CHAPTER 15
Husband and Father

In the end, nothing really counts but love and friendship.¹

ROBERT K. GREENLEAF

When Bob came home from work every day he immediately went upstairs, changed out of his drab Manhattan business suit, and either headed for the basement workshop or, in the summertime, the huge organic garden behind the house. The garden was a thing of beauty, with a large asparagus patch, rows of tomato plants, and every imaginable kind of fruit, vegetable, and salad green. These were all “live foods,” not the “dead foods” warned against by Gaylord Hauser, inventor of Vege-Sal, food advisor to stars like Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson, and nutritional guru to Esther Greenleaf. Esther was picky about what went into her family’s bodies, and she wanted as many locally-grown, organic “live foods” as possible on her table.

From his books and radio programs, Esther knew of Gaylord Hauser’s cautions against coffee, chocolate, and processed foods like white flour and refined sugar. He much preferred wheat germ, molasses, and nearly-raw beef liver. Esther was also a disciple of several other early nutritionists, like Adelle Davis and Carleton Fredericks. On the New York 219radio station WOR, Fredericks had the audacity to recommend vitamins for various illnesses, advice that earned him a criminal conviction for unlawful practice of medicine.² True to her Hargrave family’s homeopathic roots, Esther persisted in decrying evil foods—especially sugar—and patrolled her family’s sugar consumption with vigilance. Newcomb vividly remembered the times W.H. Wright, one of Bob’s friends and colleagues from Ohio, came to visit.

Alcohol was another one of those sins, and the Greenleafs neither drank nor served it when friends from their country-club community came to dinner. They did keep a bottle of whiskey on the top shelf of the cupboard in the back hall to “take care of snakes,” and in later life, Bob took an occasional sip of wine when his adult children brought it home, but that was the extent of the drinking. Madeline thought that, for Bob, alcohol represented loss of control.⁴

Esther shared Bob’s penchant for seeking. Her outgoing social skills were a balance to Bob’s more introverted style. She was willing to join in her husband’s adventures, and he was quite delighted to join in hers, as daughter Madeline well remembered.

Bob and Esther were, quite simply, a powerful team. Both read voraciously, but because so much of Bob’s reading was work-related, Esther gradually become his advance intellectual scout in areas ranging from 220theology to biology to thrillers.⁶ She would plow through the entire output of an author and then suggest the books Bob should read. He, in turn, stretched canvases for Esther’s paintings, built her a kiln, and let her coach him on creating jewelry (“for my three women”) and, yes, even painting abstract art, which he no longer considered “a bad joke.” Esther had an expansive, civilizing influence on Bob, evolving his narrow Midwestern sensibilities into more discerning and catholic appreciations. Theirs was a lifelong love story. Letters they exchanged during Bob’s frequent travels always began with “Dearest,” and ended with “Love” or “All my love.”

When the children were young, Bob and Esther teamed up to make memorable kid-magic. Newcomb, Lisa, and Madeline all received their own personalized wooden jigsaw puzzles. Esther painted the pictures; Bob cut them out and put them together. In 1951, Madeline’s puzzle was a painting of her in a Halloween outfit surrounded by all her favorite dolls and toys. Bob also made special furniture for each child. Esther painted the pieces and used them in wonderful decorating schemes for each room.⁷

In 1946, Bob and Esther honored their children by privately publishing a little book called Poems, Stories, Drawings by Elizabeth, Madeline and Newcomb Greenleaf. The writing is delightful, and the drawings are reproduced in color. The book ends with “Three New Year’s Resolutions for 1946: Newcomb: Drink ALL my orange juice! Elizabeth: No hitting; no pinching! Madeline: No more calling peoples pickle-puss!”⁸

Once when the children were little they asked their daddy what he did when he went away to work. He said, “I twirl around in a chair.” On the rare occasions when they visited his large office, usually at Christmastime, he allowed them to hop on his swivel chair and spin round and round, gleefully squealing “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Bob let them go and laughed along with them.⁹

Bob’s parents did not celebrate Christmas in a big way, or any other holiday for that matter. Fatherhood gave him an excuse to not only indulge his own children with Christmas joy but experience it himself for the first time. He and Esther were lavish, almost outrageous in over-decorating the big Christmas tree, stringing lights around the house, buying (or making) and wrapping far too many gifts, and filling the stockings to overflowing, each stocking gift individually wrapped in high style. Bob 221adored the experience so much he branched out to Valentine’s Day. Esther and the girls were treated to elaborate breakfasts every February 14, savored beneath hearts strung across the ceiling. They received gifts of enameled jewelry designed and made just for them by Daddy—or “Bobby,” as Esther always called him.

Like so many multiply gifted people, Bob could be curious and playful. Kites were his favorite purchases from Army surplus stores. He bought the giant models, two dozen at a time if he could find them, which the Army had used to carry small transmitters aloft. He frequently took them on trips and even launched one of those beauties over the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Mexico. One of his favorite kite flying spots was the back field of his in-laws’ farm in Ringoes, New Jersey. While the girls dressed in antique clothes and played at tea with Grandma Ethel Hargrave, Bob sat alone in a lawn chair with the wind whistling through his hair and flew a giant kite for glorious, uninterrupted hours.¹⁰ When the wind was not blowing, he sometimes joined his father-in-law William Hargrave on the porch to play duets of Stephen Foster melodies on cheap plastic recorders, with Bob taking the harmony line. Bob played instruments—and sang his rumbling bass—by ear, using an innate musicality that brought him great joy throughout his life.

During moments of elation at home, Bob sometimes let his emotions out by dancing in the kitchen. His moves combined those you would see at a Hoosier hillbilly hoedown and a clog dance. The rubber soles on his size-thirteen leather shoes made black marks on the linoleum floor as he swung his arms and tapped out the rhythm— chuck-a, chuck-a, chuck-a—performing with abandon in front of his delighted wife and children.¹¹

Bob tolerated dogs but loved cats. He found a congenial soulfulness in those creatures who, like him, combined playfulness and reserve, cun-ningness and transparency, all while accessing extraordinary sense perceptions. Tuffy, the Greenleaf cat, played a game with Bob for hours. Tuffy sat on the stool by the kitchen table and Bob threw a soft treat at him. Usually it hit him on the nose (Bob’s aim was good). The cat jumped down, ate the treat, then hopped back up, ready for the next shot. One year Madeline and her husband took Petunia, their Siamese cat, to Bob and Esther’s home for the Christmas holidays. Bob and Petunia worked out a new game in the back hallway. Bob held open a paper bag; Petunia 222ran into the bag; Bob closed the bag and slid it to the other end of the hallway. Petunia fought her way out, Bob held the bag open again, Petunia dashed back in and they repeated the sequence, over and over and over. “That was the playful Bob who was always there,” said Madeline, “but whom we didn’t always see.”¹²

Bob allowed himself to experience a playful childhood for the first time in other ways, and Newcomb shared in some of these rich moments.

Bob’s basement workshop nurtured connections with his Indiana craftsman roots. He was an excellent plumber, electrician, and carpenter. He could cut, weld, buff, and build, and he fashioned his heirloom furniture with meticulous precision. “I loved being with him in the shop,” remembered Newcomb.

Bob’s interest in mechanical, electrical, metal, and wood crafts was natural, given his exposure to George Greenleaf’s mastery of machines and the fact that he spent his childhood in an age when the Erector Set was introduced and became the most popular toy in America.¹⁵ One suspects more was at work here, though. His workshop gave him not only solitude but one more sphere of control. Personal control of situations did not seem to be an issue at the 195 Broadway AT&T headquarters building, but it sometimes was at 27 Woodcrest Avenue in Short Hills, New Jersey.

Newcomb saw his father as “very traditional” at home, in the way “traditional” was defined by Bob’s generation. “The man was the boss at home,” said Newcomb. This tradition meant that Bob was “not always an easy person at home,” even with Esther.¹⁶ In the early fifties, Bob opposed Esther selling her paintings. That was not something a wife did, especially the wife of an AT&T executive. It was inconsistent with a “traditional” family structure. Anyone who grew up in Bob’s generation, or even his children’s generation, can verify that this attitude was the norm in America’s hearths and homes at the time.

For all his childlike capacity, Bob as a young father could be stonily distant. “Bob was a man of great silences,” said Lisa. “Sometimes, it was a ‘suck the life out of the room’ kind of silence. If he really did not want much going on because he needed the space, he just made you give him the space without saying so.”¹⁷ Bob seldom talked about work at home. At the dinner table, he usually ate quietly while others shared their day. Occasionally Esther asked, “What do you think about that, Bobby?” He usually made an appropriate response to indicate he had been listening and went back to eating. After dinner, he often disappeared into his basement workshop.

Newcomb, the oldest child, may have got the worst of the silences, which, combined with Bob’s temper, sometimes terrified the young son. On the other hand, Bob’s anger could sometimes be downright funny, as Newcomb discovered while working with his father in the basement workshop. “If he hit his thumb with a hammer, he got very angry and he wanted to swear, but he felt that he couldn’t swear in front of me. So, I had to leave the room and shut the door. Then he would swear a blue streak. I would hear him stop swearing, go back in, and we would resume our work.”¹⁸

Other times, Bob’s temper wasn’t so funny. It could flare up if the children were late coming out of the Friends Meeting House, late to the table, or in response to any number of trivial events. According to Newcomb, Bob was aware of his temper—even afraid of it—and struggled to control it, but he was even more afraid of Esther losing her temper. That would cut too close to the quick, triggering the memory of Bob’s own out-of-control mother. “I was brought up in a home of wrangles and jangles; I’ve tried to forget about it,” Bob once wrote in a journal.¹⁹

Through it all, Bob and Esther “kept sweet” with each other. It was a genuine, loving sweetness, not a shallow, saccharine version. Even New-comb saw it.

Bob yearned for a peaceful home life and sometimes tried to achieve it by controlling the people who lived with him. Alas, it did not work. He and Esther raised three strong, smart children, and beginning in their teenage years, each, in his or her own way, stood up to him.

Madeline worked out a signal with Esther. When Madeline was about to cry, she would grab her throat, and Esther would jump in and try to defuse the situation before Bob sent her to her room, but often it was too late. “I was the only one who got sent repeatedly to my room after dinner because I egged him on,” remembered Madeline. “I’d always go in tears, but I’d do it again, and I’d do it again. And then if I said I was sorry, he would say, [here she lowers her voice] ‘If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it’” [laughs].²¹ Sometimes Bob and Madeline would not speak for days or even weeks. In spite of her tears, Madeline’s two older siblings believe that she was least affected by Bob’s attitude during her childhood. Madeline attended Earlham College and eventually went on to become one of the most admired employees of Time magazine.

Around the age of fourteen, Lisa took her own stand. Bob was self-controlled physically—that is, he never threatened to strike any of the children—but he certainly had the power to affect them emotionally when his own control of the family was threatened. Lisa felt that Esther’s interventions got in the way of her opportunity to simply thrash things out with Bob and clear the air. Without those healthy confrontations, Bob sometimes came across to Lisa as distant and arrogant.

There were also moments when a father’s blessing was given. Lisa took ballroom dancing lessons at the Racquet Club in Short Hills and became a fabulous dancer, winning prizes while literally having a ball. When she was fifteen she came home after a dancing triumph and told 225Newcomb all about it. He said, “Did you know they don’t allow Jews at the Racquet Club?”

She was stunned.

“That’s right,” he said. “They can’t even walk in the door.”

Lisa’s heart broke, because their next door neighbors were Jewish, and the father, Max, was like a surrogate father to her. That evening at the dinner table she announced, “They do not allow Jews at the Racquet Club and I will never go there again!”

Bob’s eyes widened. “You mean to say you will never go back, that you would give up your dancing?”

“That’s right—never!”

“Then I will personally take you dancing in New York!” he beamed.

Years later she remembered the moment. “Bob had high standards and was hard to please, but I hit the jackpot that day. This time I did it right!”²²

Lisa was destined to make her name as a gifted artist and, in later life, a therapist.

One could speculate that the source of Bob’s temper (which he called violence) was residual anger from the behavior of an erratic mother, or his frustration at being a hole-in-the-hedge man in an age of hedged-in men who preferred security over seeking, and it leaked out at home because it could not be expressed openly at work. The truth is, no one knows for sure. If he speculated about the source of this shadow, he did not record it in his notes and journals. His concern with the issue was two-fold: (1) consciously accepting that a shadow of violence existed, and (2) understanding its effect on his psyche, especially in its ability to interfere with his ability to make his contributions to the world.

Esther was the protector in this family psychodrama, the buffer between Bob’s darker side and his children. “Not that we needed that much protection,” said Newcomb. “It was just that occasionally he would get angry and he had rather rigid ideas about a lot of things.”²³

Because of time spent with his own father, Bob had a strong sense of what a man should do for and with his son. Bob had no personal interest in sports, but Newcomb did, so Bob took his son to baseball games and played catch with him in the backyard. Newcomb was a New York Giants fan and remembers games at Ebbets Field when the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson drove Giants pitchers crazy by his astounding moves off first base.

On the trip to Terre Haute for Burchie Greenleaf’s funeral, Bob looked up a famous local resident, one Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown— “Three Finger Brown”—the Chicago Cubs player who pitched the decisive shutout game in the 1907 World Series and won two out of every three games pitched in his long career. Brown asked Newcomb what he wanted to be. “I want to be a baseball player,” said the youngster. The future Hall of Famer responded, “Well that’s good, but what if you can’t be a baseball player, then what do you want to be?” “Well, then I want to be a radio announcer for baseball,” came the reply. Brown massaged the three fingers on his right hand that had given so many pitches their weird, unhittable spins and tried again. “What if you can’t be that?” “Oh,” said Newcomb, “then I guess I’ll just have to be an umpire.” Brown bristled at the suggestion. “Oh no!” he said, “Don’t be an umpire!”²⁴

Bob wanted to expose Newcomb to his work. He frequently took him along to his downtown office and on business trips. They went to Montreal and Chicago; they visited a steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and various other factories and Bell System plants. “He passed along to me numerous stories and aphorisms about the working life,” wrote New-comb. “He had in mind the model of his father, who had involved Bob both in his mechanical work and his political career.” Alas, it did not work. “I was defining myself in opposition to him, particularly over the issue of education. I embraced education for its own sake and went on to a career in mathematics, taking pride for many years in the ‘purity’ and lack of application of my research.”²⁵

Curiously, during his teenage years, Newcomb began calling his parents “Bob and Esther,” and his sisters eventually followed suit. Later in life, Madeline went back to referring to them as “mum and pop.” New-comb already lived away from home by the time Bob started his dream work and other transformative experiences of the period from 1958–1962, but he recognized that “[Bob] was a very different person later on.”²⁶ Newcomb married early, had two children in quick order, and enjoyed a brilliant academic career, culminating in a Ph.D. in mathematics at the age of twenty-four and a teaching career at several schools, including Columbia University.

In spite of exposure to Bob’s shadows, none of the children believed they had a terrible childhood. Later in life, they recognized the poignancy of a man who, like so many males of his generation, was caught in the 227double-bind of loving his family deeply and being unable to express those emotions openly. Lisa Greenleaf saw the pattern clearly.

Lisa sensed in her father a quality that author Parker Palmer also recognized in him: a “sadness that comes when one is too experienced to expect miracles.”²⁸ Lisa saw it as depression.

Later in life Bob was asked if he was the model of a servant for his own children. “Not in the way my own father was [to me],” he replied. “My kids didn’t know anything about my work and never saw me in action the way I saw my father. I never was one to carry my job home, but if I had, that would have been all we’d have talked about.”³⁰ He loved his family but had difficulty expressing that love directly, and his work took him away from them for weeks at a time. Even as he tried to balance responsibilities to family and work, he had a growing sense that he belonged to the larger world, that some great work was luring him forward beyond AT&T.