A sampler.

Carton 60: Box of memorabilia photos, early life, childhood, etc files 19?-1937, school notes, 1920s-40s.

I was born, so I was told, at home on 20th Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan on January 19, 1913 at nine in the evening, in the same year as the Federal Reserve and the income tax. My mother had had a large chocolate dessert for Sunday noon dinner, and regretted it.

I remember the end of World War 1 – parades and parades down Fifth Avenue. And on Armistice Day of 1918 we had a special spelling lesson. We taken to Central Park and taught to print in large letters with colored chalk on the sidewalk, "No More War Peace is Here". It's now more than three score and ten years later, and we are faced with the prospect of a war that will not only end all wars but all peace on earth as well.

I had diptheria when I was about three or four – our young Dr. Hill used to come into my bedroom on all fours singing the popular WW1 song "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile."  To me an old kit bag was a doctor's satchel.

Carton 62: 1932-1934, class notes.

In June came the Roehm purge by Hitler, and the whole idea of study under the Nazis seemed a rather dubious project. But by September, it seemed safe enough to go. As an American I shouldn't be in danger, and it would be interesting to see what was going on among the students under those circumstances.

Student life in 1934 was fun, but there was always that anxiety. Would Hitler lead us into another war? How long could he keep on expanding without setting off the conflagration? Meanwhile, the militarism became bit by bit more apparent. Also, the oppression – it was just before I left that I first heard the dread name of Dachau, as a concentration camp not far from Münich, where you might be sent if you were considered disloyal to the Third Reich and its Führer.

Carton 14: CAG & JKG 1937-47, CAG-JKG 1947-1960, Family clippings, 1960-66.

In the spring of 1937, K. applied for a Social Science Research Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to go to England, to Cambridge, to study under John Maynard Keynes. He could apply for a married fellowship of $2,600, or a single grant of $1,800. I had to decide during the Easter holiday which he should do, because the application had to be in by a certain date.

And one April night I came from the circus (was it the circus? What was I doing at the circus?) to hear cries of "Extra, Hindenburg burns up!" – Our dear friends and neighbors, the Panneses in Plandome, were my first thought. Hans Pannes, passenger agent of the Hamburg America here, and his wife Emma, a very good pianist, had already cruised South America in the Hindenburg and I knew they were going again.
...
As the Hindenburg was landing, Hans Pannes was standing beside a man on the lower platform. Emma had felt chilly, and had gone back to their cabin for her coat. The man next to him said, "Jump, Hans." He said, "I'm going back for my wife." So they died in the flames together.

...This is a long digression, but that Hindenburg disaster shook me greatly. I remember passing Ted Spencer in the Yard, and he said, "How are you?" and I said automatically "Fine," but nothing was fine. I didn't know what to do, and the need to decide was pressing. I declined Mills College, but accepted a job at the Library of Congress. They had offered me a beginning salary of $1,240 a year which I didn't accept, and they then offered me $1,440, which I did.

K. took me to a French restaurant in New York for lunch. He gave me a string of pearls as a farewell present. I had bought him a black leather cigarette case (in those days smoking was almost compulsory – if only we had known how dangerous it would be) with his initials engraved in silver. And then he told me that he got that married fellowship. So, he won! We got the marriage license, and our Wasserman tests – I wonder if they are still required – and I went back to Washington to break the news to the Nunnery.

Carton 39: Journals.
Carton 40: Journals, misc files, video - CAG interview.