They suggested that, as long as I was there, that I do something that they wanted, namely, to write a letter of thanks to the unknown benefactor who had set up the Medill McCormick scholarship. And I tried to do that, but I couldn't do it because I associated those names with the extreme right wing family of Bertie McCormick, the owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and Joseph Medill Patterson of the New York Daily News who had similar views. I felt that these people were more or less on the wrong side in the war, and was very upset at the idea of thanking some member of that family for this scholarship without at the same time complaining about it. At that time, I had left-wing views which dissipated about a year later, or maybe a few months later, but I still had them at this moment, and I… I found it very hard to write the letter and in the end I didn't write it. Then, 30 years later in a garden in Aspen Colorado, I met Treenie Barnes, Katrina McCormick Barnes, who now lives near here in Santa Fe, a wonderful, wonderful woman, and I found out that she was the unknown benefactor. And she hated Bertie McCormick, she hated everything that whole crew stood for, and when her parents died and she inherited a portion of the fortune she didn't want to have anything to do with it. She hired a secretary and rented an office and gave it all away. And one thing she gave it for was the Medill McCormick scholarship, named in honor of her dead brother who died as a very young man, a boy in fact, and didn't have a chance to go to the university.
[Q] Did… what about..?
If I had sent that letter complaining about politics she would have loved it.