Exhibit

Partial transcription of taped interview of Martha (Josselyn) DeVoe by H. DeVoe, 5 December 2004. She wanted to add to or correct some of the information on the current version of the Family History CD, and referred to notes she had made for this purpose. M is Martha, H is Howard.

M: I've always understood that my father went to the Latin School in Boston. . . Part of the requirement for the Rotch Travelling Scholarship that you knew French, but he didn't know it and he studied it going over. Apparently he was good enough they gave it to him anyway. He had to pass an examination to get into the Beaux-Arts school in Paris . . . The examination was given by someone who didn't like Americans or didn't like him, and gave him an almost impossible mathematical problem to solve, which no one else there in the room could have solved it. He solved it and got in. . . One of the people in the Beaux-Arts school there with my father in Paris was a Tilton, and they lived in Scarsdale and we used to go and visit them very often. During the depression, Flagg --

H: Ernest Flagg.

M: -- moved to Pleasantville on Broadway not too far from our place, and the daughter Peggy Flagg became a good friend of my sister's. . . .

H: Do you know how long they were there, in Pleasantville?

M: No. . . . When I was in the house on Denison Street, I caught the typhoid, and there were no other typhoid patients around. They thought it was the plumbing, and that's why we moved out to Fisher Avenue. And then the house around the corner on Bank Street became available, and we went there too. When my father designed a house for someone, he'd make a cardboard little model of it for them -- very lovely little things with a landscape he'd put on -- I don't know whether he'd use the trees. He was also interested in a great many things --the stars, microscopes. He had a book he was very fond of: "The Two Worlds." I don't know whether you have that or not. He said that the world of the stars and the world of the microscopes. [Note by H. D: this must be "Two New Worlds" by E. E. Fournier d'Albe, 1907; I have his copy of the book.] He used to take me with my -- they gave me a painting box for Christmas -- Nancy has it now -- and we'd go in the woods and paint, but I didn't do very good. For earning money I used to paint Christmas cards, and he'd always make a sample for me. He was good at chess. Also I've got a book over here that -- he used to make rabbit -

H: Shadows.

M: Yes, [hand] shadows. But he had a lot of hobbies. Of course, making scenery -- he used his architectural thing to make scenery [for toy theaters for his grandsons], I mean his painting skills. And, then, he was always making things. Of course, the history [time-line] chart was something that Mike [Webert] has now. That was something, he wanted to get me interested in history, well I didn't -- he had a lot of hobbies. He had a printing press, do you remember that, when he printed the Christmas cards and sell?

H: I have it now.

M: You have it. Unfortunately I gave away the [engravings] -- during the war they wanted everybody to give in the, whatever it was in there, copper or something. . . . Another thing: he spent about once a week [with] Mr. Fairley, who was the minister at the Unitarian Church. He'd come over and they'd discuss something. He often used what they talked about in the sermons, Mr. Fairley did.

H: Now was that in Pleasantville, or in White Plains?

M: In White Plains. But they scared the life out of me sometimes, because . . . they'd talk about "is that chair there, or do we just think it's there?" And that nearly drove me crazy. . . . Somewhere, he told me he was a runner-up for the Lincoln Memorial [design competition] in Washington. . . . I think we built the [Highland Avenue] house when I was a junior in high school, not my last year [as she had said in an earlier interview]. . . The house in Pleasantville was built by the family and the Filardis, who were builders. They got the material, a lot of it, from an old school -- they had these big windows, huge windows, with an old school -- I remember weekends we'd go up there and build this thing. . . . We didn't have a professional do it, we just -- with the help of the Filardis -- oh, and the Holdens all came over and helped us. My father was quite an actor. He was the lead in a number of parts at the Fireside Players. He had a wonderful voice and a very good command of playing. . . . When he went to the hospital with a hip operation [February 1943], he was all right for a day or so, but I guess a blood clot got in his brain, because from then on he didn't know anyone. He was completely off. He got so he wanted to know who we were -- "that's nice little girls." . . . I'd been told it was maybe a blood clot from the hip that got up there . . . We'd go up to visit him about once a week, and he said "thank you little girls for coming" . . .

H: Wasn't he in a lot of pain just from the fall?

M: I guess so, I don't know, he didn't complain but I'm sure he was. They had to get a stretcher and take him up of course [to] the ambulance.

H: But he was still in the hospital --

M: Oh, for a couple of months. . .

H: And he got a blood clot.

M: No one said that, but it was . . . I think I asked a doctor later, Dr. Brennan [her psychiatrist] or something about it; he said "well that's something that happens with a hip sometimes, a blood clot gets into the brain." . . . [About the man Ella Hannah once hoped to marry] He left without telling anybody what was the matter, but he was told by a doctor that he had a year to live. And he went to Texas, he just disappeared -- his family didn't know where he was, or anything. . . . And then you know she made up with him when my father was -- after my grandmother died, he found it in the paper where she lived and he got ahold of her. And she used to go down to New York once a week and see him, I think. He wanted her to leave my father and go live in Brazil with him.

H: Let's put it this way: she was a vivacious person.

M: But my father wasn't. . . . Alonzo Josselyn was a large person, and he had a Morris chair made for him. Do you remember that Morris? I gave it to the Holdens, and I wish I hadn't. It was made of mahogany and was a big thing. It had something in the back where you could pull a bar and you could move it back and lean back further. . . This chair was made just for him out of mahogany -- it was a beautiful thing. But we didn't know what to do with it and should have kept it. . . . When I graduated from high school, I was the youngest in my class. And I would love to have gone to college, and my aunt [Elizabeth Bell] was willing to loan me the money for it, but my folks said no.

H: In listening to an old tape recording, you were telling me that you had a choice of the Savage School or an art school.

M: But they wanted me to go to New York. They didn't want me to go away to college. I had no choice that way.

H: If you had gone to art school, who would you have gone with?

M: Florice King, my best friend. But I was afraid I couldn't equal my father -- at any rate, I didn't go.

H: If you had gone to college, where would you have liked to have gone?

M: I don't know. My aunt and grandmother took me down to Rutgers; in fact, my mother went too to see it. Girls College - she thought I would like that. I was very impressed, but my folks said no. You know, I should have said "Look, I want to go, and I'm going to go." . . . She [her mother] didn't want me to go to college. . . . She said no, even though I could finance it through my aunt. . . . And you know, when I was in Savage, my mother heard of a job that I could take -- the one I got finally, the Preventorium [at Grasslands Hospital]. They wanted me to stop Savage and not finish graduating and take the job; they said "That's why you went to school, to get a job." . . . And I said no!

H: How many years were you in Savage?

M: Three years, it was a three-year course. A lot of my friends took a fourth year someplace and got a degree, college degree.

H: Do you remember the year that you graduated from Savage?

M: '29. . . . Did you know that I was the top of my class at Savage?

H: And the youngest in your high school graduation.

M: . . . Youngest, yes. But I was so sick about not going to college that I didn't give a hoot about what grades I got. I was good at math and science, easily. Math I got I think 98 percent on the algebra. But the heck with the rest of it; if I wasn't going to college, there wasn't any sense in making good grades. But I say at Savage the theoretical -- you know, the educational part of it too as well as the sports. . . . [Speaking of her grandmother Mary Hannah] The church at the end of her street [in Weehawken] was a Dutch Reformed church, I just remembered. And my grandmother right up to the very end was good at bowling. She did bowling once a week with a crowd. My grandfather had a boat on the Hudson River, and mother would never let me go -- she didn't trust him.

H: How much time did your mother spend with her father?

M: She took my grandmother's attitude, and she didn't care for him. She didn't want me to have much to do with him. . . . His ashes were scattered in the Hudson River.

H: Who did that?

M: Steve, er, Jim Holden. My mother wanted them actually scattered; he said he threw the urn in. She was furious at him. . . . My grandmother and my aunt were quite good at bridge. We used to play there, but if we did it on a Sunday she always pulled the curtains so the neighbors wouldn't see. [chuckles] Dad and I used to play with her.

H: Where was this?

M: At Weehawken. . . . My sister was engaged at one time . . . Michael something. From Puerto Rico, but he never wanted her to see his family . . . And then he called it off; he got scared or something. But she was so happy there for a while. . . . My aunt [Elizabeth Bell] was very talented in the way of sewing. She could make anything in sewing, she could knit, she could hook rugs, and she could tat. She'd make dolls clothes for my dolls -- beautiful little things. My mother was always terribly jealous of her, 'cause I could warm up to her, and I can see why my mother -- you know, and she'd do nothing but talk against my aunt, and how awful she was. Now, about for Dad. He graduated from high school in three and a half years. It was quite an honor to be accepted in Cooper Union . . . there were something like a hundred and twenty-five in each class, and only about 15 or 20 graduated. He always, when he was in high school, he wanted to work for the telephone company. They had a day there where you could choose a profession and go visit them -- he visited the telephone office . . . in White Plains. He was very bitter about letting one lab exam [at Cooper Union] . . . He was held back a year because he couldn't -- he had the flu or something, he was sick and he couldn't attend this lab experiment with three or four other people, and it was near the end of the term and they couldn't repeat it. So they made him stay back a year . . . And he wasn't allowed to play basketball; he was very bitter about it. He went to see the dean, but he said no. . . .

H: Did he ever tell you what work he did during the war [WWII]?

M: Yes, eventually. He worked on a . . . it was something that attached to planes that would be sent off to attack another plane. . . . It was something like a "bat" I think it was called . . . He never told me during the war what it was, he wasn't allowed to. . . . During the depression the telephone company did a good thing. Instead of firing people they had them moved to other jobs, and Dad was both a repairman and an installer.

H: This is all in New York City that he worked, wasn't it?

M: Yes, but he had to learn how to do those in order to keep -- and they only kept him three days a week, but at least they didn't fire him.

H: Did have to commute down to New York, or did he ever live in New York?

M: No, he commuted every day [by train]. In those days you had to work Saturday morning, and --

H: Even before the war?

M: Yes, when we were married he was working Saturday mornings until they cut it down to three days a week. Which was nice, you know, we weren't destitute. . . . Dad was also -- when he was working as a repairman and an installer, they had him go to some hearings. He had to join the union, and they had him going as a union representative to these hearings about something or other -- you know, the company was being sued about something. . . . Well, that's it.

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Written notes made by H. D. during the interview about information not on the tape:

RR would have paid burial and transportation & coffin for Christena Hannah - Ella didn't know that

"Head of Design Department" at Schumachers - but there were only two of them

Marion DeVoe taught in a one-room school house - Bedford, maybe?