Sextant Vol. XIII No. 1

SEXTANT The Journal of Salem State College

Celebrating 150 Years of Teaching Fall 2004

Volume XIII, No. 1

president’s

Note President Nancy D. Harrington ’60 Vice President of Academic Affairs Diane Lapkin Editor Margaret Vaughan, Psychology Editorial Board Susan Case, Biology Heidi Fuller, Sport, Fitness and Leisure Richard Lewis, Art Eleanor Reynolds, Library Ellen Rintell, Education Leah Ritchie, Management John Scrimgeour, English Stephen Young, Geography Design & Production of Volume XIII, No. 1 Susan McCarthy, Publications Joyce Rossi-Demas, Publications Photography Kim Mimnaugh, Art Department Sesquicentennial Co-Chairs Cynthia McGurren ’83 James Stoll SSC Foundation Board Officers Jacob S. Segal, President Wayne Gates ’76, Vice President Deirdre A. Sartorelli ’83, Vice President Joan Boudreau, Treasurer Janet Robinson, Secretary

Sextant is published by the faculty of Salem State College.

Opinions expressed by writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect College policy.

Copyright © 2004 Salem State College 352 Lafayette Street Salem, MA 01970-5353 Telephone: 978-542-6253 Email: sextant@salemstate.edu www.salemstate.edu/sextant/

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this issue of Sextant (Vol. XIII, No. 1). The report two years ago of the magazine’s ill health appears to have been premature. Sextant, it turns out, has life-support. The Salem State College’s Sesquicentennial Committee, and its two co-chairs, Cynthia McGurren and James Stoll, came to its rescue. With their help, we were given a commitment by the Salem State College Foundation to publish this issue and one more next year. Once before, the Foundation lent a helping hand in funding this magazine. It now appears that may have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

It is also an honor to introduce this issue of Sextant, an issue commemorating the College’s 150th anniversary. From the beginning, this institution has emphasized the cornerstones of public higher education: art, music, literature, and both the natural and social sciences. It is through them that students have come to learn about the world in which they live, and how to be more effective with the lives they have chosen. While both the world and Salem Normal School have changed over the last one hundred and fifty years, art, music, literature, and the sciences have remained constants. They are the sources of our noble cause, teaching, and they are the sources of the articles that appear in this issue.

And what better way to commemorate this anniversary than to examine the lives of some of our distinguished alumni (Charlotte Hawkins Brown, p. 20; and Hope Hilton, p. 38), the life of a resident scholar at the turn of the twentieth century (Sumner Webster Cushing, p. 42) and the life of an artist, who in the nineteen-fifties added a bit of distinction to the walls of the College (Philip von Saltza, p. 12). In this spirit of commemoration, it was also decided early on that this issue required a time line (p. 32) that would highlight notable events that occurred during the last one hundred and fifty years on campus and on the world stage. If the time line evokes reflection and reminiscing, it has done its job.

Of course, celebrating the past has a way of making one think about the future. What will the next one hundred and fifty years bring? While it is impossible to make any predictions with any amount of certainty, three additional essays published here speak to future threats to our way of life: the growing gap between rich and poor nations (p. 29); religious wars fought on city streets that take the lives of children (p. 56); and the deleterious effects of global warming (p. 50). Fortunately, Salem State College and other institutes of higher learning continue to produce educated men and women who will become leaders in their professions and their communities. As such, they remain some of the most important institutions in the world because they lay the foundation for our futures.

—Nancy D. Harrington ’60 President, Salem State College

Cover Photographs by Kim Mimnaugh: All photographs are objects found on the campus. Each represents a cornerstone of education: painter’s pallet (art), cello (music), the complete works of Shakespeare (literature), and an early microscope (sciences).

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Connecting Generations Through the Memory of the Second World War Christopher E. Mauriello and Roland J. Regan Jr.

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Ill-Fitting Shoes Julie Whitlow

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Climate Change and its Effect on Tropical Rain Forests: A Case Study from Malaysia Lisa Delissio

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Child Victims of War Yvonne Vissing

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Philip von Saltza and His Maritime Art at Salem State College Jay McHale

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Charlotte Hawkins Brown: What One Salem Alumna Could Do Gwendolyn Rosemond

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Alma Mater of Our Hearts: Myth, Memory, and Salem State College Nancy Schultz and Dane A. Morrison

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Sumner Webster Cushing: A Geographer for All Ages Theodore S. Pikora

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Over Niagara, Explication de Texte, Hypotenuses, and Papers Due Today Ann Taylor

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Alma Mater Theresa Hickey

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The Fire Within John Volpacchio

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Connecting Generations Through the Memory of the Second World War Christopher E. Mauriello and Roland J. Regan Jr. Forgotten and Discovered

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n the summer of 1995, while at my mother’s townhouse, I came upon a box of over two hundred photos that my father, Roland Regan Sr., had taken during his service in the Second World War between 1943 and 1945. As I studied these old photographs, I began to feel a commitment to my deceased father and his generation to make them public so that others could share this wartime experience.

For the next several summers, I began to arrange my father’s photos so that they could be viewed and preserved for later generations. In 1997, I contacted several publishers while simultaneously contacting several universities and colleges about the possibility of donating copies of these rare photographs to their

history departments. To my surprise, the response from both publishers and universities was very encouraging. And, to my delight, organizing the collection of photos proved to be a labor of love as I selected, scanned, and edited hundreds of original photos.

I was also teaching several courses in the School of Business at Salem State College during this time. It was the summer of 1998, when I contacted the history department at the College to notify them of my intentions to donate a digitized, musically-scored CD-ROM version of my father’s photos. The message was forwarded to Professor Christopher Mauriello, the modern European historian for the department. Unknown to me, Chris had also made his own discovery of rare documents. In 1993, while a Ph.D. candidate in history at Brown University, he came upon a box of letters in the basement of his aunt’s home in Massachusetts.

Upon reading one of the letters, he realized that they were his father’s wartime letters written to his family back in Boston between 1943 and 1945.

As a side project to his research on modern European history, he began to read, transcribe, annotate, and historically contextualize the over two hundred and fifty letters he discovered. Like me, he too felt a deep commitment to his father and the war generation to make these letters public so that others could benefit from these unique insights into history.

With these shared discoveries and commitments, we met to introduce ourselves and review each other’s collecPrivate Roland J. Regan Sr., left, in 1943 and Private Frederick J. Mauriello, right, in 1944.

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Kim Mimnaugh

Captured here are the many photos, some military regalia (good conduct medal, combat engineer belt buckle, and 309 th Artillery insignia patch), German marks, and other memories that both Roland and Frederick accumulated during their thirty-four months of service.

tions. We immediately recognized the powerful parallels between the images and the words contained in both collections. Both of our fathers were sons of European immigrants that settled and lived in the Boston area, and both volunteered for active service in the U.S. Army in 1943.

Between the summer of 1944 and 1945, they both experienced similar paths in combat against the German Wehrmacht.

Roland Regan was in the First Army, 348th Army Engineering Combat Battalion, Company A and Frederick Mauriello was in the 309th Field Artillery Battalion 78th Division.

Parallel Lives and Circumstances

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ike many Americans yesterday and today, Roland and Frederick were children of immigrants. Roland James Regan was born in Lynn, Massachusetts on December 8, 1922. He was the son of two Irish immigrants, Margaret (Lombard) and Patrick J. Regan from Mallow and Skibbereen respectively in County Cork, Ireland. He was the second of four children (Vincent, Roland, Peg, and Robert). Patrick was a railway car operator for the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway Company while Margaret worked at home raising her children. Rollie, as he was known among his family and friends, was raised

during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.

Frederick Joseph Mauriello was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 20, 1921.

He was the first child and only son of Eugene and Angelina Mauriello, both immigrants from Avellino, Italy. They entered the United States with millions of other southern European immigrants during the first decades of the twentieth century. Freddy, as he was called in family circles, was followed by three sisters: Edna, Marie, and Dorothy. The Mauriello family initially settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts. In 1937, they moved to the Beachmont section of Revere, Massachusetts.

The first defining experience of Roland and Frederick’s young lives was the Great Depression. The Regan’s were a blue-collar working-class family and were fortunate to avoid most of the severe economic and psychological 3

hardships of the Great Depression.

During this turbulent economic period, Patrick was able to maintain his job at the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway.

However, in January of 1940, Roland’s father became ill with tuberculosis and was hospitalized most of that time until his death Roland (on-leave) and Chet Whitten (his future in January 1942. brother-in-law) in October 1943 before During this peRoland left for Great Britain with the th riod, Roland left 348 Combat Engineering Battalion.

Lynn English High School, and, with his brother Vincent, helped support his mother and two younger siblings. Roland initially worked as many as four different jobs during the course of a week to help make ends meet. Between 1940 and 1942, his work included being a railroad fireman and a welder at the Quincy Naval Shipyards in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Pickett, Virginia, and bridge building and repair at Camp Myles Standish in Taunton, Massachusetts. During his three months there, the 348th assembled several pontoon bridges across the Merrimack River. On October 30, 1943, the 348th boarded trains from Camp Standish and headed toward Halifax, Nova Scotia. On November 2, the battalion set sail to England on the refitted luxury liner the HMS Mauritania. Six days later the battalion arrived in Liverpool, England, among the first American troops to arrive in this part of Great Britain. By early December, the 348th had moved to the seaport town of Swansea, Wales, and continued preparation for the invasion of continental Europe. It was here that Roland fine-tuned his amateur interests in photography and began taking photographs.

Frederick and his family were also profoundly affected by the Great Depression, which lasted in the United States from 1929 to America’s entry into the war in 1941. The parents and children all worked various jobs and pooled their resources to support the family during those dire economic years. Frederick worked delivering newspapers.

Similar to an entire generation, Roland and Frederick’s world views were shaped by the social experience of the Depression. It reinforced and deepened their commitment to the importance of family, faith, and friendship, but it also created a lifelong focus on job security and social position.

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The Regan family in the spring of 1941. From left to right: Patrick, Roland, Vincent, Robert, Peg, and Margaret.

The second defining experience for Roland and Frederick was America’s entry into the Second World War. It was this experience that forged a common generation.

Frederick graduated from Revere High School in 1939. Following his childhood fascination with radio, he attended Massachusetts Radio School and received his radio operator’s license. Using this technical background, he worked in the Charlestown Navy Yard installing radio towers and radio systems on a variety of naval vessels.

With the United States’s entry into the Second World War, Frederick joined the army in 1942 and was sent to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) in electrical engineering at the University of Connecticut.

The second defining experience for Roland and Frederick was America’s entry into the Second World War. It was this experience that forged a common generation. In January 1943, Roland joined the United States Army. In June 1943, he was assigned to the First Army, 348th Engineering Combat Battalion. Roland received specialized training in welding and metallurgy while stationed at Camp

With the army’s need for well trained men, Frederick was soon sent to join the 309th Field Artillery Battalion as a radio operator directing artillery fire and was then quickly sent to Le Havre, France. While he wrote letters home to his parents and sisters throughout his military experience, the letters from the autumn of 1944 to the end of 1945, during the height of combat and occupation, are the ones that were most evocative.

Wartime Images and Words

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oland’s photographs and Frederick’s letters document the lives of ordinary men in extraordinary times and how these young men’s war experiences changed them as individuals. Like their lives, their perceptions of Europe, the war, the enemy, civilians, their comrades, and ultimately the meaning of victory over Nazi Germany, changed in remarkably similar ways.

The subjects of the photographs and the contents of the letters document these changes. During the fall of 1943, Roland photographed his comrades in the 348th in Wales as they trained for an undetermined invasion of continental Europe. These early photographs reveal the immediate sense of bonding between young American soldiers in a foreign land. They also reveal the sense of awe about the amassing of weapons of war—artillery, fighter bombers, and trucks. Roland does not yet know that he was documenting the secret massive buildup of Allied forces that will be part of the D-Day invasion in June 1944.

a closeness that sustains him throughout the war. On Easter Sunday in April 1943, he writes: “Today is Easter, the first Easter that I have been separated from my family. I am a little bit sad.” He continues, “Even though I am many miles away from Home, I know what is happening home… I know Ma. She went to church, prayed for the unification of the family, came home and cooked a meal that can not be matched.” 1 But his thoughts are also on his comrades in arms and the mission they are about to embark upon. On Memorial Day 1944, he conveys a sense of somber unity among his fellow soldiers at a service: “Each soldier knew that out of the gathering there would be hundreds, and maybe thousands of the boys would be killed before the next Memorial Day.” Once both men saw combat, Roland on D-Day and Frederick at the Battle of the Bulge, their respective records reflect a dramatic change in focus, interests, and attitudes.

Roland’s dramatic photographs taken immediately after the D-Day invasion reflect his sense of the historic importance and purpose of the Allied war effort. He chose to photograph combat engineers unloading huge transports on Omaha Beach and officers of the 348th relaxing after

But there are also poignant glimpses into the psychology of a young man thousands of miles from home. He chose to photograph a Catholic mass on Christmas Eve. The photo conveys both the sense of continuity with Roland’s Roman Catholic Irish upbringing and a sense of loneliness in not being able to share this occasion with family and friends. Once the hectic pace of war began in June of 1944, there are far fewer photographs of such quiet reflection.

Similarly, Frederick’s early letters illustrate a sense of bonding with his comrades and emotional attachment to his life, faith, and family back in the states. He is particularly close to his mother, Angelina, Above: Roland and his friends from the 348th holding captured German lugars and the 348th insignia patch.

Right: Fred proudly sporting a top hat in Germany in April of 1945; a letter from Paris to his family; and his dog tag.

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As to be expected during time of combat and constant troop movement, there were numerous spelling and grammatical errors in the collection of letters that Frederick sent home from the battlefield. The authors have left the original errors intact in order to preserve the integrity of the historical sources.

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As the war wears on, Roland’s camera brings the grim realities of the “total war” concept vividly home. Clockwise from top left: the 348th liberated the Woebbelin concentration camp in April 1945. The photo shows several locals helping to bury victims of the camp. Next, a heavily bombed Cologne, Germany. Finally, a graveyard of purposely destroyed Messerschmitt ME-109F fighter planes and a Heinkel bomber.

commanding their men in the essential role of supplying advancing Allied troops from the beaches to the inland of France. His photos also illustrate his sense of connection to history. In one photo, he lends his camera to a buddy to take a candid shot of him standing in front of the train station at Chateau Thierry, the town where thousands of U.S. soldiers fought, died, and were buried during the First World War. The photographs from this period also show Roland on leave in Paris. The soldier is a tourist in one of Europe’s most dramatic and exciting cities. Pictures of Roland and his buddies of the 348th enjoying the café culture and street shopping of Paris, punctuate the collection of war photos.

But there are also photographs of the destructive realities of war. There are photos of wasted hulks of destroyed transports on the beach and makeshift Allied cemeteries for the thousands killed storming the beaches of Normandy. As his unit repaired roads and bridges along with the Allied advance, he took time to photograph destroyed German tanks, displaced civilians, and leveled towns in France, Belgium, and Germany.

Roland standing in front of the railroad station at Chateau-Thierry, France.

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The tone and substance of Frederick’s letters also change to reflect the stark realities of combat, destruction, and death. In late November 1944, Frederick’s unit arrived in war-torn Belgium. Upon seeing the destructive effect of war on the civilian population, he writes to his sister Marie: “You don’t know how lucky you are in the U.S. to escape the ravishes of war. The sight of whole villages leveled and deserted has a depressing effect. The roads are lined with masses of steel that were once tanks and trucks.”

Like Roland, Frederick also had leave from the military to enjoy Paris. The letters reveal a wide-eyed young man who probably had very limited travel experience outside of Revere and Boston. In October of 1944, he writes his parents from Paris: “Its true what they say about Paris.

Everything that you have ever heard is true. Its strictly out of this world… There are more stores than you would think... Its like Tremont Street, but extending for miles.”

But like Roland, Frederick’s focus immediately returned to war after leaving Paris. His letters from the Battle of the Bulge reveal the anxiety and fear felt by soldiers seeing their first combat and the mechanized ferocity of the German Wehrmacht. The letters gain a sense of immediacy as the 309th Field Artillery Battalion faced the German counteroffensive on the northernmost flank of the “bulge” outside the border towns of Simmerath, Lammersdorf, and Kesternich. Frederick was directing artillery fire from the church steeples as U.S. and German armies exchanged occupation of the towns in fierce firefights. On December 25 of that year, he writes to the whole family, “Today I just one of the millions of boys who are doing their best to give us all a better world to live in. We are going to do IT.” Such confidence evaporates as the German counteroffensive pushes his unit back at the height of the Bulge campaign in late January. He writes this brief, but obviously fearful

letter to his mother: “I am running out of words, I just like to say is pray hard, your as near to God as any person is.”

By February 1945, both Roland’s photographs and Frederick’s letters change to reflect the emerging confidence of Allied successes as they steadily advance eastward into the heartland of Germany. Roland chose to photograph the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge including demolished German tanks, the rubble of the cities of Düran and Cologne, a destroyed and abandoned Luftwaffe airfield, and the rebuilding of roads and bridges by his unit of combat engineers.

During this period, he also had the first opportunity to photograph the defeated German army and civilians formerly under German military occupation. There are photographs of German soldiers surrendering individually and in large groups as the Allies pushed into Germany. Roland’s photos capture the sense of despair and utter defeat of the captured soldiers. There are also several moving photographs of German civilians, especially children as they pose with members of the 348th Battalion.

Roland’s unedited photographs provide a first-hand account of the horrors that awaited Allied soldiers entering these camps for the first time.

Most important, there is a series of photographs documenting the historic meeting of U.S. and Soviet forces on the Elbe River in late April and early May 1945. Clearly, Roland knew the historic importance of this joining of armies over a defeated Germany. There are photographs including Roland ferrying the U.S. 82nd Airborne across the Elbe River and posed group photos of U.S. and Soviet Red Army troops in the vicinity of the river.

Day three of the Allied invasion of Normandy on Omaha Beach, where the allies would bring some twenty thousand troops, two hundred tanks, and hundreds of needed vehicles to begin the push toward Berlin.

and the occupied territories, and the assignment of blame on everyday German civilians. “The roads are lined with strings of slave laborers. The majority of them are Russian.

Even the German civilians know its the end and are getting on the American bandwagon. They are not causing Trouble.

They all deny they are Nazis and want to be forgiven…”

And later in April: “The people here changed parties overnight. They all love the country of the United States and all hate Hitler. To listen to them talk you would think that there were no Nazis in Germany… All the Germans want us to show Mercy. Its too late they should have thought it all over ten years ago.”

As the war came to a close in May 1945, and the occupation began, Roland’s photographs and Frederick’s letters once again change. The dominant images in the photograph collection become scenes of destruction and human suffering caused by the war. In a series of photos, Roland decided to photograph German children either displaced or orphaned by six years of conflict. In every town in Ger-

Frederick’s letters also reflect the change in attitude from fear to victory. But there was no gloating. While Frederick does write, often humorously, about everyday military life, he provided thoughtful commentary on wide ranging issues including the reality of the German war machine, the permeation of Nazi ideology into civilian German life, U.S. occupation policies of non-fraternization, the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, and finally, how the war had changed his life and the life of his generation.

In a letter dated February 2, 1945, Frederick attempts to peel back the illusions inherent in Nazi ideology regarding the invincibility of their superior soldiers: “We have fought the Germans in the Siegfried Line and beaten them… We have captured over 500 hundred ‘Nazi Supermen?’ They look pretty poor to me.” By April 1945, he begins to grapple with the nature of Nazi rule in Germany

The Woebbelin concentration camp clearly showing the victims of Nazi atrocities.

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Victory Day, May 8, 1945

German youth, both starving and parentless, appear in great numbers as the 348th and the Allies move further into Germany.

many, children and their families greeted U.S. soldiers while seeking food, candy, or money.

The photographs from this period also contain some of the most disturbing images from the war. In a very rare series of photographs, Roland bears witness to a part of the Nazi Holocaust. In early May, he photographed the Allied liberation of the Woebbelin concentration camp outside of the city of Ludwigslust, Germany. This relatively small camp was a satellite for the infamous Buchenwald death camp. Roland’s unedited photographs provide a first-hand account of the horrors that awaited Allied soldiers entering these camps for the first time.

Frederick’s letters, too, focus on the destruction and human suffering caused by war. The letters from late April through the summer of 1945 are some of the most poignant and reflective letters in the collection. In one letter, Frederick struggles to come to terms with German perceptions of U.S. soldiers: “The people in this time are unfriendly. 50% despise us, the other 50% fear us. When we walk down the streets little children of two and three go running into their house… I guess after a while they will find out that we aren’t as bad as the Nazis say.” Frederick’s reflection on the complexities of war, victory, and occupation are most evident in the letter he composes on VE Day, May 8, 1945. In probably the most poignant letter in the collection, Frederick writes to his mother about loss and memory:

Dear Ma, Today the war in Europe is over! All over the world people are celebrating.There are bands, speeches and parties. The civilian population has gone mad with the spirit of victory.

Everyone is yelling ‘We won the war.’

Everyone is enthused except we who did the fighting.The boys are quiet and subdued. No speeches, no wild shouts or wild singing. Its quiet.We have waited too long for victory to come.

The battle for victory was fought weeks ago. Peace is merely an after climax. …Today should be a day of prayer instead of revelry. Prayers to God. Prayers of Thanksgiving.Thank God that so many of us have been spared. Thank God the war never touched our homeland. Prayers for all of those who gave all to their country.

Those whose ears and eyes have been closed by the touch of death. May God have mercy on their souls. Remember them in your wild reveling.

The war has cost an unimaginable amount of money. More than that is has cost lives and years of youth that can never be replaced. As I write my mind is bringing me back to my high school days.The days when the big struggle was football.The boys of that team will never gather together as a unit to talk over past glories.They played the game too hard in the fields of Belgium and France.We miss them.They will only run and play in past memories. The game is over for them.They didn’t even see the last touchdown drive. No, merely put the names in gold in the towns and cities’ memorials.

Go on and celebrate. Tonight I live in recollections and memories.Tomorrow we continue to train for the task lying before us.

Fred

Generations, Memory and History

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t was not long after Frederick wrote this letter that the war was truly over for him and Roland. Neither were career military men and both anxiously awaited discharge. They returned from Berlin to Boston: Roland in October 1945 and Frederick in January 1946.

The once proud German Wehrmacht shown surrendering to the Allies in non-mechanized modes of transportation.

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Roland returned to his family in Lynn. During his army stint, Roland was sending home three of every four of his checks to help his mother. He would continue to support his mother until her death in 1950. He returned to his prewar job as a welder at the Quincy naval shipyard. In July of 1948, Roland was appointed as a firefighter to the Lynn fire department, where he would spend the next thirtythree years of his life. During this period he met, dated, and married Mary Teresa Hunt, a nurse from Roscommon, Ireland. They would have three children: Roland Jr., Paulette, and Sheila, and four grandchildren. He would retire from the Lynn fire department as a lieutenant in July 1981. Roland passed away after a lengthy illness on November 15, 1989.

Brokaw’s characterization of them as “the greatest generation,” there is little doubt that much of what has transpired since 1945, both nationally and internationally, is the result of the Second World War and the consciousness formed by the war generation. The stories of Roland Regan and Frederick Mauriello provide a unique lens to see how this influential generation formed its world view, its understanding of international relations and war, its perceptions of good and evil, its understanding of American citizenship, and its conception of America’s mission in the world.

In the United States after the events of September 11, 2001, these again are the foremost questions in the minds of a new generation of Americans. Clearly, new ideas and values are being formed amidst a new war or, more accurately, a new type of war. Is there anything that we can learn from the Second World War generation? How did they respond to national challenges and altered international circumstances? How did these changes transform the values of the United States?

While the answers to these questions are in the future, one thing is clear: it is up to the present generation to interpret the previous generation’s response to the challenges of their time. We can learn from them, but only if we accurately preserve what they saw, recorded, photographed, wrote, and shared with us.

Editor’s Note: In 2001, Purdue University Press published Christopher E. Mauriello and Roland J. Regan Jr.’s book From Boston to Berlin: A Journey Through World War II in Images and Words. All proceeds from the sale of this book go directly to the Boston to Berlin Scholarship Fund, established by the authors, to provide funds for two students from the Lynn and Revere communities to attend Boston College. For more information, please visit www.bostontoberlin.org.

Roland’s photo captures the relaxed attitude of several of his 348th comrades at the base of a statue to Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of the Second Reich.

Frederick returned to his family in Revere. Like many veterans, he participated in the G.I. Bill and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Boston College in 1951 and an M.B.A. from Northeastern University. In 1955, he married Jacqueline Santos, a R.N. from Massachusetts.

That same year, he began a thirty-year career with IBM in New York. Frederick and Jacqueline raised five children in Millbrook, New York. He and his wife have nine grandchildren to enjoy.

Kim Mimnaugh

While the story of these two remarkably parallel lives ends here, the meaning of the story does not. Roland’s images and Frederick’s words compel later generations to reflect upon the role that this generation played in the history of the United States and the forging of a uniquely American identity. While one may take issue with Tom

Kim Mimnaugh

Roland’s images and Frederick’s words compel later generations to reflect upon the role that this generation played in the history of the United States and the forging of a uniquely American identity.

Photos courtesy of the John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Christopher E. Mauriello received his Ph.D. in history from Brown University in 1995. He holds an M.A. in history from Fordham University and a B.S. from Siena College. Chris specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century European history. His research interests include modern European cultural history, the two World Wars, and the Holocaust. He has published in the field of European history and information technology, and has presented numerous papers at professional conferences. Currently, he is an associate professor of history at Salem State College.

Roland J. Regan Jr., Esq. holds an A.B. from Boston College, an A.M. from Harvard University, and both M.B.A. and J.D. from Suffolk University. He served as a U.S. Air Force officer with the NATO/AWACS program, attaining the rank of captain. Roland later served as Counsel for Hercules Aerospace/Simmonds, while serving later as a senior associate, and currently as a principal, respectively, with the management consulting firms of Harbridge House and ProMonde, Inc. Roland is an adjunct professor at Salem State College and Harvard University.

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P O E T R Y

Ann Taylor Over Niagara

Courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

We share the proper name, and you too were a teacher . . . but here likeness ends, because you, admitting to forty-three, probably sixty, and tired of addition, got harnessed into a four-and-a-half-foot white Kentucky oak hooped barrel, rocked through Niagara’s upper rapids, and hurtled yourself over the Horseshoe Falls, a hundred and seventy feet straight down.

In seventeen minutes, you emerged with the fame you sought, forever the first of few to dare the dive, the dash on spuming rocks.

“No one ought ever do that again!” you warned, quaking, propped across a ramp, but thereafter, you weren’t a fulltime occupant, nameplate drilled to office 104.

Though poor, you were Queen of the Mist, placed atop all daredevil lists and buried among stunters—even there—unique.

First published in Free Focus under the title “Homage to Annie Taylor.”

Explication de Texte The poet’s not really hiding meanings, I say, not hopping through a perfectly plain yard, trickily slipping treats among the shrubs, under the swing seat, beside the birdbath, or within, to the back of the dark closet, beneath the bed-pillow (even perversely, into the carton, right with the farm-fresh eggs.)

Margo Steiner

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Enticed to search, she says she feels like a child scurrying for secrets. He scrapes knees, displaces old cobwebs, fingers under things, stuffs his basket with prizes that could have been handier.

Worse, smart symbols, allusions, inventive links, measures, indirections, and figures make the cracking open so much tougher.

First published in Möbius:The Poetry Magazine.

Hypotenuses

Papers Due Today

Pythagoras would be pleased with the white night cats of Pujayo, ruling their diagonals across the village square.

From my balcony, I watch one draw straight to the red bracts of bougainvillea, another to the slapping cat door into the stable, and then one direct to the dusty dryness of the crumbling fountain.

Mountain mastiffs and hungry shepherds snore and growl, guarding cottage doors and waiting, hoping for one cat to swerve.

But no, time and death have taught them to ignore all deviations, itches, urges to hiss at sidelines.

They stop, survey, and with legs blurred into an almost-skirt, they dash to where no dogs can go, reaching their conclusions.

The paths they take are thin as their backbones, and aligned like the Cantabrian cordillera they know as home.

Pythagoras would love the elegance of their angles and those shadow lines that, were they drawn, would form a starry burst from a whirling hub of pure motion; he would know the lure of their purposes, the drive in direction, the life in striking true.

Receiver of decades of papers, for so many gradings and ranks, I’ve noticed passing-in patterns— hints of their likely returns.

Mostly the giving is simple, placement flat on the pile, face-up, aligned with the others— a probable “C,” at the least.

Sometimes, it’s flip and backhanded, a random pitch toward the desk, landing askew, a good riddance— a justly ominous tip.

Then comes the unstapled, tumbling down from aloft, leaves drifting in air— a re-write still in the making.

Placed with qualms among others, the caressed implies extra care, faith in the doted-on child— a surely expected success.

The shamed gets slipped to the bottom, pleading to please read me last, (when I’m burned out on words or exhausted)— a downfall almost assured.

First published in Arion.

Returning, I embrace all alike, steady my hand, but then wonder if my poker face gives away signs, betraying how they’ve been taken.

First published in InLand.

Kim Mimnaugh

Kim Mimnaugh

Ann Taylor is a professor of English at Salem State College where she teaches courses in writing, English literature, Arthurian literature, essays, and poetry. She has published textbooks on college composition and a collection of personal essays, Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing. More recently she has published poems in a variety of places, like Arion, The Dalhousie Review, and Ellipsis.

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Philip von Saltza and His Maritime Art at Salem State College Jay McHale

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n 1954, when Salem Teachers College, the old Salem Normal School, was about to celebrate its 100th Anniversary, the College consisted of less than six hundred students and one edifice, the stately arched Normal School Building, erected in 1896 for about $250,000. Now called the Sullivan Building, the Salem Evening Observer called it, “A splendid and well appointed structure.” It was in the design of a rugged Romanesque with Palladian windows, a style adopted for its strength, dignity, and utility. The building stood at the intersection of Loring Avenue and Lafayette Street, a majestic thoroughfare featuring a splendid parade of graceful elm trees quietly marching their way to downtown Salem. But things were about to change. A new president had arrived, and blueprints for the school’s expansion were on the drawing board.

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Dr. Frederick A. Meier became the College’s seventh president. He took office on April 1, replacing Dr. Edward A. Sullivan who had served as president since 1937. The College marked Meier’s Inauguration and its Centennial off campus on June 3, 4, and 5, 1954, in the nearby Saltonstall School gymnasium on Lafayette Street. It did not have a sufficient site to celebrate the occasion on campus.

Dr. Meier’s office was on the second floor of the Normal School Building. Its classrooms and corridors were replete with fancy art work displaying classical Greek and Roman motifs, continental scenery, photo engravings, and plaster of Paris bas-reliefs, characterizing some of the excellence of the European world. Meier, however, thought Salem Teachers College needed a new image. The College

Kim Mimnaugh

was redefining itself, preparing to become a full-fledged liberal arts institution, making ready to serve a new generation of Americans: post-Second World War baby boomers gearing up to enter college.

The Commissioning

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n the fall of 1954, Meier took a ride to downtown Salem where an artist had a studio at 125 Derby Street.

Ground was to be broken at the College for the construction of a new administration building with a library, auditorium, gymnasium, and common dining area. Meier felt the College needed some artwork to embellish the barren state architecture of the fifties and sixties with its cinderblock walls, plastic tile floors, and fluorescent lighting.

With this in mind, Meier went to the studio of Philip von Saltza and commissioned thirteen paintings that would reflect Salem’s rich maritime history of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Meier wanted nothing more to do with European decorative art, nor did he desire to conjure up images of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Instead, he wished to capture the history of the College’s host city, the port of Salem. The College’s seal featured a sailing vessel churning through choppy seas. Under it was the Latin motto Progredi (progress) and Meier stood for all of that.

He was at the helm, and the College was steering a course straight into the second half of the twentieth century.

Above: Crowninshield’s Wharf, 1806. Von Saltza’s rendition is based upon a 32” x 95” oil original signed “G. Ropes Junr.” hanging in the Mary and George Putnam Gallery of Marine Art at the Peabody Essex Museum.

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In a Sextant (Vol. V, No. 1, 1994) interview, Meier reports that von Saltza was at work at his easel and did not miss a stroke as he announced his price of one hundred dollars each for the paintings. Sextant editor Rod Kessler writes, “The paintings arrived serially that year atop von Saltza’s car. ‘It was the first attempt,’ President Meier recalled…, ‘to make the College look like something other than a factory.’ ”

guages in the Sullivan Building, and provides a splendid panoramic view of the wharf. In the style of Cornè and Ropes, all the von Saltza paintings have a dark bottom edge inscribed in white with a description of the subject. The most significant works in the collection depict Salem landmarks, and the ship paintings create, because of their size, a dramatic effect.

Practically everyone who attended or worked at Salem State College (re-named in 1969) would remember seeing these paintings, but few would know much about Philip von Saltza, the award-winning WPA post office muralist who created them and whose portraits and paintings are cherished today by those who own them.

Courtesy of Malcolm von Saltza.

Not to be confused with Art Professor Robert Larter’s mural, A Chronicle of Salem (1966), painted on the wall next to the main entrance of Meier Hall, the von Saltza murals are unsigned renditions of maritime paintings that he had seen not far from his studio Portrait of Philip von Saltza by artist and friend Waldo Peirce, in the Maritime Room of the Castine, Maine, 1938. nearby Peabody Museum on Essex Street. They are depictions of Salem merchant ships and Salem’s waterfront seen in original works by such artorn in Stockholm on March 9, 1885, Philip von ists as the Italian Michele Felice Cornè (1752-1845) and Saltza came to the United States at the age of six.

Salem’s George Ropes (1788-1819), who served as Cornè’s Philip’s father, Charles Frederick, known as Carl, apprentice. was of Swedish nobility and a painter. Philip’s grandfather, Philip von Saltza needed the money. Consequently, he Count Carl Anton von Saltza, served as chief of protocol did not have time to create original works. Instead, he for the Swedish court. In 1891, when Charles Frederick painted “original copies”—which explains why he did not von Saltza arrived in the United States with his wife, sign them—by mimicking works that he knew would add Wilhelmina Henrietta Stoopendaal, and their two children, a touch of antiquity to otherwise drab buildings being the country was in its Gilded Age of grandeur and induserected. Meier was known to have boasted that he stole trial wealth. Laisse faire capitalism was at its peak. Robber the paintings at the price he paid. barons were running amok, and millionaires seemed to be created overnight.

A total of thirteen von Saltza paintings eventually made Philip von Saltza’s youth and life in the United States their way to the College. These oil paintings, on 4’ x 8’ would turn out to be an almost classic example of an immasonite panels, were hung at different locations on cammigrant coping with the times and adjusting to the rapid pus as the College’s building boom continued through changes in America: all its giddiness and gloom, its pros1966. Five of the murals decorated the cinder block walls perity, its Great Depression, its wars, its changing social of the cafeteria in the basement of the Administration mores, and its technological advances. Through it all, von Building. One was in the president’s office in what is now Saltza adapted, adjusted, and evolved, sustained by a firm called Meier Hall, and two others made their way to the belief and respect for the American way of life.

Student Union building, now called the Ellison Campus Center, when it opened in 1966.

Philip von Saltza’s interest in painting springs from his father, Carl von Saltza. Before moving his family from SweOf the thirteen paintings, ten have been located. Eight den to the United States, Carl’s artwork consisted mostly are stored in the art bank on the fourth floor of the Library of genre paintings, and he was also a successful illustrator. and are scheduled for restoration. The other two hang at In the United States, Carl was best known for his portraits north campus. The ship, Balisarius, leaving Salem in 1805, of prominent people in public life and education. His porhangs on the wall in the middle of the stairway next to the trait of his daughter, Lisa, belongs to the National Museum telephone operator’s room in the Administration Building. of Sweden. In 1892, he exhibited six watercolors, ranging Von Saltza’s rendition of Derby Wharf, as it appeared in in price from thirty-five to seventy-five dollars, in a show 1790, hangs in the anteroom of the office of foreign lan-

The Artist as a Young Man

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Courtesy of Malcolm von Saltza.

at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibited A saddened Philip, age twenty, returned to Columbia there two more times. In 1899, Carl von Saltza left a teachand, in October 1909, was graduated with an engineer of ing position at the Fine Arts Museum in St. Louis to accept mines degree. A year later, he married Katherine Warren a position at Columbia University and the Columbia TeachHardenbergh at her parent’s home on 106 Central Park ers College.

West. She was attractive and came from an illustrious New Jersey family of bankers, judges, and politicians. MeanAs a result, Philip von Saltza, now age fourteen, landed while, in October 1911, Philip’s sister married a distinin New York City where he was enrolled in the Horace guished Columbia professor and Chaucerean scholar, Mann School, an exclusive and demanding preparatory George Philip Krapp. She was twenty-eight, and he was school with close ties to Columbia. As a young foreigner in forty. Philip’s portrait of him (circa 1930) hangs in room the United States, Philip’s father hired a tutor to help him 612 of Columbia’s Philosophy Hall. with his English. According to Philip’s son, Malcolm, the young Swede’s accent was the source of some taunting, and After their marriage, Philip and Katherine migrated to Philip was getting into fights. His father would have none of Arizona and Colorado for a couple of years where Philip it. After all, he would admonish, “The sons of noble gentleput his mining degree to use. While there, he also painted, men do not get into fights.” mostly landscapes, of Arizona’s vast wilderness, so radically difPhilip entered Columbia According to their children, the von ferent from his New York City University in the fall of 1904.

Their first son, Saltzas returned to NewYork City at the environment.

During his sophomore year, Carl, was born in the Arizona he played varsity football, as urging of his wife because “Philip did not Territory.

It became a state the a thin, six foot, two-inch next year.

The couple returned end. In those days, Ivy League like digging in dirt as a mining engineer.” to New York City where another football was the best in the nason, John, was born. tion, and Philip, though listed as a fullback, won a place on the second team of the 1905 According to their children, the von Saltzas returned Walter Camp All-American Squad. Then, in November, Coto New York City at the urging of his wife because “Philip lumbia voted to abolish football. The sport was supposed to did not like digging in dirt as a mining engineer.” In New build rugged young men of character, but it was out of conYork, Philip, like his father, could become an artist and trol, and players were being maimed. President Theodore pursue his true calling. There, Philip studied with the Art Roosevelt threatened to abolish it. Columbia’s ban on footStudents League. ball lasted a decade, but the ever-resilient Philip adapted to An article in the March 25,1917, edition of the New Columbia’s boycott by simply changing sports. He became York Times reports a show by thirty-two year old Philip, a member and captain of the varsity eight-man crew team. “… a collection of paintings made on the Mexican border Then misfortune struck. Both of Philip’s parents became

by Private Philip von Saltza of Squadron A. They show varill. Philip’s sister, Lisa (1884-1977) withdrew from Vassar ious phases of military life, from the drill to the morning to help her ailing parents. On December 7, 1905, their bath…. The drawing is spirited, and the effects of sunlight mother died in St. Luke’s Hospital. Their father, age fortyare cleverly caught; but the chief interest of the exhibition seven, died three is its illustrative days later. His quality.” obituary in the New York Times Mister von reports, “The fact Saltza, it seems, that his wife had had joined the died was kept U.S. Army Cavalry from Mr. von and was with Saltza while yet General “Black Jack” there was hope Pershing’s forces that he might rally. as they crossed the When all hope Mexican border that he would not in hot pursuit of live had gone, Poncho Villa and however, his son his gang. They did and daughter told not capture him. him. He seemed General Pershing then too ill to reallater went on to ize very keenly gain fame by leadPhilip von Saltza with his two sons from his first marriage, Carl and John, a friend, and Beata, Philip’s second wife, Castine, Maine in 1926. what they said.” ing the U.S. forces 15

Surviving Hard Times

in Europe during the First World War. Philip would serve under him there, too, as part of the 77th Division. ccording to the family, Philip suffered from depresPhilip’s unit was called both the “Metropolitan Division” sion after the war and spent time in a rest home and the “Statue of Liberty Division.” It had twenty-three in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He did manage, thousand men. According to the Division’s Web site, its however, to illustrate a book by his brother-in-law, George soldiers were “Manhattan taxi drivers, Bronx tailors, Krapp, America: The Great Adventure (1924). The book Brooklyn factory hands, Wall Street executives and first features several colored illustrations of maritime scenes. generation immigrants wearing the icon of freedom.” Philip During this time, Philip met Bertha Jane Miller, fourteen was one of the latter, a naturalized immigrant serving his years his junior, who worked at the rest home. Known as adopted country as a gas and engineering lieutenant in a Beata, she was one of five sisters born in Nova Scotia. In cavalry outfit that had been converted into an artillery unit October 1925, the couple married in a Swedenborgian to fight in the First World War. church on Kirkland Street in The 77th landed in France in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

When the stock market crashed on the early spring of 1918, and Soon after, they paid October 29,1929, the von Saltzas, like

by September 25, began fight$3,000 cash for a rundown ing in the Meuse-Argonne many Americans, lost most of their sea captain’s house overlookOffensive, which featured ing the Bagaduce River in investments.

According to their daughter, some of the heaviest battles of North Castine, Maine.

U.S. troops in the First World Karen, the thirties were a decade of They raised three children: War. Philip, however, was not Malcolm (b. 1926), Karen “not much money but great creativity” long among them. While on (b. 1930), and Erik (b. 1933). reconnaissance, he and a felfor Philip despite the Great Depression.

Philip also illustrated six low officer were captured by children’s books by Krapp the Germans. They were prethat Rand McNally published, and he studied art at the sumed dead. Rumor had it that an allied infantry unit had H.F. Field Studio in Ogunquit.

By 1928, Philip was exhibburied them. Philip spent the rest of the war in a German iting as an independent artist. prison camp. According to his son, Malcolm, a German intelligence officer, looked at his name and asked, “What When the stock market crashed on October 29,1929, are you doing fighting for the Americans?” Philip replied, the von Saltzas, like many Americans, lost most of their “Because I am an American.” He stayed in prison until the investments. According to their daughter, Karen, the thirArmistice was declared ties were a decade of “not much money but great creativon November 11, 1918. ity” for Philip despite the Great Depression. The family would spend their summers in Castine, sometimes withWhen Philip returned out their father, who moved around and lived wherever home, he found his wife, he could find work. The Castine house remained vacant Katherine, surrounded during the cold winter months when the family would by admirers. Their marrejoin Philip, usually in the Boston and North Shore areas. riage ended in divorce four years later. She During the summers, Waldo Peirce (1884-1970), the then moved with her famous artist and Key West drinking buddy of Ernest two sons, Carl and John, Hemingway, was a frequent visitor. Peirce was a graduate to northern California, of an Ivy League college, Harvard ’09, and a veteran of as far away from their the First World War. His portrait of Hemingway, shortly father as possible. She after the publication of To Have and Have Not, made the died in 1959. Within a cover of Time in 1937. Von Saltza’s children remember year, her granddaughter, great cheer and warm conversations with Peirce. In fact, Chris, daughter of Dr. the family spent two winters living in the home of Waldo John von Saltza, would Peirce in Bangor, Maine, when Philip painted Skating in be featured in Life, Maine.

Newsweek, and Time as In 1938, Peirce painted a portrait of Philip during their the first woman to swim summer vacation in Castine. Meanwhile, Philip’s work the four-hundred meter was being shown by the Macbeth Gallery in New York freestyle in under five City, and around this time, he painted Saturday Night Bath, minutes and the winner using his young daughter, Karen, as the model. The Metof three gold medals ropolitan Museum in New York owns the painting plus one silver in the 1st Lt. Philip W. von Saltza, 77th Statue that is cataloged as part of its permanent collection. of Liberty Division, France, 1918.

1960 Rome Olympics.

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Courtesy of Malcolm von Saltza.

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Kim Mimnaugh

Post office mural, Milford, New Hampshire: Painted in 1940 after von Saltza won a WPA commission, created to support public art and artists during the Depression. This mural of riverside activity was featured in the December 4, 1939 issue of Life magazine.

WPA Muralist and More

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he years 1939 and 1940 were magnificent for Philip.

His art was exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and Saturday Night showed at the Art Institute of Chicago. He also won a prize in New York City’s 48th Street Competition. Then Philip really hit pay dirt. He designed and painted four murals for United States post offices as part of the Work Projects Administration (WPA).

Created in 1935 by President Franklin Roosevelt, the WPA provided employment for people during the Depression. Until it was disbanded in June 1943, the WPA had employed over ten thousand artists. Post office art came under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department and work was awarded in blind competitions. The average commission, $725, covered all costs including installation.

Life magazine on December 4,1939, shows that Philip von Saltza was one of only two artists selected to paint a post office mural in two of the forty-eight states, Milford, New Hampshire and Schuyler, Nebraska. According to Life “prize winners were selected from among 1,475 designs… submitted anonymously….”

Philip’s mural in the Milford Post Office depicts happygo-lucky lumberjacks rolling logs while a fisherman waits patiently for his turn to use the river for some fly casting.

In the background, a farmer plows a meadow. Philip’s mural captures the richness of New Hampshire, its fertile fields and abundant fishing steams. Philip also won awards

to paint post office murals in St. Albans, Vermont, and in Williamston, North Carolina, the famous mural of the Wright brothers.

Von Saltza’s post office murals are like Gershwin tunes of the thirties. They are broad stroked, somewhat ethereal and impressionistic, yet they are grounded in a strong, Depression-driven, sociological reality—survival of the spirit.

In designing these four murals, the ever-resourceful Mr. von Saltza had won a total of $2,900 in WPA competitions, and in 1940, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibited his work.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, the family established winter residence in South Byfield, Massachusetts, a small rural town near Newburyport.

Having spent most of his First World War service in a prison camp, Philip wanted another “shot” at the Germans, but at fifty-six, he was too old for military service. Instead Philip had to settle for being an inspector of parts in area defense plants where he quickly found work because of his engineering degree. Philip exhibited again at the Art Institute of Chicago where his watercolor, Cock Fighting, was listed for sale at fifty dollars.

By 1945, monetary circumstances forced the von Saltzas to sell their beloved home in Castine and move to Salem, Massachusetts. In December 1946, they paid $8,500 for a house at 8 Carpenter Street, off historic Federal Street.

Not until the mid-fifties would Philip be secure enough as 17

Kim Mimnaugh

Merchant Ship Union, built in Salem in 1802. The position of the sails and the American flag bear an almost exact resemblance to a 18.5”x 25.75” watercolor attributed to Guiseppi Fedi. Set in Canton, this painting is good evidence of the global range of Salem’s trading vessels.

Von Saltza’s Artistry

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art,” yet they play upon the eyes as sweet old eighteenthcentury music plays upon the ears. Old Yankees who lived in the greater Salem area often gave his work as gifts to their friends. Today his paintings are considered collector’s items, and they embellish many mantels and numerous walls of homes in the Salem area.

Samuel Chamberlain, in his Salem Interiors: Two Centuries of New England Taste and Decoration (1950), features several old Salem houses decorated with von Salza’s maritime art and still lifes. The dining room in the Chapman-DavisSanders House (1805) on Summer Street was decorated on all four walls with a contiguous von Saltza mural, rendered, says Chamberlain “… in the manner of early paintings, showing American ships in Chinese ports.” Some of the wealthy could not afford to buy eighteenth and nineteenth century originals, even if they were available, so they patronized their favorite bohemian, the artist Philip von Saltza. They liked his renditions better than printed copies of the originals.

iding on his notoriety as a WPA muralist and painter, Philip was hired to decorate the Main Brace cocktail lounge in Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel, and, during his lifetime, several of von Saltza’s maritime paintings adorned the hotel.Years later, when it underwent restoration, the hotel gave some von Saltza paintings to the Peabody Essex Museum where they are in storage. His painting, The Sultan of Zanzibar welcomes the Ship Glide of Salem in port, 1823, also unsigned, hangs at the entrance to the hotel’s grand ballroom, a nice gesture to a man who contributed so much to the hotel’s maritime motif.

Because Philip often did not have the time to create originals, von Saltza’s name and reputation have received less publicity than they In the residence of Jeremiah and Abby Burns on Chestnut Street, this signed watercolor deserve. His maritime (1964) is von Saltza’s rendition of a 12.75”x 17”gouache original by Michele Cornè. paintings are generally It depicts the Salem vessel Mount Vernon in battle and illustrates von Saltza’s artistic classified as “decorative popularity in the homes of Salem’s historic Samuel McIntire District.

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Kim Mimnaugh

an artist to purchase a studio for $4,960 at 125 Derby Street in Salem. From there he eked out a living as an antique dealer, a furniture restorer, and a painter in a town known for its love of all three. Philip’s studio was on the first floor of a three-story Federalist building also known as the Rebecca Becket House. This is where he would meet President Meier and receive the commission to design the paintings for Salem Teachers College.

But Philip painted more than just maritime art. In Chamberlain’s book, the Butler House (1828) on Chestnut Street, features a drawing room with a flower painting above its marble mantel. Another floral painting hangs in the dining room. Chamberlain writes, it is “by the gifted Salem artist, Philip Von [sic] Saltza.”

The Captain George Nichols House (1816) on Federal Street, displays an original von

Saltza of seated figures in a pastoral setting.

are also part of twentiethcentury America’s legacy.

Philip struggled, adjusted, and evolved. His family called him “steady on” because he had no quit in him as he met life’s challenges.

Chamberlain’s book also contains photographs of the von Saltza house on Carpenter Street, which he writes, “strike a different note in Salem interiors, since most of its furnishings consist of ancestral pieces brought over from Sweden,” when Philip went to settle the family estate in 1925.

Kim Mimnaugh

Philip von Saltza lived a long and interesting life. In many ways, he was a prototypical American immigrant of his era.

Coming to the United States from Europe, learning a new language, attending college, winning All-American status in football, fighting for his country, enduring a prisoner of war camp, experiencing divorce, re-marrying, raising children, losing money during the Depression, seeing his granddaughter win three Olympic gold medals, and struggling to survive as an artist, are all part of his legacy. They

Kim Mimnaugh

Philip von Saltza’s colorful depictions of Salem’s mighty and world renowned sailing ships, like the Grand Turk, and his equally beautiful renditions of Salem’s wharfs At age seventy-six, during their days of tradPhilip sold his Derby ing prosperity, contribStreet studio, but he A cat nap in the studio of Salem artist Racket Shreve. The signed watercolor reads uted much to the artistic continued to work out “Philip von Saltza, Castine ’37.” Mr. Shreve also inherited other von Saltza memorabilia enrichment of the Colof his home. In 1974, he including two large maritime watercolors, which hang in his home on Chestnut Street. lege. Today, as a public submitted forty of his institution, Salem State photographs to be microCollege most likely owns the Philip von Saltza’s colorful depictions filmed by the curators at the largest collection of works by Smithsonian Institute in Washof Salem’s mighty and world renowned Philip von Saltza. ington. They hold them in the Lafayette Street is no longer sailing ships, like the Grand Turk, archives under the title, Philip lined with stately elm trees; von Saltza Photographs, 1926and his equally beautiful renditions of disease and the toll of time 1939. have ravaged them. Though still Salem’s wharfs during their days of By the late seventies, Philip grand boulevard, Lafayette and his wife, Beata, were in trading prosperity, contributed much to aStreet is now lined with maple ill health and suffered from a trees.

Salem State College, the artistic enrichment of the College. cranky marriage. Their children however, has withstood the test decided to “divorce them.” of time. No longer one campus, The house on Carpenter Street was sold in 1979, and Philip the College has more than ten thousand undergraduate and went to Camden, Maine, to live with his son, Malcolm. graduate students enrolled in its day and evening programs.

Beata moved to Gainesville, Florida, to live with her daughDuring its expansion years, when President Meier was ter, Karen. asked how the College was progressing, he would reply, A combination of emphysema and pneumonia forced “The ship is steady and on course.” That President Meier Philip into a nursing home in Camden, Maine, where he had the insight to hire award-winning WPA muralist and died in his sleep on January 21,1980, just shy of his ninetyartist, Philip von Saltza, to make the voyage aesthetically fifth birthday. His wife, Beata, age eighty, died of coronary more pleasing with his renditions of Salem’s mighty heart disease two weeks later, on February 4. merchant ships and prosperous wharfs, is something of which Salem State College can be proud as it celebrates Both Philip and Beata von Saltza were cremated and its sesquicentennial in 2004, fifty years after the first von their children scattered their ashes in the Bagaduce River, Saltza painting arrived on campus. near the old beloved summer home in North Castine, Maine.

Jay McHale is a professor of English at Salem State College where he has taught since 1966. On the day of his interview for a teaching position, he remembers walking through the Commons dining area and being amazed and impressed by von Salza’s maritime art. When asked to write this article, he responded with great enthusiasm. A sailor for thirty-one years, he sold his thirty-foot sailboat in 1999.

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Charlotte Hawkins Brown: What One Salem Alumna Could Do Gwendolyn Rosemond Do not argue with or contradict the teacher in class. If you think that she has made a mistake, wait until the hour is over and discuss it with her quietly at the desk.

— excerpt from The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear,

by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, 1941.

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ith the exception of Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, and Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, higher education scholarship has generally overlooked the accomplishments of African Americans, especially women, who labored to educate their people at the beginning of the twentieth century. In fact, Thomas Woody’s seminal study, A History of Women’s Education in the United States (1929, 1966), excludes any references to black women. At the time of its first publication, African American women had been involved with institutions of higher education for over sixty years.

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black women scholars) and in texts that occasionally grow out of those studies. Frequently, research on the education of freed men, women, and their children focuses upon the scores of white women who ventured south to teach after the Civil War. These women, sponsored by northern philanthropic and religious organizations rightly deserve recognition for their work under conditions discouraging at best and dangerous at worst. Nevertheless, the untold stories of African Americans who taught in backwoods’ hovels with only their students’ successes to reward them are essential chapters in the history of education in the United States.

Much of what has been written about these practitioners of race uplift is tucked away in dissertations (usually by

Charlotte Hawkins Brown, alumna of Salem Normal School, ’02, a driven force in African American education

for over fifty years. Resilient, purposeful, on occasion audacious, she was one of the unheralded black women whose lives centered around the education of African Americans.

Yet no comprehensive scholarship on her accomplishments and on the forces that influenced her occurred until the publication of Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute: What One Young African American Woman Could Do

by Charles Wadelington and Richard Knapp, 1999.

Co-authors Wadelington and Knapp hold extraordinary credentials to raise Charlotte Hawkins Brown to her appropriate place in the history of education. Both are associates of the historic sites section of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Wadelington, now retired, was a minority interpretations specialist for all twentyseven North Carolina historic sites. In this position, he researched African American and Native American history in North Carolina to ensure its accuracy and inclusion in all of the state’s historical sites. Knapp is the curator of research for the North Carolina Division of Historic Sites.

He oversees research for all historic sites in the state and worked on both the book and on the creation of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Memorial.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown, alumna of Salem Normal School, ’02, a driven force in African American education for over fifty years. Resilient, purposeful, on occasion audacious, she was one of the unheralded black women whose lives centered around the education of African Americans.

Conscious of the intersection of biography and history, Wadelington and Knapp ensure that readers understand the context that informed Charlotte’s life and work. Whereas the emancipation of more than three million enslaved people occurred twenty years before Brown’s birth in 1883, freed men and women, North and South, faced indefensible and insurmountable obstacles in their efforts to obtain equality. The political gains of Reconstruction were repealed or unraveled through fear and intimidation. Opportunity for education and economic progress far exceeded the reach of the black sharecropper, domestic, or laborer, positions in which nearly all southern blacks found themselves. The first Great Migration of blacks to the North (1877) was yet in its infancy. The Ku Klux Klan, gaining authority and influence from 1882 to 1891, lynched 732 African Americans, a figure that would rise to 1,124 in the following decade according to U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Meticulously researched by Wadelington and Knapp, Charlotte Hawkins Brown thoroughly portrays a life and a

culture seldom referenced in mainstream history books.

The authors poured over primary sources, conducted interviews with alumni, faculty, and supporters of Palmer Memorial Institute, and incorporated resources from research centers, archives, photograph collections, and libraries — including the Elizabeth Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College where Brown’s papers are housed. Over seventy pages of notes and bibliography provide the reader not only with documentation but also leads for further study. Eminently readable, at home on the bedside table as well as in the classroom, this book delights and informs scholars as well as the casual reader. That this book is a labor of love is evident throughout.

Charlotte’s birth in the same vicinity where her grandparents had been slaves placed her in the midst of a historical drama played out all across the nineteenth-century South. Family history held that light skinned Rebecca Hawkins, Charlotte’s grandmother, was a descendant of John Hawkins, the Elizabethan English navigator. Rebecca’s father was widely believed to be John Davis Hawkins, son of a planter and brother of North Carolina governor William Hawkins.

Rebecca’s freeborn child, Caroline Francis, or Carrie, found favor with her mother’s white, unmarried half-sister, Jane Hawkins, and lived with her for a time. Jane encouraged Carrie to hold high values and to become a “colored lady” (although few whites believed such could exist) and instilled in Carrie the best of upper-class white cultural values. Carrie broke Jane’s heart by giving birth to Charlotte without the benefit of marriage or even acknowledging the father. Carrie, a devout Christian in spite of her lapse, returned to her mother’s home.

Thus, Charlotte Hawkins was born into one of the most prominent African American families in Henderson, North Carolina. Steeped in upper class values, Grandmother Rebecca, her husband Mingo, and Carrie nurtured Charlotte in a home and community that shielded her from the post-Reconstruction discrimination and violence outside their home. Nevertheless, the relative advantages enjoyed by blacks in the North led the Hawkins family to migrate to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1888.

Although most blacks in Massachusetts labored in menial jobs and endured discrimination, the Hawkins family found the safety and freedom unavailable to them in the South.

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Courtesy of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, Division of Historic Sites, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

In Cambridge, ber, 1900. Fate and Carrie met and opportunity, however, married Nelson would once again interWillis, also from vene in her young life.

North Carolina.

In the spring of The family estab1901, as she waited at lished a home the Salem train depot and Charlotte after classes, a white enrolled in the woman approached Allston Grammar Charlotte and asked if School and began she would be interested the piano lessons in teaching black childCharlotte Hawkins (back center) with four Palmer teachers, circa 1905. obligatory for a girl ren in the South. The of her status and values. woman (her name At church, she organized a kindergarten Sunday School appears to be lost to history) was a field secretary for the class and excelled in oratory, giving the keynote address American Missionary Association (AMA), the most promifor the pastor’s anniversary before her fifteenth birthday. nent philanthropic group responsible for the education of An exceptional student at Cambridge English High former slaves and their children. An excited Charlotte acSchool, Charlotte developed a passion for art, spending cepted a teaching position for the fall at an AMA supported her small allowance on works of art for her room. At home school, Bethany Institute, in McLeansville, North Carolina. and at school, the young Charlotte read about educators With a year remaining in the Salem Normal program, the who dedicated themselves to improving the standards of life school allowed her to complete her coursework in absentia and learning in the black South: W.E.B. Dubois, Lucy Craft so she might remain in her class of 1902. Charlotte set out Laney, and Maria L. Baldwin. In 1897, she heard Booker T. for North Carolina.

Washington appeal to northern educated blacks to return Disembarking from the train at McLeansville, barely a to the South and uplift their people. whistle stop in the woods, eighteen-year-old Charlotte During her senior year, Charlotte had an experience Hawkins found no one waiting to greet her. Her eventual that has since become part of legend. While babysitting and arrival at Bethany Institute, partly by foot, partly by mulereading Virgil as she pushed drawn wagon, was inauspicious. the stroller, a well dressed The school surely was not what Bethany students barely met the fifth white woman stopped to ask the educated, cultured, and where she attended school. young woman from and sixth grade standards of Cambridge. ambitious Charlotte thought nothing of Cambridge expected. It was in Impoverished and poorly dressed, the encounter until her prinfact no more than a dilapidated cipal reported that Mrs. Alice building on several acres of land. some walked as much as fifteen Freeman Palmer, a member of The AMA recognized the state board of education, miles to the school.

Bethany, founded in 1879 by a had inquired about her after white missionary, as a normal their encounter. Mrs. Palmer school.

It drew black students from surrounding counties (B.A., University of Michigan, 1876), the second female and held summer institutes to train blacks as teachers.

The president of Wellesley College and a founder of the school principal had lost interest in Bethany, and the AMA American Association of University Women, chaired that (unbeknownst to Charlotte) had begun cutting back on its organization’s fellowship committee. Born in 1855 to a financial support. Bethany students barely met the fifth farming family, Palmer was an advocate and spokesperson and sixth grade standards of Cambridge. Impoverished and for women’s education and she was fully aware of the poorly dressed, some walked as much as fifteen miles to literacy crisis among former slaves and their children. the school. Poverty governed their knowledge of nutrition; Charlotte’s experiences and role models compelled her their diet consisted mainly of potatoes, beans, corn, and to aspire to teach and she expressed interest in attending a molasses. The school year was barely five months long, four year college—she dreamed of Radcliffe—but Carrie sometimes less. discouraged her. Few people, black or white, enrolled in college at that time. Undaunted, Charlotte studied college Whether Charlotte considered trudging the four miles application materials and saw Mrs. Palmer’s name in the Saback to the train stop to return to Cambridge we do not lem Normal School catalog. Remembering Mrs. Palmer’s inknow. She remained at the school and, with her unshaken terest, Charlotte wrote to her. Palmer replied within a few faith in God and in her own invincibility, she set about days, offering Charlotte financial assistance for college. The immediately to change the course of Bethany, of hundreds young woman enrolled in Salem Normal School in Septemof black students and their families, and of her own life.

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She converted the blacksmith shed into a dormitory for girls and an old house into the boys’ residence. She assigned students chores such as washing, cooking, and carrying water as well as housekeeping. She accepted food supplies as tuition. She weathered resistance from local whites (she was black, female, a Yankee, and well educated) and from blacks who feared she threatened their way of life—their fragile co-existence with whites. She put aside her curriculum based on that of Cambridge schools and developed one that met the students at their academic level.

Just as Charlotte thought she had brought some stability to Bethany, the AMA decided to close the school in 1902.

Students and neighbors alike pleaded with Charlotte to remain. With characteristic optimism and faith, she assumed responsibility for Bethany alone. In September, with little money or support and few resources, Charlotte Hawkins opened the first normal school founded by an African American woman in North Carolina. She was barely nineteen years old.

Charlotte and her mentor, Alice Freeman Palmer, remained in close contact and Palmer introduced the young woman to potential donors in New England. Thus, Palmer’s unexpected death from surgical complications in December of 1902 devastated Charlotte. A visionary who believed

that women could be well-educated, employed, and if they chose, married, Alice Palmer had been Charlotte’s greatest source of encouragement, guidance, nurturing and endorsement. Grieving and determined to honor her friend and advisor, Charlotte asked for and received permission to rename Bethany, christening the struggling little school

Palmer Memorial Institute had come far from the shack in the woods that was Bethany. Brown juggled funds not only to cover curriculum essentials, but also to build residence halls and classroom buildings.

Courtesy of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, Division of Historic Sites, North Carolina, Department of Cultural Resources.

The Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute. As her students became stronger academically, Brown grew more confident to introduce her students to a Cambridgelike curriculum in all grades. She inserted Booker T. Washington’s industrial-education practices and principles into the traditional coursework. In founding Tuskegee Institute, Washington promoted education for blacks which combined vocational instruction—farming, carpentry, homemaking—with academic learning. Not only did Charlotte believe in Washington’s philosophy, but she shrewdly understood that it was more palatable to her donors and to southern whites.

Palmer Memorial Institute had come far from the shack in the woods that was Bethany. Brown juggled funds not only to cover curriculum essentials, but also to build residence halls and classroom buildings. Yet, adequate funding remained a constant problem. Charlotte traveled often to New England to try to raise money and she even ventured to seek financial support, with a bit of success, within the white community surrounding Palmer. She raised funds from philanthropic groups such as the Slater Fund and the Rosenwald Fund, two of several private charitable organizations with commitments to education founded by American millionaires. Perhaps her most significant coup was forging a relationship with Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University.

Charlotte Hawkins, circa 1903.

Eliot initially resisted the requests for money, but over time he became an avid supporter of Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute. He chaired the school’s funding committee and introduced Charlotte to his associates including John D. Rockefeller who, in turn made donations and referred her to other potential supporters. Furthermore, a few blacks had begun to acquire wealth themselves. Charles Spaulding, president of North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company in Durham, North Carolina, the largest blackowned business at the time, not only lent his financial support, but eventually sent several of his own children to Palmer Memorial.

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In fact, in the mid-nineteen-thirties, under Charlotte’s tion available and who would contribute to the uplift of constant and indefatigable leadership, some would say her their less fortunate brothers and sisters. By the early ninesingle minded stubbornness, Palmer Memorial Institute teen-fifties, some one thousand students per year applied evolved not only into the educational salvation of poor to Palmer for about thirty openings. Ebony magazine featured the school in an article entitled “Finishing School: the rural black students, but also a finishing school for upper Wealthiest Families Send Children to Palmer for Polishing.” and middle-class black youth throughout the country. The If ever an institution aimed to meet the educational and only accredited private school for blacks in North Carolina, social needs of a diverse constituency, Palmer Memorial Palmer offered a far better curriculum than the white high tried and for the most part, succeeded. schools in the state. It boasted a modern campus, a solid academic reputation, and, Charlotte was twice marthough always challenging, ried, first in 1911 to Edward . . .

Palmer Memorial Institute evolved sufficient funding and endowa teacher, and in 1923 ment to survive and grow not only into the educational salvation Brown, to John William Moses. The latfrom year to year. of poor rural black students, but also a ter union failed before the end the first year. Twice divorced, Always anticipating the fufinishing school for upper and middle- ofCharlotte Hawkins Brown conture, Brown was instrumental sidered Palmer her life’s misin the establishment of a pubclass black youth throughout the country. sion. Living on the campus and lic high school for blacks in retaining firm control until age the community and argued and ill-heath took their toll, she oversaw an extended famfor a black university system encompassing the several ily of students, families, teachers, alumni, and benefactors. black colleges in the state. Under her leadership, Palmer No disaster was so crippling nor challenge so onerous that seamlessly fused Booker T. Washington’s belief in industrial Charlotte Brown could not seek a way to overcome it. education and W.E.B. Dubois’s philosophy of a “black talWhen fire destroyed a campus building, she began fundented tenth,” those blacks who obtained the finest educaraising for its replacement before the ashes cooled. When Palmer’s budget drifted into the red, she boldly called upon the school’s patrons to expand their financial commitment.

Most often, they did.

Courtesy of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, Division of Historic Sites, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Photograph by Alex Rivera.

The Alice Freeman Palmer Building, the main classroom and administration building for the Palmer Memorial Institute, circa 1950. Built in 1922, it was destroyed by fire in 1971.

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Brown authored two books. Mammy, an Appeal to the Heart of the South, a novella based on the true story of a North Carolina slave was published in 1919. Of Susan, the aged heroine of the story, Brown wrote, “She is but one of many left destitute in old age by those she has been faithful to unto death.” Mammy, Brown hoped, would call attention to the thoughtless abandonment of loyal former slaves.

In 1941, she published The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, a compendium of manners.

Brown’s standards of moral and proper behavior were so strict as to require girls to memorize a part of the guide before receiving permission to attend the junior-senior prom.

The Correct Thing codified her expectations.

Courtesy of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, Division of Historic Sites, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Photograph by Alex Rivera.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown presided over Palmer Memorial Institute for sixty years, until her death in January, 1961, at the age of seventy-seven. Having been hospitalized and under constant nursing care, she was invited to spend her last days in her home at Palmer. At her funeral, Dr. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, himself a respected educator and the first black president of Howard University, offered Brown’s eulogy, crediting her with improving education for African Americans under the most difficult of circumstances. She was buried in the place she had chosen: a grassy spot on the campus of Palmer Memorial Institute, between her residence and her office.

Palmer Memorial survived for another ten years. Its demise came not from lack of leadership (Wilhelmina Crosson, another African American, Salem Normal School alumna, assumed the presidency prior to Brown’s death), but from the impact of school integration. Previously enthusiastic donors questioned the need for an exclusively black school in the nineteen-sixties and an increasingly wealthy black middle and upper class found itself with not only more educational options for its children, but also the income to afford those options. Perhaps Palmer was a victim of changing times, of transforming values. In 1971, the school closed its doors.

Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown with bust of Alice Freeman Palmer in 1952. Dr. Brown retired as President of Palmer Memorial Institute in 1952 after fifty years of service.

Of the many women who passed through Salem Normal School, and now through Salem State College, Charlotte Hawkins Brown lives on as testimony to “what one young African American woman could do” in times neither supportive of nor kind to her race.

Of the many women who passed through Salem Normal School, and now through Salem State College, Charlotte Hawkins Brown lives on as testimony to “what one young African American woman could do” in times neither supportive of nor kind to her race. Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute: What One Young African American Could Do, as much an American story as a woman’s biography, ensures that she is never again lost in the history of education in the United States. For telling her story with accuracy and passion, Wadelington and Knapp are commended.

Kim Mimnaugh

Prior to the publication of their book on Brown and Palmer Memorial, authors Wadelington and Knapp’s research was instrumental in the creation of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Memorial. Conceived in 1982 by alumnae Maria Cole (a niece of Charlotte Hawkins Brown) and Marie Gibbs, Palmer alumni rallied to the plan. North Carolina state Senator William Martin obtained passage of a bill to create the site, and in 1985 the state legislature appropriated $400,000.00 towards restoring and developing the grounds of Palmer Memorial Institute. In November of 1987, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Memorial and historical site was dedicated by the Governor of North Carolina.

Located in Sedalia, North Carolina, just off Interstates 85 and 40, the Memorial receives support from the state of North Carolina, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Foundation, and various African American and white service organizations. The site is the first in North Carolina to honor a woman or an African American. In keeping with Brown’s legacy, Palmer sponsors events throughout the year to in-

troduce African American history to the community, scholars, and researchers. In 2003, Institute activities included a series of lectures on the lives of North Carolina slaves, a presentation by members of the Negro Baseball League, and a lecture sponsored by the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women on the history and influence of that organization. An African American Heritage Festival drew visitors from around the country.

Gwendolyn Rosemond currently serves as an adjunct professor in the English and sociology departments, teaching courses on African American women and family. Prior to her retirement from the College in 2002, Gwen served as assistant dean in the academic advising center and associate academic dean for the academic vice president. She is a native of Columbus, Ohio and, as she reports, “an unrepentant and unreformed Midwesterner.”

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P

O

R T F O L I O

The Fire Within John Volpacchio

Jon Tadiello ’04

“I believe that almost everything in life can be inspirational...”

Bird in Flight, 2002

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Kim Mimnaugh

Jon Tadiello ’04

Murrini Vases, 2002

Kim Mimnaugh

Murrini Goblet, 2002

Cane Bowl Series, 2002

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John with a finished product at the glass blowing factory on the Island of Murano,Venice, Italy.

A

s a longtime working artist, I have pursued both a professional and academic career working in ceramics, sculpture, and, my true passion, glass blowing. I received my B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and my M.F.A. from the University of Colorado. I have taught art for the past twenty years, specializing in clay and glass, and have been a professor of art for fourteen of those years at Salem State College.

When asked to describe my work in glass, I use such terms as: whimsical, functional, sculptural, colorful, sensual, intricate, and thought provoking. I am always eager to discuss the creative process as it provides me with an opportunity to offer an insider’s view into both the required mechanical skills and the thought processes that go on while making an art form. I believe that almost everything in life can be inspirational, even for people who don’t consider themselves to be artistic, and that there are many ways to make the art form dynamic and full of possibilities. Passion and the fire within is what drives us to pursue our interests with full force.

In order to share my enthusiasm and experience with the Salem State community, I have developed four courses in glass making as part of the art department curriculum. Currently, I am working with College administrators to seek private, state, and federal funding for a glass facility to be built on campus. Once the facility becomes a reality, the entire College community will have access to a very exciting art medium.

John Volpacchio

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Bird in Flight, 2002

Kim Mimnaugh

Pursuing my artistic interests, I have traveled extensively throughout the United States, Italy, Japan, and South America. My most rewarding experiences have been when working beside, and apprenticing for, some of the world’s premier glass-blowing artists, such as Lino Tagliapietra, Pino Signoretto, and Dale Chihuly.

E S S A Y

Liquid Library

Julie Whitlow

C

ompared to some of the heady, perfumed cities to both the north and south, the Moroccan town of Souk el Arbaa was drab, known only for its Wednesday market and kefta (meatball kebobs) sold at the bus stop. Each week, I would pay less than a dirham (about twenty cents) to jump on the back of a horsedrawn wagon with about thirty other locals to take the half-mile ride to the market site. I’d usually bring Fedoua, my six-year-old lush-lashed translator and constant companion. Together we would navigate the acres of vegetable and fruit vendors, glance sideways at the chicken and sheep slaughter, toward the open-air dentist and veterinarian, past the faith healers and herbalists. Finally, we’d reach Fedoua’s favorite sight, piles and piles of shoes that looked like the rejection heap from the Salvation Army.

One day I bought her a pair of black patent leathers, one

strap missing, that she wore daily, adjusting her gait to the defect, never missing a stride as she ran and jumped.

The used clothing area of the souk also seemed to be of particular appeal to my students, secondary school boys that the U.S. Peace Corps thought should be learning English from me. Most had little interest in the present perfect or dull tales set in Britain about Mark the tailor, yet they were searching for a connection to a world they had glimpsed through the bus loads of European tourists who passed through their town or via fuzzy, dated American films, poorly translated and transmitted from Egypt. A pack of these boys surrounded the pile of shoes at the market on most Wednesdays, as if they were stalking something special that would set them apart, point their feet in a new direction.

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Interesting, though, these boys and their counterparts in town often did errands and even went to school in their mothers’ and sisters’ heeled plastic sandals. The sight of these strapping near-men walking around with a loaf of flat bread balanced on a board on top of their heads en route to the public ovens wearing too-small plastic shoes was incongruous, even sweet. It was their anger, though, whether in their pink open-toes or cast-off loafers, that was jarring, even venomous.

For a long while, I couldn’t understand why they were so miserable, so desperately angry at the world. They were poor but not hungry. Their families seemed honorable, solid. It was only after months of living in Souk el Arbaa that I figured out that these guys had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no futures to look toward. While the King collected money for the largest floating mosque in the world, the unemployment rate soared. While the girls were busy with domestic chores, the boys became filled with anger as King Hassan’s coffers were filled with their offerings. The shoes that they were forced to wear could take them nowhere, however desperate they were to use them to walk out of that life and into one that they lived from the periphery.

They could never be comfortable in their own shoes because history, and culture, and their own sense of destiny had placed them squarely at a crossroads with no path to take.

The shoes that they were forced to wear could take them nowhere, however desperate they were to use them to walk out of that life and into one that they lived from the periphery.

They could never be comfortable in their own shoes because history, and culture, and their own sense of destiny had placed them squarely at a crossroads with no path to take.

I was close to one family that lived in a small enclave near my own rented rooms. Mekka had raised five children in a small house with a tin roof and a single light bulb hanging dimly like an eye clouded by a cataract. I was introduced to Mekka and her daughter Hyatt and her sons Mohammad, Rashid, and Ahmed shortly after an older half-brother, Abderzak, helped me get acquainted in town.

I began to visit the family regularly, starting with Thanksgiving Day, 1988.

Julie Whitlow

It was raining, as it often does in the fall and winter in North Africa, almost in defiance of the hot, dry winds that blow up from the Sahara. The wet, moist air swoops down from the northern seas to create a clash in climate as fierce as the clash in culture that pulls at Northern Moroccans.

Europe beckons and teases with its wet sea air, while the harsh dry winds of the Sahara wail, reminding people that they are caught in the vortex between these two worlds.

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On that Thanksgiving Day, I was alone in Morocco. My roommate had been evacuated to have an abortion. Rain was streaming in through the door frame leading from the flat, terraced roof of my house. The door, however, had never been installed. I went to Mekka’s house in search of some warmth and found there a friend and a family who embraced me wholeheartedly. That evening I ate flat, oily bread and drank sweet mint tea with Mekka, Hyatt, Ahmed, and some other neighbor women. They made me dance as they kept time in exotic infectious rhythms on tabletops and boxes. I made them laugh with both my rudimentary Top:The vegetable and fruit vendors at the market in Souk el Arbaa.

Bottom: Mekka in her home making flat bread.

Julie Whitlow

Arabic and my complete inability to move to their beat. ignored me as I walked beside them, the assailant allowing Mekka gave me three kisses on each cheek as I left that me to fade into the night. As a woman alone in the dark, it night, and warned me that I had to return, that I was now was impossible for me to wear those shoes. one of them, a Maghribi. On that night, I gave thanks.

Just as abruptly as I had arrived in Morocco, it became I visited Mekka and her family almost every day. I drank time for me to leave Souk el Arbaa and return to my life their tea, shared their bread, in the U.S. I packed the bitter and during a Ramadan shortwith the sweet as I prepared age, I bought them expensive my bags. I wept when I hugged tomatoes from the market in Fedoua goodbye and when town for Mekka to make their Mekka and Hyatt waved me harira to break the fast. The off from the train station. Beolder brothers glared at me fore I left, I gave Ahmed the and left the house whenever Reeboks. His big brown eyes I appeared. They cursed their lit up and he did a dance of joy. mother for allowing me to The shoes fit him perfectly, the break the fast with them.

Velcro strap tightening around They ate the sweet dates and his golden ankle, the purple strawberries that I brought for soles hardly worn. He hugged the evening meal and cast me me, blessed me as his sister, and dark glances as they left the vowed that we would see each house. They scowled when other again. Somehow, I beMekka would place a choice lieved him. The morning of my piece of meat in front of me departure, Mekka and Hyatt around the couscous bowl. went to get a donkey cart to They inconspicuously spat help me bring my things to the in my direction as I walked station where I would get a to school, joining other boys train to Rabat. On my way out in their inane daily chant as I of town, I saw Ahmed waving passed. “Go to school by bus? sadly. As the cart passed his Mark is a tailor. Do you speak house, I turned to wave one English? Capitalist pigs go more time. There was his home.” How, I thought, can brother, Rashid, hobbling in this be interesting for them? the direction of the sea, his I did not understand what I feet squeezed into the Reeboks. represented.

He was moving toward the sun in my cast-offs, his brand-new Ahmed, the recipient of the Reebok cross-trainers.

The younger brother, ill-fitting shoes.

Ahmed, was different, though. He was still, at thirteen, engulfed in his mother’s and sister’s loving embrace. I taught him English, took him for sweets dipped in honey. We took Epilogue: Monday, May 19, 2003, The Boston Globe on nicknames from an Egyptian cartoon TV show. Ahmed Casablanca, Morocco. Officials announced the roundup of at was Bingina, the smart little brother. I was Bingota, the least thirty people for questioning yesterday, but shed little light bumbling older fool. Ahmed carried the bread home from on the suicide bombings that killed twenty-eight bystanders… the oven, usually wearing his mother’s slippers. He coveted in five coordinated terrorist attacks Friday night… the terrorists my Reebok cross-trainers, shoes I came to detest. had ties to a local Islamic group… the attacks left Morocco I would sometimes try to jog around the neighborhood. awash in anger and uncertainty….

I was already taunted and stared at by the men, but warmly embraced by the women, so it didn’t seem to me that I Julie Whitlow is an associate professor in would create any additional attention by doing a bit of exthe English department and graduate school ercise. The few times that I went out during the day, I got at Salem State College where she teaches courses in ESL and linguistics. She has just no more than curious glances. I was careful to cover up, to finished a sabbatical as a Fulbright Scholar wear more clothes than would ever be considered comfortin Nicaragua. She has also taught English able by my nazerani standards. The day I went out at dusk, in Portugal and, as a Peace Corps volunteer, though, I was followed by a sneering, toothless man who in Morocco, the memories of which inspired was muttering obscenities that I couldn’t understand, and this essay. as he touched me, I tripped and fell. I got up bloodied, approached a couple riding in a horse-drawn cart. They Leon Jackson

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T I M E

I

Commemorating 150 Years

1854 The first class of seventy-two students begins the school year on September 15. The faculty is comprised of Principal Richard Edwards, Martha Kingman, and E. Ripley Blanchard, a part-time music instructor.

t is a tall order: encapsulating into a simple time line the 150-year history of Salem State College. An institution’s history is more than dates of ground-breakings and programs added to the curriculum. The history of Salem State is inextricably bound to the experiences of those who taught here, worked here, and went to school here.

The archives has been collecting these experiences as part of the Salem State College Oral History Project.

Over the past five years, archives’ staff has conducted more than one hundred interviews with former students, retired faculty, administrators, and staff. The earliest interview is with a member of the class of 1923. The alumni interviews are particularly rich in information about the effects on students of world events such as the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Vietnam War. All the interviews, whether with a former Salem State president or a department secretary, combine to give us a rich portrait of college life.

This time line attempts to incorporate the experiences of Salem State people by including diary excerpts from the nineteenth century and oral history excerpts from the twentieth century. Its emphasis is on the daily experiences of faculty, students, and staff in the context of the wider world outside of the College.

We hope you enjoy the look back.

1854

Charlotte Forten ’56, diary excerpt, May 1855: Took a long and very pleasant walk with a number of our scholars and two of the teachers. We saw the process of rolling irons which was extremely interesting, and on our way home stopped at the pottery and saw the whole process of making earthen dishes which was more simple than I had supposed. I think that even the manufacture of things so commonplace possesses both beauty and interest, to which Mr. Edwards’ explanations added greatly.

1856 The first graduates, wishing to keep in touch with classmates and the school, organize the Salem Normal School Alumnae Association.

1861 Civil War begins with the attack on Fort Sumter; the war affects enrollment and retention. Members of the entering class of February 1861 recall that “classes were shortened, sewing machines were brought in, and the girls delved and toiled making shirts” for local soldiers.

Isaac Osbun

Crosby

Hagar

1859

1864

1869

1854 Henry David Thoreau writes Walden.

1865 George Mendel describes his laws of heredity.

1859 Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is published.

1867 Alfred Nobel, Swedish chemist and engineer, is awarded a patent for dynamite.

1862 Union Army defeats Confederate troops in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Five thousand men die in one of the bloodiest battles in our nation’s history.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.

Leo Tolstoy authors War and Peace.

Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization.

1865 President Lincoln is assassinated at Ford’s Theatre.

Claude Bernard’s Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, hypothesizes that the body maintains a constant internal environment.

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1855 Over 200 spectators witness the first end of term examinations on February 12 and 13. Students are orally tested on geometry, physiology, reading, grammar, geography, and logic.

1876 Isaac Osbun, the first full-time male teacher, is hired to teach physics and general science.

Susan Edwards, Archivist Margaret Vaughan, Editor Susan McCarthy, Graphic Designer President Edwards

L I N E

1874

1871 Artist James Whistler paints The Artist’s Mother.

General Ambrose Burnside founds the National Rifle Association.

1872 Susan B. Anthony leads fifteen women to vote in Rochester, New York, and is arrested.

1874 A journalist reports on a show by the artists Monet and Renoir dismissing them as “impressionists,” a descriptor that sticks.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.

1875 Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen is performed in Paris.

1881 The 51st class graduates in June and “instead of contributing to the decorations of the building, fired with missionary spirit, they send their class gift to aid the struggling students of the Salem Normal School South, for they were confident that the good State of Massachusetts would always minister to the needs of its students.”

1896 The School moves to a new campus in south Salem.

1897 Florence Snell, first female instructor with a college degree, is hired to teach English literature and Latin.

Following correspondence between Booker T. Washington and Principal Walter Beckwith, Salem Normal School students donate boxes of textbooks to be used by the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and its graduates throughout the Rural South. Washington described the lack of adequate textbooks as “one of the greatest needs our teachers and colored teachers generally meet with in the South.”

1886 The first Asian student, Kin Kato from Japan, enrolls in September.

1894 The Massachusetts Board of Education requires that all candidates for admission to the normal school have a high school diploma.

1898 The Spanish-American War begins. Students demonstrate their patriotism by raising money to purchase a flagpole, the first at a Massachusetts state normal school. Many skip class to see off Salem troops as they muster for duty.

Concern over declining enrollment leads to the admission of men for the first time. Two, Michael Burke from Chelsea and Ralph Munroe from North Reading, enter the program in September.

Walter Parker Beckwith diary excerpt, 1898: School about as usual— except that we opened in the morning with thin attendance—this being the morning that one of the Salem militia companies started for south Framingham.

Women’s basketball becomes the first documented athletic team at Salem Normal School. Each side plays nine girls at once (three forwards, three guards, and three centers) so that “a pretty game can be played with little or no fatigue.”

Salem Normal School Class of 1889 Beckwith

1879

1884

1889

1877 Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, transforming the music world.

1879 Thomas Edison demonstrates the electric light bulb.

1881 Henry James writes The Portrait of a Lady.

1882 Richard Wagner completes his last work, Parsifal.

1885 American painter Winslow Homer completes The Herring Net. 1889 Vincent van Gogh paints Starry Night.

1890 More than 200 Sioux men, women, and children are massacred by U.S. troops in the Battle of Wounded Knee.

The Deep South gives birth to the Blues.

1894

1899

1893 Gandhi initiates a non-violent campaign against racism in South Africa.

First prominent African American painter, Henry Tanner, paints The Banjo Lesson.

1894 John Dewey opens the first laboratory school in Chicago.

1895 First American automobile race; winner drives 7.5 miles per hour.

1898 Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov begins research which leads to the discovery of conditioned reflex.

The USS Maine battleship sinks in Havana’s harbor, leading to the Spanish-American War. 1899 Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams is published.

Aspirin appears on the market.

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1908 The school organizes a commercial department, becoming the “first public state institution to provide for the professional as well as the technical training of business teachers in an integrated program.” The program attracts students from across the state and is responsible for an increase in male enrollment.

1910 The first male athletic team is organized. The men’s basketball team consists of all of the male students enrolled at the school and one member of the faculty.

1921 Men’s athletics resume competitive play. This is the first year since the start of the First World War that there has been a sufficient number of men in the school to field an athletic team. The Athletic Association deems it unwise to attempt football “because of the heavy expense attached to the sport.” Basketball is the only sport played.

Grace Moulton D’Iorio ’23 on her Salem Normal School friendships: I had two real close friends from Lynn that I went with all the time. And I met one who lived in Salem, Alice Nelson; we stayed all afternoon, because I had to wait for the train. She liked to play tennis and so did I so we’d go out and play tennis until it was time to get the train.

1924 The Women’s Athletic Association is formed by the captains of the basketball and newcomb teams with help from physical education teachers, Miss Somers and Miss Hale.

1925 Thirty-six students majoring in commercial education receive the first bachelor’s degrees awarded by the College.

1927 The first issue of The Log, the student newspaper, is published.

Salem Normal School Basketball Team

1914 Kappa Delta Phi, a social fraternity, is organized at Salem Normal School. Ten charter members are admitted on January 17.

1917 The United States enters the First World War. Many alumni, both male and female, and most of the male student body leave to join the war effort. On the home front, the Liberty Club is formed to sell thrift stamps and Liberty bonds to help the war effort. The fraternity and athletic associations pitch in to write letters and send Christmas boxes to those in service.

The first staff of The Log

Pitman

1904

1909

1914

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright succeed in flying their aircraft over the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

1904 Puccini composes the opera Madame Butterfly.

1906 English neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington’s The Integrative Action of the Nervous System is published.

1908 Henry Ford invents the assembly line for production of the Model “T.” 1909 Robert Peary and his African American associate Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.

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1919

1924

1913 The 16th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, enabling the federal government to collect income tax.

1914 First World War begins.

1916 Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.

Margaret Sanger opens the first American birth control clinic in Brooklyn.

1918 Most deadly influenza epidemic in history kills approximately 20 million people.

Red Sox win the World Series.

1910 Pablo Picasso develops Analytical Cubism.

1920 The 19th Amendment establishes women’s voting rights.

1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial is held in Tennessee.

1911 Physicist Ernest Rutherford proposes the modern theory of atomic structure.

1927 Charles Lindbergh flies The Spirit of Saint Louis thirtythree and one-half hours overseas and lands in Paris.

1929 The stock market crashes in October, leading to the nation’s Great Depression. Practical business experience is impossible for the majority of the commercial students and therefore the practicum is temporarily suspended as a requirement.

Mildred Berman ’48 on a war bond fundraiser: But perhaps the thing that I remember most vividly about my first year was the fact that it was 1944, the Second World War was just sort of winding down, but it was still on. And there was a sale of war bonds going on around the Commonwealth and so on. And at Salem State there was going to be an auction of various things, if you bought so many war bonds. And one of the things that was going to be auctioned was the presidency of the College.

I bid on it, I had talked to my father the night before and he gave me a figure. And he said if you could get this figure, I will give you the money. And so I got the presidency of the College for one day. And I remember that very well, because then I had to think; well, what am I going to do?

People would say—well don’t just close up school and classes, and so on. So I had a program and the program was to change roles and have all of the faculty members become students and all of my friends who were the students become administrators. A dean, a head of a department, and so forth. So it was a very, very funny day. We had the English teachers dancing on the lawn…. I was sitting in the president’s office for the first and last time and that was very nice, I must say.

Enlistees line up at Navy Recruiting Station

1941 After the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, students, alumni, and faculty enter the armed services.

Edna McGlynn, history professor 1936-1976, on the Second World War: Well, at first [the students] set up what they called the Student Defense Committee to help out the soldiers.

Some of them were volunteers and the first step was to package up brownies and send them. And then they began to write letters back thanking us for the brownies and including interesting information. So at that point I said well why don’t we write them a letter and give them information about the college and about their friends here and if they will keep us up to date on their addresses, we’ll send them an updated address list of every one who’s in the service every month.

1942 The Collegiate Defense Committee is formed with Dr. Edna McGlynn as advisor. The committee raises money, collects books, writes letters to Salemites in service, and collects newspapers and salvaged paper for the war effort.

1943 The junior class raises enough money to buy a jeep for the army through selling war bonds and putting on a variety show.

1946 The enrollment of veterans under the G.I. Bill begins to impact campus life as the veterans win many of the elections for class officer positions.

Sullivan

1929

1934

1939

1944

1949

1928 Alexander Fleming discovers the antibiotic properties leading to the production of penicillin.

1942 Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of the Century opens in New York.

1929 Stock market crashes initiating the Great Depression.

Edwin Hubble hypothesizes that galaxies are receding.

1945 First atomic bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

The United Nations is organized.

1930 DuPont Co. produces the first wholly synthetic fiber.

1947 The first Dead Sea Scroll is discovered.

Bell Laboratories invents the transistor.

1931 Billie Holiday sings in Harlem nightclubs.

1935 President Roosevelt’s New Deal establishes Social Security in an effort to alleviate poverty.

1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at Berlin summer Olympics.

1944 U.S. Congress passes the G.I. Bill of Rights.

1948 MIT researcher, Norbert Wiener, authors Cybernetics.

1949 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and George Orwell’s 1984 are published.

1938 B. F. Skinner’s The Behavior of Organisms is published.

1950 The United States enters the Korean War. The National Science Foundation is created.

1941 U.S. enters the Second World War.

1951 J.D. Salinger writes Catcher in the Rye. 35

1955 Senator John F. Kennedy speaks on campus, urging action against Communism.

1957 Ten students are awarded the College’s first master’s degrees.

1963 Students unsuccessfully lobby to name the new arts and sciences building (now Meier Hall) after John F. Kennedy.

Senator John F. Kennedy 1964 For the first time, women field varsity teams in two sports: field hockey and basketball.

1966 Salem becomes a resident campus as Bowditch and Peabody Halls open accommodating 600 students.

1967 A silent protest is held against the war in Vietnam by seventy-eight students and faculty at the base of the bell tower. Twenty students counter protest and 400 spectators watch.

1968 Time-Out-Day, October 29, the campus takes a day off from normal college activity to discuss campus problems, including the dress code, class cuts, and student involvement in governance.

Helen Auchterlonie Gifford ’70 on the dress code: It was a huge thing. I don’t know anything that changed as much while I was here because when we came I remember the incident that sparked it. Girls had to wear skirts, we could not wear pants on campus, and they had to be a certain length and I mean it was absolutely mind-boggling. I remember the president had sent a boy home—I forget what he was wearing maybe it was jeans, we weren’t allowed to wear jeans—because he wasn’t dressed the way the president felt was appropriate. That sparked all of this and of course by the time I left people would laugh if you said there was a dress code.

1970 A student strike is held, demanding contracts for four fired faculty members and the removal of the chair of the foreign languages department. The students sit-in at the library.

The Union for Student Involvement (USI) takes over the data processing center to protest President Keegan’s lack of response to their list of forty-one demands, which cover all aspects of College administration. They remain in the center for three days.

1973 The first academic symposium on 1969 President Meier halts publication of The Log after finding Jack Kerouac is out it will contain an excerpt from Eldridge Cleaver’s held at Salem State. novel The Black Moochie. The issue is published offBeat writers such campus using donated funds. as John Clellon Vietnam moratorium is recognized Holmes, Allen on October 15. There is a march Ginsberg, and from campus to Salem’s Common.

Gregory Corso are John Clellon Holmes & Allen Ginsberg reunited to discuss Kerouac’s life and legacy.

Jay McHale, faculty member, on the Vietnam March in 1969: 1974 The Afro-American Society issues its We had maybe, I want to say Valentine’s Day Manifesto in response to somewhere between 300 and 500 a mock slave auction in Bowditch Hall. people march. They assembled by Student Government Association (SGA) the tennis courts, walked up the driveway then down Lafayette President John Tierney calls an emergency Street all the way to Salem Common on route 1A in silent procescampus meeting to discuss the problems, sion, carrying signs. I don’t remember any heckling, there may have the demands of Afro-Americans, and possible been a few remarks when we marched to the Common, but I don’t solutions to the racial problems on campus. remember anything that was aggressive or deliberately hostile or in 1978 The Blizzard of ’78 shuts down the campus. your face; it was dignified silence.

Blizzard of ’78 Meier

1954

Keegan

1959

1964

1952 Ralph Ellison authors The Invisible Man. 1953 Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is published.

Watson and Crick announce DNA’s double helix.

36 36

1969

Penson

1974

1979

1964 United States enters the Vietnam War. The Civil Rights Act is signed into law.

The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.

1954 Brown vs. Board of Education holds that separate but equal educational facilities are unconstitutional.

1965 LBJ’s Great Society establishes Medicare and Medicaid.

1955 Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus.

Rock and Roll is here to stay.

1968 Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated.

1966 Masters and Johnson publish Human Sexual Response.

1960 The Pill becomes available.

1969 The Apollo 11 spacecraft lands on the moon.

Woodstock Art and Music Fair is held.

1962 Rachel Carson writes Silent Spring.

Andy Warhol paints Campbell’s Soup Can.

1972 Watergate break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters leads to eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon.

1973 In Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court’s 7-2 vote establishes a 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers the “I Have a Dream” woman’s right to choose. speech in Washington, D.C. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. 1976 Stephen Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer, Inc.

1980 The biological society and the biology department sponsor the first annual Darwin Festival.

1981 Salem State’s first Board of Trustees is appointed.

ROTC is established on campus.

1998 More than 137 miles of fiber optic cable are installed campus wide, paving the way for the World Wide Web.

1982 The Salem State College Series begins in November 1999 Salem State adopts a zero with former President Gerald Ford as the first speaker. tolerance policy towards student alcohol use.

More than 500 students, faculty, and concerned citizens participate in Respect Everyone’s Differences Rally 2000 Tony Cotoia ’65, Executive Assistant to the Peace and Disarmament More than 300 students rally against hate President 1994-2000, on helping a student: Day. Panel discussions, after three hate crimes occur on campus. presentations, and a poHe was cleaning floors in Meier Hall, and I talked etry reading focus on the to him, nice looking kid, and I said, “Gee what do 2001 Former President William Clinton dangers of the nuclear you do for a living?” He said he was a janitor and speaks at Salem State Series, his arms race. he also does caning. I said, “Why don’t you go to first public address since leaving school?” He said, “I’m not that smart.” I said, “Why?” office. Despite negative publicity, 1986 The inaugural issue of “I’m dyslexic, and I have a learning disability.” I said, tickets sell-out in thirty-six hours.

Sextant, The Journal “Tell you what, I want you to go to school, but you of Salem State College, Campus shuts start at North Shore Community College.” Got is published. down on 9/11 him to enroll there. He graduated from Salem at 11:00 a.m.

The women’s basketball State last year with honors. Those are things that Students organteam wins the NCAA I enjoyed. It’s not the buildings we built or the ize peace rally Division III national programs we built. It is the people we built, and and athletes championship. that’s what I enjoyed. donate almost 1989 Salem State students and employees join more than $2,000 to student who lost her 15,000 public higher education supporters who gather mother in the tragedy. at the State House to protest budget cuts. It is one of 2003 In response to drastic budget cuts, the largest demonstrations students and alumni form the Comat the State House since munity Action Network (CAN), the high point of protests to advocate adequate funding of in the sixties and seventies.

September 11th Peace Rally public higher education. CAN 1991 The SGA starts a letterorganizes a rally, a teach-in, and a letter-writing campaign. writing drive for troops 2004 Upon opening of the new central campus residence from New England fighting hall in September, almost one third of the College’s in the Gulf War. full-time day students live on campus. The new dorm 1994 The College adopts a new is the first air-conditioned state college dormitory. logo and identity program Salem State’s Sesquicentennial celebration concludes which changes school with a black-tie gala. colors to blue and orange.

Blizzard of ’78

New signage

Amsler

Bonachea Harrington

1979

1984

1989

1979 The Iran Hostage Crisis focuses nation.

1981 The Center for Disease Control recognizes AIDS. NASA launches Columbia, the first space shuttle.

MTV debuts with Video Killed the Radio Star.

1982 1983 1985 1989 1990 1991

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is published.

The Internet opens.

Microsoft releases the Windows operating system.

Berlin Wall falls uniting East and West Germany.

Hubble Space Telescope is launched.

Soviet Union collapses.

Conflict in the Persian Gulf begins.

1994 Scientists report a sixty-five to seventy percent decrease in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

1994

1999

2004

1996 Geologists discover evidence of organic material in a Martian meteorite.

1997 Dolly, a sheep, is the first cloned mammal.

2000 U.S. Supreme Court rules upon Florida election results culminating in the George W. Bush’s presidency.

2001 Two airlines from Logan Airport are hijacked by Islamic extremists and flown into the World Trade Center towers.

One additional plane is crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth is brought down in a Pennsylvania field.

2003 United States invades Iraq.

Human Genome Project completes draft of entire human DNA sequence.

2004 Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 is released.

The winner of the presidential election is...

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Alma Mater of our Hearts: Myth, Memory, and Salem State College Nancy Schultz and Dane A. Morrison Here’s to Salem College our Alma Mater dear, Here’s to all the happy days we have spent together here.

When college days are over, and we are far apart We’ll ever think of Alma Mater Salem, College of our hearts.

Hope Hilton, 1940

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dimmed on this campus, though her Alma Mater—distinguished from many official college anthems in being an original composition by a student—is performed several times a year here.

For many of us, Hilton’s words have been dulled by their repetition at official College events, like a familiar recipe we no longer need to consult. But these words and this music merit a fresh look, especially in the context of Salem State College’s sesquicentennial. The 150th anniversary offers an opportunity for the campus community to reflect on Hilton’s sentiments, reminding us of what Salem State College has meant to the generations that have been a part of this community, revealing the pioneering role of the College in public higher education, and, especially, recalling the contributions our students have made to the legacy of the College. This commemoration offers an opportunity to restore to memory the contributions of the forgotten— those whose names do not adorn campus buildings.

Born in Key West, Florida, on February 11, 1918, Hope Hilton was the daughter of navy bandmaster Avery J. Hilton and Blanche Fosberry Hilton. At age five, she moved with her family to One Myrtle Square in Gloucester, Massachu-

Salem State College Archives

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hese words and this music that we know so well were the original creations of Hope Hilton, Salem College, class of 1940. The junior-high education major was one of a graduating class of about a hundred students leaving behind one world—a campus with its life of quiet regularity— to step forth into a wider, more dangerous one, teetering on the eve of a conflict that would pull Americans to far-off parts of the globe. Hope Hilton’s composition was a celebration of the College on several levels.

On a personal level, Hope’s Alma Mater was an answer to her classmates’ grumblings about the anthem that had been sung for the previous eight years. On a more public level, she was engaging in a commemorating moment, satisfying one of the oldest human needs: to mark in memory a place of particular significance. We perform such commemorations every day. Most are simple rituals within a family or intimate group, marking birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and death dates. Other commemorative acts rise to the level of local, regional, or even national significance, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dedication at the bridge in Concord, Massachusetts; Abraham Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; or our own celebration of Salem State’s one hundred and fifty years. Hilton’s memory has

Salem State College Archives

setts. She enrolled in Salem Teachers College in September Hope” from Joliet, Illinois, in 1946, she recounted this an1936. The Clipper yearbook tells us that Hope played basketecdote that alludes to her pioneering role: “The Ministers’ ball and hockey, but her position as Glee Club accompanist Wives Club discovered my existence a few weeks ago and for four years was her deepest interest on campus. Her invited me to their last meeting. I thanked them for the classmates remembered her as an “unsquelchable inquisitor” invitation and promised to be there—with my wife.” and an “incorrigible punster.” Music education, an irreverIn 1950, she completed her ent sense of humor, and a bachelor’s degree of sacred th tendency to veer from the The 150 anniversary offers an theology at Tufts University. expected path would continue Aspiring to further her studies opportunity for the campus community to characterize her life. in church music, she applied to reflect on Hilton’s sentiments, The Teachers College gradufor a scholarship in the church, ate did not immediately become but was told that there was reminding us of what Salem State College a teacher, though in the tradi“no place in the Universalist tion of the campus motto she has meant to the generations that have Church for a specialist in did “go forth to serve.” The church music.” When the Second World War was opening been a part of this community, revealing Korean War broke out the next doors for the generation of the pioneering role of the College in year, the “unsquelchable” Rev. Rosie the Riveter, and Hope saw an opportunity to public higher education, and, especially, Hilton walked through one. She enredirect her talents, and joined rolled in the Hartford Theologi- recalling the contributions our students the Women’s Army Corps, specal Seminary in Connecticut, cializing in psychological warhave made to the legacy of the College. fare, was ordained a Universalist and reaching the rank of Minister in January 1942, and captain. It was in May 1955, served parishes in Ontario, Maine, Illinois, and Massachuat Ft. Belvoir in Virginia, that she had a chance encounter setts. Throughout this period, she remained connected to with Dr. Timothy Clifford of Salem State’s music departSalem Teachers College, returning to campus in 1942 to ment. It was his first day serving as a major in the Corps lecture on agricultural conditions in the Point Pilu region of Engineers. Dr. Clifford recalled: of Canada. Hope’s irreverent sense of humor could not be contained even in her ministry, where she occasionally disAs I signed in at post headquarters, I overheard played an ironic appreciation of her unorthodox position an enlisted man chuckle as he put down the as an unmarried female minister. Writing her “Epistles of phone. “I have just been ribbing Hope Hilton.”

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I went over to his desk and asked, “Did I hear you say Hope Hilton?” He replied yes. I then inquired whether she came from Massachusetts. He didn’t know. I got the telephone number, called, and discovered I was talking to Hope Hilton, a WAC officer and a 1940 graduate of Salem State.

Dr. Hilton’s words in her Alma Mater capture the essence of commemoration. Alma mater (Latin for fostering mother) means both the college from which one has graduated, as well as its official school song. Each performance of the song, in a sense then, recreates the place, as is and as it was.

The image of a fostering mother—a mother who gives and nourishes—is an apt descriptor for a college, which traditionally stands in relation to its students in loco parentis (in the place or role of the parent).

When Dr. Clifford joined the faculty in 1949, the Alma Mater was already a tradition, sung from memory “at any and every college function.” The music professor had been long frustrated in his search for the sheet music, and now welcomed the opportunity to sit down at the Officer’s Club piano, and play the song with its composer. Dr. Clifford was astonished to learn that while Hope could verify the melody, “she had never studied harmony and had no idea of what chords were correct.” The College lost track of Captain Hilton following her discharge from the army in 1955.

Hilton wished to resume her calling as a minister specializing in music education, and to this end, completed her doctorate at the University of Southern California in 1961.

Her dissertation on “The Use of Music in the Religious Education of Primary and Junior Children” attracted the attention of editors at Beacon Press. In 1961, the same year Hope completed her doctorate, the Universalist and Unitarian Churches merged, and she sought a position in this newly configured institution. But in an experience that echoed her disappointment of a decade before, she was again told there was no place for her in the Church.

Finishing her degree, Dr. Hilton supported herself by accepting a position as a music teacher in the Los Angeles public schools. In the inner-city classes in which she taught voice and conducted the chorus during the racially charged nineteen-sixties, she inspired her junior-high students to participate in city-wide choral performances. But as late as 1963, this self-described “isolated Universalist” still held out hope for a position within the church. Her dream was to “go forth and serve” at a college or seminary, where she could “train others to work in… music and religious education.”

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Hope’s words turn somber in the next line, as she anticipates a time When college days are over, and we are far apart.

Her sentiment locates and celebrates the place in which we gained the knowledge and skills to go forth and serve, but laments the distance that taking these separate life journeys must put between us. Her final words—We’ll ever think of Alma Mater Salem, College of our hearts*—address the role that memory plays in commemoration. Time passes, and the members of the community move on to other places, but they take these memories as an essential part of their being. Place, myth, and memory are mapped in the geography of the heart.

This sesquicentennial offers an opportunity to remap the landscape of memory and to celebrate the contributions of Salem State College students—past and present. *

Editor’s Note: In 1975, the last line of the Alma Mater was changed to: “We’ll ever think of Salem College, Alma Mater of our heart.”

Nancy Schultz and Dane Morrison have thought a good deal about “commemorating moments.” Their recently published book, Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory (Northeastern University Press, 2004), is a collection of essays that re-examine the meaning of place in American culture.

Dane A. Morrison is professor of early American history. He authored A Praying People: Massachusett Acculturation and the Failure of the Puritan Mission, 1600-1690.

Kim Mimnaugh

On July 28, 1965, writing from Inglewood, California, noting that there had been “no indication, during the past eight years, that the churches of this area have any interest in or need for my services,” and feeling that it was “pointless to remain a statistic in an inactive file,” Dr. Hilton requested to be released from the Unitarian-Universalist ministry.

She was already music director of the Methodist Church in Gardena, California, where she had fallen in love with a member of the choir. In December 1965, at age fortyseven, she became the wife of Elwin Pfaff. Her husband, now age eighty-four and living in Glendale, Arizona, recalls that their marriage took place even though the couple knew that Hope was suffering from untreatable cancer. Just ten months after her name was removed from the fellowship of the ministry, and six months after her wedding, Hope Hilton passed away on June 15, 1966. A memorial service was held at the Morningside United Church of Christ in Inglewood. Her book was never completed.

In keeping with her buoyant spirit, Dr. Hilton’s hymn opens with the celebratory gesture of a toast: Here’s to Salem College our Alma Mater dear. The toast invites the community to join in the act of commemorating the place that nurtured their hopes and dreams. The next line— Here’s to all the happy days we have spent together here— suggests the selective quality of mythmaking around commemoration. Hope’s words convey the nostalgia we all experience for a mythical, simpler, happier time, when our dreams of the future lay promised before us, and before the trials and disappointments of later years overshadow us.

She would spend her life looking for a community like the one she had known at Salem College.

His current research is on the first generation of Americans to encounter other peoples in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Ph.D. is coordinator of graduate programs in English and American studies. She is a recent recipient of fellowships from Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

P O E T R Y

Alma Mater A poem in tribute to Salem State College in honor of its 150 th Anniversary

someplace among the branches and the trees the grasses and the weeds the family’s laundry stretched taut along the lines of fragile rope . . . white sheets billowing in the wind . . . all

Theresa Hickey

spoke to her of moments when with arms wide opened she had met the unexpected with a sigh or with a smile

Kim Mimnaugh

The Center for Creative and Performing Arts (CCPA) was an evolving entity when Theresa Hickey arrived on campus in 1993. Since then, she has written publicity for the media, covering nearly eighty events annually on behalf of all departments the Center represents: art, English (creative writing program), SFL studies (dance program), music, and theatre.

Now retired, the mother of four currently resides in Swampscott with her husband, Michael.

Photograph by Kim Mimnaugh

somewhere between the birth of sons and daughters she had become the person she was meant to be but she hadn’t been looking and so she did not know 41

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SUMNER WEBSTER CUSHING

A Geographer for All Ages Theodore S. Pikora The Persuasion of an Education

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he mission of normal schools at the turn of the twentieth century was to provide teachers to staff the ever-increasing populations of elementary and high schools. An often overlooked benefit of that effort, however, was that they also served as incubators and training grounds for those who would be inspired to become teachers in higher education and scholars in their disciplines. One shining star who followed that path to academia was Sumner Webster Cushing, a geographer and a member of the faculty at Salem Normal School from 1907 to 1920.

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umner Cushing was born in Norwell, Massachusetts in December of 1879 to a family having a long history dating back to the seventeenth century in nearby Hingham. His father, Webster A. Cushing, served as a soldier in the Civil War and then earned his income as a shoemaker for a family with three children. He employed one helper in his business and a housemaid—an indication that they were of adequate means. After graduating from Brockton High School, Sumner was able to move on to complete the teacher-training program at the State Normal School at Bridgewater.

Salem State College Archives

A remarkable collection of artifacts, left behind by Cushing nearly a century ago, lies in a small box in the arIn 1901, Sumner Cushing entered Harvard University chives of the Library at Salem State College. It includes to pursue his bachelor’s degree under the guidance of Wilhand written field notes, articles, pictures and even sample liam Morris Davis, a leading world authority in geography, exam questions. Together, they portray a man who was recgeology, and geomorphology. To know Davis is to appreciognized for his innovative approaches to teaching geograate the foundation of Cushing’s geographical perspective. phy. They suggest Davis was perhaps that Cushing was a best known for his world traveler and application of the cona prolific writer cept of evolution to a who increased the number of processes understanding of a in physical geography, number of lesserespecially as it related known regions from to cycles in mountain Madras to Mexico; building and stream and that his associaerosion. Most of his tion with national theories were based leaders in the on extensive field emerging profesobservations; and it sion of geography followed, therefore, enhanced both the that he frequently stature and the eduled trips with his stucational experience dents and colleagues Specialized geography classroom at Salem Normal School, circa 1910. at Salem. to study natural land42

scapes. In the classroom, Davis was an energetic lecturer with a persuasive manner. One of his goals in education was to rid grade-school geography of the rote memorization popular at that time and replace it with observation, analysis, and explanation in keeping with the scientific nature of the discipline. While his thoughts about mountains, streams, and educational reform generally received positive reviews, some of Davis’s ideas were not without criticism, especially in his attempts to include human activity in the study of geographical relationships. Early in his career, he began to explain cultural and economic patterns as a direct causal result of environmental conditions such as climate and topography. This perspective, commonly known as “environmental determinism,” supported the notions that seasonal climatic changes stimulated cultural creativity, for example, and that the rugged topography of mountainous regions meant limited economic development. The assumption of a dominance of environmental controls diminished the role of human choices and invention in shaping culture. Deemed as overly simplistic and easily subject to ethnocentric bias, environmental determinism was roundly rejected by many geographers. But it was popular with a number of Davis’s students.

Among them was Ellsworth Huntington who spent most of his career at Yale where he wrote about the influence of climate on civilization. Another was Sumner Cushing, who became a close friend of Huntington and collaborated with him on a number of scholarly projects after their years at Harvard.

Perhaps the most unfortunate feature of determinism was that its one-dimensional viewpoint was easy to teach; it became a popular approach to geographic education in American grade schools. It wasn’t until mid-century that probability and more complex relationships between nature and humans were more widely used to interpret geographical patterns.

Despite the philosophical differences over the study of human responses to the environment, Harvard was a center for motivating a number of bright scholars to become geographers. As a group, they played a significant role in founding the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in 1904, with Davis as its president. Sumner Cushing was not a charter member of the AAG, but he quickly met the requirements for acceptance early on in his career with his original scientific work and numerous publications.

After receiving his B.S. degree from Harvard in 1903, Cushing took a series of one-year teaching appointments at high schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The stay in Providence gave him the opportunity to complete his master’s degree at Brown University. In the summer of 1907, Cushing returned to Harvard for more graduate studies under Davis and Douglas W. Johnson, and in the fall of that year joined the faculty at Salem.

A Different Approach to Teaching Geography

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eography already had an established role in the curriculum at Salem when Cushing arrived. Two of the first courses considered to be essential in the training of teachers when the institution was founded in 1854 were Physical Geography and Projections of the Sphere. Geography was also given some early notoriety when Arnold Guyot was hired as a part-time lecturer in 1856.

Just two years earlier, he had been appointed Professor of Geography at Princeton. The Swiss-born Guyot had an international reputation and was gaining

As a student of Davis, Cushing was well versed in physical geography and field techniques, aware of the need to revamp teaching methods, and was acquainted with a number of fellow geographers who would shape the future of his academic discipline. But his view of world cultures was often translated through environmental determinism.

Captain Sumner Webster Cushing, 1918.

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national attention here with his publication of one of the first popular geography textbooks in America, The Earth and Man. His primary message to future teachers at Salem was about emphasizing observation and map analysis as classroom methods rather than the memorization of information.

But this new kind of professor was intent on leaving the traditional classroom behind, and getting out to observe and analyze everything from tanning leather to glacial deposits.

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Salem State College Archives

As part of a course in economic geography introduced in 1908, he took his students outside to nearby West Street where a garden of grains and grasses was planted Geography fair at Salem State College, circa 1910.

A half century adjacent to an exafter Guyot, Sumner Cushing gathered everything he had perimental plot started a few years earlier by Gertrude learned from his experiences at Bridgewater, Harvard, and Goldsmith, a biology teacher. He was transposing his field Brown and poured himself into his new assignment. The experiences with William Morris Davis to his own classes, Normal School at Bridgewater whetted his appetite for an deciding it was a good way to learn about the relationships education, Harvard and Brown provided the informational between soils, moisture, and crops. Cushing also taught and conceptual fodder, and Salem gave him the opportunity courses about the geography of commercial and industrial to teach and become a professional geographer. activities around Salem. His original handwritten notes are laced with long lists of products used in local factories and At that time, their places of origin, from South-American llama fleece geography to Russian leather. And again, he got his classes out into classes were the field to make regular visits to sites like the United Shoe taught on the Company in Beverly, General Electric in Lynn, and the third floor of A.C. Lawrence Leather Company in Peabody. Cushing felt what is now the that students could learn a great deal about raw materials, Sullivan Buildlabor, and the steps in processing and manufacturing within ing, opened a short amount of time in the mills because they were eleven years highly organized in relatively small spaces. before Cushing arrived. There was a large As much as possible, Cushing tried to steer collection of away from fact-based lectures, instead maps, globes, census data, opting for ways to experience geography. and artifacts reflecting Devereux Beach in Marblehead was a favorite site for commercial studying wave action and coastal morphology. A more deactivities and manding excursion in physical geography had his students natural phewinding their way southward down the slope from the nomena from Normal School. There, the assignment was to trace the around the course of the Forest River. The marshes, muck, and mosworld. No quitoes along the circuitous route were obviously less dedoubt, these lightful than the beach, but the experience gave his budmaterials ding geography teachers an appreciation for the rigors that were useful often accompany fieldwork. Cushing and his students also teaching aids studied landforms in a number of towns in Essex County; in Cushing’s Cushing’s physical geography final exam questions, circa 1910. his original notes and diagrams are quite detailed. lectures.

As much as possible, Cushing tried to steer away from Wasting no time upon his return, Cushing presented his fact-based lectures, instead opting for ways to experience findings at the annual meeting of the Association of Amerigeography. There were regularly organized geography fairs can Geographers in 1911, and he received highly positive and exhibits featuring exotic products and students dressed reviews. The journey to India then became the subject of in the attire of foreign lands. Star gazing parties to view the several papers published in the Journal of Geography, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and the constellations were held on the roof of the training school Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. during the clear and cold winter nights. Vivid impressions of these and other activities are During the remainder of the well chronicled in the Normal decade, Cushing wrote articles His original notes from that trip reflect School yearbooks of the era. on topics ranging from the But the real goal of Cushing’s a man who was fascinated not only by boundaries of the New England teaching was to have his stustates to the use of industrial physical geography, the primary subject dents learn and think as sciensites in high school teaching. tists. Written exams minimized of his formal training at Harvard, Many of them reflected his memorization in favor of exin landforms and but also by human phenomena as well. specialization planation and a serious depth other aspects of physical geogof understanding. raphy. In 1913, for example, he published a paper on the block mountains and narrow In addition to his courses in geography, Cushing also coastal plains of southern Honshu in Japan. The work is had responsibilities for supervising teachers in the training based on extensive field notes along a route that paralleled school. He encouraged students, especially the eighth gradthe Tokaido Road from Kobe and Osaka, on to Nagoya and ers, to cultivate his garden and to accompany their practice then Tokyo. teachers from the Normal School on field trips to factories.

Out to the Field and Into the Journals

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uring his early years at Salem, time away from teaching was almost entirely dedicated to fieldwork and travel. In 1908, as soon as he finished his first year of courses, Cushing went to France and spent the summer studying the Central Plateau with his mentors, William Morris Davis and Douglas Johnson of Harvard. In the summer of 1909, he explored 1,500 miles along the coast of Maine; and his paper on the subject before the Harvard Geological Conference won him a Sheldon Fellowship. This prompted Cushing to take a leave of absence from the Normal School in 1910-11 to realize perhaps the most adventurous endeavor of his career—a survey along the eastern coast of India from Calcutta to Madras.

There are attempts at associating natural landscapes with human development in other articles, sometimes through the perspective of environmental effects. A study of settlement and population patterns in Mexico that appeared in the Geographical Review of 1920 is noteworthy for its meticulous attention to detail.Yet, much of his explanation deals with the influence of the dry climate and topographical features, not human initiative.

References to environmental determinism are more pointed in papers written with Ellsworth Huntington. In an issue of the Journal of Geography in 1919, the authors present a credible discussion of the potential of tropical

His original notes from that trip reflect a man who was fascinated not only by physical geography, the primary subject of his formal training at Harvard, but also by human phenomena as well. His sketches of the broadly eroded valleys along the Eastern Ghats exhibit a masterful ability to capture the dimensions of landforms in order to accentuate his written descriptions. A keen curiosity in people and culture is evident in his portrayals of everything from dwelling types to decorative body ornaments. To some degree, Cushing’s sketches and comments have a flavor reminiscent of the nineteenth-century explorer geographers who roamed uncharted lands.

Journal field notes: village house types and land use along the Madras coast, 1911.

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Cushing and the Community of Geographers

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agriculture along with a comprehensive classification system. But they also bemoan the challenge of introducing incentives for development to men who live in the tropics, the assumption being that they are the products of their hot and humid climate and will not change easily.

Theodore Pikora

Despite Cushing’s flirtations with the dangers of environmental determinism, his work was well received overall. That acceptance was perhaps because environmental determinism was not as unpopular with the profession then as it is today. And, too, his ability to objectively describe and explain the nature of physical geography in precise detail was an unarguable scientific contribution in its own right.

Lastly, Cushing had a gift for writing that went far beyond the drab informational litanies often found in many journals of that day. At times, his captivating style seems more like high drama or travel writing than an academic paper, as seen in the following passage.

Two years ago I stepped into the Orient at Alexandria, Egypt, from the deck of a Mediterranean steamer, and was overwhelmed by the scenes, the color, the people, and the noises of a new world, in spite of having read of the East all of my life. A few months later the veil of the commonplace had been so drawn over it all that scantily clad natives in gaudy colors, luxuriant palms, and abnormally high temperatures were hardly noticed. My experience was paralleled by a British official at Cairo, who told me he felt he could write a book on that city after he had been there a week; at the end of the first year he was sure he could write interestingly no more than a newspaper article; at the end of eight years he returned to London and was nonplussed when called upon by a Sunday school superintendent to tell the class something entertaining concerning Cairo. So it is to a greater extent with our pupils.They feel the interesting things of commercial geography are far removed, whereas they are right at the door and only need someone to reveal them.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1913). “Industries as Studies for High School Pupils in a Commercial Geography Course.” Journal of Geography. Vol. 12, pp. 113-117. (Courtesy: National Council for Geographic Education.)

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he national spotlight began to shine on the man from Salem even after his earliest publications. In 1912, Cushing was invited to participate in the Transcontinental Excursion organized by William Morris Davis under the auspices of the American Geographical Society. Preston E. James and Geoffrey J. Martin, in All PossibleWorlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, describe the trip as having approximately one hundred American and forty European geographers who traveled by train from New York to the west coast and back, covering almost thirteen thousand miles. While many lively discussions and hours of field observations resulted in a multitude of papers, perhaps the most positive benefit of the journey was the lasting friendships that were forged among many of the participants. For Cushing, the trip undoubtedly provided a valuable introduction to professional geographers from beyond the scope of his contacts in the greater Harvard community.

...Cushing had a gift for writing that went far beyond the drab informational litanies often found in many journals of that day. At times, his captivating style seems more like high drama or travel writing than an academic paper...

As Cushing’s reputation began to grow, his invitations to teach elsewhere increased. Between 1911 and 1913, he taught courses at Wellesley College. His summers were also busy teaching geography at the University of Illinois, Columbia, and Miami. In turn, Cushing was instrumental in bringing lecturers of significant stature to Salem. They included Donald B. MacMillan who presented his paper on a trip to the North Pole, Richard E. Dodge of Columbia University, Ellsworth Huntington from Yale, Ray H. Whitbeck of the University of Wisconsin, and none other than William Morris Davis of Harvard.

A particularly noteworthy visiting appointment occurred when Cushing was away on leave during the 19131914 academic year. His replacement was perhaps America’s best-known cultural geographer, Carl Ortwin Sauer. He came from Chicago where he was working on his Ph.D., but wanted a break from his studies in order to reflect and broaden his interests in geography. Newly married, Sauer and his wife lived on Lafayette Street in Salem.

It was a most satisfactory experience for the Sauers as he described the staff at the normal school as “congenial as can be” and Salem as “the greatest town I believe in which I have ever been.” Shortly before his death in 1975, Sauer

reminisced about his days in Salem in correspondence to Richard O. Riess, a member of the geography faculty at Salem State College. He said he learned about the job from his mentor, Wallace Atwood, and that he was elated at the possibility of coming to Salem because he thought it was “perhaps the best normal school in geography on the Atlantic Seaboard.” Sauer also decried the fact that, in general, normal schools around the country did not receive proper credit for motivating and providing opportunities for young professional geographers.

service of his country. Cushing was married to Frances B. Deane in 1913. She was a history teacher at the Normal School, and they lived only a few blocks away on Summit Avenue. Her knowledge in a related field and her writing ability were decided assets for Cushing. In fact, she took an active role in editing a number of his later publications.

After his departure, Sauer joined the staff at Michigan in 1915, and he became chair of the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley in 1923. There he established one of the most prominent schools of geography in America, emphasizing the cultural landscape. His works on cultural origins and diffusion are still considered basic reading for all geography undergraduate students.

Cushing helped to compile handbooks with information about terrain, travel routes, climate and fortifications.They were likely put to good use by Woodrow Wilson’s team in Paris as it delineated new national borders in Europe.

From 1918 to 1919, Cushing served with the United States military. James and Martin, in their text All Possible Worlds, state that fifty-one members of the Association of American Geographers contributed their professional backgrounds to the United States government in the First World War and at the Paris Peace Conference that followed. Captain Sumner W. Cushing was one of only four of them who worked for the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff in Washington. The others were Ellsworth Huntington; J.W. Goldthwait, a geologist from Dartmouth College; and Lawrence Martin, a Cornell Ph.D., who later became the chief of the map division in the Library of Congress. Cushing helped to compile handbooks with information about terrain, travel routes, climate and fortifications. They were likely put to good use

by Woodrow Wilson’s team in Paris as it delineated new national borders in Europe. He was cited by his commanding officer, General Churchill, for his “marked ability” and his “devotion to duty.”

Throughout his years at Salem, Cushing seemed equally content and successful as a teacher, a field researcher, a writer, and in working on special projects with his colleagues. He moved quickly and with ease from one mode of activity to another. Indeed, there was very little time when he was not involved in something professional. It is also important to note that Cushing was able to pursue his varied interests in a nurturing environment. He was granted leaves of absence for his research, exchanges of lecturers were encouraged, and he had the freedom to experiment with his approach to teaching. All of this sheds a rather positive light on the nature of normal schools at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it suggests that they certainly were more than simply places where mostly young women became teachers. Large public and private universities along with small normal schools shared people, ideas, and common concerns. Cushing’s work is evidence of a complementary role for these institutions in a network of higher education in America.

Beyond Teaching and Scholarship

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While professional activities filled the first half dozen years of Cushing’s life at Salem, there were two significant diversions from academia by mid-decade. The first was his marriage and the second was a short tour of duty in the

Salem State College Archives

lthough Cushing spent a great deal of time teaching, writing, or away on research, there is also ample evidence of his involvement in the student life of Salem Normal School. He frequently offered lectures of general interest to the entire student body in the Assembly Hall—often using lantern slides and, no doubt, vignettes from his travels. In 1914, Cushing founded the Beta Chapter of Kappa Delta Phi, a fraternity that he had joined while a student at Bridgewater. This was particularly significant because it came during a time when there was a special attempt to integrate men into a campus life that had been dominated by women.

Salem State Normal School colleagues: Sumner Cushing, Walter Whitman, Principal Joseph Pitman, Frederick Archibald, and Charles Whitney, 1919.

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Textbook Projects

The second collaborative book was Modern Business Geography, published in 1925. It was essentially an economic ushing considered the first years of his career in geography text that dealt with patterns of production and teaching and fieldwork as a platform on which to trade. Huntington had a high level of appreciation for present his ideas in writing. In 1913, he became Cushing’s contributions to both books. He gave Cushing involved in several major textbook projects. The first was credit for the major part of whatever pedagogical value an effort to prepare a manual for methods of teaching geogthat Principles of Human Geography may have had. He also raphy. He was already heavily concerned with this issue as a indicated that Cushing provided the general plan, methodresult of his membership on special committees organized ological approach, and a large share of the text for Modern by the Massachusetts State Board of Education and the Business Geography.

National Council of Geography Cushing would not see eiTeachers. Both groups were In 1981, an assessment of undergraduate ther of these books published, seeking to improve the quality however, because he died in of geographic education at departments around the country 1920 at the age of 39. Just as the elementary, high, and the published in the Journal of Geography he set forth on the ambitions normal school level, and thus of the next stage of his career, charged their respective comranked Salem State College first in his life ended. One can only mittees with developing specific courses of instruction. An teaching geography and fourth overall, imagine what the course for this energetic scholar might example of their work was the just ahead of the U.S. Military have been, and how it would Teacher’s Manual of Geography have impacted Salem Normal in Grades VII and VIII. Cushing Academy at West Point.

School. was its moving force. It was in great demand in the Commonwealth and in other states as well. Although he was responAfter Cushing sible for most of the ideas in the state sponsored publicahe list of Cushing’s contributions is both long and tions, his textbook on the subject was never finished. varied, especially considering that his professional The two major books that were brought to completion career spanned a mere thirteen years. And while he were co-authored with Ellsworth Huntington. The first received well-deserved accolades for his work, he was a was Principles of Human Geography. Published in late 1920, humble man. In a memorial memoir written by Ellsworth it became one of the most popular college texts of its time.

Huntington for the Annals of the Association of American Huntington’s earlier work, Civilization and Climate, was first Geographers, Cushing was described as a rather shy person printed in 1915, and it was heavily rooted in environmental of great modesty and “unusual courtesy.” Yet under that determinism. In the book written with Cushing, much of overlay, there was a scholar who had sound ideas and opinthe environmental explanation of culture was muted; and ions, and who was particularly adept at presenting his it perhaps reflected a scholarly maturation by both Cushing thoughts with reasoning and humility. In contrast with his and Huntington as they began to appreciate more the notion quiet outward appearance among his colleagues, Cushing that human patterns were a result of complex circumstances was transformed in the classroom. There he was an enthusithat went far beyond the influence of physical geography. astic leader, relating well to children at the training school as well as to his own students. Mr. Pitman, principal of the Normal School at the time, declared that Cushing in every possible way “strove to make the subject of geography alive and show its importance in understanding the trend of civilization. He succeeded to an unusual degree for his students speak of him as a wonderful teacher.”

After his passing, no one quite replaced the type of geographer that Sumner Cushing represented. In a sense, he was a product of his time as much as his own energy and ability. It was an age when there were parts of the world that were still exotic enough to be interpreted to an American audience for the first time. Disciplines like geography were in the midst of defining their character and forming professional organizations. And education was emerging

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Journal field notes: rock structure and peneplain erosion southwest of Nellore, India, 1911.

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from the primitive methodologies of the nineteenth century, searching for new ways to enliven the classroom and enlighten the mind. Cushing responded well to those challenges and opportunities.

During the three decades that followed Cushing, the Great Depression and the second World War placed substantial restraints on innovation, research, and outreach to geographers. Connections with larger research and Ph.D. granting institutions became distant and the benefits of intellectual exchange were weakened.

As Salem moved through the transition from a normal school to a teachers college in the fifties, then to a state college in the sixties, the department of geography began offering a bachelor’s degree program with an emphasis on the application of geography to problem solving in urban planning, environmental conservation, cartography, and tourism development. The department grew to over ten faculty positions, and, as did Sumner Cushing, they established a number of linkages with professional organizations and made their presence known at national meetings and in journal publications. In 1981, an assessment of undergraduate departments around the country published in the Journal of Geography ranked Salem State College first in teaching geography and fourth overall, just ahead of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Again, as in the time of Cushing, Salem was woven into the national fabric of professional geography. But this time it was different. The spotlight was shared now by a group of geographers reflecting individualized interests in their geographic subfields, and the types of contributions that each made varied one from another. Offering a quality program at the dawn of the twenty-first century required a team approach. Cushing came from another era when one person could represent the discipline, and he did it well.

Huntington described Sumner Webster Cushing as “one of the few men who had this power of seeing geography with the eyes of all ages.” He could see the subject through the eyes of a child, a college student, a teacher, and a trained investigator and scholar. What is unusual is that he was remarkably effective with all of these audiences— a geographer for all ages.

Kim Mimnaugh

Theodore S. Pikora, Ph.D. joined the department of geography at Salem State College in 1965 and has specialized in cultural and urban geography and tourism development.

He was department chair during the 1980s, and he has been active in national and regional professional organizations, serving terms as editor of the Applied Geography Newsletter of the AAG and as president of the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society. Since retiring two years ago, Ted has found time for pet projects in writing, woodworking, and gardening.

A special thanks is extended to Susan Edwards, Archivist at the Salem State College Library, for her thoughts and assistance on this article.

Cushing’s budget for travel and provisions in India, 1911.

Publications by Sumner W. Cushing Cushing, Sumner W. (1912). “Ganges River,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 11, pp. 55-57.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1913). “Coastal Plains and Block Mountains in Japan,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 3, pp. 43-61.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1913). “East Coast of India,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 45, pp. 81-92.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1913). “Industries as Studies for High School Pupils in a Commercial Geography Course,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 12, pp. 113-117.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1917). “Sriharikota and the Yanadis,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 7, pp. 17-23.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1920). “The Boundaries of the New England States,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 10, pp. 17-40.

Cushing, Sumner W. (1920). “The Distribution of Population in Mexico,” Geographical Review, Vol. 11, pp.

227-242.

Huntington, Ellsworth, and Sumner W. Cushing (1919).

“Nature and the Possibilities of Tropical Agriculture,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 18, pp. 341-352.

Huntington, Ellsworth, and Sumner W. Cushing (1920).

“Rivalry Between Sugar Beets and Sugar Cane,” Journal of Geography, Vol. 19, pp. 255-259.

Huntington, Ellsworth, and Sumner W. Cushing (1920).

Principles of Human Geography. N.Y.: John Wiley and Sons.

Huntington, Ellsworth, and Sumner W. Cushing (1925).

Modern Business Geography.Yonkers on Hudson, N.Y.: World Book Co.

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Lisa Delissio

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Fahrenheit, global average sea levels have risen four to ten ave you noticed a change in the climate? While it is inches, and global precipitation has increased one percent. difficult to know anything for certain in our comThese seemingly modest changes may appear harmless, but plex world, an overwhelming majority of scientists the real implications may be profound. It is predicted that who study climate or the effect of climate on our planet as the climate changes, one-fifth to one-third of species agree that human-induced climate change is a reality (R. will be unable to adjust and are likely to become extinct Watson, 2001). Human activities are modifying the Earth’s (C. Thomas, A. Cameron, and others, 2004). atmosphere on a global scale. These activities include habitat destruction and fragmentaIf these trends continue, and tion due to the conversion of The tropical rain forests are home to there is every reason to believe natural areas for agriculture they will, some predictions say more than half of the Earth’s species. and housing, forestry and roadthat by the year 2100 our debuilding, and changing patterns That is, more than fifty percent of our scendants should expect to see of water use. We have also ina temperature rise of two to planet’s animals, plants, fungi, and creased emissions of carbon disix degrees Fahrenheit, making oxide, as well as other climate microorganisms live in tropical rain New England feel like the midchanging gases, through the coast, and a sea-level forests, and, in many cases, nowhere else. Atlantic burning of fossil fuels. Carbon rise of six to thirty-seven inches, dioxide makes a blanket around inundating many coastal commuthe Earth that holds in heat. Acnities (Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, cording to the 2002 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 2001). The most extreme changes are expected at the Change (IPCC), the atmospheric concentration of carbon North and South Poles, where glaciers have begun to recede dioxide alone is up more than twenty-five percent over pre(IPCC, 2002). Polar bears and penguins are already feeling industrial levels. Over the last one hundred years, the glothe squeeze.

Above: Stream running through the rain forest of Borneo. bal average temperature has increased almost one degree 50

Lisa Delissio

E S S A Y

However, if you travel around the globe from the North or South Pole to reach the region around the equator, other important changes are taking place right now. These changes are important because the tropical rain forests are home to more than half of the Earth’s species. That is, more than fifty percent of our planet’s animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms live in tropical rain forests, and, in many cases, nowhere else.

Tropical Rain Forests: Carbon Dioxide Absorbers or Emitters?

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In addition to looking at the results of computer models, scientists are collecting evidence about the effects of climate change from research plots—protected pieces of land used for study—in the tropical rain forests. The New World tropics, which include the rain forests of the Caribbean, and Central and South America, are particularly well-studied. A team of fourteen researchers from five countries, led by Oliver Phillips of the University of Leeds (2002), examined 120 research plots, and showed a trend toward an increase in biomass, or biological matter, over the past thirty years. Their results, although controversial, provide support for the predictions based on some computer models. Recordings of the atmosphere over the Amazon in South America show that this rain forest is acting like a sink for carbon. In fact, a study by thirty scientists, led by D. S. Schimel of the Max Planck Institute für Biogeochemie in Germany (2001), suggests that some tropical rain forests have been absorbing enough carbon to offset carbon emissions due to deforestation.

Tropical rain forests, then, may be net absorbers of excess carbon, and therefore may provide an important negative feedback to climate change.

n a process called photosynthesis, plants take in and store the energy from sunlight. In doing so, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon acts as a nutrient and thus facilitates plant growth. When plants die and decompose, this carbon is re-released into the atmosphere. This release also happens when plants are stressed, such as when they experience drought. If forests, over time, show more growth than dieback, there is a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On the other hand, if forests lose mass, there is a net release of carbon dioxide.

Net Emitters Every year, one third of the ll forests are not equal carbon that is removed from in their ability to use the atmosphere goes into the increased atmospheric trees and other plants of the carbon dioxide as a fertilizer. tropical rain forest (NASA, Some Amazonian forests show 2002). Tropical rain forests as signs of an increase in the size a whole are an important sink and number of woody vines, for carbon dioxide, and have which may be particularly good played a critical role in helping at making use of the increased to clean the atmosphere of an levels of carbon dioxide in the important climate change gas. atmosphere (O. Phillips, R. Indeed, tropical rain forests Vásquez Martínez, and others, have the potential to, at least 2002). These vines climb on in part, offset the carbon emistrees, weigh them down, block sions that result from the burnthe light and use up nutrients. ing of fossil fuels and from the In the process, they decrease cutting of forests elsewhere. tree growth rates, However, not all tropical and increase tree rain forests are the same.There Dipterocarp trees, such as the one above, can reach up to mortality rates. is significant uncertainty about 240 feet and dominate the lowland rain forests.

As the trees which forests are net absorbers break, die, and which are net emitters, and how each forest may and decompose, carbon dioxide is rechange as more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere. leased into the atmosphere. In this case, the effect may be a net emission of carNet Absorbers bon, thus promoting more woody vines, ince carbon is an important nutrient for plants, inand changing the species composition creased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the forest. could act as a fertilizer to speed up the growth of rain forests. Computer models predict that the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may enhance tropical Right: The two-winged fruit of the dipterocarp tree serves as an important food source for forest animals. rain forest productivity (J. Grace, J. Lloyd and others, 1995).

Lisa Delissio

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Effects of Temperature and Rainfall on Carbon Exchange

In fact, annual rainfall in many tropical forests has decreased significantly during the last decades, in many cases at rates greater than those predicted from global-warming models. New World tropical forests might be better equipped to deal with dry periods because most have dry seasons; some are deciduous forests, dropping their leaves every year in response to drying. For example, drought had only a small effect on tree mortality in two seasonal Panamanian forests as they are regularly subjected to water shortages during dry seasons (R. Condit, S. Aguilar, and others, 2004).

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Above: The leaves of this fan palm are often gathered together by forest workers to provide shelter against the rain.

Below: Leaves of banana palms can grow to more than six feet in length.

Lisa Delissio

To make matters worse, the computer models of the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research also predict an intensified and prolonged dry season in many parts of the tropics. Tropical rain forests will become increasingly subject to risks of climate change, such as prolonged dry seasons, extreme droughts, increased cloud cover, and therefore a greater occurance of lightening— a fire source. Little is known about the threshold of drought tolerance for evergreen tropical trees. Water availability can be a significant constraint on plant growth, even in tropical rain forests.

Hans Hazebroek

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s indicated by the term global warming, climate change is expected to involve a general warming trend. In the tropics, this trend has been manifested as warmer nighttime temperatures. A warming of three to four degrees Fahrenheit is predicted for the tropics in general, with less warming (one to three degrees Fahrenheit) in the more maritime Asian tropics. Increased temperatures appear to have caused a decrease in tree growth and a resulting release of carbon dioxide in a Costa Rican rain forest. One study out of Monash University in Australia has shown that tropical trees have a narrower temperature tolerance than do the trees in temperate forests (S. Cunningham and J. Read, 2003). This makes sense, as temperate trees are regularly subjected to widely varying seasons, while the tropical trees experience summer-like temperatures year-round.

At the same time, in one Panamanian forest, a twenty-five year drying trend is causing a decline in abundance of all the tree and shrub species that occur in moist soils, including the local extinction of sixteen of these species (R. Condit, 1996). In a Costa Rican forest, epiphytes, plants that live on the branches of trees and get their moisture from the air, died back as a result of drying. This massive die-off of epiphytes allowed more light into the understory, causing different species of tree seedlings to grow (N. Nadkarni and R. Solano, 2002). Shadeintolerant weedy species, in particular, could benefit from this increase in light availability. In this way, drying could lead to the local extinction of tree species that survive in the shade.

During a severe 1997-1998 El NiĂąo drought, there appeared to be a significant release of carbon dioxide from parts of the New World tropics (D. Clark, S. Piper, and others, 2003).

Apparently, carbon fertilization only works in times when there is plenty of water and lower temperatures. Over the past few decades, El NiĂąo droughts have been getting more fre-

Hans Hazebroek

quent, and more severe.

More important, drying is associated with warming in many climate models. It is possible that climate change itself may, through an acceleration of forest die-back, limit or reverse the carbon dioxide sink provided by rain forests in the New World tropics.

Protection of forests that are net absorbers of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may help, in a small but significant way, to ameliorate climate change. The removal of carbon dioxide from the air will allow more heat to escape from the earth. On the other hand, the warming and drying of some tropical areas that are showing the effects of current climate change, may prevent other tropical forests from serving as carbon sinks. In fact, it may turn them into a net source of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere can stimulate a positive feed-back loop, causing more carbon dioxide to be released and accelerate global climate change. In other Above: Highly endangered proboscis monkeys can be seen at Bako National words, we do not fully underPark. They spend their days eating the leaves in the mangrove swamp. stand the effects of increased carbon dioxide on tropical Below: Giant bearded pigs forage for food scraps around the research camp. rain forests, or conversely, the effects of these forests on atmospheric carbon dioxide.

A Case Study from Malaysia

Hans Hazebroek

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y interests in highdiversity plant communities led me to study the rain forests in Sarawak, Malaysia, on the Northwest coast of the island of Borneo. In terms of trees, these forests are some of the most species-rich forests in the world. Moreover, an exceptional number of species probably evolved here and are found nowhere else. They include a large number of tree

species of the Dipterocarp family that are important for the international timber trade.

Dipterocarp wood is used for cheap paneling and hollow wooden doors. These forests are also home to endangered proboscis monkeys and orangutans, as well as rhinoceros hornbills (the state bird of Sarawak), sunbears, bearcats, and countless other wonderful and unusual species. The results of climate-related studies in this area of Malaysia might have broad implications because, while there are many types of tropical forests, the most common type is a dry-ground lowland rain forest, which is what is found in this region.

The study of this forest provides an informative contrast to the research being conducted in the New World tropics.

Research Sites: Within Sarawak, Malaysia, there are three research sites that I have studied, two in national parks (Bako and Lambir) and one in a protected forest—not in a national park (Mersing). Each research site includes four to five one-and-a-half acre research plots in which every single tree has been surveyed.

In these three locations, ten thousand trees have been mapped, identified, and measured on a regular basis since 1965. Additionally, twenty thousand seedlings and saplings have been followed since the mid-eighties—an extraordinary feat, producing a highly valuable set of data. These sites have been maintained and studied by the Sarawak Forest Department, Harvard University, Boston University, and Salem State College. One of the sites, Lambir Hills National Park, also has a large, 128-acre research plot coordinated through the Smithsonian Institution, and a twenty-acre plot run by Kyoto University.

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Natural Disturbance and Climate

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n rain forests in the Caribbean region, Panama, Hawaii, New Guinea, Australia, the Solomon Islands, and parts of Southeast Asia, including northern and eastern Borneo, periodic large-scale natural disturbances such as hurricanes and cyclones, earthquakes, fires, and volcanoes are important determinants of forest ecology. In contrast, the research site at Lambir in particular has unusually infrequent natural disturbances and low wind speeds. The most important natural disturbance in this forest is probably the rare catastrophic landslides that occur on steep slopes after heavy rains. Extended droughts are rare. The forest receives rain every day during the dry season, and every day and night during the wet season.

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pamela Hall and Richard Primack, from Boston University, also assessed the types and numbers of tree species present over time, to determine if some species were going extinct locally, if other species were moving in, and at what rate. Matthew Potts of Harvard and Michiko Nakagawa and her colleagues from Kyoto University, looked at tree mortality rates prior to and just after the 1998 drought to find out if they were affected.

One researcher, Rhett Harrison, from Tokyo University, focused his work on plants of the Moraceae, or the fig family. Figs are considered a keystone species, meaning that they are critical for the survival of a large number of other species. Most of the trees at Lambir flower and fruit at intervals of only once every two years, so they cannot Droughts associated with El Pollination is required for reproduction. tobe eleven relied upon for food by the Niño have been occurring for birds, mammals, or reptiles.

A tree species without its unique one hundred thousand years.

Figs flower and fruit year round, However, El Niño droughts in pollinator could fail to reproduce, and so are considered to be famthe New World and Southeast ine food. Harrison was monitorand therefore go extinct.

Asia rain forests, including ing the figs’ pollinator insects Borneo, have shown a sudden when the drought occurred. increase in frequency and severity since 1960. At this point, Pollination is critical for the flowers to develop into fruits. it is impossible to say if this increase is due to a long-term natural cycle or a short-term natural change or the result Richard Primack, Pamela Hall, and I had been monitorof human activity. From January to April 1998, a severe ing the tree seedling populations, assessing their growth and El Niño drought hit the northern part of Borneo. A great mortality. Seedlings are, in general, considered to be more smoke haze covered the region as large portions of the sensitive to environmental extremes than are adult trees. “ever-wet” rain forest burned. This drought was the most Their small size makes it particularly difficult for them to severe one to occur since weather records were first kept access resources like water and light in an environment in 1917. where resource availability is sporadic. Prior to the drought, fish-eye lens photographs were taken over many individual An extreme climatic event, like the 1998 drought, or seedlings to assess the amount of light available to them. climate change in general, can have a variety of effects on the tropical rain forest. It can change the population densiFindings ties of trees, or change their size distributions. It can nlike New World tropical forest sites, which apchange the composition of the plant community, so that pear to be increasing in biomass, and similar to different species are present or dominant. It can cause the other Asian and African sites, there was no change ranges of species to change. It can even speed up (or slow in biomass over a twenty-year period in these Bornean down) the rates at which the trees grow and die. The study forests.

They do not seem to be growing or shrinking of the forest during and after this drought made it possible (O. Phillips and A. Gentry, 1994). to evaluate the impact of drought on a tropical rain forest.

Long-term data from the research sites were analyzed Of fifty-six tropical forest sites worldwide, including to better understand the impact of climate thirteen in Southeast Asia, the only four sites to show a change and the 1998 El Niño drought. decrease in turnover rates were lowland Bornean tropical rain forest, including the forests at Lambir and Mersing.

Oliver Phillips and his colleagues (1994) While other forests around the world are growing faster compiled basal area (cross-sectional area and dying faster, the Bornean rain forests seem to be slowof trees per unit area of ground) to detering down (O. Phillips, 1996). In contrast to New World mine if the forests were gaining or sites, there was no measurable shift in species composition. losing biomass. The Phillips team also The tree species and types of species that were there in looked at tree mortality and growth 1965 were still present, in approximately the same numrates to assess tree turnover from 1965bers, twenty years later (P. Hall, 1991).

1985. Increased basal area or increased turnover rates could indicate a fertilizaDuring the drought, however, tree mortality rates were tion effect from an increased amount of about five times higher than they had been reported during a non-drought period (M. Nakagawa, 2000). The economiLeft: Coconuts, still in their green husks, are native to Southeast Asia. cally and ecologically important dipterocarp trees were

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Lisa Delissio

disproportionately affected, It is important to note that with mortality rates twelve to the Bornean lowland rain forest thirty times higher than prein particular may be resilient in drought mortality rates. Trees response to climate change or of some families had low extreme climatic events. Most pre-drought mortalities and pollinator species returned relatively large increases in within three years, and there mortality during the drought was a significant but relatively (M. Potts, 2003). These famiminor impact on tree seedling lies were the Anacardiaceae mortality. There was no change (the mango and poison ivy in biomass until 1986. Until family), the Euphorbiaceae that time, these forests did not (the rubber tree family), and show any fertilization effect the Myristicacea (the nutmeg from high levels of atmospheric and mace family). Trees of carbon dioxide. Therefore, the the Annonaceae (the custard forests may not be able to proapple family), the Lauraceae vide an offset to the carbon re(the bay leaf, avocado, and leased through the burning of cinnamon family), and the fossil fuels and habitat destrucMoraceae (the fig and multion. They are also less likely to berry family), had begun with make a significant contribution high mortality rates and were to the problem. least affected by the drought.

It is also possible that these The fish-eye photographs results may be due to lower showed that, as a result of this levels of human-caused disturincrease in tree mortality the A research team from Boston University and the Sarawak forest bance, or the maritime climate, department measures seedling height and tree diameter. forest canopy died back at rather than to an inherent resisleast twenty-five percent durtance to climate change. These ing the drought, dramatically results suggest it is only a matEach research site includes four to five increasing the light availability, ter of time until the impact of and changing the understory climate change is seen more one-and-a-half acre research plots in environment (L. Delissio and clearly here. These studies also which every single tree has been surveyed. showed that mature trees might R. Primack, 2003). be sensitive indicators of cliIn these three locations, ten thousand The drought also caused the mate change. Overall, insect local extinction of the insect trees have been mapped, identified, and pollinators may be one of the pollinators of the fig trees (R. important indicators.

Harrison, 2000). So, for a full measured on a regular basis since 1965. most Through differential effects on two months, no new fig fruits trees and seedlings of different were produced. On the other species, and a change in the understory light environment, hand, three years later, all but one of eight pollinator speclimate change may cause a shift in the species composition cies had returned. Unfortunately, it is often the case that a of rain forests around the world.

So, even this highly stable single fig species will have only one pollinator species, so forest, in a region of the world expected to be least afthe remaining missing pollinator may be important. Pollifected by climate change, may be vulnerable to humannation is required for reproduction. A tree species without induced change in the global climate. its unique pollinator could fail to reproduce, and therefore go extinct.

Editor’s Note: Complete references are available from the author.

Tree seedling mortality at Lambir in the census period Lisa Delissio grew up in New York’s Hudson that included the severe 1998 drought was also up signifiValley where she attended Ichabod Crane Central High School. She received her B.S. cantly from two earlier periods that lacked severe drought in biology at Tufts University. It was through (L. Delissio and R. Primack, 2003). As with mature trees, Tufts that she had her first tropical field-work some species were more strongly affected than others. As experience at Hummingbird Cay in the Bahatree seedlings represent the future of the forest, these efmas. She received her Ph.D. in biology from fects could influence the future tree population sizes and Boston University, where she studied the ecology the types of species present. However, seedling mortality of the rain forests of Northwest Borneo. Dr. rates during the drought were still within the range of Delissio is currently an assistant professor in the biology department at Salem State College. non-drought mortality rates from earlier studies.

Kim Mimnaugh

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E S S A Y

Child Victims of War Yvonne Vissing Immediate Victims

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ar is usually viewed from an adult perspective, with a focus on political strategies, economic consequences, moral rightness, or militaristic gains. We tend to dwell upon the direct effects of war, like number of deaths. And when we hear of deaths we think of combat soldiers. But the fact is: children are those most likely to die or suffer injuries in war.

The increased victimization of children during war has occurred because of a shift in the nature of war itself. Today, militaristic activities are more likely to occur in cities and suburbs, areas that are heavily populated by children. In the Second World War, one civilian died for every eight soldiers killed. Today, the ratio is reversed, one military personnel killed for every eight civilians (Strong, 1993).

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hildren are often immediate victims in that they directly experience the consequences of war.

During the past thirty years, over two million children have been killed because of armed conflicts, and more than ten million children have been injured. They have been blinded and crippled, losing arms and legs (United Nations, 2004; Christian Children’s Fund, 2004; and Human Rights Watch, 2004).

Millions more have become sick due to preventable illnesses. As soldiers move in and out of communities, children are exposed to new diseases for which they have no immunity. When children live as refugees or in communal living situations, communicable diseases increase.

During wartime, measles, diarrhea, and pulmonary infections are common (UNICEF, 2004).

Many children in war-torn areas don’t have ready access to available food and water supplies and must rely on them to be transported. When children are dependent upon the government to provide them food and basic necessities, as are the children of nations like Iraq, the disruption of services caused by war has a devastating effect. When shipments are delayed, they go hungry.

When the food or water supplies are polluted, they become sick.

Olive Pierce © 1999

Little girl, Amarah Children’s Hospital, Iraq, 1999.

Many children in Iraq appear small for their age—the result of long-term malnutrition.

War and economic sanctions have decimated the supply of fresh foods and milk.

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Girls are often targets for sexual domination during wartime. Girl “soldiers” may be raped, or in some cases, given to military commanders as wives. In many countries, civilian girls have been sexually mutilated as a form of torture, or raped specifically so they will become pregnant and bear children that are of the same ethnic stock of those who seek to dominate their country. Once war

Olive Pierce © 1999

is over, these girls face additional abuse when they try to re-enter their communities and find they are stigmatized or cast out of their homes by families. Girls who have become pregnant often find that they, and their children, are scorned by their communities.

Not surprisingly, the spread of HIV/AIDS among both girls and boys in war-torn countries has skyrocketed (UNICEF, 2004).

While conventional bombs and gunfire are the most obvious deadly risks, children are subject to harm from all types of warfare.

Landmines are of particular danger Mother and child, Basrah Pediatric Hospital, Iraq, 1999. to children. These “indiscriminate” Nurses are in short supply in Iraqi hospitals, which used to be the boast of the Arab world. Mothers fill the gap. weapons of war are buried in roads and fields to detonate when the enemy walks over them. hemoglobin’s ability to carry oxygen to cells, which can Unfortunately, children play and walk down these streets. cause children to suffocate. Children have smaller lung Children have become so familiar with mines that they forcapacities, and anticholinesterase agents and nerve gases get they are lethal weapons. In northern Iraq, children have interfere with their central nervous system’s ability to conbeen known to use mines as wheels for toy trucks, and in trol breathing. As a result, children can asphyxiate in less Cambodia children have been seen playing “boules” with than sixty seconds. Agent Orange and other herbicides are B40 anti-personnel mines (United Nations www.un.org, associated with a host of disorders, including cancer and 2004). Some even have their own collection of landmines. birth defects.

There are an estimated 110 Exposure to any of these million landmines lodged When children are dependent upon the wartime weapons can lead to in the ground of sixty-four catastrophic consequences for government to provide them food and countries, just waiting to be children’s developing neurostepped on or picked up by a basic necessities, as are the children of logical systems.

Their immature curious child. Worldwide, bemotor skills make it hard for nations like Iraq, the disruption of services tween eight thousand and ten them to run away from harm, thousand children are killed caused by war has a devastating effect. even if they knew what to do or disabled by landmines every or where to go. Unfortunately, year. According to United Nafor children in warring areas, victimization doesn’t include tions data (2004), about fifteen million landmines have been just immediate injury; it also includes harm from being placed in Angola—approximately one landmine for every directly involved in war activities, as well as indirect conAngolan—making Angola the world’s second most heavily sequences of war. mined country. Afghanistan is ranked first, where seventy thousand persons have suffered amputations from landmine explosions—the highest amputee rate in the world.

Active Victims Like landmines, “cluster bombs” are made up of many ome young children become soldiers to defend their small bomblets contained within one large delivery system. family and their homes, but others are routinely Experts estimate that around ten percent of the bomblets forced into active combat. They do not play with toy do not explode on impact, but lay on the ground awaiting guns; the guns they carry are real. The wounds and death an accidental encounter, often by a child (United Nations they inflict are far from imaginary, and child soldiers can 2004). be as brutal as any adult. Some child soldiers are as young as eight years. Even much younger children may engage in Biological and chemical agents are particularly deadly “play” that directly socializes them to use violence against for children. They breathe more times per minute than others when the need arises. There are currently over adults, which exposes them to larger doses. Agents like three-hundred thousand children under age eighteen fightsarin and chlorine are heavier than air, so they accumulate ing in wars around the world (United Nations, 2004). The closer to the ground, nearer to children. Because their skin national army of Burma is believed to have more child is thinner, children are more vulnerable to agents that act soldiers than any other country in the world. Over seventy on skin. Blood agents, such as cyanide vapor, interfere with

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thousand of Burma’s three-hundred fifty thousand soldiers are estimated to be children as young as eleven years.

Both boys and girls are used as soldiers by governments and armed groups in many countries in the Americas and Middle East.

are forcibly recruited, “press-ganged,” or abducted by armed groups. Children may be bullied into becoming soldiers by older boys and men. Many children join armed groups because of their own experience of abuse at the hands of state authorities.

Although international law forbids recruiting children under fifteen as soldiers, such young children may be found in government armies and, more commonly, in armed rebel groups. While national armies are supposed to be subject to the United Nations’ international rules on protecting children, it has little jurisdiction over use of child soldiers. In Ireland, across the Middle East, and into Southeast Asia, rebel groups actively cultivate child soldiers (Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org, 2004). Children are uniquely vulnerable to military recruitment because of their emotional and physical immaturity. They are easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence before they understand the circumstances. Children are most likely to become child soldiers if they are poor, separated from their families, or have limited access to education. Orphans and refugees are particularly vulnerable to recruitment. Others

It turns out, children can be effective combatants; being small, they are able to get into smaller places and can look innocent. They are also likely to take orders. Technological advances in weaponry have also contributed to the increased use of child soldiers. Lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easily accessible, and easy to handle for children. Being a soldier, however, doesn’t make their life any easier. They are often brutally punished for mistakes and injured during harsh training regimes.

Young soldiers are used to lay and clear landmines. They are sent into minefields ahead of older troops to make sure the paths are safe. Not surprisingly, children have been used for suicide missions. While many children fight in the frontline, others are used as spies, messengers, sentries, porters, servants, and sexual slaves. Both governments and armed groups use children because they are easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience.

It is unfortunate that few peace treaties recognize the existence of child soldiers, or make provisions for their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Many former child soldiers do not have access to the educational programs, vocational training, family reunification, or even food and shelter that they need to successfully rejoin civilian society. As a result, many end up on the street, become involved in crime, or drawn back into armed conflict (Amnesty International, 1997).

Indirect Victims

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ullets and bombs may seem the most deadly part of war, but more children die from indirect consequences of violence (UNICEF, 2004). Starvation and disease take many young lives. And while the physical effects of war can be deadly, the psychological effects of war are immense and incalculable.

© Martin Adler / Panos Pictures

The impact of war is so catastrophic that public health officials have deemed war the major health threat of our time. Conflict has the potential to forever change indirectly a child’s aspirations and capabilities. While children have widely differing needs, experiences, and challenges during and after conflict, no child emerges unscarred or unaffected. Children thrive when they feel loved, receive proper food, water, and clothing, have a stable home, and have access to education and health care. But during wartime, these essential needs are compromised. War puts their basic survival at stake.

Eva, a thirteen-year-old guerilla fighter with the Farabundo Marti Para La Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), Hacienda Montecillo, El Salvador.

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Half of the twelve million war refugees in the world are children, and each day five thousand more children become refugees (United Nations, www.un.org., 2004). They can become refugees in their own nation, or in countries that

are foreign to them— places in which they are treated as unwanted intruders.

War makes it difficult for children to access healthcare, and routine problems often become worse because of the lack of preventive services. A simple eye or ear infection can lead to blindness or deafness if left untreated. When care is available, children’s smaller bodies require different treatment strategies including smaller dosages of medicines, different medications, and smaller-sized equipment.

These obstacles make it harder to treat children than adults.

Because there is frequently a lack of medical personnel, injured limbs may easily become amputations. There are seldom rehabilitation services available, and most treatments provided are meager. In war-riddled areas, there may be no available hospital beds, or a functioning hospital in which to receive care, since hospitals may be targets of war. Schools may essentially cease to function. Fearing that they may be killed, children may not go to school, and often schools simply close their doors.

Studies of homeless children indicate that while physical displacement is problematic, even more so is the internal, psychological displacement that accompanies not having anyplace they can call home. When a child is forced to leave the security of their home, inevitably their mental security is shattered. Investigations of refugee children from Southeast Asia and more recently former Yugoslavia indicate that serious psychiatric disorders were present in forty to fifty percent of the children who were forced to flee their homes (Association for Child Psychiatrists and Psychologists, 1996).

According to the United Nations (2003), over ten million children have suffered serious psychological trauma due to war. Children continue to suffer long after the conflict is over. According to the National Association for Child and Family Mental Health (1994), children exposed to war often suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The effects of armed conflict range from increased anxiety, depression, and higher levels of violent behavior, to sleeping and eating disorders. There is also evidence that children exposed to war may develop somatic problems such as headaches, stomach pains, and bed-wetting. They may experience developmental difficulties like poor concentration, memory impairment, and a general deterioration in learning skills. Children who have observed war crimes respond differently than adults; young children lack the cognitive

Olive Pierce © 1999

Over one million children have been made orphans in the past thirty years because their homes were destroyed and their families killed, moved, or have otherwise abandoned them (National Children’s Bureau, 1993). Without care-givers, they are forced to survive on their own, all too often finding poverty, abuse, exploitation, homelessness, malnutrition, and disease. Children whose families are killed or disappear may be forced into dangerous or illegal behavior in order to survive. Having no support network to guide or assist them, a ruthless, survival mentality takes hold.

Girl selling seeds, Safaafeer Market, Baghdad, Iraq, 1999.

In a country which values education above all, many children have had to drop out of school to help support their families.

capacities available to the adult and are rarely able to talk about their traumatic experiences. They will express their internal conflicts in other ways, such as repeatedly reenacting the event, having intrusive visual images, or experience regressive and aggressive behavior.

Merely observing violence and death can severely impact a child’s well-being and capability to function normally. It can disrupt the ability of children to be nurturing towards others, or even care for themselves. Child specialist Naomi Richman concludes that children are most likely to be at risk from trauma if they have directly suffered violence against themselves or witnessed killing and atrocities, particularly when against a family member. Their trauma is further compounded when they lack strong supportive relationships. An internationally led team of investigators in the first ever pre-war psychological field research with children found that forty percent of children in Iraq felt that life was not worth living (Erik Hoskins, 2003).

Economic sanctions that are supposed to end war may inadvertently put thousands of children at risk. When a nation’s ability to provide for its population is compromised, it is children who fail to receive basic resources like food, water, education, and health care. Studies on the impact of economic sanctions in Iraq, Cuba, and Haiti have 59

Olive Pierce © 1999

Boy and beggar, Jumhuriya neighborhood, Basrah, Iraq, 1999.

The Jumhuriyah neighborhood was hit by an allied missile in December 1998, killing seventeen people and injuring others, including children. Despite the lack of electricity, building materials, and clean water, those who survived are working to put their lives back together again.

shown illness and malnutrition rates skyrocket as food prices soar and availability of basic resources plummet. In Iraq, the death rate for children under five years of age was 2.5 times greater than it was in 1990, before the sanctions were imposed (Garfield, 2003).

Children of all ages worry about war no matter how far they may be from the conflict. The closer to home the war or threat of war is, the greater the impact. War and the images of violence are carried on television, radio, newsprint, and the Internet, making no one immune from fear and unease. It is difficult for people far from the war zones to know if the media pictures are accurate portrayals or highly sensationalized in order to seize market share. Whether in Hiroshima, New York, or Baghdad, children know they, or their families, can be killed in an instant.

Network, www.christianchildrensfund.org, 2004). The tensions in the Middle East have become so ingrained that it will take generations before the people who live there trust one another. Religious and value differences between peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran make resolution of problems harder, especially when one group seeks to undermine the validity of the other.

Once wars are couched in religious terms, children are socialized that in order to be faithful, one has to fight those who are evil. When entire groups of individuals are labeled as evil, and there is systematic psychological warfare to promote propaganda to dehumanize others, it is easy for children to feel as though they are doing the right thing by hating and fighting those who are not like themselves.

Warfare, and peace, is promoted through the ways that adults interact with children. Through the stories that are told about other people, through the kinds of songs that are sung, and the kinds of games that are played, children learn a great deal about cultural values. How well a child is taught to solve problems peacefully will undoubtedly influence the kind of adult he or she will become.

Child psychologist James Garbarino notes that when a culture fails to teach respect and tolerance, and resorts to violence to solve problems, this message socializes its youngest members by making violence both normal and acceptable. When children see that violence is effective in achieving goals, violence will beget violence.

Cultural Victimization

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Olive Pierce © 1999

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he entire culture in which children live and grow is adversely affected by war.

The cultural context in which children develop predisposes them to be citizens who embrace the path chosen by adults. It is the acceptability of war that breeds conditions for further violence. People deemed as evil may be targeted for ethnic cleansings and extermination. Children who grow up believing that certain people are bad and deserve to die inevitably carry on the legacy of violence. Children in war torn areas of Ireland, the Middle East, and Africa play with imaginary guns and weapons, only to continue their behavior as they age with the use of real weapons. There is armed conflict in half of Africa’s forty-five countries, making war and poverty the normative experience (Christian Children’s

Mother and daughter, Amarah Children’s Hospital, Iraq, 1999.

A mother sits with her sick child. “There is so little we can do,” said the attending doctor.

“We haven’t enough of anything.”

Protecting Children From War The toll war takes on children demands an urgent response. The blueprint to peace is simple: children need to feel loved, observe peace in their households, and live in social communities that strive to provide the basic necessities for its members and seeks nonviolent resolutions to conflict. In order to protect children from being victims of war, it is the responsibility of every individual, family, organization, community, and nation to establish patterns of interaction that promote peace. The consequences of war on children are so obvious and disastrous that global conflicts must be prevented. Children represent the hopes and future of every society: destroy them and you have destroyed your future.

There are many individuals and organizations around the world who champion nonviolent methods, and others who support the health and well being of children. The United Nations has established programs that have made a real difference in the lives of children caught in desperate circumstances. The “Children as Zones of Peace” was first promoted in the early nineteen eighties to argue that children are neither the proponents nor the perpetrators of war, and therefore deserve to have Center for the Internally Displaced classroom, Basrah, Iraq, 1999. their rights protected. Assistance for children durChildren sit three to four to a desk without pencil or paper. Until the sanctions were replaced by war, pencils were prohibited because the graphite might be used for camouflage. ing conflicts have been provided in El Salvador, in Lebanon’s Days of Tranquility, and in Uganda’s All of us find it hard to believe that at the end Corridor of Peace. Raising standards for child protection of the twentieth century children are targets, are essential, and the United Nations has been in the forechildren are expendable, children are victims, front in child advocacy. Its “Rights of the Child” treaty can children are refugees, and even perpetrators— be a powerful political tool, as it guarantees a child’s right in one conflict after another, on virtually every to education, housing, a decent standard of living, and procontinent…. I am under no illusion about the tection in times of war. Ironically, every country in the size of the task. But with the necessary political United Nations has ratified these rights, except Somalia will, substantial progress can be made toward and the United States (United Nations, 2004). our common goal of making the rights of chilOne child-war expert, Nandita Saikia, points out that dren in situations of armed conflict the rule we don’t have the right to inflict the devastation created rather than the exception… The task that we by war on our own children, nor do we have the right to face is indeed a challenging one. But the cost inflict that environment on anyone else’s children. Since of failure—or this generation’s children and “wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men the next—is simply too high to bear. that the defenses of peace must be constructed,” according The children are waiting and counting on us—it is time to UNESCO (2003). Ultimately, the only way to assuredly for us to act responsibly. protect children from the devastating effects of war is to Editor’s Note: Complete references are available from the author. prevent war. As noted by author Graça Machel, former first lady of Mozambique and international advocate for Dr. Yvonne Vissing is a professor of sociolchildren, “The impact of armed conflict on children is ogy at Salem State College, where she is also everyone’s responsibility.” The depth of our commitment the coordinator of its Center for Child Studies.

She recently developed The Peace College, an today to immediate action with and on behalf of warintergenerational peace education program. affected girls and boys will determine their future commitment to peace.

Olive Pierce is a documentary photographer Kim Mimnaugh

Often, people talk about wanting to help children, but “the wheels of change are too slow for many of these kids,” said Julia Freedson (www.watchlist.org, 2004), coordinator of the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, a

and political activist. Concerned about the plight of Iraqi children, she made a journey to Iraq in 1999 under the auspices of Voices in the Wilderness to bring back firsthand impressions of their lives.

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Olive Pierce © 1999

network of non-governmental organizations. “By the time we’re done talking about what we should be doing to protect the kids, many of them have already lost their lives or suffered in other horrible ways.” Graca Machel said in 2003 to the United Nations General Assembly:

S O U N D I N G S

... and thank you

Photographer Kim Mimnaugh, editor Maggie Vaughan, and graphic designer Susan McCarthy, August 25, 2004, winding up Volume XIII, No. 1—Maggie’s last issue as editor. “It’s been grand.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have helped to produce this special issue, and to them we remain indebted: Kim Mimnaugh provided us with so many wonderful images, Susan Edwards helped several authors with archival materials, Susan Case read every word backwards looking for misspellings, Rose Cooke and Roland Ricard happily printed updated versions of the continually changing magazine, Bruce Perry located obscure photos, and Adria Leach and Kristin Eaton ’04 helped with many of the little details. And, of course, we will always be indebted to the Sesquicentennial Committee and the SSC Foundation for coming to our rescue.

Many departments and centers on campus also deserve our thanks because we simply couldn’t do our jobs without them: Academic Affairs, College Relations, Fiscal Affairs, Information Technology, Institutional Advancement, the Library, Mail Services, Publications, Purchasing, Research and Records, and Shipping and Receiving.

We also would like to acknowledge the generosity of Olive Pierce, the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, and the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, for allowing us to publish their photos.

Authors, too, would like to extend thank yous to: Nancy Aker, Senie Blake, Susan Fountain, Megan Miller, Christopher Miner, Fran O’Donnell, Sandra FitzHenry, and especially Elwin Pfaff; John Adams, Salem Athenaeum, Cathy Boudreau, Eleanor Reynolds, Jane Walsh of Salem Public Library, Dan Finnamore of the P.E.M., Michael Harrington of the Hawthorne Hotel, Salem historian James McAllister, Jeremiah Burns, Racket Shreve, and the entire von Saltza family.

Finally, we thank Anita Shea, Martin Krugman, Will Vaughan, Donna Colbeth, Sharon Bowman, and Kevin McCarthy, Esq. As always, thank you Scott Prewitt and the staff at Imperial Company for all of your expertise.

—MV & SM 62

Dear Editor: I was saddened to read that our current issue of Sextant, was our last. I have always had great pride in our school, when I read each publication. My husband enjoys reading it more than the one from his school (Boston College).

I commend your optimistic view of returning.

Sincerely, Elaine Dacey ’64 President, SSC Alumni Association I’m sure it’s much too late for you to reconsider but I wish you did not have to give up on the Sextant. I don’t think the College has ever done anything with a classier, more professional, more solidly-academic look to it than the Sextant. I’m sorry that sometimes the best things get cut first in a financial crisis. Maybe it can be resurrected some day, perhaps on a paid-subscription basis. I’d certainly want to subscribe.

My congratulations on all you achieved in the publication, and my best to any colleagues of mine who may still be around Salem State.

Sincerely, David E. Newton Former Professor of Chemistry & Physics Briefly—thank you. The latest (and, sadly last) issue of Sextant is content-rich and visually beautiful. A feast for eye and mind. I am so proud to be part of it (Vol. XII, Nos. 1 & 2). I hope that Sextant will soon rise again. You have created a work that is consistently a credit to the College.

Gratefully, Eileen Margerum Professor Emerita of Communications Thanks for another Sextant. Your Journal remains distinguished in appearance and content.You have honored me by sharing space (Vol. XII, Nos. 1 & 2). The editorial adjustments were enhancements. I’m still digging for records connecting Bowditch to A. Lawrence and science at Harvard in the early nineteenth century.

Sincerely, Dick Land Belmont, Massachusetts Sextant encourages readers to submit letters or comments to: SEXTANT Salem State College 352 Lafayette Street Salem, MA 01970-5353 or sextant@salemstate.edu Include your name, address, phone number, and email address.

Letters may be published and edited according to available space.

C O N T R I B U T O R S

S

alem State College and the entire community owe a debt of gratitude to those who have led with their commitments in the quiet and early stages of our 150th Anniversary Capital Campaign. The following donors have stepped forward to bolster the College’s role in developing academic, artistic, and athletic excellence. These donors are catalysts who help others in our community see the College for the jewel that it is.

The depth of their vision and their charitable investments bring us to new heights. Our capital campaign donor list identifies a select group of individuals with insight and generosity. These individuals realize that the public recognition of their leadership giving will inspire others to follow their lead with gifts in support of the 150th Anniversary Capital Campaign.

Because of the founders and benefactors of Salem State College, our community is stronger. We truly appreciate the contributions listed on these pages which were received before September 1, 2004.

Sullivan Society – $1,000 + Meier Society – $2,500 + Bowditch Society – $5,000 + Forten Society – $10,000 + Peabody Society – $15,000 + Hawthorne Society – $20,000 + Sextant Society – $25,000 + Note: * Indicates that a portion of this contribution has been directed to the annual fund.

Please recognize that the College’s consistent growth during the past 150 years has depended upon the generous supporters of our Annual Fund Campaign. We are grateful to these dedicated donors, many of whom are included in this Capital Campaign Donor List. For a current, complete listing of our Annual Fund Campaign giving, please view the College’s 2003-2004 Honor Roll of Donors at www.salemstate.edu/alumni.

Salem State College theatre performance

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Sullivan Society Lucille E. Ackerman ’37 Stanley P. Cahill and Gayle A. Sullivan ’96 J. P. Campbell Inc. Erik J. Champy ’89 Carol A. Chisholm ’78 Class of 2004 David E. Collins and Carol Collins Donald E. Cullivan and Lorraine E. Cullivan ’54 William H. Dacey and Elaine F. Dacey ’64 John F. Enos and Mary L. Enos ’56 R. Althea Flamer Wayne A. Gates ’76 and Carol Gates General Electric Michael P. Greenstein and Arlene T. Greenstein Imperial Printing Company Anthony A. Klein and Barbara N. Klein Dean T. Langford ’89H and Nancy Langford F. D. Mason Company Frederick Mason III and Susan Mason Terence A. McGinnis ’03H John W. P. McHale Mary M. Miller SSC Academic Affairs Office Gary Stirgwolt and Jane Brady Stirgwolt Tobin Moving and Storage Verizon Communications Alfred J. Viselli ’59 and Nancy M. Viselli Benjamin Waxman and Nicole McLaughlin Xerox Corporation Leonard P. Zani ’54 and Kirsten I. Zani

Meier Society Beverly Cooperative Bank Class of 1951 Class of 1964 The Cranney Companies James P. Dennis and Leila A. Dennis ’02 Dimeo Construction DiVirgilio Insurance Co. Fidelity Foundation Arthur T. Gerald and Henrietta L. Gerald Healy Marketing Group Heritage Bank Herbert A. Fox and Janyce J. Napora Milton Lapkin and Diane R. Lapkin Beatrice D. Moody Trust Fund North Shore Medical Center O’Keefe Chevrolet OSRAM Sylvania Robert L. Paterson and Louise A. Grindrod * R & L Associates, Inc. Ronan, Segal and Harrington Salem Five Stephen P. Sorkin and Karla Sorkin Suburban Real Estate News, Peabody/Lynnfield Weekly News and North Shore Golf U.S. Rep. John F. Tierney ’73 and Patrice Tierney

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Bowditch Society Anonymous Michael J. Eschelbacher and Roslyn Eschelbacher * Gerondelis Foundation, Inc. Waldren P. Lojko ’49 and Grace R. Lojko ’46 Michael G. Sheffer and Cynthia A. McGurren ’83 SSC Center for the Creative and Performing Arts SSC Theatre & Speech Communication Department Barnet Weinstein and Sandy Weinstein Patricia H. Zaido

Forten Society

Center for the Performing Arts

Terry L. Conrad and Robin Conrad Richard F. Durgan ’69 and Cheryl H. Durgan Richard L. Elia and L. Harley Elia ’93 John D. Galaris ’67 and Mary Ellen Galaris ’67 Daniel Mackey Massachusetts Electric Company * Staples Business Advantage *

Peabody Society Jean W. Bennett ’33 and Robert T. Bennett, Jr. ’69 Fleet Boston Financial * L. Lee Harrington ’91H and Joan M. Boudreau

Hawthorne Society Richard C. Bane and Tami L. Bane Nancy D. Harrington ’60 David R. Masse ’86 Jacob S. Segal and Marilyn J. Segal Library

Sextant Society

Scholarships

Richard H. Ayer ’71 and Edlita Ayer ’70, ’76G Class of 1954 Brian C. Cranney ’01H and Sheila A. Cranney Alex B. Dichner and Frances V. Dichner ’76 Lowell J. Gray ’00H and Elizabeth S. Gray Michael J. Harrington ’81H and Dorothy Harrington/ The Hawthorne Hotel Peter J. Lappin and Maria E. Lappin John H. Wall ’38 and Beverly R. Wall Haim Weizmann and Edna Weizmann Anna Mary White Foundation 64

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Visionary Society Michael J. Agganis ’66 and Madeline A. Agganis ’79 Chartwells/Compass Group

Emilio A. DiFelice (deceased) and Mary A. DiFelice ’36 (deceased)

Par artner’ tner’ss Society Pepsi Bottling Group of New England

Sesquicentennial Society Gerald J. Morrissey and Karen M. Morrissey ’71, ’93H Eugene Salem ’87H and Janet Salem (Windhorse Foundation)

Benevolent Benev olent Society Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation Thomas M. Feeley ’68 and Joan M. Feeley *

SSC Alumni Association

Salem Society Walter A. Cuffe Jr. ’62 and Sally A. Cuffe ’62 Henry S. Dembowski ’60 and Claire C. Dembowski * George H. Ellison Sr. ’54 (deceased) and Clare Ellison * David W. Ives and Pamela J. Burch Deirdre A. Sartorelli ’83

Visionary Society – $500,000 + Partner’s Society – $250,000 + Sesquicentennial Society – $150,000 + Benevolent Society – $100,000 + Salem Society – $50,000 + Note: * Indicates that a portion of this contribution has been directed to the annual fund.

352 Lafayette Street Salem, Massachusetts 01970

THE WORLD I saw eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years Driv’n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world And all her train were hurl’d.

The doting lover in his quaintest strain Did there complain; Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights, Wit’s sour delights; With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure, Yet his dear treasure, All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour Upon a flow’r.

by Henry Vaughan, 1650