The Domestic Side of Berlin 1962

     Ray would go off and have his big adventure and leave Mary and the rest of us in Shawnee Village, a suburb of Kansas City. And that was what happened in 1962. His trip to Europe involved an absence of three weeks, weeks that not only included Father's Day, but also his 40th birthday.

     There was always the problem of trying to knit together the two far different experiences.Thinking about it, it was probably hardest for Ray.  While Ray was off touring Army Posts in Europe, sitting on the deck of the USS Shangri-La, and, if not meeting, at least seeing up close and personal well-known worldwide politicians, Mary and the rest of us were dealing with the details of domesticity.

Ray, seated on the right, is visible behind the sailor.

Through the letters of Mary, Ray and even Edna, or Gussie, as we called her, I'll try and illustrate that event. Previously I quoted Ray's story of going into the Russian-controlled sector of Berlin. About that time in Shawnee, Mary was dealing with the five of us and our various activities, Steve's baseball games, Sally and my days at camp, hers and Cindy's days at Blue Bird day camp, etc.

Letter from Mary to Ray June 4. Ray began his journey in Washington, DC, but then flew to Paris. In this summer of 1962, Steve was 14, I was 12, Sally was 11, Cindy was 7 and Scott was nearly 5. Mary and Ray were 38 and 39 with Dad having his 40th birthday on the trip.

        

We stayed awhile to watch the planes take off after you left but it kept raining on us and Steve let us come home. Pop had already given up and was sitting in the car.  The kids had the usual fights on the way home but after your folks left for Topeka they settled down.  Sue and Sally helped me pick cherries which we pitted, put in plastic bags with sugar and put them in the freezer.  I don’t know if they will keep until you get home or not.  After supper Scott and Cindy were in the backyard with me when Gussie drove in to stay until Friday morning.  I think there was some problem in Topeka between her and Allan but I don’t know for sure yet.

I enjoyed being an official at Day Camp and don’t think I mind it at all.  After Cindy and I got home we all went swimming.  We picked up our pictures at Katz and they were all good.  The pictures Steve took of your folk’s home came out real fine.  Just about 4:00 when Cindy and I were sitting in the water a big jet went over and we thought you would be leaving for Paris just then.  Cindy didn’t think you would fly this way.

Scott just chased her through the front room.  “She hit me with a “pool”.  I’m going to pick up Martha Shiverdecker to go to the baseball meeting tonight.

Dr. Leigh called about 7:30 to see what you wanted and thought it was real funny he hadn’t signed your polio shots.

                                    With All my love, Mary

You just might get this before your birthday.  Of course if you don’t you won’t get it all.  We hope you have a real Happy Birthday for we love you very much.  We thought we would send you the Easter picture but it doesn’t seem to have Steve in it since he took the picture.  Sue and Sally think it should be in anyway.

 Adults referred to Ray Morgan, Sr as Pop, but to us he was Grandpa. Since Dad had the movie camera with him on the trip, I've used others from before and after his trip.

The following is a letter from Edna to Ray, written June 10 when he was in Grafenwoehr, Germany.

Dear Ray,

Your family was so nice to me this past week. They are such a nice group. They were picking cherries when I got there Sunday evening and then we pitted them and put them in different sacks with sugar—later they were frozen and one day we took them out and made a pie.

Steve played such a good ballgame Thursday evening and they won—in more ways than one the other team failed to have one player they needed so it was forfeited and then Steve’s team scored a few extra times.

This should reach you in London and take a good look at things around there for me.  Father and Mother went over there when I was about 8 and seemed to enjoy it so very much.

When Sue answered the phone and some man wanted to talk to you and she said that you were in Europe the man almost fell off the other end of the phone.

Steve is very busy practicing with his typing--each morning out comes the card table and he goes in to high gear.  It sounds like a wonderful idea.

Steve got some mighty good grades.  His envelope came while I was there.

Allan and I went over to your folks and your father took Allan on the Grand tour—he was quite impressed.

Have a grand time—we shall be anxious to hear about it.  Sincerely Gussie

This is from Thanksgiving of that year and includes Gussie, the senior Morgans and all the rest of us.

 

Berlin 1962 Continued

While Ray was in Berlin, he also attended Unity Day, a ceremony in front of Berlin's town hall. The following is the front page article that appeared in the New York Times on June 18, 1962:

Konrad Adenauer greets Willy Brandt, June 17, 1962 - NY Times

• Chancellor Adenauer and Mayor Willy Brandt, bitter political opponents, joined today in an appeal to the Soviet Union to let the German people decide their own fate in freedom. The two men spoke at a rally of an estimated 150,000 West Berliners outside the City Hall. It marked the ninth anniversary of the swiftly quelled uprising in Communist East Germany in 1953.
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• The rally and the day passed peacefully, without any sign of the demonstrations that the Russians feared would take place at the wall the Communists built through Berlin last August. Both sides took precautions against incidents. A few Soviet Army soldiers joined the normal guard of armed East German police atop the Brandenburg Gate just inside East Berlin. Soviet Army patrols were reported to have been seen along the wall.
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• They had previously left the job of patrolling the wall to East Germans. Large detachments of West Berlin police were kept on duty in the City Hall square and along the routes of the march to the rally. United States Army helicopters patrolled overhead.
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• But it was a disciplined, non­ aggressive crowd, apparently intent only on cheering the condemnation of Communist actions by the Chancellor and the Mayor.
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• Some observers though t the Soviet Army patrolling of the border was an acknowledgment of the Soviet Union's continuing responsibility for East Berlin. The Russian profess to have transferred the responsibility to the East Germans.
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• But since the Wall went up the Russians have let their presence in East Berlin be known whenever serious troubles appeared imminent. They brought a tank detachment into the city last August after United States tanks appeared at the East-West dividing line.
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• Dr. Adenauer told the Soviet Union that the methods of the East Germans were not serving the cause of peace.
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• “The spirit is always stronger than brutal force.'' Dr. Adenauer said. "The spirit will win through in the end.”
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• The Chancellor read to the rally a message from Secretary of State Dean Rusk.  It expressed the understanding of the America n people for the suffering that had resulted from the split of Germany and their hope for reunification "in peace and freedom.”
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• Dr. Adenauer' s was a  subdued speech. He recalled for the thousands in the square and a nation-wide radio and television audience that the Poles waited 150 years for unity. He asked the Germans to learn from the Poles' example.
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• Mayor Brandt geared his speech to the sharpening mood of West Berlin over the daily shooting at refugees by the East German police. In recent week the East Germans have killed a twelve-year old boy and wounded a fifteen year old.
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• Saying that he was speaking to both the West and the East, Mayor Brandt declared, “The German people will not put up with the partition. We are not against negotiations nor are we against sensible interim settlements. But we are against doing nothing at all, against resignation and against foul compromises.”
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• To the loudest cheers of the rally, he said West Berlin police would shoot back. “I would rather step down,” he asserted, “than ever give orders to respect that wall.”
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• “The city wants peace,” he went on. “But this city also wants to be free. We have not overcome our brown (Nazi) past to bow our necks once again.”
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• Chancellor Adenauer flew to Berlin in a United States Army plane. The Communists had denounced his visit as illegal and provocative, and after the rally the East German’s press service accused Mayor Brandt of encouraging attacks on the East German police.
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• Six students were detained briefly by West Berlin police during the day for exhibiting anti-Adenauer posters. The posters said, “Long Live Kennedy” and “Berlin Trusts Kennedy Even if Adenauer Obstructs.” The allusion was to the Chancellor’s recent objections to the United States Proposal for a Berlin settlement, particularly one for international authority to regulate access to Berlin.
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• Published: June 18, 1962 Copyright © The New York Times

The way the Town Hall looks today according to Google

Berlin Memorial 

     As referenced in the above New York Times article, on June 11th of 1962, a 12-year old boy was killed by the a 19-year old border guard. The boys and his two friends ran into the two 19-year old border guards on patrol and asked to know how their weapons worked. Finally one of the guards decided to show the boys how his weapon worked and accidentally shot the boy dead. Western officials didn't learn what had really happened until the following year. To read more about the wall and this incident, use the link below.


 Berlin Wall Memorial

Helping me to discover all of this were Steve and Chris. Chris made the identification of Willy Brandt and from there I could find the actual day and what happened in Berlin on June 17, 1962.

Ray Morgan in Berlin 1962

     In June 1962 Dad left Kansas City for a three-week tour of Western Europe sponsored by the Defense Department. The following is the article he wrote about his visit to Berlin. The Russians had begun building the Berlin wall in August 1961.

     On a bookcase at home, there is a triangular piece of dirty, grey concrete.  It has special significance because it is a piece of the crumbling East Berlin wall which I pulled loose one bright, sunny Sunday afternoon and stuck in my pocket under watchful Communist eyes.     With a group of West Berlin police with carbines slung over their shoulders, I and some other correspondents walked up where the wall was built along the famed Potadammerplatz and peered over the wall from an elevated wooden platform.
      At 100 yards or so away, a group of East Berlin communist troops, with sub machine guns over their shoulders, watched us intently through binoculars.  They walked several yards towards us at one point but we stayed where we were despite the fact the wall is in Soviet zone here.
     I slipped the crumbling piece of mortar between the thin concrete blocks out of the wall and dropped it in my pocket.  We watched a short time later as the communist soldiers moved closer and then we departed in waiting cars.
      Later, about 10:30 that night, John Pinkerman, news editor of the San Diego Union. And I and some others were sitting in the Berlin Hilton.
      Pinkerman, who felt a strange fascination for the wall that grips so many West Berlin visitors, wanted to tour the wall in a taxicab as he had done several nights before that.  He and I went to the brightly lighted entrance to the hotel where shiny motorcars disgorged well-dressed visitors and German cabs were lined up just as in the United States.
      We found an English-speaking driver whom Pinkerman had used on his previous trip and off we went over to Edwardstrasse and down toward the famed Brandenburg gate.  We flashed our official identification and the West Berlin policemen waved us through the barbed wire.
       Along the brightly-lighted stretch of pavement the cab driver wheeled the cab.  He joked about driving through the gate but his laugh was somewhat nervous.  It was an eerie kind of scene in the darkness, an eeriness hard to define.
      On the left, a group of British soldiers stood in front of a barbed wire encircling the brightly-lighted war memorial. Two Soviet soldiers walking along the Soviet memorial plaza stopped and watched the cab moving slowly.
       Atop the Brandenburg gate we could see two East Berlin police in an observation post looking at us with ever-present binoculars.  We got out and chatted with the West Berlin Police a minute or two while they watched.
       We drove back out of the barbed wire area and sped along toward Checkpoint Charley, the barricade where Americans are permitted to enter East Berlin.  The cab had to be parked a half a block away from the Communist border.
       The street was brightly lighted as we walked down the white painted line which marks the division between freedom and totalitarianism.  Helmeted American military police stood talking with the West Berlin police and a burly East Berliner stood almost on the line with his submachine gun
       The cab driver walked along with us until we got a few feet from their line.  He wanted to know when the wall was going to be kicked down.  Pinkerman almost got in a fight when a British girl came up, giggling, with her escort and said the Allies would never defend Berlin.
       I mention these things only because they tend to point up the almost unreal quality in the late evening hours when the floodlights shatter the darkness of this strange world created by a sagging line of concrete blocks topped by barbed wire and broken glass.

Brandenburg Gate Postcard

Potadammerplatz 

     It is a situation Americans find difficult to comprehend.  It is when there is no fighting war is actually in progress between the adversaries and yet two sides, dedicated to two ways of life, stand on either side of a thin line with guns and watch each other.

These are a few of the postcards that he brought home with him and then lastly is a bit of the home movie he took in Berlin.