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34

Partly because of the somewhat traumatic nature of my working experience during 1925, I spent much time trying to get my feet on the ground as regarded my philosophy of life and my religious convictions and many pages of my diary are devoted to these matters, much of it rather stilted and even puerile in places, but nevertheless displaying a very serious young man trying to find himself and having no easy time of it. But the writing in the fall seems to become more mature. I was still reaching and still dissatisfied but my outlook seemed to be more practical, less dreamy and mystical and ultra-religious than before. Also, I was troubled throughout the year by loneliness and homesickness which my male companions failed to alleviate too successfully. But I was engaged to Willie and felt constraint about going out with Schenectady girls although I'd chosen to keep our engagement a secret in Schenectady despite it being known in Syracuse. As a result, I was invited to various homes in Schenectady, some with daughters, others where girls had also been invited, and thus I met several attractive girls such as Midge Hayden, the Steinmetz step-granddaughter, Nina and Tatiana Nikiforoff, daughters of a White-Russian engineer in Central Station Engineering, Sylvia Guttman and others at the Unitarian Church in particular. But I was unable to enjoy these relationships entirely because I felt I was parading under false colors regarding my status. A few times I accompanied the boys to Cain's Dancing Class downtown, where we danced with the working girls but this hurt my conscience. Went to such a dance in Amsterdam once as well as to a few Edison Club affairs. But I was quite unhappy about this situation, torn between guilt and loneliness. It wasn't a happy situation, particularly when piled on top of my struggle at the GE. I was also unhappy about many of the men I'd grown to know very well as I got to know them better, finding that few of them shared my interest in what I called then "the beautiful things of life" like poetry, music, natural beauty, good reading, and I became very uneasy about wasting my precious leisure time with these guys shooting the bull, wise-cracking, and so on. But I met a few fellows who convinced me that there were at least a few kindred souls around. Dave McClenegan was the most outstanding in this respect, and then I met a young man named Dreier who would probably have qualified as an eccentric but who made a profound impression on me although I never got well acquainted with him. The homes which meant the most to me and where I was invited numerous times were the Nikiforoffs, Starzenskis, Schencks, and Stones. I was tremendously impressed by the few GE executives I heard speak such as Francis Pratt, George Eveleth, H.L.R.Emmet, who was to head the Erie Works later and with whom I worked closely during World War II particularly, and Bill Trench, later to become secretary of the Company. They all were outstanding men and one thing about them that seemed to impress me very strongly was the fact that they were obviously gentlemen clean through. That appealed to me very much. So now I shall turn to filling out this brief introduction with the 1925 excerpts.