JULIA CHILD 1912-2004
By Bev Brock-Alexander
Julia Child was born Julia McWilliams in Pasadena, California and graduated from Smith College in 1934. She met Paul Child during her World War II service in the O.S.S. (The Office of Strategic Services). They married after the war. Mr Child's job with the U.S. Information Agency took them to Paris in 1948, a move that eventually would profoundly affect American culture.
Julia fell in love with France and French Cooking literally after the first bite. She attended Cordon Bleu and studied privately. Julia met Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle and the three women eventually opened their own cooking school in Paris, "L'Ecole des Trosis Gourmands" (the school of the three hearty eaters). Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Child, Beck and Bertholle was published in 1961 and it set the standard for generations of American homemakers. Julia's omelet lesson made WGBH lead to the station's revolutionary idea of a regular cooking show. At that time in television history, there were none.
Julia Child and "The French Chef" went on the air February 11, 1963, and her cooking shows have been aired and repeated without interruption ever since.
Via Unknown News:
During the McCarthy era, when Julia Child heard that faculty at her alma mater, Smith College, had been named as suspected communists, she wrote this letter to the "Committee for Discrimination in Giving." And she sent a copy to the college.
March 12, 1954
Mrs. Aloise B. Heath, Secretary
Committee for Discrimination in Giving
My dear Mrs. Heath:
Another fellow alumna of Smith College has forwarded to me a copy of an undated form letter containing your printed signature as secretary of a committee whose members are unidentified. This letter names five members of the Smith College faculty as having been or as now being associated with organizations cited as Communist dominated or as Communist fronts, etc.
I have also a memorandum, dated February 26, 1954, signed by the President of Smith College and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Smith College, stating that your committee never presented its letter either to the President or to the Board of Trustees for comment or investigation.
I know you feel you are doing your patriotic duty towards Smith College and towards the United States, or you would not have allowed your name to be used at the end of your committee's letter. But I respectfully suggest that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice.
We, as alumnae, have voted, in the correct parliamentary fashion, for each member of the Board of Trustees to act in our behalf. Our trustees, who are answerable to us, have duly selected President Wright to administer the college. It is an extremely serious matter to accuse by implication five faculty members of being traitors to the United States; and furthermore to accuse the college of knowingly harboring these "traitors". According to proper democratic methods, charges of this grave nature should first be brought to the attention of the President and the Trustees. You have assumed a responsibility for which you were not appointed. It is clear that you do not trust your own elected officers, and that you do not have confidence in democratic procedures.
David Lawrence, the newspaper columnist, has an article in today's Herald Tribune in which he states again a principle he has stated before in regard to fighting Communism:
"The followers of Senator McCarthy believe in fighting fire with fire, and they are not too concerned with the methods, etc."
This is the theory of the "end justifying the means." This is the method of the totalitarian governments. It makes no difference how you do it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, but use any method fair or foul as long as you reach your goal. I am sure Lawrence has not thought through his thesis to this length, but carried to its logical conclusion, it is the nullification of all that the United States stands for.
In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States.
In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.
Certainly democratic procedures are often slow. But their very slowness gives full opportunity for free debate, free investigation, the right of the accuser to present his case, and the right of the defendant to hear the charges and be faced with the evidence. None of these rights are available in the totalitarian countries; nor have you made them available to the persons you have accused.
One of the purposes of Smith College, and the main reason why its alumnae support it, is that it is a free, democratic institution, privately endowed, and subject to no political pressures from any government or any party. It can operate freely as long as its Trustees and its President have the courage to act as they see fit, with the support of the alumnae. In this very dangerous period of our history where, through fear and confusion, we are assailed continually by conflicting opinions and strong appeals to the emotions, it is imperative that our young people learn to sift truth from half-truth; demagoguery from democracy; totalitarianism in any form, from liberty. The duty of Smith College is, as I see it, to give her daughters the kind of education which will ensure that they will use their minds clearly and wisely, so that they will be able to conduct themselves as courageous and informed citizens of the United States.
I am sending to Smith College in this same mail, along with a copy of this letter, a check to duplicate my annual contribution to the Alumnae Fund. I am confident that our Trustees and our President know what they are doing. They are only too well aware of the dangers of totalitarianism, as it is always the great institutions of learning that are attacked first in any police state. For the colleges harbor the "dangerous" people, the people who know how to think, whose minds are free.
Very sincerely yours,
Julia McWilliams Child
She was a grand old lady. And she had balls.
5:10:26 PM 
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