International House Berkeley

20 Bob and Nanny (Nowell) Brewer 1947 - 1951 Bob Brewer I started at I-House in 1947. I remember going to lots of House gatherings during my first year at there. After one of these events, as I was heading for the Great Hall, I overheard Elliott Castello and Doug Powell discussing and exchanging songs with each other. They were talking about songs they knew and liked, and they admired each others good taste! My interest was piqued, so I introduced myself and thus began an incredible musical journey. I was enchanted with the music and impressed with how many songs were in their repertoire, and how they sang duets with lovely harmony. It was a real pleasure to hear them sing together, and have a ball doing it! I knew some of the songs and so started throwing my voice in now and then, and followed them around and chimed in more frequently. This was the beginning of the Jahdrools (Elliott Castello, Bob Hacker, Bob Brewer, Joe Connell, and Doug Powell). But the musical scene was more encompassing than the Jahdrools, in that there were many people who simply loved to sing, and they participated in many musical scenarios; experience level did not matter! All were included. But there were some people with great talent. Music was important to me long before coming to I-House. During the war, when I was in the infantry, I organized quartets. Sometimes we would have four good singers, and sometimes not, but we would still sing. Later I was in the Air Force. We made our way up from Italy, then Southern France, all the way to the North. My plane, a single engine fighter, was shot down when I was flying out of Lunéville on my 46th mission. There was no place to land, so I dove, then parachuted out, landing on the top of a big pine tree, sustaining burns and sprains. A couple of Volksturmers showed up with guns and told me to hurry up and get down. I had a heck of a time getting down, but eventually I did. One of them was kind and the other not. They tied up my hands with the ripcord from my parachute, and then they checked my pockets for a gun. I believe that if I had had one, the less than kind one would have shot me on the spot. But, I didn't. Instead, the nice one took a pipe out of my pocket and put it in my mouth and lit it. Later, a German army sergeant showed up and I had to march all the way back to the post, many miles, with this pipe in my mouth because my hands were tied behind my back. At their headquarters, they left me alone in a room overnight, and I was able to tear my navigational map into small pieces, which I swallowed (luckily they did not find this in my flight jacket when they frisked me). Then I exposed the 35mm film I had, to destroy any images which might help them. I was only a prisoner of war for two months, because it was the very tail end of the war.

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