Americans and the Holocaust: Judge Curtis G. Shake

I remember the first Monday morning we started out to school. We got up about 5:30 to get ready to go to school like we did at home. Mr. Chambers worked on the street and he was up early and we had an early breakfast. And by about 6:30 we were down at the university. There was nobody at home. We rattled the door. There wasn’t anybody there and I said to Eliza, I said, “Eliza we made a mistake, we’re wrong on this someplace along. We must be a week early or something because there’s no school. Here it’s almost seven o’clock and there isn’t a soul around here.” Eliza said, “Wait a minute. I got a calendar.” He got it out of his pocket and said, “This is right. This is the right day.” Well, I said, “Then they’re not having any school. There’s something wrong.” We sat around and finally the janitor come and he said, “Well, boys, you ought to know better than to come around here until about 9:00 or 9:30. That’s when we open up.” So much for that.

Indiana Memory, Curtis G. Shake Oral History Transcript, page 11

I got out in 1907 in the spring. School was out about April. I had nothing to do but wait and go to school in Bloomington in the fall of 1907 and so I decided it might be a good idea to find out how a law office run and I came into Vincennes and I got permission to stay in the office of Cullop and Shaw…. Things went along for a few weeks and one day [Mr.Shaw] called me in his private office and he said, “Curt, do you know Jake Gimbel?” I said, “No, is he the man that runs the store over the way?” He said, “Yes.” The store was run by Gimbel, Haughton, and Bond. Jake was a bachelor and he belonged to the Gimbel family. He’d started in business here and afterwards ended up in big stores in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York. …I went and cleaned up and I walked into the store at Second and Main. I didn’t know Mr. Gimbel even by sight. I knew him by name. I asked one of the clerks, I said, “I want to see Mr. Gimbel.” She said, “Well, he’s back up in the office up there.” There was a little stairway up on a sort of a balcony. I went in and he was sitting at the desk. I walked in and I said, “My name’s Curtis Shake, and Judge Shaw said you wanted to see me.” “Oh, yes, yes”, he said, “come in. Have a chair. Shut the door.” He said, “Do you mind answering personal questions?” I said, “No, I don’t care, ask whatever you want to.” “What are your plans?...I said, “I’m going to law school.” “Where?” “Indiana University.” “When?” “This fall.” Well, now he said, “Here comes the personal question.” He said, “You got any money?” I said, “Yeah…about six hundred dollars.” “Where’d you get it?” Well, I said, “I worked on the farms during the summer and I taught school for two years and I’ve got about six hundred dollars in the bank across the street over there.” “You’re going to Bloomington to law school for six hundred dollars?...That won’t put you through.” And I said, “I know it wouldn’t but I’ve worked before. I’ve carried papers in this town and I’ve fired furnaces and I’ve waited tables, and I think I can make it. I’m going to try it…” Well, he said, “Did you ever stop to think that if you’re a good janitor, you might be a poor student. If you’re a good student you might lose your job as a janitor or carrying papers or whatever you’re going to do?” Well, I said, “That’s a risk you run.” Well now, he said…“I’ll make you a proposition. I’ll pay your way through school. You can buy your clothes and charge it to my account here in this store…I want you to pay your bills. I don’t want any extravagance but anything that’s in the line of education, I’ll pay the bills.” Well, I said, “Now wait a minute, Mr. Gimbel, just stop right there. I haven’t got any security whatever. My father’s just a poor farmer and I’ve got three brothers and I can’t give you any security.” He said, I would expect one promise from you that sometime if you ever get able, and I hope you will, and you take this proposition that sometime you help some other boy through school and that’ll pay the bill. You’ll never owe me a dime.” Well, we discussed it and I went back and talked two or three times and I went to Bloomington and I’ve got a little yellow book at home and I’ve got every check that I’ve listed that I got from him during the three years that I was in law school, every suit of clothes that I bought, every time I had a sore throat and had a doctor bill I’ve got it all figured out, the whole bill comes to…between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred dollars, three years. That just shows you the difference.

Indiana Memory, Curtis G. Shake Oral History Transcript, pages 13-14

Time went on and I’d gotten started to practicing law. Then something happened. I’d gone over here to the college university. It had just about run through the book. It was down to about sixty students. I picked up the paper one day and the board of trustees had decided to close the doors, surrender the charter, liquidate the property and pay their debts, if they could pay them. I got some of my friends together. The boys were going to school over there. And we decided that we would undertake to try to save the school. And that was an interesting thing because… the first thing I did… I went over to Jake and I told him… He’d been a trustee himself. And I said, “Mr. Gimbel, I think with some hard work and organization, we could save that school.” “Oh”, he said, “My heavens, I wish you could but I don’t think you can.” Well, I said, “If we did and put that school on its feet, keep its door open, develop it, would you be satisfied that I’d paid my moral debt to you?” He said, “I’d say you’d overpaid it many times.”...Well, we started in and we had public meetings and we got pretty salty with the board. They were all old and they served for life and they were nice old men but heavens, they didn’t have a board meeting but once a year; usually didn’t have a quorum the first time... they said, “Boys, you just can’t do it.” Then we conceived an idea. I went to this old man Meredith... He ran the Meredith Hotel at Washington. There was another boy named Schuler McCormick, a young lawyer. We went over to him.... So we told him, we said, “Mr. Meredith, you can do us a big favor.” “What can I do for you, boys?” We told him that the board was trying to close up that university and what we’d like for you to do, we’d like for you to go over there and go to Mr. so and so at the bank, who was president of the board, and tell him that instead of closing the university, just give it to Washington and that Washington will take it, Washington will pay its debts. It will build it a new building, it will get behind it and make a real school out of it and will not even change the name. It will be Vincennes University. Well, there was a lot of rivalry between Washington and Vincennes. Well, I remember his answer. He said, “Now, boys, I’m not about to buy any damned old run-down college.” “Well”, we said, “That isn’t the point. They won’t do it but you could help us out.”... Finally he said, “Well, boys, if you’ll give me five dollars for expense money, I’ll do it.” So we forked over five dollars and he promised to be over the next afternoon. We stood up on the corner and we saw him at the appointed time go into the bank and we saw him and the president of the board whispering to each other for a long time. And finally he walked out and we didn’t bother him, and he left. And that afternoon I was back in my office, the president of the board called me up and he said, “Curt, come up. I’d like to talk to you. Do you think there's any chance we could save the school?” I said, “Well, I think you could if you’d give us a chance.” “How’d you like to be on the board?” I said, “I’d be tickled to death to be on it. Get some young blood on it.”... That’s when I went on the board in 1923. And of course, we had a fight. We had to get a bill through the legislature. It took me… I run first for Representative trying to get in the legislature to get the bill through. I got beat for the nomination. Next time it come up two years later I ran for joint representative and got beat for the nomination. The third time I just tried for the Senate. I wasn’t any good for the House and I got elected. And then I prepared and introduced a bill to levy a county levy for the support of the college. And that opened the door and now we’re a recognized public institution and we get out state aid all right. And the school has jumped from… it went down to about, it went down to less than seventy students, and sixty-eight to be exact… and now we’ve got about twenty-four hundred out there on the campus. We can’t keep up with ourselves.…

Indiana Memory, Curtis G. Shake Oral History Transcript, pages 26-29