A Debt Repaid

A Debt Repaid

By Anne Glasheen

It was the summer of his last year at Harvard, 1929. He was working two jobs and, with the help of his older sister, a new teacher, he hoped he could afford the tuition. He worked in a leather tanning factory in Woburn, Massachusetts, fulltime during the week, and as a guard at the Gardiner Museum on weekends showing people the art treasures of Harvard.

When his boss asked him to dump the chemicals used in tanning process, my father refused: “Those chemicals will enter the aquifer and affect the water these people drink.” Daddy was a chemistry major.

When the boss fired him for refusing to obey, daddy went to the curator of the Gardiner and requested more hours: “But why do you need this money so desperately?”

“Because tuition is due soon and I need another hundred dollars or I won’t be able to graduate.” This was in the twenties and that was an enormous amount. The museum curator reached into his wallet and handed my father a hundred dollar bill.

“I don’t expect to be repaid. Just do the same for someone else when you are able.”

To my father that was a primary debt. He dug sewers that year until he had accumulated that hundred dollars plus interest. He returned to the Gardiner Museum and knocked on the curator’s door. When he handed the money to his benefactor the man began crying.

“You don’t know what this means to me. I lost all my money in the stock market and until you came in thought I had no alternative.” He pulled out his desk drawer and showed my father the gun he had been planning to use.