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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I lost a lot of money for the firm quite soon. And he (Clarence Dillon) ceased to know who I was. I was a non-person. So, after he threw me out -- I was his personal assistant for some years -- and then suddenly I was a non-person. But, then all the other partners in Dillon Read, who had hated me when I was the boss's white-haired boy, they suddenly decided, "Maybe there is some virtue in this fellow that Dillon has stepped upon mightily." So, they took me up and I became a friend of Jim Forrestal's and Dean Mathey's. And then when he (Forrestal) went to Washington, he took me with him to Washington. That's how I ended up in Washington.
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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
One time during the Marshall Plan days, when I had to defend the Marshall Plan appropriations before the House Appropriations Committee, I appeared for some, I think it was 38 consecutive sessions before John Taber, who was the chairman of that committee. During that course of those sessions, which were stretched over three or four months, I lost 15 pounds and was a mere wraith of my former self at the end of those hearings. We finally got it approved by the Committee, but that was a long and tedious and hard row to hoe.
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Paul Nitze
Presidential Medal of Freedom
There are those who say that we grossly overestimated the dangers of a Soviet attack. We didn't really think there was going to be a Soviet attack. We knew the damage that they had suffered during World War II and that it was unlikely that they would wish to physically attack Europe. The question was really one of a longer range question. Weren't they really dedicated to the idea that the world as a whole needed to end up with one side or the other being victorious? This was certainly the essence of Marxist-Leninism that either they or we were going to win in the long run and they were dedicated to the proposition that the world should be a socialist, a Communist world. Now, were we right in estimating that that was their long range doctrine? I think everything we found since confirms that that was true. It wasn't a matter of immediate risk of war, it was what was the whole campaign aimed at. And, I don't think we got that wrong. So, I don't see how one could have had another option other than to maintain deterrence during that long period, and do what was necessary and in order to contain the Soviet Union and keep it from expanding further.
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Antonia Novello
Former Surgeon General of the United States
In my junior year in college, I had one of the biggest surgeries to correct the complications of the eighteenth birthday surgery. And some other kid would have said, "I'm sick. I'm going to take music appreciation, art." I took that semester -- as a denial -- calculus, trigonometry, quantitative chemistry, everything that made me believe that I was not sick. But the part was, that in those six months, I had to wear Pampers to go to college and no one ever knew because I was not about to show it. And I continued to laugh at this little incidental in my life while I was showing that my brain was still okay. So that taught me one thing which I think sometimes is useful and sometimes is not. I have this inability to feel for the ones who use disease to not do what they are supposed to do. Because, believe me, if I did it, then anyone can, because there will be the plugging of the microscope, the plugging of the heating pad and the every five minutes going to the bathroom because I had to, until I had my last surgery.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
When we did this huge derring-do stage production of Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, which was -- I mean, that was an absolute last throw of the dice for the RSC. We were in such terrible financial circumstance that I was employing a company of 50 actors, and I only had money for one production, and no play has been written that provides for 50 roles. And I had a whole company desperate for work, and I didn't want to get rid of anybody. And I suddenly had the idea that I could go to Dickens. And it suddenly occurred to me that Dickens was the greatest dramatist who never wrote a play. And I could take all of that material and make a stage work with this wonderful company of actors, and we did. And a colleague of mine, John Caird, co-directed the show with me. And we had this eight-and-a-half-hour show that become a kind of legend in London, and then we took it to Broadway and we won all the Tony Awards. And then we televised it and won the Emmy Award for it. So, it was evidence that things can be born of the most extreme desperation.
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Sir Trevor Nunn
Theatrical Director
Sir Trevor Nunn: I guess the same applies to the decision to do Les Miserables. I knew that there would be a lot of people writing for the serious press, or representing the serious media in England who would say, "But, it's outrageous that one of our premier subsidized theater companies should be doing something that is appropriate to the commercial sphere." I believe that, on the contrary, it was entirely appropriate for a classical theater company to say, "We are going to take a great 19th century novel -- a complex 19th century novel -- about justice and about faith, and we are going to make a musical the like of which hasn't previously occurred. I mean, it's going to have a seriousness and a moral complexity, and a political message that hasn't previously been in the musical theater." But again, you know, just before we got started, I remember feeling extreme pangs of terror, you know. The kind of "Maybe I should call this off." Maybe I shouldn't give those people in the media the chance to say, "You see, we told you that this was disgraceful and it shouldn't happen." But in each case, you go through that cold terror and you come out strengthened by it. Therefore, when I was asked recently, "Would you consider going back into the subsidized spectrum? Would you become the next director of The National Theater?" I experienced two things. Unquestionably, I experienced that feeling of, "That's where I can be sure of maintaining my integrity, so I want to do it." The second feeling was of absolute terror because wonderful people have done the job up until now. Its reputation is unparalleled. The expectation is extremely high. Why put yourself on the line? So that, in the end people will say, "He did okay for a while, but then he did the National Theatre and completely screwed up."
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