Politicians at the Polo Grounds, Opening Day 1942

Rosa was studying photography while Murray went to Columbia for a masters degree in journalism. She wrote to her mother on April 18, 1942, that

Almost the whole journalism class skipped school, taking the professor with them, to see the opening game of the baseball season at the Polo Grounds. I took some pictures of Willkie, LaGuardia, Jimmy Walker, etc.

The Yankees won, 7-0 against the Washington Senators.

Fiorello LaGuardia at left (with glasses), Jimmy Walker (with flashy tie) and Thomas Dewey at right

Dewey is second from right. Does anyone recognize these other gents? Is that Wendell Willkie at right?

from Rosa Morgan to her mother, 25 January 1942

New York City

25 January 1942, 9:15 am

Dearest Mom, et al

Again at CBS, just finishing the night’s work. This seems to be the only place where I can light long enough to write a letter still, but Friday begins my life of leisure and all will be different then. At least it will be a little different. Murray plans to use me as a “leg man,” covering the campus for his Herald-Tribune job, and I plan to take shorthand and typing in the evening, plus a course in all branches of photography which is offered to journalism students as part of the Columbia course. The photography is expensive but might prove useful. I look forward with the greatest pleasure to the end of my proofreading duties. ...

I think I left you last week at the point of beginning Christmas Eve with us. To begin with, it turns out that I am married to Santa Claus himself. Murray gave me everything a girl could want for Christmas including atmosphere. 

When I got home from Howard and Judith’s, Murray was beaming proudly over an apartment that practically glittered, it was so clean and orderly. It was a matter of bringing order out of chaos too, because I had been too busy with Christmas shopping and wrapping packages after work to do any housecleaning. I just settled myself in a chair, at his bidding, while he piled up packages around me, all wrapped by his own pretty hands. He got most of my things in the same little shop that your bed jacket came from, and he bought all the things I insisted were impractical when I gazed at them in the window. And they were impractical too, but so pretty: ice blue satin lounging pajamas with a house coat to match (for Rosa who barely has time during an evening to wash her socks and cream her face) and a huge, bright red wool purse with monogram in gold, mittens of red leather and white fur (my greatest joy in this city of icy winds), a red suede jacket with a knitted beige back and sleeves, with a plaid skirt to match. Also two albums of phonograph records, Rumanian Gypsy music and Yugoslav folk songs, and a book. And a wonderful Christmas card with tickets to see the U. of Washington basketball team play NYU in Madison Square Garden… along with tickets to a very good play on Broadway, “Angel Street,” a mystery, very English with little action but lots of atmosphere. It was our first, and only, play since the one Clare Boothe [Luce] gave us tickets for when we were here two years ago, on my birthday. …

Having disposed of Christmas we are still a long way from being up to date, but I had better mail this now and begin again. … 

I told you that I leave Prentice-Hall only to go to work 7 days a week for Murray, in the field I mean, not in the house. Besides wearing my legs down to the knees, and having a lot of fun, getting interviews and material for his Herald-Tribune stories around the campus, I attend his lecture classes and take notes for him, with the professors’ permission, while he is working at CBS. Needless to tell you that is the purest pleasure. The Monday class is in small-town journalism and although that group is made up exclusively of smart cookies, I feel about as competent on that subject as any of them, having had close contact and a vital interest in an example of it for over a year.

Reinhard Heydrich: wikipedia

Did I tell you that Murray had an article on Reinhard
Heydrich [Nazi general nicknamed "The Blond Beast." He was killed by a Czech partisan in June 1942] in the magazine “Who,” last issue? They pay very little, but it has a large circulation. The story is under Howard’s [Howard Daniel] name for practical reasons. At work on his news broadcast at CBS the other day, Murray had a chance to work in some quotes from the article, giving full credit to the source, which will give it publicity to a few million listeners and may help to sell it to Readers Digest which does pay well. A couple days earlier my love arrived at the studio just in time to see one of the stories he had written the night before at the newspaper office coming in on the AP wire, so he put it in the broadcast program. Nothing like booming your own stuff, we say.

Love, 

Murray and Rosa

New York City -- Rosa to Jessie Northcutt, early 1942

Dearest Mom, 

Last night I collected my last check from Prentice Hall Publishing House and became a lady of leisure, meaning that I only work for Murray now.

Josephine Rathbone integrated yoga postures 

into exercises for relaxation and physical therapy.

Courtesy of Springfield College, Babson Library, 

Archives and Special Collections.

This is a Saturday morning and I'm waiting in the library at Teacher's College on the Columbia Campus, to interview a Professor Rathbone on her special relaxation program. She has worked out some exercises to help civilian morale during air raids and blackouts and the course has been made part of the curriculum at C.U. Murray wants the story for the Herald-Tribune, so here I am. On my last job I had Saturdays off. 

Murray is getting a little sleep for a change. We attended a dinner last night for 42 South Americans visiting here on scholarships. The speeches were over at 10:30 and Murray just had time to go to the newspaper office and write his stories before reporting at the studio to write his radio broadcast at 12:30 a.m. He got home at 9:30 a.m. when I got out of bed and he took my place.

...

In order to attend the dinner last night and get a seat at the Press table with Murray I claimed to represent the Baltimore Sun and, naturally, to be only slightly acquainted with Murray, my competitor. The evening was a little awkward and awfully funny. I don't think we put it over very well. I couldn't manage a drawl that didn't sound like West Coast instead of sunny Baltimore and we kept forgetting our roles. Murray addressed me alternately as "Miss Morgan" and "Nunny." On the whole I'm afraid any impartial observer would have picked us as a couple extremely happily married for nearly 3 years. We've bluffed through a lot of things in our career together, but this was the silliest, just to get me a superb roast chicken dinner in the company of my husband.