Robert M. Frey

Susan Meehan: Today is Tuesday August 5, the year 2014. And I am Susan Meehan and I am here interviewing Robert--

Robert Frey: M.

SM: M for--

RF: Mark.

SM: Robert Mark Frey.

RM: F-r-e-y.

SM: F-r-e-y. And Robert would you be willing to give us your birthdate?

RM: Sure. June 22, 1928.

SM: And have you been a lifelong resident of Cumberland County?

RM: Almost. Family moved here along with me in June of 1931.

SM: And where did they come from? Just another part of Pennsylvania?

RM: Yes. I was born right outside Quakertown in Bucks County. And for a short time after that my family lived in Philadelphia and they came from Philadelphia to Carlisle.

SM: Was your father in business in Carlisle?

RM: No. He was in business in Quakertown and other parts of Bucks County.

SM: So they chose Carlisle and you liked it and you stayed?

RM: Well they stayed too. (Meehan laughs)

SM: So you went to grade school in Carlisle?

RM: Right.

SM: Which school?

RM: I went to the Franklin Building for the first two years. Then I went to the--I think it was--the Hamilton Building for two months waiting for the LeTort Building to be completed and then in November of 1936 the Hamilton Building was closed forever. The LeTort building still remains in use.

SM: So you were a founding member of the LeTort Graduate group? (laughs)

RM: Yes, but only for third and fourth grade then I went back to the Franklin building. The reason for that--I lived on about the boundary line between both schools. They assigned students according to what was most convenient for the school district in those years. Which I suppose they still do.

SM: And were you able to walk to school?

RM: If you didn't walk somebody else in the family or a good neighbor had to take you because there were no buses in that time. No buses in Carlisle. There were a few from outside of Carlisle.

SM: When you were in school were you a model student?

RM: Oh, of course. (Meehan laughs)

SM: You never had to be in cloak room?

RM: No, I don't think so. I might've been in the corner once in a while.

SM: And how large was your class in those years?

RM: In the elementary school. I think we were up in the mid-40s.

SM: So then when you finished there was no middle school at that time was there?

RM: No. That’s a creation of about--well time flies--

SM: In the sixties and eighties.

RM: --10 or 15 years ago.

SM: So then you went to which--which building were you in for high school?

RM: The only one they had. The Lamberton building. That was for junior high school as well as for senior high school.

SM: So you moved over there in seventh grade?

RM: Right, seventh grade.

SM: Are there others in your class that are still in town that you meet with?

RM: Yes, and that picture that is up on the second floor of this building [Cumberland County Historical Society] that has--I think it’s fifteen or sixteen Navy enlistees. They’re either all from my class of 1946 or nearly all of them.

SM: Are you in that picture?

[00:04:55.01]RM: No. I was in the Army in later years. They all enlisted right after graduating from high school.

SM: And what did you do following high school?

RM: I went to Dickinson College and then went to Dickinson School of Law and then went to the Army.

SM: So, was the war still in progress when you went into the army?

RM: Yes, that was the Korean War.

SM: Okay. Did you serve oversees?

RM: No, served in Raleigh, North--no not Raleigh--Fayetteville, North Carolina.

SM: Was that Fort Bragg?

RM: Yes. And at Camp Gordon. Fort Gordon now.

SM: Georgia?

RM: Georgia. Right.

SM: You didn't bring back a Southern accent at all.

RM: Not that anybody could notice. Carlisle is almost as much a Southern town, but not the accent, as any of the South is. [00:06:11.03]

SM: So then following the war, you came back and established a practice here--

RF: Correct.

SM: --or did you go in with someone else or--

RF: Well, I shared offices with Merrill Hummel, a well-known local attorney, and he continued practicing until he was about my age now. He passed away, I think, in his nineties.

SM: So that was--was he also a Dickinson Law School grad?

RF: Yes.

[00:07:24.23]SM: So--this sort of diverges from the time line, but do you have some feelings about the Dickinson Law School changing to become the Penn State Law School?

RF: Well, at the time of the change, I endorsed it. I was president of the board of trustees at that time, which had the title of president of the school. But as events unfolded Penn State seemed to be eager to rid itself of most all of the representation that it made in connection with the merger, so that's been a disappointment. I just hope with the change of authorities that it will not be pursued to abandon Carlisle.

SM: I think there were many people in the community that were disappointed when it changed hands and that feel the same way you do.

RF: I don't really know. There was a lot of disappointment when the change in deans brought Dean McConnaughay, who seemed to be eager to get out of Carlisle, and he--not seemed to be, he was eager--and did everything he could to transfer as much as he could to Penn State. He would've transferred it all if he had gotten his way. [00:08:40.24]

SM: But I sense as a--not being a member of the legal community--that there was--there's a strong feeling of loyalty among the Dickinson Law School graduates--

RF: You're correct. The alumni have been very loyal to the point of many saying they have a love for the school. It's very nice for a graduate school; it's what you usually associate with an undergraduate school.

SM: That's right. [00:09:14.06]Well, what other community things have you been involved in of that nature in the course of your career? Are there any--have you been associated with the Historical Society--

RF: Yes.

SM: --on the board?

RF: Since 1955.

SM: Oh my.

RF: In fact, I guess I took over as treasurer from Jacob Goodyear, who was treasurer for a number of years, and I served over a council for ten years, and I got involved in a number of organizations such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army and Exchange Club.

[00:10:09.28]SM: Do you sell blueberries? Do you eat blueberries?

RF: I eat blueberries--(Meehan laughs)--for my wife when we eat them. They'd (??) get a box the size they're selling is a little much.

SM: That's a big--a big box. (laughs)

RF: It is.

SM: Well, is there any one of the--those organizations that you have something that you want to tell us about for the record? Anything?

RF: Well I was on the advisory board of Salvation Army for four years, and I was still a member of Exchange Club, and I was chairman of an awards committee, and in that position I get the credit for creating the Molly Pitcher Award, which is now in its forty-eighth or forty-ninth consecutive year. It's been a very successful program.

SM: Have you, yourself, received that award?

RF: I did.

SM: I think so. Do you know what year that was that you received it?

RF: I think it was 1993. It was the twenty-fifth year of the giving of the award.

SM: Well that's a very special award in this community, and I know you know how special it is.

RF: It's worked out well. (both laugh)

[00:11:47.25]SM: Well I think--it's my understanding that you and Pierson Miller owned at one time the High Street building that now--

RF: Right.

SM: Can you expand on that a little bit? How did you come to--

RF: We bought it as an investment in 1960, I believe. I think it was in September of 1960, but whatever case it was the Odd Fellows Building, and the Odd Fellows was declining rapidly. They were no longer taking in new members and the building was, I guess, basically a burden to them. So we bought it and we kept it until Mr. Miller passed away, and then it was sold in a private sale to the Historical Society.

SM: Well, when you had ownership of it, was the third floor being used for anything or was that idle?

RF: It was idle. The third floor was the part that was historically occupied as the lodge area, and for a short time after we owned it they continued to--they didn't hold an actual meeting, but a committee met there regularly and they decided that they didn't need to meet there for the purposes of that committee, so that committee--I think it was a beneficial committee, that is a committee that approved grants to members of the lodge who were in need for some reason. But I was never a member of the Odd Fellows.

SM: So you never got to attend any function while it was still part of their--

RF: No. In fact, they didn't have any functions out of the committee meeting. I think it was either two or three members of the lodge were the committee that met just because they all was [undecipherable] and they got tired of it after a while and they just met in some business room.

SM: I think--you've had a number of other buildings in town that you have had interest in from time to time.

RF: Yes. P. K. [Miller] and I owned 112 West High Street which is part of the James Wilson Hotel, and I owned an interesting number of buildings downtown. I owned an office building where my office is located at 5 South Hanover Street, and I owned a lot of residential properties and still do.

[00:15:00.00]SM: Were you involved with that--the area that became the arboretum, the park out where the new Orrstown Bank is out by GIANT? I can't think of the name of it.

RF: Oh, Seven Gables.

SM: Yes.

RF: No.

SM: Oh, I thought maybe you were involved with that.

RF: That is--that's a group of Carlisle businessmen that Bob Black--Bob Black, I guess--was the leader of it. And they've done a good job there.

[00:15:36.05]SM: Well, when you think back of growing up in Carlisle--I'm switching back--can you, for example, were you old enough to remember the last train, and did you get to--

RF: I was on it.

SM: All right.

RF: I just heard a little talk or mention of the last train in Carlisle, and the person had a picture that was apparently prepared and circulated by Cumberland Valley Savings and Loan Association, but they depicted the last train in Carlisle as being what is apparently the last scheduled regular train in 1936. But the very last train, on which I was a passenger as a youngster, was a more modern train; that is, the engine was more modern, it had--a torpedo-like front, and it--my recollection is it had something like twelve passenger cars or more because they knew they were having a whole bunch of people wanting to get on the last train ride. And I think the fare was fifteen cents, but that's just by recollection, that might be an error. My mother thought it was a historic event and picked us up at school and brought us down after school for the last ride on the Cumberland--well, it was the Pennsylvania Railroad then, but it was originally the Cumberland Valley Railroad.

SM: Had you taken the train to Harrisburg and traveled with the train at all in your youth?

RF: I suppose a time or two, but if you were just going to Harrisburg it was easier to take the trolley. I forget when the--or the bus--the trolley stopped running--that is the one to Harrisburg--I think, in the early 1930s, when you could get it into Mechanicsburg, and then they switched the trolleys over to buses.

SM: So to go from--up until the early thirties you could get it right in Carlisle, but after that you had to go to Mechanicsburg. So did it come into the square?

RF: Right. I think that's the one you had multiple traction companies serving Carlisle. I think it was in 1928 that the last Carlisle service occurred, and the trolley from Carlisle to Mount Holly Springs continued to operate I think for six more months and then it ceased, and that would've been presumably the same time the trolley to Newville ceased because it and the trolley to Mount Holly Springs I believe were the same company.

SM: Was this because more people had automobiles?

RF: I think so.

SM: It seems like more people were served by the trolley than would have been served by automobiles. But there were buses in lieu of the trolley, then.

[00:19:54.23]RF: I don't know if there were or not. They--when I mention those dates, you can appreciate that the Depression was soon to follow the closing of those lines, but I don't know if they had any buses yet or not. Buses weren't terribly dependable in the twenties, not that I was around to see them, and even in the early thirties. I've seen some of those old buses. (Meehan laughs) They don't look like they would attract too much. But the trains ran so frequently--

SM: You could get where you needed to go.

RF: Right. One of the things that's always amused me about the trains is in the village of Boiling Springs, I had a friend tell me that as a youngster--this was back in the twenties--all the churches in Boiling Springs got together for an annual picnic down at Williams Grove, which was understandable, but they got there by a special train. A train came to Boiling Springs, (Meehan laughs) parked itself on the side, and then they boarded the train and went--how far is it? Three miles? Five miles? But that's how accommodating the railroad was to take the picnickers to--

SM: To Mount Holly.

RF: --from Boiling Springs to--

SM: --Williams Grove.

RF: Williams Grove. And then they went back--I don't know if they went back or just parked the train in Williams Grove--and when the picnic was over they returned the folks to Boiling Springs.

SM: Did you ever go to the Williams Grove park yourself?

RF: Oh yes, but at a later date, (both laugh) back in the thirties.

SM: Well now, was that such that you could have taken your children to it when they were growing up?

RF: Yes, it was an amusement park owned by--

SM: Was it Kreitzer?

RF: No, might've been now, but no. I can't think of his name at the moment. I'm having an old timer's (??) moment.

[00:22:44.29]SM: Well, what other things did you do for fun as a child?

RF: Well I grew up on South Hanover Street, 629, right across from the present Ewing Funeral Home, so all my playmates were up Ridge Street, and we spent a lot of time on the LeTort Spring. And it wasn't until years later that I found out the temperature of the LeTort Spring only varies by one degree from summer to winter. We always imagined that it got warm late (both laugh) in the summer, but that was just wishful thinking. Something like fifty-four degrees is practically the year-round temperature.

SM: So did you fish and just splash around and tube?

RF: Yes, I fished, and I'm probably the worst fisherman they ever had there.

SM: (laughs) That was before Trout Unlimited came in and made everybody go to the Yellow Breeches, right?

RF: Well they had plenty of trout that other people were catching down there, but I was not among the lucky few. (Meehan laughs) The first day of trout season was an unofficial holiday at school. It was always the fifteenth of April, and if you didn't go to school that day and went fishing or whatever, you got an excused absence, so there was no penalty.

SM: And was that the same for the first day of hunting in November, then?

RF: Hunting was less popular at that time for high school students, and I have never been a hunter, but quite a few did go hunting. The banks of the streams, the Yellow Breeches in LeTort were just crowded with fisherman. So many of the hunters go to their own hunting [undecipherable].

SM: That's true.

RF: Some of them--admit that all they do is go for a walk with their rifle.

SM: Just to be in the woods.

RF: They play a lot of cards.

SM: I think you play cards from time to time or used to.

RF: I have, yes, how'd you know that? Doesn't matter.

SM: No, I won't mention any other names.

RF: You don't need to disclose your confidential sources.

SM: (laughs) But you enjoy that.

RF: I did, yes.

[00:25:39.17]SM: Well, how about any parades that might have been memorable that you can think of?

RF: Well the Memorial Day Parade; the high school--all the school students marched, and that was not an excused absence. You reported to your classroom at school and then as a group joined all the other classes and marched in the Memorial Day Parade. That was a big event because with all the school children there, all the parents and grandparents were along the path of the Memorial Day Parade, and then they held the speeches and so forth on South Bedford Street alongside the LeTort Park across from the old graveyard, so that was a big event. And all the schoolchildren carried flowers, picked whatever flowers were available in your own backyard or your neighbor's or whatever.

SM: And then did you put them on the graves?

RF: They were then taken by the students to whatever grave they wanted to place them on in the old graveyard.

SM: Sounds quite meaningful.

RF: It made an impression.

SM: How about bands, or did you play any sports or participate in music or anything?

RF: I played a trumpet when I was in the high school band while I was in high school.

SM: But that was--the length of your music career was high school?

RF: Yes.

SM: (laughs) I think Carlisle's always had a good band, haven't they?

RF: Yes, I think that's probably true, present company excluded.

SM: How about the fair? Anything from the fair that--fair--annual event that comes to mind?

RF: You have to remember the Carlisle Fair, in my lifetime, only originated about 1955.

SM: Oh truly, I didn't know that.

RF: The prior fair became the Masland carpet mill site, and it's--I think Masland's took over there in about 1924, but the fair may have ceased doing business a few years before that.

SM: So there was a stretch of several decades where there was no official fair.

RF: No, no Carlisle Fair, that's right.

SM: I hadn't known that.

RF: But the Carlisle Fair revived, generated a lot of interest for a number of years. I think Paul Snyder was the moving party in that. [00:28:53.21]

SM: How about the Old Market House? You have any memories of that at all?

RF: Oh yes, that was razed in 1961 or '2, I believe, and I can tell you a good story about that.

SM: Well good, that's what we're here for.

RF: It was condemned because the east wall was thought to be in danger of collapsing, and you may recall a recent meeting here honoring Mrs. Kitzmiller, Mrs. Millicent Kitzmiller, and she was sort of an impetuous parker, so she got a lot of traffic tickets for parking in the wrong place, and on one occasion she pulled up in front of the police station and waved her hand to come out and they weren't coming out so she held up the ticket indicating that that's what she was there for. Finally they came out when she blew the horn more(?), a couple times or whatever, and told her she had to come in to pay her fine. She said, "I'm not going in there. That building's been condemned." So they came out and gave her curb service and took her fine. (Meehan laughs) And then when the building was ultimately razed, the part that was the hardest to get down was the part they claimed was about to fall down, which was the east wall. It had been braced earlier with steel columns to prevent it from falling.

SM: Do you remember a particular treat or something that you would want to get at the market? Did you go with your mother at all?

RF: Well one of the most famous stands was Grocers(?) Celery and--but the market was Saturday morning and Saturday evening and Wednesday morning, and the busiest hour on Saturday morning's market was the hour from I think six to seven. It opened at five o'clock, and the amazing thing to me--I've never understood why you had to get to market so early in the morning, but people got up early to get there. And the market was a frequent place for organizations to have food sales. When I was a Boy Scout, we'd solicit the neighbors to contribute whatever the lady of the house would be willing to make for a contribution, and then you had a stall at market to sell what had been given to the Scouts and help fund some of the Scout activities.

SM: Did you do some camping with the Scouting?

RF: Yes.

SM: In the local area or did you go to Philmont or do anything like that?

RF: No, that's out in Arizona. The first year I went to Boy Scout Camp, for some reason they had it up at Dehart Thompson(??), but that would have been a choice of the Scoutmaster. And I went over to the Hidden Valley at Loysville several years, probably three or four.

SM: That's where most of the Scouts from this area went, isn't it? To the Hidden Valley?

RF: Yes, that was--

SM: Is that the one that Bob Davis was involved with, I think?

RF: Probably still is, and Dr. Hershberger's(??) been very active in it in recent years.

[00:33:28.12]SM: Well now, tell us about--I don't want to tire you out. Are you--

RF: You're not tiring me out.

SM: Are you doing good to go?

RF: I can sit for a long time. (both laugh)

SM: Well, maybe not comfortably, though. If you don't want to--

RF: Yes, I sit comfortably. It's just I can't stand up as comfortably.

SM: Tell us about your first car. Was that purchased in Carlisle?

RF: Yes, I purchased it originally from a neighbor, and then the neighbor was compelled to trade it in to the dealer--this was in 1946--from whom the neighbor bought a new car, so I ended up buying from the dealer to whom she had traded it. It was a '34 Studebaker; that was a pretty fancy thing, and shortly after that I sold it and got a '37 Chrysler, and I had a lot of cars after that.

SM: That's right, but there's something about your first car that is a special car, I think, especially for men.

RF: I guess that's right.

SM: What color was it?
RF: Brown, and I think it was a Studebaker President if I remember correctly. But it was a--for a '34--that was the year Studebaker had streamlining, and the back seat only had a fixed center armrest so it only accommodated two people. It was just a sporty car.

SM: Well now, was this in days that you were courting that you had this car, or had you already married by that time?

RF: Oh heavens no, I was a senior in high school.

SM: Okay, I lost track of the time. So there couldn't have been too many high school seniors that had cars. It must have been--[00:35:32.01]

RF: Well--

SM: You were a hot date.

RF: Well there were quite a few that had cars, that wasn't unusual, particularly anybody whose father was a dealer would have an automobile, but plenty that didn't.

SM: When you were in high school, were the War College--children of the War College students coming to--

RF: No, there was no War College at that time.

SM: Oh that's right.

RF: It was the Army Medical Field Service School, which I guess stayed until--I don't know whether it's 1948 or thereabouts, and it was followed by a number of different schools until finally about 1952, I guess it was, that the War College came here.

SM: So there would have been a few military students, though, I suppose.

RF: Oh yes, right.

SM: But not the same percentage as later. There would have been more once the students started coming in.

RF: The students?

SM: Now I'm talking about students who came to Carlisle High School from the--

RF: But the students at the War College were--are principally the parents in their high thirties or very early forties, so many of them have school-age children, and they'd come to the Carlisle Schools. They enriched the Carlisle--

SM: I think so, too.

RF: The student body and the teachers and so forth are very quick to tell you how much they are pleased to have those students.

[00:37:18.18]SM: Well now, tell us about--a little bit about your time when you were serving as treasurer and active on the board at the Historical Society. What were some of the issues that you were dealing with then? That was before the expansion.

RF: I think the expansion here has occurred three or more times. The first one occurred when I was still on the board, and that was promoted by Mr. Roger Todd who employed the architect and gave perhaps all the money to make that first addition to the rear of the building possible. I don't remember any other particular incidents. I remember they--I think they cleaned out the basement here and discovered up in the northwest corner a space in the basement that I don't think was ever identified as to its purpose. It looked like it could have been a--my recollection--it was about six feet square and maybe close to six feet deep, and it was concrete and nobody knew what it was intended for, but I think they probably filled it in when they went ahead with the addition. It had no purpose then or now.

SM: So that was under the Hamilton Building?

RF: Right up in the northwest corner. It was just an oddity. It could have been a cistern, I guess, but it didn't seem to have been.

SM: Well how about the legal community? Were there any historical things of note that you'd like to talk about on that?

[00:39:58.03]RF: Well it's grown by leaps and bounds. When I came to the bar to practice, I think there were something like fifty attorneys in Cumberland County. Now there are probably close to four hundred. Now many of them are headquartered on the West Shore, but--and of course the terrible shooting in the courthouse on August 2, 1955, is a date that will always be remembered.

SM: Were you present on that occasion?

RF: No, I was out to lunch, having lunch at Heinz's(??) down the street on South Hanover Street. Somebody came in and said, "There's been a shooting," and I quickly found out it was not just a shooting but a terrible shooting, and one person was killed and at least two injured. Judge Garber was injured; he never really got over his injuries. He was struck by a bullet in the shoulder, and that shoulder, or upper arm, never healed well and it was not only painful all the rest of his life, but it hindered his mobility with that arm. And the culprit who shot him used to periodically have a petition that would get filed in the prothonotary's office seeking his release from prison or a new trial or whatever because he was innocent, he hadn't done anything wrong. And of course that petition had about as much chance of being acted on favorably by Judge Shughart than he had a chance to be struck by lightning. Eventually he died in prison. When you're talking about Carlisle at that time and automobiles, it's always been interesting to me that all through the thirties and prior to that, almost every dealer in Carlisle had his place of business in the business district downtown, and automobiles were all showcased in a showroom at the front of a dealer's store and you got a garage service area typically at the rear of the building where the showroom was in the front and along the street. You could walk along the street, look in the window and see the new models on display at that dealership. And in the late thirties, they started to move--some new dealerships were relocated to the edge of town. R. H. Black(??) was about the first one in 1937 to build on the Harrisburg Pike at the edge of Carlisle, at the corner of Media Road now. Of course, Media Road barely existed, and then--

SM: What type of car did he have?

RF: He had the DeSoto Plymouth and Packard. He had been right across the alley from where we're sitting, in a building here at the corner of Dickinson Avenue and North Pitt Street. Seven Star Garage was the Buick and Oldsmobile garage at that time, and it was located on North Hanover Street at the corner of Locust Alley--Avenue--and North Hanover Street. Somebody in Carlisle got the brilliant idea that if you named all the alleys avenues, it would be a more dignified address. So that's how that happened. [00:10:01.10]But you talk about changes in Carlisle. Back in the thirties during the Depression years, the alleys were filled with people, and these small alley houses would often have two or three different families [undecipherable] because someone would be out of work and the one that was working had the house and would take them in out of the goodness of the person's heart, and that continued. That partly explains why the Carlisle--the population of Carlisle hasn't gone up much over the years. I think it's up to eighteen thousand now, but it's hovered pretty much from fifteen to eighteen thousand for the last fifty or sixty years. Those are just--I mentioned two garages. The Ford garage was right beside the drug store on West High Street. There were a lot of drug stores--several drug stores--on West High Street. Wertz(??) Drug Store was down on the corner of the James Wilson Hotel, and Wilson's Drug Store--well that was formerly Stevens Drug Store and then it became Wilson's--it'll come to me, but--

SM: That's alright. Well this was a period where people ordered their cars, though. They didn't have to have a showroom with the big stock that modern dealers have, I guess.

RF: Well they didn't have a big inventory like they have now, but they sold--the ones in the showroom were for sale. And if you had three or four cars in stock, plus whatever the salesman might have of the current year's model as the demonstrator, you didn't need to special order a car to get the features you wanted. They didn't have many.

SM: (laughs) No features.

RF: Any special features that you would have to order--the big deal was the radio and heater. If you've ever seen some of the orders for cars back in the early thirties, the second taillight was optional at extra cost, sometimes the bumpers were optional at extra cost, a power operated windshield wiper was sometimes optional at extra cost, the second windshield wiper was optional at extra cost, all the things that you would've thought would be standard equipment. Now I'm sure that when dealers ordered their cars for sale, whether they were sold or not, they ordered many of those details because people would want them. But it wasn't uncommon for people to buy a car without a radio and then buy a radio separately, and the same way with heaters.

[00:13:55.21]SM: So, to move away from cars for just a minute, I think that you are and have been a member of Second Pres [Presbyterian]?

RF: Yes.

SM: Were you attending it before--when it was still downtown?

RF: Yes. I am presently the longest member of Second Presbyterian Church because I joined in 1941, and Glenn Stambaugh who was the longest until just a year or so ago when he passed away. That's not--doesn't mean I'm the oldest member because there's a lot--there may be several members, I'm sure there are several members that are in their nineties, but they may have moved here or whatever, and I--

SM: So were you baptized there, or--you had already been baptized.

RF: No, I'd been baptized in Germantown because my parents believed in infant baptism, so I wouldn't have been more than a few months old.

SM: So that was a big change when the congregation moved it to its new location.

RF: Yes, it was a good choice.

SM: It's been a very successful congregation, I think.

RF: It has; we've been fortunate to have good ministers.

[00:50:29.19]SM: Well now, where did you meet your wife? Was she from Carlisle?

RF: Yes.

SM: Were you high school sweethearts?

RF: No, she's a little younger than I am, and we got married in 1960, so that was long after high school. She was a member of the class of '49; I was '46.

SM: What was her maiden name?

RF: Hippensteel, good German name.

SM: That's a good Cumberland County name, I think. And in your law practice, you have been involved--have you been in court--a trial lawyer or do you do--

RF: I've tried a couple of cases but I wouldn't describe myself as a trial lawyer because I never cared for it after testing the waters, so to speak, and concentrated on a so-called office practice: real estate, and estate settlements, and estate planning, and tax--income tax--and that's about--that's enough.

SM: Keeps you busy.

[00:51:51.08]RF: Yes. The other thing is if you're going to court, you're out of the office a good bit. If the phone rings and somebody wants to speak to you, you're not there and don't know when you're coming back. So for the--it's not very compatible. Most of the trial lawyers have much smaller practices of real estate; many of them don't do any, and--planning, but--that's my personal--

SM: It's served you well in your career.

RF: I'm well pleased that I went that direction.

SM: Is the bar association still pretty active, or are the--I'm thinking of like the Medical Association, how that's sort of tapering off--

RF: Well the bar association is probably more active than it used to be. When I first began practice, the principal activities of the bar association were the annual picnic and annual dinner meeting. But now the bar association has its own building on South Bedford Street and a full time staff and various activities, including some community service activities, going to the schools with programs on various legal subjects, so it's a lot more active and it's doing well in that respect.

SM: To what end? To educate children about the law, or to get children interested in becoming lawyers or attorneys?

RF: I guess if there's any interest in becoming a lawyer, they'll answer a few questions and so forth. Some of it's to let--particularly in senior high school--let students know something about life insurance, and when you might need a lawyer, and what to expect and so forth, just practical background information which if your parents were knowledgeable you'd learn it from them, but if your parents didn't have much experience or wouldn't think to tell you about it, they'd better get it outside the home.

[00:55:05.03]SM: I think we probably need to wrap this up now because I know Cara has to close out her day upstairs and we've been--

RF: Oh okay, I've taken up(??) a good bit of your time.

SM: Oh no, that's--you're--we don't want to tire you out--

RF: You won't tire me out.

SM: This is what I'd like to suggest, now that you've had a taste of it, that you think about anything you'd like us to record that you didn't think of today, and after you've had your recuperative period maybe we can have another session.

RF: You could tell a lot of stories about different people, some of which you probably don't want to tell.

SM: Well that would be up to you, but I think those are interesting things that will mean something to people down the line.

RF: Well they mean something, but some of the people in town who were characters or worse--

SM: Like Mrs. Kitz--[Kitzmiller]

RF: Yeah, but she was a jewel, really, just interesting because of her idiosyncrasies. Tom Flagg, for instance--I don't know if you ever heard of him or not--he published the Free Press, which was I guess on eight-and-a-half by eleven paper, mimeographed. He dressed conspicuously, wore a top hat sometimes, and he was a certifiable character. A nice enough person, and sadly shortly before he died an actual death, he caught a burglar on the roof of his house or a porch roof perhaps, and he shot him and it turned out to be a young fellow, and he killed him. And he regretted that he wasn't such a bad burglar as the ones you typically think of, and it may be his concern over having done that that brought about his death soon after, but there have been a lot of people like that.

SM: Well, make a mental list and then next time you can--

RF: The crystal industry in Carlisle is fascinating.

SM: Well that's what else you can do is tell us some people that you think we ought to talk to, other people that you think would interview well.

RF: Well you could talk to Bill Hoffman because his uncles were involved in that very much.

SM: Aside from his own interesting career.

RF: Yes. You can't talk to Ted Lutz anymore, but the trucking industry in Carlisle--you could talk to Jim George about that, obviously, and many other things.

SM: Well let's sign off for today, and you just keep us in mind when you're thinking of these things now. You'll go home and you'll say, Oh I wish I would've told her.

RF: Yeah, that's right. It's like when you make a speech somewhere; you make the best one on the way home.

SM: That's right. [00:59:44.12] (end of second tape)