Typical family psycho-social reaction. (Note: Max and my ultraconservative brother went to college together at Rutgers in the late 1960s). My brother was in training for the next imperialist effort, so I rebelled. Black-sheep role. Church civil rights activist; campus antiwar radical; underground press; etc.) Tiresome in its predictability, but there you are and here I am.
My brother and I would be dressed up in little suits and we would serve drinks to the New Jersey chapter leadership of the right-wing Reserve Officers Association. My father was state treasurer. I was the only 8-year-old on the block who knew the difference between dry and sweet vermouth, and how to make martinis v. gimlets.
Of course, since I was supposedly named after John Foster Dulles, I adopted my nickname as my writing name, thus Chip. (OK, John and Foster were also family names, but really...it was the 60s). I once traded some of these tidbits to Herb Quinde, an intelligence operative for the LaRouchites, for some legal documents he had that I needed for an article. They ran it as a story proving my venal nature. I got a footnote.
As for the silk mill, yes, it was a finishing and dyeing mill in Paterson, NJ., but as for reparations...long gone, the DuPont's developed rayon and manufactured and stored it for a year and then flooded the market with the new miracle fabric for women's stockings...collapsing the silk industry. Gramps lost it all because he refused to declare bankruptcy and repaid his debts from his assets. We kept our family silver service for twenty and class status, but the money was gone. Gramps worked his way back up the social/economic ladder to be vice-president of a bank. That would be 1929. Bad luck. He ended up testing light bulbs for GE. No DuPont product ever entered our home.
An early education in capitalism.
Then there was my great uncle, a commercial attache to Cuba, who refused to support the idea of turning the island into a single crop sugar export plantation since it would destroy the economy. Guggenheim was sent to deliver the ultimatum: agree or resign. Instead he exercised his victorian suicide option. His widow told us never to go to the art museum because it was built on blood. Yuck!
-CB
----- Original Message ----- From: Max B. Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 7:39 PM Subject: RE: Suck on 52 coup in Iran
> . . . so I grew up thinking it was common knowledge.
> :-)
>
> Now about the family silk mill in Paterson, NJ...
> -Chip Berlet
>
> Given your at-home education, how come your brother
> didn't go left too?
>
> As for the silk mill, is that for real?
> My father organized people in those mills.
>
> We have an ancient grudge. Cool. Got to
> figure out those reparations.
>
> mbs
>
>