint Anthony’s at twenty-sixth and Market, Saint Boniface on Fear Avenue, Saint Martin’s up at, I guess it’s not Preston’s, Saint Martin’s is near Broadway. It’s that grey street. They were all German speaking institutions. But you must always remember that where we all think of the mid-city mall being now and all those, this institution has moved. When I was a child, that was still called the German-Protestant Orphans Home. I think that the, and if you go up and down East Market Street at this time, 6:00there are a number of very imposing Protestant churches. And if you look at the cornerstones and some of the other stone on them, you will find their dedications and names and so on, written in German script. So this was very much a German speaking community, at least divisibly. There were a lot more English speaking people. There was one Italian speaking parish, called Saint Michael’s, which was about, oh just south of Jefferson Street on about Jackson or Hancock. You might want to look that up. But at the time, I am told, this is before I was born, that at the time of World War One, there was so much anti-German sentiment in the community, that all of these institutions began to be English-speaking institutions. And they were not 7:00only religious and charitable institutions, for example, the bank, which today we call Bank One, but which for a long time we called Liberty National Bank, it’s name was The German Insurance Bank. And they changed its name at the time of World War One to be Liberty National Bank, a patriotic name. This shows what has happened since nineteen-nineteen.

WHITE: And you said you were born in nineteen twenty?.

BURKE: That is correct.

WHITE: How did, did you feel any of this immigrant, any anti-immigrant stuff that might have been left over from those old days? Or did your parents tell you anything that might have made you, you know, feel that you were the child of immigrants?

BURKE: Oh, we all knew 8:00it. I mean, I think it was a matter of pride and gratitude to this country. (Laughing) Yeah, we, I knew about it, I knew about a lot of things. I would point out that I think this demonstrates some of the feeling there was, and I don’t say it with any rancor. We were talking about my being born in nineteen twenty. When I was elected Mayor of Louisville in nineteen sixty-nine, I was the first Catholic elected Mayor of Louisville in the twentieth century. Probably the second Catholic ever elected Mayor of Louisville. And I’ve never been able to really demonstrate this, and it may not be quite accurate, but as far as I know, I was the first Catholic elected to Congress from the Commonwealth of Kentucky from the founding of the Republic. Now that may not be so, but I have not been able to find another person whom we could demonstrate was. So there was some religious differences 9:00in the community, but certainly nothing very bad.

WHITE: Well, let’s talk about your growing up years. And I’m of course particularly interested in any influences that may have, you know, you might have carried with you into your adult life, your professional life. But if you could just describe a little bit about your home life and your family.

BURKE: Well everybody probably thinks what I’m going to say next is true, but those of us who are in my age group, who grew up in the United States, especially in Louisville, between the two World Wars, believed probably that we were lucky enough to grow up during the best of all times of the United States. The world was at peace. We all knew that the United States was the greatest country in the world. It was just a wonderful time to live. We lived in neighborhoods, which 10:00we could define, you know, you could walk almost anyplace you wanted to go. And if you didn’t want to walk, you could go on the streetcar. We rode on the street car to high school, for example. When I went to high school, I went to Saint Xavier High School, but I’ll get to that in a minute. I went to Saint James Parochial School, and of course walked. Everybody walked to school, no matter what school they went to, you knew everybody in the neighborhood, it was simply a wonderful time to grow up. I had one brother and one sister and we got along fine. We were just, we just felt like we were fortunate to be where we were.

WHITE: In what ways might you have felt your parents’ influence on you? In other words, they must have influenced you in some way.

BURKE: Well, I’m sure that they did and I don’t think it was peculiar to my parents. People like my parents 11:00were so convinced that the key to their children’s success in life was education that, you know, they would do almost anything to get you to school and to be sure that you did well. Neither my mother or father graduated from high school. And my sister was the first person in the family to get a Ph.D.. So as I would say, these were people who loved their children, who realized the opportunities that their children were having and education was the thing, I think, which people like my parents just emphasized over everything.

WHITE: And did your father work at the Carter Dry Goods all along?

BURKE: He did. It’s too bad we can’t...

WHITE: Life long?

BURKE: It’s too bad we can’t interview my Dad. My Dad left high school after about his second year and went to work at Carter Dry Goods Company 12:00as what they called a “till boy”. A till, T I double l...

WHITE: Till boy?

BURKE: A till was a division within a warehouse, where they assembled orders from particular customers or merchants. Carter’s was a big wholesaler. You must remember that Louisville in the years following the Civil War, was a tremendous wholesale center. Manufacturing was here some, but because of the railroads--and you don’t want to get into the wars among the railroads--and the success that the L&N railroad had in crossing the Ohio River; which is another wonderful story--but that’s been written. And Dad went to work for them when he was about sixteen years old. He worked there fifty years. When he retired, he was executive vice president. But some of the most interesting stories that he would tell, these, when he was a very young--when he was young, 13:00I guess in the nineties, probably before the nineteen, well, maybe early nineteen hundreds. This is when the Eastern Kentucky coal mines were being opened. And Carter’s was a big supplier of the coal mine commissaries. You’ve heard Mr. Tennessee Ernie Ford saying, “that he owed his soul to the company store.” These were the company stores. And Carter’s was a big supplier. And my father, being a young person, would go on the train with the salesman; and they would go on the train to either Hazard or Harlan and then they would unload their samples and merchandise and so on onto wagons. And my Dad would drive the mules over the mountains to the smaller county seats in Manchester and Jackson and the other places. And therefore since some of these people were merchants, my Dad, as a very young man, 14:00actually knew, knew of, or knew to recognize some of the very important Kentucky feudists. And I used to say to him, when he would tell me the stories about that, “You know weren’t you afraid?” And he said, “No, they didn’t care anything about me, they were only dangerous to their own friends and relatives.” (Laughing) That they didn’t care much about us. They called him a drummer from Louisville. You know they called salesmen, drummers. But anyway, Dad worked there. But by the time that I was on this earth, he wasn’t doing that anymore, he was working here. But this is another element, I think of the history of Kentucky that many people--that I--and I think I know a lot of people in rural Kentucky know about it; my Dad got to be one of the biggest suppliers in the country of what they called tobacco canvas or tobacco cotton. Up until about now, you don’t see it anymore, because they know about greenhouses and so on. But when you put tobacco plants in the ground, you put them in beds; 15:00and then because of various weather and insect conditions, they cover them over with very thin cotton cloth, looks like cheesecloth really, which was called tobacco cotton or tobacco canvas. And they grew those in beds until it was time to transplant those tobacco plants into the fields, where you would then see the tobacco plants grow. And my Dad among other people, sold an awful lot of tobacco cotton, not only in Kentucky, but in every other tobacco producing state. They also sold blankets and all those things. Everybody of course worked on Saturday at that time, even half a day. I remember when I was a little boy, I would go down to Carter’s--which abuts the river--and while my Dad worked I’d go way up on the fourth or fifth floor and sit on huge stacks of blankets and watch the boats go up and down the river and so on. Of course that was--that was before the bridge at Second Street had been built. The K&I Bridge, of course, had been built, but the ferry boat was still running. 16:00We used to sometimes go down on Sunday...

WHITE: Where did the ferry boat run?

BURKE: Went from Fourth and the river to Jeffersonville. It stayed a little while, I think, after ‘26 and ‘27 when the Second Street Bridge was built. But I remember a big event on Sunday afternoon sometime, is we would go down and they’d park the car on the levee, and we’d get on the ferry boat, and go to Jeffersonville and get an ice cream cone, then come back. It’s fun, too bad you can’t do it anymore. But this is what Louisville was like. I remember the name of the last ferry boat I ever saw, named for a man in Jeffersonville, called the Froman M. Kooch. That was the name of the ferry boat that ran--these were big ferry boats, that ran between Louisville and Jeffersonville.

WHITE: Foot ferries, do I assume? Not car ferries?

BURKE: I think on the Kooch you could get an automobile. There weren’t too many automobiles. (Laughing) No, no, I think you could get a vehicle on those ferry boats. They were a pretty good size. 17:00WHITE: Are you describing, because this might be important later on as we talk, are you describing a city that was pretty vibrant? I mean it sounds like there was a lot of activity there.

BURKE: Oh yeah. Louisville was, as is now, Louisville has always been a pretty vibrant place; because I guess our history friends would tell you that cities have always--any successful city has developed at a crossroads. And of course, the Ohio River was one of the tremendous highways of commerce and people, and still is. And this is where the Ohio crosses with the railroads and the interstate, now the interstate system. But this is where the Ohio River crossed, so Louisville has always been an important functioning economic unit.

WHITE: And of course, we’ll have to get to the Depression, but let’s hold that off for just a minute. 18:00Of course, you were, the first ten years of your life or so, nine, ten years of your life were in the boom times. Was money ever an object in your family?

BURKE: You know if it was, I never knew it. We knew about, certainly everybody knew about the Depression, it affected the whole country. But my Dad used to say he was lucky he did not lose his job, he just had his salary cut in half. But many people that we knew, neighbors and so on, were out of work. They were all kinds of things, that you know. I’m not going to try to give a history of the Depression. But yes, the Depression was a big factor, but you know, it really didn’t bother us, because if we thought we were poor, everybody was poor. I mean, you know you weren’t strange. Times were tough; but we got along fine.

WHITE: So you don’t, there was no particular, you were not particularly struck by the Depression. I mean, it’s not anything 19:00that, you know, you sort of had to get over or...

BURKE: No, no.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: Everybody knew it, but no, it didn’t bother us.

WHITE: Well, let’s talk about your schooling a little bit if we could.

BURKE: All right.

WHITE: Where did you start?

BURKE: I went to Saint James Parochial School, which is still very much in operation on Edenside Avenue near Bardstown Road. (Laughing) I walked to school. Everybody did that. It was a great school, still is. At that time was taught principally by the Ursuline Sisters, whose Mother House is at Maple Mount, near Owensboro. And it was a great experience.

WHITE: How old were you when you started?

BURKE: I guess I was either six or seven when you start the first grade.

WHITE: Okay, first grade.

BURKE: Yeah, I went there all, I went there eight years. That was the way schools were divided at that time. I went from there to Saint Xavier High School, 20:00which at that time was at Second and Broadway, which was and is an outstanding school, taught by the Xavarian Brothers, who came from Belgium in the eighteen fifties....They came twice. They came once before the Civil War and once afterwards. But some of them, at that time I had no European teachers, but some of them were when they began. And they came to be able to give a good secondary education to the children of the immigrants, that’s the purpose they came for.

WHITE: And what made it outstanding?

BURKE: The level of excellence which they required, (Laughing) and the level of excellence which they brought in their instruction. A lot of them were from New England and they brought the standards I’m sure, of a New England preparatory school to Second and Broadway in Louisville.

WHITE: What, was there anything that you particularly enjoyed about it?

BURKE: Yeah, I enjoyed, I enjoyed 21:00and I think I didn’t know this at the time, I enjoyed the level of excellence which was required in everything.

WHITE: What kind of a, what kind of a young person were you?

BURKE: Well, I don’t know. I guess we’d have to ask some other people.

WHITE: Or you know, well go ahead, see what you can come up with.

BURKE: Well, I tell you, I enjoyed going to school. I enjoyed learning. And I guess if people are saying how did you enjoy extra-curricular activities. I certainly did. I played on the football team. I was on the debating team. I did almost anything that was made available.

WHITE: Were you thinking about the future at that age?

BURKE: I couldn’t tell you. (Laughing) I don’t... I tell you this though, I do think this, from some very young age I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer; 22:00but, you know, when I started thinking that--I don’t know when I didn’t think that.

WHITE: Well, so were there any particular people, either family members that we haven’t talked about in presumably a large....Well let me back up, did you have aunts, uncles, cousins or any of those things?

BURKE: I had one brother and one....oh yes, yes, I had a lot of those people.

WHITE: So you did have an extended family. Were there any people, let’s just say before you get to your college years, either family or teachers or friends or anybody that particularly influenced you?

BURKE: I would have to give you such a large group that I’m sure I would err by omission. You know, we were immersed in a wonderful, big, loving family and teachers and so on; who simply wanted everybody to succeed. Now they wanted you to work to succeed, but there were so many people who contributed to this. Yes indeed, I was in an environment where I don’t see how you could miss. 23:00WHITE: Okay. Anything else that comes to your mind about your school years that might have been important?

BURKE: Well I can tell some things which may not have been important, but we’ve been talking about some things which would give you a picture of what Louisville was like at that time. When I was going to school at Saint Xavier High School at Second and Broadway, at that time if you weren’t close enough--a few people were to walk--you went to school on the street car. There weren’t many automobiles, not many people got driven to school. So when we would go to school in the morning, there weren’t nearly as many high schools in the community as there are now. And for example, we would take--those of us who lived where I did--we would get on that street car at Bardstown Road. And it didn’t make--well we wanted to get on the Broadway car. But if we got on the Jefferson Street car, we simply transferred at Longest. So when the boys and girls who were going to the various schools, and you must remember the high schools 24:00at that time were segregated by gender, both public and private. So that when we all would get on the street car to start down Bardstown Road, we had people on there who were going to Louisville Male High School; who were going to DuPont Manual High School; who were going to Saint Xavier High School; who were going to Atherton High School--which was on Morton Avenue--who were going to Sacred Heart Academy, which was on Lexington Road. And we would all ride on the street car up to a certain point. Now the boys who were going to Manual and the girls who were going to Sacred Heart, had to get off at Longest and transfer, because they had to get on the Oak Street car to go either east or west. Those of us who were going to Saint X and Male, stayed on. The Male, the kids who were going to Male got off at Brook and Broadway, we rode to Second and Broadway; but there was almost a ritual when the boys got off at Male, they 25:00would get off and the last one who went by would reach up and disconnect the trolley, so that the motorman had to go around and put it back up. Then when we got to Second and Broadway the last one of us to get off would disconnect the trolley, so the motorman had to go back and do it again. Now, you couldn’t do that on some streetcars because they had, the long cars had a motorman and a conductor and he was on the back. But this was all I think in very good spirits. (Laughter—White) You know you could move around, you could ride streetcars, you could walk. For example--and this was true of the boys at Male and us--our football practice fields were by no means near the school. Our football practice field was at Clay and Kentucky and the school was at Second and Broadway. The Male school was at Brook and Breckenridge and their football practice field was several blocks at towards Oak Street. We all walked after school to football practice. I assume now that if young men were required to walk a mile to football practice they 26:00would file a complaint about being abused children or something. (Laughter) But you know, this was a foot society and streetcar, but it was great.

WHITE: Did you get to know any of those other kids?

BURKE: Oh sure.

WHITE: On the streetcar or football games or whatever?

BURKE: Oh sure, and in the neighborhood, sure.

WHITE: So your world was not so terribly small by Louisville standards.

BURKE: It was, you know, until you got in high school.

WHITE: Into or out of?

BURKE: I can remember...yes into high school. I can remember when we were in grade school, we seldom went out of what I guess you would call the attendance area of our school. We walked to school and we walked home. We did know children who went to the other schools, but we seldom went there. When we were in grade school, I can remember for example, well this is before I was in grade....I guess I could have been in the first grade. We lived on Duker Avenue and I walked to Saint James School, which was on Edenside. That’s less than a mile. But I can remember when they built the old Uptown 27:00Picture Show at Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway, and there was a cupola on top of it which had a revolving colored light. And when I was little, really little, I was about, I don’t know, but I probably was not in school. I know one of my great privileges--showing the trust they had in me--I got to walk up to Bardstown Road and watch that light turn around. And I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

WHITE: I didn’t ask you where you house was, where did you live?

BURKE: Well when I was born my parents lived at 1101 Baxter. But then we moved to Duker Avenue to the nineteen hundred block, and to acquaint you with where that is. You know where the Uptown Cafe is? That’s the corner of Duker and Bardstown Road. In that neighborhood, before the Uptown was built, when I was very little, there was a moving picture theater on the corner of Bonnycastle and Bardstown Road, which was called the Cherokee. It did not--it was there before the days of the sound movie--these were silent movies. 28:00And my older sister--who is still very much around by the way--tells me that when she would take me to the movies at the Cherokee; and I couldn’t read, that when the print would come across the bottom of the film while the lady was playing the piano that the Indians were chasing the cowboys, that she would tell me what it said. And I would continually say, “You’re not reading all of it.” (Laughter) But you don’t want to hear anymore about this ancient world.

WHITE: Well, I certainly do. I think it is wonderful. Before we, anybody who was born in Louisville, you have to ask about the flood. So I’ve just got to ask you about the flood, which was...

BURKE: Nineteen thirty-seven.

WHITE: Must have been about the year that you graduated from high school.

BURKE: Yeah, I graduated from high school in ‘38. It was early in ‘37, so I was about a sophomore or junior at Saint X. Well of course, the flood was a devastating thing. I’m not going to tell you all the history. You know that they caught a fish in the lobby of the Rad Hotel at the level of the 29:00crystal ballroom. The city was of course, really divided in half. Many people who think about the flood and who were not here, or who don’t know anything about rivers, believe that what happens with a flood like that is that the river just starts coming up on land and covers everything. That isn’t what happens at all. (Laughing) Although that does happen. But if you’ve seen some of the pictures, there were several blocks on Main Street, like between Sixth and Seventh, which didn’t get any water on them. The water comes from the creeks and from the back up of the storm sewers. The first water which appeared on the streets in Louisville in the nineteen thirty-seven flood, came like a geyser from the storm sewer right in front of the main public library, because the river couldn’t carry the storm water off. And then Louisville was just plain cut in half by ( ) Creek. You could go on Broadway from what you and I would think of as Barrett and Broadway; all the way down to the west where the river is on the west. You could do that in a motorboat. And the current 30:00was so strong where Beargrass Creek crossed Broadway, that you couldn’t cross that in an outboard motor, they had to use cabin cruisers. Many people were displaced. We were not. At that time we lived on Grassmere Drive, but as happened to many other people, some of our relatives who were not so fortunate came and stayed with us. I remember that they had first aid stations. We lived there on Grassmere Drive, which is near Saint Frances of Assisi School, which is on Rutherford. And I know they had a station there, where they were giving typhoid shots. And I remember going down just to look at the bridge which the United States Corps of Engineers built across Beargrass Creek at Baxter Avenue, you know Baxter at the railroad, so that people could get from there once they got the boats out. I’m not going to tell you the history of the flood, but I tell you … WHITE: Well, I was just interesting, interested particularly in what you saw and what you remembered.

BURKE: Well, everybody saw a lot 31:00and then I remember the radio where they were dispatching boats. They were saying send a boat to such and such a place. When we came back to school at Saint X at Second and Broadway, the whole schoolyard was full of boats. It obviously had been a dispatch center. The water was down, but the boats were all still there. To show you how deep this was, one of my uncles lived on Thirty-fourth Street south of Broadway, and the water down there was so high, that when they took the people out of his house, and a lot of his neighbors, they did it with a full size steamboat. They could come in and take them out of the second story of their house in a great big steamboat. So this was a serious and destructive thing. The other thing that many of us remember is that in order to keep order--and Neville Miller was mayor then, and did a great job. They borrowed police officers from all over the country. You might find a police officer from Boston or Chicago or someplace on the corner directing traffic.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO WHITE: Well anything 32:00else that stands out about the flood, before we move on?

BURKE: No, I don’t think so. (Laughing) WHITE: Okay. (Laughing) Done enough?

BURKE: The flood was the flood.

WHITE: The flood was the flood, okay. All right, you graduated from high school.

BURKE: I did.

WHITE: What happened next and what were you thinking?

BURKE: What happened next, was I had played football at Saint Xavier High School and was modestly successful, and I went on a football scholarship to the University of Southern California.

WHITE: Had you ever seen it before?

BURKE: No.

WHITE: And did you go because you got the football scholarship?

BURKE: I did.

WHITE: Were you sort of looking at anything or pointing toward anything or were you just sort of taking the next logical step?

BURKE: I was just taking the next logical step.

WHITE: And what happened?

BURKE: I played football and went to school. That’s a fine school by the way. But I 33:00stayed there one year. I will give you some other relationships to the uh, to some things that I told you before. When I went to the University of Southern California and took my placement examinations, my preparation at Saint X had been so good that I didn’t have to take any English courses, and I was already qualified. They took my - you could choose any language that you wanted. So I chose one of the two that I had studied, and I had so qualified in Latin that I didn’t have to take any languages. I had also taken French. Anyway, I went to Southern California...

WHITE: So you did or did not take a language?

BURKE: No.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: Not in that year, but now I did later in college. I played football there and was modestly successful. But after one year I had decided, and once 34:00again let’s put this in perspective--this was not a time when you got on an airplane and flew from coast to coast. You had to go by train; and an R & A train took fifty-six hours to go from Chicago to Los Angeles. And you had to get to Chicago first. There were two fast trains, one called the Chief, maybe it was the Super Chief: it took forty hours, thirty-nine hours and forty-five minutes if it wasn’t late, and it was always late. And I came home once during that year. And I decided that I didn’t want to be that far away from home. So I left the University of Southern California and transferred to Xavier University in Cincinnati.

WHITE: And how successful was that?

BURKE: That was great. I went to school there three years. I played on the football team at Xavier. I 35:00graduated with a degree, Xavier is a Jesuit school, I graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree, Summa Cum Laude. And it was a tremendous educational experience. That was the days when if you went to a Jesuit college, you had all Jesuit professors. Now one of my friends, who is a Jesuit, says that at their colleges now, he’s thinking of making a recommendation that they have some kind of a platform and they have a Jesuit stand there all the time; so all the students can at least say, I saw a Jesuit while I was going to school there. (Laughter) WHITE: Well, why philosophy?

BURKE: Well, I tell you, this is an unusual degree.

WHITE: For a politician it’s an unusual degree.

BURKE: Well, I got a degree in philosophy with a major in history. I also took a lot of economics and accounting. If you, at that time, you don’t have to do this anymore--at 36:00that time speaking of the Jesuit school--at that time if you wanted a Bachelor of Arts degree, you had to take both Latin and Greek. And I had, had a lot of Latin. I had, had one year of Greek. And if you took in effect a Bachelor of Arts course, without Latin and Greek, they gave you a degree called a Bachelor of Philosophy. That meant you had to take as many courses in Philosophy as you took in your major, but it could not be your major.

WHITE: Okay, so you did it really to escape Latin and Greek.

BURKE: Greek, yeah.

WHITE: Okay, Greek. (Laughing) BURKE: I don’t mind Latin, Greek’s hard.

WHITE: But your major was in history?

BURKE: Yes.

WHITE: And are you describing a school, that like Saint X here, had very high standards? It sounds like it.

BURKE: Oh my, yes indeed, it still does.

WHITE: So you had a rigorous education.

BURKE: Oh and still 37:00does have very high standards, for example - I’ll quit telling you these tales. The uh, I took Physics at Xavier and the professor who taught us Physics, his name was ( ) and Father ( ) had a Doctor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He also had a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from one of the colleges in Rome. But when he finished his doctorate at the University of California, they asked him to stay and he did. And he was the operator of the University of California’s Astronomical Laboratory for several years before he came back. The man that was the head of the History department, which was my preceptor, his name was Gray, had his Ph.D. in History from Yale, and had written several books on the history of England. 38:00These were, that is a great school. This is the footnote, you may want to edit this out. I have two grandsons, both of whom graduated from Saint Xavier High School, and one of whom graduated from Xavier University exactly fifty years after I did. My other grandson graduated from Princeton. But we believe in those schools.

WHITE: All right, so if I can do the math, you would have graduated in 1942?

BURKE: Nineteen forty-two.

WHITE: All right, talk about the world in 1942, please. (Laughing) BURKE: The world in 1942 was doing nothing but getting ready to fight World War I--II. I graduated, they even moved our graduation date forward. I went in the Army in October of nineteen forty-two. The uh 39:00- you were asking about the Depression, I can tell you some other interesting things about World War II, and talk about graduating from college in ‘42. I’ve got a picture which is a part of the academic procession when we graduated from Xavier in 1942. I don’t remember how many people you can see in that section of the procession, not many, maybe five or six, but I’m the only one who lived through World War II. The uh...

WHITE: When did you find that out?

BURKE: Oh, I guess after the war, I wouldn’t have known it before then. But when I lived on Eastern Parkway, when I was going to high school, there were four or five of us--five of us who played together all the time; we played in Tyler Park everyday, whatever was going on. Three of them got killed in World War II. 40:00We were just exactly the right age, you see. We were twenty-one in 1941, the year it all started.

WHITE: At what point, well let me back up and ask you, how big that academic procession was?

BURKE: Oh, I don’t know, a couple of hundred.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: But you know, probably a lot of the rest of them died too. Just looking at this. The reason that our mortality may have been high at my graduation from Xavier, there was a senior ROTC program at Xavier, which I could not qualify for because I could not see well enough. It was a Field Artillery Reserve Unit, and they became the junior field artillery officers of the First Armored Division. They were all in Africa, they were the people who bombarded General Rommel. Some of them got from Africa over to Italy, but a lot of them didn’t.

WHITE: 41:00So basically you were not aware of those statistics until after the war?

BURKE: No, no, no, no...

WHITE: I mean you hear war stories about sending over the young troops, who had no idea what they were getting in for. How would you describe yourself?

BURKE: I knew, I knew. I’m sure I knew while I was in the Army, that the young men from my neighborhood had gotten killed; because I’m sure in exchanging correspondence with my parents I knew that. They were, you know, they were the kids down the street. But I didn’t know about the Xavier people, because they were all from different places.

WHITE: Okay, so you entered the Army. Now, were you drafted or did you enlist?

BURKE: Well, you know, I enlisted, I would have been drafted. I mean, everybody was going in, and I wanted to go in. I enlisted, if I had not, I would have been drafted.

WHITE: Did you have a sense, 42:00as people have described it later, that you were going into a good war?

BURKE: Oh sure.

WHITE: You know, World War II was the “Good War”, in quotes.

BURKE: Oh yes, that’s right, absolutely.

WHITE: And so you wanted to go?

BURKE: Oh yeah.

WHITE: And, just, first of all, where were you in this country? Where did you take your basic training?

BURKE: Fort Lee, Virginia.

WHITE: Okay. So you were a Private?

BURKE: Yeah.

WHITE: Okay. And then where did you go after Fort Lee?

BURKE: I applied for Officer Candidate School at Fort Lee, which was the Quarter Master School. And because I can’t see very well, I had to get all kinds of waivers, but they finally let me in.

WHITE: How did you work that one out? (Laughing) BURKE: Oh you just, you know how everything is in the government, you fill out a lot of paper. I went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Lee, Virginia and was commissioned 43:00in, I guess the end of March, 1943, and on the sixth of April, Evie and I got married.

WHITE: Maybe we need to take a minute to talk about this. (Laughter) Now, who did you marry, and how did you know her and why did you get married on April sixth?

BURKE: Well my wife’s maiden name was Hackett, H A C K E T T and her first name is Evalyne, which is spelled E V A L Y N E, because some of her ancestors--we’ve got a lot of Evalynes in our family. I have--she has--I have a wife, a daughter, a grand-daughter, all named Evalyne. We have to know what to call them. They call my wife Evie, they call my daughter Lyn 44:00and they call her daughter Evie. She has these two daughters now and neither one of them are named Evie. (Laughing) WHITE: In the picture? Okay.

BURKE: That’s right. How did I know Evie?

WHITE: Yes.

BURKE: Well, our parents tell us that when I was in the second grade at Saint James School, she was in the first grade, and our parents have always told us, although neither one of us remember this really, that we were in a school play together. But I don’t remember that. I first remember knowing Evie, I guess, when we were in high school. Her, one of her brothers was in my class at Saint X, so you know, these are neighborhood people that I’ve, we’ve known all our lives.

WHITE: And uh, so you had known her for a while...

BURKE: Oh yeah.

WHITE: ...when you married on April sixth. And why did you, I’m not going to anticipate the answer. Why did you get married on April sixth? 45:00Was there a reason?

BURKE: It was the only time that we ever knew that I could get loose from the Army. You know I was on a very short leave, which followed my commissioning in the Army; and we wanted to get married, and that was the only time that I could get out.

WHITE: And how long were you married before you went overseas?

BURKE: Well let’s see, we went back to Fort Lee, that would have been in ‘forty-three. We were at Fort Lee for a short time, then we went to Camp Ellis, Illinois. Then we went to Fort Knox, where I took some more training. We were, I went overseas in August of nineteen forty-four. So we were married in April of ‘forty-three, I went to Europe from Fort Knox the day after 46:00our oldest child was born. I saw her once and the next time I saw her, she could walk and her mother had taught her to say, “Howdy do, Daddy.” (Laughter) We must all have gotten along all right, because that particular child is now a grandmother. So we must not have suffered too much. (Laughter) WHITE: All right, so you went overseas and you were shipped where?

BURKE: We went from the port of embarkation at Brooklyn in a huge convoy. One of these things that you may - this was the second of the big waves that went in, you know, June was the invasion. We went over in August.

WHITE: We have to say the invasion of Normandy, we might as well...

BURKE: The invasion of Normandy, that’s correct. We went over in August, and literally, you know you hear them talking about these invasion operations. You talk, people talk about a bridge of ships, well you really saw it. We sailed from Brooklyn 47:00and we could tell we were going North. And we knew nothing about navigation, but we picked up another huge convoy which had come from Boston. And we all went over toward the British Isles together, literally; and I think it was this big. But you could not really ever look out and not see another ship. Some of them were other troop ships and some of them were the Naval escort, because the submarines would liked to have gotten in the middle of that.

WHITE: Well I was going to ask you if you had any encounters with German subs.

BURKE: Not going over. I could tell you about some encounters with German subs later.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: But we went over from the Port of Embarkation at Brooklyn, and they took us up, if you’re familiar with Scottish geography, they took us up in the Firth of Clyde. There are two towns up there called Greenock and Gourock; and because the Germans still had aircraft up, they took us out--off 48:00the ship on lighters at night. And we went--and I don’t remember if we went into Greenock or Gourock and got on blacked-out trains. And we did not know where we were going, but we went down into the Midlands of England. And we went to a town called Sutton Caulfield, which is between Birmingham and Coventry, as the British say, on the Great Wattling Street. (Laughing) You know, the old Roman road. But we went down to Sutton Caulfield, between Birmingham and Coventry in the Midlands. Isn’t it ironic, that’s near where my father was born? (Laughing) My father was born in Manchester. But that’s where we were while we, as long as we were in England. We did a lot of stuff, everybody did, getting ready to go over. We would take large numbers of our troops and go over to Liverpool and pick up vehicles and drive them down to South Hampton, 49:00which were going over, and then eventually we went over to Normandy.

WHITE: And what was, at what point was the war in Normandy? I mean, what did you find over there?

BURKE: The troops, well they had, had some success, but we were, you know that was the time, you might read about the breakout at the Valley of ( ) and so on, the battles for San Marie Glace and so on. This was all going on, but the troops were still pretty well down on the beach. We were down on the beach for a while. We eventually got up to Cherbourg. We got up there a town called San Pierre Glace, Saint Peter’s Church, rather than San Marie Glace, which was the next one. We went into Utah Beach, the big invasion beaches of the Americans were Omaha and Utah. The British and the Canadians and the French went into some others called Gold, Silver, I think Queen. They were...

WHITE: Juniper? 50:00BURKE: They were over near Konk. But we went up to Cherbourg, and we were then in Cherbourg for a while and then worked out of there.

WHITE: Let me put this on pause for just a sec. And where were you specifically? I mean, were you seeing action or were you a back up?

BURKE: Well, we were, we’ve got to, we were support troops of those who were closest to the enemy. Now, you must not think that, you know, people see all these pictures of a lot a transportation troops who were called the Red Ball Express. We picked up things from the end of their routes and took them forward. For example, we hauled ammunition and gasoline and such on to tanks, and to other combat vehicles right where they were in combat. So yes, we were support troops, we were not technically combat troops, but we were in direct support of those people who 51:00were in contact with the enemy. So during the summer of 1944, we carried stuff from everyplace. We were a truck company, and we carried things from Cherbourg, from the various support debarkations. Cherbourg you must understand, was the big ammunition port, because it was far enough back that they weren’t afraid that it would get exploded. Also, you’ve seen the pictures of the great ship Normandy, they say Normandy is there, which a huge landing area. Cherbourg is a big port. And we carried it from there all the way up, as a matter of fact, we were up at Aachen and Ulich in Germany, which means we had gone, for a while we had been stationed for a short time at, as the French call it “Ras”, as you and I might call it Rheims.

WHITE: R H E I M S.

BURKE: That’s right.

WHITE: Yeah.

BURKE: We were all the way, we were up at 52:00Ulich and Aachen, which the French call Illys la Chapelle, Charlemagne’s Castle. But we were all the way up there. There was a big battle for the Ulich Sportplatz. But you may recall, one of the things on that, we got sent back. Everybody got sent back.

WHITE: Got sent back into Normandy?

BURKE: Into Normandy, yeah, but I’ll tell you about that, because we saw it on the original cast, you don’t need to see the road show. If you’ve ever seen the movie or heard about a book called, The Bridge Too Far? All right. That was an effort, they were, the British I think, were going to blow up the dykes of the upper portions of the Rhine, up in Holland. The town up there is called Nijmegen. I have no idea how you spell Nijmegen, but that is how you pronounce it. I think it’s spelled something like N I J E M A E G E N or something in Holland, Dutch. 53:00[correctly Nijmegen] (Laughing) Well, they got cut off up there. And that’s what the bridge they got too far. And we would go, we were going from Rheims then; and we would haul ammunition up, you know, to the safe side. And the British would send their trucks over, and there was a race track up at whichever town this was we went to, a horse race track. And I remember we would go in at night and we would go around this way, and then they’d come in behind us; and we would unload tank and artillery ammunition from our trucks into their trucks.

WHITE: The British?

BURKE: Yeah. And then we would go all the way back to Rheims.

WHITE: Wow.

BURKE: That’s a long drive. We did that every night for a while. And they successfully got out. But then after we had gone all the way across, up at Aachen and Ulich and Nijmegen and all those places; and it looked like things were going real well. Whump. 54:00It all just stopped. That’s how far the Germans had retreated. So we were all sent back. We were in Normandy then. We did a lot of work.

WHITE: Wait a minute, you said things went well and then it stopped.

BURKE: Oh the Germans stopped, the Germans put on a...

WHITE: They stopped their retreat?

BURKE: ...a big defensive effort.

WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: ...Yeah, the Germans put on a big defensive effort. And it had settled down pretty much during the late Fall and early Winter of nineteen forty-four, when the Germans almost did what everybody, including ( ), said, ‘you can’t do.’ They decided you could come out of the Schnee Eifel, the snow ridge in the mountains in the winter time. And they did, and that was what resulted in what is called the Battle of the Bulge, in December of nineteen forty-four. We were then living in Cherbourg.

WHITE: Okay, so you were not part of that.

BURKE: Oh 55:00yes we were.

WHITE: Part of the Battle of the Bulge?

BURKE: Oh yes. (Laughing) WHITE: From Cherbourg? Well go ahead.

BURKE: Oh yes.

WHITE: Go right ahead.

BURKE: We loaded up our trucks with land mines, and wire and everything the combat troops needed; and we took off. And we were--during that time in hauling all this stuff--we were in a town that I think is called ( ) Luxembourg; and is probably actually in Luxembourg. I’m not sure. I’d have to look at maps. But we were up there, in fact, some, two or three, maybe four of our trucks were actually in Bastone, when Bastone got cut off, when General MacArthur--some of our people who got to wear the Purple ( ) for that. But we were up in Luxembourg, near Luxembourg City, and we were hauling anything. We hauled people, we hauled ammunition, we hauled gasoline. We hauled all kinds of things. At which point, let’s take a break. 56:00WHITE: Fine.

(Tape stops and starts again) BURKE: As you know from general history the--the so called Battle of the Bulge resulted in American successes. And we were a part of the massive number of troops who then continued east. We continued doing as we had before. We were supply troops, we hauled everything. We hauled ammunition, we hauled gasoline, we hauled food. And when we got up as far as the Rhine, we actually hauled parachutists in our trucks. They instead of jumping out of airplanes when they crossed the Rhine, they jumped out of the tailgate of our trucks. (Laughter) So, we were simply a part of the huge pursuit of the Germans in the Spring of 1945. We of course, didn’t know this until 57:00we read books later, that the high commands of whose existence we barely knew. We didn’t see anybody above the rank of Lt. Colonel. They had decided that the Russians were going to take Berlin. We were at this big German town of Halle, H A double L E. That was a big battle. And we were up at Halle doing things, and we were suddenly swung South. And we were down in the Sudaten Mountains in Germany. And we went from, I guess, from Bavaria into Bohemia and we were a part of the large number of troops, who were pursuing the German army down there. And uh, we, 58:00you know, the war ended while we were down there.

WHITE: You were there, in Bohemia, when the war ended?

BURKE: No, we were in Pilsen. And that’s right interesting too, we were actually in a little town near Pilsen. We had Pilsen, the Russians had Prague. We had Marienbad. The Russians had Karlsbad. And we sat there that Spring and just looked at each other. We actually saw them. I mean, they were there and we were there, right down the railroad from each other. And we traded prisoners with them, as a matter of fact. We had...

(Knock on door - Burke says, “Come in” :White: “I’ll pause this”) (Tape starts again) WHITE: Okay.

BURKE: Those were interesting times. Of course, we had nothing to do with the decisions which were being made internationally. But we actually, one day, well not “one day”; we knew what was going to happen. (Laughing) 59:00We turned Pilsen over to the Russians, and they turned over all of Czechoslovakia over to the Russians. And we drove our vehicles, are you ready--how about this for a site seeing trip. We drove all of our vehicles from Czechoslovakia to the South of France. Because it had been determined that we were troops, as I told you, we got to the beach, many, many, many troops, not just us, but many, many, many troops, who had participated in the support of the invasion of Europe, we were really the only large scale experienced invasion support troops in the world. So it was decided that we were going over and support the invasion of the Chiriac Islands in Japan. So instead of, this was thousands of troops, not just us. So instead 60:00we were down at Marseilles. We stayed down there, I never will forget that, because we drove from Czechoslovakia down into the South of France, that summer. And being way over there in the east, partly high up in the Sudaten hills, we were still wearing wool uniforms. And if you want to be hot, you ought to be down on the Mediterranean in the summertime, wearing wool shirts. I will never forget that as long as I live. (Laughing) Anyway, good fortune came upon us, because as we were down there: and I’ll tell you how close it came. As we were down at the point of embarkation in Marseilles; we were going to go from there to Panama, and then be re-equipped to go to Japan. And they dropped the Atomic bomb. So that one, one of the ships on which some of our people were, our advance party was being sent, actually got to Panama. We left all packed to go to Panama, 61:00but we went to Newport News. (Laughing) WHITE: Just right then?

BURKE: Yeah.

WHITE: Just from Marseilles?

BURKE: Yeah, we went through the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, you see.

WHITE: Well let me ask something about, oh you know, sights, sounds, smells. I mean what did your war experiences leave you with? Were you changed? Was it simply something to get through? Was it -?

BURKE: Oh yeah, oh no, nobody that goes through that stuff is not changed. First place you spend a lot of time scared to death, if that doesn’t change you (Laughing), you don’t have very good judgment. Sure, you saw a lot of horror, you saw civilian suffering. We uh, because of this experience, I was telling you about out in Bohemia; we were really able--we had the prisoners that we exchanged, that’s what we were talking about a moment ago. In coming, in coming East, we had picked up a lot of prisoners, the Germans, we 62:00had liberated a bunch of prisoners that the Germans had, who were Eastern Europeans. And the Russians in coming, the Germans were very systematic, they transposed their prisoners. So that in the Russians coming West, they had picked up a lot of Western Europeans, so there were exchanges. I guess it was at, I don’t know, in one of the German cities, they would trade prisoners. Our troops had Russians, Poles, Rumanians, all kinds of Slavs. The Russians had British and French, a few Americans, but not many of those, but these were prisoners exchanges that went on. But yes, the war experience certainly, what I was going to say, was not only did you see the horrors, you know about the horrors of war, but we really got to understand the Nazi mentality. It was very difficult. We dealt with Nazis. I mean they were difficult. 63:00They were still right, even after we had them behind wire. (Laughing) WHITE: So you saw dedicated Nazi soldiers, then. You didn’t see German kids who had been conscripted against their will.

BURKE: We saw a lot of those. That was called the Lanzfer. But we saw actually guys with black suits, who had palms on their lapels, you know the Schuzhafte Yeah, we saw a lot of dedicated Nazi’s. And then when we were - I won’t tell you all these details, but when we were trading with the Russians in, in Pilsen, I guess. We were warned. We were not in charge of this. We were service; Intelligence people that knew would tell us to watch. And we caught a couple. There were some people who didn’t want to be traded to the Russians, because they were Schuzhafte or they were SS. And 64:00they would integrate themselves among, as you say, these prisoners who were just a bunch of kids, who had been conscripted. But the Schuzhafte, the SS people had a serial number tattooed on the upper, inner part of their left arm. And if you got a prisoner and they took his shirt off and he had a lot of sore places and scars up there, he had tried to cut out that identification.

WHITE: Wow.

BURKE: But yeah, war is horrible. General Sherman was right, ‘War is hell.’ END TAPE ONE SIDE TWO END OF INTERVIEW