Harold Schweitzer

 

Reminiscences by Anthony Palisi

 

 

          Rahway roots ran deep in the family of Harold Schweitzer, whose 848 Westfield Avenue residence was centrally located between the two public schools which he attended: Franklin Elementary and Rahway High. Upon graduation, he matriculated to Newark College of Engineering before entering the US Army.

 

          While in the military, he contracted rheumatic fever, and when his life seemed in jeopardy, his parents Fire Captain Harold and Mrs. Mary Schweitzer, successfully petitioned to have him discharged and sent home, either to die or to recuperate.  Eventually, he recovered, but the illness left his heart severely damaged, curtailing his physical activity.

 

          Having recovered sufficiently to resume a relatively normal life, Harold transferred to Seton Hall College in South Orange, where he changed his major to social studies, a department chaired by one of the college’s most demanding professors.  Even those whose major concentration was other than social studies quaked at the name of Rev. Dr. Joseph Brady—and a good portion of student body then was comprised of returning, World War II, combat veterans.

 

          Despite his obtaining graduate degrees, first in personnel and guidance and then in clinical psychology, he retained through his lifetime a keen interest in American history.

 

          My brother, Marino, a sophomore at Seton Hall, introduced me, a freshman, to Harold, a senior.  I had not known Harold although we grew up in the same town and attended the public schools. Harold drove the Schweitzer family car to and from Seton Hall, and he graciously offered me a ride whenever our schedules matched.

 

          To day-hop to Seton Hall from Rahway using public transportation, a person followed one of two routes:  Pennsylvania Railroad to Newark and two Public Service buses to the campus, or Public Service bus to Roselle, the Green Flyer bus to Newark and a Public Service bus to the campus.  An automobile ride was most welcome—even if a person arrived several hours before his first class.

 

On those automobile rides to and from Seton Hall, our friendship developed.  Harold was active on campus, writing for the college newspaper and singing in the Glee Club.  He assisted me in obtaining a staff position on the newspaper, but not even Harold could open the Glee Club to me. Harold sang well enough to be given solos. In that year, Seton Hall began its radio station, WSOU-FM, and Harold and I were among the first to get on the air, hosting briefly a talk-music show.

 

An undergraduate thesis was the prerequisite for graduation in the social studies department, where all theses had to be approved by Fr. Brady, a stickler for historical fact and thesis format.  Many a student had his graduation delayed a year or more while he attempted to satisfy the demanding department chair.

 

It seemed to me that Harold got a late start on his thesis, but he remained unperturbed.  He was a quick study.  Somehow he managed to submit his thesis just ahead of the deadline, and even the super sleuthing of Fr. Brady was unable to unearth anything that would deter Harold’s graduation. He was graduated with honors.

 

Harold wrote well, but he obtained more pleasure from the final product than from the process.  He wrote only to meet requirements.

         

I continued my studies; Harold went out in the business world.  He was a salesman in a furniture store, The Treasure Trove.  He did well, but he didn’t see the position as a career.  He began to take courses toward teacher certification.

 

For the next three years, we spent one evening a week, either in his parents’ home or mine, watching TV.  Each of us connected with the other’s father very well; it was as though each household gained another son. It was my understanding that all the Schweitzer relatives lived at 848 Westfield Avenue: his parents, his paternal grandmother and another person who lived with them “because she had no other place to live.”

 

Mine was a large extended family, and Harold frequently accompanied us to my relatives’ homes in nearby New York. When he didn’t, I always heard, “Where’s Harold?”

 

Of course, double-dating was in the picture, Harold giving me fits because he seemed always to have a date whose given name began with the “J” sound—Jane, Gerry, Jean, Jo, Judy, Gina.  I was ever so careful not to address Jane as Jean or Gerry as Gina, but more than once I felt tongue-tied.

 

By the time that I was graduated from Seton Hall, Harold had completed his teacher certification courses.  We eventually applied for positions in Rahway School System.  We were overjoyed to learn that we both had been assigned to the seventh and eighth grades in the new Madison School.

 

Following our appointments, Mr. Potts interviewed us together.  Looking at Harold’s 6’4”frame, he said, “You’ll find it easy to establish discipline in your class. They key will be to hold the advantage your size gives you.”

         

Then, looking at me, he said, “You’ll have your work cut out for you from the outset.” 

 

Mr. Potts saw us as individuals, but he also perceived that he had to contend with us almost as though we were a single entity. In retrospect, we gave him occasion to believe he was correct.

 

For example, Harold and I were asked to participate in a Saturday formal occasion, requiring us to hire tuxedos. We conspired to wear them to Madison School the following Monday.  We walked into the office to sign in, and there stood a wide-eyed, disbelieving principal.  I said, “It is formal education week, you know.” We both walked out before he recovered to say anything.  First-year teachers!  Only a few of the students seemed to notice our strange wardrobes.

 

In spite of our upstart, often zany approach, I think he liked us individually and together.  He certainly liked that we maintained classroom control.  He liked our going out at lunch time to play softball or football with the older children—even though he knew legally he was on dangerous ground. And, we liked him—admired him as a man and as an administrator.

 

I don’t remember how the caricaturing of one another got started, but neither Harold nor I ever believed that the other would take it except as it was intended—a bit of fun.

 

Each of us had served as the other’s best man. Fortunately, our wives got along well. We remained close even though our careers began to move in different directions.

 

The country was gearing up for the centennial observance of the conflict between North and South, 1860-1865.  Harold insisted that the proper name was “The War between the States,” and the principal issue was not slavery but states’ rights. He read voraciously, preferring the historian Clifford Dowdy to the equally popular and prolific Bruce Catton—Dowdy because he developed the Southern—the states’ rights—perspective more than Catton. Harold knew that the narrative style which both Dowdy and Catton used was influenced by another historian, Bernard DeVoto.  Harold was intrigued by Quantril’s Raiders, a little know band of Confederate thugs who raised havoc with the Union forces and the Union lines.

 

His principal hero was the flamboyant General George Custer. An original portrait of Custer in oils graced the Schweitzer living room. One of the family vacations was to the site of Custer’s Last Stand.

 

Harold wanted to be a school psychologist.  He had taken his master’s degree at Seton Hall under St. Theresa Gertrude, a pioneer in the personnel field.  Then he went on to study for his doctorate in clinical psychology at Fordham University.  He transferred from Madison School to Rahway High School for the opportunity to work in psychometrics, Rahway not yet having a special services team. 

 

He left the Rahway School system to assist Dr. Harold Sperber, Westfield School psychologist for two years. 

 

Sr. Theresa Gertrude was planning to retire.  She remembered Harold from her classes and asked him to be her successor as head of the Department of Personnel & Guidance at Seton Hall. He was completing his doctorate.  He accepted the position.

 

His training had strong overtones of Freudian thinking, but even as he settled into the Seton Hall program, Harold’s focus shifted first to Harry Stack Sullivan and eventually to Carl Rogers.  I always suspected that Harold’s fondness for Sullivan was as much for the manner in which he became known as for his theory of interpersonal behavior.  Sullivan never wrote anything himself.  After his premature demise, his students published posthumously their notes from his classes.

 

Later, Harold called me to be an adjunct lecturer in the department, handling courses in elementary school guidance (then a new field) and group counseling.

 

Much of my doctoral training had been in group psychology.  There being a gap in group work in the Seton Hall master’s degree program, Harold asked me, then a principal in Franklin Township, to come to the university full time.  I resigned, effective June, and prepared to join Harold again in the Seton Hall summer session.  We looked forward to working side-by-side once more.

 

In early January, 1965, during a heavy snow storm, we received a distressing telephone call from Harold’s wife that he had suddenly died, at age 37, while at the supper table with his family—wife, the former Regina Pounds of Clifton, two sons and his infant daughter.

 

Harold had postponed surgery because the odds of his surviving the operation then were 50/50.  He had hoped for better odds, but time clearly was not on his side.


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From Sixth Grade teacher to PHD, and eventually Department Chairperson at Seton Hall University!