Exhibit

Partial transcript of a tape recorded interview made August 1979 at 6 Trout Pond Lane, Chatham, Massachusetts. M is Martha (Josselyn) DeVoe; H is Howard DeVoe

M: Oh, I remember, alright, I do remember part of it. Auntie was a youngster who was born very very late in her parents' life. That's why it would make Nana's parents, my grandmother's parents, the same age as her parents. My grandmother was a lot older than Auntie. So, that is true, alright, they would be cousins. Well, let's say that Nana's parents died, or one died and then the other died, when she was only fourteen or fifteen years old, and she had no other relatives, so she went to live with her aunt -- her mother's sister. That would be it. . . And Auntie was still another generation removed -- in other words, Auntie was the age of my mother, even though Auntie and Nana were cousins. Auntie was born very late in life.

. . .

H: Let me get the record straight: Auntie was Elizabeth Bell.

M: That's right, she was Elizabeth Bell; she was born when her parents were quite well along in years. And she did not have any other children -- any other brothers or sisters. So my grandmother went to live with her aunt and uncle. And then she met my grandfather, and they were married when she was only seventeen years old. And then they came and lived in the East, because he was a railroad -- maybe a brakeman at that time, he wasn't a conductor -- that was -- and they did come to live in New York, in Haverstraw, New York, when my mother was very young. She was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, but they moved to Haverstraw, New York, and lived there many years until they moved to Weehawken. And he went up the ladder as far as personnel on the railroad went, and he was a conductor of the best train there that went from Weehawken to, I guess Niagara Falls and Rochester, back and forth. He was given the - well, he was the top of the conductors, that's all. I mean, he had the choice of trains and that's what he wanted. He would go up one night and come back the next day. Two trains alternated; it was an overnight train -- I remember. That part I'm not sure of. So when Auntie came to live with my mother, it was more like a sister because they were the same age. She came actually to live with her -- aunt, would that be? No, her cousin, that's it. . . And she came to live because her parents both died, and they were the same age as my grandmother's parents when they passed away, and she was only nineteen at the time they passed away. So the natural place for her to come since she had no other relatives was to live with this cousin of hers. She did that.

H: And she arrived on the day when --

M: Well, she arrived as Minamine graduated from Packard Business School. And I guess she was looking forward to this graduation, because Minamine had not graduated from high school.

H: I didn't know that.

M: Yeah, she flunked out a course in German, I believe, and her mother persuaded her to stop school instead of taking it over, which she guess she always regretted.

H: So you might say that your grandmother was a strong-willed woman as well as your mother.

M: Yeah, that's right. Well, I think Mother always regretted, she felt very much ashamed that she hadn't finished high school and she flunked out this one course; and I mean, she could have gone back the next year and taken it and finished it and passed it, undoubtedly, but her mother persuaded her not to go back to school, and so she didn't graduate from high school. So this graduation from Packard School -- they didn't require a high school diploma to get in that business school -- this graduation meant a lot to her. And it was most unfortunate that Auntie arrived on that day from Terre Haute, and my mother's mother felt that she should be there to meet her, which I'm sure Auntie would not have felt necessary at all. You know, it could have been easily explained and she was the kind that would have thought -- I never heard it from her side, but I'm sure that she would not have kept my mother from her only graduation just to meet her at the train. She could have seen them afterwards; she was going to live with them. Now, where do we go from here?

H: Well, then what happened was that when Nana died, that Auntie moved --

M: Well, then Mother thought that she owed Auntie a home because her mother had made Auntie a home. No, wait a minute -- the other way around. It was a paying-back kind of thing, but because Auntie's folks had made her mother a home when she was homeless, she thought she should make Auntie a home when she [had nowhere to go ?].

H: How did your father feel about that?

M: I don't --

H: That's quite a big responsibility.

M: Well, she paid her own way of course, and they built a wing onto the house -- she paid for that. She sold -- at that time she owned the house she and my grandmother lived in. Nana was more or less separated from her husband at that time.

H: I met him once, you know. I remember meeting him once.

M: I think he was a wonderful person. My mother wouldn't let me have much to do with him. He wanted to take me out in a boat on the Hudson, and she wouldn't allow that.

H: How old were you?

M: What?

H: How old were you when that happened?

M: Oh -- high school age, maybe, or something. She was afraid very much of water anyway, and I guess she didn't ___ if he could manage the boat, but that was his life and he had this boat on the Hudson River -- he was retired then, and he had a -- it was a nice boat, really.

H: He was living near --

M: Well, he lived off and on it -- that __, he didn't -- they weren't that compatible.

H: Then where did your grandfather live when he wasn't in Weehawken?

M: I don't really know that part --

H: I have the impression it might have been Florida.

M: Well that's right, he did go to Florida at one time, but when he had this boat he wasn't in Florida -- he couldn't have been. He had it -- I don't know where he lived. But I don't remember him around very much when I visited my grandmother -- he was -- of course he was off on these runs. I mean every -- he had a -- like an airplane pilot. He went away and he'd come back . . . He'd go up to Rochester --

H: Okay, so I understand all that.

M: Well I -- I -- it worked out fairly well, but at that time Mother was going to work with Doctor Vier, so Auntie had the meals, and I guess she liked that part of it. Nancy was a very little youngster, and Auntie adored her.

H: I thought she adored me!

M: She did, but you weren't home (laughs).

H: What do you mean, I wasn't home?

M: Let's say Nancy was preschool and was home all day, and you --

H: Well I was there --

M: No, not when Auntie . . . I think you were older when she arrived. Maybe you're remembering the times she came to visit us summers. Auntie at first didn't, as I remember it -- no, I guess she did live with my mother, and then Mother felt it didn't work out. And she went to the apartment in White Plains, and Auntie went out west to live with some cousins of hers, or a good friend of hers.

H: What apartment in White Plains?

M: Where she was --

H: No, but Auntie was living in Pleasantville in that wing.

M: Do you how many years? I really don't know how many years she lived there.

H: Well, your grandmother died when I was about ten years old, or something like that?

M: Ah -- let's see. You weren't -- wait a minute -- you weren't -- no, you were younger than that . . . I think you were younger than that, because you had a fever and a sore throat the last Christmas that she was alive. You wanted so badly to go down there, because she wanted to see you and all. You'd been making these records for her . . . Bob was in kindergarten and you were in first grade, that was it. Nancy wasn't even born.

H: Okay, so I was really in school but I wasn't preschool. I see what you mean. Okay. I remember going down to Weehawken anyway with my feet in a bucket I think in the car to keep warm -- was something warm down there? It worked out alright -- I made it.

M: You had quite a high fever for a couple of days, and we didn't either want to expose her to it or, you know, have you take the trip with a fever.

H: I did go down, didn't I?

M: You did go down, because you woke up without a fever, and we said we're going. We knew we'd take a chance if there's any --

H: But it was a very cold day as I recall.

M: I know, it wasn't really a good thing for you to do, since you had had a touch of the flu and we didn't know whether -- we kept it sort of away from her. But that was her last Christmas. But, so you were, when she, when Auntie moved there you were, in the time the wing was built and all, you were in second or third grade. So Nancy was born when Auntie was there, I guess. Must have been.

H: But when was it that Auntie would visit in the summers?

M: Well, then, Minamine -- oh, I know, after Dad, my father, died; that was it. Then Mother felt she no longer wanted to stay in Pleasantville.

H: Yes, but, Auntie had been living there until then.

M: Until, that was it -- she lived there until my father died, and then they moved down to White Plains -- Mother and Priscilla moved into an apartment, Auntie took a rooming. No -- Auntie didn't do that. I'm not clear on this. She went out West -- that was it, she went back to Terre Haute to be with a friend of hers she was very fond of. They thought they would try it, and she wasn't too happy there. She stayed about two years, and wasn't too happy. But those years that she was out there, we invited her out to our house for the summer.

H: That's when she was staying at our house.

M: That's right, and she stayed for maybe two or three summers at our house --

H: Now I remember. Sure.

M: It's coming back now. Was it that time that Nancy was born -- I don't remember.