September 1988

retching for Seoul Candidates for the White House "Love L&t ter," A Short Story

American Landscapes

The United States. more than three times the SJZe oflndia, encompasses an area of 9 .363,405 square kilometers. This vastness offers a gamut of natural features from mountains in the cast and higher ones in the west to seemingly endless rolling pramc in between that both bewilder and please the eye.

Recently, the U.S. Information Service organized an exhibition that pictured the varied American landscapes. SPAN offers a sampling of the exhibit on this page and the back cover. Seen above is the northwestern coastline of California; at top, right. is the Red Rock Crossing in Sedona, Arizona; and the picture at right shows a water mill in the Blue Ridge hills of Virginia. A hot-air balloon flies high over the California wine district in the picture on the back cover.

September 1988

SPAN VOLUME XXIX NUMBER 9

2

Candidates for the White House

6 The Importance of Being

Je~

Jackson

by Normu11 Orn.t1em

8

Tomorrow's Medicine Today hy Dianne I"1/e.1

11 Legendary Olympian

by Sumi/ Dul/a

16

Putting Their Hearts in Seoul

20 Baseball

by Joel Schwarz and William A. Henkin

22

A Gift of Vision

by Parimal N. Gandhi

23

The Rotary Story

by Charles Newton

25

An Indian Visit

by Tacy Paul

Busi~

26 Goes Back to School

by Mary-Margaret Wantuck

28 Focus On...

30

McGarry's People--Camera to Canvas

34 Whitman's Passage to Punjab

by Dorshan Singh Mam/

37 The Love Letter A Short Story by Jack Finney

42 On the Lighter Side

43 Re-Creating the Big Bang by ue Edson

Publisher Editor

Leonard J . Baldyga W.mcn W. McCurd}

Managing Editor

H1madn Dhanda

Associate Managing Editor

Krishan Gabrani

Senior Edilor

Aruna Dasgupta

Copy Editors

A. Vcnkata Narayana Sn1gdha Majmudar

Editorial Assistants

Rocque Fernandes Rashmi Goel

Photo Editor Art Director Associate Art Director

Avmash Pasricha and Katyal Knn11 Ro}

Artist

Hemant Bhatnagar

Chief of Production

Awtar S. Marwaha

Circulation Manager

Y P. Pandhi

Photographic Service

USIS Photographic Services Unit

Photographs: 1-ront CO\er-Ne1I Leifer for Sports lllus1ro1ed 0 Time Inc. I A\1nash Pasncha. 8-9-illuslruuons b> Hcmant Bhatnagar. 17 top left < 1986 Zigy Kaluzn}. All righh reserved. 20-illustration b} Cameron Gerlach. 22-<:ourtesy Panmal Gandhi. 29 left and center right-<:ourtcsy Bala K. Srinivas; top right-Geeta Srinivas. M.D. 30-32- Avinash Pasricha. 46. 47 left-Tony Kelly; 47 right-<:ourtesy Fermilab. Inside back cover t(lp John Wagner. Jr .. courtesy The Image Bank: boltom left- c; 1985 Ray Atkeson; right-© 1985 Jeff Gnass. Back cover-© 1985 Morton Beebe Photography, San Francisco.

All posters published and distributed by Portal Publications Ltd. Corte Madera. California.

Published by the United States Informa11on Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg. New Delhi 110001. on behalf of the American Embassy. New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessaril} reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited. Faridabad, I laryana.

U..c or SPAN arucles ID other publicauons "tnCOUr1jlcd. exccpl when copyngllted. For pcrm1~<1on Pnce of mai;atinc. one yc"r'ssubscripuon ( 12 i!l'lues) Rs. 30; single cop)'. Rs 5.

ForehQngc of uddrcss send un old address from• rcctnl SPAN envelope along w11h new addrtt< lO Circulu11on Manai;er. SPAN magninc. 24 Ka.s1urba G.1ndht Marg. New Delhi 110001 See chanac

wri1c to the Ed11or

or •ddress ronn on page 48b.

Front co~er: This dramatic shot of Carl Lewis by Neil Leifer symbolizes America's hopes at the 1988 Olympics beginning in Seoul this month. See also pages 16-21.

Back cover: A hot-air balloon flies over wine counlry-Napa Valley, California. More photographs of American landscapes on the inside back cover.

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Leonard J . Baldyga--SPAN's new publisher and the director of the United States Information Service in India--brings to his job a vast body of experience in both public diplomacy and journalism. Since he joined USIS more than a quarter century ago, he has had the distinction of serving in important regions of the world, with a variety of cultures and traditions, and different styles of government, including in Africa, Eastern Europe, Mexico and most~ecently in Rome where he was Minister Counselor for Public Affairs during a five-year period. He also served as director of the European area for USIS. "Essentially, what I have been doing all these years has been conducting public diplomacy--attempting to convey something of the dynamism of American society, the feel and flavor of my country, to the leaders and the people of the countries where I have been assigned . And, in turn , it has been my pleasant duty to learn about those societies and appreciate what they think of the United States."

Only a few months ago, Baldyga's invaluable services to the U.S. government were recognized when the nation's highest award for excellence in public diplomacy was bestowed on him, named for Edward R. Murrow, who set a high standard for objective broadcast journalism during a long, distinguished career. Ironically , it was Murrow's appointment as director of the United States Information Agency by President Kennedy that brought Baldyga into government service.

"Ed Murrow had a profound faith in American democracy, whose base had to be an informed public. Deceit and deception were his enemies; truth his only friend," Baldyga recalls.

SPAN ' s new publisher considers his Indian assignment as both an opportunity and a challenge. "This is my first visit to India, but my interest in the country goes back 30 years to my graduate school days at Columbia University. I had a very dear friend, Brijen Gupta, who always fired my imagination with his stories about this land and its rich past. I had hoped to be here earlier in my career , but I am absolutely delighted to finally have come.

"What has always intrigued me nnst about India is , to paraphrase Jawaharlal Nehru, its tryst with democracy . Many people believe that democracy is not for poor, developing nations, that it can only flourish in rich, industrialized countries. I believe that India has proved these skeptics quite wrong. Despite its problems , India is developing into a strong, rrodern state within a framework of democracy. Although I have been here only a few weeks, I have already experienced the vitality of the Indian people and institutions, and especially the vibrant press."

On Indo-U.S . relations, Baldyga is forthright: "We have had differences between our two countries, aoo there always will be differences--that is only to be expected because our two nations have differing perspectives on regional and global issues. However , it is also because that is in the nature of democracy--to encourage open discussion and debate."

During his tenure in India , he hopes t o use his experience in public diplomacy to give a new dimension to Indo-u.s. relations--to minimize areas of disagreement and provide ITK)re depth and scope in areas where the two nations have a tradition of cooperation--in agriculture, science and technology, education and culture. "This is how I view my Indian assignment," he says . "Although our two nations are on the opposite sides of the globe, we share much in corrrnon. We both have been melting pots, welcoming and assimilating peoples of different lands and beliefs into our societies, and we both are a free and proud people."

Of SPAN, Baldyga says , "I have long admired this magazine , aoo am happy to be actively associated with it." In fact, with SPAN , Baldyga comes back to his first love--journalism.

As a student at Southern Illinois University, he was managing editor of the university's Daily F.qyptian. Later, he was editor of the Marion Daily Republican and a bank stock columnist and financial writer for the American Banker on Wall Street. "At SPAN I will endeavor to continue the tradition that the magazine has assiduously built over the years--to be a forum for an active, honest, intelligent dialogue between America and India. What I like most about the magazine is that it is not only a window on America but also, with contributions from many Indian experts in various fields, a truly binational, bicultural presentation."

Baldyga and his wife, Joyce, have two daughters , Natalya , 19, who is attending Middlebury College in Vermont; and Sarah, 16, who is studying at the American Einbassy School in New Delhi.

--w.w.M.

With the nomination.by the two major American political parties of their candidates, Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis, the stage is now set for the final round of the presidential battle. Over the next two months, they will crisscross the country, give speeches, shake hands, attend banquets and appear on television to woo the voters who will give their verdict on November 8.

On these pages, SPAN presents the profiles of the two presidential contenders and their running mates.

George Bush George Bush is aptly called "the handyman of American politics." Since 1966, he has held a number of important political offices. He has been a U.S. Congressman; Ambassador to the United Nations; chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing; Republican National Committee chairman; di~ector of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and, since 1980, Vice President of the United States. These are assets that should help Bush in his bid for the American Presidency in the forthcoming November general elections.

Yet, political pundits say, some of these assets are Bush' s potential liabilities. Whether as U.N. Ambassador, director of CIA or Vice President, Bush has always been "taking orders rather than taking charge," and the man who occupies the White House should have proven leadership qualities. Again, they point out, that as Vice President Bush has hung heavily on President Reaga~'s coattails, but bis close identification with Reagan does not necessarily give him the advantages of incumbency. Jn fact, Bush may have to pay a price for such failures as the Iran-contra scandal of the Administration. In addition, he has not been particularly good at oratory needed to sway voters in his favor.

Though there may be some truth in this assessment, Bush's top advisers insist that he, like Reagan in 1980, has been consistently underestimated by his political rivals and the press. Although even they concede that Bush is sometimes less than inspiring as an orator, they argue that he enjoys an old-shoe familiarity with the voters that is tantamount to trust.

"His biggest strength as a candidate is that the voters feel they know George Bush," says

2

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

'

Michael Dukakis Michael Dukakis, the popular wisdom had it, was a capable administrator, a technocratic, problem-solving governor who came up short on emotion and rhetorical tire.

The Massachusetts governor demolished that reputation for blandness in a dynamic speech accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, offering an outline for "a new era of greatness for America" that repeatedly brought Democratic National Convention delegates to their feet July 21.

Tf Dukakis, whose mother and father came to the United States from Greece, can translate his party triumph into a victory in the November 8 election, he would become the first son of immigrant parents to hold the Presidency since Andrew Jackson did in the early days of the American Republic.

Dukakis was not well known nationally when he launched his presidential bid early in 1987.

His nomination capped a 16-month campaign in which the man who had been a marathon runner in his youth methodically eliminated one rival after another in a grueling series of state-bystate primary contests.

His most tenacious rival, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, stayed in the contest right up to the national nominating convention in July, even after the eventual outcome became certain.

Governor Dukakis, who nurtured an image as a party centrist throughout the campaign, worked hard to gain the support of the charismatic Jackson, who had

SPAN SEPTEMBER

1 98~

J

••••••••••••••••••••••••••

CANDIDATES continued

George Bush Republican Party consultant Eddie Mahe.

"They are confident they know what they're getting."

Moreover, Bush's supporters point to the example of Vice President Harry Truman, who grew in office and, when propelled into the Presidency on the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, developed into a strong leader.

In fact, they already notice a new authority and self-assurance in the man. For example, reacting to the lapses of the government, Bush said a few weeks ago that he was "tired of being embarrassed" by ethical lapses in government and wanted "a strict code of ethics" to prevent "the excesses of the past." Says Mitchell Daniels, a former bead of the White House political-liaison office, "I suspect that George Bush might surprise people by being bolder than expected. He might break out of the mold."

Wrote Time magazine recently, " Bush's posture throughout his political career reflects . his natural modesty, but it can also be seen as a deliberate strategy. The Vice President made one of his most revealing statements when he declared his candidacy last October. 'I am a practical man. I like what's real,' he said. 'I like what works ... .I do not yearn to lead a crusade.'"

If Bush is burdened by some of the Reagan Administration's failures, he is also likely to benefit in his race for the White House from some of the successes achieved by the Reagan Administration in foreign affairs, specially by the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty with the Soviet Union.

Bush will also profit from Reagan's eminently successful negotiating techniques, which he observed firsthand. "There's no doubt in my mind that I would be a better President now than I would have been in 1980," Bush said recently. "I've learned a lot."

*

*

*

George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942. At age 18, he became the country's youngest commissioned pilot of that time. During World War II, he flew combat missions in the Pacific, was shot down and rescued by an American submarine, and won the Distinguished Flying Cross and other medals of valor.

In 1945, Bush entered Yale University,

where he was Phi Beta Kappa and captained the varsity baseball team. After graduation in 1948, he went to Texas where he swept floors in his first job. Later, borrowing from his family , he entered the oil business. He was the cofounder and director of Zapata Petroleum Corporation and president of Zapata Offshore Company, which pioneered in experimental offshore drilling equipment, and made millions.

Possessed of wealth and a buoyant personality, Bush became active in Republican politics in Houston. In 1964, he campaigned for the U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Ralph Yarborough, and lost.

In 1966, however, Bush became the first Republican to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas since the Civil War. Two years later, he ran without opposition.

In 1970, Bush again tried for the Senate only to lose to Lloyd Millard Bentsen, now the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate.

Ayeac late,, p,esidenl Richa'd Nixon named Bush to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1973, Nixon made him head of the Republican National Committee, which tested the man during the most difficult days of Watergate. While Nixon was grilled for the Watergate scandal, Bush stood by his President. But he wrote a personal letter to Nixon advising him to resign, which earned Bush public applause. "It is my considered judgment that you should now resign," the letter said. " I expect in your lonely embattled position this would seem to you as an act of disloyalty ....My own view is that I would now ill serve a President...ifI did not give you my judgment... .I now firmly feel resignation is best for this country, best for this President."

When Gerald Ford became President, he appointed Bush to Beijing as American envoy.

Later, Ford named him director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bush's first attempt at the U.S. Presidency was in 1980. However, in the Republican primary election in New Hampshire, Bush was outmaneuvered in a crucial debate by Ronald Reagan, dashing his hopes of becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

He is married to Barbara Pierce, and they have five children: George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy.

0

J. DANFORTH QUAYLE Senator J. Danforth Quayle, George Bush's vice presidential running mate, is just 41 years old. Yet, despite his youth, he has already won such acc6lades as "a man of the future," "a proven vote-getter" and " an expert on defense and national security."

Said President Reagan of Quayle, " His talent, intellect, energy will be great assets....He will be a great Vice President."

Hailing from Indianapolis, Indiana, Quayle won his first major political election when he was only 29; he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He was re-elected in 1978. Setting his sights higher, he contested for the U.S. Senate in 1980, and unseated veteran Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, using the slogan "A New Generation of Leadership." In 1986, he retained his Senate seat against tough Democratic opposition.

In the Senate, Quayle has distinguished himself as author of the Job Training Partnership Act. He serves on the legislative body's Armed Services Committee. where he specializes in NATO alliance matters.

Quayle is also a member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Before entering active Republican politics in 1976, Quayle had been assistant attorney to the governor of Indiana; director of the Indiana Inheritance Tax Division; practicing attorney; and associate publisher of the family's newspaper, Huntington HeraldPress.

Quayle was born on February 4, 1947. He is a graduate of DePauw University in Greencastle. Indiana, from where he earned a B.S. degree in political science in 1966, and of the University of Indiana, from where he received a law degree in 1974.

Quayle is married to Marilyn Tucker, whom he met at law school. They have three children: Tucker Danforth, Benjamin Eugene and Mary Corinne.

D

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SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

Michael Dukakis

LLOYD BENTSEN, JR. Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr., 67, the millionaire Texas senator chosen as Michael Duk:....cis's Democratic vice presidential running mate. has what Governor Dukakis needs to be elected the next President of the United States: Strong voter appeal in a pivotal American state.

Texas is one of the big prizes in U.S. presidential politics. Its 29 electoral college votes-the third largest after New York and California- make it a huge factor in either party's strategy.

What is more, Bentsen has the distinction of having beaten Republican presidential contender George Bush in an election. Bentsen turned that trick in 1970, when Bush opposed him in Bcntscn's first bid for the Senate.

Scion or a wealthy landed family in Texas's Rio Grande Valley, Bentsen gained his first statewide office in 1948 at the age of 27, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He kept the seat through three successive terms, then declined to seek re-election in order to go into business. By 1970, he had become president of a Houston financial holding company.

Bentsen's foreign policy views are not widely known. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, however, he has been a central player in Congress's fight with President Reagan over trade legislation- an issue Democrats are expected to stress in the election campaign.

Born February 11, 1921. in Mission.

Texas, Bentsen received a law degree from the University of Texas Law School. In 1942, he entered the U.S. Army, rising to the ra nk of major as a B-24 flier and squadron commander in the European theater of operations. He won the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Married to Beryl Ann Longino, he has D three children: Lloyd, Lan and Tina.

immigrants, Dukakis seems to have developed a large and loyal following known as early as bis adolescent years that among the party's more liberal elements. he was destined for government service.

The governor won Jackson's backing in After distinguishing himself as a leader the end, but not before committing a in high school, he entered Swarthmore political gaffe that tarnished his College, a small, highly regarded liberal reputation for cool, deliberate efficiency. arts school near Philadelphia, in the early That departure from form came when 1950s.

Dukakis failed to reach Jackson to inform At Swarthmore Dukakis, who now is him of his choice of Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his vice presidential running mate apparently trying to stake out a position firmly near the political center where he before the news leaked to the press, perceives the greatest number of votes to be, thereby embarrassing Jackson who prized was a liberal activist. He once gave his image as a vital player in the political haircuts to black students when the local process. barbers refused to cut their hair.

But those wounds healed as both men Following college and a stint in the sought a mutually-needed reconciliation, and U.S. Army, Dukakis entered H arvard Law Jackson joined Dukakis on the podium School and soon began to storm the after the governor's acceptance speech to citadel of Boston suburban politics. In 1962, share in bis triumph and signal support he was elected to a seat in the for the party's ticket.

Massachusetts H ouse of Representatives on Now that he has seemingly united the a "good government" platform. party and taken full command of its bid to In 1970, Dukakis ran for lieutenant recapture the White House after nearly governor of the state and lost the election. eight years of Republican occupancy, Undaunted, he tried for the governorship Dukakis is moving in a new direction four years later, and won. committed to growth, reform, and competent and effective management.

The cool technocrat Dukakis may give way to a more emotional, rhetorically polished Dukakis in the campaign days honesty and ;ntellectual ahead, but the candidate's goals are unlikely approach to the job paradoxically created to change as be loosens up to appeal to a problems for him in that position. wider spectrum of the electorate.

Breaking with tradition, Dukakis refused to Dukakis has told interviewers that he offer large numbers of state government expects to be tested on the multitude of jobs to his campaign supporters, preferring economic, social, foreign policy and instead to hire experts from outside. This defense issues that will be debated cost him the support of some former allies. throughout the campaign.

In addition, he found himself obliged to H is central message, now enhanced by cut spending and raise taxes to put the state his post-convention status as leader of a on a sound footing fiscally. unified party, is that the American people H aving alienated liberals by his are ready for change and he will be ready, as spending cuts and conservatives with his President, to make the tough decisions liberal agenda, in 1978 Dukakis lost his bid needed for change. for re-election to a Republican opponent.

Dukakis points to his record of success Disheartened, Dukakis joined the as governor in convincing the Massachusetts Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; state legislature to adopt his programs four years later, he emerged a more and says he will be able to establish equally pragmatic and relaxed politician with a more good relations with the U.S. Congress. positive attitude toward private "To be a successful Chief Executive, you enterprise. Confessing to having been have got to work well with your "young and brash" during his first term, legislators and they with you," he says, he sought the governor's office once more adding that "it's clear that Congress wants to work with a President who wants to and was re-elected in 1982.

Dukakis, at the beginning of his second work with them." term, inherited a state that was on the verge Spurred on by his heritage as the son of of an economic boom. hardworking and successful Greek

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CANDI DA TES continued

Michael Dukakis Many observers credit the boom to various causes: Reagan Administration ec<?nornic policies; the fact that Massachusetts already had an excellent, though underutilized , economic base which was poised for growth; a property tax cut that Dukakis opposed but which was forced on him by the voters; and Dukakis's own actions as governor.

In any event, Dukakis, as any governor would, has taken credit for the state's burgeoning growth and its low (about 3.2 percent) unemployment rate and is now fashioning a national agenda based on the economic success of Massachusetts.

Dukakis takes into the final phase of the campaign a reputation for integrity, fiscal honesty and a rational managerial approach to problems, as well as his generally liberal outlook.

These qualities served him well in the Democratic Party primaries. The question now is whether he can extend their appeal to all Americans during the general election.

To gain national support, Governor Dukakis will have to convince "middle America" that he is sufficiently pragmatic, realistic and tough to defend the country's interests abroad.

Michael Dukakis is married to Katharine (Kitty) Dickson and has a son and two daughters: John, Andrea and Kara.

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" Ernie's zeroing in on Campaign '88." @ 1988 Tribune Media Services. Inc. All Rights Reserved .

6

SPAN SEPTEMBE R 1988

J

esse Jackson did not win the Democratic ¡Party's nomina.tion for President, but his victories this year far outnumber his losses. He won nine primaries, some I, I00 delegates and, for a time, he had won more votes chan a ny of his Democratic presidential rivals. Most significantly, he has replaced President Ronald Reagan as the single most emotionally compelling figu re in American politics, "the most powerful communicator in either party," in the words of former Vice President Walter Mondale. Just as Reagan reached beyond his core of supporters in the conservative wing of the Republican Party to win the American Presidency, Jackson this year reached out to gain support from a wide range of voters beyond his base in the black community.

Before he began bis first campaign for the Presidency, in 1984, Jackson was head ofa Chicago organization called PUSH, or People United to Save Humanity, which focused mainly on problems in Chicago's poor neighborhoods and schools. Jackson was also nationally known for his deeply inspirational speeches to schoolchildren urging them to avoid drugs and aspire to educational achievement. With the current concern about drugs in America, those speeches became a centerpiece of Jackson's campaign, but he was leading young audiences in chants of " I Am Somebody" long before he became a candidate for office.

Before founding PUSH, Jackson had been a young associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. After King's assassination in 1968, the civil rights movement for many years lacked a leader of King's stature, and Jackson was one of several who sought to fill the void. Although he was undoubtedly the most charismatic of King's potential successors, many senior dvil rights leaders considered him too personally ambitious, preferring to build a stable movement that would not depend on the personality of one leader.

Jackson's 1984 campaign was hurt by the opposition of some of these black leaders.

In 1984, Jackson became the first black American to mount a serious campaign for the Presidency, winning two D emocratic primaries. (He was not the first black candidate, though, as Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm had entered several primaries in 1972 and won numerous delegates.)

Jackson's first candidacy was very much a symbolic effort, a protest against the white political establishment. Jackson made little effort to court white voters or to conceal his ties to controversial figures

The Importance of Being

Jesse Jackson

by NO RMAN ORNSTE IN

whom many white voters found offensive, such as Louis Farrakhan, a bluntly antiSemitic leader of the Black Muslim religious movement. Jackson won only about five percent of the white votes in 1984, and his primary victories came in Louisiana and the District of Columbia, two of the most heavily black areas of the United States. Jackson's support was further limited by the opposition of many established black politicians (such as Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and Harold Washington, mayor of Jackson's hometown of Chicago) and by the fact that Mondale, the eventual Democratic nominee, had a strong record on civil rights and was liked by blacks.

Since Jackson began his current pursuit of the U.S. Presidency on the day that his 1984 campaign ended, many Democrats expected that the 1988 campaign would pick up where the previous effort had left off. Jackson had two advantages this year that were expected to solidify his support among blacks: First, many of the black elected officials who once shunned Jackson now supported him or did not actively oppose him; second, there was no white candidate in the race who, like Mondale, had significant support among blacks.

Having solidified his base of support in the black community, Jackson could begin to look for votes among whites, especially among urban liberals and populist voters-farmers, miners and others whose industries or regions had faltered while the rest of the country prospered.

Jackson had long spoken of developing what he called a " Rainbow Coalition" of blacks, Hispanics, urban liberals, farmers,

the unemployed and the working poor, single mothers- an ambitious catalog of voters he felt had suffered oppression of "economic violence" similar to that experienced by blacks. A year ago, the prospect of uniting these groups behind Jackson seemed implausible-Hispan ics are generally more conservative than other minority groups; white liberals had plenty of alternative candidates this year; and farmers were seen as unlikely to vote for a black.

The first indication that some pieces of the Rainbow Coalition w~re falling into place came in the first contest of the yearthe Towa caucuses. Jackson came nowhere close to winning, but he got 8.8 percent of the vote in a state that was less than one percent black. With eight percent of the white vote added to his solid black support in other states, Jackson made clear that he could be a formidable presidential candidate, especially if four or five of the Democratic contenders split the remaining votes.

As the race heated up, Jackson remained near the bottom of the pack, but he was posting extraordinary numbers in states with very few black voters. In the New Hampshire primary election, for example, he got about eight percent, in Minnesota, 20 percent. Despite these results, the press focused on the front-runners of the Democratic Party, and paid little attention to Jackson until " Super Tuesday," March 8, when 20 states held primaries or caucuses. Many of the contests were in the South, and Jackson won five of them, despite the presence of Senator Albert Gore, Jr., who identified himself first and foremost as the southern candidate for President. Although Jackson won the most popular votes on Super Tuesday by a slim margin, he matched quite evenly with Dukakis and Gore.

After Super Tuesday, as Gore stumbled and Dukakis continued his steady, unsurprising campaign, Jackson continued to astound observers with his progress in states with no black population to speak of.

In Kansas. he got 31 percent, and in Alaska, he won the Democratic caucuses.

The peak of Jackson's success came in Michigan, where he defeated Dukakis by a landslide, winning 54 percent of the vote.

These accomplishments put to rest the notion that white Democrats would not vote for Jackson because of his race.

Jackson's performance was even more astounding when it was compared with his campaign finances. The fortunes of all the other presidential candidates rose and fell with their fund-raising, leaving Dukakis

and Republican Vice President George Bush, the best-funded candidates, as the survivors. But Jackson had only a tiny fraction of Dukakis's treasury and, except for some narrow cable television spots in early contests, he did not run a full-fledged television advertisement until April, for the New York primary. But Jackson did not need television to reach his voters- they showed up by the thousand at his speeches.

When Jackson finally did have enough money to run a television campaign, the publicity had little impact and he lost the New York contest to his party rival Dukakis. Most voters had already formed strong impressions of Jackson and a few advertisements would not sway them.

Jackson was vastly exceeding expectations with his performance, but soon a pattern emerged: He was winning caucuses, in which a small group of ideologically committed Democrats tend lo participate, but having more trouble in primaries, which draw more-and more typical-voters. Alaska was a caucus, K ansas was a caucus, and Michigan's primary resembled a caucus in that voting places were few and voting hours sharply limited.

Jackson was winning as much as 20-25 percent of the white vote in some states, more than he got in 1984. but not enough to win the nomination or to win primaries in which a broader spectrum of voters participated. The ceiling on Jackson's vote was higher than anyone had anticipated, but when a broader cross section of Democrats participated, the ceiling still existed.

Even at its most successful, the Rainbow Coalition was not a winning coalition because it excluded vast numbers of white, middle-class, ideologically moderate voters, who often don't participate in caucuses. Thus, Jackson won the Michigan contest, in which only 210,000 voters went to the polls, but lost in nearby Wisconsin, a smaller state in which more than 800,000 people cast ballots.

There are many reasons why a majority of voters will not vote for Jackson, but race is one for only a minority, as his success among liberal midwestern whites shows.

When asked why they don't support Jackson, most voters mention his political views, which are far to the left of the American mainstream. On domestic policy, for example, Jackson is one of the few American politicians who still advocate social programs that would redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. (The traditional approach to social welfare has been to guaran-

tee a minimal standard of living and equality of opportunity for the poor.) On foreign policy, Jackson advocates scrapping almost all controversial military programs and has been far more critical of American support for Israel than other politicians.

Voters also criticize Jackson for his lack of government or administrative experience.

However, through his impressive and forceful performance in the primaries, Jackson has cemented his claim as a major figure in the Democratic Party, one who has energized black voter participation in a remarkable fashion. Poor blacks now vote in greater proportions than equally poor whites-a dramatic change from lhe pastand the single most important reason is Jackson's involvement in presidential politics and voter registration. During the 1988 campaign, Jackson has claimed credit for electing several Democratic senators in close contests in 1986, where a heavy black turnout made the difference. Many factors, of course, can make the difference in a tight race, but Jackson's effect on black turnout has been unmistakable.

Democratic Party leaders have begun to ask, in former party chairman Robert L. Strauss's words, ' 'How do we use Jackson's enormously increased stature to help the party and also to advance his agenda?" As for him, Jackson already has almost everything a politician could want: Wide name recognition, a fervently loyal following, respect as the leading representative of an important group of voters, relatively favorable treatment from the press and a guaranteed spot in the history books. By some measures he has doubled his base of support between I 984 and 1988, from the ten percent of voters who are black to the 20 percent who are black or very liberal whites. Jf he can continue to broaden his base in this way over the next few years, Jackson's Rainbow Coalition could become a majority coalition by the turn of the century. From his birth on October 8, 1941, as the illegitimate son of a teenage mother in South Carolina, Jackson has taken pride in surpassing people's expectations of him.

It would be foolish to set limits on his potential in politics.

Jesse Jackson is married to Jacqueline Lavinia Brown. They have five children: Santita, Jesse Louis, Jonathan Luther, Yusef DuBois and Jacqueline Lavinia. 0 About the Author: Norman Ornstein Jenâ&#x20AC;˘es as

codirector of the Times Mirror Gallup surveys and is 011 electio11 co11sulra11t to CBS.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

7

Tomorrow's Medicine Today

by DIANNE HALES

Patients who may have no other chance for life volunteer for latest experimental treatments at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the largest medical research hospital in the world.

A frail infant with an incurable genetic disorder gets experimental treatments and grows into a healthy, energetic eight-year-old.

A grandmother's "untreatable" ovarian cancer stays in check after experimental cancer therapy.

A 33-year-old man with AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and its killer cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, undergoes a daring new treatment-an experimental antiviral drug combined with a bone-marrow transplant. Two years and a second transplant later, he has defied all the odds and his immune system is still functioning.

These three people are among tens of thousands of patients who volunteer for experimental treatments each year at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The sprawling 14-story government facility is the largest medical research hospital in the world. It is also the last resort for people with health problems no one else can solve. That is most remarkable considering its humble beginnings as an attic laboratory a century ago.

To apply for Clinical Center admission, a doctor must first furnish the patient's medical files to a panel of scientists from the 12 NIH institutes. They determine whether the condition meets the requirements of a particular study. Typically, these include specifics of age, weight, sex, general health, and availability for Jong-term hospitalization and extended follow-up visits, when necessary.

For some patients, getting in is easy. It is not who they know, but what they have that matters. Researchers who actively recruit volunteers will quickly admit patients who fit their needs. Others who don't quite fit, or who are closed out of full studies, must wait until a suitable opening arises. Though the Clinical Center has 500

A pioneer in gene therapy, Dr. W. French

Anderson, a molecular biologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.feels confiden/ thal one day gene therapy may help cure a rare but deadly genetic enzyme deficiency in infants, which causes severe combined immune deficiency ( SC ID ) . His

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beds- large by metropolitan hospital standards-only one or two may be reserved for a particular study.

Research projects cover everything from aplastic anemia (a bone disorder that impedes blood cell production) to ZollingerEllison syndrome (a triad of ulcer, gastric hyperacidity and pancreatic tumor). There's an entire laboratory on the third floor where scientists study alcoholics as they are nursed through withdrawal with experimental drugs. And on the first floor, there is a superequipped dental suite. In one study, researchers are trying new painkillers on patients with impacted wisdom teeth.

On the ninth floor, children with adult bodies-precocious puberty- undergo new hormonal treatments. On the 11th floor, adults plagued by fungal diseases get ketoconazole, a new drug under study.

But regardless of age or ailment, patients who travel from all over the world share a common hope: that here, finally, they will be able to find medical miracles.

Doctors and patients zigzag through mazes of long, dim corridors crowded with lockers, lab equipment and, often, caged lab mice. No-frill patient rooms are small but comfortable.

Doctors may have four or five desks jammed in offices built for two. Some researchers settle for Ii ttle more than cubbyholes carved out of ceiling-high stacks of papers and computer printouts. " Even Nobel Prize winners put up with these conditions," one scientist says with a mixture of horror and awe.

Information flows constantly from lab bench to bedside. "We work within sight and sound of the people we're trying to help," says one physician-scientist. " Whenever I make rounds, J get new ideas for things to try in the lab."

team proposes to ( 1) take a virus from an infected lab mouse; ( 2) remove a segment of the virus's genetic material and replace with an enzyme-producing human gene; ( 3) place the altered viral particle in a lab dish along with the baby 's bone marrow-derived cells: ( 4) incubate the two, causing the gene-carrying

American llealrh magazine. Copyright Š 1987 Dianne Hales.

virus 10 fuse with the baby cells' DNA; and then ( 5) transplant the gene-altered marrow cells back into the child. Anderson hopes the transplanted cells would manufacture the missing enzyme. And if they. in turn. reproduce enough enzyme-making cells, the dis.order would be cured.

What makes NIH the best and often the only hope for many patients is its unparalleled resources, including state-of-the-art equipment and top-notch labs. ''But N TH 's greatest asset is the minds of the people here," says Dr. Samuel Broder, the National Cancer lnstitute's (NCI) director of clinical research.

The intellectual atmosphere is electric, says Dr. Anthony Fauci , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Working here is like being on a team of talented and motivated athletes. You're inspired to go that extra mile."

Some critics charge that NTH goes too far with therapies that cost too much- in human and financial terms. Yet NIH doctors feel that driving on to do what no one else has tried is part of their job.

Questions of risk seem, as Broder puts it, "like bringing up air travel safety at the time the Wright brothers made their first flight. Their mission was to prove tlight was possible, not that it was safe. And our mission is to generate new knowledge, not necessarily to refine it."

Of course, every effort is made to protect and promote the welfare of the patient. But ultimately, at the Clinical Center, "the science" reigns supreme. " At other hospitals, the pressure is to treat patients and get them out," says Fauci. " Here the driving force is to ask a nd answer important scientific questions." And in the process of helping future generations, individual patients sometimes benefit. ''Until I came here, I had never seen a patient with cancer go into remission," says Dr. Vincent De Vita, NCI director and a 20year NIH veteran. "Then I started treating childhood leukemia patients with vincristine [now a standard cancer drug], and they lived. Again and again we've taken untreatable cancers and made them treatable. The excitement gets in your blood." Although some NI H researchers pride themselves on being hardened realists, there is a contagious outlook among Clinical Center staffers that, medically, anything is possible.

Largely because of its never-say-never philosophy, NTH is also, as one patient puts it, " the best place for a fighter to be." Here are a few NIH patients who would say the heroic fight has been worthwhile.

More than two years ago Ellen Jones, a white-haired homemaker with two grown children and an I I-year-old granddaughter, suddenly began to look and feel pregnant. " J just filled up with fluid," she recalls. " I wasn't surprised when I found out it was cancer." A no-nonsense woman, Jones faced the crisis head-on.

Within a week, she had a complete hysterectomy. Later, when her surgeon discovered the cancer had spread, Jones began chemotherapy at Johns H opkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. " ! figured l'd go there and be cured," she says. But after eight months, traces of cancer remained. The doctors offered an experimental drug they hoped might help. But Jones and her husbanda car salesman in Easton, Maryland- soon learned that their insurance would not pay for it or any other unproven treatment. ..There was no way we could afford it ourselves," she says. " That was more devastating than finding out I had cancer in the first place. It took away our hope."

Then she called NIH's patient referral number (301 -496-4891) and described her condition. Within hours, she was speaking with Dr. Michael Bookman, a co-investigator in a Clinical Center study that, he said, was in need of patients just like her. And only three days later, she was admitted to the Clinical Center. " He explained the risks to me, but that really didn't matter," she says matter-of-factly. ·This is my only option, and I feel lucky to have gotten in."

A potent treatment/or cancer being tried ac the Clinical Center is adoptive immunotherapy. In tliefive-step process. ( I ) blood is drawn from the patient; ( 2) white cells are removed from it by a blood-separating machine; ( 3) these are then incubated in lnterleukin-2 ( IL-2). a na111ral immune factor. This transforms white cells ( 4) into fierce fighters known as lymphokine-activated killer ( LA K ) cells, which are ( 5) transfused into the paJient along wicll more IL-2 to launch an all-ow attack on cancer cells in the body.

She was. Bookman was helping test a potent, toxic cancer treatment called "adoptive immunotherapy." Only 13 months earlier, the treatment had been heralded by the world press as a ''breakthrough" in cancer research. In the process, a patient's white blood cells are removed by a blood-separating machine and incubated in Interleukin-2 (IL-2), a natural immune factor. This transforms white cells into fierce fighters known as lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells. Finally, LAK cells a re returned to the body along with IL-2 to launch an all-out attack • on cancer cells.

The therapy requires a five-week stay punctuated by bursts of intensive therapy. "I don't feel like a guinea pig, and I know I'm getting the best care," Jones said from her hospital bed. "At least they're trying."

At last report, her cancer was still in check. Unlike other patients, Jones did not experience the most toxic side effects associated with adoptive immunotherapy. Still, during therapy she had continuous nausea, diarrhea, skin irritation, breathing problems and extreme fatigue. "They say I'm handling this well compared with other patients," she says. "I hope it's worth it."

NIH scientists defend adoptive immunotherapy's aggressive approach. ''I don't see any virtue in going slow when you can go fast," says NCI's DeVita. To him, the potential benefits clearly outweigh the risks faced by the most seriously ill. " Especially for patients with an expected life span of six to eight months," he says.

"They realize that dead patients don·t complain about side effects."

NIH scientists have since refined the treatment and, though side effects remain, they report immunotherapy is becoming more potent and less toxic. Because of research like this, cancer has become a solvable problem, says DeVita. "Most people can't imagine a world without cancer. I can."

Dr. Robin Berman watched and worried when her second son, Brian, began changing before her eyes. As a physician, she tried

ILLUSTRATIONS ADAPTED BY HEMANT BHATNAGAR

SPAN SEPTL·MB!oR 1988

9

TOMORROW'S MEDICINE TODAY

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At other hospitals in America, the pressure is to treat patients and get them out. At the Clinical Center the driving force is to ask and answer important scientific questions. desperately to find om what was wrong. The three-year-old's abdomen was so swollen he seemed almost as wide as he was tall.

In May 1983, Berman and her husband, Dennis, learned that Brian had Gaueher:s disease. a hereditary enzyme deficiency that blocks the meLabolism of lipids (fatly substances in the blood).

Blood tests that measure enzyme levels and genetic abnormalities revealed that Brian's younger brother. Josh. then only one year old. also had Gaucher's-though he showed none of the signs. The Bermans learned that, like eight percent of other Ashkenazi Jews, both of them carried the defective gene. (Their oldest son. Jeffrey, and their daughter, Naomi, now three, arc also carriers.) 路'When T heard the diagnosis. I tried to remember what T'd learned in medical school about Gaucher's," Berman says. 路路1 think it was summed up in a 15-minute lecture.'' Her research quickly informed her that. while other forms of Gaucher's kill before age two or cause irreparable brain damage, Brian's type, which affects 20,000 Americans, can produce a spectrum o f symptoms. As fats build up in their tissues, patients may develop enlarged spleens and livers, bleeding episodes a nd bones so brittle that rolling over in bed can fracture them. There is no cure.

By November Brian's condition was deteriorating quickly.

Bruises covered his body: his nose bled uncontrollably; he was too weak to climb stairs. Berman, a family practitioner, went hunting for the leading Gaucher's experts. She found them a t N IH , where scientists first identified the missing enzyme that causes the d isease. In 1983 they achieved another breakthrough- production of an improved. never-before-tested form of the crucial enzyme from human placentas. Dilemma: Should the Bermans give permission for their son to be the first?

"A lot of parents agonize over whether their children should become guinea pigs," Berman observes. " But we had no a lternatives. If your child faced the possibility of dying or becoming bedridden in five years. you路d do the same."

On December 22. 1983, Brian received his first enzyme injection.

With the shots he has grown into a healthy and energetic- though not cured-eight-year-ol d. (He still gets twice-weekly injections.)

Other recipients, unable to tolerate doses as high as Brian's, have not fared as well. T ha t is why N IH researchers are searchi ng for an alternative- gene therapy for inherited enzyme deficiencies.

Already. scientists have isolated more than 200 genes that direct cells to manufacture vital enzymes. In theory. the genes could be spliced into a harmless virus and permitted to invade a patient's bone-marrow cells. These "infected'' cells would heed their new genetic instruct ions and ch urn out the needed enzyme, scientists believe.

Much of the slow progress toward gene therapy was made over the past 20 years by NIH 's W. F rench Anderson. a molecular biologist. His recent research has focused on a rare but deadly genetic enzyme deficiency-lack of adenosine deaminase, which causes severe combined immune deficiency (SCID ). This tota l lack of immunity led to the death of David, the fa mo us boy who could survive only inside a germ-free bubble. The six to ten America n infants born with the disease each year would be ideal candidates for gene therapy. Because 90 percent die by 15 months, potential benefits should outweigh the risks, Anderson says.

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In April 1987. he cook the first step toward winning approval lo do gene therapy on an infant with SCTD. A special NIH committee that oversees genetic experiments is reviewing the research plan. If it gives the go-ahead, Anderson's team is eager 10 be the first 10 attempt gene therapy. The sort of complex, compelling medical challenge that gene therapy poses is, he says, "what NIH does best.,.

In August of 1985. Richard Roe (not his real name) walked through the doors of the Clinical Center. Stricken with A IDS and Kaposi's sarcoma, he had been selected for a combined-therapy clinical tria l that included suramin (an experimental drug that has since been shelved as ineffective against A l DS) and bone-marrow transplants. What made Roe and two others in this particular AIDS study so special was that they each had healthy identical twins willing to donate bone-marrow cells. Doctors hoped those cells would generate a new, hea lthy immune system in the recipient.

Tho ugh the o ther two A IDS twins d ied. Roe survived. M ost remarkably. the treatment partially restored his body's depleted defenses and stabilized the cancerous lesion. Today, he works and leads an active life. free from other outward signs of AIDS. Researchers are puzzled as to why he has done so well. Was it the transplant? Perhaps, says Fauci . But if so. why did the other twins no t respond to the same trea tmen t? Fauci is no w testing bone-marrow transplants on more than 20 pairs of twins.

"It's impossible to imagine where we'd be in the war against AIDS if there were no N IH.'' says NCl's Broder. "Years ago, when we first began to see devastating immune problems in young men. l personally carried blood samples to the lab that led to the isolation of the ATDS virus. If not for N IH . we still might not know what causes AIDS." N IH has also taken the lead in aggressively attacking AIDS and related infections. " We don't wait for patients to deteriorate,'' says Dr. Henry Masur, deputy director of the Clinical Center's intensive care unit. It began treating A IDS patients even before their illness had a name. " By intervening early, we've shown there's a lot you can do to improve the quality and du ra tion of A l OS patien ts' ljv'es."

Bu t the real goal- a bona fide cure--remain"s a distant hope. A bone-marrow transplant, oflen fata l if the donor is not perfectly matched (identical twins arc), is not now an option for most AIDS patients. (Fauci hopes his research may some day solve that problem.) So far. the first and only drug approved to fight A IDS. AZT (Burroughs Wellcome's Retrovir), may yet cause long-term complications. N TH scientists estimate years of work before they develop a vaccine. Yet the mood of the ATOS researchers at N J H is upbeat.

"No one else did or could have done what N IH did," says Broder. "In six years, we discovered a unique agent. identified the means of transmission. issued guidelines for minimizing risk, protected the blood supply and took the first step in practical therapy. If there is a breakthrough that leads to a cure for A IDS, you almost certainly wi ll be able to trace it to ideas developed here." n About the Author: Dianne Hales is a comributing editor to American

Health: Fitness of Body and Mind.

Lege ndar y

Olympian bySUMIT DUTIA

Jesse Owens created a sensation by winning four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

On the eve of the 1988 Olympics, to be held this month at Seoul in South Korea, SPAN presents the story of the athlete who has inspired generations of sportspersons of all nationalities.

Of all enduring memories in the annals of sporl, there is perhaps none to match the glorious sight of thal lilhe young man from Cleveland, streaking past a benumbed opposition in a blur of speed and power before some 110,000 spectators in Berlin in the summer of 1936. While Adolf Hitler reportedly spluttered in impotent rage, James Cleveland Owens, member of one of the "inferior" races Hitler so despised, repeatedly took apart the cream of international talent with almost embarrassing ease in the heartland of Nazi Germany to win a then unprecedented four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, and a permanent niche in history.

As much as the victories, it was the flair and grace with which they were accomplished that set Owens's feat apart from other epochmaking Olympic triumphs. Of all the heady concoctions sport has brewed over the years, it is difficult to imagine anything more intoxicating than the sight of Owens in full flow during that Berlin Olympics. The taut body quivering for takeoff, the dilated eyes rounded with concentration, that explosive start mellowing into a majestically fluid yet lightningfast motion leaving his rivals struggling fa r behind. The blend of technique, raw power and natural athleticism transformed J.C. (Jesse) Owens into a speeding arrowhead.

Little wonder then that even today, when every sporting spectacle is glamorized by television, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, based on the Berlin Games and focused naturally on

Owens. still sends tremors of excitement down the spine of even the most weathered fa n.

August 3, 1936: It was midafternoon and should have been sweltering hot, but a morning shower had considerably lowered the temperature, and also fouled up the tracks.

Crouched in the inside lane, with five of the fastest humans in line beside him, Owens looked longingly at the finish line of the 100-meter sprint. On your marks. Get set.

Crack! And they were off in a synchronized blur. By the 20-meter mark Owens was moving up and away, accelerating smoothly Like a well-oiled machine, to breast the tape a good three meters ahead of compatriot Ralph Metcalfe in the world-record equaling time of 10.3 seconds. As those who had witnessed Owens win his preliminary heats by ridiculously large margins had predicted, it had been a cakewalk.

The next morning saw him standing in front of the long-jump pit, as the hot favorite for an event in which he held the world record of 26 feet 8! inches (8. 134 meters). But the young black sensation from America almost never made it past the qualifying stage, each time fouling on his first two jumps and only managing to scramble home off his third and last.

Apparently Owens, while warming up, took a practice run and strode through the pit. Much to everyone's surprise, this was ruled as a jump by the pit officials. In his second attempt, he pounded down the straight a nd launched himself high into space, only to be

greeted by the red flag. His toes had brushed the bank of earth bordering the take-off board. No jump. Just one last chance for the world champion to avoid an ignominious elimination. A hush descended on the stadium as Owens paced about nervously at the top of his run-up. He had to jump 23 feet 5 inches (7. 137 meters) to advance to the final s-a piece of cake under normal circumstances.

And then one of those things happened that make sport transcend race, religion, even war. The German long jumper, Lutz Long, Owens's only serious challenger for the title, walked up to him and suggested that he place a towel a few centimeters before the take-off mark to guide him. Owens took his advice a nd duly cleared more than the requisite distance.

The tension in the packed stands subsided, only to rise to a crescendo .as the battle in the finals between Owens and Long approached its ciimax. Owens not only annexed the gold medal but broke the existing Olympic record as well with a colossal leap of 26 feet inches (8.064 meters). Long rushed to 5216 congratulate the victor and both men walked off the field arm-in-arm to the deafening cries of " JESSE, JESSE." More was yet to come from Owens. H e pranced through the preliminary heats of the 200-meter sprint with such effortless ease that by the time the finals came round his opponents had mentally already conceded defeat.

Following a scintillating start, Owens cantered home to win by a handsome margin of

SPAN SEPTEMBER 198ll

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Legendary Olympian

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four meters in a new Olympic record time of 20.7 seconds. He had now become the first man since the turn of the century to win three gold medals- and he hadn't yet finished.

Hjs fourth medal came under more controversiaJ circumstances. Selection for the U.S. 4 x 160-meter relay team had been done on the criterion that the four fastest men failing to make it to the individual 100-meter event would form the American quartet. Owens was thus not considered. But when the Games were under way, rumors arose of a crack German squad that could upset the American applecart. The coaches had a prolonged conference, and it was decided to induct Owens and Metcalfe into the American squad (at the expense of Stoller and Glickman). Owens and Metcalfe accumulated such a big lead in the first two legs that. as sportswriter Paul Gallico put it, "the boys to whom they turned over the baton could have crawled in on their hands and knees." The Americans won comfortably enough in a world-record equaling time of 39.8 seconds.

Standing on the victory podium for an unparalleled fourth time, the packed Berlin stadium giving him yet another standing ovation, James Cleveland Owens, the pooT black boy from Cleveland, was on top of the world.

At that moment-and for the next few dayshe was probably the most talked-about man in the world.

James Cleveland was born on September

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SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

12, 1913, in Oakville, a rural, poor and predominantly black-populated region, quite isolated from mainstream America. His ancestors, who had come from Africa in the 1830s, had adopted the Welsh surname of Ow.ens from one of the slave owners they had served in America. James's father, Henry Owens, was no slave; yet he was a timid, fearfuJ black who knew his place in the white man's world and steadfastly refused to make any attempt to raise his standjng. As he solemnly repeated many a time to a young, impressionable James, "J.C., it don't do a colored man no good to get himself too high, 'cause it's a helluva drop back to the bottom." A superstitious, God-fearing man, Henry Owens believed reading any book other than the Bible would bring forth heavenly vengeance. He was, however, never in a position to thus incur the wrath of the gods, for he could neither read nor write.

What with their father's jaundiced attitude toward progress and self-bettennent, it was a wonder any of the Owens children even dreamt of improving their lot. It was mother Emma, a vital, bustling, energetic woman, who drilled into her ten children her belief in hard work. constant effort and the Lord's work.

As the youngest child in the family, James never lacked companions to play with. From an early age he developed a love of running. "l wasn't very good at it." he was lo reminisce

later, "but J loved it because it was something you could do all by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like il, seeking out new sights on just the strength of your feet and the courage of . your lungs."

Despite the fun and games, childhood was not always pleasant. Racism, usually dormant, reared its ugly head at times. Poverty was another humiliation. Emma managed as best as she could with her husband's limited income, but with ten children to be fed , clothed and kept, there obviously wasn't much to go around. In later years James was to recall, " I didn ¡1 have enough clothes at the time to cover my entire body ... .! can remember being embarrassed when I saw the neigh~ borhood girls.... [ would run and hide."

When Owens was barely ten his family decided to leave Oakville and look for the more tolerant climes of Cleveland.

James was admitted to the Boston Elementary School in the first grade. The very first day proved hlstoric. Answering roll call, James timidly volunteered his name, J.C. Owens. "Jesse?" asked the teacher. "No ma'am, J.C." "Jesse, did you say?" "J.C. ma'am."

"Speak up, will you? Now. is your name Jesse?" "Yes ma'am." And the name Jesse Owens was entered into the school register.

Transferring to Fairmount Junior High School a few years later, Owens came into

contact with two people who were to play a significant role in his life-Minnie Ruth Solomon, his first girlfriend and later bis wife, and Charles Riley, his physical education teacher.

It was thanks to Riley that Owens met Charles Paddock, gold and silver medalist in the 100-meter sprint at the 1920 Antwerp and 1924 Paris Olympics, respectively. Paddock had come to Fairmount in the course of a lecture tour on Riley's invitation, and was introduced to Owens, who was so awestruck he couJdn 't speak. After Paddock left, Owens turned to Riley and declared, "I want to be a champion like Paddock!" The seed had been sown.

Coach Riley, recognizing he had in Owens an athlete of extraordinary ability, took him under his wing completely, even taking the youngster to his house to feed him nutritious meals, which he suspected he was not getting in his own borne.

Just over a year after Owens started serious training, Riley clocked him at 1 l seconds Rat for the 100-yard sprint. A disbelieving Riley went home to get another stopwatch which recorded the same timing. Only a few months

later, Owens set his first world marks- for junior high school athletes, in the high and long jump events, clearing distances of 6 feet (1 .828 meters) and 22 feet I Ii inches (7.004 meters), respectively.

Success meant more hard work, and Riley was no easy taskmaster. Owens's appetite too had been whetted; athletics, he perceived, was the winged chariot that could carry him to the hitherto undreamed-of land of fame, money and opportunity. He stuck to his task doggedly and, inch by inch, chapter by chapter, the success story was written. In May 1933, at 19, he long-jumped 24 feet 3i inches (7.41 meters), breaking the existing schoolboy record by over three inches (7.6 centimeters).

In June he broke the IOO-yard (91.44 meters) and 200-yard ( 182.88 meters) records for schoolboys and, for good measure, his own long jump record. A fortnight later, at the U.S. National Inter-Scholastic Champion~ ship, Owens caused a sensation when he jumped 24 feet 9~ inches (7..559 meters) and ran the 100 yards and 220 yards (201.16 meters) in 9.4 and 20.7 seconds, respectivelyall three new records. His name appeared in press notices all over the country and a small victory parade was arranged back home. Jesse Owens was on his way to fame.

Conditions at home, however, were none too good. Papa Henry Owens, until then eking out a pittance as a menial laborer, was knocked down by a speeding vehicle and hospitalized with a broken leg. The Owenses, deprived of his income, however meager, faced a financial crisis. Emma and her daughters found work as maids, while the boys, with the exception of Jesse, dropped out of school to support themselves. Jesse Owens somehow also found time to do his schoolwork, attend athletic practice and work part-time in a grocery store to earn his keep.

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Two things remained forever sacred to Jesse Owenshis country and the Olympic movement.

At that time a very small percentage of blacks went on to college from high school.

Owens could by no stretch of the imagination be called a brilliant student, but some inner drive compelled him to Lry for a degree.

Several colleges queued up to offer him athletic scholarships, but Owens chose to join Ohio State University, primarily because it offered him a paying job as an elevator operator.

However, he found the going extremely tough. Study time was limited, but enterprisingas he was, he managed to set up a table and chair in front of the elevator he manned, where he studied until his presence was called for. But to his great disappointment his results remained poor, his average barely hovering above the pass mark. His academic base from his schooldays was so weak he would never become an academic success. Nor would he ever earn that degree he sought so assiduously.

What he lacked in the classroom he more than made up for on the track. U nder the tutelage of Larry Snyder, Ohio State University's track coach, Owens smoothly underwent the transition from a promising high school athlete to international star. And then came that unforgettable day at Ann Arbor in the Big Ten Championship meet when, in the space of a single sensational hour, Jesse Owens broke or equaled six world records. The circumstances under which he accomplished this feat made it more memorable. On May 24, 1935, Owens was in a woeful state. H e had fallen down a flight of stairs and severely hurt his back. Repeated massage relieved the pain somewhat, and he managed to ho bble through the preliminaries and qualify for the next afternoon ¡s finals.

He first broke the I I-year-old 220-yard sprint world record (and, simultaneously, the 200-meter reco rd) by fini shing meters ahead of the others in 20.3 seconds. A few minutes later he broke the long jump record with a colossal first leap of 26 feet St inches (8. 14 meters) and then, taking his place with the finalists of the 220-yard low hurdles, went on to shatter that record too (as well as the 200meter low hurdles record) in 22.6 seconds.

Finally, he tied the 100-yard sprint record at 9.4 seconds. Not bad for an afternoon's work.

After Ann Arbor there could only be Berlin.

In between, however, a small honor gave Owens much satisfaction. En route to Berlin

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The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) took on the SS Manhattan , Owens, a member of the 383-strong U.S. Olympic team, was voted the it upon itself to make good the deficit by best-dressed man aboard by this teammates. organizing a number of exhibition shows in For one who always strove to look his best in Europe after the Berlin Olympics, in which the the limited number of shirts a nd solitary suit premier stars would participate. Jesse that he possessed, the accolade was pa rticu- Owens's presence was a must; promoters were larly sweet and did much to erase the bitter- willing to pay a lot more ifhe were there. Jesse, preoccupied with the forthcoming test of his ness of those unhappy childhood memories.

Arriving in Berlin, Owens found to his skills at Berlin, and not quite realizing what he surprise that he was a celebrity. His reputation was letting himself in for, agreed and duly had preceded him. People crowded around signed on.

The very evening he won his fourth gold him wanting to shake his hand, c hildren queued up for hours for his autograph, female medal, Owens was reminded of his obligation admirers even slipped marriage proposals un- by the AAU bosses. Snyder was vehemently der his door at night. To someone who had opposed to letting Owens go; he argued that been forewarned to expect a cold greeting Owens was so tired, physically and mentally, from the Germans, in the light of Hitler's after his history-rewriting feats, he needed at much-publicized theories of Aryan suprem- least a week's rest before he could even conacy, it was all quite incomprehensible. The template running again. But the AAU would truth was that the Germans were sports lov- have none of it. A few days later, as Jesse was ers, and as long as an athlete performed well, it returning to the Olympic Village after watchdidn' t matter to them if he was black or white, ing the day's events, he was brusquely told to Aryan or non-Aryan. Besides, H itler had spe- pack his belongings as he would be leaving fo r cifically instructed the organizing committee the exhibition tour right away. He didn't even to see that participating teams had no cause to have time to bid farewell to the numerous complain on grounds of racism; the Olympics friends he had made in the Village, not even were intended to be a showpiece of German Lutz Long (whom, incidentally, he was never efficiency and excellence, and nothing was to to meet again, owing to the German's death in go wrong. Much has been written about World War II). The next few days were nightHitler's refusal to shake hands with Owens marish. The athletes, whom accompanying after he won the 100-meter sprint. But Jesse coach Snyder described as being so tired "they himself could scarcely be bothered ; the snub could scarcely drag themselves around," were spurred him to greater effort. hustled to Cologne, Prague and Bochum on The days following his Olympic victories successive days, and subjected to a grueling should have been among his happiest, yet they routine; competing against select opposition turned out to be a bitter, traumatic experi- in the afternoon, being made to socialize with ence, ultimately leading to his expulsion from guests and promoters until late at night, o fte n the ranks of amateur athletes and rendering catchingjust a few hours sleep before trudging him ineligible to compete in the next Olympic to the airport for the early morning flight to Games or, for that matter, any future a mateur the next destination.

Finally, at London, left penniless a nd waitathletic competition.

It had all begun a few months before Berlin. ing fo r the organizers to feed him his next In those days there weren't any big business meal, Jesse Owens was at the end of his tether. conglomerates to underwrite expenses in- In his hands was a telegram from an enterpriscurred by American Olympic teams, and the ing showman back in the U nited States, cager athletes and athletic organizations had to to capitalize on his fame, offering him $25,000 raise the passage money by virtually passing for just two weeks of stage shows.

With the help of Snyder and some other the begging bowl around. However, in 1936, the U.S. track and field team managed to raise officials, Owens made his decision . He would considerably more money than it would re- go back. An opportunity like this might never quire, but its efforts were offset by the insig- come again. His entire life had been spent in nificant amounts other U.S. sports teams were poverty; here was his chance to break loose able to generate. As a result the American from its shackles at one shot. On August 16.

Olympic Committee found itself $30,000 in 1936, Jesse stayed put in his hotel room while the others left for Stockholm . The AA U rethe red.

\

...._

acted quickly, and predictably. President Avery Brundage issued a statement that henceforth Owens would not be eligible to compete in amateur athletics.

Many attempts were made in later years to get him reinstated, but the AA U would not relent. With that one terse communication, the athletic career of Jesse Owens came to a grinding halt. Worse was yet to come. Returning home to a hero's welcome, he found the $25.000 offer was a fraud, as were the many other offers that poured in. Abandoning his dreams of quick money, Owens looked around for steady employment. But as he sadly recounted later, "After l came home with my four gold medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job."

Jesse Owens set out on his own. He founded a touring basketball squad on the lines of the Harlem Globetrotters, organized exhibition athletic shows, started a dry-cleaning business, and even went back to college at the age of 27 to earn the elusive degree. Many of his ventures failed. At one time he even had to undergo the ignominy of the bankruptcy court. But whatever else Jesse Owens might have lacked, it wasn't determination. He fought on, and at last the rewards began coming. He was appointed secretary of the Tllinois Athletic Commission, and later sent to

During his goodwill visit to India in 1955, Jesse Owens trained Indian athletes at Delhi's National Stadium.

India, Malaya and the Philippines on a goodThis piece will be incomplete without an will mission. Arriving in New Delhi on Octo- anecdote. fn 1973, an athletic meet was in ber 3, 1955, for a three-week stay, Jesse Owens progress at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, took more than half an hour to cover the short Pennsylvania, and Jesse Owens, now a venerdistance from the plane to the airport build- able 60-year-old, was in attendance. The ing. Indian admirers surrounded him, each sprinting and long-jumping skills of a young wanting to shake his hand. Later he was athlete caught his attention; strolling over to presented a guard of honor by Indian athletes. the wide-eyed lad, he congratulated him on As he walked down the line, each athlete being "a spunky little guy to be jumping garlanded him. Indians simply fell in love with against all those big guys" and paternally this gentle. amiable and unassuming man. advised him to "have fun running and jumpThe New Delhi correspondent of The New ing, but never overburden yourself with what York Times wrote: " There is something pleas- you're trying to do." ant happening to U.S. public relations in New Carl Lewis never forgot that meeting. Even Delhi these days. Jesse Owens is in town." after Lewis achieved his life's ambition- that One diplomatic success followed another. of rivaling his hero's four-gold-medal haul at He was sent to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984-he reitas a personal representative of President erated, " Jesse Owens is still the same to me, a Eisenhower and, shortly afterward, appointed legend." member of a select sports committee set up by That is indeed the way the world will the President himself. remember him. When Jesse Owens passed Two things remained forever sacred to away in the early hours of March 31, him- his own country and the Olympic move- 1980, he was more than a man- he was an ment. Fiercely patriotic, Owens thundered institution. And so he always will be. before black audiences, "I am an American Generation after generation will remember first and a black man second. All that I have him as the man who braved insurmountable and all that I expect to get is under this flag." odds to emerge as one of the greatest athHe was just as vociferous in his belief that letes mankind has ever known . As long as politics should not be dragged into the sports excellence exists, the name of Jesse Owens arena; throughout his life he strove to preserve will endure.

0 the sanctity of the Olympic ideal, and played a major part in forestalling a black boycott of About the Author: Sumit Dutta is a Calcutta-based the 1968 Mexico Games. free-lance spor1s writer and journalist.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

15

~MltltD ITT)~ LJ[[l)@0[1 HEARTS

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~ tS\@n nnAmerican athletes have trained hard and long to excel in their various disciplines

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to compete with the best in the world at the 1988 Olympics.

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part...just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle."

That creed of the Olympic Games holds a special meaning for the United States on the eve of the 24th Summer Olympics, to be held at Seoul in South Korea from September 17 to October 2. U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) officials expect these Games to be much more competitive than recent Olympics and know it will not be easy for the United States to make the kind of sweep that it made at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. As Mike Moran of USOC points out, "The Soviets and most other East bloc countries boycotted the 1984 [Los Angeles] Games. Couple that with the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Games, and you haven' t had a true Olympics since Montreal in 1976. There's another factor: the emergence of Chjoa and K orea. They've made huge strides since 1984 and will be highly visible in Seoul."

This has stirred American sports officials and players to strive even harder this time and the Olympic trials have provoked almost as much media and public interest as the main event. Though some of the selections won 't be made till as late

as the first week of September, more than three-fourths of the U.S. squad to Seoul has been finalized. The tests have been grueling and the sifting so strict that Mo ran can say confidently: " This is the best U.S. Olympics team ever assembled."

There have been surprises and upsets, thrills and spills, world records and tension-filled battles. The "old is gold" brigade (Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses) reaffirmed their supremacy even as the limelight turned on younger, newer sensations. On these pages, SPAN presents a portfolio of Olympic hopefuls, including some who may not finally make it to Seoul. Because, as Sports Illustrated told its readers, "As you survey the great team the U.S. will send to Seoul, you should keep in mind that, as ever, a fine one is staying home." By next month, the glory and the headlines will belong to those who reach Olympian heights.

But as the trials eliminated some of America's most talented sportsmen and women, the nation stood up to cheer them too.

As Bob Kersee, the coach of champion high hurdler Greg Foster (who didn't make it) said after seeing the injured Foster, hls left arm in a cast, attempt the trials, even though each hurdle he jumped threw hlm off balance, " That is the vision of the Olympic spirit more lasting than any medal."

0

John Bergman ( below) , now sure of his place in the American team for the 1988 Olympics. lets out a victory yell a.fter his final lift at the Weightlifting Trials in Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

Carl Lewis (below) dramatically con.firms his position in the American team with his jump of 28 feet 9 inches (8.86 m ) -thefifth longest ever made- al the Olympic Track and Field Trials in Indianapolis, Indiana, in July. lewis won/our golds in the 1984 Olympics.

Kristie P hilUps ( right, seated) and P hoebe M ills practice on rhe balance beam under the watchful eye of their Rumanianborn coach Bela Karolyi at his training center in Houston, Texas.

Mills has won top place in the Olympic team but Phillips- who overconfidently slowed down her training schedule earlier this year-could not qualify.

Wendy Williams ( below. left J emerged a winner at the national diving meet in Boca Raton to qualify for the Olympic trials in Indianapolis.

Edwin Moses (below, center) triumphantly clears the final hurdle to win the 400-meter hurdles at the Track and Field Trials in Indianapolis. His timing of 47.37 seconds was the fastest in the event this year.

Kent Ferguson (below) .fared well at the Florida diving meet, bur finished third in the Diving Trials in Indianapolis, thus failing to qualify for the Olympic team.

..

HEARTS IN SEOUL continued

Mary Decker Slaney ( right, in blue) and Regina Jacobs, who were both selected .for the U.S. Olympic team. wave to the crowds after securing first and second positions in the 1500-m run at lndianapolis.

Greg Louganis (below). who heads the American diving squad to Seoul, executes a perfect dive at Boca Raton. This will be the clzampion'sfourth Olympics.

Gary Kinder (bottom) watches his discus on the horizon during the decMhlon evellfs at the Olympic trials. He won the Litle, and a place in the team, with 8.293 poims.

Michele Mitchell ( bottom. center) is a picture of grace M the diving meet in Boca Raton. Mitchell. who won the silver medal in platform diving in the 1984 Olympics, will be trying for gold at Seoul.

Melissa Marlowe ( bottom. right), showing perfect control and balance on the beams during the Gymnastics Trials at Salt Lake City, Utah. easily quc1/[fied.for the Olympic team.

Florence Griffith Joyner (above, left) created a sensation at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis by becoming the fastest woman in the world-she recorded 10.49 seconds in the 100-m dash.

Dan Hayden (above), America's champion gymnast, exhibiting perfect control here, lost his balance- and his place on the Olympic team- at the trials in Salt Lake City.

Jackie Joyner Kersee (left) races over the 100-m hurdles in the Indianapolis heptathlon which she won with a record 7,215 points, bettering her own world mark of7.f57 points.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

19

I a I I.

a LL

ILLUSTRATION BY CA M ERON GERLACH

20

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

BASEBALL, which has been described as "America's national pastime," will be an exhibition sport in the 1988 Olympics, as a prelude to its gaining competitive status in future Olympics. The authors explain the rules of the game, barely understood in a cricket-playing country like India.

by JOEL SCHWARZ and WILLIAM A. HENKIN

There is a saying that in spring a young man's fancy turns to love. But in spring in America a young man's fancy is just as likely to turn to baseball: In fact, it is not only young men who look forward to spring.

By October, when the championship of the year is decided in what is called the World Series, American baseball fans will have bought more than 40 million tickets to cheer their favorite teams and players on toward victory, and raruos and television sets in homes, hotels, bars and restaurants will have been turned on some 800 million times for more than 2,000 professional baseball games.

The rules by which baseball is played today are essentially the same as those at the turn of the century. Each team has nine players. The ball is thrown and hit on an infield playing area known as the diamond- because of its shape-whose sides measure 27.4 meters.

There are four bases, one at each corner of the diamond, with the home base, or home plate, at the diamond's foot.

Defensive players are stationed at each of the corners; a fifth defensive player, the shortstop, plays between second and third bases to complete the infield. Three more defensive players patrol the outfield, the wide grassy area between the infield and the fences or walls that mark the outer boundaries of the playing field.

Near the center of the infield, a little closer to home plate than to second base, is the pitcher's mound. From this slightly raised hillock the pitcher throws a hard , five-ounce (140-gram) ball, 23 centimeters in circumference, 18.4 meters toward home plate. There. each player on offense appears in a regular rotation, attempting to hit the thrown ball with a bat, a tapered, cylind rical piece of lathed ash wood, usually between 8 1 a nd 9 1 centimeters long.

BASEBALL KEY I. First base 2. Second base 3. Third base 4. Home plate S. Batter 6. Catcher 7. Umpire 8. Pitcher/Pitcher's mound 9. First baseman 10. Second baseman

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Third baseman Shortstop Left fielder Center fielder Right fielder Foul line 27.4 meters Overview of stadium Batting form Pitching form Baseball

The object when batting is to hit the thrown ball in fair territory (within the lines of the playing field), and then to run around the bases from home to first to second to third and back to home again. A complete circuit of the bases scores a run, and may be accomplished all at once or piecemeal, any num ber of bases at a time.

The bases are safe territory for the runner; but if the runner is off base and is touched by the ball while it is in the hands of a defensive player, he is out. The runner is also out if the ball he hits is caught by a defensive playereven if the ball is "foul," that is, outside the lines of the playing territory. T he batter must run if he hits the ball fai r.

The defensive team, of course, tries to put each batter out before he can score a run. Three outs terminate a team's turn at bat; three outs by each side make up an inning; nine innings make up a complete baseball game unless the score is tied, in which case extra innings are played until one team wins.

A batter can also be out on pitches alone, without ever hitting the ball. A space the width of home plate (43 centimeters) and as high as the d istance between the batter's knees and shoulders, is called the strike zone: any ball thrown by the pitcher that passes through this area untouched by the batter is called a strike. Any ball thrown by the pitcher that passes outside the strike zone untouched by the batter is called a ball.

A strike is also called when the batter swings at any pitch, no matter where it passes, and fails to touch it with his bat; or when he hits the ball but it remains in foul territory.

A foul ball hit when the batter already has two strikes does not count as a third strike, however-unless it is caught by a defensive player while it is still in the air ("on the fly"), in which case it is an out, the pitch is simply taken over. If the pitcher throws four "balls," the batter is entitled to go to first base: this is known as a "base on balls," or a "walk." If the pitcher throws three strikes, however, the batter is out. ln the United States there is a perennial debate a bout why people love to play baseball. Is it because it is the only team sport that is played without reference to a clock? The shortest professional game on record was played in less than one hour while the longest took more than seven hours. Is it because it is a game that anyone can learn to play? You have to be tall to play basketball well; you

usually have to be la rge to play American football well; but small, short, tall, fat, fast, slow and skinny players have all been stars on the baseball field.

Baseball is a game of intelligence, skill and wit as much as it is one of speed a nd strength.

As a result, it is a subtle, dramatic game, where the whole perspective of a competition can change in a single moment, on the result of a single pitch, a single catch, a single mistake, a single swing of the bat. It is the only team sport whose outcome inevitably depends on a confrontation between individuals acting alone. The pitcher releases his 145-kilometerper-hour fastball, and the batter has threetenths of a second lo decide whether to swing, and to hit the ball if he is going to do so. No one else is involved. When the ball is hit toward a fielder, it is that fielder alone who must make the play, while it is only the batter who can run the bases.

D uring the baseball season, each of the 26 teams in the major leagues plays a schedule of 162 games. The winning teams in the two divisions of each league play a best three-outof-five series to determine the league champion. Then the two league champions meet for the World Series.

Within the professional baseball community, the drive for the pennant-the small triangular banner a league champion is entitled to fly over its stadium as tangible evidence of its successful campaign-und erlies every game. Among the community of baseball fans, team standings a nd statistics a re followed carefully as the season's race ¡unfolds.

Sometimes the obvious leader stumbles in the stretch and may lose the championship on the very last pitch of the very last game of the very last week of the season. T he drama that is baseball never stops.

T he World Series is the culmination of the entire baseball season. Although every player on a World Series team receives a substantial amount of extra money and a diamond World Series ring, the winning team in this best fo urout-of-seven contest receives the greater glory due to a ny conque ring warrior. Crowds greet the team plane at the airport, and official parades honor the players; their most spectacular deeds are recounted in conversations au through the winter months when the true baseball fan feels there is nothing in the sports section of the newspaper worth reading. 0 About the Authors: Joel Schwarz and William

A. Henkin are free-lance writers.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1911

21

A Gift of Vision .,,~

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The author recounts how he got back his eyesight with the generosity and help of some American Rotarians.

could be heard over the murmur of students discussing the design problem at hand. As usual, he needed more neatness and attention to detail. The fans battled the summer valiantly, but in vain.

And then it happened. I thought something had fallen into my eyes. I could not keep them open. I splashed water into them. Friends blew warmed air. Slowly, the pain became unbearable. It was as if someone were sitting on my eyeball and rubbing it with sandpaper.

A number of visits to ophthalmologists, as many opinions, and eye drops and bandages later I found myself at a wellknown eye hospital. 1 was diagnosed as having bilateral corneal dystrophy-a rare, irreversible, hereditary, slow-moving dise~se in which the cornea wastes away.

(The cornea is a transparent membrane in the middle of the outer layer of the eye

which helps focus the rays of light entering it.) There had been extensive deterioration and the corneas of both my eyes were slowly turning opaque. My vision had already reduced considerably and the process would continue until both corneas were totally opaque. T was then 21 years old, with most of my life ahead of me but only increasing darkness to look forward to.

There was a faint silver lining, though. I could undergo a corneal transplant-a surgical procedure in which part of a healthy cornea, which has been removed within a few hours of a donor's death. is stitched onto the patient's eyeball after removing the diseased part of the patient's cornea.

The patient's original cornea is retained, to the extent possible.

Above: Parimal Gandhi (second from left) on a sightseeing trip with Rotarian John Turret (left). the initiator of the fund-collection drive for Gandhi's eye operation in America, and Diane and Virgil Jansen ( right) . who were among the Americans who contributed to the fund.

Corneal transplants are not without danger. The presence of foreign tissue is resisted by the human body through the antigen-antibody reaction resulting in rejection. The antibodies reach the affected area through the bloodstream. A corneal transplant, however, has far less risk of rejection than, say, a heart transplant, because the cornea does not have a direct blood supply. Rejections, however, cannot be ruled out altogether.

So there I was, in hospital, waiting for some generous soul to leave me a gift of vision. This happened after a week-a long wait indeed, considering that hundreds die in a day and have no use for their eyes from then on. An accident victim left me his cornea. I wanted to thank his family but, as in the case of blood donation, donor and beneficiary never learn each other's identities.

This cornea was grafted into my right eye-a reasonably painless affair with the anesthesia hurting longer than the surgery.

I was in hospital six weeks and before [ was discharged, the stitches were removed. I used to visit the hospital periodically for checkups. There were no restrictions worth mentioning. The left eye was "not yet bad enough to do."

But something was wrong. Distant walls seemed to be closing in on me. I could hear the drone of aircraft in the sky and the chirping of birds, but could not see them. Distant number plates were no longer legible. Faces were featureless.

T used to go around with an almost constant smile on my face, afraid that people, not knowing that I could not see them well enough to recognize them, might feel that I was not acknowledging their presence.

To strangers, I must have appeared an imbecile.

As time passed, things got worse. [could no longer read small print or newspapers.

This was a major blow since I had been an avid reader and was still a student. Since I had had my transplant done by doctors regarded as the best corneal surgeons in the country, I felt that I had nowhere left to turn. r resigned myself to reading essential things with a powerful magnifier held to my unoperated left eye. I felt sure that even the magnifier would be of no help after some years. ( Cominued on page 24)

22

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

The Rotary Story

by CHARLES NEWTON

On February 23, 1905, Paul P. Harris, a 37-year-old lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, and three of his friends formed a club. Since they intended to meet at one another's home by rotation, Harris christened the club "Rotary." Encyclopaedia Britannica records this as the first "civilian service club," as distinct from military clubs that are more in the nature of"social and recreational clubs for enlisted personnel." Civilian service clubs, however, are composed of businesspeople and professionals, and combine fellowship with volunteer community service.

Although the beginning of the Rotary movement was small, Harris had ambitious plans. Rotary's broad objectives were-and still are-the development of the ideal of service as the basis of business, the cultivation of fellowship among members and the promotion of international peace. According to Harris, "In Rotary, thoughtfulness of others is regarded as the basis of service and helpfulness to others is its expression. Together, they constitute the Rotary ideal of service." Rotary adopted two mottoes: "Service above self" and " He profits most who serves best."

Harris's idea was an instant hit. The club's membership increased and it did not take long for the concept to cross the limits of the city of Chicago. In 1908 the Rotary movement spread to California and a chapter was formed in San Francisco. By 19 IO Rotary had a national association in the United States and two years later it became an international phenomenon with the formation of clubs in Ireland and England.

By the time of his death in 1947, Harris's tiny acorn had blossomed into a mighty oak. There were 6,234 Rotary clubs worldwide, with 300,529 members. Today there are more than a million Rotarians in some 23,000 clubs, grouped into 425 districts in 161 countries. (Until a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing women to become members of Rotary, the club admitted only men. The ruling. however. has not yet opened Rotary's doors for women in every country.)

Rotary's funds come from contributions by members. b<;:quests, donations, trusts and fund-raising campaigns. Since l 947, the Rotary Foundation has spent more than $145 million on charity and educational projects around the world. Over the years, Rotary has increased its emphasis on educational exchanges, and now annually sponsors almost 1,000 young men and women from all over the world to study or to undergo professional training in a foreign country. By the mid- l980s, the organization had disbursed $115 million to some 20,000 scholars in 156 countries. The grantees include young students, senior administrators and politicians. In 1965, Rotary introduced a Group Study Exchange program under which a group of young professionals (not necessarily Rotarians) are sent to a foreign country for a study tour lasting from four to six weeks. (This was the program under which Parimal Gandhi, author of the accompanying article, "A Gift of Vision," went to the United States.)

The organization's concern for improving world health has focused largely on diseases that afflict children. Since 1979, Rotary has been involved in waging a war against the six diseases that annually take a toll of3.4 million children in developing countries alone- polio, measles, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough). At its international assembly in 1985,

Rotary International pledged to rid the world of poliomyelitis by the organization's centennial year, 2005, and launched its most ambitious program ever- PolioPlus (so called since it also aims at fighting the other five diseases mentioned earlier).

At the 40th anniversary of the United Nations in October 1985, when several countries pledged their financial support to the goal of child immunization by 1990, Rotary pledged $120 million"Rotary's announcement...proved an electrifying moment in the ceremony," according to Herbert A. Pigman, director of the Rotary International Immunization Task Force. The amount pledged by the foundation was much higher than that pledged by any single nation. Integrating its resources with those of the World Health Organization, the Rotary Foundation has already approved grants of $37.4 million for accelerated immunization efforts in 42 countries to protect more than 240 million children.

Rotary is one of the six nongovernmental organizations recognized by the United Nations. Interestingly, there were 49 Rotarians among the delegates of the 46 countries who met in San Francisco in L945 to sign the Charter of the United Nations. One of them was a past vice-president of Rotary International, Carlos Romulo of the Philippines who was elected president of the U.N. General Assembly in 1949. (Romulo later served as Filipino foreign minister and ambassador to the United States.)

ROTARY IN INDIA : Rotary was introduced in India in 1919- just 14 years after its birth in the United States- by R.J. Coombes, a British businessman in Calcutta. On his return to Calcutta after a visit to America on business, Coombes formed a Rotary Club with l 5 members, all of them Britons. The first meeting was held on September 26, 1919, though the club was granted its international charter only on January I, 1920. Calcuttan Nitish Chandra Laharry became the first Asian to become president of Rotary International ( l 962-63). With 1, l 00 clubs and 50,300 members, India today ranks fourth in terms of the number of Rotary clubs. (America tops the list with 6,330 clubs, followed

by Japan with 1,628 and the United Kingdom with 1,518.) India is among the target countries for Rotary International's current PolioPlus campaign (see accompanying article by Tacy Paul). All 425 Rotary districts in the world have been allocated fundcollection targets to help Rotary reach its goal of raising $120 million for its all-out war on polio. India's 24 districts have been collectively allocated a target of $4 million. Rotary International will give $16 million for India's immunization programs.

ThePolioPlus program in India was inaugurated in Tamil Nadu because of that state's success in ,a similar project sponsored by Canadian Rotarians in their campaign against red measles a few years ago. According to S.L. Chi tale, chairman of the Tamil Nadu PolioPlus Committee, "In Tamil Nadu 155 Rotary Clubs with 5,745 Rotarians are already busy organizing camps to immunize 13.63 million children. By the end of June l 988 more than a million children had already been immunized. The overall target for India is immunization of2 l .73 million children by 1990. Rotarians from India are also helping in the immunization program of some countries in Asia and Africa."

While the PolioPlus campaign is a high profile venture, there are countless small and yet equally important ways in which Rotary's volunteer army in India is helping achieve the goals of founder Paul P. Harris-service before self.

D About the Author: Charles Newton is a Calcutta-based.free-lance writer.

23

A GIFT OF VISION co111i1111ed

"Is there customs duty on a new vision? I must confess to having smuggled in a new cornea!"

My left cornea, of course, had not been transplanted and the disease was taking its course. My right eye, however, should have had excellent vision. But it did not. r was told that the graft in my right eye might have gradually got the disease from surrounding tissue, or had slowly been rejected or had never really "taken." It is not uncommon for corneal transplants to fail for no fault of either the surgeon or the patient. But knowing this was no consolation to me.

In January 1984, I was selected by Rotary International for their Group Study Exchange program for outstanding professionals. (I was- and still am- a manpower trainer specializing in teaching communication skills.) On May 1, 1984, I found myself in St. Louis, Missouri, with the five other Indians selected for the program. We arrived after midnight to a warm and hearty American welcome, in contrast to the chiUy wind blowing outside. The program was a fabulous experience in international living. I lived with ten southern Illinois Rotarian families and met many more. lllinois became my home state in the United States, no less dear than my home state of Gujarat in India.

Tn Mt. Vernon, UJinois, I met Dr. Meenakshi Desai, an ophthalmologist from Ahmedabad. She heard about my transplant, examined my eyes and told me that I was headed for near-total blindness very soon if I did not do something. But what could I do? One transplant had not worked. Another would, she said. She suggested that I get it done in the United States. But I did not have the funds. What I had would have paid for the ambulance ride and not much more.

My hosts at Mt. Vernon, John and Eloise Turrel, made up their minds that if and when I left America, it would be with my sight restored. John Turrel contacted several Rotarians and established a Parimal Gandhi Co rneal Transplant Fund. (This he did, in spite of the fact that he was a diehard Republican and I a staunch Democrat!) He managed to collect almost $5,000 for my treatment. American Rotarians

24

SPAN SEPTEM BER 1988

Carl Schweinfurth, Dr. Hank Hannah, Four days later I gathered enough courHerbert Schueler, Blain Kennedy, Allen age to remove the eye guard. I carefully Corbin, Virgil Jansen, Dave Mehrmann, opened my eye. From a dull green, the Dr. Manoj Desai and many others contrib- carpet in the bedroom transformed into a uted to give me a new vision of life. So did vivid forest green. All the colors in the my sister who lives in Dallas, her employ- room changed shade and brightened. I ers, and two uncles who live in New York. I remember asking my sister if she had consider the contributions of my American washed the carpet. She hadn't. I shut my friends all the more noteworthy because eyes in disbelief and opened them again. they had known me less than a month and Yes, it was true. The colors were still there. had no bond with me whatever. They took Nothing had faded.

Life took on a new meaning. My horito my cause with the same seriousness and enthusiasm as they would have for one of zons literally broadened. Things came their own family. back into focus. Smiles were warmer, the It was decided to regraft the cornea in my sunshine brighter. People's faces were right eye because it had hardly any vision. expressive again. Girls were prettier. The The surgery was done in Amarillo, Texas, by water an azure blue. One of the happiest Dr. John Alpar, a man whose heart is as large moments in my life came when I found as he is and whose fingers have magical myself able to read the almost microscocapabilities. He is a familiar figure at many pic print in the Dallas telephone direcIndian ophthalmology conferences and tory-without a magnifier! I had Jost the workshops. My anesthesiologist was Dr. glass and hadn't given it a second thought.

Mahendra Patel, an Indian, who hosted me l no longer needed it. I went through the during my eight follow-up visits to Amarillo. phone book again and again for the sheer Three days after we flew to Amarillo, I, joy of it. was back in Dallas at my sister's. I had only This time, the cornea had been donated a green plastic guard on the operated eye. I by the family of a 23-year-old accident remember asking Dr. Alpar apprehen- victim. The donor had given away a part of sively, " Am I allowed to open my eye?" his being to a man he would never know. I Laughing loudly, he said, "Yes, whenever would never be able to thank him or his you wish to see anything, you will have to." family directly, even if thanks were possible Taking treatment at an American hospi- or adequate. His gift went beyond mantal was an eye-opener for me in more ways made boundaries, benefiting someone who than one. The American hospital industry lived thousands of kilometers away.

As my flight took off from America, I is commercial, professional and intensely competitive. Excellent facilities are avail- was overwhelmed with joy and grief. I was able in the smallest of towns. Optimum use going back home but I had left home is made of a doctor's time. While one behind too. The sheer magnitude of my patient is being seen by a doctor, another is experience overawed me. I had been just being "prepared" by a nurse. The doctor another visitor when I landed. But I had often has only to confirm readings, make a been transformed during my visit (which diagnosis and prescribe treatment. A lot of extended from the scheduled six weeks to the initial work, and many of the tasks almost one year) into a living symbol of traditionally performed by doctors in most everything that is good about Indo-Americountries, are entrusted to well-trained can relations. paramedics, most of whom are women.

At Bombay airport, I was asked the There is extensive computerization. routine question: "Anything to declare?" I A number of myths I had harbored were was stumped for an answer. Is there cusshattered. American medicine, I had been toms duty on a new vision or a renewed told, was extremely radical. At least the lease on life? I must confess to having doctors who treated me chose a well- smuggled in a new cornea! proven surgical technique, in preference to My anonymous American eye donor newfangled ones. The behavior of the staff and I share the ultimate relationship. He was not only courteous, it was warm, con- has given me vision. I have given him life. siderate and affectionate. Medical treat- For he will live on within me. Sharing every ment seems prohibitively expensive, except joy and every sorrow. Through night and that most Americans have medical insur- day, rain and shine, light and darkness, we ance that pays all but ten or 20 percent of shall look together at the many shades of the bills. I feel that one gets full value for my life; together as no two people can the money spent. otherwise hope to.

0

An Indian Visit

by TACY PAUL

Typically, my international flight arrived in New Delhi four hours late. As I wheeled my overloaded baggage cart through the Indira Gandhi International Airport's customs area, past the armed guards at the sliding glass doors, J prayed that the Indian Rotary member J had written to would emerge from the crowd to meet me. I studied the sea of faces and looked in vain for my name on one of the many placards. My shoulders began to ache under the weight of my heavy carryons and my back perspired in the hot, heavy July air. As the crowds pushed past, I was left alone. 1 wearily negotiated my luggage back inside, changed money and hired a taxi.

After a much-needed shower at the hotel and with my enthusiasm for India still intact, I picked up the phone and called the only number T knew in Delhi- that of Sudarshan Agarwal, the Rotarian who was supposed to meet me at the airport. Agarwal answered the phone and was dismayed that his man had failed to meet me at the airport. He asked me to come straightaway to his office in Parliament House in the car that he was sending for me.

A private car? In America, as far as J knew, only top business executives and the President had chauffeured cars. No one had ever sent a car to pick me up before.

As the white Ambassador drove down the streets of New Delhi, the driver pointed out landmarks that I had seen in my friend's photo albums and the guidebooks of India. When the car passed through the gates of Parliament House, I asked the driver what his boss did. "Secretary," he replied with a note of pride. Imagining him to be someone who typed documents, I asked, "Secretary of what?" "Secretary-General of the Rajya Sabha." "Ob," I gulped. I glanced down at my simple cotton dress and sandals and regretted that I had not worn my one good silk dress to meet this man who was obviously high in the hierarchy of the office of the Indian Parliament.

Sudarshan Agarwal, an international director of Rotary-one of nine. or so directors around the world-greeted me in his expansive government office and then sent me on a tour of the chambers of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha with a member of his staff. He had also arranged for me to stay with some of his personal friends. Thus began my stay as a Rotary Graduate Scholar in India. I had come expecting only to be a student. Yet India gave me much more than time spent in a classroom.

My journey to India really began when I was a freshman in boarding school. My closest friend and rootpmate was a BengaliAmerican. In the bucolic hills of Pennsylvania, Karabi did her best to make me Indian. She taught me how to drape a sari, cook kheer and showed me countless pictures of Calcutta and her relatives there. My fascination with India grew and I was delighted when I won this Rotary scholarship.

In Delhi I had planned to study public administration at the University of Delhi and the Indian Institute of Public Administration. As I intended to pursue a joint degree in law and public administration in the United States, I thought I Tacy Paul

could begin my coursework in India, which seemed an ideal place to study public administration. It has a large government bureaucracy and the typical problems of a developing nation.

But classes only ran one week when the teachers went on a long strike. While I was frustrated that my initial academic plans had not worked out, my new free time gave me the opportunity to do something even better-help in PolioPlus, a Rotary project aimed at ridding the world of polio.

Delhi's Rotary clubs were working with local health officials and UNICEF on the project. I joined their efforts with enthusiasm, thus learning in the field what I was forced to miss in the classroom. I learned about administering projects with the private, public and quasi-public sectors of lndia by interacting with the government doctors, visiting immunization camps and organizing joint meetings with Rotarians, UNICEF personnel and city officials.

I got so involved with Rotary work that even when the strike got over at the university I continued to work on the UNJCEF-Rotary project and attended classes part-time. I was busy organizing a team of volunteers to work with the local government to identify which city children needed to be immunized.

Rotary awards its scholarships to promote international goodwill and understanding, and does not necessarily expect its recipients to obtain a degree in the scholarship year. Since my work reflected the spirit of the scholarship, Rotary was flexible and openminded enough to permit me to be only a part-time student.

The scholarship contract calls the awardees ambassadors of goodwill. As an American "ambassador," I spoke to Rotary clubs, women's groups and schools on topics such as the "Typical Life of an American High School Student," "American Family Life" and "A Little Bit of Texas." I will continue my ambassadorial duties when I return home to talk about India.

Rotary had appointed Jagdish and Sarla Kapur as the Rotary family to look after me in Delhi. It was my first experience of seeing an Indian joint family. Jagdish and his three brotherswho among them have eight sons- all live in the same large house with their families. l was amazed that so many relatives could harmoniously live together under one roof. Each time I went over there, I met another family member I had not seen before. I was never able to ascertain how many children the eight sons had among them and when I asked "Jagdish Uncle," as I had begun to call him, how many people lived in his house, he replied with a nonchalant wave of his hand, "Oh, I can't count that high."

The Kapurs shared all their holidays with me. On Diwali, I spent the afternoon gorging myself on sweets and playing cards with sons, sisters, cousins, grandchildren, in-laws and other relatives. Foreigners often refer to Diwali as the Indian Christmas but Diwali night has none of the peace of Christmas Eve. The traditional song for Christmas Eve is "Silent night, holy night./ All is calm, all is bright." The song for Diwali should begin with a drurnroll and a phrase similar to that line in the American Anthem, " ... the bombs bursting in air."

The best part about the Rotary scholarship was that l met a variety of Indians all the time. I delighted in going to their homes, sharing their roti and dal, and playing with their children. It is true that sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the differences between our two cultures. Most often, however, I saw that we are more alike than we are different. We all share the same dream of making the world a little better for us and our children to live in.

D

SPAN SEP'fF.MBl;;R 1988

25

Business Goes Back to School

by MARY-MARGARET WANTUCK

A growing number of American companies are sending their executives back to business schools to help them upgrade their skills to deal more effectively with the complex issues of the business world of the 1980s and beyond.

In 1974, Scott Goldsmith traded his car in on a dream.

Then 25, he had observed the growing demand in the United States for vitamins, natural foods, personal.care items and other products associated with health, fitness and youthful appearance.

Convinced he had identified an opportunity to start his own business, Goldsmith quit his job with a wholesaler of office furniture, sold his car for $3,500 and launched Vita Plus Industries in his Las Vegas, Nevada, apartment. The company now has a manufacturing plant with 100 employees and annual sales of $6 million. Goldsmith wants the business to keep growing, but he wants well-planned orderly growth. And he wants to acquire the ability to identify and avoid pitfalls.

Shelley Ward had been a schoolteacher and summer employee of Spillman Company, in Columbus, Ohio, when she was invited to become a full-time employee of the firm, which fabricates steel frames and moldings. Now purchasing agent and customer service representative, she wants to achieve as much growth as possible in her new career.

Thomas Venable, founder and president of Spectrum Control, an Erie, Pennsylvania, firm that makes filters to prevent radio-frequency interference, was concerned when his company's longtime, solid management appeared to be generating "too many errors.¡¡ Roger Dodson, president and part owner of Long Pride Broadcasting, Wichita, Kansas, recognized that the owners and managers of smaller businesses tended to be long on energy and creative ability, but short on formal training in management. He particularly wanted the managers of his company to understand business planning.

While each of those managers had different needs, they sought the answers to their problems in the same manner-in education and training programs outside their respective businesses.

Goldsmith enrolled in the owner-president program that Harvard University offers to individuals who have started or inherited businesses grossing between $3 million and $100 million a year, and who have at least ten years of business experience. Ward participated in a Smith College program designed to help women who move from subordinate to supervisory roles.

Venable took his executives to a training program that promises

26

SPAN SEPTEMB ER 1988

to "hold the company's hand while it implements changes.,.

Dodson and five of his executives became students at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management at Wichita State University's College of Business Administration.

In seeking such outside help. those four business people joined one of the fastest-growing activities in the American business world today- the mass movement of managers back to the classroom to improve their business skills. Those classrooms are in major U.S. educational institutions, in community colleges and secondary schools, in hotel meeting rooms where seminars are held and, to a great extent, in the facilities of companies themselves.

Oscar G . Mink, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas in Austin, estimates that nearly eight million working adults in America are participating in education programs companies conduct in their own classrooms. He says these employers are either seeking training to improve job performance, education to prepare for future jobs or development for personal growth.

Samuel A. Pond, publisher of Bricker's International Directory, a guide to university executive education programs, surveyed management schools in 1984. There were, he says, 5,543 participants in programs that these university-level management schools conducted for companies at their facifities. Worldwide, there has been a 63 percent increase in such programs in the past decade.

"The programs fall into two categories," says Pond. "One is general management programs that deal with the various functions of a business, as well as overall strategies and policies. The second is functional- marketing or operations."

Lawrence Winters, director of sales for Dun & Bradstreet Business Education Services, says his company's one-day seminars have shown significant growth.

Estimates of what companies are spending on formal education and training programs for employees range from $50,000 million to $80,000 million a year, with a substantial portion of that going into development of managerial skills.

Another measure is found in an analysis that William G. Thomas, a management and organizational development consultant with the Consul Group, made of companies cited in the best-

Reprinted by pcnnission from Nation 's B11siness. Copyright (() U.S. Chamber orCommerce.

made into managers. Andrews selling books, In Search of terms no longer valid the proposiExcellence and The JOO Best Comtion that "a man may learn what panies to Work for in America. he will need to know from what he He found that 97 percent of the currently doing." That has beis firms have in-house management a .. hopeless" approach, Ancome development programs, 96 perwrites. because of "rapid drews cent pay for courses employees in technology, the interadvances take in college and university manof markets and nationalization agement programs and 43 percent the progress of and competition give time off for study. processinformation in research Why this back-lo-school trend behavior human in as well as ing, in American business? To a great in organizations." exlenl, il reflects the complex Many entrepreneurs. however, forces affecting today's business less complex motivations in have world and the individuals striving addilional education to seeking for success in it. them better managers. make help Anthony Carnevale, vice-presione of Lhe people Wiltsee, George dent and chief economist of the owner-manHarvard the run who American Society for Training its students. of says program. ager very the says Development, and have been who people are "These changis nature of management for ten to businesses their building "In . ing. and new skills arc needed " ...and finally, if things get too tough for you out there in the real the probably is this and years, 20 ...

PhD or MBA. MA. an up pick and here back 011 scurry ll'Or!d, the past," he says, ..companies to away gotten they've time first were divided into compart< 1988 T nbune Mccha S<mccs. Inc . All Rtghh Rtwf\ <d their about think and back step ments-design. engineering, manufacturing. materials handling. maintenance and others-with own strengths and weaknesses. A lot of them are very weak on each run by a separate manager. But the lines among those finance , accounting and control.

"People are so busy making their products and selling their functions arc becoming less distinct. primarily because of new that they're not t~inking about where the money is going services handled be can that technologies. and the result is consolidation to come from to run the business. It's not something they've been by one manager. Today's manager is an integrator."

Andrew McCulloch, associate director of the executive educa- trained to think about."

In the women-only program at Smith College, Director Susan tion program at New York's Columbia University, agrees in says Lhe goal is to "educate these women to move from a Lowance integrators. be must managers "Today's words: almost the same They can't make decisions based on a specific piece of data or in a divisional to organizational perspective ... The program deals, she certain area. They must bring together a variety of viewpoints to explains, with "what happens when a woman stops doing the work for someone else and begins managing the work of other people, get the best possible decision."

In addition to a base curriculum, the program recognized major using a budgel and working within a time frame to achieve an trends in the business world with the recent addition of two new organizalional goal."

The program at Smith College is divided into three segments. offerings, "Managing an Enterprise" and "New Frontiers of The first is a three-week summer phase of core courses in Management."

The former ranges from competitive strategies to reconciling organizational behavior. finance, marketing and information innovation with productivity. The "New Frontiers" program systems, complemented by training in communication skills. Studeals with such issues as relations with government. the media and dents then return to their companies for a year, during which they citizens' groups. One graduate, McCulloch recalls, says the pro- formulate, implement and evaluate projects that demonstrate gram taught him to analyze "the things I simply read and listened ability to integrate functional skills and to think strategically. A second, three-week summer session focuses on long-range planto before."

Even the highly touted master of business administration ning and analysis based on theory and skills learned in both the (MBA) degree is no shield from the need for additional education first summer session and in the various projects.

Teacher-turned-executive Shelley Ward says of her participaduring the course of a career, says Ray Watson. associate dean of the executive education program at Duke University's Fuqua tion in the program, "Coming to Smith has given me confidence School of Business. "The MBA or its equivalent is only good for and knowledge of where my faults are. Businesswise, I'm much eight years out in Lhe business world," he says. "After that, it self- more aware."

At Wichita State University, Director Fran Jabara of the Center destructs because of the continuous and rapid changes occurring in the abililies and skills thal business people need to compete for Entrepreneurship says his program for small-business people is unique. A recent course conducted attracted 140 business people, successfully."

Kenneth Andrews, a professor in the Harvard Business School who attended three hours a night, three nights a week for three and author of The Ejjectiveness of University Management Devel- weeks.

Jabara says the course addresses such questions as translating opment Programs, attributes lhe back-to-the-classroom movement among American business people to an increasing realiza- an idea into a marketable product or service. Experienced manag( Continued on page 33 ) tion that, while many people are born managers, others can be

SPA" SEPTEMBER 198R

27

â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

Alumni Forum The U.S. Educational Foundation in India (USEFI) is planning a grand reunion of India's Fulbright alumni mid-November in Delhi. This will be the first all-India meeting of the alumni since the 1961 gathering on USEFl's tenth anniversary.

Even though many of India's 2,700 Fulbrighters will not be

able to attend the two-day meeting, USEFI hopes to use the occasion to work out a plan whereby they can meet periodically and help advance the cause of lndo-U.S. relations.

The alumni program has received a considerable boost over the past two years owing to the efforts and enthusiasm of Ambassador John Gunther Dean, who has been meeting with Fulbrighters on his visits to various Indian cities. While there were just a few regional associations of Fulbright's Indian alumni two years ago, today there are 27 chapters throughout the country.

Hepatitis Breakthrough American scientists have identified and cloned the proteins from a major hepatitis virus that infects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year. Scientists at Chiron Corporation, a California biotechnology firm, say the latest breakthrough is expected to lead to a blood-screening test for a previously undetectable Infection called "blood-borne hepatitis non-A. non-B" and make it possible to begin work on a vaccine that could eradicate the global d isease.

Hepatitis non-A, non-B is a major type of hepatitis that is different from hepatitis A and hepatitis B, whose viruses have previously been identified.

Blood-borne hepatitis non-A, non-B is transmitted through contaminated blood during blood transfusions or other close personal contact.

"Solving blood-borne hepatitis non-A. non-B has been one of the toughest challenges in the world of infectious disease," Edward Penhoet. president and chief executive officer at Ch iron said recently.

28

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

The discovery and cloning of the blood-borne non-A, non-B virus has led to the development of a prototype bloodscreening test that is currently in preclinical trials. (Cloning, also known as gene splicing, involves a process by which scientists can artificially reproduce the virus protein that is used in the blood test.) "At the present time there is no way for people in blood banks to detect non-A. non-B hepatitis," Penhoet pointed out.

When the new techn9logy ls approved and available, blood banks will be able to use a relatively simple test to screen blood infected with the virus. A blood sample would be applied to a small plate coated with the cloned virus protein. If the blood is infected, antibodies from the blood will bind to the plate.

Currently the virus cannot be detected directly. , Instead, blood banks conduct what is known as surrogate screening of donor blood, a technique that eliminates only a portion of the infected blood.

An Indian Mayor for Hollywood Park "My victory was somewhat hollow," smiles Bala K. Srinivas, "in that I was not opposed." Srinivas, who was elected mayor of Hollywood Park, Texas, last May is the first Indian American to hold this post in the state. What makes his choice a surprise to outsiders is the fact that Hollywood Park-a northern suburb of San Antonio-has just three Indian families and 92 percent of its popu lation (3,000) is Caucasian.

Srinivas, who runs a management consultancy firm, went to the United States in 1956 where he earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (He was graduated from Osmania Engineering College in Hyderabad.) After a short stint with a firm in Cleveland, Ohio, he returned to India in 1958 and worked for the Tata Engineering & Locomotive Company in Jamshedpur, Bihar, and the Praga Tools Factory in Hyderabad. He returned to the United States in 1966, where he rejoined his former employer in Cleveland. In 1979. he resigned to start his own management consultancy business in San Antonio under the name of Beekay Associates, "and that is what I am still doing," he says.

How did he get interested in community affairs?

"Actually it was the editor of our town newspaper, Faye Miller, who suggested that I run for public office as a councilman," answers Srinivas. " I thought this would be a good way to give something back to this country which has been very good to me and my family."

Snnivas ran for a two-year term as councilman against a longtime resident of the community in 1985 and won. In 1987, he defeated Bernard Jensen, a former councilman and a resident of the town for 22 years to retain his position. "But I defeated Bernie narrowly," he concedes.

Srinivas was nominated mayor pro tern by the town council in October 1986. " In May this year," he says, "the 'incumbent mayor, Patricia Flynn, suggested that I run for mayor since she d id not plan to recontest. I was elected unopposed for a two-year term."

Explaining his duties and responsibilities as mayor, Srinivas says, " I am the head of the executive branch of the town's government system. The mayor is also a member of the town council- the legislative branch-that has five cou ncilmen. all directly elected by the citizens. The mayor presides over council meetings which are held once a month and he is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the government. Srinivas has to ensure that expenses stay within the budget, and that all laws and ordinances passed by the council are strictly enforced. Hollywood Park has an an nual budget of $800,000."

The mayor and councilmen , Srinivas stresses, do not get paid.

Hollywood Park is a predominantly residential community, 25 kilometers from downtown San Antonio. It began developing some 40 years ago and was incorporated on October 24, 1955. There are more than 1,000 residential homes there.

Srinivas is married to Geeta, a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. They have a 28-year-old daughter, Vinita. Geeta also has a son, Vikram, from a previous marriage.

Srinivas has not visited India since 1985, "but I telephone my mother in Hyderabad at least once a month," he says.

Oil Giant The photograph at right shows the world's tallest offshore oil-drilling platform being towed on the Miss1ssipp1 River to its ultimate destination in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, Louisiana.

Named Bullwinkle, after an American cartoon character, the 50,000ton rig measures 411 meters in length. When the deck and drilling rigs are installed, the structure will stand 492 meters above the seafloor, making it some 5.0 meters higher than the world's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois. Initial oil production at the rig, which was constructed by Gulf Marine Fabricators, Inc., of Ingleside, Texas, is scheduled to begin early n~xt year.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

29

30

McGarry's People

CAMERA TO CANVAS Jeanine Lipchik-McGarry is not just another camera-happy tourist. When she moves around, camera slung across her shoulder, in search of the right moment and person to shoot (she hates that word: "just say 'to photograph"'), she is an artist at work. This young American artist from Detroit, Michigan, currently in India on a Fulbright grant, specializes in painting portraits of people based on her photographs of them. McGarry does not like people to pose for her- " it would be hard on the person and on me because I'd feel distracted wondering how I could make him or her more comfortable." Her modus operandi is to move out with a camera, and photograph "anyone whom I think I would like to paint." " l don't know," she answers, when asked what makes her choose her subjects. " It's just something about the person that makes me decide whether I want to paint him or her. Sometimes, in fact, I have taken photographs of people but later thought, ' I don't really care about this person. I am not going to paint him.' I think I am just sensitive to people and maybe I feel things that are real deep in them." One of her first portraits in India was of a policeman who came up to her while' she was photographing the area she lives in. "I thought he was going to stop me from photographing there but he just wanted to know where my wristwatch was from!"

McGarry's Fulbright grant is to interview Indian artists. She has been here since September 1987 and has met artists in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Pune so far. She finds contemporary Indian art " more dramatic and more emotional" than American art. "In fact, my own work might change after my visit to Jndia. I think my colors are going to be bolder now."

But her interest in people remains unchanged.

The U.S. Information Service is exhibiting McGarry's Indian portraits of people and flowers-some of which are shown on these pages- in Delhi, D Bombay and Calcutta beginning this month.

The Watch Is Where From?

1.98 m x 1.32 m Oil, canvas, Masonite.

The Star 2.l8mx1.32m Oil, canvas, Masonite.

The "Potter" Bride 1.88 m x 1.82 m Oil, canvas, Masonite.

CAMERA TO CANVAS continued

On the Road to Pu11e 74cmx91 cm Oil, canvas. Masonite:

Wedding Invitation in Chandigarh 2.43 m x 1.22 m Oil, canvas, Masonite.

Hyderabad "Monks" 48 cm x 48 cm Oil, canvas, Masonite.

After the Fight 30cm x63 cm Oil, canvas, Masonite.

32

SPAN SF.PTEMBER 1988

Business Goes Back to School co111im1ed f rom page 21 ers like Frank Carney. a founder of the Pizza H uL chain, and Larry Jones. president of Coleman Co mpany. add a dramatic element to the classes with frank discussions of the drawbacks as well as the rewards of running a business.

Broadcast executive Roger Dodson says he brought his management people to the course LO gain a better understanding of the business planning process. As a result of the course, he says, "we ended up developing a whole new procedure for planning for the company. I wish we had gone through the program many years ago. We not only had a good time, we learned a heck of a lot."

Other manager-education prog~ams in the United States include a Stanford University course for smaller to medium-sized firms. It is open to the heads of companies with 500 to I ,000 employees and io managers who report to such individuals. The two-week course is designed to give participants enough background in policy, strategy, finance, planning and personnel to enable them to analyze the structures of their own organizations and their roles within those structures.

Executive Director George Parker warns, however, that the program has its limitations. ''There is a tremendous appetite on the part of smaller companies for universities to provide them with cookbook approaches a nd formula solutions to their problems, but that is not Stanford's way," he says. "I am candid with each applicant, explaining that he should start with the premise that our faculty knows absolutely nothing about his specific business, but that we do know quite a bit about certain disciplines and the principles involved . It's up to each business owner to take those principles and apply them to his individual company."

For companies like Venable's Spectrum Control, which are seeking instruction geared to their individual problems, Philip Crosby Associates (PCA) in Miami, Florida, is one destination.

PCA is one of many American firms that have emerged in response to the demand for management training in nonacademic settings.

Founded by Philip Crosby, a former vice-president of ITT Corporation , the firm works closely with executives of client companies in developing strategies to overcome their specific problems.

Once a strategy is developed, the client company managers who will be overseeing its implementation attend PCA's " Quality College" to make sure they understand what they are expecte<j to do back at their company. " We will hold the company's hand while it implements changes, assisting them if necessary and monitoring them to make sure they are on the right track," says Larry McFadden, PCA president.

Venable sought PCA 's help when problems began to surface at his S22-million-a-year firm. "We had always been a solid and profitable company," Venable says ... but we were finding there were too many errors cropping up in our production process, in accounting, in inventory- all due to our management systems. We wanted to eliminate this and have our managers managing quality in every work activity."

The full effect of the PCA training will be fully apparent only when all of Spectrum's employees will have been trained in "doing it right the first time," Venable says. But he is already finding fewer mistakes in billing and shipping, as well as a dramatic, positive change in our return orders."

Linking management education programs to specific goals is not by any means limited to smaller companies. Kenneth Hansen, manager of corporate education and training at Xerox, says, "If

.. ft "s imperative we get some heavyweights on the board."

J)raw1ng by Sle'-cnson: • 1981 The Ne~· Yorker Magazine. Inc.

you look at the needs of American corporations today. you'll see that their management training must be locked into corporate objectives."

That is also tr ue for smaller companies. Ken Nill, owner of Lasenron, Inc., Burlington, M assachusetts, says his fiber optics company is growing so fast- it has sales of more than S20 million a year and 300 employees- that he sought help in the H arvard owner-manager programs. He explains: "I have never had any formal management training; I've learned by doing. But our company is taking off, and there's a need for strategic planning. I have to learn new approaches and validate the ones that l've implemented. This program gives me exposure to different viewpoints and how to react to people."

Whatever form the continuing education takes- a summer on a college campus or a two-day seminar in a meeting room of the local hotel- there are clearly defined rewards, the experts say.

H arvard's Kenneth Andrews reports that, on the basis of his research, the rewards business people can expect from such education include: • A broadened perspective of the business world and an increased confidence in their own abilities.

• A sense of assurance that their own performance will continue to improve.

• Awareness of business areas beyond their own specialties.

• D eeper appreciation of the interrelationship of business and social concerns.

• Ability to look at old problems in new ways.

• Realization there can be many different approaches to the same problem .

And companies can also e~pect rewards for providing education and training opportunities for employees.

In fact. what Xerox Chairman David Kearns says about the extensive programs of his own giant corporation can be said by the heads of firms and organizations of all types and sizes: "Our investment in training will help managers deal more effectively with the complex issues of the 1980s and beyond, and will pay long-term dividends in productivity and profitability." 0 About the Author: Mary-Margaret Wantuck is a former associate editor of Nation's Business i11 Washington, D.C.

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

33

Whitman's Passage to That India figured as a grand metaphor in the poetry of Walt Whitman is to be seen at its freest and fullest in his splendid poem, " Passage to India," though both American and Indian scholars have sought to trace his mysticism and his metaphysic to Hindu thought in the entire body of his verse. What he knew of this hoary land from books and legends a nd stray stories set the wires singing in his blood and bones, and India fo und in him a bard fit to carry the song, as though the American poet had an Indian soul!

On the Indian side, Whitman's influence, understandably, has been wide and radical enough to have left its mark upon almost each regional poetry, and the story of influences, affinities and correspondences has been the subject of many a critique and dissertation. But I do not know if any major Indian poet in any tongue has sought to invest Whitman's image with a native aura as consciously and arcanely as the Punjabi poet, Puran Singh. The kind of local color he lends to his " portrait" of the American poet is something that suggests Whitman's "passage" to Punjab, though he must have been only faintly aware of the Land of the Five Rivers, ifhe was aware of it at all.

My theme in this essay, then, is to bring out the nature of the influence Whitman exercised at least over one Indian poet, an influence that otherwise defies critical analysis as we understand it. And it is something like the idea of " poetic reincarnation" that Puran Singh set out to chronicle.

Since the idea of reincarnation as such is a typically Hindu concept, one is attracted to it, tho ugh even Puran Singh, I trust, could not have meant this to be anything more than a striking metaphor.

Seldom, indeed , has a poet, separated by race, time and country, given such an eloquent and soulful testimony to the force of another poet in the fullness of his heart and the urgency of his imagination. For, ;\.'hat Puran Singh claims is not the American poet's influence as such, but something far deeper and far higher, something that, in a manner, transcends description.

To him, Walt Whitman appears as a poetic prophet whose spirit has mysteriously passed on into his own, and who leads him into that " great good place"

34

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

where kindly a nd kindred folks disport themselves in mystic delight and companionship. In other words, Puran Singh is suggesting something of the idea of poetic reincarnation and apostolic succession. It may be pertinent to add here that the concept of apostolic succession subsuming the passage of the same soul through new births or "vestures" is authenticated for Puran Singh in the story of the ten Sikh Gurus.

What, therefore, he has in mind is a far cry from the idea of mere "influence" which Harold Bloom, for instance, examines in such a recondite and pedantic manner in The Anxiety of Influence. In Bloom's theory of poetry, a strong poet is obliged to

Walt Whitman ( 1819-92)

destroy or repudiate his poetic "pater" in order to create an imaginative "space" for himself. There may be something in this Freudian concept which is, in a way, echoed

by Whitman himself when he says in "Song of Myselr': He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

But clearly, such a concept comes a cropper when we apply it strictly to the relationship between poets like Whitman and Puran Singh. Here, on the contrary, we have the case of a poet who, born in a wholly different culture and tradition, and writing in a radically different tongue, finds an epiphanic experience when he comes across a verse that lights up his entire "soulscape," so to speak. Here is no unconscious "slaying" of the " pater" poet, but a conscious surrender before a Master or a

Guru. Indeed, such a surrender becomes the requirement of his song and craft. It is a wholly different aesthetic.

Properly speaking, Puran Singh's long essay on Whitman is not really a critique as such, affirming Whitman's declared poetics. There is little here of what we generally call literary criticism. Of all the classical and modern critical approaches, there is not one that will answer our purpose fully.

All we have here is one breathless song in prose in praise of another song so puissant as to turn back all textbook criticism to its linear tracks. Puran Singh, in fact, makes light of all theorizings and all extended explications. For him, as for Whitman, to analyze a poem is to violate it, is to spill its riches in the dust.

While such a mystic rapport is clearly stipulated by Puran Singh, he frequently calls Whitman by his Christian name, as though he were a town friend, a daily sharer of ambrosial airs at a common tavern. At times, he calls out his Walt from across the continents-a call from the Punjab plains to the American prairies where the great dreaming heart of America still beats in song and story. It is, as though, having heard the "barbaric yawp," Puran Singh answers back in the rich and rugged and dulcet accents of the Punjabi tongue. It is the deep calling unto the deep and, to use John Masefield's memorable line, it is "a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied."

What, however, constitutes the raison d'etre of this strange composition is Puran Singh's astounding belief that Walt Whitman is " the Guru's Sikh born in America."

Almost everything about the American poet-his God-intoxication, and mystic fervor, his egalitarian vision, his radical ethics, his love of the human body, and of all animals and sentient beings, his inebriation with things, place~ and persons, his celebration of the road, the sword and the steed , his faith in the new forces of science, electricity and technology and, finally, even his leonine face and fl owing locks and patriarchal beard-suggests such a description.

To prove that he is not riding a fanciful Pegasus, Puran Singh goes on to quote parallel lines and passages from the "Guru Granth Saheb"and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He has deciphered the great hiero-

Punj ab DA~HAN by

glyphic hand of America, and he knows it.

"We have," he avers, " taken strolls in each other's company in the gardens of the Beautiful."

Even to a cursory eye, the striking resemblance between Whitman and Puran Singh as persons and poets is so palpable that one cannot resist the temptation to see them linked in a kind of mystic compact. Indeed, no two poets in any part of the world, to my mind, have ever shown the kind of numinous correspondence that exists between these two poets. Whitman has admittedly scores of disciples and imitators in different climes and tongues, yet no poet even in America-from Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg to William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg-may claim that order of complete and conscious identity that Puran Singh claims as ofright and necessity. Puran Singh, in sum, thinks himself the poetic reincarnation of Whitman in Punjab. As he put it, "I find the poetic spirit of Walt Whitman identical with the Sikh spirit. It is not so much mental similarity as the psychic unity of the soul-consciousness underlying Sikh literature and Leaves of Grass."

Puran Singh's Whitmanian connection dates back to the year 1901 in Japan when an American friend put a copy of Leaves of Grass into his responsive and eager hands.

The reaction may best be described in terms of Whitman's description of his own encounter with Emerson. He was, as he put it, " simmering, simmering, simmering," and the great American transcendentalist brought him " to a boil."

It appears to me, something of this kind convulsed the consciousness of Puran Singh, and it altered his youthful sensibility in a radical manner. He was then only 20, and full of high dream. It was not really a meeting, but a spiritual consummation.

For more than 27 years, he nursed this tender and inviolate relationship. It had the mark of divinity and destiny for him.

From their poetry and their utterances, it is not difficult to see that both Whitman and Puran Singh had a similar " philosophy" of poetry. Both regarded the poet as a person possessed, in whom the word became the message in the very act of creation. Nor was a poet, in their view, a mere vessel, a neutral zone agitated by some breeze. He was, on the contrary, a su-

SINGH MAIN!

"Even to a cursory eye, the striking resemblance between Whitman and Puran Singh as persons and poets is so palpable that one cannot resist the temptation to see them linked in a kind of mystic compact."

premely active and roused sensibility, issuing forth in verse in the full exultation of its powers and in the full beauty of its truths.

He was, above all, conscious of his manifest destiny, of his poetic ministry.

Come said the Muse.

Sing me a song no poet y et has chanted.

Sing me the universal.

- Whitman

And apropos of Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes: "Who touches this touches a man." Compare this with Puran Singh's poetic credo announced in the opening line of The Spirit of Oriental Poetry: "We love our poet rather than his poetry; our artist

Puran Singh ( 1881-1931)

rather than his art." Later, he goes on to equate the poet with "the Guru, the Master, the Buddha, the Christ," and talks of him as "the incarnation of Logos. " What drew Puran Singh to Whitman was, above all, the volcanic energy and the oceanic undulation of his poetry. Its rapturous excess, its spontaneous flow, its horizontal spread and its vertical insights made it for him a poetry of prophecy. No wonder, in both these poets, the imagery of eruption, plunge, sweep, swing and flight is pervasive. Both are bowled over by the sheer sparkle and dazzle and dapple of things, by their opulence and energy and extravagance. Both shout hurrahs and " vivas" to the miracle of life. The inebriation in either case abides.

If, for Whitman, "a mouse is miracle

enough to stagger sextillions of infidels," for Puran Singh, no place or person is devoid of the mysterious and the sacred.

His poetry too comprehends all that assaults the senses. In a poem called "Punjab Ahiran Ik Goey Thapdi," to cite an example, he celebrates the sight of a village woman of the lower classes pasting cowdung cakes on the wall to dry. There is, both in Whitman and Puran Singh, a clear commitment to God's plenty. And in this commitment, one may read the element of childlike innocence and wi,de-eyed wonder.

It is not surprising that Walt Whitman was driven to write his great poem, "Passage to India," out of some deep, obscure impulse. Surely, the land of Puran Singh had a primordial fascination for him. The American poet sought to reach out across the seas and the continents to a land that was for him, more than anything else, a great idea, a massive metaphor. It was a voyage of the imagination to the secret recesses of his soul. It was "the return of the native" to a home dimly seen in the'twilight zone of consciousness.

Again, both Whitman and Puran Singh were public poets in the best sense of the word. Their radical views on. man, society and state challenged all kinds of soulless orthodoxies, political tyrannies and societal inequities. Their love of the ordinary and the commonplace, of the humble and the lowly, testifies to their vistas of democracy, egalitarianism and fraternity. Their democracy is the apotheosis of the spirit of man.

Such an attitude is possible only when a person begins to trust the voice of faith as opposed to the call of reason. It is a most difficult state to achieve, and few can really realize what Paul Tillich calls the "dynamics of faith. " There is no place here for "cold philosophy," metaphysical abstractions and systematization. " A morning glory," sings Whitman, " at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." Puran Singh is even more particular and insistent in this respect. In one of his poems, "Philosophy and Art," he talks of the wiles of "murderous philosophy," a treacherous cul-de-sac that drains life out of us. It substitutes ideas for persons, concepts for concreteness.

Similarly, the body-soul relationship, a recurrent motif in Whitman's poetry, finds

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

35

WHITMAN'S PASSAGE TO PUNJAB continued

"There are several poems by Puran Singh in which he celebrates the spirit of Punjab in true Whitmanian accents." a distinct echo in Puran Singh, though the American poet's celebration of the body is in louder, bolder and of deeper tones.

There is, in fact, no body-soul dichotomy in their verse. They would have nothing to do with that hoary, textbook virtue that leads to the misery of shames and shams.

The sexual imagery in Whitman's poetry serves both as a catalyst and a vehicle. The astonishing fecundity of his verse is directly Linked to his sexuality. In Puran Singh, on the other hand, there is a more muted sensuousness, a more controlled eroticism, as in his long poems, "Puran Bhagat" and "Heer te Ranjha," or in his English rendering of the "Gita Govinda." In fact, as I see it, Puran Singh's sensibility is somewhat feminine, whereas that of Whitman is typically masculine, if not "androgynous," as American critic, John Kinnaird, maintains.

Puran Singh has often a delicately Keatsian sense of beauty and a lyrical love of the female form as, for instance, in a poem like "Ik Jungli Phu!" (Wild Flower): Beneath the blue skies there stood a hut of straw; newly-wattled, sun-drench 'd, and washed in gold.

Inside was a maiden. soft and sensuous. gazelle-eyed, white as snow, and lithe of limb, aching with youth and lost in dreams of love.

For Puran Singh, the sheer beauty of "the female form divine" is proof of the Ultimate Beauty beyond. In another poem, he says, it is the lie or falsehood that seeks to cover nakedness; the soul in its blessedness needs no raiment: Naked is the lotus, naked all sunshine: naked is the water. and naked am /: Naked are the blue skies, and naked is God!

Again, both Whitman and Puran Singh believed fervently in the manifest destinies of their respective lands. Whitman's Leaves of Grass has often been called America's national epic. Several sections of the poem constitute a glorious hymn to the promise and dream of America. As he lists its riches and outlines its topography, the music of names and places, of its flora and fauna, rises to a breathless crescendo. The sonorous catalogs swell up, and roll on like

36

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

thunder. There are several poems by Puran Singh in which he celebrates the spirit of Punjab in true Whitmanian accents. Perhaps the most moving and felicitous of these poems is the one called "Des Noon Assis Sadi Gariban Di" (A Blessing From the Poor to Our Land): Long live thy mansions and palaces. and long thy huts and hamlets!

Long live thy village bellesthose "queens of curds and cream": 0 I greet you, my sweet land with every breath I take.

0 I salute you, my heroic land!

livery of rhyme is fatal, unless one is merely composing what is pretty."

Whitman justified his use of slang, patois and colloquial expressions in his prose Primer. "All words," he declared, "are spiritual; nothing is more spiritual than words." A similar reverence for words qua words is to be seen in Puran Singh's poems and critical writings. In each case, the rhetoric is a means to a spiritual breakthrough. Their wordplay, repetitions and cataloging are all a spiritual exercise at bottom. The cataract of words thunders down in an awe-inspiring manner, and carries all before it. Puran Singh's idea of the birth and nature of poetry may be seen in the lyrical agony of the following lines:

Similarly, in a poem entitled "Punjab Dey Majoor" (The Laborers of Punjab), he recalls the utter piety of their daily chores, Lo, whole series and school~ of words "their beautiful thoughts and dreams," drop one by one from my little hands; ... their "honest faces." He is particularly A whole river of bowtties flows charmed by their simplicity, naivete and unstopped. unawares, unspent! humor. He admires the Punjabi peasant's sense of spiritual peace and contentment.

Even the titles of their poems and volIn his essay, "Kirat" (The Dignity of La- umes bespeak their visionary concerns. bor), he affirms the beauty and holiness of Apropos of Whitman's titles, Puran Singh the bread earned through sweat and tears. observes: "Sometimes the titles of his poRejecting all feudal values like Whitman, ems are, in themselves, greater poems than he upholds the Sikh concept of the work the lines bound like a golden sheaf of ripe ethic. For him Sikhism means a charter of a wheat ears below. The title is poetry, and happy and free and beautiful life in the the lines, but the daily bread." As for the service of man, country and community. It titles of Puran Singh's own three volumes means, above all, the establishing of a true of verse-Khule Maidan (The Wide Open republic of the spirit in which there is no Plains), Khule Ghund (The Open Veils) and room for the hegemony, dominion, or sway Khule Asmani Rung (The Wide Blue of one class over another. He truly believed Skies)- the keyword, khule, which in Punthat the line in the daily Sikh ardas jabi means open and wide and spacious, (prayer), "Raj Karega Khalsa," implied has both a thematic and a stylistic import. not the rule of the Sikhs, but a rule of the The word that comes closest in English to Pure and the Elect of the Lord. this expression is "amplitude." And we And, finally, a word about their idiom, know, Whitman's poetry, as his own, is style and prosody. Clearly, neither Whit- brimful of this feeling and thought. man nor Puran Singh could have expressed Thus, whichever way we may look at the himself in any form other than free verse. unique symbiosis of these two great poetic Their stormy and free muses found their spirits and psyches across the length of time metrical correlatives in it. Puran Singh was and space, we may, in the end, at least quick to realize the revolutionary import of ponder the problem of the poetics of reWhitman's experiments. incarnation. As a critical theory, it will not There is a brief but telling comment on hold, but it may lead us into the mysteries of this aspect in The Spirit of Oriental Poetry. the poetry that borders on the numinous, "As in the hot deserts," says Puran Singh, and which joins a soul to a soul in a strange, "wine is not so refreshing as a draught of moving compact of companionship.

0 cool well water, so in the vast desert of life, the Tennysonian rhymes and meters are no About the Author: Darshan Singh Maini, a formatch for the inspiring vital radiations of mer professor of English literature at the Punjabi Whitman's soul....Ah, those well-woven University, Patiala, is currently a visiting profespoems! They are veils on the face of God! sor in the department of English at New York To attempt to clothe deep feelings in the University.

A Short Story by Jack Finney

Woman writing a letter

(~etail).

Khajuraho, 11th cenlury A.D.

I've heard of secret drawers in old desks, of course; who hasn't?

But the day I bought my desk I wasn't thinking of secret drawers, and I know very well I didn't have any least premonition or feel of mystery a bout it. I spotted it in the window of a secondhand store near my apartment and went in to look it over, and the proprietor told me where he got it. It came from one oftbe last of the big old mid-Victorian houses in Broo klyn; they were tearing it down over on Brock Place, a few blocks away, and he'd bought the desk along with some other furniture, dishes, glassware, light fixtures, and so on. But it didn't stir my imagination particularly; I never wondered or cared who might have used it long ago. I bought it and lugged it home because it was cheap and because it was small. I fastened the legless little wall desk to my living-room wall with heavy screws directly into the studding. l'm 24 years old, tall and thin, and I live in Brooklyn to save money and work in Manhattan to make it. When you're 24 and a bachelor, you usually figure you'll be married before much longer, and since they tell me that takes money, I'm reasonably ambitious and bring work home from the office every once in a while. And maybe every couple of week~ or so I write a letter to my folks in Florida. So I'd been needing a desk; there's no table in my phonebooth kitchenette, and I'd been trying to work at a wobbly little end table I couldn't get my knees under.

So I bought the desk one Saturday afternoon and spent an hour or more fastening it to the wall. It was after six when I finished. I had a date that night, and so Thad time to stand and admire it for only a minute o r so. It was made of heavy wood, with a slant top ¡like a kid's school desk, and with the same sort of space underneath to put things into. But the back of it rose a good two feet above the desk top and was full of pigeonholes like an old-style roll-top desk's. Underneath the pigeonholes was a row of three brass-knobbed little drawers. It was all p retty ornate, the drawer ends carved, some fancy scrollwork extending up over the back and out from the sides to help brace it against the wall. I dragged a chair up; sat down at the desk to try it for height; then got showered, shaved and dressed and went over to Manhattan to pick up my date.

I'm trying to be honest about what happened, and I'm convinced that includes the way I felt when I got home around 2:00 or 2:30 that morning; I'm certain that wr.at happened wouldn't have happened at all if I'd felt any other way. I'd had a good enough time that evening; we'd gone to an early movie that wasn't too bad and then h2d dinner, a drink or so, and some dancing afterward.

And the girl, Roberta Haig, is pretty nice-bright, pleasant, goodlooking. But while T was walking home from the subway, the Brooklyn streets quiet and deserted, it occurred to me that although I'd probably see her again, I didn't really care whether I did or not. And I wondered, as I often had lately, whether there was something wrong with me, whether I'd ever meet a girl I desperately wanted to be with- the only way a man can get married, it seems to me.

So when I stepped into my apartment I knew I wasn't going to feel like sleep for a while. I was restless, half-irritated for no good reason, and r took off my coat and yanked down my tie, wondering whether I wanted a drink or some coffee. Then-I'd half forgotten about it- I saw the desk I'd bought tbat afternoon, and I walked over and sat down at it, thoroughly examining it for the first time.

I lifted the top and stared down into the empty space underneath it. Lowering the top, 1 reached into qne of the pigeonholes, and my

Repnnted "'Ith perm1..sion or The Saturday Evening Post Soc.et), a dl\iSJon of BFL and MS. Inc C 1988

THE LOVE LETTER co111i11ued

hand and sh irt cuff came out streaked with old dust; the holes were a good foot deep. I pulled open one of the little brass-knobbed drawers, and there was a shred of paper in one of its corners, nothing else. I pulled the drawer all the way out and studied its construction, turning it in my hands; it was a solidly made, beautifully mortised little thing. Then I pushed my hand into the drawer opening; it went in to about the middle of my hand before my fingertips touched the back. There was nothing in there.

For a few moments Tjust sat at the desk, thinking vaguely that I could write a letter to my folks. And then it suddenly occurred to me that the little drawer in my hand was only half a foot long, while the pigeonholes just above the drawer extended a good foot back.

Shoving my hand into the opening again, exploring with my fingertips, I found a grooved indentation and pulled out the ti ny secret drawer that lay in back of the first. For an instant I was excited at the glimpse of papers inside it. Then J felt a stab of disappointment as I saw what they were. There was a little sheaf of folded writing paper, plain white, but yellowed with age at the edges, and the sheets were all blank. There were three or four blank envelopes to match, and underneath them a small, round, glass bottle of ink; because it had been upside down, the cork remaining moist and tight in the bottle mouth, a good third of the ink had remained unevaporated still. Beside the bottle lay a plain, black wooden pen holder, the pen point reddish-black with old ink.

There was nothing else in the drawer.

And then, putting the things back into the drawer, I felt the slight extra thickness of one blank envelope, saw that it was sealed, and ripped it open to find the letter inside. The folded paper opened stiffly, the crease permanent with age, and even before I saw the date I knew this letter was old. The handwriting was obviously feminine, and beautifully clear-it's called Spencerian, isn't it?- the letters perfectly formed and very ornate, the capitals especially being a whirl of dainty curlicues. The ink was rust-black, the date at the top of the page was May 14, 1882, and reading it, I saw that it was a love letter. It began: Dearest! Papa, Mamma, Willy and Cook are long retired and to sleep. Now, the night far advanced, the house silent. I alone remain awake, at last free to speak to you as I choose. Yes, I am willing to say it! Heart of mine, I crave your bold glance, I long for the tender warmth of your look; r welcome your ardency, and prize it; for what else should these be taken but sweet tribute to me?

I smiled a little; it was hard to believe that people had once expressed themselves in elaborate phrasings of this kind, but they had. The letter continued, and [wondered why it had never been sent: Dear one: Do not ever change your ways. Never address me other than with what consideration my utterances should deserve. lfl be foolish and whimsical, deride me sweetly if you will. But if I speak with seriousness, respond always with what care you deem my thoughts worthy. For, oh my beloved, 1 am sick to death of the indulgent smile and tolerant glance with which a woman's fancies are met. As I am repelled by the false gentleness and nicety of manner which too often ill conceal the wantonness they attempt to mask, I speak of the man I am to marry; if you could but save me from that!

But you cannot. You arc everything I prize; warmly and honestly ardent, respectful in heart as well as in manner, true and

38

SPAN SEPTF.MBLR 1988

loving. You are as I wish you to be-for you exist only in my mind.

But fib'ment though you are, and though J shall never see your like, you are more dear to me than he to whom I am betrothed.

I think of you constantly. I dream of you. l speak with you, in my mind and heart; would you existed outside them! Sweetheart, good night; dream of me, too.

With all my love, I am, your Helen At the bottom of the page, as I'm sure she'd been taught in school, was written, "Miss Helen Elizabeth Worley, Brooklyn, New York," and as I stared down at it now I was no longer smiling at this cry from the heart in the middle of a long-ago night.

The night is a strange time when you're alone in it, the rest of your world asleep. lfJ'd found that letter in the daytime, I'd have smiled and shown it to a few friends, then forgotten it. But alone here now, a window partly open, a cool late-night freshness stirring the quiet air-it was impossible to think of the girl who had written this letter as a very old lady, or probably long since dead. As I read her words, she seemed real and alive to me, sitting-or so r pictured her- pen in hand at this desk, in a long, white, old-fashioned dress, her young hair piled on top of her head, in the dead of a night like this, here in Brooklyn almost in sight of where I now sat. And my heart went out to her as I stared down at her secret, hopeless appeal against the world and time she Lived in.

ow, the night far advanced, the house silent, I alone remain awake, at last free to speak to you as I choose.

I am trying to explain why I answered that letter. There in the silence of a timeless spring night it seemed natural enough to uncork that old bottle, pick up the pen beside it, and then, spreading a sheet of yellowing old notepaper on the desk top, to begin to write.

I felt that I was communicating with a still-living young woman when r wrote: Helen: I have just read the letter in the secret drawer of your desk, and I wish I knew how Tcould possibly help you. I can't tell what you might think of me if there were a way J could reach you.

But you are someone-I am certain I would like to know. I hope you are beautiful, but you needn't be; you're a girl I could like, and maybe ardently, and if I did I promise you I'd be true and loving.

Do the best you can, Helen Elizabeth Worley, in the time and place you are; I can't reach you or help you. But I'll think of you. And maybe I'll dream of you, too.

Yours, Jake Belknap

I was grinning a little sheepishly as I signed my name, knowing I'd read through what rd written , then crumple the old sheet and throw it away. But J was glad I'd written it-and I didn't throw it away. Still caught in the feeling of the warm, silent night, it suddenly seemed to me that throwing my letter away would turn the writing of it into a meaningless and foolish thing, though maybe what I did seems more foolish still. I folded the paper, put it

into one of the envelopes, and scaled it. Then l dipped the pen into the old ink and wrote "Miss Helen Worley'' on the face of the envelope.

I suppose this can't be explained. You'd have to have been where I was and fell as I did to understand it, but I wanted to mail that letter. I simply quit examining my feelings and quit crying to be racional: I was suddenly determined to complete what I'd begun, just as far as I was able to go.

My parents sold their old home in New Jersey when my father retired two years ago, and now they live in Florida and enjoy it.

And when my mother cleared out the old house I grew up in, she packed up and mailed me a huge package o f useless things T was glad to have. The re were class photographs dating from grammar school through college, old books I'd read as a kid, Boy Scout pins- a mass of junk of that sort, including a stamp collection I'd had in grade school. N o w I found these things on my half-closet shelf, in the box they'd come in, and I found my old stamp album.

It's funny how things can stick in your mind over the years; standing at the open closet door, I turned the pages of that beat-up old a lbum directly to the stamps I remembered buying from another kid with 75 cents I had earned cutting grass. There they lay, lightly fastened to the page with a little gummed-paper hinge: a pair of mint-condition two-cent United States stamps, issued in 1869. And standing there in the hallway looking down at them, I once again got something of the thrill I'd had as a kid when l acquired them. It's a handsome stamp, square in shape, with an ornate border and a tiny engravi ng in the center: a rider on a galloping post horse. And for all I knew they might have been worth a fair amount of money by now, especially an unseparated pair of stamps. But back a t the desk I pulled one of them loose, tearing carefully through the perforation; licked the back; and fastened it to the faintly yellowing old envelope.

I'd thought no further than that; by now, T suppose, I was in almost a kind of trance. I shoved the old ink bottle and pen into a hip pocket, picked up my letter, and walked out of my apartment.

Brock Place, three blocks away, was deserted when I reached it; the parked cars motionless at the curbs, the high, late moonlight softening the lines of the big concrete-block supermarket at the corner. Then, as l walked on, my letter in my hand, there stood the old house, just past a little shoe-repair shop. It stood far back from the broken cast-iron fence in the center of its wide weed-grown lot, black-etched in the moonlight, and I stopped on the walk and stood staring up at it.

The high-windowed old roof was gone, the interior near ly gutted, the yard strewn with splintered boards and great chunks of torn plaster. The windows and doors were all removed, the openings hollow in the clear wash of light. But the high old walls, last of all to go, still stood, tall and dignified in their old-fashioned strength and outmoded charm.

T hen I walked through the opening where a gate had once hung, up the cracked and weed-grown brick pavement toward the wide old porch. And there on one of the ornate fluted posts, l saw the house number deeply and elaborately carved into the old wood. At the wide flat porch rail leading down to the walk, I brought out my ink and pen and copied the number carefully onto my envelope; "972," I printed under the name of the girl who had o nce lived here, " BROCK PLACE, BROOKLYN, N .Y." T hen I turned toward the street again, my envelope in my hand.

There was a mailbox at the next corner, and I stopped beside it.

But to drop this letter into that box, knowing in advance that it

could go only to the dead-letter office, would again, I couldn't help feeling, turn the writing of it into an empty, meaningless act, and after a moment I walked on past the box, crossed the street, and turned right, suddenly knowing exactly where I was going. r walked four blocks through the night, passing a hack stand with a single cab, its driver asleep with his arms and head cradled on the wheel, and a night watchman sitting o n a standpipe protruding from the building wall, smoking a pipe; he nodded as I passed, and I nodded in response. I turned left at the next corner, walked half a block more, then turned up onto the worn stone steps of the Wister postal substatio n.

It must easily be o ne of the oldest postal substations in the boro ugh , built, I suppose, not much later than during the decade following the Civil War. And I can't imagine that the inside has changed much at all. The floor is marble, the ceiling high, the woodwork dark and carved. The outer lobby is open at all times, as are post-otllce lo bbies everywhere, and as I pushed through the old swinging doors I saw that it was deserted. Somewhere behind the opaque blind windows a light burned dimly far in the rear of the post office, and I had an impression of subdued activity back there. But the lobby itself was dim and silent, and as I walked across the worn stone of its floor, I knew I was seeing all around me precisely what Broo klynites had seen for no telling how many generations long dead.

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The Post Office has always seemed an institution of vague mystery to me, an ancient and worn but still functioning mechanism that is not operated, but only tended by each succeeding generation of men to come along. It is a place where occasionally plainly addressed letters with clearly written return addresses go astray and are lost, to end up no o ne knows where for reasons impossible to discover, as the postal employee of whom you inquire will tell you. And its vague air of mystery, fo r me, is made up of stories- well, you've read them, too, from time to time, the odd little stories in your newspaper. A letter bearing a postmark of 1906 is delivered today- simply because inexplicably it a rrived at some post office along with the other mail, with no explanation from anyone now a live. Or sometimes it's a postcard of greetingfro m the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, maybe. And o nce, tragicaliy, as I remember reading, it was an acceptance of a proposal of marriage offered in 1931-and received today, a lifetime too late, by the man who made it and who married someone else and is now a grandfather.

I pushed the worn brass plate open and dropped my letter into the silent blackness of the slot, a nd it disappeared forever with no sound. T hen I turned and left to walk home with a feeling of fulfillment, of having done, at least, everything I possibly could in response to the silent c ry for help I'd found in the secrecy of the old desk.

Next morning r felt the way almost anyone might. Standing at the bathroom mirror shaving, remembering what I'd done the night before, I grinned, feeling foolish but at the same time secretly pleased with myself. I was glad I'd written a nd solemnly mailed that letter, and now T realized why I'd put no return add ress on the envelope. I didn't want it to come fo rlornly back to me with NO SUCH PERSON, or whatever the phrase is, stamped on the envelope. There'd once been such a girl, and last night she still existed for me. And I didn' t want to see my letter to her-rubber-

SPAN SEP'TtMBtR 1988

39

THE LOVE LEITER continued

stamped, scribbled on and unopened- to prove that there no longer was. l was terrifically busy all Lhe next week. l work for a wholesalegrocery concern; we got a big new account, a chain of supermarkets, and that meant extra work for everyone. More often than not I had lunch at my desk in the office and worked several evenings besides. I had dates the two evenings I was free. On Friday afternoon I was at the main public library in Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second, copying statistics from half a dozen trade publications for a memorandum I'd been assigned to write over the weekend on the new account.

Late in the afternoon the man sitting beside me at the big reading-room table closed his book, stowed away his glasses, picked up his hat from the table, and left. I sat back in my chair, glancing at my watch. Then r looked over at the book he'd left on the table. I t was a big one-volume pictorial history of New York put oul by Columbia University, and I dragged it over and began leafing through it.

I skimmed over the first sections on colonial and precolonial New York pretty quickly, but when the old sketches and drawings began giving way to actual photographs, I turned the pages more slowly. I leafed past the first photos, taken around the midcentury, and then past those of the Civil War period. But when I reached the first photograph of the I 870s- it was a view of Fifth Avenue in 1871 - J began reading the captions under each one.

I knew it would be too much to hope to find a photograph of Brock Place, in Helen Worley's time especially, and of course I didn't. But I knew there'd surely be photographs taken in Brooklyn during the 1880s, and a few pages f;mher on 1 found what I'd hoped I might. In clear, sharp detail and beautifully reproduced lay a big half-page photograph of a street less than a quarter mile from Brock Place, and staring down at it, there in the library, I knew that Helen Worley must often have walked along this very sidewalk. " Varney Street, 1881 ," the caption said. "A typical Brooklyn residential street of the period.''

Varney Street today- I walk two blocks of it every night coming home from work-is a wasteland. J pass four cinder-packed usedcar lots; a shabby concrete garage, the dead earth in front of it littered with rusting car parts and old tires; and a half dozen or so nearly paintless boardinghouses, one with a soiled card in its window reading MASSAGE. It's a nondescript, joyless street, and it's impossible to believe that there has ever been a tree on its entire length.

But there has been. There in sharp black-and-white, in the book on the table before me, lay Varney Street, 1881, and from the wide grass-covered parkways between the cut-stone curb and sidewalks, the thick old long-gone trees rose high on both sides to meet, intertwine, and roof the wide street with green. The photograph had been taken, apparently, from lhe street-it had been possible to do that then, in a day of occasional slow-trotting horses and buggies- and the camera was aimed at an angle to one side, toward the sidewalk and the big houses beyond it, looking down the walk for several hundred feet.

The old walk, there in the foreground under the great lrees, appeared to be at least six feet wide, spacious enough easily for a family to walk down it four or five abreast-as families did, in Lhose Limes, walk together down the sidewalks under the trees.

And beyond Lhe walk, widely separated and set far back across the fine old lawns, rose the great houses, the ten-, 12-, and 14-room family houses, two or more stories high. and with attics above

40

SPAN SH'l fMllfR 1988

them for children to play in and discover the relics of childhoods before them. Their windows were tall, and they were framed on the outside with ornamented wood. And in the solid construction of every one of those lost houses in that ancient photograph there had been left over the time, skill, money and inclination to decorate their eaves with scrollwork- to finish a job with craftsmanship and pride. And time, too, to build huge wide porches on which families sat on summer evenings with palm-leaf fans.

Far down that lovely tree-sheltered street-out of focus and indistinct-walked the retreating figure of a long-skirted, puffsleeved woman, her summer parasol open at her back. or the thousands of long-dead girls it might have been, I knew this could not be Helen Worley. Yet it wasn't completely impossible, J told myself; this was a street, precisely as I saw it now, down which she must often have walked, and I let myself think that yes, this was she. Maybe J live in what is for me the wrong lime, and I was filled now with the most desperate yearning to be there, on Lhat peaceful street-to walk off, past the edges of the scene on lhe printed page before me, into the old and beautiful Brooklyn of long ago. And to draw near and overtake that bobbing parasol in the distance and then turn and look into the face of the girl who held it.

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r worked that evening at home, sitting al my desk with a can of beer on the tloor beside me, but once more now Helen Elizabeth Worley was in my mind. I worked steadily all evening, and it was around 12:30 when I finished, 11 handwritten pages I'd get typed at the office on Monday. Then I opened the little center desk drawer into which I'd put a supply of rubber bands and paper clips, took out a clip and fastened the pages together, and sat back in my chair, taking a swallow of beer. The little center desk drawer stood half open as I'd left it, and then, as my eye fell on it, r realized suddenly that of course it, too, must have another secret drawer behind it. [ hadn't thought of that. It simply hadn't occurred to me the week before, in my interest a nd excitement over the letter I'd found behind the first drawer of the row, and l'd been too busy all week to think of it since. But now I set down my beer, pulled the center drawer all the way out, reached behind it and found the little groove in the smooth wood I touched. Then I brought out the second secret little drawer.

I'll tell you what I think, what I'm certain of, though I don't claim to be speaking scientifically; I don't think science has a thing to do with it. The night is a strange time; things are different at night, as every human being knows somewhere deep inside him.

And I think this: Brooklyn has changed over the decades; it is no longer the same place at all. But here and there, still , are little islands- isolated remnants of the way things once were. And the Wister postal subsLation is one of them; it has changed really not at all. And I think that at night- late at night, the world asleep, when the sounds of things as they are now are nearly silent, and the sight of things as they are now is vague in the darkness-the boundary between here and then wavers. At certain moments and places it fades. I think that there in the dimness of the old Wister posl office, in the dead of night , lifting my letter to Helen Worley toward the old brass door of the letter drop-J think that 1 stood on one side of lhat slot in this year and that I dropped my letter, properly stamped, written and addressed in the ink and on the very paper of Helen Worley's youth, into Lhe Brooklyn of 1882 on the other side of that worn old slot.

I believe that- I'm not even interested in proving it-but I believe it. Because now. from that second secret little drawer, l brought out the paper I found in it, opened it, and in rust-black ink on yellowing old paper I read: Please. oh. please-who are you? Where can I reach you? Your letter arrived today in the second morning post, and I have wandered the house and garden ever since in an agony of excitement. I cannot conceive how you saw my letter in its secret place, but since you did, perhaps you will see this one too. Oh, tell me your letter is no hoax or cruel joke! Willy, ifit is you; if you have discovered my letter and think to deceive your sister with a prank, J pray you to tell me! But ifit is not- ifl now address someone who has truly responded to my most secret hopes-do not longer keep me ignorant of who and where you are. For I, tocr-and l confess it willingly- long to see you! And l, too, feel and am most certain of it, that ifl could know you, I would love you. It is impossible for me to think otherwise.

I must hear from you again; I shall not rest until I do.

I remain, most sincerely, Helen Elizabeth Worley After a long time. I opened the first little drawer of the old desk and took out the pen and ink I'd found there and a sheet of the note paper.

For minutes then, the pen in my hand, I sat there in the night staring down at the empty paper on the desk top; finally, then, I dipped the pen into the old ink and wrote: Helen, my dear: I don't know how to say this so it will seem even comprehensible to you. But I do exist, here in Brooklyn, less than three blocks from where you now read this. We are separated not by space, but by the years which lie between us. Now I own the desk which you o nce had, and at which you wrote the note I found in it. Helen, all I can tell you is that I answered that note, mailed it late at night at the old Wister station, and that somehow it reached you, as I hope this will too. This is no hoax! Can you imagine anyone playing a joke that cruel? I live in a Brooklyn, within sight of your house, that you cannot imagine. Tl is a city whose streets are now crowded with wheeled vehicles propelled by engines. And it is a city extending far beyond the limits you know, with a population of millions, so crowded there is hardly room any longer for trees.

From my window as 1 write I can see-across Brooklyn Bridge, which is hardly c hanged from the way you, too, can see it nowManhattan lsland, and rising from it are the lighted silhouettes of stone-and-steel buildings more than one .thousand feet high.

You must believe me. I live, I exist, many years after you read this; and 1 feel I have fallen in love with you.

I sat for some moments staring at the wall, trying to figure out how to explain something I was certain was true. Then I wrote: H elen: There are three secret drawers in our desk. Into the first you put only the letter 1 found. You cannot now add something lo that drawer and hope that it will reach me. For I have already opened that drawer and found only the letter you put there.

Nothing else can now come down through the years to me in that drawer, for you cannot now alter what you have already done.

Into the second drawer, in 1882, you put the note which lies before me, which I found when I opened that drawer a few minutes ago. You

put nothing else into it, and now that, too, cannot be changed.

But r haven't opened the third drawer, Helen. Not yet! It is the last way you can still reach me, and the last time. I will mail this as I did before, then wait. In a week I will open the last drawer.

Jake Belknap It was a long week. I worked and kept busy daytimes, but at night I thought of hardly anything but the third secret drawer in my desk. I was terribly tempted to open it earlier, telling myself that whatever might lie in it had been put there decades before and must be there now, but I wasn't sure. and I waited.

Then, late at night, a week lo the hour after I'd mailed my second letter at the old Wister post office, l pulled out the third drawer, reached in, and brought out the last secret drawer, which lay behind it. My hand was actually shaking, and for a moment I couldn't bear to look directly something lay in the drawer- and I turned my head away. Then r looked.

I'd expected a long letter, very long, of many pages, her last communication with me, and full of everything she wanted to say.

But there was no letter at all. It was a photograph, about three inches square, a faded sepia in color, mounted on heavy stiff cardboard, and with the photographer's name in tiny gold script down in the corner: l:Jrunner & Holland, Parisian Photography, Brooklyn, N. Y. The photograph showed the head and shoulders of a girl in a high-necked dark dress with a cameo brooch at the collar. Her dark hair was swept tightly back, covering the ears, in a style which no longer suits our ideas of beauty. But the stark severity of that dress and hair style couldn't spoil the beauty of the face that smiled out at me from that old photograph. It wasn't beautiful in any classic sense, I suppose. The brows were unplucked and somewhat heavier than we are used to. But it is the soft warm smile of her lips, and her eyes-large and serene as she looks out at me over the years- that make Helen Elizabeth Worley a beautiful woman.

Across the bottom of her photograph she had written, " l will never forget." And as I sat there at the old desk, staring at what she had written, I understood that, of course, that was all there was to say- whatelse?-on this, the last time, as she knew, that she'd ever be able to reach me.

It wasn't the last time, though. There was one final way for Helen W orley to communicate with me over the years. and it took me a long time, as it must have taken her, to realize it. Only a week ago, on my fourth day of searching, I finally found it. It was late in the evening, and tbe sun was almost gone, when I found the old headstone among all the others stretching off in rows under the quiet trees. And then I read the inscription et~hed in the weathered old stone:

Helen Elizabeth Worley-1861-1934.

Under this were the words, I NEVER FORGOT. And neither wiJI I.

0

About the Author: Jack Fi11ney is bes1 k11011'11 as 1he awhor of The Body Snatchers which was 1he basis ofthe science fiction film classic, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers ( 1956). Unlike most science fiction writers, Finney has never shown a fascination with the fwure. Instead, he develops ti mystique of the past. Like "The Love Le11er. "many of his writings have his characters somehow traveling back in time. A1nong his famous novels are Five Against the House, Assault on a Queen, The Woodrow Wilson Dime, Time and Again, Marion¡s Wall andThe Night People. He has also published a play, Telephone Roulette, cmd tll'o col/ecrions ofslwrt swries.

The Third Level and I Love Galesburg in the Springtime.

SPAN SloPHMB!olt 1988

41

"Crime certainly doesn 't pay. With me, it's always been a labor of love."

Drllwing by Ross; '1) 1987 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.

I UNDERsrAND 1l<ATYO\l WAt{T TO JOIN THE'. WAR ON OR.lli%. S\11' I DOf'l"T Tlit(llK 1'\i1S tS WH.«T THE.Y l'\EAN

Reprinted with pernuss1on from The Saturday Evening Post Society, a division or BFL and MS. Inc. <C> 1986.

"l think the signing of contracts calls for a toast, don't you?" © 1988 Tribune Media Services. Inc. All

Rights Reserved.

"Sw·•. you'"" good or ;i,

~

You were there for most of il." (f J

1988 Universal Press Syndica1e.

Re-Creating the Big Bang

by LEE EDSON

America's planned $4,400 million new supercollider- 85 kilometers in circumference, three meters in diameter and nine meters underground-w ill be the largest pure-science project ever attempted. The device will help scientists create energies never before achieved on Earth, enabling them to discover what our universe was like microseconds after it was born.

N

ext year, if all goes according co plan, one of seven states in the United States will win the world's largest scientific sweepstakes. The lucky state will get a voucher from the U.S. Treasury for the munificent sum of$4,400 million. The runners-up will get nothing directly except a thank-you from the sweepstakes sponsor, the U.S. Department of Energy.

There is of course a long string attached to the money. The winning state will be committed to setting aside a substantial hunk of its land to build, house and maintain the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher. the superconducting supercollider (SSC). The state will have seven years to complete the job.

None of the seven states Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, M ichigan, North Ca rolina, T ennessee and Texas- is taking anything for granted. Lobbying in Washington, D.C .. has been intensive. with some states setting up special offices along the Potomac River to advance their case for the collider. Back-home politics is not being neglected either. State commissions are working hard to firm up their constituencies for the long battle ahead. The recent experience of New York State points up the fragility of public support for such projects. New York. one of eight finalists originally selected, withdrew its proposed Rochester site at the 11th hour because of vigorous protests from those who would lose their homes if the collider were built on the proposed site and other residents who felt it would destroy the rural character of their communities.

The larger question is how such a megaproject, aimed at solving abstruse questions of theoretical physics, got rolling in the first place. How did the Reagan Administration dedicated to pinching pennies on many programs decide to go forward with what the President described as "the largest pure-science project ever undertaken"? H ow could it be justified? And is it simply a massive undertaking that has gotten out of control?

No doubt, the excitement both in and out of the American scientific community has given the collider its momentum. One of the obvious reasons that the seven states are competing so hotly for the contract is the sheer magnitude of the project. The SSC is about 18,000 times larger in diameter than the cyclotron that opened the atomic age a half century ago and 20 times more powerful than America's giant tevatron al the Fermi National Accelerator Laborato ry nea r Chicago, known as Fermilab.

As now envisioned , the new atom smasher and its associated facilities will be contained in an oval tunnel 85 kilometers in circumference, three meters in diameter and nine meters underground. In operation, subatomic fragments will be propelled through the tunnel at velocities close to the speed of light and end

From

Al'rl).<s the Boord. Copyri~ht

up being pulverized in collisions with other subatomic fragments. rn the tracks of the debris from those collisions, scientists are hoping to discover new and more basic particles that will reveal the ultimate secrets of the composition of matter. "This device," says Leon Led.erman, director of Fermi lab and a major initiator of the SSC, " will c reate energies never before created on Earth. It will take us back in time to reveal what the universe was like microseconds after it was born."

Simulating the Big Bang-or the "giant accelerator in the sky," as Lederman puts it- is an ambitious goal for science, and it takes a megaproject on Earth to achieve it. The expenditures involved are eclipsed only slightly by the cost of America's voyage to the moon. In size and scope, the project riva ls the construction of the Panama Canal. By some estimates, the amount of earth to be moved is enough to landscape most of Connecticut, and the amount of concrete to be poured would be enough to lay the foundations of the skyscrapers that make up the New York skyline.

Some 4,500 construction workers will be needed to build the SSC, which is expected to be completed in 1996. When it goes onstream, the number of permanent on-site jobs created, according to one estimate, will probably be on the order of 3,000. Negotiating the rights-of-way will keep 100 specialists busy for six months.

Eventually, an additional $3,000 million will accrue to the winning state for maintenance and related activities up to the year 2000.

Clearly the project can fatten the treasury of the winning American state for years to come and simultaneously increase that state's contribution to the national economy.

The expectation of a large payout from construction a nd maintenance, and from visits by hundreds of scientists from different countries [including India], is only a tiny part of the economic benefit. Analysts see the SSC as a magnet that will attract permanent service businesses and perhaps high-technology firms as well, thus generating additional wealth and taxes. A recent study of the ten-year economic impact in Europe of the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN-the huge Swiss accelerator near Geneva- shows that the presence of this device and the research community a round it has created an "economic utility" that has paid back 60 percent of the cost during the ten-year period under study. What's more, in a sample year, 75 percent of the increased business from CERN resulted from sales to markets o utside high-energy physics, such as shipbuilding, railways, power generation. refrigeration and medical care.

The vision of a new large-scale economic bonanza in the United States, courtesy Uncle Sam, has not only stimulated the usual salivating response by the nation's business and political commu-

â&#x20AC;˘ 1988 The Confcrcn<i: Bourd

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

43

RE-CREATING THE BIG BANG continued

nities, it has also created some unIRON YOKE SUPER INSULATION _usual allies for and against the project. President Reagan, for inSS stance, an opponent of government ELEC rRtCAL BUSING HFI l\JIA CONT AIN'.1[1JT S ,· spending, is solidly behind the multibillion-dollar expenditure for the LIOUIO HELIUM PASSAGE supercollider project. But Reagan, 60 I( SHILO even as governor of California, has consistently supported big-ticket baJPtRCONDUCTINO COtL sic-research projects that assure 20 r. SH'f.

America's primacy in science. On the other hand, some leading members of VACW!.~ SH BEAM TJB( the physics community, including at least one Nobel Prize winner, have UOUtl) NI' HOr. · 'l opposed the project, arguing, among other things, that it would draw funds UOUtD HEL•VM Rt TUHN away from other worthy, though less 20 i< H(LI '.1 • adventurous, scientific endeavors.

To find out more about how the HF. 1. IVrt G.._S RETURN collider works and what it can acS\.JPPOR,. RE DES i Al complish, I visited the closest thing to it in existence- Fermilab. Situated on one-time lllinois farmland near Batavia, 50 kilometers west of Chi- Guiding force: A cross section of one of the mag- direction, kicked along by electrical fields. The nets that will line the supercollider's SS-kilometer liquid helium and nitrogen create a superconduccago, Fermilab, a smaller version of tunnel and keep partkles moving in a circular tive-virtually resistance-free--<mvironrnent. the projected SSC, is the radiant jewel in the U.S. Department of Energy's research crown. Operated by a consortium of universities, the lab quarks, bosons, muons and the like-some of which were hardly is symbolized by two tall buildings shaped like concave lenses suspected before or only theoretically surmised. To understand rising from the plain, where, incidentally, one of the nation's few how they are constructed and to solve some of the riddles herds of buffalo still roam. surrounding their existence requires us to break particles apart, The grassy mall in front of the center conceals the guts of the en- and that takes more energy tha n we can generate in the largest terprise-a 6.5-kilometer-long circular tunnel that is buried accelerators today."

4.5 meters underground, deep enough to prevent the escape of any The SSC utilizes the legacy of two decades of experimental radiation. Inside the tunnel is a device called the tevatron (the ingenuity in which high-energy beams can be provoked into headname comes from the TEV, or one trillion electron volts), in which on collisions. This approach has an advantage over the propulsion nuclear particles can be unleashed in a ring and given increasing of particles at a stationary target because the energy unleashed is momentum by the kick of an electric field at various places along substantially increased and thus produces greater amounts and the way, while numerous magnets steer them in a circular path. varieties of debris-just as two cars crashing into each other headWhen they collide with other particles unleashed from the oppo- on do more damage than one car hitting the rear end of a parked site direction and traveling close to the speed of light, the vehicle. How a re the beams made to collide at high speed? The fragments that emerge from the collision are measured by various answer lies in the line of very powerful magnets- some I 0,000 of devices to give us new understanding of the structure and contents them, each with 32 kilometers of coil- precisely arranged over the of the atomic nucleus. length of the tunnel. All of the magnets have to operate simultaFermilab's tevatron is one of four major high-energy atom neously to make the machine work. smashers in the United States, which together represent an The key to the strength of the magnets is superconductivity, the investment of $2,000 million and command a budget of $600 unique property in which certain metals lose virtually all resistance million a year. These accelerators, along with others in Europe a nd to electricity when chilled to a temperature approaching absolute Japan, have been importan t tools in the development of high- zero ( - 273. 15 degrees Celsius). In the case of the SSC, the coils of energy physics and in the explanation of how the universe works. the magnets would be encased in liquid helium as they are at The fundamental picture of matter that has come out of some Fermilab. However, the recent discovery by IBM scientists of a 40 years of experimentation is known to physicists as the "stan- new class of superconducting materials that can be used at - l 95.5 dard model." It provides a detailed portrait of the particles in the degrees Celsius or higher may eventually become the materials of atomic nucleus, how they fit together and the forces that bind choice because of the savings involved. them. This model is successful in explaining physical phenomena For years, the idea of an advanced machine of this sort-one up to the maximum energy that can be achieved in the present that joins the world of the very small with the world of the very accelerators. But if one wishes to extend the current theory to large-captured American physicists' imaginations. But nobody higher energies. the model starts to fail. "A few years ago we found thought that such a machine could be built in a cost-conscious ourselves at a turning point in high-energy physics," Lederman society until 1981, when it found a champion in Alvin Trivelpiece, explains. " We were in a new world of submicroscopic particlesthen assistant director of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

44

SPAN St;PTEMBER 1988

and director of the Office of Energy Research. Trivelpiece was this; that's why we like it." And, of course. industry too. having problems with an accelerator project known as Isabelle at In early 1987. after considerable study (Herrington says he first the DOE facility at Brookhaven, Long Island. This accelerator made sure that the other sciences were in good shape), the was ready to go, the tunnel for it was about lo be dug, but the secreta ry agreed to seek President Reagan's support for the SSC. magnets were not working. An investigation showed that it would As an old California buddy of the President-he had been the require $60 million to fix them-twice as much as envisioned- advance man in Reagan's political campaigns since 1966-he and they would come on-stream two years late. M oreover, ·the knew that Reagan liked high-tech projects and, as governor of energy obtainable would be lower than that at CERN, making it California, had supported the growth of basic-science research. less of a drawing card for high-energy physics research.

Still, it was not the easiest time to meet with the President on a big This financial and political hot potato had been tossed from one budget item, especially since Reagan had just returned from the committee to another and had divided the high-energy physics hospital after prostate surgery and was having his well-publicized community. But after a major study in 1982, the physicists came to difficulties with the U.S. Congress over the Tran-contra affair. a consensus that, rather than waste money on Isabelle, it would be Nonetheless, with the entire cabinet present, Herrington made more cost effective to go lo a higher-energy accelerator, even if it his presentation. It lasted 20 minutes. He told me that even though look additional funding. Although it didn't make the Congres- he worked (or Reagan in California for 22 years, he felt like sional Representatives from the Brookhaven district of New York Columbus arguing before Queen Isabella. The President listened and some of their scientific constituency happy, Trivelpiece de- carefully, and then apparently surprised most of the observers by cided to terminate Isabelle and to use $20 million of its funding for pulling a card from his pocket and reading a statement he a design study that, after tense wrangling in the U.S. House of identified as Jack London's credo: Representatives, led to the present conception of the SSC. Not until April 1986 was Trivelpiece satisfied that the design I \\'ould rather be ashes than dust had gone through the wringer on accuracy and cost. Finally, the / 11•1mld rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant hla:e day arrived when he had to get it approved by Department of Than ii should he stifled in dry rot Energy Secretary John S. Herrington, who had joined the Reagan / 11·01dd rather he a superh meteor With every atom of me i11 magnificent glow cabinet in 1985. Trivelpiece admits that he had some butterfiies Titan a sleepy and permanent planet. in his stomach. He wanted to present a design that was good not The proper.function of man is to live 1101 to exist. only for science but for America. The most persuasive argument. the one that prevailed in subsequent meetings at DOE, was that it would maintain America's historic lead in high-energy physics, a President Reagan told his audience that he had gotten a copy of lead first forged when Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron in the credo from Ken Stabler. the former quarterback of the the 1930s.

Oakland Raiders, who, when asked what it meant, replied: To emphasi7e this point to his boss, Trivelpiece brought in a "Throw deep." number of scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, to The next day the President did throw deep: He formally explain the importance of the collider in physics ' research. approved the long-range collider project. The decision was folHerrington, a tall, firm-jawed man, now 48, is a corporate lowed by a press conference at which Herrington glowingly noted attorney and businessman who had made his money in real estate. that the President's declared support was a "momentous leap He had had no formal science training, but had visited Fermilab forward for America and the equivalent of putting a man on the and other DOE installations and been briefed by many of the moon .. (see box on page 48). physicists who supported the new project. "What was most Proposals for constructing the SSC were issued in April 1987 and impressive to me on these visits:· Herrington told me, .. was to see sent to the governors of the 50 American states, with Herrington at these installations rooms full of private-sector equipment insisting that the selection process would be fair and equitable. A working for the government. Here, I thought, was an example of 21-man panel from the prestigious U.S. National Academy of great private sector-government cooperation. I concluded that the Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering was proposed superconducting supercollider could be a new catalyst to formed to act as a site-selection committee. The conditions listed create another Silicon Valley." were that the winning state would have to donate 6,500 hectares Critics have noted that Fermilab has not, in fact, created a large with the necessary geologic, climatic and seismic safety characterissatellite industry, though it keeps 4,000 suppliers around the world tics for the project. The collider would have to be built near busy. They suggest, perhaps irreverently, that Herrington may universities, and there would have to be appropriate environmentalhave had another motive for supporting the supercollider. " He impact statements. The invitation to bid was 77 pages long. inherited a cabinet post that Reagan wanted to eliminate," says T he states' preparations for the bidding led The Chronicle of one observer. "Backing the collider is a good way to put his Higher Education. a prestigious newspaper on American univerdepartment back on the map. perhaps even enhancing its stature sity affairs, to predict that the process would turn out to be a by creating a kind of technological pyramid for the ages." "high-stakes poker game" rather than a public auction. Daniel Herrington shrugs off this criticism, pointing out that the Greenberg, editor of the newsletter Science and Government department is different from what it was in the Carter Administra- Report, called it a madcap event. State officials, perhaps catching a tion. " In those days," he says, "the Department o r Energy was strong whiff of big money, poured millions of dollars into their issuing regulations to turn down thermostats, setting the price or proposals and gathered pledges of support from business leaders oil and virtually telling businesses how to run their affairs. We no and legislative officials. Some states provided sweeteners-spelonger see the department as government interference but as a cially endowed chairs, multipurpose buildings and tax rebates. cooperator with industry. The collider is the ultimate symbol of Other states hired expensive lobbyists to work on the U.S.

SPAN SI l'I ~MBrR 19~8

45

The supercollider will be 20 times more powerful than the giant tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago. Built in 1972, Fermilab is one of four major high-energy atom smashers in the United States. Left: A Fermilab technician examines an

Congress and state legislators and to monitor the Department of Energy. The Washington Post reported that one SSC lobbyist was receiving a fee of $361,000 a year.

Each American state trumpeted its unique virtues. Colorado advertised its stable geology, which makes tunneling relatively cheap. Arizona touted its dry, sunny climate and construction expertise. North Carolina boasted research facilities and southern hospitality. Jn Illinois, Lederman , who originally called the SSC the desertron because he thought it could be built only in the desert, changed his mind and pushed his state for the prize. He even sweetened the offer by proposing that Fermilab act as an injector of protons for the collider, which he said would save $500,000 in construction costs.

The hungriest and most energetic state was Texas, which desperately needs a push to compensate for losses in oil revenues and the decline of the real estate business. The state legislature created the Texas National Laboratory Commission, which conducted media tours and promised $1,000 million worth of added lab space, housing, instrumentation and other facilities to support the collider. When the mayor of Waxahachie, Texas, appeared on a platform and announced, " We must find the Higgs boson" (a theoretical concept known only to high-energy physicists), Lederman remarked wryly that he knew high-energy physics had arrived. Lederman was sure of it when the macho Texans turned down a bond issue for a new sports stadium, yet, in a separate referendum, voted strongly in favor of pursuing the supercollider.

So gung ho were the Texans, who may have seen the supercollider as a modern Spindletop (the gusher that opened up oil in Texas), that when two groups, one in Odessa and another in El Paso, were rebuffed by the commission, they independently submitted their own proposals to Washington.

Eventually, 25 states proposed some 36 " qualified" sites-an

enlarged photograph of tracks made by particles in a bubble chamber. Above left: Known as the preaccelerator, this huge machine is used to split atoms. Above: An inside view of the tunnel of the main accelerator at Fermilab.

effort that produced 13 tons of documents. Then, in December 1987, the 21 National Academy scientists and engineers picked eight finalists. California was not included despite a $2.5 million pitch led by former Republican Congressman Clair Bergener and a last-minute frenzy to submit the proposal on time.

A story circulating in Washington that President Reagan might seek to use his influence to get for California what Lyndon Johnson got for Texas in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Houston Space Center proved to be a snide rumor, without foundation.

None of the New England states submitted proposals. Ohio, whose governor once said that God had endowed his state for the SSC, was evidently forsaken by the Lord because Ohio was not among the front-runners . Nor was Washington or Utah, two western states that felt they had the blessings of nature and their populaces to offer. Alaska was dismissed, as was one New York proposal to build the SSC across the St. Lawrence River and under Canada.

New York's second proposal was accepted but later withdrawn in response to local opposition. Texas' private proposals were rejected, as was another private proposal from a landholder in Utah. One of the most colorful suggestions-also rejected early as being unqualified- was a proposal to build a collider on an area of the moon. This was turned down because, among other things, it was not in the United States and was not near a university.

To get a fix on how one western state succeeded in becoming a finalist, consider Colorado. Colorado's former governor, Richard Lamm, started early in 1984 by putting together a collaborative management structure that showed that state government, universities and industry can work well together when there is sufficiently strong common cause. The General Assembly passed a bill setting aside $3 million for obtaining rights-of-way. Public meetings were

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

47

RE-CREA TING T HE BIG BANG continued

Many scientists believe the supercollider will boost-and not diminish- funding for other sciences in America, and spin-offs from it will open up new areas for venture capital and research. called in the communities near the projected sites and gained the acceptance of the majority of the people. The present governor, Roy Romer, had no trouble taking over the SSC project from his predecessor, since it was R omer who as head of the Governor's High Tech Cabinet Council first recommended the SSC as a way to develop industry in Colorado.

The reason that most Coloradans like the SSC is simple. The pullout of the large oil companies from the exploitation of the shale lands in western Colorado, as well as the loss of oil and gas revenues. left the state depressed, as did the squeeze on agricultural profits. To make matters worse, the expectation of a high-tech and semiconductor industry failed to materialize. As Lamm put it, even the Front Range (a regional term for the urbanized part of Colorado) is worried about those cracks in Silicon M ountain.

Adding to this woe was the loss of a proposed microelectrol!ics computer center to Texas.

In view of these defeats, Coloradans looked at the SSC as a gold mine that would restore the status of their state as a center for advanced technology. One of the few members in the House of Representatives to withhold approval of the authorization bill for the SSC was Lamm's colleague, Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, who at first thought the expenditure for this branch of science was too great during a period of budget austerity. But Schroeder soon changed her mind and now favors the project because of its utility to Colorado.

A number of American scientists continue to be unhappy over the prospect of the government's shelling out billions of dollars to advance an exotic area of science such as particle physics. Philip Anderson, a Nobel laureate at Bell Labs who once opposed Fermi lab, argues that the SSC will divert funds from other science

Trivelpiece's Pursuit: A Footnote to the SSC Story Anticipating that approval of the SSC might be a major event in President Reagan's career, John Herrington, the U.S. Secretary of Energy. sought to verify the authorship of the Jack London credo that the President had pulled out of his pocket during a discussion of the project with cabinet members. This turned out to be not so easy.

IL was not in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. T he Princeton University Library didn' t have it, nor did the Library of Congress nor even the Huntington Library in Pasadena, which is said to house the largest collection of Jack London's writings.

Thal spurred Alvin Trivelpicce, a leading proponent of the SSC then with the U.S. Department of Energy, lo conduct an even more intensive search. A hundred people were enlisted lo look through newspaper morgues, seek out old-timers and probe literary specialists.

But they came up witJ1 few clues.

Ironically. the mystery was solved by Trivclpicce's secretary, who discovered that her husband had a copy of the poem on his bulletin board. h had been clipped from a column in The San Francisco Examiner. The investigative team quickly hunted down the author of the column, who said that London had given him the credo six days before his death in 1916, thus providing authenticity for what might become a historical footnote. Trivelpiece is now executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: a framed copy of the credo hangs on his office wall.

- L.E.

programs that are just as important to progress as the collider. He has also suggested that the SSC wait for the development of wire made out of the new superconducting materials, which would make it possible to reduce the length of the tunnel needed for the SSC from 85 kilometers to eight kilometers. P rofessor James Krumhansl of Cornell University, a former industrial scientist, questioned the wisdom of going ahead with the project, stating, much to the annoyance of his colleagues in physics, that particle physics had never produced much fo r the economy.

The collider supporters see little merit in such arguments.

George Snow, a physicist at the University of Maryland and a pioneer in early deliberations on the collider, thinks that Krumhansl's assertion is plain wrong. Some large modern industries, especially medical instrumentation (notably med ical imaging) and computers, are based on the findings of high-energy physics. Some overzealous supporters of the program have even gone on record stating that one-third of America's gross national product owes its existence to our knowledge of the atom.

As to the dissemination of funds, many believe that the collider will contribute to rather than diminish funding for other sciences.

SSC's advocates believe that spin-offs will open up entire new areas for American venture capital and research.

According to some observers, the original cost of the collider could be lightened through contributions from other countries that may want to use it for their own experiments. Herrington, when I saw him, was confident that as much as 50 percent of the necessary support would eventually come from outside the United States. He is less sure of the number at present, but insists that if we do not move ahead with the SSC, we may easily become upstaged by Europe, which is going ahead with its own plans for an advanced atom smasher. The European accelerator would not be as big and powerful as the SSC. but it would still be an important step forward.

The last chapter of the coUider saga will, of course, depend on the mood of the U.S. Congress, which has the final say on funding.

So far, a majority in both chambers appears to support the concept. but how they will vote when the prize money goes to one stale, leaving the others empty-handed, is not at all certain. What's more, the collider is likely to be in competition with other important and prestige-endowing nonmilitary proposals, such as the manned space station, the supersonic plane and a grand plan for government-funded research to map the human genetic inheritance. Not to mention. of course, mammoth military projects such as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or big-ticket medical research, especially for AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

Still, in politics anything can happen. A few months ago Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico addressed a group of collider supporters in Washington. Domenici, who supports the collider, noted that the climate for spending money on any one project was not good in the United States, but he nonetheless urged the assemblage to continue their lobbying effort for the $4,400 million supercollider project. Then, having finished the exhortation, he returned to his work at the budget-resolution conference, where he led the fight against any increase in U.S. government spending.

0 About the Author: Lee Edson is the author of several books on science.

48

SPAN SEPTEMBER 1988

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NEXT ISSLE The Performing Economist Robert Krulwich, economic correspondent for the CBS Morning News. docsn¡LJUSt report economic news, he performs it. Using music. slapstick. toys and other props, and crazy sound effects, Krulwich delivers "economic performances" that have won him rave reviews and legions of fans. His three-minute television programs discuss every major and mmor economic happening in the United States.

l

Alaskan Utopia Alaska¡~

north coast is famous for its flora and fauna and the traditional lifestyle of its residents. Combined with all this is a shift to modernity and prosperity. The discovery of 9.000 million barrels of recoverable 011 at Prudhoe Bay 111 the late 1960s gave an 'upswing to the quality of life here.

I Robots: Promise and Problems Isaac Asimov, one of America's most prolific writers on science, ruminates about the sociological impact of robots in the workplace. While robots are ''liberating" human beings by laking over several jobs that are dangerous or dull, they are causing unemployment too. But there is no danger, he says, of Homo sapie11s being taken over by robots as Homo superior. "The human brain," Asimov says, "is not easy to match, lel alone surpass."

Democracy at the Grassroots Glimpses into the hectic schedule of Margaret E. Byington, chairperson of the Board of Commissioners of Kent County, Michigan, reveal how democracy functions at the grassroots in the United States.

Kent County. with a population of 467,800, has an annual budget of $ 124 million.

48a

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American Landscapes

The United States. more than three times the SJZe oflndia, encompasses an area of 9 .363,405 square kilometers. This vastness offers a gamut of natural features from mountains in the cast and higher ones in the west to seemingly endless rolling pramc in between that both bewilder and please the eye.

Recently, the U.S. Information Service organized an exhibition that pictured the varied American landscapes. SPAN offers a sampling of the exhibit on this page and the back cover. Seen above is the northwestern coastline of California; at top, right. is the Red Rock Crossing in Sedona, Arizona; and the picture at right shows a water mill in the Blue Ridge hills of Virginia. A hot-air balloon flies high over the California wine district in the picture on the back cover.