Ann Nelson
Born a few years before the stock market crash of 1929 and raised in Philadelphia, Anne Nelson recalls with admiration her own mother's interest in issues of social justice and racial equality. Those same interests and a determination to work toward world peace have guided Anne Nelson's life from the time she was a student at Girls' High and Temple University to the present day. Her introduction to Woods Hole when still a teenager added a unique filter to her world outlook, providing opportunities to interact with a diverse community of scientists and others from around the globe.
Anne recalls, at the age of 13, standing with other youth activists on the White House lawn. Eleanor Roosevelt had prevailed upon her husband to address the assembled crowd, who had come to Washington seeking job opportunities for youth. FDR's response of "Why do you stand there in the rain?" became a Woody Guthrie song. FDR pointed out to the crowd that in the USA, unlike in some other countries, they were free to assemble and to petition. Woody's assessment was that on this occasion "all they got was wet".
At the age of 16, through classmate Connie Heilbrunn (whose father was at MBL and who had been Frank R. Lillie's first graduate student,) Anne was hired to work for the F.R. Lillie family, in their Woods Hole Gardiner Road home. It was the summer Dr. Lillie stepped down from his positions as Director of MBL and first President of WHOI. An accomplished swimmer with Red Cross certification, Anne supervised the grandchildren when they went swimming. She also served as a driver, taking the housekeeper to Falmouth to shop and collecting Mrs. Lillie at St. Joseph's on Millfield Street after daily mass. Mrs. Lillie often invited MBL summer investigators and their spouses for tea, and Anne was in charge of the teacart. Mrs. Lillie always gave her some background information on the guests before their arrival, and Anne recalls meeting a couple who had escaped from Nazi Germany to pursue their scientific studies in the U.S.
Anne married Leonard Nelson, a Heilbrunn student, in 1943. While he served in Europe during WWII, she was employed by the National Maritime Union as a dispatcher for the Port of Philadelphia. Her job was to supply crews for tankers and freighters, which joined convoys on "cold runs" -- bound for Murmansk -- or "warm runs" -- bound for South America. Standing inside a cage for personal safety, she was required to answer two rotary telephones while attending to her other primary duties. She did her best to help address the manpower shortage on merchant ships, supplying a variety of positions, including chief steward, quartermaster, boatswain, A.B.s, ordinary seamen, carpenters, firemen, oilers, wipers, cooks, bakers, messmen, and bedroom utility men. She was not popular, she says, because the dispatcher was always blamed for any deficiencies or problems associated with a given ship. Her husband, who occasionally asked merchant seamen arriving in Europe from the Port of Philadelphia for news of her, invariably received bad reports about "Shanghai Annie."
After the birth of daughter Pamela in Buffalo in 1948, Anne traveled by airplane with her father and the six-week-old infant to Lincoln, Nebraska, to join her husband, an instructor at the University of Nebraska. In 1956, they moved to Chicago, where her husband had an appointment at the University. It was in Chicago that she first joined Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), interested primarily in its local commitment to better race relations.
She maintained her connection with WILPF during their years in Atlanta (1960-67), driving to the Atlanta University center with its five historically black colleges, where most meetings were held. At her very first meeting, at the home of Mrs. Mays, two new members were introduced, Anne Nelson and Coretta Scott King. The two new members occasionally chatted on the phone during that turbulent era and also saw each other in later years at conferences. "If Coretta was the speaker, she would leave her coat and bag with me," interjects Anne. In 1968, they joined 5000 other women for the Jeannette Rankin Brigade Peace March on Washington. At one point during the day Mrs. King asked Anne to stand by with her while she called from a pay phone to check in on her husband, who was at home babysitting their four children as well as those of Ralph Abernathy.
During a year spent in Washington, D.C., Anne regularly observed meetings of a Senate Subcommittee (Employment, Manpower, and Poverty) of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. Dressed "properly" and carrying a briefcase, she was never challenged on arrival. She observes that in today's atmosphere of heightened security, she would likely not be permitted to come and go so freely.
Winters were spent in Toledo, Ohio, from 1969 until 2001, although there were sabbaticals abroad to Cambridge, Dijon, Geneva, and Naples. A member of Toledo's local WILPF group, Anne turned her principal attention nationally and internationally in 1971 when elected to the WILPF national board. From 1983-89 she was the U.S. member of the WILPF International Executive Committee. Over the years she attended international meetings of WILPF in England, Paris, Tokyo, Havana, Moscow, Sydney, Zeist ,The Netherlands; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Santa Cruz, Bolivia. There is at least one adventure story associated with each destination. In 1983, she traveled to Moscow from Naples to attend an International Women's Exchange. Flying first from Naples to Milan, she was not permitted aboard the Alitalia plane to Moscow because she could not produce her visa, which the American group was holding for her in Moscow. After a 3-day delay she was given another visa and flew on Austrian airlines to the crowded Moscow airport. There she stood in a "delegate" line, which she realized would be processed expeditiously. Her group produced the visa they had been holding for her, and then there was the problem of explaining why one person had two visas. Arriving at last at the conference, she was embarrassed when cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova interrupted the proceedings to say, "Anne, where have you been?"After her husband's death in 1999, Anne moved to Falmouth in 2001. In addition to serving as president of the Woods Hole Woman's Club and regularly attending senior exercise classes, she has occasionally attended meetings of the Cape Cod WILPF branch. She joined two reading groups, particularly enjoying a multiracial "rainbow" group which met for a time in Falmouth. She is proud to be a member of Neighborhood Falmouth, an organization she sees as "important" and that she believes is making a significant contribution to the betterment of seniors in our community. She is also a strong supporter of the Woods Hole Public Library, attending concert fundraisers and Story Hour for Grownups whenever possible.
