July 9, 1993

Dear Cathy Haney,

You will have to put up with my 81 year old typing and my 30 yr. old portable. I am a computer impaired person.

Your �Chautauqua's Coming� intrigued me. If you have read the Chautauqua Chapter in �Sittin' Stone,� you will learn why. I didn't even know the old Chautauquas were still going. Yours is a marvelous idea, and I wish I had been there to help Clay County celebrate. That old �Chautauqua� resurrection of yours deserves national publicity. Upward and onward with the great State of Kansas ... and Clay County! By the way, your letter arrived just when I was reading the obituary of Olive Beech in the N. Y. Times. She was the big wheel in the Wichita - Orleans (France) affiliation which I arranged with the help of dear Jean Falaise. (M. le Mayor of Orleans) Charles Boyer, the Andrews Sisters, and a host of other dignitaries way back when. From Wichita, I went on to Morganville - which, for a few years, was the most exciting of all. Dear Velma et co.! The real thing, it was.

I am enclosing a piece I once wrote - post Elmore McKee - and published somewhere. It sort of features Morganville, and may be a bit too lyrical. Anyway, it was fun. Could you kindly photocopy it and send it back to me? Here, too, are a few other items that may be of help.

At the risk of sounding a bit cocky, I'm afraid I more or less �invented the Sister City� notion back in 1946 - although something like it had occurred briefly during the war when a couple of American cities, working with Natalie Payne�s �Bundles for Britain,� �adopted� several English cities for relief purposes during the bombings. Food, nylon stockings, medicine etc. When I left the Army as Public Relations Officer at the New York and San Francisco Ports of Embarkation, I stepped into the job of National Campaign Publicity Dir. for American Aid to France, Inc. - Hon. Chairman, General Eisenhower, with John Jay McCloy, Averill Harriman, Mrs. Vincent Astor and others among our Directors. In order to launch a �grass roots� effort, I suggested that my old home town, Dunkirk, N. Y., stage an all-out relief and good will gesture toward its namesake city of Dunkerque, France. The town went nuts, and achieved world wide publicity (see enclosed). The N. Y. Times Sunday mag. gave it a cover story. A.B.C. Radio provided a two-way radio broadcast between the two cities, MCed by Charles Boyer and French Ambassador, Henri Bonnet. The Voice of America sent it around the world, and the French Press gave it the works. Anyway, about sixty U. S. Cities almost immediately followed suit, and A.A.T.F. was in business. My reaction was �What in hell hath Todd wrought?� We were deluged with French mayors looking for their towns to be adopted.

After the A.A.T. F, campaign ended (came the Marshall Plan), I was invited by Isabella Greenway King (former Congress woman from Arizona, and Eleanor Roosevelt's dearest friend and bridesmaid) to do publicity for her badly named �Operation Democracy, Inc.� Object: to promote �Town Affiliations� around the world. We were to �tell the American story overseas,� �win friends and influence people,� as well as bring about Wendell Wilkie's �One World!� Great days of hope and promise for Henry Luce�s �American Century!� One of the best of all was dear little Morganville, Ks. ... and, of course, Velma Carson. What a gal!

To end a too long story, I went from �O.D.� to the U. S. Information Agency in 1950 as �Chief� of the Office of Private Enterprise Cooperation, the N.Y. City�s unit supplying stories from the �Heartland� of America for U. S. I. A's radio, publications, motion picture divisions' etc. One of my main preoccupations continued to be �sister cities,� with the emphasis on �Getting to Know You� and beating the hell out of the Iron Curtain and Joe Stalin. Little did I know how long it would take! Thank you, Mr. Gorbachov, Mr. Yeltzin, and, maybe, even, Bill Clinton! I do hope you are not all worrying about tres chic Mrs. Clinton out there. We need her, and more nifty gals like Velma! Or even, the late Olive Beech. I suspect you may qualify!

P. S. Your �Chautauqua� was great.

Cordially yours,

Charles L. Todd (signature)

more next page ...


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Next day

I dashed off the foregoing yesterday, and I fear it was a bit scatty since I am currently up to my neck in trying to get off four large cartons of notes on the successes and failures of do-it-your-self diplomacy as I experienced it between 1946 and 1959 during, most of it, the Cold War Days. My New York Office of Private Enterprise Cooperation in New York in 1956 was transferred to Washington for purposes of closer integration, and I, along with my colleague Ethel Schroeder, (a former top researcher at Time-Life and a veteran of several top secret organizations in Europe during the war) refused to go on the grounds that there was no �private enterprise� in Foggy Bottom with which to �cooperate.� We also felt it would �blow our cover� - tieing us in too closely with the federal overseas propaganda business. With the blessing of U.S.I.A., we organized a private no-profit group called the International Advisory Council, Inc, with a board of Directors made up of prominent internationally minded non-governmental leaders. We continued to work closely on contract with U.S.I.A., but also took on as clients numerous American corporations with overseas connections, community service groups, the Advertising Council, National Association of Manufactures, the Foreign Press Association at the U.N. etc, etc. I was commuting 3+ hours a day from Chester, N. J, into my office at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in N. Y. and found the going tough. In the Spring of 1954, I was invited to give a speech on. �People-to-People� in the 150 year old Hamilton College chapel. Two weeks later, I was invited to take on the Chairmanship of the College Department of Speech and Communications with a full professorship and immediate tenure - and there I stayed until my retirement 12 years ago. During my years at Hamilton, I continued [to] work with international exchange groups, and involved the College in a good many international friendship programs, along with a lot of writing - four books, and numerous cross-country lectures.

Sorry about all this biographical rambling. The Town Affiliations program was taken over and greatly added to by hundreds of other important organizations, including, of course, Milton Eisenhower's �People to People Foundation� out in Kansas, most of whose mailing I have in my files which I am considering sending on out to the LB.J. School of International Studies at the U. of Texas where a number of my old colleagues are working.

I am slowly working through four heavy cartons, and as I run across pertinent material to what you are doing, I will try to send some of it on. Meanwhile, I am excited by your project. After seeing what Clay County did with the Chautauqua extravaganza, I have high hopes.

Thanks for writing, and best of luck with my erratic typing.

Cordially

Lafe (for Lafayette) (signature)

Charles L. Todd


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Enclosed Material

These items were picked randomly out of four large cartons of my files on �People to People.� There is a lot more available, but I have no idea as to what the scope of your new project is. Please let me know a little more fully, and I'll b e glad to cooperate. There is enough for a large book on the frenzied activities of the American people to make friends and influence people during those Cold War lays. I regret that I never wrote the book, though I did do a great many articles off and on for the press and magazines.

Do keep in touch!

C. L. T.

(initialed C.L.T.)

With regard to your question, I suspect Morganville was one of the smallest American towns to take on a �Sister� community. The town of Chester, N. Y. (Pop. about 800 at the time) took on Marshall Tito's birthplace, Kumrovic, in what was once Jugoslavia, and was deluged by pen-pal letters from school kids - full of Communist propaganda praising their �glorious leaders.�