Viewing page 27 of 113

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

homestead, which I have visited. I believe Henry went to VPI as Walt did although it may have been the University of Virginia. Henry never married. This was an odd circumstance because he was a charming and handsome man with quality sticking out all over him. A couple of times, as I've hinted in my diary, I've had a vague suspicion that he was tilted just a hair toward homosexuality, and if so, this would explain his failure to marry. Henry made a lot of money in the market in the 1920's and was worth a million I'd judge. I think he lost a lot of it in the market crash but he remained comfortably off. He had a salary of around $10,000 I belive, and at the time, this was very good money and particularly for a bachelor. Henry was very popular with the Erie gentry such as the Emmets. He lived in a small apartment near West Sixth and Myrtle which I believe Ed Waller shared with him for several years. Henry was a great reader. He was also a great drinker. His ritual nightly was to repair to his apartment after work, mix up a shakerful of extra dry martinis, drink them leisurely, and then walk the block-and-a-half to the Erie Club for dinner. Henry had no car, perhaps didn't even drive a car, and perhaps it was so he'd not have to worry about driving when he shouldn't. However, he had a routine he followed religiously year after year. He went on the wagon for Lent and he observed this meticulously. Then a day or so before the end of Lent, he had his annual physical and would come off with flying colors, thus setting the stage for his falling off the wagon violently the day after Easter. One of his favorite books was "Alcohol, the Servant of Man." And he would fondly quote Herodotus at the drop of a hat. Although one would never know it from anything Henry said, it was generally acknowledged that he was very generous with his money in Schenectady, having put several poor boys through college. It was said that he kept his room over there although he never used it, just to support his old landlady. The few times he ever went over there, he'd stay at the Mohawk Club. I remember getting him to Washington once during the war and taking him out to dinner at the Balalaika with John and Frances Grace and Henry seemed to fall for Frances and she for him, and we had a good evening. Henry's sole function in TED was pricing and he had worked at it for a quarter century and he convinced me it was an art not easily become master of. Henry and I for many years attended together the meetings of the NEMA Mining and Industrial Electric Locomotive Section and on a strictly legal bases we all kept mining locomotive prices competitive throughout the industry. Henry was always wonderful with me when he was sober but when he'd get tight, he'd frequently condemn me as being a "yes-man" to Whitey Wilson, something I wasn't and never had been, but somehow Henry had gotten that implanted in his mind and he never quite got rid of it. There is much in my diary about Henry, who has now been dead about twenty years.