From Cardinal Meissner to Archie Williams

One serendipity I won’t soon forget happened in the fall of 1985. I was in line for lunch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and there was a priest right ahead of me. As an ex-Catholic I like to tease the clergy. So I said playfully, Father, if you give me an easy general confession, I'll take you to lunch. A lady just ahead of us in line got the joke and giggled. I included her in for understanding that crude joke.

That lady turned out to be Mrs. Eleanor Milner, wife of General Milner commanding our forces in Berlin. But she was flying low that noon because in the evening her twenty-one-year-old son was starring that night on Broadway as the lead in The River, a musical based on Mark Twain's tale about Huckleberry Finn. She said they were having Joachim Meissner in for supper on October 4. Would I like to join them? Would I ever! Now that could be a major tease. The Cardinal Archbishop of Berlin, formerly a banker in Erfurt, was the only other active red hat besides Pope John Paul II, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.

I took down the number and phoned it as soon as I hopped off the train from Frankfurt at the Zoo train station. The American captain who answered the base phone sounded like a Nazi! Professor Hazard, he announced, like a man promulgating a battle plan, a military taxi, green in color, license plate Able Baker 23 Charlie, will meet you in twenty minutes at the corner of Hardensburgstrasse and Joachimsallee. It will?, I weakly replied, having expected to take public transportation to meet the General and his wife. And the General wondered, he went on, if you would like to stay overnight at his Residence. I could hear the capital R in Residence in his voice.

I had already signed in at a local Youth Hostel, but I gamely opened up my train station locker and took out a camera bag and a tote to simulate luggage. The butler was not misled, however, as he quickly took me to the guest room, which was larger than my home in Philadelphia! And he quickly piled on briefing papers about the Deutsche Bank vice-president and the Cardinal who were to share the table with me. The house was a glorious Jugendstil villa on Pacelli-Allee, built in 1912 for the head of the Deutsche Bank. When General Maxwell Taylor was looking for digs, he saluted this one.

The Cardinal was a charming mix of worldly spirituality. He talked blithely about the chrism cramp he was suffering from, having just confirmed a church full of Lithuanians in Vilnius. And when the Pope appointed him Archbishop of Cologne, he revealed his truly funky style. The Koelners had the tradition of choosing their own bishops, and each one seemed more leftie to an exasperated Pope. He'd teach them who sat in the Holy See by appointing Meissner! At his first press conference, he announced first of all to his pissed off flock that he had just purchased a burial plot in the Catholic Cemetery. Not the retiring type, Joachim Meissner.By the way, the Cardinal had brought a new East German book on Matthias Grunewald, who just happened to be the favorite painter of my daughter-in-law the painter. I decided I'd check out Check Point Charlie and buy it for her as an early Christmas gift.

Meanwhile at breakfast the following morning, Mrs. Milner told the General she had no use for her chauffered Mercedes this morning. Was it all right if Professor Hazard used it? Sure, the easy-going General had allowed. He had won my respect and affection for not being ashamed of not being West Point! He was proud of being a graduate of Saint Bonaventure's in upstate New York. I love people who are proud about not being vain! In any case, it was a new experience for me, the Detroit prole, who had helped build many cars for Ford and Chrysler, working my way through the Jesuit University of Detroit, but never had been chauffered before. First I wanted to go to Spandau Prison, to interview Rudolf Hess or Albert Speer. The much traveled chauffeur allowed as how that was impractical. Even illegal. I then had a bright idea. How about the Olympic Stadium? Full speed ahead.

The year before in San Francisco, Phil Mumma, the editor of the Oakland Museum magazine (and a former basketball star at Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette) asked me to write a piece on the history of the original and the 1896 renewed Olympics. And when I did that, he had a further suggestion. Everybody knows how Jesse Owens rankled Hitler by running off with so many gold medals. But not so many had even heard of San Jose State runner Archie Williams, who garnered two golds in the 400 and 800 meter relays. He was now a retired Air Force Colonel teaching computer skills to rich kids up in Marin County.

What a story he turned out to be. Archie wanted to be a civil engineer, which meant he had to transfer to UC, Berkeley. He was a serious student, taking no gut courses like many student athletes. He was stunned when he heard the admissions counselor at Berkeley warning him away from civil engineering. He said there were only two majors suitable for your people: theology, to keep your people out of jail. Or law, springing them out when they're incarcerated.

Archie refrained from punching out this dodo, and went ahead with his civil engineering degree, graduating on time in 1938. Only one interview from General Electric. No job. So Archie went across the Bay to Oakland and learned to fly, ultimately becoming one of the instructors for the legendary Tuskegee Airmen. They were the elite group that the Southern generals who then ran our armed forces wanted to keep away from battle because the Niggers couldn't be trusted. Eleanor Roosevelt, bless her soul, got wind of this embargo and promptly went down to Alabama and demanded a flight from one of the Tuskegee boys. Shortly after, they were on their way to North Africa and eventually to the Sicily invasion.

Ironically, they were so good at protecting bombers and conducting raids that eventually when they didn't get assigned to a battle, the generals shouted, Where are those fucking Niggers when we need them. Archie became a meteorologist, and retired a colonel after twenty years. When I had finished writing the piece for The Pacific Sun, Archie had me over to his house to look over his Olympic memorabilia. And the paper ran his favorite photo as the cover: Leni Riefenstahl on one knee, filming Archie breaking the tape as he won the 400 gold. I've never had a better visual in fifty years of journalism.

So I had a surprise in store for Archie. I loped around inside the Olympic Stadium until I found what I wanted in wonderful Jugendstil/Deco letters: ARCHIE WILLIAMS: I made a photo and mailed it as a postcard to him out in Marin County. His thank you note made me think it was pure gold for him again.