In Peter Richardson’s A BOMB IN EVERY ISSUE, it was disappointing to find only one reference to my father, Ramparts Magazine’s managing editor, James F. Colaianni: an anecdote in which Colaianni drives his teen-age daughters to a Beatles concert and waits in the car, rather than attending himself. With this, Richardson attempts to sum up Colaianni as an expendable square, out of place in a revolutionary milieu. “Emblematic,” says Richardson, of a schism in the Ramparts editorial staff between “suburban” deadwood and an authentic New Left. With added invective, my father is referred to as a “self-proclaimed Lay Theologian.” These digs are both inaccurate and insensitive. To begin, we were not suburban. In 1963, my father drove our family of eight, three-thousand miles, relocating us from New Jersey to California, to do grass roots work for the Catholic Church. We first settled in the Mission District of San Francisco, an urban area few were familiar with, prior to its gentrification. My father did his graduate work at a liberal arm of University of San Francisco known as The Institute of Lay Theology, which, in the flurry of liberal thought accompanying Vatican II, instituted a program designed to give lay leaders a balance of power with clergy in Catholic parishes. As a radical Catholic, my father courageously voiced opposition to the Vietnam war. He tells me that, like other Ramparts staffers, he sometimes endured flagrant surveillance by government investigators, monitoring his whereabouts and actions. His 1966 Ramparts article denouncing the manufacture of Napalm in the Bay Area spearheaded national focus on America’s brutal use of the chemical weapon in Vietnam. Far from Richardson’s assertions, James F. Colaianni’s activities define him as a New Left Catholic. In fact, he wrote the book: THE CATHOLIC LEFT: The Crisis of Radicalism in the Church, (Chilton, 1968). That, and his prescient MARRIED PRIESTS, MARRIED NUNS, (McGraw-Hill, 1967), were brave and early calls for justice and equality in the Church. Richardson can reduce him to one belittling anecdote, but I will here relate another: One morning in 1968, my father and a group of some twenty, including Dr. Benjamin Spock, convened an impromptu anti-war prayer vigil across from the White House in Lafayette Park. This sort of peaceful congregation is but one of many which my father had a hand in organizing. My father did not come alone to this vigil. My brother and I, both under 10, and my mother, were also there. In fact, he drove us there. He did not shield us from this sort of thing, but rather, exposed us to it as a necessary part of our moral development. We were sitting in a circle on the grass, praying and singing various anthems when suddenly, but not unexpectedly, the police arrived. They first bent to whisper in Dr. Spock’s ear; he nodded and they took him by either elbow, lifting him into a waiting van. My father was next. Into the van he went. And one by one all were arrested, save my mother, my brother, and I, who were permitted to leave the site. The act of civil disobedience I witnessed that day is emblematic of my father’s role in the New Left. I don’t recall seeing any of Ramparts’ “hip” editors at the various sit-ins, pickets and rallies my father attended, though, surely, they were involved in such activities. But, I wonder how many of them attended Beatles concerts. I will venture to say, very few, if any. But then, a particular taste in music is not the test of one’s political convictions. Ironically, Ralph Gleason, Ramparts’, and later, Rolling Stone’s music editor (and the original source of the unfortunate anecdote), remained in contact with my father for the rest of his life. They shared a love for Jazz.

Louis Colaianni

Bob,  I read the Richardson Ramparts book, hoping it would recapture the feel of
the place.  It didn’t.  It doesn’t transmit at all the madcap energy of that
undertaking.  (I was the front desk receptionist in 1966.)  You and Warren,
bursting in from lunch, suit coats flapping, talking closely at fever pitch, 
Colaianni’s ever furrowed brow, Maureen (Warren’s Brit amazonian secretary)
clumping down the hall in her 4 inch spike heels, bellowing ... the Kennedy
assassination crazies with their special offices—Lifton used to talk my ear off
while I was trying to answer the phone.  What amazing excitement Ramparts
generated ... about such important issues.  Thanks!