The Last Word
Koppel, Tom
THE LAST WORD Tom Koppel Norman Thomas Slept Here Election Day, 1952. In the yard of my Bronx elementary school, campaign buttons had sprouted like mushrooms. I Like Ike was the most popular...
...After six runs for the Presidency, Norman Thomas had decided, like Joe DiMaggio, to hang up his spikes...
...As it turned out, the Party garnered only 2,044 votes in the entire United States that year...
...My brother and I were put into a tent outside, so that Norman Thomas could have our bedroom...
...My parents helped set up Three Arrows to replace it...
...The original plan for Three Arrows, situated on 125 green upstate acres, called for a high level of communalism...
...It was organized after the mid-1930s rift between Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party's entrenched Old Guard, which controlled the pursestrings and leaned toward cooperation with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal...
...Little by little, I began to notice how different my parents were from the ail-American norm...
...We had a day camp, a lake, sports, and a co-op general store...
...Then, in 1960, Norman Thomas came to speak at the Bronx High School of Science...
...Neither," I replied smugly...
...On each visit he would sleep in a different family's cottage, and eventually the honor was ours...
...As General Eisenhower's victory was announced on our boxy new television set, it puzzled me that the Socialist Party didn't even rate a mention...
...Unfortunately, the state of family finances and my mother's poor health compelled my father to decline the honor...
...it seemed like a historic occasion...
...mine had filed as a conscientious objector...
...mine preferred the meetings of such organizations as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the United World Federalists, and the NAACP...
...I wonder why not," the man said, "he sure looks like a President...
...Other kids' parents went out to cocktail parties...
...My dad votes for Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate...
...No kidding...
...The kid wasn't impressed...
...When it was time to change trains, we said goodbye...
...That's Norman Thomas...
...He was white-haired and tall, and looked distinguished—like a proper Presidential candidate...
...Besides, if he's so great, how come he never wins...
...Tiny bungalows would be owned or rented by Party members, but everyone would eat in a common dining room...
...Who...
...Afterward, on the subway ride home, someone noticed Thomas sitting alone in the next car, enjoying the luxury of an entire double seat and reading his copy of The New York Times...
...At dinner I was impressed by his benign presence and articulate speech...
...Under prodding, my father admitted that the Socialists were only a minor factor in American politics, but he insisted that Socialists did actually win elections and run governments in such remote, enlightened places as Sweden and West Berlin...
...I could no longer resist the temptation of basking in his reflected glory...
...Ike or Adalay...
...mine had helped the NAACP break the "color bar" in New York City hotels...
...If Americans ignored political reason, he suggested, it was their loss and no reflection on the Socialist Party or its esteemed leaders...
...No matter that the standard bearer was again to be Darlington Hoopes, whose name sent me into convulsions...
...Tom Koppel is a free-lance writer in British Columbia...
...And he never won...
...That evening, I learned I had been mistaken...
...My mother died, my father lost his passion for politics, and for a few years socialism and its elder statesman vanished from my consciousness...
...As we stood waiting for the next train, I could see that personal contact with this gentle, articulate man had made a deep impression on my friends...
...By the way," I said as nonchalantly as I could, "did I ever tell you guys about the time Norman Thomas slept in my bed...
...I Like Ike was the most popular message, but Adlai Stevenson had his vociferous supporters too...
...Ours was Three Arrows (pointing downward and standing for "down with capitalism, down with fascism, down with war...
...Like good little automatons, we would sing "Thomas is our leader, we shall not be moved," and some chosen kid would hand him a bouquet...
...Who da ya support...
...Years later, when my fellow college students rose in angry rebellion against their parents' values, I was incapable of sharing their insurrectionary fervor...
...For the parents, there were committee meetings, book fairs, political discussions, and lectures...
...I never saw Thomas again...
...Hey, Tommy," a classmate challenged, "how come yer not wearing a button...
...Then we would tag along behind him for a while, cadging autographs and seeing what a celebrity did on his day in the country...
...Even in the summertime, politics played a prominent part in my childhood world...
...For the kids, it was a summer paradise...
...Nearby passengers stared at us, and one man pulled my friend aside and asked who the old man was...
...Never hoid of'im...
...However, such idealism soon yielded to the young Socialists' preference for privacy and space...
...Other kids' parents worried that "niggers" would move into the neighborhood...
...Egalitarian principle imposed an upper limit on the size of cottages, and all work on roads, garbage dumps, and other communal facilities was done by co-op labor...
...He seemed to relish the attention, and offered us his views on the current Kennedy-Nixon Presidential race...
...Thomas won control of the Party, but the Old Guard took their money and their summer camp...
...Whenever he arrived at Three Arrows, our camp counselors would turn us out to greet him...
...Because it would have seemed dippy to my friends, I had resisted telling him about my parents, but I'm sorry now...
...In 1956, when I was thirteen, my father came home one day and announced in high excitement that Party friends had asked him to run for Vice President...
...Busloads of young Party members would come up from the city, and Norman Thomas was the community's frequent and honored guest...
...Socialism, I decided, had to be a good thing...
...Other kids' fathers told proud stories about their wartime military service...
...My father had voted for the new Socialist candidate, a man who bore the unfortunate name Darlington Hoopes...
...Norman Thomas has run for President more times than anyone else, ever...
...The camp evolved into an attractive bungalow colony in which seventy-five families owned small cottages (complete with kitchens) but held no individual title to the land...
...I was part of a crowd that stayed after school to hear the old gentleman, now in his seventy-sixth year, urge us to open our hearts to the political causes needing our support—especially the nascent civil rights movement...
...Every left-wing group in the New York area had its own youth camp...
...He ran for President six times...
...He would have loved to know that the son of an old political crony was part of that admiring cluster of students...
...A group of us made our way over to him, crowded around, and told him we had enjoyed his talk...
Vol. 48 • June 1984 • No. 6
