Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1987-04-01

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COLLEGE BULLETIN • APRIL 1987

2
T h e g a m e’s afoot!
In the same manner Holmes propelled Watson from the sitting
room to the murderous streets o f London, a new guide puts you
on foot seeking the haunts o f your favorite mystery writers and
their detectives.
By A lzina Stone D ale ’52

u n n i',

and

Barbara Sloan Hendershott

8

M arking T im e
When ex-Marine sergeant Bill Ehrhart enrolled at Swarthmore in
1969 he ju st wanted to forget Vietnam, but a country exploding
with antiwar protest wouldn’t let him. Neither would the rage
exploding within him.

ü

By W. D. Ehrhart ’73

12
M o s c o w journal
Soviet human rights activist Andrei Sakharov voiced cautious
optimism about ongoing changes in the U.S.S.R. during recent
discussions with American academic leaders.
By D avid W. Fraser

41
P h ob op h ob ia: O d es to an xiety

Editor:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor:
Larry L. Elveru
Assistant Managing Editor:
Kate Downing
Copy Editor:
Ann D. Geer
Class Notes Editor:
Nancy Curran
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: Illustration by John Babcock,
courtesy of Passport Books. Funds
for color reproduction donated by
H. Thomas Hallowell, Jr., ’29.

Poet Nathalie Anderson, assistant professor o f English literature,
recently found her muse lurking in a lengthy list o f exotic
phobias. She selected ten from the list, including nephophobia
(fear o f clouds) and clinophobia (fear o f going to bed), fo r
inspiration.
By N athalie F. A nderson

44
Inside the N a v a jo -H o p i land dispute
j§ ^
ft
' ¡¡¡UÈ,

Federal efforts to force more than 14,000 native Americans from
their homelands in the Southwest have been fueled largely by
energy interests, a recent graduate found when living and working
with a fam ily fighting relocation.
By Robbie Liben ’83

WËËm H l ’ "
DEPARTMENTS

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0884-5468), o f which this is volume
LXXXIV, number 5, is published in
September, October, December, January,
April, and July by Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, PA 19081. Second class
postage p aid at Swarthmore, PA, and
additional mailing offices. Postmaster:
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15 The College
18 Class Notes

W

y sv & M

20 Deaths
38 Recent Books by Alumni

j D m—- ■jLiiiin I

l l f l l l m ilf

The game’s afoot!
In the same manner Holmes propelled Watson
from the sitting room to the murderous streets of
London, a new guide puts you on foot seeking the
haunts of your favorite mystery writers.

By Alzina Stone Dale ’52 and Barbara Sloan Hendershott
London, one of the world’s greatest cities, is
the center of the thriving English mystery
world. Beginning with Charles Dickens and
Wilkie Collins, who lived and worked in
London, and including Edgar Allan Poe,
who attended school there, nearly every
mystery writer worth his salt has set at least
one of his tales against a London backdrop.
Even so American a writer as Robert Parker
in his The Judas Goat took Spenser across
the Atlantic to pursue his quarry in London.
Because of the richness of its mystery associ­
ations, modem London is a mystery reader’s
mecca, filled with the real sights and sounds
that give the stories their authentic atmos­
phere.
In the author’s note to Wobble to Death,
Peter Lovesey states that his “characters . . .
are fictitious, but the setting is authentic”;
this combination is repeated in the works of
many other mystery writers. As a result,
turn any London corner, and you will
encounter the scene of a fictional crime or
discover a haunt of a favorite detective or his
creator.
London has always been a tourist’s de­
light, a sprawling metropolis encompassing
over 800 square miles; a key is needed to
unlock its myriad streets and avenues, pas­
sageways and alleys. Many excellent guides
have been written for just this purpose.
Some focus on specialized areas, such as
architecture, history, or literature, but if you
want to hunt down the locale of a detective
story, you will find these guides deficient.
With the exception of the likes of Wilkie
Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and G.K.
Chesterton, little is said about mystery
writers, let alone their detectives. When the
author of a detective story is mentioned, he
is lumped with such writers as Geoffrey
Chaucer, Samuel Johnson, and John
Donne.

2

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN BABCOCK

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Faced with the knowledge that none of
the existing guidebooks provided a mystery
reader with a way of seeing London through
the eyes of such characters as Philip Trent,
Lady Molly, or Lord Peter Wimsey, we
decided to write for ourselves, based on our
favorite mystery writers and their works, the
guide we would like to be using.
The first thing we had to decide was
which books to use for our guide. Our
choice had to be personal because the
number of mysteries that take place in
London runs into the thousands. Our ambi­
tion was not to produce an encyclopedia of
crime or even a handsome coffee table
tome. We wanted something readable, a
toteable book that could guide and entertain
both our armchair readers and our London
walkers. So, we each sat down and made a
list of our favorite authors, being careful to
mix types, periods, and sexes. Then we
compared lists and kept the names that
appeared on both. Next, we consulted such
major classics on the detective story as
Steinbrunner and Penzler’s The Encyclope­
dia o f M ystery and Detection and Julian
Symons’s M ortal Consequences to make
sure that we had examples from all the triedand-true mystery types. The resulting list
included everything from apple-cheeked
spinsters to superspies and ran the gamut
from Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver to
Antonia Fraser’s Jemima Short and John
Buchan’s Richard Hannay. We covered a
group of writers who would appeal to an
audience of varied reading tastes and, at the
same time, satisfy our own.
In preparing the guide, we made a
number of discoveries about the authors and
their stories. For instance, while each of the
writers makes it plain that his story takes
place in London, just where in London is
not always clear. Dick Francis, for example,
has his merchant banker Tim Ekaterin work
in a new building with a view of St. Paul’s
“in the City.” It might be on Gresham
Street, Old Jewry, or Milk Street— any­
where north of the cathedral, where the
bombs of World War II laid waste. Agatha
Christie often gives a street address that
sounds right but is totally fictitious and then
has her characters— Tommy and Tuppence,
for instance— eat at a Lyons Corner shop or
have tea at the Ritz. On the other hand, she
sometimes refers to the Ritz as the Blitz or
combines two hotels into one, as is the case
with the Ritz-Carlton and Bertram’s. On
such occasions, since we are walking a real
city, we will take you to the Ritz. In still a
different way, Margery Allingham, world
famous for her evocative descriptions of
London, invents squares and cul-de-sacs,
locating them around the corner from real
APRIL 1987

A member of the British Crime Writers
Association and Mystery Writers of Ameri­
ca, (Maryal) Alzina Stone Dale ’52 (right)
is no stranger to the whodunit world. She
has written biographies of two mystery
writers, M aker and Craftsman: The Story o f
Dorothy L. Sayers, and The Outline o f
Sanity: A Life ofG .K . Chesterton. Her most
recent book, M ystery Reader's Walking
Guide: London, has been selected as a
Dividend by the Book-of-the-Month Club,

as a Featured Alternate in the Book Club
Associates of the Mystery and Thriller
Guild Book Club in Great Britain, and was
the lead trade title in Passport Books’
catalogue last fall. Dale and Hendershott are
busily working on a sequel, M ystery Read­
er’s Walking Guide: England, due out in
mid-1988. It, too, will be published by
Passport Books, which coincidently is
headed by Mark Pattis ’76.

places. In Black Plumes, when David Field
takes Frances Ivory from Sallet Square to
the Cafe Royal for a sundae and walks her
to Westminster Bridge by night, we are
dealing with the imagined, as well as the
real. The railway station in Tiger in the
Smoke is probably Paddington, but a case
can be made for its being Euston or Victoria
or even Charing Cross!
Our aim has been to give you a guide that
is workable, whether you stay at home or
sally forth armed with umbrella, camera,
and guidebook to track down your favorites
for yourselves. For, as G.K. Chesterton, one
of the grand masters of detection, said in his
“In Defence of Dectective Stories,” “Mod­
ern man has a great need for romance and
adventure, which, paradoxically, he can
find just around the corner in any ordinary
London Street.” Or, as Sherlock Holmes
observed and we echo, “It is a hobby of
mine to have an exact knowledge of Lon­
don.”

aficionado Alzina Stone D ale ’52 and friend
Barbara Sloan Hendershott spent several
years putting together eleven fascinating
walks through London thatfollow the paths
o f some o f the more widely read mystery
writers, their sleuths, and characters. Ln
addition, they’ve provided “real” history o f
the areas, as well as other interesting sights
and places to eat along the way. To give you
a sampling, we’ve excerpted the City Walk,
starting near the end o f the 3.8-mile route at
the Tower o f London.

The City Walk
Editor’s note: Probably more blood o f ficti­
tious victims has flow ed through London
than through any city on earth. M ystery

The first walk begins in the oldest part of
London, the square mile known as the City.
The difference between London and the
City of London can be confusing. They are
actually two different administrative enti­
ties. The City of London, usually referred to
only as the City, covers roughly one square
mile; today it is the financial center of
London. It is built on the site of the old
Roman city of Londinium, as well as the
walled medieval city. The street plan is that
of the medieval city, and many of the old
street names have been retained. One of the
delights for visitors to this area is the curious
street signs— Crutched Friars, Cheapside,
Seething Lane, Bread Street, and so on. The
3

approximate position of the Roman and
medieval walls can be determined by such
names as Moorgate, Aldersgate, and New­
gate.
The Romans had arrived by 43 A.D., the
first date in London’s history. However, it is
quite likely that there were Bronze and
Stone Age settlements on the site before this.
The first Roman town was sacked by
Boadicea, but it was soon rebuilt and given
walls and a bridge across the Thames.
London quickly grew to be one of the
largest towns in northern Europe. Today
there is little left of the old Roman city: the
Temple of Mithras, which was discovered in
1954; a bit of mosaic floor uncovered by
war damage to All-Hallows-by-Tower; a
larger bit of mosaic under Bucklersbury; a
number of smaller relics that can be seen in
the London Museum; and, of course, bits
and pieces of the wall, such as the part near
the Tower of London.
*

*

*

You are now on Tower Hill, with the

0

The Case of the
Baker Street
Irregular

Stalking through London’s fog-shrouded
streets, straining to catch the sounds of longvanished hansom cabs, supplying flickering
yellow gaslight from his own imagination,
John Koelle ’49 has visited all of Sherlock
Holmes’s old haunts. “When we were in
London,” he recalls, “of course we saw
Baker Street, and we took a couple of walks
that are described in the canon. There’s one
in ‘The Greek Interpreter’ from his lodgings
in Baker Street to Pall Mall and Mycroft
Holmes’s Diogenes Club.”
Koelle and his wife Barbara have also
explored the Northumberland Hotel, where
Sir Henry Baskerville stayed, dropped into
the Criterion Bar, where Watson first heard
of Sherlock Holmes from young Stamford,
and taken a look at the plaque in St. Bart’s
that commemorates the place where
Holmes and Watson actually met.
They’ve even visited the falls of Reichenbach in Switzerland, where Holmes and the
evil Moriarty struggled hand to hand and
seemingly plunged, locked in each other’s
arms, into the horrible abyss.
“A friend and I simulated the titanic
struggle,” muses Koelle, “while our wives
tried to take pictures.” The mood was
abruptly shattered, however, “because they
were laughing so hard they couldn’t hold the
4

Tower Hill Scaffold Memorial to your left.
The chained area marks the location of the
Tower Hill scaffold, where 125 well-known
people were officially executed between
1347 and 1747. Among the victims were Sir
Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and the
Duke of Monmouth.
Following Tower Hill to the left around
the north side of the Tower, you will come
to the London Wall. The wall stands in a
sunken garden that marks the ground level
in Roman times. Because the Tower of
London itself will take several hours to
investigate, you might consider seeing it at
another time. You should arrive at the
Tower as early as possible, especially in
summer, when the line-length is unbeliev­
able. (Tour buses tend to begin disgorging
their contents around 11:30.)
Characters in mystery stories often find
their ways to the Tower. In Inspector Ghote
Hunts the Peacock, H.R.F. Keating’s In­
spector Ghote came upon the Tower from
a different direction than you did. But when

cameras.”
You will have deduced by now that
Koelle, a retired electrical engineer, is a
member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the
best-known of the societies dedicated to
preserving the memory of Sherlock Holmes.
BSI members refer to the fifty-six Holmes
stories and four novels as the “sacred
writings” or the “canon.” The group,
founded in the mid-’30s by novelist and
essayist Christopher Morley, contends that
Sherlock Holmes still lives— albeit re­
tired— on Sussex Downs, where he keeps
bees. Another BSI tenet is that the stories
were written by Dr. Watson and that Conan
Doyle was, as Koelle describes him, “a
literary agent and friend of Watson’s, who
kindly arranged to have the stories pub­
lished.”
Koelle has been a member of the Baker
Street Irregulars since 1963 and faithfully
attends the annual dinner in New York City
each January. Last year he received the
group’s Two-Shilling Award for “continued
and faithful service to the cause beyond the
call of duty.”
When BSI members are invested (for­
mally accepted into the society), they take
an investiture name— Koelle’s is “The Sus­
sex Vampire,” after the story of the same
name— and are given a shilling. The shilling
was the standard wage for the band of
young “street Arabs” who served as Hol­
mes’s eyes and ears in London: the original
Baker Street Irregulars.
The Two-Shilling Award is a reference to

he saw the Tower, the outline was unmis­
takable. “He had looked at it a thousand
times in advertisements, in newspaper arti­
cles, on calendars. Beyond it was Tower
Bridge, the one that could be raised to let
ships pass. And there must be the mighty
Thames itself. For a second he was sur­
prised, shocked almost. The water of the
great river was not, as it had been on a
hundred brightly colored maps, a crisp and
inviting blue. It was instead plainly a dirty
brown . . . . The grim old building seemed
that moment to hold for him in one graspable whole all the past centuries of this
noble, sea-girt isle.”
In Margaret Yorke’s Cast fo r Death, the
entreaties of the Greek policeman Manolakis to see the Tower made (don) Patrick
Grant admit that he had never been there.
“We’ll go by b o a t . . . ” Grant decided. As
they approached the Tower, he launched
into a fluent description of the young
Elizabeth in the rain, a tale equal to any
Greek legend. Grant found himself quite

John Koelle ’49: “The Sussex Vampire”
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

moved as they passed within the huge walls
wherein so much tragedy had dwelt.
The Tower was originally built within the
southeast angle of the City walls, but then
it was extended east to cover 18 acres. The
commander of the Tower is an army officer
who is called the Constable of the Royal
Palace and Fortress of London. His duties
are performed by a Major and Resident
Governor, like General Mason in John
Dickson Carr’s The M ad H atter Mystery.
In Martha Grimes’s The D irty Duck, an
American tourist, Harry Schoenberg,
looked rapturously at Traitors’ Gate, the 60foot Watergate from the Thames, through
which accused traitors, such as Elizabeth I,
were brought to the Tower.
The Tower has often served as a back­
drop for real intrigue and even murder. The
most famous case of murder associated with
the Tower is that of the “Little Princes”—
Edward V and the Duke of York— reput­
edly smothered in the Bloody Tower by
order of their uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,

later Richard III. In Josephine Tey’s The
Daughter o f Time, the hospitalized Alan
Grant of Scotland Yard investigated this
case scientifically. He found many discrep­
ancies in the records and concluded that
Richard was not guilty as charged.
The Tower of London played a central
role in John Dickson Carr’s classic lockedroom tale, The M ad H atter Mystery. It is
about a mysterious Edgar Allan Poe manu­
script and a prankster who delighted in
placing hats in unlikely places. You can
explore the Tower by following the action
of Carr’s plot.
Enter the Tower near the site of the Lion
Tower (where the Royal Zoo was kept) and
go past the Middle Tower and under the gate
of the Byward Tower. This is the way the
commandant’s secretary, Robert Dalrye,
drove General Mason when they returned
from Holborn. (General Mason had been
attending a luncheon at the Antiquaries
Society with Sir Leonard Haldyne, Keeper
of the Jewel House.) Walk along the south

side of the Tower in the Outer Ward. To the
right are the steps that lead below St.
Thomas’ Tower, built by Henry III, to
Traitors’ Gate. Here, in a dense fog, on the
areaway steps, Phil Driscoll, with a cross­
bolt in his head, was found. Look down, as
Dr. Gideon Fell did; no need to climb to the
bottom.
Now walk to the left across the Outer
Ward to the Wakefield Tower, where Henry
VI was murdered in 1471 (by Richard III,
according to Thomas More.) The Crown
Jewels used to be kept here, but are now in
the Jewel House along the north wall.
Across from Wakefield Tower is the Bloody
Tower, where the Little Princes purportedly
were smothered. It was here that Sir Walter
Raleigh spent 13 years writing The History
o f the World before being executed on
Tower Hill. (He was buried in St. Mar­
garet’s, Westminster.) The police used the
Little Princes’ room in the Bloody Tower to
examine Driscoll’s body in Carr’s mystery.
From Wakefield Tower, you can see the

an incident in The Sign o f Four, in which
Holmes gives another enterprising young­
ster two shillings. Says Koelle modestly,
“I’m not sure what you do to get it; it just
stumbles upon you after a while.”
Koelle’s interest in Sherlock Holmes be­
gan when he was about ten years old, he
recalls, and “ran across a couple of the
books in the family library. The first story
I read was The Sign o f Four, I still re­
member how vivid it seemed to me. Over
the next five or six years, I dug out the rest
of the stories from the public library bit by
bit.”
There the matter rested for some years.
Koelle was in the Air Force during WWII,
graduated from Swarthmore with a degree
in electrical engineering in 1949, and then
was recalled by the Air Force in 1951.
“After that, we spent some time in Colorado
and finally got back to the Philadelphia area
in 1958,” he says.
At that point, Koelle’s brother George
introduced him to the Sons of the Copper
Beeches, a local Sherlockian society. (In
“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” a
pivotal character is said to be in Philadel­
phia.) “That was in October of 1958,” says
Koelle, “and I’ve only missed one meeting
since then.”
In 1971, the Sons’ Headmastiff (a mastiff
figures prominently in the story) retired, and
Koelle took the job. “I agreed to do it for
two years,” he remembers, “but it’s just gone
on.”
Koelle attributes the enduring fascination

of Holmes to several factors: first, the stories
themselves. “They still hold their own—and
more,” he says. “Second, there’s a nice
nostalgic appeal for an era we’d all like to
live in if we had the choice. Of course, we
always gild the past, but still it was a settled,
stable, and peaceful time with a real air of
expansion, enthusiasm, and optimism.”
Third, he says, “Holmes and Watson
seem so very real. Throughout the canon,
they keep growing and developing, and you
get more glimpses of their backgrounds.
After all, who would you rather believe to
be a real person— Sherlock Holmes or Ed
Meese?”
Through his many years of devotion to
Holmes, Koelle has collected the odd me­
mento. Foremost among his possessions are
a tantalus (a liquor decanter caddy with a
hidden latch mechanism, designed by the
Victorians to keep their servants out of the
whiskey); a gasogene (a device that looks a
little like a double-bowled hobnail lamp,
but is really a device for producing seltzer);
and even a Persian slipper for storing
tobacco, a gift from brother George.
Apart from his son Rich and his brother
George, the only other member of Koelle’s
family who shares his dedication to Holmes
is Whiskey, an orange tiger cat. “Whiskey,”
he says solemnly, “is a member of the Red­
headed League, another Holmes society.”
You have to be an authentic redhead to join,
so Koelle himself doesn’t qualify, but the
founder of the League thought Whiskey
would do very well.

Koelle reports that Whiskey very gener­
ously shares the League’s publication with
him. “I act as secretary and respond. Whis­
key did send a letter saying he’d like to
attend the meetings if possible and that they
should always have milk or fish on the
menu.”
The Koelles’ other cat, Bungle, is named
for a character in the Oz books. Barbara
Koelle, a retired psychologist, “is interested
in Holmes,” says her husband, “but her real
passion is illustrated children’s books.” She’s
president of the international W izard o f Oz
club.
Now that their three children are grown
and gone from home, both Koelles have
more time to pursue their literary interests.
“Both of us gave talks recently at the
Philadelphia Art Alliance on our special­
ties,” reports Koelle. In addition, he enjoys
writing an occasional Holmes pastiche for
the Baker Street Journal, the BSI’s quarterly
publication. It all comes back to the stories,
however, and he dips into them regularly to
hear Holmes say yet again, “Come, Watson!
The game’s afoot!” and plunge from his
sitting room into yet another adventure.
The legendary 2 2 IB Baker Street is now
a building society headquarters, and the
Diogenes Club cannot be found, but no
matter. It takes only a slight effort of the
imagination for Koelle to conjure up Vic­
torian London and the faint footfall of a lean
figure in an Inverness cape slipping through
the shadows.
—Leslie Brennan

APRIL 1987

5

White Tower itself, with its four capped
towers. Its 12 15-foot-thick walls are built
of white Caen stone from Normandy.
Begun by William the Conqueror, it was
originally a formidable fortress. The White
Tower contains several interesting collec­
tions, including one of medieval arms and
armor, from which the Carr murder wea­
pon supposedly came. The rounded-arch
Chapel of St. John, the oldest church in
London, was the place where Wat Tyler and
his peasant mob grabbed old Archbishop
Sudbury and murdered him. It was under­
neath a set of stairs on the south side of the
White Tower that the bones thought to be
those of the Little Princes were found during
the reign of Charles II. They were reverently
placed in Westminster Abbey. In Tey’s The
Daughter o f Time, Inspector Grant said
sarcastically that every English schoolboy
remembered the council scene in Shake­
speare’s Richard III, where Richard
denounced his brother’s lords as traitors and
sent them straight from the White Tower to
the block on Tower Green.
In Watson's Choice, Gladys Mitchell’s
redoubtable Dame Beatrice Bradley was
amused when, at a Sherlock Holmesian
house party given by Sir Bohun, his older
nephew refused to wear a black velvet tunic
and deep lace collar, declaring that he
“wasn’t one of the Princes in the Tower.”
From the White Tower go left to Tower
Green. It is located between the late Per­
pendicular Gothic Chapel of St. Peter ad
Vincula at the north end and the inner
facade of the King’s House at the south. It
is a serene bit of grass, of which the historian
Macaulay, a favorite of G.K. Chesterton,
said there “was no sadder spot on earth.”
The bodies of a number of Tower victims
are buried under the peaceful green sod. In
the middle of the Green, outlined with
granite, is the site of the scaffold where the
more illustrious of the Tower victims were
granted the mercy of private execution. It
was here that such as Anne Boleyn, Lady
Jane Grey, Catherine Howard, and the Earl
of Essex were beheaded. In Carr’s mystery,
Laura Bitten, Phil Driscoll’s mistress, asked
one nice old Beefeater if this was where
Queen Elizabeth was executed. The guard,
shocked by her historical ignorance, ans­
wered that “Queen Elizabeth had not the
honor.. . . I mean, she died in her bed.”
Beyond Tower Green, to the east of St.
Peter’s, is the former Waterloo Barracks. If
the line is not terribly long, take the stairs to
the cellar stronghold built in 1967 to house
the Crown Jewels. (This is the building Sir
Leonard Haldyne was in charge of in Carr’s
mystery.) Most of the jewels were sold or
melted down during Cromwell’s day, so the
6

oldest now is St. Edward’s Crown, made for
the coronation of Charles II. Of much
interest to mystery buffs is the Crown of
Queen Elizabeth, made in 1911. In it was
placed the fabulous “Koh-i-noor” diamond,
which was given to Queen Victoria by the
Punjabi Army. In Agatha Christie’s The
Secret o f Chimneys, Anthony Cade was not
impressed to hear that the prime minister of
Herzoslovakia knew where the Koh-i-noor
was. “We all know that, they keep it in the
Tower don’t they?”
Finish your tour of the Tower by re­
turning to Byward Tower to exit to Tower
Hill. Turn right on Tower Hill and follow it
around the walls until you come to the
Minories. (There is a pedestrian underpass
that will take you to the Tower Hill Under­
ground Station if you choose to end your
walk here.)
Turn left on Minories and walk north.
H.R.F. Keating in Inspector Ghote Hunts
the Peacock mentioned that Ghote climbed
a slight ascent going along the “oddlynamed” Minories. The name came from the
Minoresses, who were nuns of the order of
St. Clare. In 1293, they founded a convent
here; it stood outside the City wall.
Walk up Minories to Aldgate, passing
Fenchurch Street Station on your left. Turn
left across Aldgate to Leadenhall Street. In
an office in Leadenhall Street, Hosmer
Angel was supposedly a cashier in Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
tale “A Case of Identity.” The offices of the
Dagger Line were on Leadenhall Street in
A.E.W. Mason’s The House in Lordship
Lane. Walk west along Leadenhall Street,
which is filled with big City banks, and past
St. Andrew’s Undershaft, whose shaft was a
Maypole. Then turn left down Lime Street,
the home of Lloyds of London, the great
international insurance underwriters. The
street also figured in Sherlock Holmes’s case
of “The Mazarin Stone” by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle as the street on which Van
Seddar lived.
At the place where Leadenhall Street
turns into Cornhill, Bishopgate leads off to
the right. Bishopgate was the site, in the
fifteenth century, of Crosby Hall. Richard
III lived there, and later, before he moved
to Chelsea, so did Sir Thomas More.
Walk down Cornhill and turn right on
tiny Royal Exchange Buildings (an alley) to
Threadneedle Street. Slightly to your left
and across Threadneedle Street to the north
is Old Broad Street, where Lord Peter
Wimsey found the tobacconist’s shop with
the name Cummings, not Smith. It was the
place Tallboys mailed his alphabet letter to
his stockbroker each week using letters from
Pym’s Nutrax ad in Dorothy L. Sayers’s

Murder M ust Advertise.
Turn right off Threadneedle Street into
Bartholomew Lane. Follow it north to
Lothbury and turn left. Follow Lothbury
west; it will become Gresham Street. Cross
Old Jewry and Ironmonger streets and keep
walking along Gresham Street until you
come to Guildhall Yard. The Guildhall is to
your right.
The Guildhall, the City’s most important
secular building, has stood on or near its
present site since the eleventh century. It
was the meeting place of the important City
Guilds, the banners and coats of arms of
which are displayed on the gatehouse, to­
gether with replicas of the ancient wooden
giants, Gog and Magog. The City is admin­
istered from here by the Court of Common
Council, which developed from the ancient
Court of Hustings. Huge ceremonial dinners
are given in the restored Great Hall.
The Guildhall is associated with Lord
Mayors, such as Sir Richard Whittington
(the one with the cat). In Catherine Aird’s
In Harm's Way, George and Tom Mellot
agreed to divide their family’s farm in Kent.
George was to run the farm while Tom
“went off to do a Dick Whittington.” Aird’s
Detective Inspector Sloan thought to him­
self that it was funny that only one Lord
Mayor got into the history book, but per­
haps it was because he also got into a
nursery rhyme.
Come out of Guildhall Yard and continue
walking west (to your right) on Gresham
Street to Wood Street. This is the site of the
Wood Street Police Station, off Cheapside
at the corner of Wood Street and Love
Lane, where Inspector Ghote arrived early
for the international conference on drugs in
H.R.F. Keating’s Inspector Ghole Hunts the
Peacock.
If you wish to visit the London Museum,
turn right and follow Wood Street to
London Wall (the street Inspector Ghote
took to the Tower), where you turn left. The
Barbican, a postwar complex of apartments,
shops, restaurants, and theaters, is just north
of the London Museum. When you have
finished at the Museum, take London Wall
west to Aldersgate, where you turn left.
Follow Aldersgate, which becomes St. Mar­
tin’s le Grand, to St. Paul’s Underground
Station. If you decide to skip the Museum
and are ready to complete your walk, follow
Gresham Street to St. Martin’s le Grand and
turn left. This will bring you back to the St.
Paul’s Underground Station and the con­
dfk
clusion of the walk.
Copyright ©1987 by Alzina Stone Dale and
Barbara Sloan Hendershott. Excerpts reprinted
from Mystery Reader’s Walking Guide: London
with permission o f Passport Books.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Beyond the whodunit
Editor Jim Huang ’82 and his crew of thirteen
“Basically, we all really love books.” That’s
how Jim Huang ’82 explains why he and
thirteen other Swarthmore alumni (Tina
Anderson ’81, Lisa Berglund ’83, Ed Blachman ’81, Meryl Cohen ’79, Gregg Davis ’80,
David Fristrom ’83, Jennie Jacobson ’83
and her mother Jeanne McKee Jacobson
’53, Kevin James ’83, Alex McKale ’82,
Matt Nelson ’82, Cathy Srygley ’81, and
Beth Thoenen ’83) collaborate on a
monthly magazine, The D rood Review o f
M ystery.
Huang, who had dabbled in amateur
publishing during high school, started The
D rood Review in the fall of 1982 during an
aborted attempt at law school (“It was a
horrifyingly dull experience”). He enlisted
the aid of some Swarthmoreans with whom
he had edited The Phoenix while still a
student. Although some of them had not
read mysteries before, Huang says, “I
thought they’d have interesting things to say
about something new.” He must have been
right because D rood’s circulation has grown
to over 350 in number, and the group has
hosted three annual Boston Mystery Festi­
vals, which in 1986 drew over one hundred
attendees.
While D rood is devoted primarily to
critical review of new mystery fiction,
Huang and his staff do not stop at simply
turning thumbs up or down. “We look at
social and political messages,” Huang ex­
plains. “One of the problems with genre
fiction is that there is a lot of stereotyping.
It concerns us because we don’t like seeing
women, for instance, restricted to only
APRIL 1987

boring, traditional roles, and so we make a
point of looking at books that expand roles
for women.
“A lot of books also carry political
messages. This is particularly true in spy
thrillers, where characters are often fighting
for truth, justice, and the American way.
When an author is writing a book like that,
we think that there’s more than just enter­
taining going on, and it’s worth discussing
those messages explicitly.”
Toward this end, The D rood Review
recently ran an article focusing on the works
of author James McClure, who uses a white
and black team of police detectives to
explore the political and social environment
of South Africa. The magazine also pub­
lished the first comprehensive overview of
the roles gay and lesbian characters play in
mystery fiction.
Response to criticism of this kind, Huang
says, “has not been altogether favorable.
There are people who read their mysteries
just for fun and don’t want to think about
the assumptions that underlie the stories.”
On the other hand, “it’s given the magazine
a very distinctive character, and we’ve
found a lot of people who like our ap­
proach.”
The recent boom in the popularity of
mystery fiction, evidenced by the appear­
ance of authors like Robert Parker, Elmore
Leonard, and P.D. James on the bestseller
lists, naturally has helped along D rood’s
own growth. Huang ascribes the popularity
of mystery fiction to a number of factors.
“Some theorists point out that mysteries

Five o f the thirteen Swarthmore members o/The
Drood Review editorial group gather at a mys­
tery book store in Cambridge, Mass. Standing
(from left to right) are: Beth Thoenen ’83, David
Fristrom ’83, Jim Huang ’82, and M eryl Cohen
79. Seated is Jennie Jacobson ’83.

take place in very ordered environments,
and that’s very reassuring to people. The
detective figure in particular is a bastion of
order in a disordered society. Even in the
anti-hero subgenre of mystery, such as the
Lawrence Block burglar books, characters
follow a code of honor and work fo r society.
“I don’t know how much there is to that
theory. I think mystery stands out as a form
of fiction that demands a strong story at a
time when other kinds of fiction are de­
emphasizing narrative. In that sense, mys­
tery is a comfortable, reassuring thing to
read.”
The D rood Review’s success has led its
creators to branch out into other endeavors.
The group is putting together a proposal for
a mystery reference book that will answer
the mystery fan’s question, “Well, what do
I read next?” They’re also developing a
game called “Trivial Murders,” which
Huang describes as a cross between “Trivial
Pursuit” and “Clue.”
Ultimately, Huang and his staffers would
like to see The D rood Review expand into
book publishing. “We have some ideas
about what we like in mysteries, some of
which are things that we don’t see enough
of. Especially recently, we’re seeing more
and more books with careless plotting or
stupid characters. We’d like to find a more
refined style and publish more of those
b° 0ks‘

—Ben Fulves ’87

E ditor’s Note: The Drood Review of Mys­
tery is available fo r $12 p er year from Box
8872, Boston, MA 02114.
7

J J J M

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BOB FISHER

In the fall of 1969, the student body of
Swarthmore College was largely upper
middle class, academically paranoid, politi­
cally aware, liberal tending strongly toward
the radical-intellectual left, and socially
freewheeling. The current popular folk hero
was John Braxton, a senior facing a prison
sentence for his open refusal to register for
the draft. Vietcong flags regularly sprouted
from the windows of the upper stories of
Parrish Hall— which served as both the
administration building and a women’s
dorm— and as often as not when you went
to lunch, there’d be a troupe of guerrilla
theater actors piled in a heap on the patio of
Sharpies Dining Hall, wrapped in black
robes, draped with the entrails of pigs, and
silently holding signs reading Stop the War.
The last vestiges of parietal rules would be
swept away by the end of the first semester
that year, and by the next year there would
be coed dorms. The native costume was
faded blue jeans, heavily patched, and blue
workshirts or used army greens. Marijuana
was nearly as prevalent as tobacco.
Into the middle of all this, I arrived as a
twenty-one-year-old freshman. The previ­
ous spring, while I was still overseas, the
college had written to ask for a picture of
me. The only picture I happened to have
was one of me in a Marine dress uniform,
so I’d sent that. Nobody told me what they
wanted the picture for. I didn’t find out until
I showed up for college in September, and
there’s that picture of me in the freshman
booklet for the whole college community to
see. Wonderful. Fortunately, I didn’t look
like that anymore, so a lot of people hadn’t
yet figured out who this guy Ehrhart was.
Which was fine with me. In the fall of
1969, Vietnam veterans weren’t exactly the
most popular kids on the block. I’d enlisted
in the Marines in the spring of 1966 with
visions of brass bands, victory parades, free
drinks in bars, and starry-eyed girls clinging
to my neck like so many succulent grapes.
But by the time I’d gotten back to the States
from Vietnam, I considered myself lucky to
get out of San Francisco Airport without
being assaulted by bands of rabid hippies
armed with snapdragons and daisies, and
carrying placards reading Baby Killer.
And once I got to Swarthmore, I was
damned glad I’d let my hair grow out over
the previous summer and grown a beard.
Anonymity. I washed my new blue jeans
three times the first week I was there, and
threw them in the dirt, and jumped up and
down on them, trying to get the new blue to
look like old blue. The older the better.
Finding myself the only Vietnam veteran in
the middle of an obviously antiwar en­
vironment, and having no idea what those

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By W D. Ehrhart 7 3

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Bill Ehrhart was 17 when he joined the Marines and went
to Vietnam. He came back with a chest covered with med­
als, a souvenir rifle, and nightmares. He ju st wanted to
forget Vietnam when he enrolled a t Swarthmore in 1969,
but a country exploding with antiwar protest wouldn’t let
him. Neither would the rage exploding within him.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

guerrilla theater mimes might cook up for
me if they once figured out who I was, I’d
spent my first month at college trying to
keep a low profile.
I got away with it, too. I kept to myself,
and I kept my mouth shut, and I didn’t
bother anyone, and no one bothered me. It
was kind of lonely, actually, and sometimes
I’d sit out on the big green lawn in front of
Parrish Hall, admiring the magnificent lush
campus, and think about my buddies back
in battalion scouts and how nice it would be
for them to be here too, so I’d have someone
to talk to that understood. Or maybe we
wouldn’t even talk because they’d all know
what I was feeling because they’d be feeling
it too, and we could just lie back on the
green grass for a while and listen to the birds
up in those elegant old trees.
But most of the time, I was too busy to
think about even that. I hadn’t been to
school in more than three years, and I had
no idea before I got there that Swarthmore
was supposed to be such a hotshot school.
I’d never even seen the place. I’d met some
middle-aged man trying to bodysurf one
day in Ocean City, New Jersey, while I was
home on leave in the early summer of 1968.
He wasn’t catching any waves, and I was
catching all of them. He wanted to know
how I did it, and our talk developed into a
long and pleasant walk on the beach and a
discussion about my future. He told me
about this nice little school called Swarth­
more, which he’d attended after getting out
of the Navy in 1946. Later, I applied, and
the college had offered me the biggest
scholarship of the schools I had to choose
from.
That’s how I ended up sitting in the
Quaker meetinghouse on the first night of
school with all the other freshmen, listening
to the president, Richard Cramer, talk about
the cream of the crop of America’s high
school students and how brilliant this year’s
freshman class was, and I knew he wasn’t
talking about me. It dawned on me in a
burst of abject terror that I’d made another
wrong turn somewhere back up the pike. I
just sat there thinking, “Jesus Christ,
Ehrhart, what have you gotten yourself into
this time?” I was so scared I spent the first
month of school holed up in McCabe
Library, trying desperately to keep from
flunking out by midterm exams.
But the important thing is that during that
first month or so, nobody attacked me with
flowers or picketed my room in Pittenger
Hall or covered me with pigs’ entrails. The
few people that did discover I’d been in the
service seemed to take the knowledge com­
fortably enough. So by the middle of
October, when the reporter for the campus
APRIL 1987

newspaper Phoenix politely asked if he
could interview me, and graciously volun­
teered that I didn’t have to answer any
questions that I considered inappropriate, I
was feeling brave enough to say, “Well,
what the hell, why not?” Everybody likes to
read about himself in the newspapers.
It was a nice article, too. The guy that
wrote it was real good about not trying to
make me seem like a goon or a crazed
maniac; if anything, he made me sound a
whole lot more together than I really was.
Here’s the way the article began:
“When most of his fellow freshmen were
struggling through Algebra I, Bill Ehrhart
was slogging through a Carolina swamp.
When they were worried about getting a
date for the junior prom, he was dodging
shells at Con Thien and after that at Hue and
at a dozen other places you never hear
about.
“Bill Ehrhart is now a Swarthmore fresh­
man, but four months ago he was a Marine
sergeant.
“Bearded and quietly confident, he
doesn’t seem different from the rest of the
freshmen. Like the others, he’s busy wading
through Chaucer and reading bulletin
boards to see what meetings to attend. But
the usual freshman problems don’t seem as
difficult to him. Most things don’t. Because
Bill Ehrhart spent thirteen months in Viet­
nam, and after that nothing seems quite as
hard.”
And it went on from there.
The article appeared under a threecolumn double headline— “Freshman Vete­
ran Returns to School; From Battalion
Intelligence to Chaucer”— and carried a
picture of me complete with beard, long
hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. Good-bye,
anonymity. The effect was spectacular:
instant celebrity. People began stopping me
in the halls, after classes, on the lawn, in the
library. They interrupted my meals in Shar­
pies. They dropped by my room in Pit­
tenger. I was somebody, I was the center of
attention, and it felt good. I seemed to be
meeting everybody in the whole school.
And the biggest surprise was that people
weren’t hostile at all. In fact, they were very
friendly. They’d come up and introduce
themselves and strike up a conversation.
During those weeks after the article ap­
peared, I can’t recall anyone ever being rude
or unkind— which was a great relief. I had
truly been afraid of how people would
receive me, and now I knew I didn’t have
to be afraid anymore, I would listen to their
questions, and think about them, and try
hard to answer them as honestly and accu­
rately as I could. I often spent a long time
answering a question because I wanted

these people who were my peers and
classmates to understand.
Soon, however, a pattern to the process
began to emerge that made me begin to
wonder if being a celebrity was such a good
deal after all. Three or four or five or six
times a day, seven days a week, some new
stranger would approach me: “Hi! I’m Blah
Blah Blah. You’re Bill Ehrhart, aren’t you?
D o you mind if I ask you a few questions
I’ve been wondering about? Why did you
go to Vietnam? What was it like? Did you
see much action? Did you ever kill anyone?
No— I mean really see them die— know
you were the one?”
I’m not exaggerating. It was those ques­
tions only, and in that order, nearly every
time. It got to where I could spot strangers
headed my way from a hundred yards off,
and I knew what was coming, and I’d just
grit my teeth and punch a button in my head
and start spitting out answers. I didn’t even
have to wait for the questions. And my
answers got shorter and shorter. And I
began increasingly to feel a nebulous dis­
comfort with the whole process because I
couldn’t help noticing something else, too.
Almost nobody ever asked me anything
about anything but Vietnam. They didn’t
ask me what my favorite books were, or
what I wanted to be when I finished school,
or what I thought of the Mets winning the
World Series, or what I was doing Saturday
night. They asked me that handful of
questions about the war, and then they
thanked me and got up and left. And most
of them never came back again. It was
always somebody new: “Hi! I’m Blah Blah
Blah. You’re Bill Ehrhart, aren’t you? Do
you mind. . . ?”
Then one night toward the end of
October, I had this girl in my room that I’d
sort of gotten to know, and we were really
getting down to the bare essentials. In fact,
I was just about to make it happen, and it
hadn’t happened in a long time, and I was
feeling particularly mellow about life in
general when right in the middle of it all she
asked me, “Did you really kill people?”
And it didn’t happen.
Two days later, I was walking down the
path between Parrish and Sharpies when a
girl approached from behind and stopped
me.
“Are you Bill Ehrhart?” she asked.
“Uh, yes.”
“Were you really in Vietnam?”
“Well, uh, actually, yes.”
“Oh, wow, man. Far out. Incredible!”
And then she turned around and walked
away. She wasn’t nasty, or hostile, or
anything but clearly amazed. And as I stood
there alone in the middle of that broad green
9

lawn beneath the shadow of Clothier
Tower, surrounded by those elegant old
trees and ivy-covered buildings, breathing in
the crisp autumn air and watching other
students all over campus as they went about
their busy lives, I finally understood the
intangible feeling that had been making me
increasingly uneasy as the weeks of October
had passed.
I was Swarthmore’s real live Vietnam
veteran. I was a specimen. A curiosity. I was
a freak in a carnival sideshow.
* * * *

I was saved from rural society in Korea—
or at least given a reprieve—by Daniel
Kaufman. I’d been sitting in McCabe
Library ever since supper, trying to plow
through an unspeakably boring anthropolo­
gy assignment, when Daniel and a guy I
didn’t know interrupted me.
“You got a few moments?” Daniel asked.
Ordinarily, I would have said no. I was
tired of people’s questions. My newfound
celebrity had left me no less lonely than I’d
been before, and carried with it new prob­
lems of its own, and more and more over the
previous week, I had taken every opportuni­
ty to avoid any more questions than I had
to put up with. Swarthmore was just too
small to avoid most grillings, but the visible
act of studying provided just such an oppor­
tunity: “Gee, I’d like to— but I’ve got this
assignment here. Wow, the reading load
they give you around here! Maybe another
time.” It wasn’t entirely untrue.
But I was sorely weary of which comer
of the ricefield Farmer Chung crapped in,
and Daniel— whom I’d met earlier and who
was one of the few people who had come
back again— seemed like a nice guy.
“Yeah,” I said, “What can I do for you?”
He introduced me to his friend, Mike
Morris. “I can’t stick around,” he said, “but
you guys ought to get to know each other.”
It seemed a little puzzling to me, and I was
immediately sorry I’d agreed since Daniel
wasn’t even staying, but I was already
committed. I got up and we went down into
the basement stairwell. Mike seemed notice­
ably ill at ease.
“We can talk down here without getting
interrupted,” said Mike as we sat down on
the floor beneath the last flight of stairs. “I
read that article in the Phoenix about you,”
he began. “Pretty interesting. We don’t get
many Vietnam veterans around here.”
“So I’ve noticed.” I laughed. Well, here
we go again, I thought.
“This place must be pretty weird for
you.”
I laughed again. “Well, yeah, actually, it
is.”
“Why in hell did you come hereV he
10

blurted out. Then he got flustered and really know what they’re doing. I knew this
turned red. “That didn’t sound right, did it? guy there, an ARVN, South Vietnamese
I mean, this place isn’t exactly a haven for army staff sergeant assigned to my battalion
ex-Marines, you know? It just seems like an as an interpreter. He’d been in the army six
or seven years, and he’d been with my
odd choice.”
battalion
since before I got there, like
“Well, yes, an odd choice,” I said. Then
I told him about the unsuccessful bodysurfer eighteen months or something. One day he
just quit. Just like that. Walked right up to
in Ocean City.
“That’s all you knew about the place?” he the battalion commander and said, ‘I’m not
going to fight your dirty little war for you
asked incredulously.
“That’s it. Name, location, and sixteen anymore. Get lost.’ Man, that was a real eyeopener. He said the longer we stayed, the
hundred dollars in scholarship.”
more VC there were. ‘Every year, the
“Didn’t you read the catalog?”
“Sure, but it didn’t say anything about Vietcong grow stronger. You are their best
guerrilla mimes or Vietcong flags. And I recruiters. You Americans come with your
needed that scholarship. The GI Bill only tanks and your jets and your helicopters and
gives me a hundred thirty-five dollars a your arrogance, and everywhere you go, the
month. You know how far that goes these VC grow like new rice in the fields. You do
not understand Vietnam. You have never
days.”
“Does it bother you, the antiwar stuff?”
understood us, and you will never bother
“Well, yeah, I guess so. But it’s hard to say because you think you have all the answers.
why. I think maybe we made a big mistake You Americans are worse than the VC.’
getting involved in Vietnam. Most of the Something like that. And then he just flat
Vietnamese don’t really seem to want us quit. And he was one of the bravest men I
there, at least not many of them from what ever knew. Saved my ass more than once.”
I could see. We’re foreigners to them. It’s not
Mike let out a low whistle.
an ordinary war, you know, with front lines
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing another bit of ash
and soldiers in uniforms and stuff. Most of into my jeans. “Christ, there I am, eighteen
the time, we were fighting guerrillas— when years old, got my ass out on a wire, and
the politicians let us fight at all; free-fire here’s Trinh telling me to go suck an egg.
zones, no-fire zones, maybe-fire zones— Well, not me really, but it was all the same.
anyway, you couldn’t tell the VC from the Anyway, by that time, I was perfectly
rest of the population. Mostly we didn’t willing to get the hell out. All I wanted to
make much of a distinction. Just treated do was keep my ass alive long enough to get
them all the same: hostile.”
home and forget the whole thing.”
“You really think the politicians won’t let
“Why did you go in the first place? You
you fight?”
weren’t drafted, were you?”
“Well, it felt like that sometimes,” I said,
“Me?” I snorted. “Oh, no, I enlisted.
lighting up a cigarette. “Like they put our Couldn’t wait. Seventeen years old, right
asses out there, and then tied one hand out of high school. I’d even been accepted
behind our backs and blindfolded us. You’re to college. I don’t know. I didnft know what
going to fight a war, you ought to fight it. I wanted to study. I figured I’d just get
You want to talk, send a platoon of diplo­ drafted when I got out of college any­
mats in striped pants and top hats. I way— right when I’m ready to start a career.
remember sitting up at Con Thien, up on the I needed the GI money. And I guess I
DMZ, and reading about trying to get the figured I owed it to my country. Maybe that
North Vietnamese to the negotiating table, sounds corny, but I still believe that. This
and thinking why didn’t they just give the place ain’t perfect, but it’s still worth some­
damn table to us and let us deliver it to thing to be an American. If I were Russian,
Hanoi. Fight or get out. A lot of guys felt like I’d be locked up for telling you stuff like this.
that. That’s why a lot of us kind of liked That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
Eugene McCarthy. If he wasn’t going to
“It’s not worth dying for a mistake, is it?”
“I don’t know, Mike. People owe some­
fight, at least he was willing to get the hell
out.”
thing to their country, don’t they? How do
I flicked the ash from my cigarette onto you say it was all for nothing? It was all a
the leg of my jeans and brushed it in with mistake. Who’s that flake up there in Parrish
the heel of my hand before continu­ with the VC flag? Jesus, people carrying
ing— every little bit helps, I figured.
that flag killed a lot of my buddies. I’m not
“Anyway,” I went on, “I don’t think sure I blame them, really, but Jesus. And we
there’s much we can do about it now except still got half a million guys over there. I
get out. I’m not so sure it would matter if we remember how I felt when I’d read about
tried to turn it into a more conventional war. antiwar stuff going on back here. It made
I don’t think the politicians or the generals me angry; it hurt. I don’t think those kids
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The avid antiwar sentiments prevalent among Swarthmore students in the late ’60s and early 70s made Viet­
nam veteran Bill Ehrhart 73 feelfirst scared, then like
a celebrity, andfinally like “afreak in a carnival show. ”
William D. Ehrhart

Pennridge High School
Perkasie,. Pa.

ever think about the guys over there very
much. Not really. Not like they were real
people.”
“Maybe not,” said Mike. He paused,
tugging at his shoelace as if he were studying
it. Then he looked up and continued, “And
maybe they do. Did you ever think that
maybe they’re trying to keep other guys like
you from having to go?”
“Yeah, maybe. But you can’t just walk
away from it like it was a meal you just
didn’t feel like finishing, can you? I said we
oughta get out, and I believe that. But you
gotta give Nixon a chance. He’s only been
in office ten months— and he hasn’t exactly
gotten a hell of a lot of support on the home
front.”
Mike cocked his head, lifting his chin
slightly. “You really think he’s trying to get
us out?” he said.
“Well, he got the peace talks going. It
takes time.”
“Peace talks?” he shot back. “It took
them six months to figure out what kind of
table they were going to use. Besides,
Johnson started the peace talks, not Nixon.”
“Is that right?” I asked, feeling a slight
APRIL 1987

flush of embarrassment.
“Yeah. That whole business started back
in mid-sixty-eight, before Nixon ever got
elected. For what it’s worth.”
“Well, Johnson got us into it in the first
place, so he should have gotten us out of it.
Anyway, at least they’re talking now. And
at least Nixon’s trying to get the ARVN to
do something for once besides sit around on
their duffs.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pausing for a long
moment to think about it. I hadn’t thought
about it much. I really didn’t want to deal
with Vietnam anymore— though it was
hard not to, since you couldn’t pick up a
newspaper or turn on a television or even go
to lunch without being constantly reminded
of it. I crushed the cigarette out on the
bottom of my shoe, then ground the black­
ened tobacco into the cuff of my pants.
“Why do you keep doing that?” Mike
asked.
“What?”
“Putting the ashes on your trousers.”
“Oh, just ripening ‘em on the vine,” I
replied. Mike looked puzzled. “Never

mind.” I laughed. “It’s just a private joke.
No, I don’t suppose Vietnamization is likely
to do much good. From what I saw, the
ARVN were pretty bad. There was one unit,
the First ARVN Regiment up around
Quang Tri, they were pretty damned good.
But they were all northern Catholic refu­
gees. Most of the ARVN weren’t worth a
flying fuck. Armed to the teeth, and still
couldn’t— or wouldn’t— fight their way out
of a paper sack. That’s one of the things that
first got me thinking. The VC had nothing
when I got there—just beat-up old rifles and
bamboo stakes and whatever they could
steal from us or buy from the ARVN. But
they fought like hell. You really had to
admire them. You’d bomb ‘em and nape
‘em and blow ‘em up fifty different ways to
Sunday, and the next day, there they’d be
again, one or two guys, dingin’ away at you,
day after day, week after week.”
“You said in that article that—how did
you say it? If you had to weigh the positive
effects of the whole thing with the negative
effects, you’d still come out ahead.”
“Something like that, yeah,” I said, shak­
ing my head. ‘That’s what I get for talking
to reporters.”
“You didn’t mean it?”
“I didn’t say that,” I replied.
“Well, that’s what I wanna know,” Mike
said, “That’s the part that struck me the
most. If you had it to do again, would you
still go?”
“Man, you like to stick to simple ques­
tions, don’t you” I laughed.
“Well, I’m just trying to understand,” said
Mike. It seemed like he really did want to
understand. He seemed to be wrestling with
my answers, trying to assimilate them. And
he was willing to challenge me, to pose new
questions from my answers. Most people
just asked the usual questions, listened with
glazed eyes, then got up and walked away.
I liked him.
“Would I do it again?”
“Yeah, was it worth it?”
“How do you go through something like
that and then say it wasn’t worth it? I guess
I learned a lot. Maybe I’m a better person
for it. And maybe I could have come home
in a body bag or minus a leg. A lot of guys
I knew did. How do you tell them it was
worth it, you’re a better man now? How do
you tell them it wasn’t worth it? Sometimes
it makes me want to cry. I want it to have
been worth something, and I can’t make
myself believe that it was. It’s a real bitch,
I’ll tell ya. No, I don’t think I’d do it again.”
____________________________________ A

A dapted from Marking Time by William
Ehrhart, copyright ®1986. Used by perm is­
sion o f Avon Books.
11

M oscow Journal
Soviet human rights activist Andrei Sakharov
voiced cautious optimism about ongoing
changes in the U.S.S.R. during recent
discussions with American academic leaders.
By D avid W. Fraser

E d ito r’s N ote: Swarthmore President D avid
W. Fraser traveled to Moscow on Jan. 24 as
part o f a delegation o f nine U.S. academic
leaders, believed to be the first organized
group o f American academics to meet with
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov since his
release in Decem ber after seven years o f
internal exile in the closed city o f Gorky. In
1975 Sakharov won the N obel Peace Prize
fo r his human rights activities in the Soviet
Union.
Sakharov’s exiled stepson, A lexei Semyo­
nov, traveled with the group to Moscow.
Semyonov was forced to leave the Soviet
Union in 1978 and now lives in the U.S. His
long-standing request fo r a visa suddenly
was granted in January, allowing him ten
days to visit his stepfather and his mother,
Elena Bonner.
Sakharov met the group at the Moscow
airport and took them back to his apartment,
where he and Bonner served them a dinner
o f fish, prioshki, tzimes, and a traditional
cake. That evening and the follow ing day,
the group discussed various international
issues, including human rights in the
USSR.
While in the Soviet Union, the group also
met with refuseniks and Soviet government
officials. The delegation then traveled to
Vienna, where they attended the opening
session o f the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the third
follow-up meeting o f the “H elsinki process”
initiated by the signing o f the 1975 H elsinki
Final Act, which set human rights standards
fo r thirty-three European countries, Cana­
da, and the United States. A t the meeting,
delegates spoke with representatives from
the Soviet Union and publicized the results
o f the M oscow trip.
The trip was intended to “demonstrate
united support among U.S. scientists and
academics fo r their colleagues in the Soviet
Union,” according to delegation leader Ed­
12

mond L. Volpe, president o f the College o f
Staten Island o f the City University o f New
York. Delegation members were chosen fo r
their shared interest in human rights, as well
as their involvement in diverse academic
disciplines.
Printed below are excerpts from a journal
kept by President Fraser during his journey.
Some background information has been
added The accuracy o f this record has not
been checked with every member o f the
delegation. Some o f their opinions may have
changed
SATURDAY, JAN. 24
Arrived at Moscow 4:45 p.m. Leave Airport
7:00 p.m. -16 C on arrival.
[Andrei Sakharov is waiting on the other
side o f the customs gate to greet his stepson,
A lexei Semyonov. Semyonov has brought a
personal computer with him as a gift fo r
Sakharov.]
Problems getting literature on dissidents,
shortwave radio, Leading Edge computer
(IBM PC clone) through customs.
Bob Arsenault [director o f the Center fo r
International Service at the College o f Sta­
ten Island o f the City University o f New
York] says to Soviet customs officials that it
is a present for Andrei Dmitriyevich.
“Who?”
“Dr. Sakharov— the only Andrei Dmi­
triyevich waiting on the other side of that
door.”
“Oh, Dr. Sakharov (sarcastically).”
Visit to Sakharov’s flat (7th floor, #68)
U.S.S.R. has invited approx. 500 people to
Moscow for Feb. 12-14 conference on dis­
armament— organized by Velikov (Vice
Pres, of Academy— likely new President).
Herman Feshbach [M.I. T physicist and past
president o f the American Academy o f A rts
and Sciences] heard rumor that Sakharov
might be invited but he hasn’t been yet. He
says that he might attend if asked.

Above: A rough sketch o f Andrei Sakharov and
Elena Bonner’s three-room apartment in Moscow.

[Sakharov was invited and did attend the
February disarmament conference at the
Kremlin. H is presence, and the freeing o f
more than forty political prisoners, lent
greater credibility to Soviet leader M ikhail
Gorbachev’s glasnost ( “openness”) policy.]
Over dinner Sakharov was asked if he’d
been able to keep up in physics when he was
in Gorky— he said it was easier in Gorky
because he had time then. (Since being back
in Moscow he has had 5 in-person interviews/day— now he’s cutting back to only
phone interviews.)
When first exiled to Gorky, he was asked
to pay rent on his Gorky flat— he refused for
whole time there to pay rent, or utilities. He
thought that guard outside of their door,
who was always cold, used 2kw of elec­
tricity with heater— more than the rest of
the apartment combined.
DW F asked them what their neighbors’
reaction to their return to Moscow had
been. Elena Bonner said that it was mixed—
some were genuinely happy, others told
them that now they should behave appro­
priately.
Sakharov speculates that floating the idea
of a conference in Moscow on human rights
may have been a way for Gorbachev (or
liberals) to put pressure on those more
conservative. When asked whether there
are many others in government who favor
reform, Sakharov quipped, “They say he is
just the visible part of the iceberg; the
problem, however, is that there is still the
rest of the ocean.” Sakharov saw evidence
that authorities might be involved in
furthering dissidents’ arguments in recent
events re uprising in Kazakhstan— truckload of vodka was delivered to dissidents;
students were given wooden clubs studded
with nails— unlikely either could have been
possible without official complicity.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

SUNDAY, JAN. 25
2nd session with Andrei Sakharov at his
flat, 2-6 p.m.

Nuclear Issues
Splitting of issues in nuclear arms nego­
tiation is essential—so at least some progress
can be made. Soviet principles of “packag­
ing” inhibited Reykjavik discussion. Might
be able to reach agreements on limiting
ballistic missiles (for example) if unlinked
from SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative]
limits.
Rationale for the link is that a defensive
shield would encourage that side to strike
first. This logic is flawed because:
— Unlikely that anyone will develop a
reliable defensive system.
— Low-altitude (cruise) missiles can’t be
stopped by space-based SDI.
— Nearby submarine-launched missiles
can’t be defended against by SDI.
— Shortening the booster phase and decreas­
ing the weight of the “head” will require
very short reaction time for aiming SDI—
so short that X-ray laser couldn’t be used.
(Takes too long to get up to power.)
— Prior to nuclear war, a phase of conven­
tional war will probably destroy everything
that flies in space.
“SDI is space-age Maginot Line”— ex­
pensive and ineffective.
Neither side can afford to stop SDI re­
search because there exists a small chance
that something new and unknown will
come out of it.
If agreement can be reached to eliminate
offensive weapons, SDI will be rendered
unnecessary— so Soviets should unpackage.
[A t the end o f February, Soviet leader
Gorbachev announced that he was ready to
sign, “without delay, ” an agreement to re­

move all medium-range nuclear missiles
from Europe within five years. Gorbachev’s
proposal dropped the Soviet insistence on
linking arms control measures with SD I
limitations.]

Human Rights
What should U.S. curriculum be on human
rights?
Sakharov: Unfamiliar with Western edu­
cational system, so will formulate abstract
ideas only. In international agreements, like
U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, impor­
tant principles are formulated— curriculum
of social sciences should include course on
those documents/principles. Also analysis
of concrete situation of countries involved
in application of principles. In those courses,
non-political/non-ideologic position should
be presented. So applied and formulated in
non-political [ways]—e.g., founding princi­
ples of Amnesty Int’l. use term “prisoner of
conscience” (as distinguished from more
usual term “political prisoner”). This very
fruitful creation of new term gave possibility
of separating human rights (freedom of
thought, movement, etc.) from political
questions. Separate those who don’t call for
violence from those who use or propagan­
dize violence and from those who, by
“increasing the common sum of suffering,”
are destabilizing force in society.
Bonner: Shouldn’t restrict to U.S. Should
discuss in U.N. or UNESCO to develop
common view of what should be known on
human rights. Important to raise new
generation with clear understanding of
difference between confrontation of ideas
and that of violence.
How can other countries best affect situa­
tion in U.S.S.R.?
Sakharov: Not his specialty to give advice

A meeting o f minds in a Moscow apartment: Swarthmore College President David Fraser, Soviet
physicist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov, and M.I. Tphysicist Herbert Feshbach.
APRIL 1987

to Western states about the way they should
deal with U.S.S.R. Also there should be no
standard response.
Situation in U.S.S.R. is changing nearly
every day, constantly surprising. News­
papers recently covered episode in which
the director of a factory showed initiative
which led to marked improvement in living
conditions in his village which led to
consternation among officials in that region.
(Showed bureaucracy was not the source of
improvement.. . .) Article ended by stating
that authorities had found a way to bring
charges against him (since no one can
perform job of running factory without
breaking law of some sort— but overlookedunless authorities have reason to get him).
[He] was tried in 5/1969, convicted, and
died in camp. Tone of present articles is very
negative re authorities.
Newspapers now print what only sam­
izdat [the underground Soviet press] used to
publish—but samizdat editors are still in
labor camps for earlier publications! So we
are only on the “frontier” of a process which
will have to go much farther.
Western countries could work for general
amnesty for prisoners of conscience [how
(e.g., in what forum, when) is a tactical
question—and not in his competence to
prescribe]. [Bonner: Amnesty Int’l. knows
of 773 in U.S.S.R.].
Ascribes great significance to right. . . to
choose one’s country (Article 13 of U.N.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights)—
that, plus freedom of belief, largely deter­
mines the openness of a society. Shouldn’t
restrict 1st, e.g., to issue of reunification. To
insist at this stage that all who want be
allowed to emigrate may “upset the apple
cart”— so he doesn’t make it a criterion for
participation in Human Rights conferences.
West should be concerned with improve­
ment in Soviet society— not wish its death
and stagnation.
What do Soviet leaders seek to gain from
glasnost?
They realize closed society is dangerous,
unstable thing— especially in thermonu­
clear age. Glasnost is road to more stable
environment.
Khrushchev did not have the breadth to
see this.
How can U.S. academics distinguish real
change from government public relations?
Some poorly thought-out decisions: e.g.,
new law re profit from nonproductive ac­
tivities (unearned income)— includes such
consequences as a village farmer not being
able to hire a ride to market because drivers
may fear prosecution for use of vehicles for
personal enrichment.. . . Sorting out is dif­
ficult from inside and probably impossible
13

from outside.
Bonner: Her short exposure to U.S. popu­
lation disclosed shortage of information on
U.S.S.R. society— they know emigration
limits, certain dissidents, low standard of
living. But U.S. mass media don’t give
adequate view of Soviet society. Would be
good if Time/U.S. News and World Report
would give weekly summary o f . . . press/
events in U.S.S.R. with commentary (as on
Supreme Soviet’s discussion of beating of
common criminals during investigation)—
this would show those in U.S. that there are
slow changes in Soviet society.
Discrimination re Jews and others
Admittance to higher education is dis­
criminatory . . . anti-Jewish, also against
other groups.
Moscow University discriminates against
non-Moscovites. Also there is social dis­
crimination (“competition of parents”)—
hard to define its scale or forms— e.g.,
system of interviews permits use of “infor­
mal criteria” in selection for University.
Relation o f Academ ic Freedom to Human
Rights more generally
Administrators of a school or university
have some rights to ensure that particular
pragmatic goals are achieved (e.g., that
students be prepared for next stage of
education). Why talk just of academic
freedom?— Issue is human rights through­
out the society. Sakharov says he belongs to
a world where things are wrong on a very
basic level— so he is having trouble dealing
with the proposed abstractions. A.S.: “I
don’t understand exactly what ‘academic
freedom’ means.”
Bonner: Plenum of Central Committee
(to be held 1/27) is occasion many in
U.S.S.R. think will lead to something
important. Don’t think that all of Soviet
people are wishing for more democratiza­
tion. Requires more responsibility from
everyone. Makes people nervous. In present
system everyone can find a niche.
[A t the plenary meeting o f the Communist
Central Committee, Gorbachev stressed the
need to restructure the Soviet economy and
political system. H is economic reform pro­
posals are based on previously forbidden
concepts such as com petition, m arket
pricing, and p ro fit Even more startling was
his suggestion that there be competitive elec­
tions, with non-Communist candidates run­
ning fo r important governmental posts.]

Impressions of Sakharov
Gently, but totally firmly, dedicated to goal.
Carefully thoughtful, avoids overstatement
or over simplification, long pauses before
long, well-structured answers. Polite but not
particularly solicitous. Aura of the sage.
Good sense of humor (e.g., easier at Gorky
14

to keep up in physics). Very interested in
DW F’s observations on Alexandr Ioffee’s
approach to reporting problem of Jews in
Math Dept.— use of detail (e.g., year by
year variation) and firsthand experience.
[In February Soviet authorities granted
Alexandr Ioffee’s son permission to emigrate
to Isra el]

MONDAY, JAN. 26
Visit to the Soviet Foreign Ministry
[Three members o f the American academic
delegation go to the Kremlin to discuss a
possible Soviet-A m erican exchange o f
undergraduate students and faculty. Leading
the Am erican group is Olin Robison,
president o f Middlebury College. Robison
has made more than forty previous trips to
the Soviet Union as a diplomat, form erly
having served as a special assistant to three
U.S. under secretaries o f state. D avid Fraser
and A lice Ilchman, president o f Sarah
Lawrence College and form er assistant
secretary o f state, accompany Robison. Rep­
resenting the U.S. embassy at the meeting is
R ay Benson, one o f the diplomats who
helped negotiate the current cultural
exchange agreement at the Geneva summit
conference. On the other side o f the table is
Alexander Churlin, head o f the Soviet D e­
partm ent o f Humanitarian and Cultural
Relations; YuriKeshlev, head o f the Human
Rights Division, M inistry o f Foreign A f fairs;
and Yuriy Sucharev, chief o f the Division o f
Capitalist Countries, M inistry o f Higher
Education.]
The Soviets want to send more scientists/
technicians to the U.S. to speed their techni­
cal development. U.S.S.R. policy is to have
each side choose which specialities and
which people to send.
Sucharev gave details of current exchange
agreement. About 100 people from each
side exchanged each year. Proposed 5
chemistry and 5 physics graduate students
be sent to U.S.—would receive 10 from
U.S. institutions—awaiting U.S. response.
Robison: What has to happen to move us
toward undergraduate exchange?
Sucharev: Two students are in United
World’s college in New Mexico.
Robison: How about 100, next year?
Churlin: Submit a formal proposal.
Robison: Tell us what the proposal
should say, so negotiations don’t take 2
years.
Churlin: How many, at what universities,
accommodations, subjects they will major
in, subsistence allowance?
Robison: What answers do you want to
each item to make it most likely for you to
accept? E.g., how many per college?

Churlin: Want to send students to study
subjects we are most interested in— other­
wise U.S.S.R. would think it to be a waste
of time.
Benson: You, Churlin, will probably
want to send 8-20 with an advisor, at a
minimum. Could advisor help in Russian
department?
DWF: Some time we would like to invite
exchange in particular areas (like dance) or
particular people (like mathematician Alex­
andr Ioffee and pianist Vladimir Feltsman).
Churlin: We are prepared to listen to any
request.
Robison: How about CSCE and article 3
of Helsinki agreement as well as Shevarnadze’s call for human rights conference?
[In November Soviet Foreign M inister
Shevanardze, much to the consternation o f
many Western countries, proposed a con­
ference on human rights to be held in
M oscow.]
Keshlev: Main proposal will be on hold­
ing humanitarian forum in Moscow— to
discuss whole range of humanitarian coop­
eration. Sees invitation to Moscow as of
same order as Canada’s invitation to Otta­
wa.
Is U.S. afraid of holding conferences in
communist country?
Robison: No. But we don’t understand
glasnost (but think it looks wonderful).
Most would want to participate in con­
ference if it would further openness. Also
U.S.S.R. has developed good p.r. and many
wouldn’t want to participate if it were only
a p.r. exercise.
DWF: Raised issue of Anatoly Koryagin
[a psychiatrist arrested in 1981 fo r objecting
to Soviet use o f psychiatry fo r political
purposes. H is original 7-year prison sen­
tence was extended 2 years because he went
on a hunger strike to protest the conditions
o f prisoners]. DW F had introduced self as
M.D. who had consulted with U.S.S.R.
Ministry of Health— and raised Koryagin
issue in that context. [K oryagin was
released from prison in February.]
After meeting, Alice Ilchman, Olin Robi­
son, and DW F walked on Arbat (Moscow’s
first pedestrian mall, with best deli in Mos­
cow). Noted private fruit stall with apples
from Budapest and lemons from S. Africa(?)
and oranges from Israel. Then walked back
to car— Kremlin wall in background (also
snow removal equipment).

Addendum
The American academic leaders who vis­
ited Moscow in January are now working
with the U.S. State Department on a formal
proposal for an exchange of undergraduate
students and faculty between the U.S. and
the U.S.S.R.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Debate on declining black enrollments
highlights minority concerns conference
“All of us involved with the education of
minority youth in this country are presiding
over a disaster,” social psychologist Jeffrey
Howard warned leaders of twenty-eight
selective liberal arts colleges attending a na­
tional conference at Swarthmore on Feb. 2.
Howard’s comments sparked a panel
discussion held at the campus Friends Meet­
ing House in conjunction with a conference
on “Recruitment and Retention of Minority
Students at Liberal Arts Colleges.” The twoday gathering of college presidents and
administrators aimed at evaluating minority
recruitment and retention strategies.
The six-member panel discussed “Ru­
mors of Inferiority,” a controversial assess­
ment of black educational achievement by
Jeffrey Howard and Ray Hammond that
appeared in the Sept. 9, 1985, issue of The
New Republic. Panelists included Howard,
who is president of the Efficacy Committee,
a nonprofit educational consulting firm;
Barry Beckham, director of the Graduate

Writing Program at Brown University and
editor of The Black Student’s Guide to
Colleges’, Nancy Woodruff, assistant dean
and director of minority affairs at Bryn
Mawr College; and three students from
Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore
colleges. The discussion was moderated by
Brenda Brock, associate dean of admissions
at Swarthmore.
Howard summarized the position he and
Hammond took in their article by saying,
“We have to develop our children intellec­
tually. We’re failing to do that on a massive
scale.”
Howard provided statistics on the low
verbal SAT scores of black students as a
group and pointed to high school dropout
rates for blacks, which exceed 50 percent in
some major metropolitan areas. He also
presented anecdotal accounts of poor stu­
dent performance at college.
“We think that what happens at places
like Swarthmore is that good [minority]

Panelists Barry Beckham, Brenda Brock, Christopher M cAuley ’87, and Jeffrey Howard debate the
reasons selective liberal arts colleges increasingly are failing to recruit and retain minority students.
APRIL 1987

people come to these institutions, and be­
cause of a combination of what they see in
the eyes of the people who are already here
and their own maladaptive reactions to
what they see, they stop working. Typically
they stop working,” Howard said, “after
their first midterms, if they get C’s and D ’s.”
Howard argued that the black community
must raise its expectations for black students
and encourage them so that they don’t quit
after initially receiving poor grades.
Barry Beckham countered that the stand­
ards for measuring intellectual development
are faulty. “The SAT exam is the biggest
hoax in American higher education. It is
designed so that middle-class white families
will score 1000.” He pointed out that for
students of white and black families alike
SAT scores correlate closely with family
income. He also argued that learning that
takes place in underfunded school districts
with inadequate materials is bound to be
inadequate.
Beckam held that focusing on intellectual
underdevelopment obscures evidence of in­
tellectual overdevelopment among minori­
ties. “Our proportionate contributions far
outweigh white intellectual achievements.
For example, although not more than ten
black people have had the opportunity to
engage in the area of international relations,
two have won Nobel Peace Prizes [Ralph
Bunche and Martin Luther King, Jr.].”
“The real issue,” Beckham said, “is the
psychology of power.. . . Our predicament
is a lack of power, and our condition has
deteriorated because of that lack of power.”
Nancy Woodruff summarized the find­
ings of a study conducted by the Swarth­
more Office of Black and Minority Affairs,
which examined minority recruitment and
retention strategies among twenty-seven lib­
eral arts colleges. The study, which was
sponsored by the Ford Foundation, was the
focus of the conference. One aim of the
study was to examine whether “increasing
the percentage of minority faculty and staff
15

THE COLLEGE

requests for anonymity. Please send con­
tributions to: Lydia Razran Hooke ’64,
1111 Westmoreland Road, Alexandria, VA
22308.

Gay Alum ni

would have a positive effect on an institu­
tion’s ability to both recruit and retain
minority students. “That hypothesis,”
Woodruff said, “has not been born out by
the data.”
Woodruff suggested, however, that these
data may be skewed because minority
administrators are often placed in middlemanagement positions that are character­
ized by high turnover. This creates the
impression that minority concerns are not
an integral part of a college’s administration.
“The majority of the role models that
minority students see around them seem to
be in less than authoritative positions.”
—Ben Fulves ’87

D ebate team takes second
in w orld cham pionships
Seniors Josh Davis and Reid Neureiter took
a second-place win at the World Debating
Championships in Dublin Jan. 3. The two
were only the second American team ever
to reach the world championship finals.
They faced 112 teams from eight countries
before losing in the last round to Glasgow
(Scotland) University Union.
The Swarthmoreans not only took sec­
ond place from the judges, but also won first
place in a non-binding audience vote. The
audience included Ireland’s President Pat­
rick J. Hiliery, Garret FitzGerald, prime
minister of Ireland, and Margaret Heckler,
U.S. ambassador to Ireland.
As the top-seeded American team at the
Dublin event, the duo sliced through eleven
preliminary rounds in five days of debating
before squaring off with teams from Cam­
bridge University, the University of Sydney,
and Glasgow University Union in the finals.
With the Cambridge team, Davis and Neu­
reiter went against Sydney and Glasgow,
taking the negative side for the debate on the
motion “The West Can Go to Hell.” The
College also sent a second team to the
Dublin event, seniors Jim Bulkley and
Miriam Jorgensen, who took a fiftieth-place
win.
Davis and Neureiter are officers of
16

Swarthmore’s Amos J. Peaslee Debate So­
ciety. Last October they led the team to
victory over 171 teams from colleges and
universities across the United States and
Canada, winning the largest college tourna­
ment in debate history, held at Harvard
University.

Spanish P rofessor Em eritus
Jam es D . Sorber, dead at 90
James D. Sorber, professor emeritus of
Spanish and former choral director, died
Feb. 25 of heart failure.
Throughout most of his academic career,
he combined an interest in teaching lan­
guages with a talent for singing and teaching
voice. He combined them formally as a
member of the faculty of the David Mannes
Music School in New York, where he taught
voice and languages from 1927 to 1940.
Sorber joined the Swarthmore faculty in
1940 as an instructor in the Department of
Modern Languages and Literature. Three
years later, he also became director of the
College chorus, a position he held until
1955.
He taught Spanish for twenty-six years,
serving as department chairman from 1963
to 1965.

Seeking Sw arthm ore
friendships
Are the friendships you formed at Swarth­
more one of the most significant residues of
your liberal arts education? Have Swarth­
more friendships provided stability in a life
filled with changes of residence, career,
partner, and outlook? Thirty years later, do
you still play tennis twice a week with your
Swarthmore doubles partner?
We are soliciting anything from anec­
dotes to theoretical essays for an Alumni
Bulletin article on Swarthmore friendships,
ephemeral and failed, as well as enduring.
We’d like (but don’t insist on) your name
and class and will scrupulously respect all

Several alumni would like to organize a gay
and lesbian alumni group. Working on a
mailing list, local regional events, career
networking . . . our own reunion? All in­
formation sent to me will be confidential—
no record will be kept in the Alumni
Records Office. Interested? Ideas? Write:
Wilson, 22 Pearl, Cambridge, MA 02139.

C ollege, PennD O T w ork to
lessen Blue R oute im pact
When construction begins this year on the
campus section of the Blue Route, the road
will bear little resemblance to the one first
proposed thirty years ago.
Since the College dropped legal action
to halt construction a year ago, administra­
tors have been working congenially with
Pennsylvania Department of Transporta­
tion (PennDOT) officials and representa­
tives from the township of Nether Provi­
dence on a task force to minimize the
environmental impact on the campus and
the surrounding communities.
Those working closely with PennDOT
engineers and College-hired consultants
have included Gordon Cheesman ’75, direc­
tor of physical plant; David Bowler, profes­
sor of electrical engineering; Judith Zuk,
director of the Scott Arboretum; and Ken­
dall Landis ’48, vice president. Landis says
their efforts have helped refine the design to
reduce expected noise and other environ­
mental problems.
With the help of Donald W. Smith ’47,
president of the New York engineering firm
of Andrews and Clark, the most damaging
aspects of the expressway have been dra­
matically modified.
“Just north of the railroad trestle, the
steepest grade of the entire length of the road
was about 3.8 degrees,” Landis explained.
“Don looked at the plans and made sug­
gestions to the PennDOT engineers that
knocked off nearly a degree of pitch. Any
pitch over 3 degrees would probably cause
fully loaded trucks to shift down, creating a
significant increase in noise.” Landis added
that the planned seamless pavement, berms,
sound deflectors, and new plantings also
will help keep down the noise level on
campus.
Zuk said that PennDOT officials have
been “very sensitive to our requests” to try
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

to protect existing vegetation. “Obviously,
everything in the path of the roadway will
be bulldozed. But the engineers have made
plans to keep the scope of their work as
narrow as possible: They have been very
responsive to changes we proposed in the
road and landscape planning.”
She and her staff have worked with
consultants at Andropogon Associates, an
ecological planning and design firm in
Philadelphia, to survey the Crum Woods
and design a detailed action plan of
“rejuvenation and repair on our side of the
woods. We’ll be focusing on correcting
damage done by erosion, heavy traffic on
trails, and other problems brought about
when a natural woodland is disturbed.”
Outside the scope of problems con­
sidered by the task force has been the future
impact of the Blue Route and the inter­
change planned on Baltimore Pike and of
traffic on the various feeder roads, including
Route 320 (Chester Road), which traverses
the campus.
These final negotiations cap a twentyfive-year struggle over the expressway,
which will link Interstate 95 to the south
with the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the
north. Plans originally presented by PennDOT in 1961 would have had the road
following Crum Creek and passing under
the railroad trestle on campus. Since then
PennDOT has altered the path of the
highway, moving it slightly to the west away
from Crum Creek.
Bids for work on this section of the Blue
Route are scheduled to be let this spring.
Construction is expected to take two years.

C ollege appoints new
physical education chair
Robert E. Williams, director of physical
education at Amherst College, has been
named chair of the Department of Physical
Education and Athletics, effective July 1.
Williams succeeds David Smoyer, who
left the College last year for a position at the
Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury,
Mass. Since that time Professor Eleanor
“Pete” Hess has served as acting chair.
At Amherst, Williams serves also as head
coach of men’s and women’s cross country
and the indoor and outdoor track and field
teams. Before joining Amherst, he was
chairman of college and community recrea­
tion, track and field coach, and professor of
physical education at Rutgers University.
Williams is president of the NCAA Divi­
sion III Coaches Association and, as a
member of the curriculum development
committee of The Athletics Congress, is de­
APRIL 1987

veloping a curriculum to educate track and
field coaches.
He and his wife Thema, a speech thera­
pist, have three children.

Robert E. Williams

Field hockey w ins
national ranking
The 1986 women’s field hockey team was
ranked in the top twenty this season—
eleventh in the nation and fourth regionally.
Ranking mania began at the end of Sep­
tember, after the team had won five of its
first six games, losing only to Glassboro
State.
After the team notched three more vic­
tories in early October, it was apparent that
Swarthmore would be nationally ranked.
Despite a heartbreaking conference loss to
Elizabethtown in the final fifteen seconds,
Swarthmore was 7-2 halfway through the
season. On Oct. 7 the regional rankings
placed Swarthmore sixth and Elizabeth­
town second. The next day the national
rankings were released: Swarthmore was
ranked sixteenth.
The Garnet continued to win, sailing
through the next five games with four
shutouts. Traveling to the Seven Sisters
Tournament, held at Wellesley, the Garnet
blew out Vassar (5-1), Smith (5-0), and in
the finals beat Wellesley (2-1) to win the
tournament.
At the end of the season, Swarthmore
won the All-College Tournament by de­
feating Beaver (2-1), Penn State Ogontz
(2-0), and Philadelphia Bible (2-1). Based
on their performance in the tournament, an
unprecedented five Swarthmore players
were named to the Philadelphia Association
of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women

(PAIAW) All-Star Team. The Garnet ath­
letes named were sweeper Sue Swearer ’87,
midfielders Ann Fetter ’88 and Pam Pierce
’88, and forwards Barb Hayslett ’87 and
Amory Hunnewell ’87.
In its first year in the Middle Atlantic
Conference (MAC), the Garnet earned a
playoff berth by finishing second to Eliza­
bethtown in the Southeast League. Travel­
ing to Madison, N.J., to face Fairleigh
Dickinson, the Garnet lost its first game
after thirteen consecutive victories. Fair­
leigh Dickinson continued to the semifinals,
where they lost to eventual MAC cham­
pions Messiah College.
This season was destined to be a dis­
tinguished year for two reasons. The team
was coming off a ten-game winning streak
from the 1985 season and, with the loss of
only two seniors from the 1985 squad,
fourteen experienced upperclassmen (nine
seniors and five juniors) were left to lead the
team. With three capable goalkeepers from
last year, the squad also developed defensive
depth. When starting goalkeeper senior
Kelly Werhane broke her sternum, for
instance, sophomores Jessica Wagner and
Anne Batman comfortably filled her ab­
sence. Sweeper Sue Swearer added an extra
line of protection on defense. Swearer was
named Athlete of the Month by the Dugout
Club of West Chester. This award is pre­
sented to an athlete (male or female) who
demonstrates outstanding ability and char­
acter.

Edw in Faulkner, form er
tennis coach, dies
Legendary tennis Hall of Fame coach
Edwin J. (Ed) Faulkner died Jan. 9 at his
home in Winter Park, Fla. He was 87.
He came to Swarthmore in 1929, retiring
in 1970 as professor of physical education
after leading his Swarthmore tennis teams to
nine MAC conference championships, two
co-championships, and three Southern D i­
vision titles. The 1968 team also won the
first Atlantic Coast Regional Competition
of the NCAA College Division.
Faulkner coached five U.S. Davis Cup
teams (1924, 1925, 1926, 1932, and 1964),
three of which were champions. He also
served as coach of Junior Davis Cup teams
and Wightman Cup teams, and two Davis
Cup teams from foreign countries (Spain, in
1923, and champion France, in 1927).
His final trip to campus was in 1981,
when he returned to attend the dedication of
the Faulkner Tennis Courts. A memorial
fund in Faulkner’s honor has been estab­
lished at the College.
17

Photophobia
ODES TO ANXIETY
By Nathalie F Anderson
»

We all know a bit about
phobias, enough to know
how arbitrary the feared
object can be, but I imagine
few of us realize how many
phobias are com m on
enough to have names.
When I stumbled on a list
of them w hile thumbing
through a thesaurus last
spring at the Yaddo writers’
colony in Saratoga Springs,
N.Y., I was stunned to find
three packed columns, over 270 specific
fears. Some were familiar—claustrophobia,
agoraphobia, fear of heights, fear of vicious
dogs— but others were unbelievably bi­
zarre— fear of string, fear of flutes. My first
response was to wonder how a person could
possibly fear string. What traumas, what
associations could ever make it fearful? And
then I thought: Anxiety really is my subject;
I ought to write about these.
Freud is fairly consistent— and predict­
able— about phobias. His 1916 lecture on
anxiety provides a particularly poignant
summation: “A longing felt in the dark is
transformed into a fear of the dark.” A
phobia, that is, transforms unemployable
libido into “apparently realistic anxiety” by
displacing the emotion to “an external
object or situation.” This displacement of
emotion to “an external object or situation”
sounds surprisingly familiar to students of
poetry. Here, for example, is T S. Eliot’s
famous statement from his 1919 essay on
H am let
“The only way of expressing emotion in
the form of art is by finding an ‘objective
correlative’; in other words, a set of objects,
a situation, a chain of events which shall be
the formula of that particular emotion; such
that when the external facts, which must
terminate in sensory experience, are given,
the emotion is immediately evoked.”
We might think of phobias, then, as ob­
APRIL 1987

jective correlatives, sinister equivalents for
suspect longings. The difference between
neurosis and art is that the poet looks for the
adequate symbol, while the phobic’s
emotion—and indeed this is Eliot’s criticism
of H am let— is disproportionate to its
correlative.
Now, the way I write ordinarily is very
much in the Romantic or Modernist
tradition: “emotion recollected in tranquil­
ity,” the search for an adequate objective
correlative for my own emotions. This
doesn’t mean that readers necessarily
discover secrets about me from my work,
but however the detail may change in the
process of composition, the source of my
poetry has always been my life. Writing
about these phobias has been intriguing
because—even though I use my emotions
and my experiences— I begin NOT from
my own feelings and perceptions, but from
the objective correlative, attempting to fill
an alien equivalence, so to speak, with
convincing emotion.
To do this, I spent a lot of time at Yaddo
literally playing with string, trying to play
the flute, and watching clouds. I imagined
situations in which string, for example,
might become fearsome, recalling related
things that seemed creepy to me already.
Although I did a lot of playing with string,
and a fair amount of reading—about what
happens when we blush, for instance— I did

no scholarly research on
phobias themselves, though
I’d read Freud’s Introduc­
tory Lectures some months
before. I have no idea how
those who suffer from these
peculiar phobias actually
experience their anxiety. But
as I experimented, I realized
how readily I cou ld be
afraid o f any o f these in­
offensive things— indeed,
at certain moments I was
afraid of them. Disconcerting!
In writing the poems, I relied more than
I ever had before on a thesaurus and various
encyclopedias and dictionaries, including
the Oxford English Dictionary, to build up
a related vocabulary— related by sound as
well as meaning. I figured that the poems
should be intense, and that one way of
building intensity is through a Hopkins-like
fabric of alliteration and repetition. My
work sheets for these poems crowded with
jostling words and phrases, as free associa­
tion led me to entry after entry, to strange
researches, to unexpected etymologies. The
process was serendipitous, exhilarating.
Reading the poems, at Swarthmore and
elsewhere, is exhilarating too— not least
because every audience offers new phobia
stories. Here’s my favorite: A man, the greatuncle of Swarthmore Humanities Librarian
Steve Lehmann, so feared unattached
buttons that, when he asked his niece to
remove one from the table, he offered her a
tissue so that she wouldn’t have to touch it.
Turn the page, if you dare.
Nathalie F Anderson is an assistant pro­
fessor o f English literature at Swarthmore
College. Although she is fascinated by the
psychology o f anxieties, she admits to having
no phobias o f her own. H er first book o f
poems, My Hand My Only Map, was pub­
lished by House o f K eys Press in 1978.
41

C L IN O P H O B IA /F E A R O F G O I N G T O B E D

Here's the toad. Here's the edge of the well. Steeped
leaves, steep water. Still noctambulist.
Bolt hole. Bed rock. Never see, never go
under. Yes you will. Shut eye. Drowse. Drown.
Cock light. Burrow. What's quick? What's mired? Quilt
crawls. Flicks. Licks the dust. Gulch. Gully.
Bed fast. Bed fellow. Never stir, never
stare. Yes you will. Twitch toad. Rattle bones.
Oh toad. No kiss, no golden ball. No one
loves you. Yes it will. Quilt's rucked, rumpled.
Something seethes. Something shivers. Jaws unhinge.
Yes you will. Like stone. Kick toad. Leap frog.

L IN O N O P H O B IA /F E A R O F S T R IN G

Tow-head. Its two ends frayed innocent
as her cotton hair, fluffed with upbraiding.
Wound once, wound twice around, yanked: her finger
white above, red below the lank bow. So,
she said. So next time don't forget. Balls, balls
of it. Loose in the drawer. Twining. Forget
it, she said. When they pulled the ivy off
the screens its hands kept the grip like that, deft
efts; kept fingering the grating; pointing
the way. Yanked her braids from her mouth: sucking
the ends again. So limp. So thin. Drop it
she said. Don't flinch. Dingy, a hank of it
stirs. Something, the sizing, sours, sets her teeth
on edge. Blind worm. Slow worm. Impossible
salamanders. Next time. What could she say.

A U L O P H O B IA /F E A R O F F L U T E S

Right or wrong. Three silver birches
bar the window. So nearly straight.
Wind thin as a shiv. Desperate
teeth behind their silver bar.
Grasp and twist. Silver splits, shreds, flays.
Diminuendo. Lips blister,
stops spew hoarse waxy curds. Spiked through,
the rag's scummy. Trill. Tremolo.
Keen, you were keen. Tense. Again tense.
Keep it shrill. Knife at the teeth, wind
like a shiv. Upright, unfallen.
Silver birch. Silver blade. Spike. Bleb.
N E P H O P H O B IA /F E A R O F C L O U D S

Dead calm. They're on you before you feel them.
Flecked with them. Reek of the invisible
rasp, the livid trail. The sky's glaucous, blotched
with gleet. Creeping. Creeping.
Maggots. Slugs. Leeches. Pasty wraiths bloated,
leaden. And shifty—torpid turns turbid,
roils and spits, banks off into blear. Grizzled.
They're on you. Scuts, scuts spuming.
As the driven snow? as fleece? as feathers?
Sluts. Sluttish. On you before you feel them.
The brackish snuffle. Invisible rasp.
Slinking. Dissolute. Smut. Smut.
42

K O N IO P H O B IA /F E A R O F D U S T

Pick-face. Chapped, itching towards smoothness; blisters
crusted; scab shucking bark; burnt white on red,
mica-brittle, mica-sheer; foxed corners
of a damp mouth: skin crumbs under her nail.
Skint. Brows fretted, stubble plucked thin, lashes
fished for. Scalp scratched clear of scurf; nose chafed, buffed,
fingered, thumbed, molted. Rusty blood chipped, hairs
scraped out in loving. Stale sleep scaled away.
What powders her face in the glass. What clouds
her pillow, breathless. What thickens, listless,
at the foot of the bed. What stares her down.
Defaced. Disfigured. Her mouth. Her eyes.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

G R IN G O P H O B IA /F E A R O F G R I N G O S

Who goes? Scouting the backlands, saw the planes—
our planes—fist through the valleys, dodging spit.
Redfin swayed. Grass rattled. Sheep ducked their horns.
Leathered black, knuckled brass sneers. My planes.
As the train held its breath, heard voices— ours—
spelling it out for the slow ones. Back home:
back home's not like this. White-bread terrorists.
Atomic showers. That's right. My voice.

H Y D R O P H O B O P H O B I A /F E A R O F R A B IES

Hsst. Hsst. Pasty words on a pasty tongue.
Choke it. Hold the maggots in. Hang-dog scab
at the trash heap, hot to eat dirt.
Who goes? Only fJOnly vile I.

Miss Mulligan slavering bulldog jaws
at the seventh graders. "This long." Hands six,
eight inches apart: how they stick you. Fang
in the belly. Even the spit will do.
Blackie's a sweet pup, yips, nips heels, needles
the hand that feeds her. Bitch. Skewer her lip
they will, prick, pick, though she whimpers. Festers.
Scratched throats spasm, snarl at the bars, at what
pokes through. Cur. They'll cage you, skewer you, mutt,
though you yip, yelp, foam to a fit. Milk tooth,
snaggle tooth. Sharp as a tack. Dog-dirty.
Lick-spittle. Mongrel. Mutt. Miss Mulligan knows.

C Y M O P H O B IA /F E A R O F W AVES

Happy baby. Bobbing. Strong arm. Slap. Hard
water. Bottle-green swells smack, splatter. Chuck
the chin. Bluster. Rip-roaring rumpus. Scutched.
Scuttled. Fathomless undertone.
Mumble. Mutter. Hugging the shore. An arm
to step over. A finger. Toddler. Hand
on the ankle. Grip, gripe. Carom. Cuff. Crest.
Sea legs knee-deep. Spanking. Spanking.
Sullen. Sullen. Muscled shallows hunch, hump
at the bunk bed. Shrimp. Squirt. Grunt. Grumble. Grim
bone-bruiser. Shunter. Lurcher. Breaker. No
kidding around. Knock down drag out. Keeps.

G Y M N O P H O B IA /F E A R O F N U D I T Y

Above us the Disco-Bats flicked their privates:
open, shut. Nothing we hadn't seen before.
Sequined, celestial: sissy-folk slip out, in.
Bird women. Fly-boys. Starkers, snootfull of smooch.
Hoodwinked? Ha! Nothing we hadn't tried. False face,
nudish: each pricked veil, each spangled spread. Diddling
disguises—nothing we hadn't worn: romance,
lubricity. Cupid's eye-patch, coruscant.
Fly-by-nights. Short-falls. Bats swallow
their pleasures. Lippy muzzles, scintillant,
leap to the eye. Under the suck-guttle,
under the glut: feel it—the crawling skin.
BROM IDROSIPHOBIA/FEAR OF BO D Y O D O R

Man on the bus has three thick scarves.
What s behind it? No mouth. No nose.
Little pig eyes. Don't be rude. Don't
hold your breath. Maybe he'll pass you by.
Edge of the tub you catch it. Where?
Armpit. Armpit. No. Is it your
hair? Nipple? Navel? Soap up. Soak
a long time. Cup your hands. Catch your breath.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY BOB WOOD
APRIL 1987

Whenever he moves you catch it.
Sucking drain. Hand to your mouth it's
a long aisle. Snout. Snout. Soap up, soap
again. What’s behind it? Pig eyes.
43

Inside the Navajo-Hopi
land dispute
Forced relocation forecloses
traditional lifestyle for thousands
By Robbie Liben ’83

carved a vertical canyon fifty feet deep in
n March 1986 I quit my job in Seattle
places. There is sagebrush all around, and
and went to live with a Navajo Indian
juniper and pinyon pines cover the hills. The
family in the Southwestern commu­
nearest neighbors are about a mile away.
nity of Big Mountain. My hosts, Alice
and Joe Benally, aged 68 and 80, are two My primary occupation here is herding
the Benallys’ fifty to sixty sheep and goats.
of the more than 14,000 native Americans
This entails taking them out of their corral
who were ordered out of their homes by a
for about three hours in the morning and in
1974 act of Congress intended to settle an
the evening. There is a watering hole in the
alleged land dispute between the Navajo
valley about a mile away. Since I’ve been
and Hopi.
here, about twenty goats have been born.
Over the past ten years, nearly 2,200
The idea is to keep individual sheep and
Indian families have been relocated by the
goats from getting lost and to protect them
federal government, but the Benallys and
from coyotes. This is easier than it sounds
thousands of others refuse to leave their
because whenever one gets separated from
homes. It is the largest forced-relocation
the herd, it bleats very loudly. To get the
program attempted in this country since the
herd to move in the direction you want, you
mass internment of Japanese-Americans
wave a stick and urge them on with a
during World War II.
“whoosh” sound. I feel more like a cop
Alice Benally is a cheerful woman who
directing traffic than like Little Bo-peep.
laughs a lot. She also is strong; Alice and her
The hardest part is getting them back into
daughters were among the first to try to
the corral. That’s when they act as if they
block crews building a partition fence across
haven’t eaten all day, even though they
their land. Joe Benally is a quiet man who
have. I enjoy herding because I am outside
takes much pleasure from tending his sheep,
all day walking among the hills and \ illeys.
goats, cattle, and horses. They welcomed
It affords me a pleasing measure of solitude.
me to their family almost as another son.
In early June the watering hole dried up.
I refer to Alice and Joe as Grandma and
It has done so only for the past few
Grandpa, as is the Diñé (Navajo) custom.
summers. The people here say it dries up
Diñé means “the people.” It is what the
because of mining by the Peabody Coal Co.
Navajo prefer to call themselves.
at Black Mesa, thirty miles away.
To transport coal Peabody uses a slurry
A pastoral life
line that swallows as much as 3 million
When I first arrived, I stayed with the
gallons of water per day5— an immense
Benallys in their hogan. A hogan is an eight­
amount for a desert area. The water table
sided log house caulked with mud. It is
has dropped so much that wells and water­
beautiful and surprisingly spacious. The
ing holes that once were used year-round
Benallys’ hogan is situated on a low hill,
now dry up in the summer.
with the broad Dinnebito Valley to the east
The water we use for drinking and
and a smaller valley to the west. The valleys
washing is carted from a well twelve miles
merge to the south to form a vista that
away. It would have been too expensive to
extends for 100 miles, past the Hopi mesas,
haul water for the sheep, though, so we
to the San Francisco peaks near Flagstaff.
moved them to a new camp about fifteen
These mountains are the highest points in
miles away, near a windmill that still pumps
Arizona and are snow-capped through
water.
June. To the north is Big Mountain.
The relocation act mandates a 90 percent
Dinnebito Wash runs through the valley.
reduction
in all livestock, supposedly to stop
It is a riverbed that usually is dry, but has

I

44

Led by their elders, thousands o f Navajo and Hopi
Indians are determined to resist relocation, rather
than abandon their subsistencefarm ing lifestyles.

overgrazing. I’m not sure I’d recognize
overgrazed land, but I find it hard to believe
that any ecosystem could support ten times
its carrying capacity for long enough to
warrant such a drastic stock reduction.
The Benally family used to have over 200
sheep and goats in their flock. But all of the
Indians here had to sell off their “extra”
livestock, or they would be seized. The
Benallys’ flock has grown, however, so that
it is illegally oversized again. As a sheep
herder I must be alert to the danger of BIA
(Bureau of Indian Affairs) or Hopi police
attempting to seize my flock, as well as to
the threat posed by coyotes.
Sheep are essential to the Navajo way of
life. They provide food, clothing, and trad­
ing goods, and they are used in religious
ceremonies. The Navajo used to be almost
completely self-sufficient. (I’m told that no
one here paid much attention to the Great
Depression because no one was directly
affected by it.) Now, without donations,
(Continued on page 46)
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

A history
of exploitation
Energy interests may
lie beneath relocation effort
By Robbie Liben ’83
he Hopi and Navajo Indians have
lived side by side in peace for
centuries. The Hopi live in villages
atop mesas and farm nearby. The
Navajo (Dine) are somewhat nomadic,
traveling throughout the surrounding area
with their herds of sheep, goats, and cattle
as the seasons change.
The Hopi are descended from the Anasazi, “the Ancient Ones,” who disappeared
from the area about 1,000 years ago. Some
Navajo say they are Anasazi descendants,
too, although white anthropologists say the
Navajo migrated here around 1400. The
first recorded encounter between the Na­
vajo and whites came in 1583, when they
met Spanish explorers at Jeddito Bluff, in
the area now disputed.1 The Spaniards
named them the Apache de Navajo.
The history of the present land conflict
dates back to 1863, when most of the
Navajo were rounded up by Kit Carson,
sent on the famous “Longest Walk,” and
imprisoned at the Bosque Redondo concen­
tration camp in Fort Sumner, N.M. (This
camp allegedly was used later as a model for
Nazi concentration camps. Hitler, it is said,
had great respect for the way Americans
dealt with their “Indian problem.”2) In
return for ceding most of their homeland,
the Navajo were released five years later and
given a small reservation stradling the Ariz­
ona-New Mexico border. Still, many Na­
vajo migrated back to their homelands,
including land near Hopi villages.
At the time, there was compulsory edu­
cation for Hopi children provided by the
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Be­
cause of Hopi resistance, armed truant
officers sometimes took Hopi children from
their parents and sent them to boarding
schools as far away as Albuquerque.1 Some
were kept away for years at a time until they
lost their Hopi culture.2
When two whites were enlisted to help
the Hopi resist compulsory white education
in the 1880s, the BIA agent in charge of the
nearby Navajo reservation tried to arrest

T

JOINT USE AREA and HOPI RESERVATION
JU A BO U N D ARY

Big Mountain

The land in dispute, known as
the Joint Use Area (JUA),
occupies nearly 3,000 square
miles in the Four Comers
region o f the Southwest. The
Hopi Reservation is surrounded
by the JUA, which is shown as
a black rectangle on the map
above. Both lie within bound­
aries o f the larger Navajo
Reservation, shown in gray.
White
Cove

E3 Navajo (Side of Partition Line) m
APRIL 1987

Hopi (Side of Partition Line)

(Continued on page 48)

About 100 Hopi and 14,000 Navajo Indians living
on the wrong side o f the partition fence erected by
thefederal government have been ordered to relocate.

(Continued from page 44)

there isn’t enough food to sustain them.
Seizing or forcing the reduction of their
flocks means starving the people off the
land.
There is plenty of other harassment as
well. I have seen fighter jets roar by on
numerous occasions. At other times I only
hear their sonic booms. Also there is a new
type of purple grass here that the sheep and
goats refuse to eat. It has been reported in
the area for only three to four years, but it
seems to be taking over much rangeland.
The Navajo say they’ve seen aircraft drop­
ping seed for it. Starving the sheep is one
more way to remove the people.
Why are people like me here? Navajo
culture is communally oriented. Relatives
and neighbors help each other with what

needs to be done. Soon after I arrived, we
sheared the sheep, for instance, and women
living nearby came to help. But so many
Navajo have been relocated that the social
fabric is wearing thin. Those resisting relo­
cation are having a hard time living as they
are accustomed because their community
supports are being removed. That is why I
am here— to help with the day-to-day tasks
that were done by the relatives and neigh­
bors who now are absent.

The resistance
In 1979 seventy elders from the Big Moun­
tain area gathered together to create the
Sovereign Dine Nation (SDN). They de­
clared their independence from the United
States and the Navajo Tribal Council. They
claim the right to self-determination as an
autonomous people and maintain that the

officials of Arizona, the U.S., Hopi, and
Navajo governments have no authority “to
intrude on or disrupt sacred lands at Big
Mountain.”10
Over the past eight years, SDN has been
a source of strength and security for Navajo
determined to resist relocation. During the
late ’70s and early ’80s, as the partition fence
was being built, there were several confron­
tations with the fencing crews and the police
assisting them. These confrontations were
led predominantly by the elder women,
who are at the center of the struggle. They
are the glue that holds the resistance to­
gether.
Alice Benally and her three daughters
have been maced, wrestled to the ground,
and arrested for pulling up fence posts on
their land. During a demonstration in Win­
dow Rock, Ariz.— the capital of the Navajo
Nation— Alice Benally was beaten by po­
lice.
What is the solution to this dilemma?
First, the repeal of the Navajo/Hopi Land
Resettlement Act of 1974. That has been the
focus of the energies of the Big Mountain
Legal Defense/Offense Committee for the
past several years. More recently, the In
Defense of Sacred Lands Project has been
fighting relocation with a lawsuit based on
First Amendment rights, arguing that the
land in dispute is essential to Navajo reli­
gious ceremonies. The first strategy, if suc­
cessful, would win this battle, while the
second would make any future Indian
relocation efforts much more difficult.
But the ultimate goal is self-determina­
tion for both the Hopi arid the Navajo:
Remove U.S. jurisdiction and disband the
BIA-controlled tribal councils so that Indi­
ans here (and elsewhere) can return to their
subsistence-farming lifestyle. That’s why I
see the SDN as the most positive approach.
It was organized and is controlled by tribal
elders, not imposed from the outside as the
tribal councils were. The SDN faces a long
and hard struggle.
Peabody Coal stands to gain $55 billion
if it wins rights to strip-mine the 1.8 million
acres in the Joint Use Area (JUA). Even if
the company were to spend several million
dollars on lobbying and legal fees, those
costs would still amount to less than 0.01
percent of their potential gains. Already the
federal government has spent over $500
million on relocation.4 While their oppo­
nents may seem overwhelming, the Navajo
feel they must fight. They have nowhere else
to go if they want to preserve their tradi­
tional way of life.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

•sert

ALL PHOTOS: DAN BUDNIK/WOODFIN CAMP & ASSOC.

After the deadline
The relocation act set July 7, 1986, as the
deadline for removing the last of the Navajo
still living on disputed land— about 350
families. That day 600 to 800 people
marched about 1% miles from the Dinnebito Trading Post to the partition fence for
a rally. Another 200 to 300 gathered twelve
miles up the road for a prayer vigil at the
original site of resistance to the partition
fence. There were protests all over the JUA
that day.
Among the marchers from Dinnebito
were some of the famed World War II
Navajo code talkers. At one point, Roberta
Blackgoat, an elder, pulled out a bolt cutter,
yelled, “I’m an outlaw,” and started cutting
down the partition fence. Many people
joined in, including me. It was quite a
release for the anger and frustration we’d all
been feeling.
The only confrontations with the police
that I’ve witnessed came in late July. Joe
Benally and I were sleeping in the hogan
when a friend from SDN security woke us
in the night. He said that eight Navajo tribal
police cars were converging on Big Moun­
tain, without their lights on, and some police
were coming up our hill on foot. Joe and I
went to watch from the woods. From there
we could hear them walking through the
woods with their walkie-talkies. It was
frightening because we didn’t know their
intentions.
We saw them drive away a little later.
Then my friend came back to tell us that
SDN security had disarmed the Navajo
police and ordered them away. Guns, drugs,
and alcohol are prohibited by the SDN.
The next morning helicopters buzzed the
area, and twelve police cars and a SWAT
team were deployed across the wash. Many
of the people in the resistance fled into the
hills, fearing that this was the beginning of
the end. Three of us accompanied Louise,
one of Alice and Joe Benally’s daughters,
down to the wash to talk with the police.
The sergeant in charge claimed that his
men had gotten lost the night before, and
they had come back to retrieve their wea­
pons. Alice Benally arrived with several
grandchildren in tow and marched down
across the wash. She talked with the ser­
geant for a while in Navajo, and soon the
police left. We learned later that, as we were
talking, the police had crossed the wash
again (out of their jurisdiction) to arrest a
member of SDN security nearby.
In early August a group of Hopi K ikmongwis (religious leaders) organized a
commemoration of the Hopi-Navajo friend­
ship pact that dates from 1600. They said it
was a “remembrance of the prophecies
APRIL 1987

passed down that we are to be at peace with
the Navajo.” About 500 Navajo and Hopi
participated in the event.
What will happen next? The BIA says
that no one will be forced to relocate until
there is housing available. I take that to
mean that they will continue trying to move
one family at a time, even though the legal
deadline for complete relocation has come
and gone.

Update, March 1987
Efforts to repeal the 1974 relocation act are
on hold. The focus now is on a U.S. Senate
bill sponsored by Alan Cranston of Califor­
nia calling for an eighteen-month morato­
rium on forced relocation. This bill is
important because it calls for an advisory
committee including “two traditional lead­
ers of the Hopi people” and “two represen­
tatives of elders facing relocation.” This is
the first legislation ever to give the tradi­
tional Indian people their say. Once their
voices are heard, Congress may be more
inclined to repeal the relocation act.

Additional forced relocations are pro­
hibited until more housing is available. The
relocation commission expects the needed
housing to be ready by January. Since July’s
deadline the situation on the land has not
changed much. The number of police on the
reservation has increased, though, and ha­
rassment has been stepped up. BIA police
allegedly have been removing key parts
from windmills— they call these “water
diversion projects.” Partition fencing has
continued, too. People forced off the land by
such tactics must sign up for a “voluntary
move.”
While saying it will not force Navajo
families off the land, the Hopi Tribal Coun­
cil insists it will protect Hopi homesteaders
in the disputed territory. Recently, and more
ominously, the Council expressed interest in
acquiring the land occupied by Katherine
Smith and Pauline Whitesinger, two Navajo
elders central to the resistance.
For now, at least, the traditional Navajo
and Hopi people are standing together.
They will not be moved without a fight. dHk,

To the Navajo, who consider the Earth sacred, being forced o ff their land means losing their culture.
47

(Continued from page 45)

them. But since the Hopi villages were not
then part of any reservation, the BIA agent
had no authority to make arrests there.1 He
quickly secured an executive order from
Washington, D.C., however, creating a
reservation “for the use of Moqui [Hopi]
and other such Indians as the Secretary of
the Interior may see fit to settle thereon.”3
The two whites then were escorted away.
Thus, contrary to popular belief, the reser­
vation created in 1882 was not established
to protect the Hopi from the Navajo, but to
evict two white “troublemakers.”
The 1882 reservation is an arbitrary rec­
tangle, having little to do with Indian reality.
It includes Navajo areas and excludes some
Hopi villages. Only 300 to 600 Navajo were
living there at the time, and the BIA agent
in charge wrote, “The best of good feelings
generally exist between the two tribes.”1
Since then, however, thousands of Navajo
have been pushed west from New Mexico
by white settlers. Though the Navajo reser­
vation has expanded, the Navajo have been
squeezed closer to the Hopi than they were
in the past. This pressure has caused minor
conflicts between Navajo and Hopi neigh­
bors.
In 1921 oil was discovered on the Navajo
reservation. Standard Oil sought to obtain a
drilling lease there, but Navajo elders un­
animously rejected the request, 75-0.4 Since
“Mother Earth” is a sacred living being to
the Navajo, most are adamantly opposed to
oil drilling and strip mining— activities they
see as raping the land.
One of the BIA’s mandates is develop­
ment of Indian resources, however, and the
BIA apparently decided a more responsive
Navajo governing body was needed. In
1922 the BIA set up a tribal council of three
men willing to sign leases with Standard
Oil.4 The same political entity governs the
Navajo reservation today.
The Hopi were saddled with their tribal
council in much the same way. By Hopi
tradition, community decisions are reached
by consensus. Dissenters simply don’t par­
ticipate. When the Hopi supposedly voted
“for” a constitution written for them by the
BIA, only a small fraction of them actually
voted.5 With 250 eligible voters in Hotevilla, Ariz., for example, the tally was just
twelve for the constitution and one against.
This vote was good enough to make it legal
and binding, but those familiar with Hopi
culture recognized it as a resounding defeat.
Since 1933, ownership of mineral rights
on the 1882 reservation has been in ques­
tion. In the 1950s, when federal studies
indicated that major coal and uranium de­
posits might lie beneath reservation land,

the question came to a head. A 1962 federal
court ruling carved out a 650,000-acre
portion of the reservation for exclusive Hopi
use and declared that the Navajo and Hopi
tribes had “joint and undivided” property
rights in the remaining 1.8 million-acre area,
since known as the Joint Use Area (JUA).
Between 500 and 1,000 Navajo caught
within the newly drawn Hopi reservation
boundaries were ordered out. In 1972 the
government removed fifteen remaining Na­
vajo families.6
Joint use was not acceptable, though, to
the Hopi Tribal Council and its longtime
attorney John S. Boyden. While represent­
ing the Hopi, Boyden’s Salt Lake City law
firm at times also represented the Peabody
Coal Co. In 1966 Peabody, the nation’s
largest coal company, paid the Navajo just
$100,000 and the Hopi only $10 for the
right to strip-mine coal from 65,000 acres in

ThePeabody Coal Co. has strip-mined65,000acres
bordering on the JUA. A n estimated 18 billion
tons o f coal lie within six fe et o f the surface there.

the Black Mesa area of the JUA and the
adjacent Navajo reservation (see maps).
The royalty rates were set at a meager 15 to
37 cents per ton, compared with $1.50 or
more per ton paid landowners elsewhere.7
Mining Indian lands is lucrative not only
because mineral rights usually are sold at
extremely low prices, but also because
federal environmental protection laws do
not apply to reservations.1
Peabody was anxious to secure rights to
strip-mine, as well, the remainder of the
estimated 18 billion tons of coal lying within
six feet of the surface in JUA. But the coal
company resisted negotiating joint mineral
leases with the Hopi and the Navajo and
instead pushed for partition of the JUA.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Partition apparently was more desirable to
Peabody because it would remove Indians
from the land under the guise of a tribal land
dispute, rather than for strip-mining pur­
poses.
In the early 1970s, at the request of the
Hopi Tribal Council, a federal court ordered
Navajo in the JUA to reduce their livestock
herds by 90 percent. To force the Navajo
into compliance the BIA froze construction
within the JUA, including home repair and
water-well drilling. With their sheep and
cattle dying from lack of water and forage,
some Navajo herded their stock onto Hopi
land. The Hopi Tribal Council responded by
hiring guards to patrol reservation borders
and impound trespassing Navajo livestock.
As might be expected, these actions led to
occasional confrontations and threats of
violent retaliation.
These border altercations soon took on
the mythic proportions of a “range war,”
when packaged for the media by a public
relations firm retained by the Hopi Tribal
Council. Evans and Associates, a Salt Lake
City PR firm, reportedly arranged Hopi
round-ups of Navajo livestock for TV cam­
era crews and supplied newspapers with
photos of burned corrals and shot-up water
tanks.4 While representing the Hopi Tribal
Council, Evans and Associates represented
also a group of twenty-three electric utility
companies anxious to gain access to the coal
beneath Black Mesa in the JUA, then
estimated to be worth over $55 billion.1
Congress and its Arizona delegation (sup­
posedly experts on this “local matter”)
apparently were taken in by this alleged
range war. In December 1974 Congress
passed the Navajo/Hopi Land Resettlement
Act. It directed a federal court to partition
the JUA equally between the two tribes.
Indians on the wrong side of the partition
line were ordered to relocate. This included
about 100 Hopi and 14,000 Navajo. The
court also froze building in the JUA, includ­
ing repairs to existing structures, and man­
dated a 90 percent livestock reduction,
supposedly to stop overgrazing.
It was intended to be a humane reloca­
tion program. Those relocated were to be
given homes elsewhere, fair market value
for their existing homes, and a $5,000 cash
incentive. The effects, however, have been
devastating.
Some relocated Indians have been
housed on the reservation, but the majority
have been moved to border towns, such as
Flagstaff and Winslow, Ariz. These people
who, as sheep herders, have had little to do
with a money economy now are being
forced to pay taxes and pay for food, water,
and heat. Since most of the older Indians
APRIL 1987

don’t speak English and have no marketable
skills, it is easy to understand why many
have fallen into financial trouble fairly
quickly and often have been forced to
mortgage their homes.
They have been ready victims for real
estate and financial sharks. Annual interest
rates as high as 67 percent have been
charged. By 1983 more than 50 percent of
the homes acquired by those relocated in
and around Flagstaff, Ariz., had been sold.
Another 37 percent had liens on their homes
of $10,000 or more.4
Support for Future Generations, a reloca­
tion resistance group, rents a house in
Flagstaff as a base for support workers. I
stayed there for three weeks when I first
came to the Southwest. The reality of
relocation hit me when I was told the house
originally belonged to a relocated family
that later lost it. The whole neighborhood
was built during the last ten years for those
relocated, but the only Indian faces I ever
saw there were in the support house itself.
The financial problems of the relocated,
bad as they are, are not the most severe
consequence of relocation. The Earth is
sacred to the Navajo, as it is to most Indian
cultures. To be forced off the land means
losing one’s religion, culture, and family.
“In our traditional tongue there is no
word for relocation. To move away means
to disappear and never be seen again,”
explains Navajo elder Pauline Whitesinger.
Relocation is as alien a concept to the
Navajo as the concept of the Earth as a
living, breathing organism is to most
whites.5 There are countless stories of an­
guish, illness, and even death associated
with the forced relocation of the Navajo. To
them relocation is a form of genocide, and
“humane relocation” is a contradiction in
terms.
How do the Hopi view the situation? It
depends on which Hopi you ask. The Hopi
Tribal Council strongly supports relocation.
They are considered “progressive” Hopi
because they see strip mining and related
economic development as important for the
tribe.
The head of the Hopi Tribal Council,
Ivan Sidney, maintains that Navajo have
been raiding Hopi settlements since the
early 1800s and cites complaints of “Navajo
depredations” as the reason for their im­
prisonment in the Bosque Redondo concen­
tration camp in 1863. Sidney further claims
that the 1882 reservation was created “for
the exclusive use of the Hopi Indians”8 to
protect them from “Navajo encroachment.”
Because of failed federal efforts at removing
trespassers, Sidney says, by 1934 the Navajo
had acquired squatters rights to half of the

reservation.9
Sidney sees Navajo resistance to reloca­
tion as simply an effort to get more federal
money for the tribe. The Hopi Tribal Coun­
cil has offered life estates to Navajo living on
partitioned Hopi land, but that is not accept­
able to the Navajo who, like most other
Indians, are taught to act in the best interests
of future generations.
Traditional Hopi religious leaders— the
Kikm ongwis—are very much opposed to
relocation of any Indians. The land, accord­
ing to their beliefs, cannot be owned, ex­
changed, or partitioned.5
“There is no land dispute between the
Navajo and the Hopi,” says Thomas Banyacya, a spokesperson for the Kikmongwis.
“The traditional people never recognized
the tribal councils. It is the tribal councils,
the big energy companies, and the U.S.
government who are in a dispute with the
Navajo and the Hopi. The Great Spirit
didn’t want the land dug up to create
nuclear weapons.”5
Jkk

References
1. John Redhouse, “Geopolitics of the NavajoHopi Land Dispute,” reprinted by the Big Moun­
tain Legal Defense/Offense Committee.
2. Broken Rainbow, dirs. Victoria Mudd and
Maria Florio, 1986. (Winner, 1986 Academy
Award for best documentary film.)
3. Chester Arthur, Executive Order of Dec. 16,
1882.
4. Andy Zipser, “The New Indian Wars,” New
Times, five-part series beginning Nov. 20,1985.
5. Jerry Mander, “Kit Carson in a Three-Piece
Suite,” CoEvolution Quarterly, pp. 52-63, winter
1981.
6. “For the Fourth Time: Another Navajo Re­
moval,” Big Mountain News, spring 1986.
7. Hollis Whitson and Martha Roberge, “Mov­
ing Those Indian into the Twentieth Century,”
Technology Review, July 1986.
8. “Hopi Tribal Chairman Ivan Sidney’s Testi­
mony on the Navajo-Hopi Land Exchange Act
of 1986,” Hopi Tutu-veh-ni, May 1986. (Pub­
lished by the Hopi Tribal Council.)
9. “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth Unless
They Are Hopi Indians.” (Pamphlet published
by the Hopi Tribal Council.)
10. Sovereign Dine Nation Declaration of Inde­
pendence, 1979.
For more information contact:
In Defense of Sacred Land Project
P.O. Box 1509
Flagstaff, AZ 86002
(602) 779-1560
or
Big Mountain Legal Defense/Offense
Committee
2501 N. Fourth St., Suite 18
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
(602) 774-5233
49

Alumni Weekend • June 5, 6, 7,1987
You can go home (to Alma Mater) again on Alumni Weekend!
You are invited to a
very special hou se
party w eekend
planned to entice you
back to the cam pus with
the prom ise of finding
friends and a full schedule
of diverse activities from
which to pick and ch o o se.
Or you m ay ch o o se to
stroll the Crum.

Alumni College on Campus * June 3 ,4 , 5,1987
Catch once more the intellectual
excitem ent at Swarthmore and enroll in either:
The Critical
Encounter:
The Arts and the
Art o f Criticism
With three Swarthmore
faculty and two alumni
critics, you will hone your
critical skills and apply
them to reading a modern
novel and a Shakespearean
play, viewing a film, listen­
ing to contemporary music,
and looking at a work of art.
For more information write
or phone (215-328-8402)
the Alumni Office, Swarth­
more College, Swarthmore,
PA 19081.

The Fine Art of
Gardening
In a series of lectures,
workshops, and field
trips, designed by the
Scott Arboretum, partici­
pants will learn about
trees and shrubs, peren­
nials and roses, fragrant
plants, and the garden as
an art form from a distin­
guished faculty.
For more information
write or phone (215-3288402) the Alumni Office,
Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, PA 19081.