Wrapped in the Flag (18 page)

For this new project, Welch enlisted my dad as one of the national spokesmen. In the next few years, Dad traveled across the country to headline anti-UN gatherings. His stump speech, one I heard several times, touted JBS talking points: The UN is a Communist plan to socialize the world. Alger Hiss, an American Communist and member of the State Department, was the main author of the UN charter. My father dubbed the UN as “the house that Hiss built.”
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In addition, he explained, the UN has not been an instrument of peace but rather has facilitated an enormous expansion of the Communist empire. Dad peppered his speech with numerous examples, including the Soviet occupations of Albania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Poland, as well as its domination in North Korea, Manchuria, East Germany, Tibet, and Cuba. All of these examples, my father reminded his audiences, occurred after the UN Charter was ratified, in 1945.
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Dad took strong exception to the structure of the UN, including, the use of the Security Council veto to ensure that a socialist or Marxist would always be at the head of the organization. Dad insisted that the ultimate goal of the
UN, a goal stated by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, was this: “The UN stands, finally, as a symbol of the world order that will one day be built.”
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Dad always closed with the same words: “We do not need more government; we need less. We do not need the UN Charter; we need the United States Constitution. We do not need the House that Hiss Built; we need the mansion bequeathed by our forefathers. We need to get the United States out of the UN and the UN out of the United States.”
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As his last word rang out, the audience would jump to its feet and applaud. It was not uncommon for the standing ovation to go on for several minutes.

For several years, my father gave this speech in venues across the country. On November 16, 1963, he spoke at the Melodyland Theatre in Anaheim, an auditorium with a 2,300-seat capacity. I don’t know if the place was full that night, but I do know that Dad’s speech was published by the John Birch Society and distributed in large quantities across the country.

In school, my teacher Sister Anna Raphael announced a class project for current events: a debate for the whole school and parents on the topic “Should Red China Be Admitted to the United Nations?”

This was a hot issue in America that year. Just a few months earlier, after a full-court press by the United States, Red China had been denied a UN seat.
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Despite that setback, however, the conventional wisdom was that the issue would surface again in 1962. Sister knew all of this and realized that the issue would generate a lot of interest; her project was sure to be a success.

“Oh, God,” I thought. “Please, don’t assign me to the team.”

I could never be on the
Yes
side of the debate. My parents would come unglued if I argued in favor of Communist anything. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be on the
No
side. I knew I’d be seen as the Birch spokesperson, and I just didn’t want the soapbox. I wanted to be invisible this time.

I saw one way to avoid the assignment: get out of the room.

Luckily, I didn’t have to fake feeling ill; I really did have a pounding headache. I reached into my purse for an aspirin, raised my hand, and asked to be excused. In the restroom, the safest hiding place in the whole school, I locked myself in one of the stalls and waited until the end-of-class bell. Then, I merged into the hall crowd and snuck to my next class. For the rest of the day, I stayed as far away as I could from Sister Anna Raphael’s room.

“Congratulations,” I told myself as I settled on the bus. “You dodged that bullet.”

When I got home, Mother was working away at the dining room table surrounded by piles of books, magazines, and newspapers. How she found anything in the perpetual jumble, I had no idea, but she could always put her
finger on what she needed. It was uncanny.

I greeted her and headed to the stairs. As I put my foot on the first riser, she called me back. “Sister Anna Raphael phoned about the debate, dear. I gathered some material for you,” she said. “There’s plenty more if you need it.”

“Damn,” I thought.

Dinner immediately became the “Why We Hate the United Nations” hour. Mother and Dad pounded away on every bad idea that had its origin in some UN policy or agency. By the time they were finished, I knew all the points in Dad’s speech by heart. Then it was a refresher course on all the horrors of Red China under Chairman Mao, including a rewind of the hot-coals story.

“You need to include these details,” Mother said.

“Sister won’t appreciate that one,” I told her.

Undeterred, my mother wrote the gory details on index cards, underlining the points she thought most relevant.

For my parents, the idea of Red China holding membership in the United Nations was ghastly—an affront to freedom and decency. Given the horrendous things Mao did in China, who could possibly disagree?

I became a walking dictionary of all things UN. In addition to knowing the dirt about Alger Hiss, I also knew that there was no mention of God in the UN Charter.
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I could discuss the secret agreement that the secretary-general always be either a one-world socialist or Marxist/Communist, and I could show the proof: Trygve Lie, a Norwegian socialist; Dag Hammarskjold, a Swedish socialist; and U Thant, a Burmese Marxist. I could talk about the UN plans for complete disarmament of the United States, praised in State Department booklet #7277,
Freedom From War
, along with the plan to disband our military and replace it with a “United Nations Peace Force.”
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And I knew that the United States was paying the lion’s share of the bill for all of this.

I had no doubt that I’d find a way to include the views of Barry Goldwater since he had said, “Now is the time for the United States to declare openly that if the United Nations votes to admit Red China, our government will suspend all political and financial support of the United Nations.”
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I knew all of this and I still didn’t want to be in the debate. Sister Anna Raphael, aware of my reluctance, assigned Kathy Durso to be my partner. Kathy, ever the optimist, spotted the plus in the situation: we needed a quiet place to practice.

“Eureka,” she said. “We’ll have to work at my house all weekend. It’s too busy at your place.”

I gathered my notes and headed to Lincolnwood. As soon as I dropped my materials in Kathy’s room, her mom served up a plate of her fabulous spaghetti and yummy garlic bread. “You can’t work on an empty stomach,” she insisted. Kathy’s mother had always welcomed me. I didn’t care that my parents decided to dislike the Dursos; I never missed an opportunity to visit. Many a weekend, if I wasn’t grounded, I was at Kathy’s.

One of my fondest memories is of Dr. Durso sitting across the table from us, drinking his cocktail and teasing Kathy and me. More times than I can count, he said, “You know, you really are my favorite girl.”

“Yes, I am, Dr. D.,” I always said.

I never told Kathy or her parents how my parents derided them, calling them “low-class Italians.” Mother and Dad put the Dursos on a par with Greeks, “Indians,” “Orientals,” Jews, and, of course, Negroes. While I hated these slurs, I told myself to keep my mouth shut and get out of the house.

Kathy and I goofed around as much as we worked on our speeches, but we were ready by the night of the debate. We spoke, without notes, and we had so much detail, thanks to my mother, that we overwhelmed the other team. I don’t think it hurt that public opinion wasn’t favorable to Communists, but we were still tickled when we were declared the winners.

My parents, who hardly ever ventured out to my school activities, were there. “You girls were sharp as tacks,” Mother said.

Dad put his arm around me. “You were excellent,” he said, “a natural debater, just like your old man.”

That night I was proud; I’d lived up to my parents’ expectations and I’d been true to myself. I was sure Red China didn’t belong in the UN, and I’d argued forcefully for my position. I wasn’t ready to toss out the UN completely, but in all honesty, I could understand why my parents thought the organization was hopeless. On the subject of the United Nations, we had reached détente.

When I was a kid, I knew quite a few old people—or people I defined as old. From what I could tell, a lot of them smelled sour, worried about their aches and pains, and despaired of the younger generation. My great-aunt Agnes—my grandmother’s youngest sister—was different. She spent her days playing cards, watching her housemate Miss Ernest dig in the flower garden, and telling stories about her career as an executive assistant in downtown Chicago.

When my mother announced that Aunt Agnes had invited me for tea, I threw on my Sunday dress, brushed my hair, and raced across the yard to
the little bungalow next door. My aunt and her friend were my favorite old people.

Aunt Agnes taught me to play gin and canasta, for money, while I sipped a concoction she called “Cambric” Tea—tea, sugar, milk, and (in her cup) a dash of “something stronger.” From my aunt, I heard family secrets, like the name of my mother’s first boyfriend (Dick Thunder) and why Grandpa didn’t like my dad at first (Dad was too “fast” for his oldest daughter, Mary Laurene).

I always had to swear that I’d keep everything that she said a secret from my mother and my grandmother. “They lean to the German side of the family,” Aunt Agnes said. “Not prone to stories. Me, I take to the Irish.”

Sometimes, her stories turned to the “dark days,” when money was scarce, poor people stood in long, snaking bread lines, and beggars came to the back door for table scraps. “Old people ate out of garbage cans,” she told me. “We tried to help when we could, but times were hard.”

Because of my aunt, I realized that the Great Depression was not an abstract history lesson. My aunt had lived it. My grandparents had lived it. My parents had lived it. I understood that every adult I knew had lived it.

Despite the hardships of the Depression, my parents hated every single program passed by President Roosevelt as his New Deal. They railed against Social Security and unemployment compensation for creating “socialism” and making people “dependent on government.” For my father and my mother, it was always and only about their notions of the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, and tiny, tiny government.

One afternoon in June of 1962, I found myself fussing with my mother about the Birch meeting that was set to begin in a few hours. I didn’t want to attend; she insisted. “The future of the country hangs in the balance,” Mother said. “You will be on deck and ready to participate. Or do I need to call your father?”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“Yes, young lady, you will,” she added. “And get some letters written before dinner.”

I went into my bedroom, shut the door, and opened the latest issue of the Birch Society bulletin. On the first page I read Robert Welch’s latest analysis of current events. “The dominant feature of life in the United States today is confusion,” he wrote, insisting again that the United States would be a police state in three or four years unless the Birchers rode to the rescue.
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“Et cetera and et cetera,” I thought. “Every month, the same story. Bad government, bad president, coming disaster. I’ll just write a couple of letters.”

The “Agenda for the Month” told me where to start: “The King-Anderson Bill–Gateway to Socialized Medicine.” This was the latest Birch project, and Mother would expect me to write at least one letter opposing this bill.

I picked a name from Welch’s list of target congressmen and added the standard address, House Office Building, Washington, DC. I used Welch’s own words as my reason to oppose the bill. “The King-Anderson Bill is simply one significant part of the whole intensive drive of the Kennedy Administration to continue and complete the conversion of the United States into a socialist nation.
It is basically an extension, in form, as well as in degree, of Social Security
.”
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I signed my name, folded the letter, and slid it in an envelope. Next, I wrote to some guy I’d never heard of, a Dr. Blasingame, to thank him for the courageous stand of the American Medical Association against socialized medicine.

Later that evening, a big crowd turned out for the meeting, more than usual. Over the last months, Birch attendance had bounced back, and, judging from the crowd in the living room, the looming threat of socialized medicine was enough to pack the place. I took coats, passed coffee, and handed out materials. When everyone had settled, Mother led the Pledge and then announced, “We’ll get right to it.”

She dropped a 33 rpm record on the stereo. “For those of you new to the cause, this is a recording done over a year ago,” she explained. “It outlines perfectly the danger of the new push to force government health care on the elderly. Listen carefully and then we’ll discuss the issue fully.”

In a few seconds, the voice of a rising right-wing star—the dashing, engaging, and charming Ronald Reagan—filled the room. I’d heard this record,
Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine
, several times before, so I already knew his main point: Americans would never vote for socialism directly, but we could be taken in by things labeled liberalism.