International House Berkeley

102 Marie [Hayes] Schutz 1943 – 1944; 1946 - 1948 Marie's Memories of Bob Schutz, I-House Resident from 1946- 1948 I am sure that I am one of many I-House residents during the '40s who feel that the experience changed our lives profoundly. We came from so many different countries and backgrounds, but all of our lives had been so controlled and affected by the war. I didn't come far, from San Jose, but I-House was a world apart from my large but insular family and many years attending Catholic Schools. I-House was essential in allowing me to grow in a different way. My first stint was from 1943-1944. At that time I-House had been relocated to several fraternity houses in the vicinity, since the Navy had taken over the Hall in 1943. My roommates, Barbara Fulton, Ruthanne Sheehy and I slept on a sleeping porch, but I remember many a late-night discussion in the chapter room of Delta Upsilon House regarding the state of the world. From there Barbara and I went off to the Navy (WAVES) to "do our part." I spent some time in Washington DC, attempting to crack Japanese weather code. After V-J Day [August 15, 1945, the day the Japanese surrendered] I went to Corpus Christi, Texas to finish my service doing regular weather obs. I returned to I-House in the fall of 1946 as a graduate student in the School of Librarianship. Again roommates and other residents I met made a big difference in broadening my view of the world. My first roommate was a Swedish girl who was Jewish, Berit Heyman. Next door to us was Grace Thompson, who had a Jewish roommate as well, from Palestine, Ellen Grunwald. [There is a plaque on their room, #341, to commemorate her bequest to I-House]. Ellen later married a fellow- resident from Norway, and became Ellen Hisdal. Berit and I, Grace and Ellen made a nice foursome. Some people at I-House were stateless. Henry Laevsky, Ted Streshinsky and Victor Shick were Russian Jews who had lived out the war in Shanghai. They couldn't have Chinese citizenship and they didn't have Russian citizenship. That made a big impression on me. This second period at I-House was when I met Bob Schutz. His education had been interrupted by service in the Navy, also in weather. Before the war, he had been in the sciences, but by then he saw that it was the problem of poverty that needed to be solved; we needed a whole new economic system. So he changed his field to economics. Coming together at that point gave our lives a new, purposeful direction. We had all been dreaming of what life could be like after WWII, and we had similar dreams. We were ready to be serious students. Some people at I-House were tapped to be interpreters at the U.N. newly forming and in its seminal stages

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