Keeping At It

chapter 1

GROWING UP

My early life was relatively comfortable given that I grew up in the midst of the Great Depression and then World War II. By good fortune, my hometown of Teaneck, New Jersey, was growing rapidly. I was too young to serve in the war. But, as I look back, there is no doubt that my father’s prominent position in local government had a huge impact on the way I view life and the world.

A Model Town

“Government is a science and I am happy that the officials and the people of this community agree that the man who is to manage it should be thoroughly trained in the science of government.”

That was my father, city manager of Teaneck, explaining in 1948 why he was hiring a successor, two full years before he planned to retire.

My father cared deeply about making things work. The oldest son of German immigrants, his childhood in Brooklyn, New York, had included some gang battles (modest by recent standards) and other mischief. But mostly he found comfort in the rigorous classical education he received at Boys High School and later as a civil engineering student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he stood high in his class both physically and academically.

A job helping to rebuild New York State’s Erie Canal system took him to the small upstate town of Lyons. There he met my mother, a Vassar College graduate and the only child of one of the town’s more prominent families. They married in 1915 and moved to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, when he was hired to be that town’s engineer.

But he soon saw a greater opportunity. Government itself needed fixing too. That was certainly true in Cape May, New Jersey.

Once a favorite summer resort of wealthy Philadelphia families and even a president or two, its big old Victorian hotels had lost their luster. The city finances were extended to the point of bankruptcy. The local leaders decided radical change was needed. In 1925 they became the first in New Jersey to adopt a recently created system of city government: a nonpartisan part-time council and a professional city manager.

My father was drawn to city management, to the challenge of creating civic order out of disarray. So nobody was surprised when he joined a large number of applicants for the $4,500-a-year Cape May job. “As the first official in such a capacity, Mr. Volcker will, of course, have the eyes of the entire state upon him,” the Lebanon Daily News reported on the day he was awarded the position. At age thirty-five he moved to Cape May with my mother and three sisters, two years before I was born.

It proved an excellent fit. He soon straightened out the city’s finances and discovered a knack for publicizing “cool Cape May, twenty miles at sea,” with “shaded streets and golden sands” that not so subtly contrasted with rival New Jersey resorts built on treeless barrier beaches with flimsy housing.

Atlantic City, forty miles north, was another story: much larger, with a nationally famous boardwalk and pier, majestic hotels, and big-time entertainment. In the twenties its promoters started a beauty pageant. Cape May usually sent a contestant.

Just weeks into his job, my straitlaced father made headlines by ending that practice. No young Cape May maiden should be encouraged to exhibit herself in a bathing suit before leering men in a city of questionable morals.

Meanwhile, a much larger municipality in northern New Jersey was falling into financial and governmental crisis. Voters decided to throw out the politicians and bring in the council-management form of government. Teaneck, a New Jersey township twenty minutes outside of New York City, hired my father in 1930, immediately saving money when he also agreed to be city engineer for no extra pay.

He turned Teaneck around too. In his two-decade tenure, which overlapped with the Depression and war, Teaneck’s debt dropped to $1.8 million from $5 million and the population doubled. The town acquired ninety-five acres of parks. Taxes were cut.

Bespectacled, pipe-smoking, and six feet, four inches tall, my father cut an imposing and authoritative figure. On the wall behind his office desk he posted a framed quotation from George Washington to put favor seekers on notice: “Do not suffer your good nature, when application is made, to say ‘yes’ when you ought to say ‘no.’ Remember that it is a public not a private cause that is to be injured or benefited by your choice.”

To the best of my knowledge, his local authority was seriously challenged only once. I was way too young at the time to understand the implications, but I did know it was highly unusual for him to come home early from a town council meeting, bringing along two or three of his close associates. Later I learned the full story.

Determined to professionalize the police and fire departments, my father told the council he would be hiring a new police chief from out of town. The contentious mayor fiercely objected, demanding that one of the local good old boys be promoted instead. My father refused, insisting that the law (which I believe he largely drafted) made the appointment his responsibility as city manager.

The council could fire him but knew it would lack public support. It equivocated by suspending his pay. The issue went to court, which promptly upheld my father. Teaneck got a professional police chief, the mayor lost his influence, and my father’s salary was restored.

Behind his formality and reticence, my father concealed a dry wit and sophisticated political instincts. As I grew older he’d take me along sometimes as he consulted with the mayor, councilmen, or other influential citizens. He also made a point of visiting with the town’s less influential workers. He was fanatic about disclosure. Every family would get a detailed annual report about the state of the town. He described the budget, spending and taxes, the number of police cars and fire engines, the condition of the town’s facilities, and the salaries of employees, including his own.

By the standards of the day, the city manager was reasonably paid, starting out at about $8,000 a year. Only later did I discover that in the middle of the Depression my father volunteered to reduce that by $2,000, and it was a long time before it was restored.

The town’s success, and the city-manager form of government, was publicized nationally and even internationally. In 1945 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s national statistics identified Teaneck as the lowest-crime town in the country. The Saturday Evening Post carried an article headlined “There’s No Crime in Teaneck.” While proud of the sizable juvenile recreation programs and professional police force that contributed to Teaneck’s low crime rate, he made clear his discomfort about declaring such an absolute victory in a speech to the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs that he titled “There Is No Crime in Teaneck?”^*

A little later the US Army selected Teaneck from ten thousand applicants as the model town to be featured in an exhibit used to educate occupied countries about democratic practices after the war. Through his dedicated, professional, and nonpolitical management, my father had created an example for his own parents’ war-destroyed homeland—and for me.