Chapter One - The Early Years

At one time, I thought I wanted to write a book -- A sort of autobiographical account of my life, my experiences, and the conclusions I drew therefrom. I no longer want to write such a book. In the first place, it was a foolish idea that anyone outside my immediate family would have the slightest interest in it. In the second place, people usually write books for one or both of two reasons, namely for money or for a sort of public immortality. At this rather late stage in my life, I have no desire or need for more money and my thoughts on immortality have nothing whatsoever to do with the printed words of an autobiography.

One thought keeps bothering me, however. The thought is this. My grandfather, Jackson Moore, born in 1830 in Kentucky, might have been a most interesting character, but no one seems to have found out much about his life. My cousin, Mildred Moore, a distinguished American librarian, found him listed in the 1870 Kentucky census at age 40, married to Mary Moore, age 30, born in Ohio, maiden name Patterson, with children William, Ross, Chilton, and Scott. In the 1880 census, my father, Edwin, was listed as having been born in 1872 and his younger brother, Gus, was listed has having been born in 1877 -- but no further mention of Jackson. Presumably, he died between 1877 and 1880, which is to say between the ages of 47 and 50. My father said he died of yellow fever, but wasn't too sure of this, didn't remember him at all, and didn't know where he died. Presumably, Jackson was a tobacco farmer on a small tobacco farm near Campbellsburg, Kentucky. That is certainly where his wife, Mary, lived and died and where my father, Edwin, spend his youth. When one looks at Jackson's picture, however, one can't help but wonder whether this rather elegant looking man with the handsome facial features and the long delicate hands, was really only a simple tobacco farmer in Campbellsburg, Kentucky. He looks more like a Mississippi River boat gambler or something of the sort. We know he must have frequented Campbellsburg often enough to beget quite a number of children, but we also know that his wife, Mary, was an unusually capable woman who raised all the kids and managed the farm for more than 40 years after Jackson's death. I remember visiting her in about 1920, just three years before her death. I still have a clear picture of her sitting on her front porch in a wicker rocking chair smoking her corncob pipe. She was a small wiry woman who reminds me now of the cartoon character -- Lil Abner's mother. I suppose another reason why I remember her well is because she gave me a silver dollar, which was very big money to a 10-year old in 1920. We still have a picture of her in the same rocking chair on the same porch (but without the corncob pipe). Gerda and I visited Campbellsburg a few years ago and found the house still standing and occupied. We wondered how in the world a woman such as that could manage a tobacco farm and so many children from such a small house. We visited the Campbellsburg graveyard and found several family graves, but not that of Jackson.

What kind of man was Jackson? What did he do during his lifetime? What did he think? What did he conclude, if anything? These are the questions I would not like to leave unanswered about myself for my descendants to ponder.

It seems to me that a man is nothing more nor less than the sum total of his thoughts, his experiences and his actions. I will try to describe myself, therefore, in terms of those three fundamentals.

Much of what I set forth will be repetitious and even boring to those who have been closest to me, namely my wife, Gerda, and at least two or three of my sons. They know almost everything that I have experienced, thought or done during my life time because we as a family tend towards rather detailed discussions of this nature, particularly around the dinner table. But the point is that, even though Jackson's wife and older children may have known the man exceptionally well, none of his descendants now know anything at all about him. To that I say, "What a pity. Our knowledge of the man might possibly be not only of interest, but of value, to us, his descendants."

In considering how I would compose this story, or document, or whatever you might like to call it, I decided to make it a chronology of significant experiences, interspersed with what I choose to call "reflexions," which, incidentally, is the British way of spelling our word, "reflections." I think the word "reflexions" is particularly appropriate inasmuch as the conclusions I have arrived at on a number of subjects are not necessarily deeply researched, scholarly conclusions. Rather, they are instinctive reactions or what one might call intellectual "reflexes," based upon a rather broad array of experiences and observations over a rather long lifetime. In other words, they are really just one man's opinion, and I readily concede that they are challengeable.

When I speak of a broad array of experiences over a rather long period of time, several thoughts come to mind, the first of which is that age and wisdom are not necessarily synonymous. The second is that neither are youth and wisdom, although in many cases, only the elderly can perceive this. As for breadth of experience, I submit that, due to a number of fortunate circumstances, I have been able to see the world around me from more perspectives than most of my peers. During my four years at the National War College in Washington, D.C. (which, incidentally is grossly misnamed because it is far more concerned with the socio-politico-economic, rather that the military, factors contributing to our national security), we used to used the term, "the milkman from Omaha" to describe the large segment of our population who read primarily the sport pages and the comics of our newspapers and who keep the TV ratings high on programs that seem more suited to the intellectual capacity of baboons than human beings. If there is still such a thing as a milkman in Omaha or elsewhere, and especially if he is pursuing his master's or doctorate degree in anything, I offer my apologies to him and to Omaha. It was just an expression, and it could have been applied to any of a hundred or more other cities.

But, in any case, I would estimate that my worldwide experiences and encounters with leaders and thinkers in the socio-politico-economic-military realms would fall somewhere between the "milkman from Omaha" and, let us say, some of our most highly experienced commentators and diplomats, such as Tom Brokaw and Henry Kissinger.

To put it another way -- on the one hand, when I consider the expertise and the intellectual depth of many of the world's citizens, especially in specialized fields of thought and endeavor, I feel very inadequate and certainly very humble. On the other hand, when I consider the breadth of view, the breadth of experiences, and the capacity for objective intellectual analysis of the average citizen of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Munich, Ankara, New Delhi, Cairo, Pretoria, Phnom Penh, Manila, Tokyo and Peking (examples of some of the cities I have observed), I do not feel inadequate at all. Now, let me commence this chronology with some of my "reflexions."

There was nothing very unusual about my youth, at least not from the standpoint of a youngster from a middle class family in middle America from 1910 when I was born, to 1928 when I entered West Point.

I suppose my first serious "reflexion" was when I was in the first grade in the Roosevelt School on the north side of Fargo, North Dakota. The teacher announced one day that there would be a contest among all first graders as to who could build the best birdhouse. When I told my father about this contest, he advised me not to worry about it. I would win. He had a very talented handyman who worked for him, and the next day, the handyman came to our house with all the necessary materials and tools for a birdhouse. I thought at first that I was to build the birdhouse, but I soon learned that this was not to be. The handyman built and painted the birdhouse in our basement, occasionally asking me to hold something or to hand him something. I took it to school on the appointed day. I was not particularly surprised when the teacher announced that I had won first prize for the best birdhouse. Actually, I had not one, but two "reflexions" from this experience. At the age of about 5-1/2 years, my first "reflexion" was that it really is possible to obtain rewards in this life without any appreciable effort. My second "reflection," which only occurred to me many years later, was that the authorities who govern our lives (in this case, the first grade teacher) are sometimes willing to overlook the obvious in favor of expediency and self-preservation.

At this point, I think I should digress a moment to explain what my father was when I said he had a handyman who worked for him. He was an undertaker -- a term which he did not like. He preferred to be called a mortician or a funeral director. A logical question might be, "Why was he an undertaker? What led him into this field?" My mother once explained this to me and I will explain it in her words.

In the little Kentucky town of Campbellsburg, Kentucky, where my father was born and grew up, there were only two or three important and respected people in town. The most important person, by far, was the preacher. The second most important person was the undertaker. I've frankly forgotten who the third most important person was. I'm tempted to say the doctor, but it just occurred to me that Campbellsburg probably didn't have a doctor in residence in those early days. In any case, my father was never articulate enough (especially in public) to be a preacher, so there was only one heroic role left to him -- that of an undertaker.

When I was a very young boy, I saw nothing strange or unusual and certainly, nothing ludicrous about the profession of an undertaker. In fact, when I was about eight or nine years old, I witnessed an event in my father's business establishment which made me feel very proud of him and his profession, and made me feel very important among my friends and playmates. The event was the arrival in Fargo of the Ringling Brother's Circus and the death of the world's largest gorilla. Naturally, Mr. Ringling wanted to immortalize the gorilla by having it mounted and placed in a museum, but there were no taxidermists in Fargo equal to the task. Somehow, the gorilla had to be preserved until they could get it to a master taxidermist in a larger city. So, Mr. Ringling came to my father and asked him if he would embalm the gorilla. This was a ticklish business for my father because the embalming of a gorilla seemed a bit inappropriate to an establishment known for its sympathetic and solemn concern for recently departed loved ones. However, business in business, and for a very substantial fee, he did it -- in secret, of course. (Obviously, I only learned some of these facts in later year.) I watched him do it, and believe me, it was a fascinating sight for a young boy. Not only that, but I also got three complimentary tickets to the circus from Mr. Ringling. I took two of my best friends to the circus and swore them to secrecy about the gorilla.

Let me continue. What was the life of a so-called middle class family like in those early days of this 20th century? As I look back on it now, I think it was somewhat similar in many respects, but remarkably different in other respects, to the life of a middle class family of today (1991). The similarities were that we resented the parental oppression or discipline, or whatever you want to call it; we were all hyped-up, to use an old expression, about music; we went to each other's houses to listen to the latest "jazz" records on the phonograph, and we organized musical groups among ourselves, about which more later; we had the same interests in sports of all kinds as the young people of today except that we couldn't watch any of them on TV because there wasn't any TV, and we couldn't even listen to them on the radio because radio hadn't progressed that far in those days; we smoked secretly and we drank beer and other alcoholic drinks secretly; we did such crazy things as shop-lifting just for the thrill of it and, lucky for us, in my group at least, we didn't get caught. Sex among teenagers, at least very young teenagers, was pretty rare. I don't know what the statistics are today, but I would guess that the percentage of 16, 17 and 18-year old virgins in those days was quite high. My only scientific basis for this guess is the number of times I tried and the number of times I failed.

Most of our families in Fargo, including mine, had quite a nice summer lake cottage on the Minnesota lakes about 50 miles away where we all moved in June and stayed until early September. Most families, including mine, had at least one live-in maid and sometimes two or more, to do all the household chores. This, of course, is a major difference between the middle class of the 1920s and 1930s as compared to the middle class of today. The obvious reason for this is that we didn't have all the electrical conveniences such as dishwashers, washing machines, and even, until about 1923, electric refrigerators. I suppose a major difference, in addition to those I have enumerated, was the fact that drugs were practically unknown to the youth of those days -- not even marijuana. I say "practically" because there were some exceptions, but they were very rare.

You may conclude that most of the above comparisons are somewhat superficial in nature. I tend to agree. However, there is still another comparison which I might make, and that is that the principal difference between the youth of my time and the youth of today and recent times is that we were inclined to accept the so-called "establishment" as it existed in those days.

I suppose the first question that comes to mind is "Why didn't you challenge the 'Establishment'"? There were certainly at least as many things, maybe more, wrong with the "establishment" in those days than there are now. I really don't know the answer to this question, but I think perhaps it may have had something to do with "communication." You see, in those days, except for the daily newspaper (which wasn't always completely objective in its editorial comments - and who among the teenagers read the editorial comments anyway), we didn't have any way of knowing what the "establishment" was and what it represented. No TV and not much radio news, if any. I suppose that if we had known how dishonest and self-serving the "establishment" can sometimes be (President Harding and his political coterie, for example), we might have challenged it.

But, so much for generalities. I said I would tell you something about myself, and perhaps that is what I should do now.

As a boy, I was raised in what one might call a very religious environment. My mother and father were Methodists -- very strict, old-fashioned Methodists. I think my mother was a truly religious person. By that, I mean that she sincerely believed in the Bible. In fact, she accepted every word in the Bible in a quite literal sense. On the other hand, I think perhaps my father, who was a devoted church-goer and church-contributor, was at least as interested in how his religious activities could help his business as he was in religion itself.

Each morning, before I left for school, my mother would have me sit down opposite her in the living room for 15 minutes or so while she read aloud selected passages from the Bible. On Sundays (which I learned to hate), I first had to attend Sunday school, after which I joined my parents in the congregation for the regular Sunday church services which always included a long, boring sermon -- boring to me, at least. After church services, we always had an early afternoon big Sunday dinner. Then, I was free to do what I wanted (as long as I didn't go out and play, or in my teens, go to one of my friend's house to listen to music and dance) until 5 o'clock when I had to return to the church for a youth meeting called Epworth League. I remember that the pastor reported to my father that I wasn't as good at leading the group at Epworth League in prayer as I might be. In fact, he specifically compared me to the church's ideal boy -- an almost Horatio Alger character named Dan Howell, who loved to lead the group in prayer and was good at it.

I remarked earlier that many of the middle class families in Fargo moved to the Minnesota Lakes area each summer for about a three-month vacation. It was only about 50 miles away, and husbands in business commuted back and forth each weekend while the families remained at the "Lakes" for the entire summer. In my case, we always moved to the Lakes three or four weeks after most of my friends moved. The reason was that immediately after school was out for the summer, around the first of June, Bible School started. My mother and father felt that it would be better for my character development to attend Bible School for the first few weeks of summer vacation than wasting my time swimming, fishing, etc.

It was a great relief to me when, at the age of 15, I won a scholarship to Shattuck Military School in Fairbault, Minnesota. Shattuck was an Episcopal School where we only had to go to church once (or maybe twice, I don't remember) on Sundays and a short prayer service each evening five days a week.

After Shattuck, it was an even greater religious relief when I entered West Point, and found that I only had to attend Church once a week on Sundays. When I later attended my 50th class reunion at West Point, I was happy to learn that cadets then didn't have to attend religious services at all unless they wanted to. This, it seems to me, is the way it should be.

One advantage of having lived a long time is the ability to make comparisons -- the old with the new. Another advantage is that one finally comes to the realization that there are no simple, straightforward, easy solutions to the major controversial problems in the world. Still another advantage is the realization that very few things are really new today or any other day. Let's see how this might apply to religion.

The business of "saving souls" has been a very profitable business for a few individuals for a long time. In my 80-odd years of life, I have witnessed the antics of such soul-savers as Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple Macpherson, Father Coughlin, Billy Graham, and of course, today's holy terrorist, Jerry Falwell. They have all played on man's doubts and fears about the hereafter to their very substantial financial reward. Nothing changes very much. We smile today at the "hell's fire and damnation" tactics of Billy Sunday, but they worked for him and for his bank account. Some time ago we read in our newspapers that Billy Graham assured all good Christians that they would certainly meet their loved ones again in the hereafter. There is little doubt that this sort of "comfort" has been very profitable for Billy Graham. I suppose Jerry Falwell is as good an example as any of the more recent breed of fundamentalist revivalists. Although the tax-free income from his movement must be impressive, I doubt that wealth is its primary goal. It is more likely power -- political power, which, of course, must include wealth. So we see that nothing much has changed over the years except the methods used to herd the flock. The methods range from Billy Sunday's fear tactics, to Billy Graham's comfort tactics, to Jerry Falwell's political indignation tactics against all who do not totally agree with the leader and his followers. The simplistic-minded demagogues are still with us and so are a large number of gullible "sheep." I suppose this is the way it will be for generations to come, or perhaps for centuries.

I hope it is understood that I don't want, in any way, to interfere with, or publicly criticize those who choose to follow and contribute their dollars to these religious demagogues. They are entitled to their choice as long as they concede that I am entitled to mine, which may be very different from theirs. Take my mother, for example. She was a real fundamentalist. She believed wholeheartedly in creation rather than evolution. She believed quite literally in all the "miracles" of Christianity -- the virgin birth, the resurrection from the dead, the walking on water bit, and all the other fantasies that uphold this particular religion. These beliefs gave her happiness. She was afraid of many things in life, but when she knew she was dying, she was not afraid of death. I was sincerely happy for her that she found such great comfort in her religion. To give a specific example, however, of the wide divergence between her fundamentalist beliefs and my doubts about organized religion, I recall one spring evening in Fargo when I was about 13 or 14 years old. She and my father and I were all sitting in the yard outside our house enjoying the cool evening and looking at the stars. I asked my mother, "Do you really think that the God who created this immense universe -- look at it mother, it's endless -- cares whether Roy Moore of Fargo, North Dakota, moves his feet to a musical rhythm with a young lady on Sunday afternoons?" Her reply was very simple and direct. She said, "Yes, he does." And that ended that particular philosophical discussion.

Enough said about my religious upbringing as a boy and as a young man. Later on, I will give you some of my "reflexions" on religion based upon a lifetime of exposure to formalized religions of various sorts throughout the world.
I became exposed to music at a very young age. I think I was barely seven or eight years old when my mother and father bought a piano and stated my piano lessons. I can recall having to practice for at least on hour and frequently longer each day after returning from school instead of going out and playing baseball or whatever, with the rest of the kids. I suppose it did no harm because I later found out that I had little talent for either athletics or music. It did, however, get me seriously interested in music for the next several years. I learned to play various piano classics in passable fashion and I played piano in a small neighborhood 5-piece group. We occasionally got a job playing dance music on Saturday nights for some local club or social organization. I think our highest fees were probably $5.00 each for an evening of toil. When I was about 12 years old, I branched out into other instruments, starting with the clarinet. My father bought me a pair of Boehm clarinets. I say a "pair" because if you had both a standard B-flat clarinet and also an A clarinet, you could play in a group or an orchestra without having to transpose from one key to another, which to me was a bore. I honestly don't think I had much more real talent on the clarinet than I had on the piano, but I concentrated hour after hour and day after day on just one thing -- tone. I loved the tone of a clarinet when played well and decided to master it. As a result, old Professor Stephens who gave me lessons and who conducted the Fargo symphony orchestra, such as it was, soon gave me free lessons if I would play a few minutes each week for some of his other pupils to show them what they were striving for. To more or less culminate my clarinet experience, I entered the North Dakota State High School music contest when I was about 15 years old. I won the local contest in Fargo for woodwinds and the regional contest in Valley City, after which I went to the state contest in Grand Forks at the University of North Dakota, where I played in the finals in the University auditorium in front of several thousand people. As far as woodwinds were concerned, I was the best in the state. There were no more woodwinds to compete against me in the state, so for the so-called "finals," they pitted me against a marimba player. I think his name was Schroeder; I can't be sure. In any case, his father was a professor of music at the University and was also a judge in the finals. He won. I was told later that he also went on to play his marimba with one of the eastern symphony orchestras. I think it was either the Philadelphia or the Cleveland symphony, but again, I can't be sure.

There is a somewhat interesting sidelight to this state music competition. When I went up on the university auditorium stage to play my number (called "Deep in the Cellar"), my piano accompanist went with me. She was a very attractive blonde, also aged 15. I think she was as nervous as I. Her name was Virginia Briggs. We had known each other for quite a long time and were members of the same crowd, so to speak. I sometimes took her to the movies where her favorite actor was the then famous John Gilbert (who was the favorite "movie idol" of America, and somewhat comparable to his successor, Clark Gable). When I left Fargo for West Point a couple of years later, she moved to California, where she changed her name to Virginia Bruce. After a brief stint in the movies, she moved to New York, where she played a leading part in the Ziegfeld Follies. After that, she moved back to Hollywood, where she became quite well known as a movie actress and where she married John Gilbert. I visited her several times both in New York and Hollywood. One of these occasions was the third birthday party of her daughter, Susan Anne Gilbert. I noted that there were two other three-year olds at the party, namely the Crosby twins with their mother, Bing Crosby's first wife. Incidentally, my sons, Bill, Bruce, and Bud are third cousins of Virginia, and I suppose fourth cousins of Susan Anne Gilbert through their mother's family.

To continue the subject of my early musical training, I think I was about 13 years old when I decided to learn the saxophone in addition to the clarinet and piano. It wasn't that I was tired of the clarinet. Far from it. I think it was the fact that in 1924, saxophones were all the rage. I remember that the Brown Brothers Saxophone Sextet, for example was one of the hottest numbers on phonograph records and on the vaudeville stage. Also, there was a marvelous saxophone player and teacher in the State Theater Orchestra in Fargo. He had formerly played in Paul Whiteman's Orchestra. I never asked him how or why he had made the descent from Whiteman to a small theater orchestra in a small midwestern town. In any case, he formed a saxophone quartet made up of four of his pupils. I played the E-flat alto, and each of the others played a different keyed saxophone. We were quite good. In fact, we were so good that he negotiated a contract to put us on the stage of the State Theater for a performance every afternoon and twice each evening. He developed the musical themes, which were changed, along with the stage scenery every two weeks. A taxi picked us up at the Central High School each afternoon after school for the matinee performance. Everything was well organized, including the make-up people and a study room in the theater where we could do our homework. The money wasn't much by today's standards, but quite good for that era, especially high school kids. But even more important than the money was the semi-celebrity status we had among our high school peers. Those were the days before television and in the infancy of radio when vaudeville was very popular. The Keith Vaudeville Circuit was among the best, if not the best in the country. Toward the end of the school year, the Keith Vaudeville Circuit offered us a very good contract to tour the country during the summer, ending up in Chicago just before the beginning of the next school year. The trouble was that parental consent was needed and my parents, together with one of the other boys' parents, refused to give the required consent. With or without chaperones, they felt that we were bound to meet some bad characters in the "notoriously sinful" theater world. Thus ended my "musical career," perhaps for the better -- who knows?
I think my mother was more disappointed in the end of my musical endeavors than my father. She had learned during her early years to play the piano reasonably well. How she could have done this in the poverty-stricken slums of Indianapolis where she lived, I can't imagine, and she never explained it to me. As a matter of fact, in addition to her primary job as a men's tailor during her early twenties, she played a stringed instrument (I think it was the mandolin) in one of the theater orchestras of Indianapolis. In other words, she had a genuine interest in music. My father, on the other hand, had a fear that I might eventually opt for a musical career, which he termed a "bum's life." For a person without any noticeable talent, such as myself, he was probably right. I don't quite know how to classify an undertaker's life, which he wanted for me, but to his great disappointment, it never appealed to me.

Enough of music. Let's turn to something else. In the spring of 1925, when I was 14 years old, during a lunch period at Central High School in Fargo, I heard about the Citizens Military Training Camps (CMTC) which were taking place in various military posts around the country. The idea was to train youngsters, beginning at the age of 17, in the various arts and disciplines of military life in case they should some day be needed in the country's defense. Well, I was far from 17 years old, but someone convinced me that I could pass for 17, so I proceeded to enroll in the (CMTC) at Fort Snelling, Minnesota near Minneapolis, and I was accepted. It was a chance to do something out of the ordinary and to get away from Fargo for three or four weeks. Now that I look back on it, I wonder why my parents ever consented to my doing this, particularly at my young age. After all, I was doing to learn a lot of new things, such as how to shoot people, which should certainly have been considered anti-Christian -- or is it? Nevertheless, I went to Camp and enjoyed it very much and learned some new skills. In fact, I liked it so much that I went back again in the following year (1926) where I attained the rank of corporal. I had no idea at that time that this would be a major turning point in my life, but it was.

Toward the end of the four-week Camp in 1926, the authorities held a contest to see who would get a scholarship to Shattuck Military School in Faribault, Minnesota. The contest was rigged, to say the least. The scholarship was supposed to go to the "most militarily proficient youth" in Camp. Actually, Military proficiency had nothing to do with it. The contestants were asked such questions as what kind of car their father drove, what kind of house they lived in, how many servants, etc. What they wanted to know, I suppose, was whether the family could pay all costs other than the scholarship, e.g. uniforms, travel, etc. I won handily and I made another "reflexion." It was very similar to my bird-house reflexion, namely that honors in this world do not necessarily go to the most worthy. Rather, what I call the New Golden Rule seems to apply in most cases, which is to say that he who has gold rules.

Shattuck at that time and probably still is, a very prestigious school in terms of scholarship and preparation for college. It was also prestigious in the sense that it attracted boys from wealthy or at least very well-to-do families. Two examples which come to mind while I was there were the Pillsburys and the Hormels of flour and meat-packing fame. Another well known graduate who came later was Marlon Brando. I must say, however, that there was very little, if any, snobbishness among the students. I guess everyone assumed that everyone else had enough money to belong there.

My two years at Shattuck were uneventful in most respects. Let us say that I was average or below in both academics and athletics, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Toward the end of my last year, there was an incident which, as it turned out, shaped the course of the rest of my life. I sat at the same table in the dining hall as a young cadet named Doug Schall. Doug's father was a U.S. Senator from Minnesota. One day Doug asked if any of us would like to go to Annapolis. He said his father had an appointment to give away. I said to myself, "why not?" and I volunteered. Some time thereafter, it turned out that the good Senator found someone else he would rather give the appointment to, and I was out of luck for Annapolis, but by that time, I had the "bug" to go to one of the Military Academies. They were very glamorous in those days, largely due toss the movies which glorified them. So I wrote to Senator Frazier from North Dakota and asked for an appointment to West Point. He replied that he had already appointed a "principal," but that I could be an "alternate" in case the principal failed the entrance exams. I waited, knowing that I could never pass the entrance exams because I was too poor in mathematics.