To Howard and Judith Daniel, Feb. 3 1987 -- The "primitive simplicity" of prewar football (and a postwar addendum)

Murray felt indebted the rest of his life for all he learned from his friendship with Howard and Judith Daniel, whom he and Rosa met in Bucharest in 1939. They introduced a smart, bookish, but provincial young man to political, artistic, and intellectual worlds he had not encountered.  In return, he did his best to explain one of his enduring passions, American college football.

   

 

 

 

Thursday, Dec 3 '92, to Bill Betts

...I was slipped two presidents box tickets to the UW-Oregon State game by Fred Haley, who hates football. I was going to take Mary (Adams) but she felt the steps would be too much for her knees. So I took Jonathan Raban, the British writer who has adopted Seattle. His first game. Lots of questions. Not much enthusiasm for the nuances, but did come up with a fine remark. He'd asked if there were Oregon State supporters in the crowd of 70,000. I said a few, and pointed to the orange sweatered bunch in the curved end of the bowl. He stared, then said "No barricades?" I said that there were occasional after-game skirmishes around the goal posts but we had not imported the Brit/Yurrup idea of war in the stands. He paused, then said "American football is so gentle."

Fred and Dottie Haley to Morgans, September 1964 -- "miasmic gasses arising"

We got this in Vienna, having paddled our kayaks down the Danube from Ulm, Germany. The idea had been to recreate Murray and Rosa's honeymoon paddle down the Danube for their 25th anniversary, this time making it all the way to the Black Sea. Originally, my folks had worked out the complications of paddling through several Cold War European borders by hooking up with a group sponsored by the National Geographic. Murray's cancer diagnosis and surgery meant they left without us, so we decided to go as far as we could on our own. We made it to Bratislava, about 40 miles downriver from Vienna. 

 

Fred doesn't mention that he had crossed the country the year before to attend the March on Washington. His civil rights activism sparked a boycott, not successful, of his family business -- Brown & Haley Candy. Just as it took me many a year to return to Safeway after the grape boycott, I wonder if there are still people who forgo Almond Roca out of political habit. 
 

Dear Murray and Rosa: 

Your letter from the TRBOVLJE somewhere at midpoint was a beaut, and I am glad as anything that Dottie answered it the next day because my flesh has been too weak; but nonetheless, I have been with you in spirit every mile of your journey, and now that we are getting reports from points along the way (and I couldn't agree with you more about Munich -- I have been there half a dozen times, both pre- and post-war ((I guess I mostly like salt sea ports of call)) and likewise fail to note its commanding charm), we are keeping track of you as yr gentle readers.

Dottie and I stopped, incidentally, in Ulm last spring and spent a happy hour in the cathedral. It is my favorite on the continent of Europe, including Notre Dame, though there are any number in England which surpass all the rest for my money.

...

What else to tell you? Well, we had a good afternoon up at David's (David Hellyer) cabin with a select part of the birthday group, and it was only slightly marred by some of David's well-intentioned but somewhat ferocious remarks on the subject of civil rights in general and the summer Mississippi project in particular, which put Dottie into tears! But Connie indicated she wasn't in complete sympathy with her old man, and the next day Dottie was still unrepentant though David was, it is reported. It's some kind of a blessing, isn't it, that we keep a measure of tolerance as respects the views of strangers, because the people who are close and dear are often quite as unenlightened.

Anyway, there's a lot of fear and trembling here and there about the election, the white backlash, etc. etc. You can feel yourselves lucky to escape some of the miasmic gasses arising from that general arena.

...

Fred and Dottie

Murray to Gov. Al Rosellini, the word on the street, 21 November 1957

Restaurateur Vic and Gov. Al Rosellini were cousins.

Albert Rosellini, a Tacoma native who became a Seattle lawyer and Congressman, was elected Governor of Washington in 1956. A New Deal Democrat, he was the first Catholic and the first person of Italian descent elected governor west of the Mississippi. He won again in 1960, although Washington voters split the ticket to favor Richard Nixon over fellow Democrat and Catholic John F. Kennedy. In 1964, he lost to liberal Republican (remember those?) Dan Evans.

Rosellini had asked Murray, and likely other reporters as well, to let him know how his new administration was perceived. We had been traveling from shortly after his inauguration until October 1957, while Murray researched a book on the World Health Organization, so it was November before Murray checked in. 

 

 

Fred Haley was not appointed as a UW trustee, possibly because his support of civil rights and opposition to McCarthyism made him too controversial, but he was later a Trustee for the Evergreen State College and was instrumental in the establishment of UW-Tacoma.