Abstract

Alexander Cook was an editorial cartoonist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He also taught art in Cleveland Public Schools for approximately 25 years. By focusing on his teaching career, he mentions busing desegregation and the noticeable change in students' work ethic and discipline. Cook also makes a distinction between suburban schools and city schools. He served in World War II and describes the experience of being one of the first troops in Japan after the dropping of the atomic bombs.

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Interviewee

Cook, Alexander B. (interviewee)

Interviewer

Schnoke, Molly (interviewer)

Project

Judson Manor

Date

10-25-2016

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

49 minutes

Transcript

Transcription sponsored by the Jaworski family in memory of Alexander Burns Cook

Alexander Cook [00:00:00] No, you should put a big heat lamp over, over the people so they really spill the beans, you know, like in a police. Do I do it at a police station? From what I’ve seen in the movies, It must.

Molly Schnoke [00:00:16] My name is Molly Schnoke. I’m from Cleveland State University. I’m here today conducting an interview for the Judson Oral History Project. Please state your name.

Alexander Cook [00:00:25] My name is Alexander Cook.

Molly Schnoke [00:00:29] And today’s date?

Alexander Cook [00:00:31] And Today’s date is October 25, 2016.

Molly Schnoke [00:00:37] So you are not originally from Cleveland?

Alexander Cook [00:00:39] No.

Molly Schnoke [00:00:40] What brought you here?

Alexander Cook [00:00:43] The Plain Dealer. Yeah, I was just- I had been in the army and then had graduated from, just graduated from Ohio Wesleyan. It was in 1949. The President of Ohio Wesleyan then, Arthur Fleming, who was quite well known in the country, was president of Ohio Wesleyan. And he was also an alumnus of the university. And he liked the cartoons that I had been doing for the college paper. And I was interested in being an editorial cartoonist while in high school. Had worked for a cartoonist running errands and that kind of business, who was doing a comic strip at the time in St. Joseph, Michigan, where I grew up. St. Joseph, Michigan is right across the lake from Chicago, by the way. I was born in Grand Rapids, actually east Grand Rapids, Michigan. But Dr. Fleming, he had his Ph.D. of course, said, I like your cartoons, Alex. He said, would you be interested in my getting- He said, I know a number of publisher and editor friends across the country. Would you be interested in my getting in touch with any of them you know about? Maybe they would employ you. I said, sure. And so the one that replied to his getting in touch was Paul Bellamy, who was a well-known editor in the country of the Plain- He was editor of the Plain Dealer. His father, by the way, had written Looking Backward, which you’d be interested in, is a classic, and it’s just in a small book, I don’t happen to have it. But Looking Backward, which I understand was a classic on socialism. Someone in your library may be interested in that. But that was in Springfield, Massachusetts. That’s where he had come from, Mr. Bellamy, before settling in Cleveland.

Molly Schnoke [00:03:10] What were your first impressions when you arrived in Cleveland?

Alexander Cook [00:03:14] Oh, my. It’s interesting. When he had interviewed me, I had some time to go up in Terminal Tower, which was then probably the tallest skyscraper, tallest building between New York and Chicago. And also I decided I’d walk across the river on the Main Avenue Bridge. I don’t think people do that anymore, but I wanted to see the ships and the tugboats and all that business down in the river. And being an amateur sailor, I’ve loved the Great Lakes and have been active in the Great Lakes Historical Society for many years. I was curator of their museum until retiring from that and being a trustee also of the Great Lakes Historical Society, which now has a beautiful new museum in Toledo that everyone should see.

Molly Schnoke [00:04:19] So it being a Great Lake city?

Alexander Cook [00:04:22] Sure. Like Cleveland, Cleveland being a port city, of course. And I was quite impressed by Cleveland, actually known as the Forest City. It’s supposed to be famous for its trees and all. And also a city of bridges, because there are a lot of bridges here and crossing the Cuyahoga. Lived in Hinckley for a while, which is 20 miles south of Cleveland. Just a small village, and has grown up a good bit in that area, as you can imagine.

Molly Schnoke [00:05:12] What years did you work for the Plain Dealer?

Alexander Cook [00:05:16] I can’t tell you the exact years. I say from 1949, either six or seven years. I forgot when I left, some friends were in the public relations business, thought I might be interested in going into public relations. Corporation public relations. And I had an interesting experience with these people. The name of the company was Edward Howard and Company. How I happen to know them was through one of the columnists and the Plain Dealer who was Claire McMurray Howard, who wrote a column called Good Morning. It was a human interest type column for the paper. And her sons ran the public relations firm. But I was not particularly interested in being in public relations work. I did a good bit of writing and helped in designing employee and stockholder publications and that kind of business. It was a nice experience. But I wanted to get back into my editorial cartooning, for which I had been employed at the Plain Dealer.

Molly Schnoke [00:06:31] What types of topics did you cover when you were doing the editorial pieces?

Alexander Cook [00:06:36] The political stuff, like now.

Molly Schnoke [00:06:40] What were the big stories of those days?

Alexander Cook [00:06:42] Oh, well, of course, I did not cover it, but of course, the Shepherd murder trial business. You’ve heard of that, I’m sure, but it didn’t cover that. I worked with a man who was a sketch artist, since photographers are not allowed in the courtroom at that time. Did sketches during the trial. He was one of the fellows that I worked with at the paper. I didn’t do that type of thing, actually, but mostly political things and things to do with the city and such.

Molly Schnoke [00:07:20] What were some of the big topics of the time?

Alexander Cook [00:07:23] Well, of course, the previous year, before I came here, Cleveland had won the World Series. Had been in the World Series and won. It was in 1948. And so there was still, Cleveland is really as, you know, a sports, kind of a sports capital. I’m not big into sports myself, but I’ve always enjoyed baseball and as a boy used to enjoy, since living near Chicago and both of my parents were from Chicago. Seeing the Cubs in Chicago, managed to catch two foul tips. One off a famous batter named Ducky Medwick that bounced off the upper deck at Wrigley Field. And another time I forgot who the batter was. But anyway, so I always like baseball, and this is the time for it.

Molly Schnoke [00:08:18] It is. It certainly is.

Alexander Cook [00:08:21] I like to follow the Browns, but. But I don’t know, I’m not very good at understanding the various rules of football, so baseball is much easier for me at least. I’m also an amateur sailor. I’ve done a lot of sailing in small boats.

Molly Schnoke [00:08:42] So what do you think of that, Cleveland’s role in the story of the Great Lakes?

Alexander Cook [00:08:50] It’s a very large role. Many of the- A number of the original owners of the shipping companies as well as the shipyard which was- There were several. There was one big shipyard in Cleveland, American Shipbuilding Company. And then earlier, too many ships or a number of ships were built here in the city. And the owners of the ships also lived in the city, including William G. Mather and Steinbrenner came in years later and other Bradley were some of the prominent names in the business. Bradley, interestingly enough, had a connection with Thomas Edison, who is believed to have been conceived actually in Vermillion, Ohio, which is about 50 miles west of Cleveland. And apparently Edison’s mother had been a housekeeper for Captain Elva Bradley, whose house still stands in Vermilion.

Alexander Cook [00:10:08] Our museum that I was quite active in and been main curator of also was in Vermilion before just moving to Toledo in a beautiful new facility on the Maumee River.

Molly Schnoke [00:10:22] What do you think are some aspects of Cleveland’s story about shipping in the Great Lakes that people don’t know much about?

Alexander Cook [00:10:36] That’s surprisingly enough, they don’t know a lot about Cleveland having been a shipping capital. And just simply that the fact that so many of the prominent families, many gone now, had made their living from the shipping business. Steamship shipping in particular here would be iron ore for the steel mills that have been prominent for many years in Cleveland, and coal and limestone and other basic materials that we use in our everyday lives. And that’s really it. The same is true with Chicago and Toledo and Milwaukee and some of the other cities. But what was your question again, please?

Molly Schnoke [00:11:40] What people don’t truly know.

Alexander Cook [00:11:41] Yeah, they don’t know. As a matter of fact, I taught art in the Cleveland city schools for 24 years and had gone back and was trying to get back into my editorial cartooning and got interested in teaching through a teacher friend in Michigan, where, as I just said, I had grown up and went back to school. Then Western Reserve, it was not Case Western Reserve, it was Western Reserve University and took some variety of courses. They had an arrangement with the Institute of Art here for the studio courses and that sort of thing, and the academic courses were taught at Western Reserve. But anyway, so I could teach in any of the Ohio schools. In other words, to get my teaching certificate, which one must have to teach in the public schools. So I taught for 24 years in the system and enjoyed it very much. I had between five and six hundred students a week that I would see. I used to go to different schools. One school, interestingly enough, named after William Watterson, who had been superintendent of the American Shipbuilding Company here in Cleveland. And so his family, or he or someone in his family must have provided some land to the board of education. So that school was named Watterson, which originally had apparently (been) its origin. The Watterson family had originated in the Isle of Man, apparently in England.

Molly Schnoke [00:13:41] What did you observe in the changes of public education through those 24 years?

Alexander Cook [00:13:51] Well, not too many changes per se. Of course, you can imagine they had different, were experimenting with different reading programs and that sort of certain basic skills such as that. I have always felt that art is very important in teaching for children, in helping to develop a child’s perception and perspective on life. And too many people have considered art and music as sort of frivolous things, frivolous subjects to teach. And they’re actually very important, the development of children.

Molly Schnoke [00:14:33] But that’s not the way that the school district conceived of art when you joined.

Alexander Cook [00:14:38] No, it’s just that they had a certain number of art teachers in the system who went to different schools and so on, because being the city of the size that it is, would have different schools. But I haven’t seen so many changes in, well I retired in 1988 and I, I don’t recall having so many changes. I would say that the unfortunate thing of a city like Cleveland was that so many students come from one-parent families, which is unfortunate. And so discipline in recent years has been pretty shaggy.

Molly Schnoke [00:15:36] Did you witness that change in the students over the years?

Alexander Cook [00:15:40] Oh, yes, because when I came to work in the system, my discipline was just not thought of. It was just like one of the original three Rs, so to speak. You know, just assume that you would have good discipline and so on. But because of some unfortunate circumstances of so many children who did not, were not in a normal family situation, had an effect on instruction. I think it was kind of difficult to explain all that, except for the fact that it’s been universally true in the urban situations throughout the country, not just Cleveland, but in Chicago and New York and the other bigger cities.

Molly Schnoke [00:16:42] And you were, you were with the school district when it went through some of its demographic changes.

Alexander Cook [00:16:50] Yeah, right. When a federal judge who had been a John Kennedy appointment decided that the children in the racial situation were not getting equal opportunities, so to speak, in the system and thought it would be better if the children would be bused to other schools throughout the system to gather more of a, more equity and such so-called equal balance. And I always felt that that was somewhat debatable because the system has had such excellent teachers in both parts of the city. And you see, it was actually matching or a balanced situation between the two sides of town. The east side of Cleveland, which has been pretty much African American, and the west side, which was mostly, I would say, mostly White at the time. And Judge Batisti was his name, he had come here from Youngstown. I don’t know. He had been a federal judge. He was not really a teacher and he was the one that tried to work out what he felt was what many people thought too was an imbalance.

Molly Schnoke [00:18:28] How did your colleagues feel? What were the teachers thinking at that time?

Alexander Cook [00:18:35] Pretty much the same way. Hadn’t really given it that much thought because when you’re teaching, you’re concentrating on whom you’re teaching rather than any racial aspects. And I was happy to teach anyone willing to learn, regardless of their race or their background, that kind of thing.

Molly Schnoke [00:19:04] Once the judge made his ruling and the plan was laid out, do you recall a sense of, do you think things changed quickly after that was more slow, gradual change?

Alexander Cook [00:19:20] An interesting thing happened. It turned out that the African American families were happier having their children in their own neighborhood, having the schools in their own neighborhood. And so it just sort of, it just sort of petered out, so to speak, that I wouldn’t call it an order. But the change did not work as well as I had expected.

Molly Schnoke [00:19:49] Is that surprising to some folks?

Alexander Cook [00:19:51] No. Yes and no. I mean, I would say no it wasn’t particularly surprising because when you as a child, if you can imagine when you were a child, you wanted to go to the school in your neighborhood. And this was sort of a juxtaposition of combining the schools that had been all African American or all white and making sort of a more of a mix so that they would all benefit.

Molly Schnoke [00:20:29] Did you live in Cleveland at the time?

Alexander Cook [00:20:30] Yes, I lived in, I had been living in Lakewood before getting married. And my wife, who was here also at Judson, taught in one of the suburban systems, South Euclid–Lyndhurst. And her subject was French language courses.

Molly Schnoke [00:21:10] Were there differences that the two of you discussed in what was happening in suburban school districts versus the…?

Alexander Cook [00:21:16] Yeah, I guess so. I mean, just what was obvious. Yeah, pretty much.

Molly Schnoke [00:21:23] What did she talk about what was happening in South Euclid-Lyndhurst at the time?

Alexander Cook [00:21:29] Just growth. A growing system, which I would assume is a very good system. I don’t really know much about it. I can’t recall having discussed the academic aspects or anything like that. But she also was certified to teach Spanish in addition to French and she was in a junior high situation. I was certificated for K through 12 in Art and I enjoyed the younger children. So I didn’t mention earlier here that I had all elementary children. I could have taught, they were kind of interested in putting me in one of the high schools before I retired. But I had elementary children for the most part.

Molly Schnoke [00:22:33] You were a cartoonist?

Alexander Cook [00:22:34] Yeah. Before.

Molly Schnoke [00:22:35] Before. What did you- What did you teach the children? What was sort of your take on art coming from a cartoonist?

Alexander Cook [00:22:44] Drawing, painting, three dimensional type things. One of the things that I learned while teaching in the Cleveland city schools was that you more or less have a pretty limited budget when it comes to materials. So you would use things like simple tag board that’s used for folders, for sculptures, and then construction paper which comes in various colors and so on. Papier-maché. One of my schools won a Freedoms Foundation Award for patriotic figures in papier-maché, which was quite, was really quite, quite successful.

Molly Schnoke [00:23:41] What did they make?

Alexander Cook [00:23:43] Little figures of Abraham Lincoln and other, some of the other famous Americans and I imagine George Washington and so on and even got off into the hippie area of one little boy whose name was Alexander by coincidence, he made a little hippie type figure holding a guitar and with long hair and everything, which was kind of cute and all. He named him Alexander. He gave it to me. Finally being papier-maché, it didn’t last too long, but anyway, which was a nice experience for the children. I enjoyed providing different things for my children to do because I feel that art education is very important in child development.

Molly Schnoke [00:24:40] Earlier you had talked about your interest in sailing and the Great Lakes. How do you think our relationship to our, our lake and the Great Lakes as a whole has changed over years?

Alexander Cook [00:24:57] Well, I would say, number one, trying to get rid of the pollution problem because of the various industries that are around the lakes. The Great Lakes shipping also at one time there were actually literally thousands of different ships operating on the lakes. And the early vessels were all wood and wood construction, that kind of thing. But the ships have grown in size too, carrying very large cargoes, particularly as I mentioned earlier, iron ore and some of the basic materials, coal and limestone and that sort of oil, that kind of thing, pretty much. But the early shipping on the Great Lakes comprised a lot of shipping of lumber and timber because as you probably would know that the early cities around the Great Lakes were pretty much wood construction. And, the other materials came in later, especially in the city itself.

Molly Schnoke [00:26:15] Were you ever out on the lake with those boats?

Alexander Cook [00:26:17] Oh, sure, yeah, right.

Molly Schnoke [00:26:22] What was that like?

Alexander Cook [00:26:25] I’ve been on several different freighters and worked for a marine outfit while I was in college and worked in the shipyard while I was in college. And ships that incidentally, at that time we were not in World War II as yet. We were, for minesweepers in Benton Harbor, Michigan, building wooden minesweepers that went to England. And I worked as a caulker. A caulker is one who puts, drives, has a mallet and drives oakum into the seams of the wood planks and so on, which was a nice, quite an interesting experience.

Molly Schnoke [00:27:05] How many boats were you making at the time?

Alexander Cook [00:27:08] Oh, at that time in Michigan there were maybe three or four vessels being made at a time. But the shipping has changed now so that there are fewer freighters on the Great Lakes than there were over say during the, during the 20th century when I would say that the Great Lakes had the busiest amount of shipping. But the ships and lakesmen call them boats, even though technically they’re ships had become over a thousand , a fleet of about 12 or 13, what are called thousand foot freighters. Ships that would carry say easily six times what the earlier freighters had carried. The newer thousand footers carry as much as 50 or 60,000 tons of iron ore, whereas in the earlier days they would carry only maybe around 10,000 tons because the ships are so much larger. So that’s a big change in that business.

Molly Schnoke [00:28:30] You mentioned a lot about having worked on a shipping yard and sailing, but you ended up being in the Army.

Alexander Cook [00:28:40] Well, that’s true. I was only 18 and World War II and I had enlisted in the Army. We had been at war and as you know, Pearl harbor was 1941. And in 1942, I enlisted, and I was still a student at Ohio Wesleyan and wound up in New Guinea, in the South Pacific, in the Philippines, the Bismarck Archipelago, and finally Japan. I was one of the very first soldiers in Japan after the war.

Molly Schnoke [00:29:33] How did you end up there then?

Alexander Cook [00:29:38] We were the very first soldiers into Japan after the atom bomb business. And Japan had surrendered, as you know, in 1945. And it was simply. I wasn’t there very long, nor was my outset. But I had been in army intelligence in a brigade. It was an army special brigade in the army engineers. And we had landing barges and that kind of stuff. And one of my activities was making sketch maps for landings for the men that were running the landing boats and that kind of thing. And had several close calls in which the Japanese had attacked us, our outfit, while in New Guinea. And I was happy to live through that business. But I was no particular hero or anything like that, just another soldier. It was a sergeant, just a plain, regular sergeant in charge of my work. And as I say in army intelligence, I guess this is for me.

Molly Schnoke [00:31:05] Yes, it is. What was Japan like when you arrived? After the bomb was dropped?

Alexander Cook [00:31:13] Excellent question. You’d think you were in a different world. For one thing, they were very apprehensive. They didn’t know how Americans would treat them. They found out that Americans are very fair people, generally speaking, and didn’t harm them in any way. After all, we had been their mortal enemy. Even though they, I think in more recent years, they’ve kind of forgotten that they had brought the thing on in the first place with bombing Pearl Harbor. But that they found that Americans, I would say, were very fair people.

Molly Schnoke [00:32:07] And what did you think of them?

Alexander Cook [00:32:09] They were very interesting. For one thing, I was looking at a culture that was very old. They were, say they were supposedly some many years a good 50 or 60 years behind us medically, in our medical science. Even though in the 1940s we, well, I would say that we were medically advanced then, too. Today, it’s a different story. Of course, we’re very, very well advanced medically. They had some of the old, not typhoid, but some of the diseases that were rather prevalent at that time. And most of the people that you would see were in kimono type garbs and they had little stilted wooden shoes, which I think they called them geta. And it was a fascinating, it was quite an experience. I decided that was not being particularly happy in the army, as most men aren’t. It was a very, very gratifying experience to actually have a chance to go to Japan, seeing as we were the very first soldiers in Japan. So we were there as an occupying forces, but it was very obvious that we were in a place that was many years behind us in terms of so called development. I mean they had nice railroads and that sort of thing.

Molly Schnoke [00:34:08] What was it like on your return home, a lot of, when the war was over?

Alexander Cook [00:34:15] Well, it was wonderful to get back home because during the war most of us didn’t think we’d ever see snow again. When you’re in New Guinea, because it’s practically on the Equator, as you can imagine.

Molly Schnoke [00:34:31] Did you look forward to seeing snow?

Alexander Cook [00:34:33] Sure, believe it or not, at least at that time. But it was a really, really great experience because I understand my wife having been to Japan several times to see that country. I’ve not been back there at all since the war or since the war was over, or as a soldier. But I’ve realized how it’s developed. And the nice thing is that Americans, as contrasted to World War I, in which the enemy was left pretty much to itself or former enemy, that is in Germany in that case. But you see, we’ve been very helpful in developing these countries, getting them on their feet as we know they become even competitors of ours in business and such.

Molly Schnoke [00:35:44] And you said that was an important aspect.

Alexander Cook [00:35:46] Yeah, I’d say that was very important. Rather than dealing with them as former enemies, especially as you know, the Japanese cars and all the rest of all the industry has developed. So these countries are, according to the politicians, are better off than we are.

Molly Schnoke [00:36:12] Well, do you think that that’s a meaningful lesson for today?

Alexander Cook [00:36:22] Well, if you consider it as a lesson or some learning, I guess that the irony is that we have war in the first place, which is an unfortunate thing because we shouldn’t have wars. It seems as though we’ve been in a number of different skirmishes and things since World War II because ironically, World War I was supposed to end all future wars. But anyway.

Molly Schnoke [00:37:00] Did the soldiers coming home, did the country feel after World War II, after so much had happened, that there wouldn’t be war again?

Alexander Cook [00:37:14] I guess you could say that getting back because you know, see, in the first place, before we got into World War II, we were in a depression much worse than the current, so called, recent, more recent depression. And I think most historians and scholars would agree that it was World War II that pulled us out of the Depression. It was not through any direct action by our politicians or presidents and so on. But I can’t really recall too much the fact that we were just all glad that we were home again as soldiers and that sort of thing and getting back to normal. Of course the economy has had ups and downs since then, as we know. But it certainly, I think it has given a more worldly feeling, so to speak, having especially with our soldiers having been in foreign countries. So we have a different perspective on things.

Molly Schnoke [00:38:58] Is that how you and your peers felt returning home, that you…?

Alexander Cook [00:39:02] Oh, they were thrilled, being an only child anyway.

Molly Schnoke [00:39:08] Well, then you had that worldly experience, having been to other countries and having seen other places and other peoples.

Alexander Cook [00:39:14] Right.

Molly Schnoke [00:39:20] You mentioned the Depression before the outbreak of war. Do you recall anything from that time period?

Alexander Cook [00:39:33] Except the lot of unemployment, that kind of business and, excuse me, I’m sorry. Yeah, we all felt the Depression, that’s for sure. I know my parents and my father was working and I was never hungry, let’s put it that way, as a child. See the Depression, the height of the Depression or that as it started around in 1929 and pretty much. And since then, up until we got into the war. So actually the war pulled us out of the depression.

Molly Schnoke [00:40:28] Did you know people who were more affected depression than you?

Alexander Cook [00:40:31] Some people were quite deprived and that. And I was fortunate as a child and I grew up in a nice home.

Molly Schnoke [00:40:51] What did your father do at that time?

Alexander Cook [00:40:53] My father had originally been in the tire business about the time that I was when I was a child. And then he was with the, years later, he was an executive with the Automobile Club, the 3A and so on, which in Michigan was not just selling memberships to the 3A and road maps and that kind of stuff, but also insurance. So my dad kept quite busy. My mother never worked. Although when my dad died before, when I came to Cleveland, the day that he was going to put me on the train to come to Cleveland, he died. And he had not been very sick. He was only 57 and opening a new office in Michigan that same day. My mother visiting me at Ohio Wesleyan was impressed by my fraternity house mother and thought that she’d like to be fun to be a fraternity house mother. So she went back to school to learn a little bit about some of the little things such as bookkeeping and some of the things that a fraternity house mother could be doing at Purdue. Purdue University apparently was offering some courses and so on. And so she got a job. She was in a sorority first I believe, and then a fraternity in Pittsburgh, and then wound up in Kent State, a sorority house and loved it. And then when she retired from that, she settled in Saugatuck, Michigan, which is a resort place near St. Joseph, across the lake from Chicago.

Molly Schnoke [00:43:07] Do you want to go back to Michigan?

Alexander Cook [00:43:09] No, I’d like to. But since retirement and having arthritis and then being confined to the wheelchair and a walker and so on, we haven’t been able to get around as much as we had been. I did one thing, that I did quite a bit of traveling while I was teaching, too, on visiting Great Britain and got to Denmark and some of the Scandinavian places. One very revealing thing that I experienced that I had was in a, was part of a cruise which included Finland and Denmark, was to visit Russia. And when you visit a place like Russia, at least, I’d say, 25, 30 years ago, you realize that you were fortunate in living in this country. Because there were still piles of rubble from World War II, from bombings and so on. In Leningrad or St. Petersburg, actually.

Molly Schnoke [00:44:29] And this would have been in the 90s or 80s?

Alexander Cook [00:44:33] Yeah, it would be 25, 30 years ago, you know, when they began to open up again and they still had. Yeah. Visiting the Hermitage in Leningrad. And as you probably know, I learned that Peter the Great was interested in having a window on Western Europe. So they’ve renamed it again. They’ve taken, Lenin’s picture was everywhere in Leningrad, or that is, St. Petersburg. You were not allowed the free run of the place during this, was it part of a cruise situation.

Molly Schnoke [00:45:22] Were you surprised by what you saw?

Alexander Cook [00:45:25] Yeah, to a certain extent, because Russia, the cities are not as developed as ours are here. Maybe they are now, because that’s quite a bit of time ago. But that to me was a very great experience. I think that if I were living in Russia, I’d prefer to be at sea on a ship. But we should feel very fortunate in having the country that we do have. And that we are where we are. And probably looking at it from a selfish aspect.

Molly Schnoke [00:46:16] Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Alexander Cook [00:46:21] Nothing in particular that I can think of. I mean, I keep busy and I’m intending to do several different books. One book that I’ve been working on, one children’s type book through the Great Lakes Historical Society. And I want to do some sketchbooks that would include some of my experiences. Because I’ve had quite a few experiences, as you can see. And…

Molly Schnoke [00:46:59] If you could sketch one thing about the political environment today, what would your sketch be?

Alexander Cook [00:47:11] Funny, because one of the guys you’re going to interview next, George, is one of the editors of a little sheet paper thing that they get out called Connections, and wanted me to do some little political type things for it. I didn’t come up with something. I did think of one thing showing a huge bag labeled the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent on this during this campaign, which I consider as having been wasted. And a little squirrel looking up at it and saying, that would buy a lot of nuts. I didn’t give it, I have not given him that cartoon. But that was the idea that I had, because I just think that all this business has been preposterous and it shows human nature really, at its worst. If you want to say that greed and all this stuff, the greed and the fact that money is as important as it is. I have a slogan for this place. When at Judson, you do what the Judsonians do. That’s my slogan for this place.

Molly Schnoke [00:49:05] And with that, I will thank you for your time, for your interview.

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