Chicago

Another important place was Chicago.  We were told not to take vacations, but finish college as soon as possible to contribute to the war effort.  So I spent the spring semester at the University of Chicago.  I wanted to separate myself from Wayne and see something new.  I was 19 years old.  I loved The University of Chicago even more than Michigan.  I loved the intellectual atmosphere, the classes, the gray stone Gothic architecture.  I especially liked one class taught by a professor of music in which we were told to write a term paper comparing the art, music and literature of a given place and time period.  I chose the late 19th century in France and fell in love with Impressionism and Van Gogh.  I bought a huge reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the Chicago Art Institute, which I still have.  I lost weight and felt much more attractive than ever before in my life.  A wonderful breakthrough in many ways. 

My mother’s school friend, Clara Winter, was the manager of an elegant residential hotel on the near North Side.  She frequently invited me to stay overnight which I loved to do.  There I met two of her sons who were 13 year old twins.  (I couldn’t tell them apart!)  They attended a military academy.  They looked very cute in their uniforms with their dark hair and eyes, and pink cheeks.  They were very lively and fun to be with, like my cousin John.  They thought I was Somebody, being a university student.  I still visit Ali, in Ithaca, NY, the only one of Clara’s boys who is still alive.  He is in his late 80s now.  From time to time I enjoy the warm hospitality provided by him and his wife, Lola.  I loved Clara and her sons, especially the twins.  

In my spare time I took leisurely walks around the campus or read French or German poetry in the Rare Books Room overlooking the red-roofed Oriental Institute.  No one ever came there, only the librarian and me.  I sat in a big comfortable leather chair, as I used to do at Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, and used dictionaries when needed.  I liked Baudelaire, Verlaine, Heine and Goethe. (The last two being Granny’s favorites.)

In Chicago I also learned to ride a bicycle, which I had previously feared to try.  I loved to explore the surroundings of the university, especially by Lake Michigan.  

Chicago is also an important place in my life because it was there that I met my first husband, Christian Bay, a Norwegian political scientist.  I was in graduate school in 1947, majoring in Sociology and Labor Relations, having been a labor organizer for Amalgamated Clothing Workers, CIO for almost a year, after graduating from Michigan.  Christian was an idealistic, leftwing visiting scholar, with a law degree from the University of Oslo.  (I knew my mother would like him and she did.) In his early 20’s, he had served as Judge in minor Quisling trials in postwar Norway.  That impressed me.  He got a job in the Norwegian Information Office at Rockefeller Plaza in NYC, to prolong his stay in this country.  I met him there when my classes ended.  We became engaged, and married on September 2, 1947. I was 22 years old, Christian was 26.