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Authors: Martin Duberman
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in matters of sex was to result in a pattern of lifelong celibacy. Once, in his mid-forties, he got an âexpertly administered, absolutely delightfulâ blow job; that would be the sole sexual experience of his adult life. Which helps to account, perhaps, for the special zeal with which he embraced every opportunity to bury himself in organizational work, to toil, with vast enjoyment, and semi-anonymity, on behalf of a cause he believed in.
He discovered his penchant for organizational work even before he graduated from Columbia. On one of his visits to New Albany in the mid-forties, his father had taken him to visit the local chapter, in nearby Louisville, Kentucky, of a recently founded national menâs singing organization designed to preserve what was viewed as the disappearing folk art of barbershop quartets and choruses. The Louisville chapter was made up largely of local businessmen, and it was the networking, not the music, that had drawn Foster Sr. But the barbershop bug immediately bit Junior and became a lifelong passion with him. For a few years he sang in a male chorus, but later found that he enjoyed the business end even more; he helped to organize local, then district, then national programs, and took special satisfaction, one spring day in 1961, at being present for the formal ceremony in the office of Governor John Dempsey of Connecticut that proclaimed April 8â15 a week for officially celebrating the venerable institution of barbershop quartet singing.
In 1949, the year Foster graduated from Columbia, his father and mother, already long separated, finally decided on a formal divorce. But the settlement proved protracted and acrimonious, with each parent trying to enlist Foster Jr. as an ally. For a time, his father would have the advantage. Foster Sr. saw that his son, after graduation, was floundering, uncertain what kind of work to take up and where his aptitudes might lie, and so offered to set him up with a Gunnison Homes dealership in St. Petersburg, Florida. He assured Junior that he would accumulate considerable capital in short order. That alone had appeal, but what appealed still more was the possibility that his father might finally, after years of doubt about his sonâs commonsense abilities, find in him something like a worthy business associate.
PART TWO
YOUNG ADULTHOOD
YVONNE
Y vonneâs sister had gone to college in Georgia, but Yvonne was having no part of it. There was no way, she told her mother, that she was going to go south to college. No way. Theo couldnât argue with her too much; having brought her daughter up in her own outspoken image, and having imbued her with proud, pro-black attitudes, she realized Yvonne might be right in predicting that she would end up dead in a Southland still rigidly insistent on segregation.
But why in heavenâs name, Theo wanted to know, had Yvonne settled on Seattle University? Was the Far West the only possible alternative to the Deep South? Yvonne said something sly about how pleased Grandma would be because Seattle was run by the Jesuits, and then, more seriously, insisted on how well suited the school was to her own burgeoning interest in philosophy; what could be better than the chance to read scholastic philosophy with the people who invented it? âBut what will you do there?â her mother asked in mock horror. âItâs tucked off nowhere, way out in the left-hand corner!â Yvonne tried to reassure her that since her childhood friend, the studious Freddy, was already enrolled at Seattle University, the two of them could concoct some plot or other.
Theo couldnât help but smile; sheâd been considered wild herself all her life, and took some vicarious pleasure in her daughterâs high-spirited decision to shock the neighborsâthis was 1950âwith the spectacle of a seventeen-year-old girl going off to school at the other end of the country. That Freddy would watch over her was
He discovered his penchant for organizational work even before he graduated from Columbia. On one of his visits to New Albany in the mid-forties, his father had taken him to visit the local chapter, in nearby Louisville, Kentucky, of a recently founded national menâs singing organization designed to preserve what was viewed as the disappearing folk art of barbershop quartets and choruses. The Louisville chapter was made up largely of local businessmen, and it was the networking, not the music, that had drawn Foster Sr. But the barbershop bug immediately bit Junior and became a lifelong passion with him. For a few years he sang in a male chorus, but later found that he enjoyed the business end even more; he helped to organize local, then district, then national programs, and took special satisfaction, one spring day in 1961, at being present for the formal ceremony in the office of Governor John Dempsey of Connecticut that proclaimed April 8â15 a week for officially celebrating the venerable institution of barbershop quartet singing.
In 1949, the year Foster graduated from Columbia, his father and mother, already long separated, finally decided on a formal divorce. But the settlement proved protracted and acrimonious, with each parent trying to enlist Foster Jr. as an ally. For a time, his father would have the advantage. Foster Sr. saw that his son, after graduation, was floundering, uncertain what kind of work to take up and where his aptitudes might lie, and so offered to set him up with a Gunnison Homes dealership in St. Petersburg, Florida. He assured Junior that he would accumulate considerable capital in short order. That alone had appeal, but what appealed still more was the possibility that his father might finally, after years of doubt about his sonâs commonsense abilities, find in him something like a worthy business associate.
PART TWO
YOUNG ADULTHOOD
YVONNE
Y vonneâs sister had gone to college in Georgia, but Yvonne was having no part of it. There was no way, she told her mother, that she was going to go south to college. No way. Theo couldnât argue with her too much; having brought her daughter up in her own outspoken image, and having imbued her with proud, pro-black attitudes, she realized Yvonne might be right in predicting that she would end up dead in a Southland still rigidly insistent on segregation.
But why in heavenâs name, Theo wanted to know, had Yvonne settled on Seattle University? Was the Far West the only possible alternative to the Deep South? Yvonne said something sly about how pleased Grandma would be because Seattle was run by the Jesuits, and then, more seriously, insisted on how well suited the school was to her own burgeoning interest in philosophy; what could be better than the chance to read scholastic philosophy with the people who invented it? âBut what will you do there?â her mother asked in mock horror. âItâs tucked off nowhere, way out in the left-hand corner!â Yvonne tried to reassure her that since her childhood friend, the studious Freddy, was already enrolled at Seattle University, the two of them could concoct some plot or other.
Theo couldnât help but smile; sheâd been considered wild herself all her life, and took some vicarious pleasure in her daughterâs high-spirited decision to shock the neighborsâthis was 1950âwith the spectacle of a seventeen-year-old girl going off to school at the other end of the country. That Freddy would watch over her was
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