DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Now we'd like to remember Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the four-foot-seven, grandmotherly German Jewish psychologist who became an unlikely sex therapist on radio and TV. She died last week at the age of 96. Her matter-of-fact sex advice, along with her funny, lively personality, made her a national media celebrity. Here she is appearing on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in 1996 giving him some romantic advice.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN")
RUTH WESTHEIMER: So what it means, a good relationship - it does mean laughter.
CONAN O'BRIEN: Yes.
WESTHEIMER: And in bed, you probably...
O'BRIEN: I get a lot of laughter in bed.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: No problem there.
WESTHEIMER: I would think that you might be very good in bed because...
O'BRIEN: Yeah.
WESTHEIMER: You know a little bit...
O'BRIEN: Keep talking about this, about how I would be good in bed.
(LAUGHTER)
WESTHEIMER: You might because you know how to make conversation. You know how to look into her eyes. Look at you. Look at you.
O'BRIEN: Yes, yes.
WESTHEIMER: You know how to promise her, maybe, an engagement ring, something like that.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: You lost me there.
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: But it's all about - you're right. So much of it - you know, guys get hung up on their body and stuff like that. But what you're saying is that, that doesn't matter, right?
WESTHEIMER: What I'm saying now...
O'BRIEN: Thank God for that.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Dr. Ruth's media career was launched in 1980 with a 15-minute, after-midnight Sunday segment on WYNY in New York City. That led to TV shows, sex guidebooks, speaking engagements and appearances in commercials, advertisements, even in film. Terry spoke with Dr. Ruth in 1996. Dr. Ruth had just written a book about the changing family. Her own family was exterminated in the Holocaust. She grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and was 10 when her synagogue was destroyed in 1938 during what became known as Kristallnacht. Shortly thereafter, her parents sent her out of the country to safety.
WESTHEIMER: I was an only child. At the age of 10, my mother and grandmother, because my father had already been taken by the Nazis to a labor camp, put me on a train to Switzerland. And I thought this would be, and they thought it would be, for six months. And out of the six months, the whole Kindertransport, the entire group of children who left Germany, stayed in Switzerland for six years. And it became - it wasn't a children's home anymore. It became an orphanage. So for me, the word family has a tremendous amount of emotions attached to it. I know what it means to live without a family.
TERRY GROSS: I'd like to hear a little bit more about your family. After your mother put you on the train to Switzerland to get out of Nazi Germany, did she and your grandmother try to flee also?
WESTHEIMER: It was too late already. It's a very good question, Terry. I was told I did not want to leave. I was an only child, rather spoiled - 13 dolls - and I did not want to leave. I was told that if I am not leaving, my father could not return from labor camp. So I had no choice.
GROSS: You write that in the orphanage in Switzerland, that the message was drummed into all of you never complain - you're lucky to be alive. Do you think that was a healthy attitude to have?
WESTHEIMER: Today, from my vantage point of being an educator, today, I would question that very much. However, my philosophy of life came from my early socialization, that was such a good one. The first 10 years of my life were in an orthodox Jewish home, and in that way, I could survive. But if you ask me, was that pedagogically sound, to tell children who have lost everything, who didn't have in that children's home - never had money to even buy a bar of chocolate, even though we were in Switzerland, the country of chocolates. If you say to me that to then say to children, you have to be grateful because you have a roof over your head and you are being fed, it's a big problem. That would actually - that could be the subject of another book of mine.
GROSS: What's the problem?
WESTHEIMER: The problem is that the educators were not educators. The people who were placed in charge of us were themselves refugees, themselves sent out, pushed out of Nazi Germany, with all the anxieties, with all the uncertainties that that implies. So these were people who didn't know any better. I don't waste my time hating because they did not know any better. And again here, fortunately, there were a few adults - one Swiss woman that is popping up, popping in my mind, Helen Halmisser (ph), not Jewish, who was instrumental in giving us some friendship. There were other adults. And then mainly, there were the children themselves who gave comfort to each other.
GROSS: Now, your mother was actually pregnant with you before she and your father married.
WESTHEIMER: Yes.
GROSS: Was that considered shameful?
WESTHEIMER: Terrible.
GROSS: Did they consider that shameful?
WESTHEIMER: Absolutely. But you know what?
GROSS: What?
WESTHEIMER: That's why I wrote it in my autobiography. Somebody who read the draft said, why are you writing that your mother was pregnant with you then your father married her, that you were pregnant with your daughter before you married her father?
GROSS: I was going to bring that up in a second (laughter).
WESTHEIMER: I know. I know you already, Terry, so let me just tell you. And my answer to Ben Yagoda, my co-author now and my co-author on the autography, was I'm not a saint. I want to show that what I talk about is some of the issues that I have experienced, and I want to show things happen in life.
GROSS: Let me ask you how you found out about your mother being pregnant before marriage. Did she tell you that?
WESTHEIMER: (Laughter) No, she never would have told me ever, ever. And I was 10 years old. I once looked at some documents after the war, many years later, when I started to do my master thesis. And lo and behold, I saw the marriage date, and I know when I was born. I said, aha, they loved each other. And they loved each other so well that here I am. And then they got married.
In Frankfurt of those years, that was considered - it is not like today in even our country and in other countries. In the Frankfurt, in an Orthodox Jewish family of those days, that was considered a very big problem.
GROSS: Did this seem really out of character to you, when you found out that your mother had actually had sexual relations with your father before marriage?
WESTHEIMER: On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, my father was a very good-looking man. So that's all I can say about that. He was not only spirited and very intelligent.
And he - I also know that my grandmother who lived with us - my mother's father - who had a tremendous influence on me because she was a very smart, devoutly religious woman - I know that she was not happy about that because I do remember some fights.
But in the days, I didn't know why there were fights. My mother was working in the household of her mother-in-law. So it wasn't just that he brought her home for one night (laughter).
GROSS: Right. Your mother worked as the house cleaner in your father's house.
WESTHEIMER: The housemaid. Absolutely.
GROSS: Right.
WESTHEIMER: Absolutely.
GROSS: I could see the potential...
WESTHEIMER: Interesting. And...
GROSS: ...For scandal here.
WESTHEIMER: And then I became a housemaid in Switzerland. I have an official diploma of a housemaid.
GROSS: Which you used, actually, when you first moved to America.
WESTHEIMER: A dollar an hour, and I supported my little girl. But now, Terry, right away, we have to say - I am married now for 35 years with the same man, and I have two children, and Terry, I have two grandchildren. Nobody in the whole wide world has grandchildren like mine.
GROSS: I've heard that before (laughter).
WESTHEIMER: Nobody, Terry - a 6-year-old grandson and a 3-months-old granddaughter. And I have to say something to you, seriously speaking. When I look at these grandchildren - and I see them every single week - I say, Hitler and the Nazis did not want me to have grandchildren, and look at this triumph.
GROSS: People are always asking, why is it that people who aren't married - who aren't ready to have children would risk having sexual relations without using birth control? I want to find out why you did that. You were pregnant before you were married. You hadn't intended on becoming pregnant. I assume you knew about birth control.
WESTHEIMER: That's not true.
GROSS: But...
WESTHEIMER: I was a little stupid by...
GROSS: (Laughter).
WESTHEIMER: ...Hoping that I wouldn't get pregnant. But basically, I already knew that I would marry the father of my daughter, even so afterwards, we separated. And I deep down said, Oh my gosh, I'm 29 years old. I'm only 4 foot 7. Maybe I will never have a child. So deep down, I do remember that I - (laughter) I wanted that pregnancy.
GROSS: (Laughter).
WESTHEIMER: So I - there is no question that I already knew this man is going to be the father of my daughter. I'm going to marry him. I did not know that once she was a year old, we would separate. That, I did not know. I thought, like everybody thinks, this is going to work out. But you see, somehow, things in life do work out because when I remarried, my husband adopted Miriam. I made sure that she always knew that she was adopted.
GROSS: Can I ask you how you learned the facts of life...
WESTHEIMER: Yes.
GROSS: ...Growing up in a home for children during World War II in Switzerland?
WESTHEIMER: Now, I knew already the facts of life because my parents had a book by Van de Velde, "The Ideal Marriage." I remember exactly what it looked like. And it was hidden. And I was very short. I was even shorter than now. But I do remember that I took a chair. I climbed up. I knew in that bookcase where that book was, and that's where I read. I thought, oh, my gosh, look where babies come from (laughter).
GROSS: Were you shocked? Was it upsetting to you to find that out?
WESTHEIMER: Yes. And then it was a girlfriend who taught me about menstruation, in the bushes. An older girl, also in Frankfurt - before I went to Switzerland, my mother and grandmother said, we have to tell you some things before you go. I said, don't talk to me. I know it all (laughter). I didn't know it all, but that's what I thought, I knew it all.
GROSS: From what you had learned about sexuality when you were young, what were your expectations? I mean, did you think that it was going to be something that was, like, extraordinary, something that was going to be frightening?
WESTHEIMER: I fortunately already in Switzerland had that boyfriend, and we discovered wonderfully early in life about - not about sexual intercourse, but about kissing and hugging and necking and touching. So I knew there is a - there are some good things coming. I didn't know I would be Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist. But I knew that there were some good things in store.
GROSS: Well, Dr. Ruth, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
WESTHEIMER: Thank you, Terry. Thank you very much.
BIANCULLI: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, recorded in 1996 - she died last week at the age of 96. Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new summer blockbuster "Twisters." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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