Thanks to Laura Washington for her commentary on Frank Sinatra (Op-Ed, June 8), which awakened in my 60-year-old brain a deeply buried memory.
In 1944, at Hibbard School on the North Side where I was a 2nd grader, a paper drive was held to aid the war effort. Each pupil who collected 100 pounds of old newspapers (we dragged them in our wagons and brought them to school) was rewarded with an afternoon off and a free pass to the Metro Theater on Lawrence Avenue to see a movie called “Tomorrow the World.”
The movie is about an American couple who take in a German lad raised under Nazi influence. I remember the American kids in the film finding a little Gestapo suit in the boy’s trunk. The Sinatra connection? After the feature, a short feature was shown in which Sinatra, against a Main Street background, sings “The House I Live In” in which the lyrics detail “What is America to me?” including “. . . all races, all religions . . .” and “. . . the right to speak my mind out. . . .”
Sinatra really felt the song, and so did his audience. My neck hairs tingle at the recollection.
