[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we're going to start an oral history call-in series on the most defining news event of your lifetime. We're going to take these decade by decade. Today, if you are 90 years old or above, this call-in will only be for you today on the most defining news event of your lifetime, local or national. For some extra fun along the way, we'll invite you to name the most memorable concert you ever saw, if you have one. Let me say all that again.

We are starting right now an oral history call-in series on the most defining news event of your lifetime. It can be local or national, or maybe it happened in another country. We're going to take these decade by decade. Today, if you are 90 years old or above, this call-in is only for you right now on the most defining news event of your lifetime. Again, for some extra fun, but it's optional, we'll invite you to name the most memorable concert you ever saw, if you have one.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and all right, if you are 90 years old or older, what is the most defining news story of your lifetime? Our lines are full and we'll start with Sheila in the West Village. Hi, Sheila. Thank you so much for calling in. Happy New Year, first of all.

Sheila: Thank you. Happy New Year to you, and I have to admit, I have talked to you twice before [unintelligible 00:01:44], and it's been very exciting. My most exciting--

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you're on. Go ahead.

Sheila: Thank you. The most defining moment from news, which for me was on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, because I was nine years old. I had no idea at that time that anything bad could ever happen to me or my family. I just thought that I lived in this perfectly protected world, and suddenly I grew up. I was really very, very amazed and shattered.

Brian Lehrer: Nine years old. Do you remember where you were when you heard the news about Pearl Harbor?

Sheila: Oh, yes. I was just coming home from school and my mother greeted me with this news that she'd just heard on the radio.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think it shaped you politically in any way that's lasted to this day?

Sheila: No, I was too young, you know? I didn't understand politics at that time. My parents were both very much to the left, so I picked that up very quickly as I grew up, but at that point, I was just afraid for the first time in my life that an outside force could come in and affect our lives.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila, thank you very much for starting us off. I laughed inside when you said, "I admit I've spoken to you a few times before."

Sheila: I hate to take advantage, but I love it.

Brian Lehrer: It's not supposed to be a source of shame if you've been on the show a few times.

Sheila: No. I didn't want to be greedy, but then I am greedy, so there you go.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila, thank you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. A few people are calling in to say Pearl Harbor. I'm going to take one more of those. Then we're going to move on, so we make sure to get a number of different things. Berta in Airmont, New York also remembers Pearl Harbor, right, Berta? Hi.

Berta: Yes, very much. Hi, and thank you for taking my call. I have to say I'm a first time caller, but a long, long-time listener. I wouldn't miss the mornings without you, and happy New Year.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, and happy New Year to you. If I may ask, how old are you, or if you want us to do the math, how old were you when December 7th, 1941 came around?

Berta: I'm going to be 92 this year. As a girl, I remember living through the rationing, the black curtains, the shortages. I had cousins in the service and the anxiety of that time. The other thing was that years later I met my future husband, who we were married for 70 years, at Pratt in New York, and he was a Navy veteran. The effects of Pearl Harbor lasted quite a while in my life.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think it shaped you politically in any way?

Berta: I don't think it did then. Again, like the other caller said, it was just a sense of anxiety and fear. I think what happened was, as I grew up, the other events of my life, like Watergate, affected me more politically.

Brian Lehrer: I forgot to ask Sheila if she had a most memorable concert. Do you?

Berta: Oh, I remember-- well, we've gone to concerts at the SUNY in Purchase. I think the one that affected me was with Yo-Yo Ma. I mean, it was such a beautiful concert, but I can't remember exactly what he played, but that was one of my memorable experiences.

Brian Lehrer: Berta, thank you very much. My producer just told me that Sheila had told the screener that her most memorable concert was Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden. We're going to go next to Barry in the West Village. Hi, Barry, thanks so much for calling in.

Barry: Hi. Good to talk to you.

Brian Lehrer: You're 94, I see.

Barry: Yes, 94. Born in Manhattan and raised in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: What was the most defining news event of your lifetime, do you think?

Barry: The Holocaust. It was absolutely a blot on mankind forever. That's a terrible thing to happen.

Brian Lehrer: May I ask, were you or people you know personally affected?

Barry: People I knew were not directly affected. My first wife is Polish, and she was in Warsaw when they were occupied by the Germans, but she was not Jewish. Her mother went to labor camp, and she was in the German labor camp along with her mother and brother. Her father was in the government in London, the Polish government in London, and worked with the United Nations.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think there are ways in which you have viewed the world through the lens of the Holocaust ever since?

Barry: Yes. I became a conscientious objector and refused to kill.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think you would do if you were Ukrainian today?

Barry: That's a good question. I probably would help with the resistance in some way. I think that Putin is cruel, stupid. He's a danger to the world.

Brian Lehrer: The limits of pacifism.

Barry: I probably would stop being a pacifist. If I sat across the table from Putin, I would kill him.

Brian Lehrer: If you had that chance. There was a Tony Kushner play that I've seen about a guy who had the chance to kill Hitler. I won't reveal, in case anybody sees that play, whether he actually does it or not, but that was the premise. You're saying if you were sitting across from Putin and you could do it, you would kill him. Barry, do you have a most memorable concert?

Barry: Yes. Ed Sullivan's presentation of the Beatles in New York. It was absolutely wonderful.

Brian Lehrer: You would have--

Barry: The Beatles were terrific.

Brian Lehrer: Now, let's see, you would have already been-- I mean, that was 1963, maybe '64. You would've already been into your 30s by then.

Barry: Yes, I guess that's true. I didn't keep track of the dates.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. People usually think of people younger than that, but you were taken by the Beatles in your 30s when they showed up on Ed Sullivan for the first time. Barry, thank you so much for your call. I really appreciate it. Donna in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Donna. Happy New Year.

Donna: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What was your most memorable news event?

Donna: It was the bombing of Hiroshima with the atomic bomb.

Brian Lehrer: The line from Pearl Harbor, established by the first caller, to the end of the US involvement in that war, the bombing of Hiroshima. What do you remember about it from the time?

Donna: Well, it's hard to know exactly whether I remember it from the time, but I remember the idea of the children wandering, that were hurt by the bombing, wandering around, already wounded and confused by everything that happened. Looking for somebody to help them and maybe even getting into water because of the way that they were burned by the whole thing. Also, the shadows that were left by people.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that shaped you politically in any way to this day?

Donna: Totally. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: You're anti-war, anti-US military strength? How would you describe it?

Donna: Yes, yes. I've been anti-war for a long time. I was an activist during the Vietnam War, and following that, always an anti-war activist. I mean, not all the time, but it was my basic place from which I operated politically.

Brian Lehrer: How did the Good War, just war, I presume you think, US involvement in World War II itself, which of course ended with the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, did that serve as a counterweight to you at all in your anti-war? If you saw the good, you're old enough to have seen the "Good War" and then the, what you saw as the horrible way the US ended the war. How do those live together in you?

Donna: Well, I felt that it was just terrible. For one thing, I didn't understand enough about the Second World War to know. I didn't know about Dresden, so I didn't really understand that there were other instances where people were killed in a terrible way.

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] Civilians were killed en masse.

Donna: Right. Exactly. That was the first time I ever saw that. It was so appalling to me and I felt it was so wrong. There was no way that it could be justified in my mind. I guess in a certain sense I've always felt since then that war, there is no justification.

Brian Lehrer: Donna, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your call. Alex in Chelsea, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alex.

Alex: Hi, Brian. First time caller.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on. May I ask your age?

Alex: I'm 90-

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] You're going to--

Alex: -and very happy about that.

Brian Lehrer: I'm happy, too, that you're 90 and here to make this call. You're going to give us something a little more contemporary, a little bit, than the other callers. What you got?

Alex: Yes. The life-transforming events that I experienced, and still do, were the rebirth of feminism in the 1960s. In particular, the Women's Liberation Movement, a radical movement to get women equal citizenship and freedom.

Brian Lehrer: Did your life change at all as a result? Did you feel you were living a life limited by old notions of what women could do, and then something changed for you as a result of the '60s, '70s?

Alex: Yes. Everything changed for me. First of all, I became a lifetime activist. I started raising my children in a entirely different way. I continue to feel that this is one of the most profound movements of the 20th and now 21st century. It was a worldwide movement that really changed circumstances for 50% of the population of the world.

Brian Lehrer: 51%?

Alex: Yes. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: We have 20 seconds left for you to give us your most memorable concert. I see you have one.

Alex: Yes, it was a series of concerts. The Budapest String Quartet put on all of the Beethoven String Quartets. I was pregnant when I attended those concerts at a high school in Manhattan, and my son, whom I was pregnant with at that time, grew up to be a musician.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Ha. Alex, thank you so much and thanks to all of you who called to start this decade-by-decade oral history project on the show, all of you who called who are 90 and above. Tomorrow at the same time, the most defining news events and concerts of your lifetime for those of you in your '80s.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.