Caitlin Haskett (00:00:00): The following interview with Joan Wohl was conducted by Caitlin Haskett on behalf of Bryn Mawr College as part of the project, Mid Century Jewish Martyrs, a Collection of Oral Histories. It took place on July 8, 2019 at Joan's home, [redacted]. So, to begin with can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and your family growing up? Joan Wohl (00:00:31): I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the West Oak Lane neighborhood. I went to elementary school, all public schools, and then went to junior high school, and then I went to the Philadelphia High School for Girls, which is the all academic school in Philadelphia, which has sent a number of students of Girls High to Bryn Mawr. I grew up in a very wonderful family. My father was a teacher and a lawyer, and Jewish educator. He was a Jewish educator because the principal of the Jeshurun Religious School for 50 years, from '21 to ... 30 years, I guess. Joan Wohl (00:01:20): Then, he also was one of the founders of Camp Ramah in the Poconos and one of the founders of the Solomon Schechter Day School in Philadelphia. Though, I did not go to a Jewish Day School. I stayed in public schools. My father was also an educator. He was the head of the mathematics department at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, which was at 8th and Leheigh in those days. I grew up in a house. I had an aunt that lived with us. Never married, was a public school teacher, so education was very important. I was one of two daughters. My sister, Nona, is six years older. Joan Wohl (00:02:02): She also went to the same schools I did, elementary, junior high, graduated Girls High and she also went to Bryn Mawr College. When my father was the principal of the mathematics department at Northeast High School, first he was a teacher and then he became the department head. The man who was the head of the department of mathematics before him was W. Wesley Stevenson. Joan Wohl (00:02:31): A very wonderful educator whose wife, Jane Allen Stevenson, was head of the English department at Philadelphia High School for girls and was a Bryn Mawr college graduate of the class of 1904. The Stevenson couple took to my father and mother because they didn't have any children and they loved them, and they loved the daughters. So, from an early age, my sister and I were told that we were going to go to Bryn Mawr College. Of course, we didn't know what Bryn Mawr College was, but this is what we were told because of Jane, as we called her. We knew her at our high school, although by the time I went, she had already retired from there. Joan Wohl (00:03:12): When Dr. Stevenson retired, my father then took the examination in the city of Philadelphia to be the principal, the head of the department. He came out with the highest scores ever and they refused to appoint him because he was Jewish. Philadelphia at that time, and I'm guessing this was around 1938-39 ... I'm not quite sure of the time. My sister probably knows. I can't remember. There was no department of head of any kind in the city of Philadelphia who was Jewish. Joan Wohl (00:03:53): The city officials wanted to appoint this next teacher who was there head. Dr. Stevenson, who was about to retire, said, “No, I'll stay on another year and Mr. Piwosky will take the exam again.” He took it again the next year, scored the highest, and they had no choice but to appoint him, so he was the very first department head in the city. We were very involved with Jewish causes. We belonged to a congregation Adath Jeshurun, which is a conservative congregation. My father was in the religious school. I grew up, I went all through it. We did not have bar mitzvah in those days but I had confirmation, and later on married. My children were named there, and I've also named my grandchildren there. I still belong to that congregation. Okay, so now comes the time when I'm graduating high school. Joan Wohl (00:04:54): And I will tell you a story, which I'm free to tell now. I did not do it because it involved someone who was still alive, but since this person is no longer alive, I have felt free to share it with my Bryn Mawr classmates in the last 10 years about that. Joan Wohl (00:05:10): There was a scholarship set up by a former mayor of Philadelphia, a Mayor Kendrick, and this scholarship was a memorial scholarship called The Minnie Murdoch Kendrick Scholarship. It must have been from his mother, who was a Bryn Mawr graduate and was a Girls High graduate. This scholarship was for a graduate of the Philadelphia High School for Girls to go to Bryn Mawr College. A four year, full tuition scholarship renewable each year, of course, like most of them that you keep certain grades. Joan Wohl (00:05:44): At Girls High, the principal and faculty of course knew about the scholarship. When I was a junior in high school, the student who held it before me, and I do not know who it was, graduated and the faculty had a meeting and decided not to award it to someone that year. They wanted to hold it for the next year because Joan Piwosky ... That was my name ... Joan Piwosky was graduating, and this scholarship was going to be for Joan Piwosky to go to Bryn Mawr, which was very good because my family ... That would allow the family financially to let me live on campus if the tuition was paid for. Otherwise, I would have been a day student. It came my senior year, I took the SAT's, did very well and I get a letter of rejection from Bryn Mawr college that they turned me down. Joan Wohl (00:06:37): Everyone was shocked. I was shocked. My parents were shocked. The faculty, the principal of my high school, they just couldn't understand it. We did not know why I was turned down, and I had to go through graduating when all the list of graduates and where they were going to college, and mine was unknown. We spoke to the head of admissions at that time. Her name was Annie Leigh Broughton, a very wonderful member of the campus community. They said that I could take the exams again and reapply, which I said I would do. So, all summer, I studied. Took the SATs. Going back to June when we found out that I was turned down, or I guess it was May. I don't remember when the letters went out. All of a sudden, the principal and the faculty at Philadelphia High School for Girls got a very interesting phone call from a woman... Joan Wohl (00:07:44): A Bryn Mawr graduate who was on the board of trustees. I did not know her name, I did not want to know it. I do not know it to this day ... who said the following, “We understand there is a scholarship at the school for a student to go to Bryn Mawr, and we know that a Ms. Piwosky was rejected for admission, but we know that there is another student in that class. Her name is Caroline Taggert ...” who happened to be a good friend of mine, “... who's also applying, and we would like to have that scholarship go to Ms. Taggert.” Joan Wohl (00:08:19): The principal met with the faculty at the Philadelphia High School for Girls and they said, "No way. Something's not right here. These two facts are connected.” They said, “No, we're holding this scholarship for Ms. Piwosky, and we know that Ms. Taggert got another scholarship.” I think an alumni scholarship of some kind. She was in my class when we graduated. Always good friends. Bottom line is I took the exam in August. I tutored myself in math because that was the weaker of the two. Joan Wohl (00:08:50): We had literature and math. Within I almost want to say 24 hours, but certainly within a week, I was down at the seashore in August ... school starting in two weeks, three weeks, my father gets a phone call at his law office. Surprise, surprise. We are admitting Ms. Piwosky to Bryn Mawr, and of course, I had the scholarship, but we really don't know if there's any room on campus. Joan Wohl (00:09:19): My father and mother said, “Well, you'll find room, of course.” So, I entered Bryn Mawr happily. My sister having graduated a few years before, and another relative who became later my sister-in-law had graduated. My sister's sister-in-law had graduated. My sister's sister-in-law had graduated. So, I came to the campus and I was assigned a room in Pem East way upstairs. Joan Wohl (00:09:44): It was called the Alumni Room. It was underneath the attic where they stored the suitcases and where all the mice ran around. It had no window to the outside. It had no closets inside, but there were two beds in there. So, when I got to my room, this other young girl from Manhattan arrived. Her name, Pat Hirsch Frankel, who also became a lawyer like I did. We two young ladies were so happy to be admitted at that time. They said to us we know these are not the best accommodations, and we promise you that if any room opens up in this dorm, we will offer it to you. In those days, I don't know about today, I understand all rooms go into some kind of a thing and you draw numbers or something-- Caitlin Haskett (00:10:34): It's more of a lottery system. Yeah. Joan Wohl (00:10:35): In those days, seniors, you could keep your room. You could keep it, so seniors had their own room, etc. A room opened up in a few months later, and Pat took that on the first floor. Then, in February of my freshman year, a young lady who was graduating in, I believe, Spanish, they said, “You're never going to graduate” to her. “You're going to have to go to the Spanish house.” Or, the French house, whatever it was, “... and immerse yourself in it or you're never going to graduate.” Joan Wohl (00:11:08): So, she gave up this gorgeous room at the top of the stairs at Pem East. Big bay window overlooking the campus. I could see President Katharine McBride in her office right across from me. So, that was my entrance into Bryn Mawr. Having been turned down, not knowing why, and neither one of us ever learned until after we were out of college about the Jewish quota. We did not know it was the 10% quota. Found out later, it was confirmed by everyone. Bryn Mawr was not alone in this. All schools had this. I think there was an Asian one, maybe two percent, whatever it was. Joan Wohl (00:11:45): But, I did not know. I never heard that word all through college. Never heard it. So, I entered Bryn Mawr. I was a political science major. Wonderful, wonderful friends. It was a very interesting entrance to a new world for me because suddenly with all of these girls, most of whom went to private schools and were getting ready for their debuts and their coming outs at this time, and I never felt jealous of them. I didn't want to be a part of their world, and I wasn't a part of their world. It didn't matter to me. Joan Wohl (00:12:25): So, being Jewish was very important to me in my life. I'd always eating kosher food at home and out, so Bryn Mawr College was the first time that I had to make an adjustment that I would eat chicken and beef out. I'd never done it before, and as had been my pattern in life, I never, ever ate any shellfish or pork products, but it was at Bryn Mawr that I first learned that I had to do that if I was going to survive. Joan Wohl (00:12:59): I enjoyed my studies at Bryn Mawr. I was a political science major under Dr. Roger Wells, who was a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And, then also I had a minor in economics and wonderful professors there. My social life was very interesting. I had some very, very good friends in Pem East. One was a very good Catholic, and one was a very good Protestant and I was Jewish. So the three of us, and we were dating. In those days, we dated a lot. We dated every weekend, went out. Haverford, of course, was nearby and Pem. So, when the Catholic girl had a date and he had a Jewish friend, oh, they called Joan. I went. If they had a Protestant one, they called Betty. Uh, call Betty. We just all went out together. That went on for years. And this is how we met people. Joan Wohl (00:14:00): Everyone got along very, very well. I know that in Pem West, there was a very large clique that had gone to the same private school apparently. I don't know the name of it. They were probably cliquey but everything in the world is cliquey somewhere. It didn't bother me. We all got along very well in Pem East. I never heard any problems with anybody. We got along together. We watched Princess Elizabeth get married. We did all these in the smoker. Of course, everything was very big at the smoker. Everybody had to smoke. I didn't smoke, but they made me try. I hate it. I never inhaled. I couldn't stand it, and the smell in the place, but that's the way it was. We all had to take a science course, and I really wanted geology. I loved rocks and the earth. Joan Wohl (00:14:54): And I thought that would be wonderful until I saw that the building was way down the other end of campus and I was picturing in the winter time, the snow, walking down there, and right next to me was Denbigh that had biology. What did I know about it? I'll take biology. I spent a couple of years breathing through my mouth because I never would want to smell anything with all the formaldehyde, but that was very much a part of my college career. But, I loved the time at Bryn Mawr. I have wonderful, wonderful, wonderful memories of events. We had our dining hall together with Pem West, and we had servants. We were served. We had wonderful meals. We used to joke that somebody had given the college an asparagus endowment because we seemed to get a lot of asparagus. Joan Wohl (00:15:48): Then, we dressed up at Christmas time. We all dressed up, and they had a big Christmas tree. It didn't bother us they had a Christmas tree, but we didn't have any Shabbat services of any kind. I know it was a Quaker school, but I do know that they all went to a church on the weekend, and one of my friends who was Quaker, I would go with her to Haverford for the nice walk to the meeting house. But, my Jewish life which was so important to me, I kept ... Since I lived in Philadelphia, it's under an hour for my parents to come out. So, they came out and they did my laundry. I would give them a bag, they'd bring it back, which is not surprising because the other children all had these cardboard boxes that went in the post office. Joan Wohl (00:16:36): They mailed their laundry home to their homes wherever it was, and clean came back. I still went to my synagogue for holidays in Philadelphia. In the fall of my freshman year is when the United Nations voted for partition in the Palestine Mandate, and in the spring, I remember going back on a Friday night to my synagogue for services when Israel was made a state, and that was very important to me because my mother had been a strong Hadassah member. She had met my father in 1916 at a ... It was called Hatikvah Juniors. It was a Zionist club in Philadelphia. My Jewish education was very, very important to me, and my studies at Bryn Mawr were absolutely wonderful. My faculty people were wonderful. We had to take orals in two languages. Joan Wohl (00:17:34): I had gone into Bryn Mawr with four years of Latin, three years of French, so I took the French oral no problem. I didn't want to do the Latin. I didn't feel comfortable doing it, so I had to take another language, so I took Spanish. At that time, it was done with Dorothy Nepper, who later became Dorothy Marshall, the Dean of the College. She was the Spanish teacher. I took a few years, and then I passed the Spanish one. Let me tell you about the swimming requirement. I don't know if they still have it, but we had to pass swimming. Now, I was raised all my summers at the Jersey shore in the ocean. I never put my head under water. I didn't know anything about diving. I was scared to death of it. So, had to be in swimming and the test was you had to stay afloat for 20 minutes. Joan Wohl (00:18:28): They didn't care what stroke you used. Oh yes, I did get a doctor's certificate that I had something wrong with my nasal passages and I did not have to dive. Oh, that was a blessing. Thank goodness for this. But, the other one for 20 minutes, and I remember being in there and the teacher having a big stick on the side saying, “Ms. Piwosky, keep moving.” I was floating on my back a lot. “Keep moving, keep moving.” Thank goodness, I did that. Also, had to be dunked down and stay down for maybe three minutes before you came up. I managed to do that. That was one of the hardest things I ever did at Bryn Mawr College. It was a snap doing the blue books and I loved all of that training. I loved all that essay work, which stood me in such good stead when I went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School because I was already trained in essays and doing blue books. Joan Wohl (00:19:19): Everybody else came having done multiple choice exams at their schools. This one other fellow from Dartmouth College and I, we were used to this. This is what one does. One thinks. One puts the ideas down and we think. So, Bryn Mawr was very important. The Deanery existed then. It was a gorgeous place, and it had some rooms. So, we would have our dates stay over night there when we had big dances. My future husband stayed there one time. I had another date with another fellow the year before, he stayed there. So, the Deanery was a very exciting place for us. Ms. Eli was a lady who lived in a house at the corner where ... It's the one that has no name yet. The new dorm at the corner there where my last reunion was. She lived there, and she loved the students. Joan Wohl (00:20:17): In my senior year on Christmas Eve ... Or, New Years Eve, I guess it was ... we went over caroling ... It must have been Christmas. We all went over caroling. I guess the best carolers were the Jewish students. We knew how to sing in choruses. It was wonderful. That was our only part of something off campus. Everything else was contained in the campus. Step singing was very big. Not just once or twice, we had all kinds of occasions. They could find any occasion they wanted. Joan Wohl (00:20:46): Step signing tonight, and we would all manage to get out there no matter what the weather was because we enjoyed that. We got to know everybody. The enrollment was not as large as I understand it is now. You really knew everybody. These were very, very wonderful years. I look back on these Bryn Mawr years as I look back on my Philadelphia High School for Girls years. I was always an advocate for single sex education. We need this as an option for people. It enables young women to find their voices and experiment with ideas and not worrying about the boys and the men that are over there, and the teacher not calling on you. We never had anything like that. We were all women, and we were treated as ladies. We were treated with great respect. Joan Wohl (00:21:43): So, when it came time for graduation, our class was very cohesive at that time, and we knew we were all going off into different spheres. Women were just starting to go out into the workplace. I was going right to law school. I got married two weeks after I graduated college. But, most of our women went to Manhattan. They got jobs at magazines, Elle, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping. Joan Wohl (00:22:14): This is the way women got into the world of making their own living. So, most of my friends at Bryn Mawr, they were Jewish, they were Christian. It didn't matter. I don't think I ever knew a Muslim. I don't even know if we had a Muslim person there. I don't think so. That I don't think so. We had really very, very good times. It was a very tough education. The professors were hard on us, very hard. We would think we would do wonderfully and we would get a grade that we thought we should get more on a blue book, but they gave us a chance many times to do it over if you want to. They'd give you a chance to do that. Joan Wohl (00:23:08): I had an interesting experience my freshman year. Since I came from Philadelphia and my mother was involved as a volunteer at the ... at that time the Federation of Jewish Agencies, which ran the annual campaign for monies for all the agencies in Philadelphia as well as the overseas. Remember, this was just a few years after the end of the war. The DP camps were still going in Europe and people were still coming into this country slowly who had been in camps or who had survived being protected by Christian families. Joan Wohl (00:23:41): I got a letter, or it must have been a call from someone at the federation in Philadelphia. They wanted to make contact. They realized there were a lot of college students in the area. We had all these schools. Swarthmore, where my late husband went, and you had Penn and Haverford, and you had Bryn Mawr, there was Villanova. Joan Wohl (00:24:07): There was no Jewish presence there, so they wanted to know if I would collect for the Allied Jewish Appeal. That would give me an opportunity to find these young women, tell them about the Jewish communities out there in Philadelphia. They will say they don't have to do it because they don't come from here, but then we would ask them, “Do you support the one in your community?”. Joan Wohl (00:24:27): Of course, they don't. I was given a list at that time, and I remember being shocked at seeing all these names. Not that there were a lot of them, but certainly more than 20 or 30 names on the campus. That was a surprise to me. I went around and people gave $1.00. The biggest one was $5.00, but that was the normal for the regular community. That was a big gift. If someone gave $25.00 in those days in Philadelphia, they were really a very big giver. So, that was a very wonderful experience. Joan Wohl (00:25:05): At graduation everybody had to go to the baccalaureate service the night before graduation, which was a Christian service. We didn't know it was a Christian service until we went there, and that was intriguing. It wasn't my favorite part of graduation, but I loved the regular graduation. Ms. McBride was a wonderful president. She was a brilliant scholar. She was a psychology person. She insisted that she would always teach a class, graduates class, while she was president. Joan Wohl (00:25:40): I think Pat McPherson also did that when she became president, and I don't know about Kim Cassidy now, whether she still teaches. But, that was the quality of leadership that we had a Bryn Mawr, and from what I see, it still continues. It makes me very, very proud. Should I talk some more about my childhood growing up? What would you like to know? Caitlin Haskett (00:26:08): I have some questions just following up on things you've said if that's okay. Joan Wohl (00:26:12): Yes, go ahead. Caitlin Haskett (00:26:12): So, to start with, I guess we'll go back to your childhood. Can you tell me a little bit more about your religious upbringing? You said you went to Sunday school and that your father was a Jewish educator? Joan Wohl (00:26:25): Oh, yes. Sunday, since my father had to be at Sunday school, we drove with him and I brought some of my friends in the neighborhood. We would go to Sunday school, which was all morning. In the afternoon, I would go visit one of my two grandparents somewhere, and then once I got to confirmation ... Well, once I finished all of that, I guess it was around that we started Hebrew school two days a week. Joan Wohl (00:26:53): So, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I went from West Oak Lane from either elementary or junior ... I guess it was junior high ... down for Tuesday and Thursday. Then, when I went into Girls High, which was then at 17th and Spring Garden Streets near center city Philadelphia, we'd take the subway up, a whole bunch of us, and go to Hebrew school from 2:00 to 4:00. It was a wonderful time. At 16, we had our confirmation year, and then we had post confirmation, which was all optional but we loved it. I even taught one of the classes later on. I taught a class at [inaudible] to confirmants that were just a few years younger than I was. Joan Wohl (00:27:38): So, I always had that. I did not go to Gratz College, which was in Philadelphia where most of the people went because I wasn't confirmed until the end of my junior year, and I only would have been at Gratz College for one year before I went away to college, so I never got a certificate as later my children all did. Joan Wohl (00:28:00): But, we were involved in all these. In our confirmation year, all the synagogues, and they were mostly on Broad Street. The Reformed, the Conserved. Not the Orthodox. No one had anything to do with the Orthodox, and they didn't have anything to do with us, but the Reformed and the Conservative, we all had joint dances and joint programs together and that's how we met each other. We would all go to Rodeph Shalom, which is reformed and they would all come up to either Beth Shalom or Adath Jeshurun, which were conservative and then they'd come to Keneseth Israel, which was also in town. Joan Wohl (00:28:24): Adath Jeshurun, which is now and has been since the late 50's up in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania was at 2109 North Broad Street. Broad and Diamond, so it was very close to Center City. So, our Jewish young people in Philadelphia had all of this. The boys then had their B'nai B'rith groups together and women had some Junior Hadassah groups together. But, my home was such a devoted Jewish, kosher home and educational, I was exposed to so many of the most wonderful lecturers and speakers who came to our congregation. I mean, I just remember them with fondness. We were exposed to all of this. I guess I was exposed, my family believes so much in education, Jewish education, secular education. Joan Wohl (00:29:30): We read. The Philadelphia Orchestra was very important in my growing up. Went to the children's concerts, the youth concerts with Eugene Ormandy conducting, and then I got married. We went to the orchestra and I still had a series. I'd go to the Philadelphia Orchestra. I'd go to the concerts. Curtis Institute of Music is right in our neighborhood here. I'd go over there for concerts. I still go up ever Shabbat to Adath Jeshurun. My housekeeper drives me up on Saturday. I drive, but I'd just rather not take long distances. Joan Wohl (00:30:07): She does that for me. We had a very wonderful life. It's very interesting. The neighborhood I grew up in, which is West Oak Lane, it's near Broad and Olney. I was born right there at Jewish Hospital, which is now Einstein Medical Center. At that time, it was Jewish Hospital. It was not until I believe the last 40's that the three Jewish hospitals in Philadelphia merged. Jewish Hospital was in the north, Mt. Sinai Hospital was south Philadelphia and Northern Liberty Hospital was over in northern Liberty. They were all Jewish enclaves. That's where the Jews lived. I was born at a Jewish Hospital. Lived just a few blocks on Nedro Avenue. We had this trolley car that took us down to the subway and that's how we lived all those years. Joan Wohl (00:31:17): The friends that we played with were really all Jewish. I can think of only one incident in my growing up days that would be considered antisemitic now. It's a very funny story, if you want me to tell you. I think it's funny. It's rather peculiar for the family. Okay, I was in I believe it was fourth grade. Third or fourth grade. In those days, for the holiday season, they would have pageants, and our pageant was going to be Betsy Ross making the flag. So, they had a bowl of crepe paper cut up all in white, and a bowl all in blue and then a bowl in red. There were three bowls. Somebody was to be Betsy Ross, someone was to be George Washington. I was selected as Betsy Ross. The other one, whose name I don't want to tell, was a gentile boy that lived a few doors from me. Joan Wohl (00:32:19): He was selected as George Washington. We were to pantomime as the rest of the class behind was singing the song or telling the story how they made the flag, and we were to dip our hands ... Oh, there was an empty bowl there ... taking the red, putting the red in, and then the blue in and the white, and we would mix it up. Then, at the end, we would just stand in front of it as the class is finishing its little poem and just hold hands in front of it. Well, two days before the pageant we found out that the young man who was to be George Washington had been pulled out of the program because his family said that they would not allow him to be holding hands with a Jewish girl. I was fourth grade. Joan Wohl (00:33:09): How old was I? Eight years old? Nine years old? We all thought it was very funny, so silly. It's the only time I can ever think that anyone did anything personally to me. My family, looking back, they must have been upset but they never let me know that it was pretty horrible. I know the teacher was not happy, but that was fine. I had no other incidents. When we went to Hebrew school, our rabbi was Rabbi Max D. Klein, who was our rabbi for 60 years, and had graduated the Jewish Theological Seminary in one of the early classes where he was taught by Rabbi Solomon Schechter, the famous Schechter. But, our Rabbi Klein also referred to him as Schester. He said that's what we always said, so we had to call him Dr. Schester. But, Rabbi Klein gave us a wonderful ... He was a brilliant man, a brilliant scholar. Never married. Joan Wohl (00:34:02): This was his whole life, so when we came to our confirmation, we had to know by heart at least 10 or 12 of the prayers. I'm not saying the Amidah all the way through, but we had to know the Kaddish and the Kiddush and the [inaudible] and the Vayechulu. We had to know all of these without looking at anything. We'd have to stand up in front of our peers and do it. That has stayed with me all my life. People say, “How do you know it?” I know it because I learned it. Well, they learned it but they don't know it. Then, I had a friend a Hebrew school. She was a year older than I was. She didn't go to Girls High, but we were friendly because on Shabbat afternoons, we would go to each other's home after services and play together. Joan Wohl (00:34:42): What did I want to tell you about that? That must have been ... See, there goes. Well, I'll think about that. Why did I want to tell you about that? Oh, yes. She and I decided that we were going to go to services and not open the siddur at all. So, we challenged each other. We were probably about 11 or 12 years old, and we did it. For years, we just knew it. We didn't have to look at the book. I had a very wonderful, happy time. We were always a very Zionist family. We supported everything in Israel. Joan Wohl (00:35:32): I can think of something interesting that I haven't thought about in a long time. I know I'm going back and forth, but that incident with the young fellow that wouldn't hold my hand when I was 10 years old, after I graduated from Bryn Mawr, I had a classmate ... I don't want to use names ... A very wonderful girl, married to a very wonderful fellow. They were Quakers. They were very prominent and they went to all the Quaker meetings. Joan Wohl (00:35:58): They did not live in Pennsylvania. They came to a national Quaker meeting, and they stayed with me and my family. I put my children in the other room, and they got the other kid's room. They were there about three or four days, and I was very interested in their agenda. So, this was when Israel was already a state, and I was just shocked when they came back and told me about all this money they were allocating for this Augusta Victoria Hospital, which I remember seeing where it was. They told me in no uncertain terms that that was because the Israelis were not giving any medical care to any of these other people. I thought that doesn't make sense. So, they were helping out at that hospital, and I asked them, “Well, do you also help out Hadassah Hospital if there are different hospitals for different people?” Joan Wohl (00:36:54): I remember she understood what I was talking about. He took great offense at it, and tried to tell me how wonderful the Quakers were and everything, but I knew very well that the Quakers had not been very supportive of diversity certainly in the early 40's and during the war. I knew that from other people. So, although I went to a Quaker institution, and my husband also went to one being Swarthmore, and I have so many friends who are Quakers when I know what some of their polices are, they were very divergent to what I felt as a Jewish-American where everyone should be treated equally and shouldn't have prejudices against anybody. My father was very involved with the Jewish community relations, and he had meetings with the ministers in town. This was quite interfaith work. I always grew up in a family with interfaith work. Joan Wohl (00:38:00): Maybe that's what's kept me in my volunteer life. I always was active at my synagogue in the women's association. In those days, it was the women's association. I ran the adult classes for women. They'd never had it before. In those days, most of us were at home mothers or we worked part-time. I never worked at the law office more than three days a week. I always wanted to be home with the children. So, we had 75 or 80 women every Tuesday studying. Then, I became active in the Jewish Women Organization in the city, and then I spent most of my volunteer work with Jewish Family and Children Service, where I've been on the board. I've headed long reach planning, I've headed home worker services, services to older persons, resettling the Russian immigrants in the 70's. I really can attribute that not just to my family and my synagogue, but Bryn Mawr was so inclusive of everyone. Joan Wohl (00:39:02): I never felt any difference there. Nobody treated you differently. Maybe some of the girls were cliquish, but you get that in any field. It could be in any institution. I've always felt Bryn Mawr gave me a background on which I could build a really good moral life. It was a very, very wonderful education. The camaraderie, the closeness with the faculty. Their doors were always open to us. Always open. Even if it was in the evening, we'd get over to their homes on Faculty Road. It didn't matter. One of Dr. Well's daughters was in my class, Elsa Wells, and one of his other daughters, Lois, was in my sister's class which is coincidence. But, they were available to us. And, of course, the infirmary. What could we do without the infirmary? We were always getting infections, always getting sore throats. Maybe we talked too much. Maybe we didn't eat as well. I don't know, but we really had a wonderful, wonderful time. People got along well. Joan Wohl (00:40:14): The faculty relation was good, and I never heard the word Jewish quota until it was my 25th reunion. I was one of those, a group of four or five of us, that ran the reunions every five years. I was doing major gifts, and I traveled around to the west coast and the southern states meeting with some of our classmates to try and get some major gifts for this anniversary. That was the first time when one of the members said to me, “Joan, how did you always feel about the Jewish quota when you were there?” Very innocently ... Let me think how old I was at that time? 40's or something? ... I said, “What Jewish quota?” That's how naïve I was. I subsequently then found out with research with people at other colleges and other people that yes, we had the 10% quota. Other people seemed to know about it. Joan Wohl (00:41:12): I didn't know about it. If my parents knew about it, they never said a word. They were just happy that we had this wonderful education. We did not have a Hillel there at the time. We really missed it. I never went to anything at Haverford. There were never any joint Jewish holidays. I went back to my own synagogue and I took many of my friends with me. They could stay overnight and my parents would drive us. I didn't have a car. Nobody had cars. I don't think we were allowed to have cars because nobody had a car. You went on the train and the lantern man followed you from the train up and back. You know about that? So that you were never alone. Joan Wohl (00:41:58): II have some friends that have lasted through these years, there's a group of our class of '51, who all live in the New England area, and for many, many years they have been meeting every autumn on a certain Saturday. All those that live in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts getting together for a lunch. I'm living in Philadelphia, and I was always so jealous. My husband would always say, “Why don't you go up?” I'm not going to go, but once he died, which was in 2015, I got a call from our classmate up in Massachusetts, “All right, Joan. You have no excuse now.” So, I've been going up and it has been wonderful. We are about seven or eight people that meet every year, and they are a mix. Joan Wohl (00:42:52): I think the hostess and I are the only Jewish ones, and the others are all very [inaudible], and they're all very big givers at Bryn Mawr and they've kept up their involvement. We got the stories out about them. So, up to me, I've been involved with the alumni association, with reunions, with fundraising. I've gone back to several things. I've seen things in the city, when Kim Cassidy has spoke here in Center City, and I was at one in the fall. My sister and I are usually the oldest ones there. Can't find people that are classes ahead of us don't seem to be around. But, Bryn Mawr has been a very important part of my life, and it was an integral part of my life as a young Philadelphia, American, Jewish committed person. Joan Wohl (00:43:47): Bryn Mawr was just part of my whole life, and I think it's made me pretty much what I am today, and I hope I've gotten good things from it. I really have only good memories from the education that I got. What it enabled me to do and the doors that it opened for me in social justice, which merged with my Jewish interests. I remember going and studying about Appalachia. I remember going to the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers. I remember we were doing something with the poor in south Philadelphia with the sociology department. It just reinforced the kind of world that my parents raised me in, and Bryn Mawr just gave me more of it. Maybe other people didn't avail themselves of it, but I did. I thought it was wonderful. Joan Wohl (00:44:42): We had great lecturers all the time. I mean, Eleanor Roosevelt and people like that that. Estes Kefauver. I loved it. You can't tell with my voice, which is going the last few years, but I sang in our synagogue's choral society for 36 years and loved it. Choral music is very important to me. One of the things they did freshman week at Bryn Mawr was they sent you down to the chorus master. I forgot what his name was. He married one of the students. I forget. They tested you to see what voice you were. They came to me. They threw me out, so I never sang at Bryn Mawr, but as an adult I sang all the oratorios and things like that. But, Bryn Mawr, no. Singing, which is so much a part of my life, forget it. Caitlin Haskett (00:45:38): Were you disappointed? Joan Wohl (00:45:40): Oh, yes. Oh, yes, because the other girls were singing and they were going down to sing with the chorus with the Philadelphia Orchestra and they were singing with the ... They didn't call it by colleges. Haverford. I don't remember much of Swarthmore at the time. Swarthmore was involved, I know with the library, things like that. Yeah, I was very disappointed because I love it, but it probably gave me more time to study. Joan Wohl (00:46:11): Oh, I can tell you a funny story about passover at Bryn Mawr. I told you that I had had to make very painful but a realistic decision about eating chicken and beef. I still separated milk and meat as best I could. It came passover my freshman year. What am I going to do? My family's going to bring me out food. So, they're going to bring me out matzoh and they were going to bring me out gefilte fish and a horseradish, but I don't have a refrigerator. We didn't have refrigerators in those days. But, my window, which is a bay window on the outside had a ledge, and I used that as my refrigerator. Joan Wohl (00:46:54): Well, a couple days later, I look up at my room and the horseradish must have spilled, and the ivy was red all the way down to the ground. Very embarrassing because you could see where it came from. The ledge is on a slant. It wasn't flat. I didn't know that, but that's how I've served passover. Oh, yes. I ate only my own food. Caitlin Haskett (00:47:21): Was that your freshman year or every year? Joan Wohl (00:47:25): No, every year. Oh, I did that every year. I didn't put it out over the ivy though. Caitlin Haskett (00:47:32): Did you share with other Jewish students or just for yourself? Joan Wohl (00:47:35): Well, I know that I took students home for the Seders to my family's house. That, I did all the years. There were three of them, four of them. Some of us were bridesmaids for the others when we got married afterwards. Yeah, but they came back to me for passover, and also they came back to me for the high holidays because school always started by early September, so we always did that. Always did that. I continued after I was married and living in Germantown and Mt. Airy. There was an organization run by the B'nai Brith women at Beaver College, which is now Arcadia College, but it was Beaver College then. Joan Wohl (00:48:20): It was a program that connected Jewish students with families in the area that would be their hostesses during the year. I had many, many students for several years from Beaver. We got them tickets and they came to us for the high holidays. We had them for Shabbat meals, but it was very interesting that after a few years, they didn't want it anymore. I found that after usually two years they weren't interested in coming to my house. They were busy at the college. We tried, we tried. What else can I tell you that you'd like to know? It was a very happy childhood. Caitlin Haskett (00:49:13): I'm wondering about you brought up the Jewish quotas again, and I haven't come across much about it, so I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about the research you did and how you determined it was 10%? Joan Wohl (00:49:24): Word of mouth. Our parents generation knew all about it. Caitlin Haskett (00:49:27): I see. Joan Wohl (00:49:28): I knew about it. My husband was a physician, and he went from Swarthmore College ... This is in the war years, etc etc, but he went to Temple University Medical School, and his father was a physician. Brilliant physician, author of many books, and he never made full professor. Never made full professor because he was Jewish. At that time, Temple University Medical School, which is now the Lewis Katz Medical School, but back in the 40's and 50's, there was no ... Until the 50's, there was no Jewish. Joan Wohl (00:50:02): We knew there was quota in terms of faculty. The reason that we had Jewish Hospital and the others is that Jews could not get on the staff at Hahnemann. Jefferson, there were some who had graduated there earlier. That's why the black community opened Mercy and Douglas Hospitals, which is now Mercy-Douglas, because they could not get privileges to take their patients anywhere. Joan Wohl (00:50:29): So, there were quotas all through the medical hospitals. We knew about that, and we knew about it at the universities because Jews were starting in bigger numbers to go to Harvard, and to go to Yale, and to go to Brown. It wasn't just one or two. You might know a dozen in your community going to any one of those. They would say, “Oh, we just made it under the quota. We just make it under the quota.” People looked around and they looked at numbers, and they figured it out. It was exactly the same every year practically. You looked at the number of the class, and you looked at the number of Jews and it was right there. 10%. You might find something at 11% or 12%, but it was never more than that. Bryn Mawr had it. Joan Wohl (00:51:19): Everybody must have known it at the time. I'm sure all the faculty must have known it. I don't know about faculty appointments. I remember one Jewish professor at the time. I don't know, but with the students, that's what it was. We just didn't know it, but this was just normal. It was like the old movie, The Gentleman's Agreement, which was a movie probably in the '40's or 50's with Jews traveling around the country not being admitted to hotels and restaurants. You couldn't find anything in writing. You couldn't prove it in writing. It was a gentleman's agreement. Joan Wohl (00:51:57): People just knew it. Apparently, Bryn Mawr had nothing to be proud of whatsoever, and it just has nothing to do with M. Carey Thomas. It's just the way the world was, and certainly during the '30's, which was a terrible time in America ... It was an isolationist time, and Father Coughlin on the radio every Sunday with his vitriolic sermons against the Jews and all of that. It was a terrible time. Joan Wohl (00:52:34): Jews held back. They didn't talk about other things. You lived in the world you could live in. If you couldn't live in that world, you didn't live in that world. After my father became the department head, other people became department heads. Slowly, very slowly. That's the way things were. What are you going to do about it? Joan Wohl (00:52:56): It goes on today. You can find antisemitism from the brightest people who come from the brightest colleges, and they still don't realize that they're hurting somebody else. They're probably good people that are not even aware of it, or aware of it and they think they can get away with it. But, I never knew the actual word, I say, until I was out of college a couple decades. Never even knew about it. It puts so much into perspective. Joan Wohl (00:53:26): We knew about the rumor, the suggestion from my high school principal and the head of the faculty that the reason that I was turned down was because I was Jewish. They never used the word quota. They never said that, but it was clear to them that the connection with my not going and taking a scholarship and turning me down had to do with bringing this other young, Christian girl in. They knew it, and they wouldn't go along with it, which I'm very, very proud of to this day. Joan Wohl (00:54:05): I don't know, there must be quotas now. We have affirmative action. That's a quota in another way, but putting quotas to try to make things diversified. Well, then other people are left out. We had very few international students. We had some people, one was the daughter of the Iranian ambassador. Someone else tells me about somebody had a chauffer pick her up every weekend and take her to Washington. I was totally unaware of that. I must have been in another world. I didn't know about that. We were a very close group. I think we had two Asian girls. I think they both became doctors. All their family is doctors. One of them has three daughters, who then went to Bryn Mawr, but that was the only Asians that we knew. Joan Wohl (00:55:04): I come from a high school where we had black girls and white girls, but not that many black. That was just the time. The 30's and the 40's. The 50's, I got out in '51, so I had all those 40's there. That's what Bryn Mawr. We had a fabulous education, fabulous faculty. If they discriminated in terms of admission with other people, I have no idea. I only know my story. Joan Wohl (00:55:36): I never told my story to any of my classmates ... any of them ... until Mrs. Broughton had died a few years ago because I didn't want to cast aspersion on anybody. I know her comments to my father. They were not pleasant. I knew that, but I stuck with it. I took the exam. I took the SAT's a second time. I didn't have to do that, but they had to save face somehow. I don't know where they got pressure from. Somebody. Somebody must have said something. I don't know, but I took it. I don't remember if I did as well or not as well. I have no idea. The phone call came and there I was. I'm in. That was a very happy day for me. Caitlin Haskett (00:56:25): All right, you mentioned that you had to go to baccalaureate before you graduated and that was a Christian service. Joan Wohl (00:56:36): We all did. It is. Caitlin Haskett (00:56:38): Yeah, tell me a little bit more about that experience. Joan Wohl (00:56:43): Well, the speaker was a wonderful Justice Hand from New York who happened to be the grandfather of one of my classmates, my dear classmate, Sue Savage Speers, who became president of the Alumni Association. She's board of trustees, she's just retired from. That was her grandfather, Learned Hand, I guess. There were two brothers, but he was the speaker at the baccalaureate. Joan Wohl (00:57:14): I just remember I really probably didn't know what it was that I was going to. We just knew that it was a baccalaureate, and I always know that when you see diplomas, it has the word baccalaureate somewhere in there, but I don't know what that means. It was just what we had to do. So, I guess it was actually a service. Even to this day, I don't know of a program or anything. I don't know, do they still have a baccalaureate service? Caitlin Haskett (00:57:44): Mm-mm (negative). Joan Wohl (00:57:44): We had it. It was the night before, and I know my husband-to-be, who was at that time a resident up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania getting some general surgery before he did his full orthopedic surgery, he couldn't get away for the ... He came down. He was there for the baccalaureate, but he couldn't be there for graduation. We had a procession. We came in. We had two processions, but we didn't have our hats on and we didn't have the hoods. Just the regular gowns as I recall. Just the black gowns. Yeah, that was interesting. Caitlin Haskett (00:58:24): What was your reaction like when you realized it was a Christian service? Joan Wohl (00:58:29): Well, we all were very puzzled by it, but we were thrilled that our classmate's grandfather, this very famous Justice, was there. I remember being very proud of him. Then, we graduated a day or two later, and our lives changed. You don't think about it again. It's gone, it's done, it's finished. It wasn't as if it was something we had to do every week like other schools that make you do things. There was nothing forced Christian, even Quaker. I don't even know if they had Quaker meetings on the campus. I don't know. The closest one I knew was at Haverford. Joan Wohl (00:59:10): No. There were Jews here. My dear friend who graduated in '36 I believe, she was Jewish. Her sister was two years before her, Jewish. They were from Chicago. Their maiden name, I can't remember. Hirschberg, maybe. H-I-R-S-C-H-B-E-R-G. I can look that up. Kate, she became Dr. Kate Hirschberg Kohn, K-O-H-N. Brilliant physician at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. She was a wonderful ... Her former husband is president of KAM Temple in Chicago, the big Reformed temple. She was Bryn Mawr in '36. Joan Wohl (00:59:57): She was there at the same time as Katherine Hepburn, but not the same class. I'm pretty sure she was '36. Of course, I said then Jane Stevenson was in '04. I think of her very fondly these days because one of her classmates ... I forget her name. She was Japanese, became this famous Japanese educator. They just had a big program at Bryn Mawr about her. She took her Bryn Mawr education, went back and started the first school for girls in Japan. Joan Wohl (01:00:27): She was in Aunt Jane's class, so I knew about her all the time. She was her good friend. Bryn Mawr opened windows for us, and my Jewish neither propelled forward or took me backwards but it certainly is an underbelly. It gave me the intellectual support to continue to be what I wanted to be. Joan Wohl (01:00:54): If anybody said things against me, they never told me. I often joke with my classmates that there was one word I learned when I entered Bryn Mawr I had never heard before, and they all wanted to know, “What is that word you heard?”, thinking it would be something rather racy. I said, “The word is Bermuda.” I didn't know what Bermuda was, but everybody was going to Bermuda. Well, we didn't have money. Where did we go? We didn't even go to Camden, New Jersey to their families, and they were all taking these trips on their spring breaks and their Christmas breaks. So, I joke about that. Caitlin Haskett (01:01:31): Mmm-hmm. Joan Wohl (01:01:37): There were cliques but that's true in any school. The best thing about Bryn Mawr, we had no sororities of any kind. Best thing. I hope they never have that. It tears a school apart. Its deficits far outweigh any benefits, any benefits whatsoever. We were all in it together, and since you were with your major, so you had your dormitory friends and those in your major. Some of them were the same, but you met new people all the time. Caitlin Haskett (01:02:07): Tell me about when you went to talk to the other Jewish students for the United Jewish Appeal, and that list of names that you got. Joan Wohl (01:02:15): That was very interesting. It was very negative most in my recollection. It's been so long ago. Some of them didn't want to do anything, so maybe they came from families that were not committed to fundraising for world Jewry or the poor in their community. It could be. But, I remember getting very negative responses but I was very happy with what I did get. I forget. I turned it over to them. They never asked me again. I think it was just that one year. I can't remember if I ever did it again, or if they asked me or not. I really don't know. But, I was very happy many years later when Hillel outreached and had a Hillel director there, and they had a Hillel director at Swarthmore before it became so anti-Israel. My husband and I supported them financially. Caitlin Haskett (01:03:18): Did you meet new people through that list that you go to know the other Jew students on campus? Joan Wohl (01:03:26): I must have. I must have. It must have opened my eyes, but I have no recollection, any specific recollection. I was better off with those that I knew in my own friends. Harriet and Flo, Pat, Helen. I would know these girls. I would know them and I could explain to them what I was doing and trying to explain that people who went to school near their towns supported that one, and if they didn't want to do this, at least would they do the other? You try to educate people when you do fundraising. Caitlin Haskett (01:04:04): Tell me about your friends at Bryn Mawr and your social life? What kinds of things did you get up to? Joan Wohl (01:04:09): Oh, I had wonderful friends. The girls were just wonderful. My roommate was Pat Hirsch. She was incredible. She played the french horn, and she also took up fencing, you know with an epee? We remained friends, she and her husband. She settled in Reading. She went to law school after I did. I don't know what she did for a few years. Maybe she had the kids first. I don't know, I don't remember, but we've remained friends all these years. Harriet Smith had the room next to me. Harriet became a physician, very big, at Maimonides, New York. Unfortunately, she died two years ago I think of one of the cancers. Very sad. We had Helen Finkle. Dear Helen Finkle. Never married, became professor of French in Rice University in Texas, and lived on the east side of Manhattan and was one of these eccentric women wearing her mink coat walking through town. A good friend of Pat Hirsch. Joan Wohl (01:05:18): She would come to a reunion but never sleep over. She'd come to Pat's house down in Reading, but never sleep over. Helen was a wonderful, wonderful friend. I remember our freshman year, she was across from me. Israel was declared a state, and she came running in that her uncle had become the prime minister, Shertok, but he took the name of Sharett. Moshe Sharett was the first, I think, Prime Minister. That was her uncle. That was exciting. She introduced me to Edith Piaf's music. Oh, that was wonderful. She played that. She was from Manhattan. Pat was from Manhattan. Flo, and then some of the upper class girl, but they were the ones ... Helen, Pat, Harriet and I, we really stuck together. Joan Wohl (01:05:41): I had the other friends there, the ones that we dated together with Betty Temples and Jane Wickham, the Catholic, and the Protestant one. They're both still alive. It's interesting. They graduated before me. Caitlin Haskett (01:06:30): You mentioned you hung out in the smoker. What kind of things did you do in the smoker? Joan Wohl (01:06:35): Well, you went there to socialize if you wanted to see anybody after dinner. You would just sit. They had a little black and white TV. You'd watch a little on TV. Then, we had quiet hour, I guess, from 10:00 to 11:00. Betty Temples and I, we became the financiers. In the back on the first floor, there was a closet with a key. It had all the snacks and drinks like apple juice, and you bought them. She and I were the financiers. That's how I learned to do a whole budget and write checks and do all that. That was a lot of fun. Caitlin Haskett (01:07:17): How did you get that position? Joan Wohl (01:07:18): I have no idea. Absolutely none. She was the year before me. When it was my year, maybe she had somebody else with her and took me. No idea, but we just got along very, very well. Although, my husband and I visited her and her husband down in North Carolina and we stopped doing that because her life philosophies and politics didn't quite agree, so we stopped doing that. They're just full-time in their church. Full-time. They're elders and they're singing, and whatever they're doing, which is fine. Joan Wohl (01:07:58): What was I going to tell you? Ask me something else. Maybe it'll come back to me. There's something I wanted to tell you, another incident I thought of that I haven't thought of in a long, long time. Caitlin Haskett (01:08:22): Was it related to something with your friends at Bryn Mawr? Joan Wohl (01:08:24): Yeah, I don't know. Probably. Some incident that must have happened. It'll come back to me. Caitlin Haskett (01:08:32): Okay. Caitlin Haskett (01:08:34): While we're waiting for it to come back, do you want to tell me a little bit about academics at Bryn Mawr? Joan Wohl (01:08:39): Oh, yes. They were the finest type, and it always has to deal with coming down from the top, from the president of the college to the faculty, the top faculty, department heads and who they choose for their faculty. They choose well, and they choose well with people who are going to relate to the students at the highest academic level. If we wanted to investigate something, they would help us find it right away. Take us to the library. I still have my number I used to go on, NJPW2 or something. In class, nothing came down from above. The teachers never sat behind a desk. I don't remember anybody ever behind a desk. They either took a chair right with us, encouraged our critical thinking and if they criticized us there was a reason for it to get us to improve. Joan Wohl (01:09:43): Bryn Mawr had just the highest academics. I had friends from high school that went to Penn, went to Holyoke. Somebody went to Barnard maybe. They didn't have anything like I had at Bryn Mawr. Nobody. Nobody had this intensive thing, and nobody had these role models of women professors to look up at. That in itself was amazing. One of our class members, Frieda Woodruff, she went on to become the college physician for 30 years. Frieda Woodruff, yes. They just encouraged us in all ways. I can't remember the names of the two professors from ... Hubbard. That's one of them ... from Swarthmore. He was the economics one. He was blind and had a dog, but there was another man who was one of the top economics--kind of in the category that Alice Rivlin would be like now. Joan Wohl (01:10:49): My husband had had him at Swarthmore, and he came. He was older already, but still teaching at Swarthmore. He came and gave a course to us at Bryn Mawr. Oh God, the highest caliber of people. People had been done to Washington working with presidents, coming back. I would say the academics, you couldn't touch it anywhere else. I mean, maybe there are others of the equal, but I'm telling you that this is at the highest. Bryn Mawr does not tolerate mediocrity. Not at all. They won't tolerate it. Just won't tolerate it, and if a student does something in a paper that isn't top, they make them do it again. It can be hurtful, but you do it. I've always been grateful for that, and as I say, that helped me in law school. Joan Wohl (01:11:45): Law school was another story where they didn't call on women. That's another whole story. I had one man who never called me on the whole year. Yes, I still have the letter somewhere that I got at Bryn Mawr. I was a senior, had applied to Penn Law, and mail came to me addressed to Ms. N. Joan Piwosky. It said, "Dear Sir ..." Joan Wohl (01:12:09): And, he's the man that never called on me. He was also the man that was the only one that wouldn't change an exam time for me when ... It's time now of the Korean War, and my husband was a physician on a ship, and it was coming in to Norfolk. I was going to go down there, by golly, and meet that ship. He wouldn't give me the exam before afternoon. I went in there, and it's the only time in my life I remember crying. I broke down so. I didn't want to, but I did, and of course, that was the worst thing to do. It was terrible. Joan Wohl (01:12:46): So what? So, I didn't do well in that course. It didn't bother me. He couldn't flunk me. I was too good for that, but he could give you the worst grade possible. But, that was at law school, not at Bryn Mawr. We knew that from the top down, from Dr. McBride at that time and Dean Marshall, that they only went for excellence, and excellence in women. That always was important to me. Caitlin Haskett (01:13:24): How did you end up selecting your major? Joan Wohl (01:13:29): That's very interesting. Joan Wohl (01:13:32): I was always interested in politics and interested in government. My father was a lawyer. My sister's husband was a lawyer. I'm sure that influenced me because our conversation was always about the world around us. If you're interested in the world around us and how it works, you're going to go into political science. We had a course in elections. This goes in the 1948 election, so that would have been my sophomore year in the fall, November, and that was the one where Truman beat Dewey and nobody expected it. Joan Wohl (01:14:14): He went to bed, and you seen the newspapers that Dewey ... I don't know what happens now, but with Dr. Wells, every four years a course was given in the election year. That would be September through January, I'd say, on the American election process. We would have to follow the campaigns and the theories of all the candidates, and actually learn the whole electoral college and what the votes where in each one. Joan Wohl (01:14:51): We came in on Election Day for an exam, and what was our exam? We had to fill in the whole electoral college, how it was going to go. Well, ABC and NBC, everybody else got it wrong, so they couldn't grade us on it because that's the kind of thinking that they had. That was wonderful, and we had to think back on everything we knew about South Dakota or Maine. This is not easy stuff. Even today you wouldn't know, but they told us we had to do this so we were very intensive with this, and they wanted us to work on any campaign. Damn, what year was that one? What was the next year? Adlai Stevenson. I guess I was in law school at the time, the first year just out of Bryn Mawr. I went down to work. Joan Wohl (01:15:48): I've always tried to work at a campaign. I'm a lifelong democrat. I guess I'm a bleeding heart liberal. I don't know, but I try to keep an open mind. Bryn Mawr is a big part of my life. I've never missed a ... Well, planning a reunion. I only missed one. I planned one in '05. I was reunion chairman, but it was the weekend of my grandson's bar mitzvah in Florida so I wasn't there, but I've been at every one. I make all the plans and love it. Pat and I are co-chairmen for the next one for our 70th. We did our 65th. So, it was pretty funny when they had a meeting and they said, “You two will take the next reunion.” Sure. Who knows if we're going to be around? Of course, we'll do it. Why not? It's very simple, so we'll see. Caitlin Haskett (01:16:49): Well, that's actually a lovely segue because we're running up on time, so if you're getting tired, or you have something else to go to, but I'd like to ask you a little bit about what your life has been like since Bryn Mawr. You mentioned you went to law school, and then you worked in a law firm. Joan Wohl (01:17:05): Can I go to the bathroom? Caitlin Haskett (01:17:05): Mmm-hmm, yeah. [recording pauses] Caitlin Haskett (01:17:05): So, can you tell me a little bit about your life after Bryn Mawr? You mentioned you went to law school at Penn? Joan Wohl (01:17:19): Oh, yes. I had a very exciting life. I was married two weeks after I graduated, and my husband, Dr. Milton Wohl, was an orthopedic surgeon. I started law school in September, after graduation. He finished residency at PGH, Philadelphia General Hospital. We were married for 64 years, so my life was tied up with Milt. Of course, we had our separate people, but my whole life was centered around family and community. When I graduated law school, I worked. My father had his own law firm. In those days, nobody would accept women in their law firms part-time, and I know that I did not want to work full-time. I knew that. I knew that right from the beginning. I wanted to have children, and I wanted to be there for them, so I went to work for my father's firm and I did that for many years. And I had my three children. Joan Wohl (01:18:22): I had my three children. I had all my volunteer work, very busy at my synagogue, and I was running adult education, and I was involved in ... We had all kinds of protests going on. They were always getting protests down in front of the Israeli Embassy or whatever, or we were marching in Washington for Sharanksy, for the Russian Refuseniks. I just had a wonderful life involved with my own family, my extended family, which was my husband's parents and his brothers and sisters, my nieces and nephews, to whom I'm still family now, and my community work, our social life with friends. We loved to cook. We had big dinner parties of 18 people at a time. We had three tables of six. Those days, we had card tables and they fit a v-top on top that made it round. You fitted this thing on top of a card table. Joan Wohl (01:19:23): So instead of four people, you got six. And we could fit three of those tables in our living room, so we were known for having these, these dinner parties. We would have people from various walks of life. We had medical people, legal people, Jewish people and the community people, and we always were involved, my husband and I, in getting people together. We just loved it. We did cooking. We also bought a farm in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, which is outside Philly about 40 miles, for 40 something years and we entertained there. We spent our summers there, and towards the end of our years when we retired, we lived there full-time before I then moved into Center City, Philadelphia. But, my life, oh we had wonderful things. We traveled. We traveled all over the world, to medical meetings, I traveled to legal meetings. Joan Wohl (01:20:17): Scandinavia, Asia, it doesn't matter. Africa. I went and lived in Nigeria for a while with my husband for a few months when he was a volunteer with CARE MEDICO ... these were the orthopedics overseas ... it was called. They had this program in four different countries. The parameters were that the country had to invite you in and want you to be there to train their people. The point was to not just treat patients, but you had to train their people. So, the orthopedic program was to train a local physician in orthopedic surgery so he could then go get register up in London and get certified. Joan Wohl (01:21:00): You replaced somebody and you came. I had three little children. To this day, my mother never forgave me because I left the children home and went with my husband. Well, my pediatrician did not want me to pump all these vaccinations into the kids. We got them cholera, typhoid and malaria and all that. If we were going to be there for a year or something, that's another story but just for a couple months, the littlest one was just three years old, so I had these two women hired we hired through the years that stayed with the children when we went on trips. I had to work with my husband and keep all the books for CARE MEDICO. Every patient, every procedure. Joan Wohl (01:21:45): We had the general hospital in Enugu. We were in the eastern region. If you know your history, there was a civil war a few years ago in the eastern region, the educated, Christian section succeeded and became Bifafra, B-I-F-A-F-R-A. Unfortunately, it didn't last because the Muslim hoards came down and destroyed it, but we were in the eastern region. We'd be there all week. They provided a house, a houseboy, a driver and a car. On weekends, we would go out visiting. We'd go one weekend to the leprosarium, one weekend we went to the Baptist clinic that was a dental clinic, and we went to Queen Elizabeth hospital. They were the different missionary places, and they would save up the orthopedic cases and I would be there taking all the records. That was exciting. That was really, really wonderful. Joan Wohl (01:22:40): We loved to travel. We loved to be out at the farm. All summer, from June to September, we had people out there. We entertained. The senior citizen group from our synagogue came. We had all the residents from the hospital came out, all the residents. My son was in medical school then. We had all them. So, we always were in a position ... We always wanted people to meet other people. That really kept me very busy. I still was going in a few days a week at the office. We had a civil law practice, no criminal, and we did everything, just sent out our taxes so that we represented people in those days, which they don't do these days. You represented a family, so if they had a business, you handled their union contract, their real estate and their leases. Joan Wohl (01:23:35): If someone in the family got in trouble, you went into court. We would go to family court. Their contracts, do their estates with their wills. You represented everybody, and it was wonderful. You got to know people. So many of the clients were dad's teachers from Northeast High and all the teachers from around the city that knew him. Those were very, very happy times. We were not political involved in terms of supporting candidates but we were always aware and involved in thinking and talking about the world around us, and particularly with Israel. We've been eight or nine times to Israel. The very first time was in 1964 when the city of Jerusalem was still divided with barbed wire. We were there, and it was quite an experience. Joan Wohl (01:24:34): We were there for two weeks, and my sister and I had realized in planning this trip that our kids would be missing summer camp, so we figured if we're already in Europe, mother and dad are treating us to this, let's stay another two weeks and we'll pay for the children. We all stayed for a month together, so we went then to Italy. That ended up into something which you're all reading about now since I'm talking to you in July of 2019, and we're at the 50th year of the Apollo mission landing on the moon. That was just the time of our family trip. We were in Florence, Italy for the takeoff. Joan Wohl (01:25:26): We were in Lucerne, Switzerland at the hotel and they were circling into orbit, and it was very hard to listen because they had on the American television, but they kept it quiet while they were putting in the German translation. Then, we were in London when they landed. No, no. The walk on the moon, pardon me, was Lucerne, not the orbit. That's what came. The landing was in London, and that is an experience that has stayed with us all our lives. We were in a hotel. Joan Wohl (01:26:01): They didn't have TV's in the rooms, but the lobby had it and we were all in the lobby. We were a family, and there were other people in the hotel and people who came in from the street, including one of Dr. Wohl's Nigerian friends who had been one of his physical therapists who had escaped during the Bifafra war and was in London. We're in there and we're watching this, and when it landed safely, the BBC played the Star Spangled Banner and everyone in that lobby, the British all stood. They all stood while that was going on. AAnd, then, they played God Save the Queen. Joan Wohl (01:27:00): It was one of the most emotional moments that we realize that we're all the same, and I think I hope our children remember that aspect of it. That was a great experience in my life. It's been a wonderful amount of travel, of raising a family, hoping to teach them the right things, taking trips with them, introducing them to theater and orchestra and music. One of our sons is a composer. The other one's a pediatric ENT doctor. My daughter has a social work degree, but she's been working on other projects. So, my life has been such a full one. I'm a great reader. I don't want Kindle or anything. I like to hold the book, and I just ordered today from Amazon another book people are telling me that I must read. All right, I'll read it. That'll come tomorrow. Joan Wohl (01:27:52): I love reading. I love gardening. We love flowers. I love birds. I'm very interested in architecture. My husband and I were founders of the Philadelphia chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. Even at home, where we have collected the ichnography of Philadelphia, which are the prints and maps, anything having to do with the history of Philadelphia. Joan Wohl (01:28:18): And we belong to the National Organization of American Historical Print Collectors. My husband was the president, and that has introduced us to people all over the country who collect all kinds of things based on not the collecting of it. It's the learning the history of it. You look at any piece, and then you find out what it's really about. Joan Wohl (01:28:45): So, we travel. We go to the orchestra. We have our professions, we have our children, who have decided to live all over the country, so we're always traveling to see them. Then, since my husband's gone, we still do it. I just finished a five day with the 12 of us together for five days. We just finished that trip. Family is very, very important to me. All three of my children have remained very Jewish and committed in their communities. They sing in the choir, they lead services. They can lead any service that you want. They can read Torah and Haftarah. We can all do that. Oh, yes. I was very involved. I never thought of it this way. It was the 70's, and it was when I belonged to the Conservative Movement and they suddenly started a movement for women to be more participatory in the ritual. Joan Wohl (01:29:45): There's three areas. There was to be able to have an Aliyah, being brought up to say the blessing over the Torah, to be able to read the Torah and the Haftarah, and to be counted to a minyan and be one of those to be counted to be the 10 people required for a legal service in Judaism. The hardest one, believe it or not, is the one for the minyan. I was very involved, and Philadelphia women, we were one of the first ones. At a national convention, we presented it. So, at my own congregation, the women, we learned to read Torah, so passover one year, that was our first time, and then in the fall at the high holidays, I was asked if I'd be the first one to read it on Rosh Hashanah. Joan Wohl (01:30:41): They figured that nobody could touch me because I was a well respected person in the community. They knew that there'd be some pushback probably, which there wasn't. Everybody was ready for it. It could have been done years before, though maybe it took a while. I've always been very proud of that. Then, I was asked to be one of the first ones to have an Aliyah. This was in '73, 1973. The other things had been in '70, '71. That's approximately when things happened. Joan Wohl (01:31:20): In October of '73, my mother had passed away two years before, three years before, and my youngest child's bar mitzvah was to be in October of that year, so they wanted me to have an Aliyah on Rosh Hashanah and I'd be the first one. I turned it down and I said, “I want the first one to be at my son's bar mitzvah so that I can do it for my mother because she was never able to do it.” Joan Wohl (01:31:51): So that's how I know when I had the first one. I could have been the first. It didn't matter. I've been very involved in that. I went around lecturing on the Philadelphia brach of the Women's League for Conservative Judaism. I helped host Jewish family living and Jewish education, adult education. I'd go around in 24 synagogues, sisterhoods, in the area and I'd go on doing programming and giving speech, talking about lectures on what to do on the holidays. Joan Wohl (01:32:21): Presumptuous of me, I guess, but I was involved in that so many years, and at the national convention of Women's League for Conservative Judaism, I guess it might have been '71 or somewhere in there, we did a survey. There were 1200 women that were at this national. They included people from Canada and Puerto Rico, also. Yeah. There was a survey just wanting to know what your synagogue at home was doing. What were women allowed to do? Joan Wohl (01:32:50): Were the women reading? Did you still have separated seating anywhere? Did you have women on the board of directors? Then, you went to the ritual things in the synagogue. I remember sitting at dinner with this gal. She was a sister president from Long Island. We were talking about they don't really do anything, but I took what I thought was the most innocuous thing. I said, “So, as a sister president, you have a seat on the board of directors, right?”. Joan Wohl (01:33:21): “Oh, no. Oh, no. We wouldn't want that.” I said, “You don't even have that?” I said, “So, how many women are on your board of directors?” “We don't have women on the ...” How can you talk to people about making changes in ritual life when they're not even looking to make changes in their own life? Joan Wohl (01:33:39): That's when I learned you had to take people in this world from where they are to where you go, and that has maybe been the strength in the things I've done in the community. You can't just start it where you think things should be. People aren't there. You have to start where they are, and slowly get them involved some way. But, I always remember that one story. How could you talk about anything else about Jewish life if she doesn't even agree that she should sit on the board of directors? That's just an example of something that really would get me happier to go out and do things, which I've always done. Joan Wohl (01:34:25): So, now I'm at the stage in my life where I'm honorary. I'm an honorary board director here, I'm an honorary board trustee here, and that goes for my synagogue. That goes for the Jewish Family and Children Service. My late father used to say, because he was very involved with things, he used to say, “One of the best jobs in the world is past president. You get invited to every meeting, they might or might not ask your opinion. You don't have to vote, and you can just sit there and watch what they're doing and maybe make a comment, but maybe not.” So, I really enjoy watching the new generation. Joan Wohl (01:35:07): We had to write an article for our Bryn Mawr reunion, one of our reunions ... I have the book somewhere ... about my life. I remember at the time trying to think. They wanted us to summarize how we saw our life, what we were doing. Joan Wohl (01:35:37): You start thinking what are we doing? We're doing, raising a family, you're cooking meals, you're going to work, you're raising kids here. I suddenly realized that everything that I was doing, whether it was at the synagogue or in the community had to do with families. Not just insular families, the greater families, community families and I just feel that that's a focus of my life since Bryn Mawr. Joan Wohl (01:36:07): I credit all my education for that. It's made me who I am. It's taught me to be very patient, really, and to be very thorough and very deep in what you know. Like at Bryn Mawr. You couldn't have anything just on the surface. They won't accept anything like that. You have to know what you're talking ... You have to have your resources. Maybe 30 pages of footnotes. It doesn't matter, but you have to know what you're doing. They're not going just let you get by on anything. You learn to be thorough about things, and I'm not bragging, but I'm proud of the fact, and people have told me that I've been a mentor to so many young women in the community in their various fields. Joan Wohl (01:36:51): One's in horticulture, and another's in Jewish committee, one's teaching. Who knows what they're doing. I never realized it, but when we first started to have equality in the Conservative movement, we have an annual conference in Philadelphia in the spring, and it always starts with a short service in the morning. For years, that service would be that rabbi of that congregation led the service and we said we were going to do it. Well, no one had done it before. Who's going to do it? Who's going to read the Torah? Who's going to do it? I said we'll do it. We didn't have very many women who were reading Torah at that time. I went around to about 10 different synagogues. I knew the women. I knew they were bright.I said I can provide you with a tape. I can provide you with other information. Joan Wohl (01:37:40): You're going to learn--We're going to do it ourselves. And we did. The rabbi of that congregation, do you think he sat there being proud? No, he absented himself. He would not even enter the building until we had concluded an [inaudible] service, and then prayed himself in some other room. I said to the girls, “Don't get discouraged. We did what was right and we're going to keep on doing it.” I'm proud of those things. I never thought about it. You're making me think about things that I've done, but I'm proud of it and I'm really proud of mentoring other people because people mentored me. I think of the people who were young women lawyers who encouraged me to do what I was doing. I still continue teaching some Sunday school and substituting and things like that. Joan Wohl (01:38:35): I still continue teaching some Sunday school and substituting and things like that. I still take adult education. I'm now into what? My 38th year. I have an institute every Monday from September to May. I study with a group that's close to 30 women. Jewish topics. We have visiting professors teaching us on various topics, and I still do that. I love it. I tutor immigrant children in south Philadelphia in a reading program. I do that. God knows if they knew what my age was they would think. Joan Wohl (01:39:14): They're Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese. That's my main volunteer work. Oh, we also serve meals and make them for Ronald McDonald House. I do that. This just comes from doing what we're supposed to do. It starts out with your religious training of Tikkun olam, repairing the world, making things better. You get your fine education from your high school and your college and your law school, and you just put yourself out in the world and just put it to work. That's what we all have to do. I'm very proud of what I've done. I hope to keep on doing it. Caitlin Haskett (01:39:53): All right, I have one more question. You mentioned again your continuing connection to Israel, and then you had mentioned earlier how your friend's uncle became the prime minister and that first reaction-- Joan Wohl (01:40:07): Yeah, my classmate. That was back in my second year. It's fascinating because this classmate, Helen Finkle, lived on the upper west side in a very fine, fine section. She had gone to ethical culture school in New York. I never thought of her particularly connected to anything, and her she was and I find out that she is so excited about the fact that Israel is now a state and her uncle is the first prime minister. That was really a shock to me. It shows that you don't really know a person. You really don't know a person. I don't remember, maybe she did come to my house for Seders, but I don't think for Rosh Hashanah. But, the others did. Caitlin Haskett (01:41:00): What other kind of reaction did you have when Israel became a state, or was there a reaction on campus? Joan Wohl (01:41:09): I don't remember that. The fact that I don't remember it means that it was not celebrated. Now, as a political science major, you have to remember that at this time, the United Nations was just being formed, and besides the General Assembly, there was the ECOSOC, economic and social committee. What was the other one? They had to put out reports. They didn't have books at the time. They came out in mimeograph sheets in different colors. Green, pink, I think maybe blue, but I'm not sure. Joan Wohl (01:41:50): And we studied all of them. So, we in our political science class, we were studying the world that the United Nations was dealing with, so we knew about what was going on with the British wanting to give up their mandate, and the Arabs fighting with the Jews, and the different opinions and the King of Jordan worried because going way back to 1917, it was his grandfather who had okayed the information on the declaration which said that there will be a Jewish state in Palestine, not all of it, and then the grandfather was murdered by his own people. Joan Wohl (01:42:30): We knew these things that were going on were not pleasant, and we were watching the world changing, but that was only within our own department. Dr. Wells, I had no idea what his thinking was politically or anything, but we discussed these things because it was all at the time of the United Nations post World War II. But, I don't remember anything else either celebratory or negative. There might have been, and I'm sure there was. I'm sure there was because there was some faculty that I know ... I didn't have them, but I know that they were not probably too happy. Joan Wohl (01:43:12): That's interesting. One of my dearest friends, two of them, as a matter of fact ... One just died last year, one I was just with yesterday ... happened to be two youngsters that were on the ship, the St. Louis, which was a ship that was sent over in '38, '39 I guess. The German Jews who had visas to get off in Cuba, Cuba wouldn't let them. Joan Wohl (01:43:43): The United States wouldn't let them in, and they were sent back to Europe. They had left in Hamburg, and then there 800 and some of them. They were divided into three groups. Denmark said it would take some of them, Belgium said it would take some of them and England said it would take some. They were the only country. My two friends were fortunate that their families, in a lottery, pulled going to England because those who went to Belgium were caught up in the Holocaust and died. Joan Wohl (01:44:19): Those who were in Denmark, Germany conquered it, took over Denmark. Those from England were safe, so my two friends came here. And I remember when my friend came and joined me in Sunday school. She was taken in--her family was taken in by a Philadelphia family. I knew her my whole life. We went to high school together, and our children went to Sunday school and were confirmed together. Joan Wohl (01:44:47): She just passed away last year, but one of them is still here. I was always involved with Jewish settlements and Zionist things in the finest sense of the world, having a sense of a national homeland. It doesn't mean that someone else isn't going to have a national homeland. Someone else can, but this is my people. So, that's what I was concerned with. So, that's what I was concerned with. That's what my family's always been involved with. Joan Wohl (01:45:15): I don't remember me in '48. What I do remember is that my first nephew, my sister's first child, was born April 3rd. I think it was just at the time of independence of Israel. He was born then. I got a call out at school that the baby was born, and I remember opening up my window. It didn't have screens or anything. Opened up the window, this one famous window where the horseradish went down. I don't remember this, but they all tell me that I just put my head out the window screaming, “I'm an aunt. I'm an aunt.”. Joan Wohl (01:45:51): That really described part of my life for the next few years. I was a wonderful aunt to nieces and nephews, and then I got married myself and had children. I'm very proud of them. I'm a very proud mother. I was very proud of my husband, my parents, my sibling, my nieces and nephews. Caitlin Haskett (01:46:21): How are you doing? Do you want to end it up here or I have one more question I could ask. Joan Wohl (01:46:26): Sure, ask me anything you want. Caitlin Haskett (01:46:27): Okay. Tell me how did you meet your husband and get to know him. Joan Wohl (01:46:32): You want the truth? Caitlin Haskett (01:46:35): Yeah. Joan Wohl (01:46:35): Well, I always tell people when they ask this question that we were an arranged marriage. My husband and his two brothers were born in Omaha, Nebraska. Their parents were both physicians and they were working out there. Then, they came to Philadelphia in 1930 or 31. It's very interesting that my father at the time when we got engaged found a file in his office from my husband's parents from 1933. So, he must have known them somehow. Okay, my sister's husband ... All right, my sister was married. My husband had two brothers, and they all were married. One of them was married to another Bryn Mawr girl. They had one brother left. My sister-in-law had one brother left, and my sister had one sister left, so I always said they decided we had to get Milton and Joan together. Joan Wohl (01:47:38): We have to keep this all in the family. So, whether that's actually true or not, I don't know but I dated him. We were six years apart in age, so he said he couldn't date me in medical school. I was still in high school, so he waited. As soon as I got to college, I dated him, but then I as dating someone else so I didn't date him for a while. My senior year, I was living on campus. The family had no idea what my life was like when you live out there. He was up at Wilkes-Barre doing his year. I got a call in October, and we were married in June. This is my senior year. I was so glad to hear from him. All of a sudden, it just all came back. He was going to come into Philadelphia because his brother and sister-in-law had tickets for a show. Joan Wohl (01:48:26): It was set up thing, you know, did I want to go? Sure. So, I saw him then, and then he came in November and I saw him on a date. December 31st, we went to a New Year's party together, and then in January I saw him again. Then, in February we decided this is it, we're going to get married. You know, the family doesn't have any idea that I'm dating Milton Wohl because they think I'm living at Bryn Mawr and working hard because it's a senior year, getting ready for comps and all this other stuff. So, we're now in February. We said what are we going to do? I said, “Look, I don't want to upset my sister. She's pregnant and she's due in March. I don't want to do anything until the baby's born because I don't want to take away from that excitement in the family.” Joan Wohl (01:49:16): Okay, so he won't talk to my father until after March. So that baby is born March 14th. I get a call from my mother. “A very strange package just arrived at our house. It's a sterling silver rattle from a jeweler in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It's from Milton Wohl, Joe's brother. Why would Milton Wohl be sending a ..". Well, shit. “Have you had any contact with Milton?” As a matter of fact, mother, so yeah, I've been, we've been dating. "How long?" Well, this whole year, I said but ... So, then he decided all right, he's going to have to talk to my father. We already decided we were going to get married in June. I graduate, he finishes his year, we're going to do that. Meanwhile, his brother's so happy about it and my sister's so happy about it, so we set it up, and I said, “Oh, I don't want to do anything until the name the baby in synagogue. They're doing it on passover.”. Joan Wohl (01:50:24): So, now we're into April. So, what happened was he spoke to my father. We all got together for the Seder that night. I had my comps ahead of me. I said to my mother and sister, “I have no time to plan anything.” But, my sister and mother, they love stuff like this. I said, “Do whatever you want. I'll get a dress. I don't care what you do.” We got the date. Oh yeah, we had to get the date at the synagogue and I did my comps. I met them in town and bought a dress. He's up there. I'm down here. He couldn't get any more time off. I'll see you when we get married. So, this was this wonderful, wonderful man that I adored so I always say it was arranged. Joan Wohl (01:51:07): II think it was just meant to be always. Looking back, I didn't need to dump him for somebody else, and the fact that he held on waiting for me is incredible. But, that's how we met. The families all knew each other. He did not have a religious school background. They were quite the secular Jews. She was the president of Hadashah. My father-in-law was the founder of the Hebrew University Medical School. Einstein, all those people back in the 20's so they were very committed Jews, but they didn't belong to a synagogue. They certainly didn't have a kosher home, so Milton had to greet all these things and we had a wonderful life together with our three D's, Debra, Daniel and David, who live all over the country. Joan Wohl (01:52:00): We keep saying we didn't move. Dad and I are still here, but they're there because work took them, so it's been a very ... And, it is. Still travel. Just recently, I just came back as you may know. I've been away for two different trips. I haven't been in Philadelphia. I just got the family, all 12 of us together. It's what I do. I bring them in from all over and we have time together. The family gathers Thanksgiving and Passover at my home. It's a given. That's what they do. That's what they commit to. We have a wonderful, wonderful family. We sold the farm. We sold anything we had and we live in Center City, Philadelphia and I'm very happy here. Caitlin Haskett (01:52:49): All right, that's I think a lovely note to end on unless there's anything else you want to add to the recording before we end. Joan Wohl (01:52:56): Well, I just want to say that I think it's a wonderful thing that Bryn Mawr is going to build its archives to get oral history from their alumni on whatever topic may be. I'm sure there are many graduates that have stories that they would like to tell to put into it. For instance, one of my classmates became one of the first ordained ministers in her church. You know, these are important things. We're all very proud of what our life was, is and is going to be. Caitlin Haskett (01:53:34): All right. Joan Wohl (01:53:37): I thank you very much for this opportunity of sharing some of these thoughts. These are some things I haven't thought of, and the one that I can't remember I wanted to tell you, which will probably come to me in the night. Caitlin Haskett (01:53:50): All right, well, thank you so much for all that you've shared today and for taking the time to talk to me. It's been really lovely. Joan Wohl (01:53:56): It's been a pleasure, dear. Good luck to you. Caitlin Haskett (01:53:59): Thank you.