Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1990-05-01

College Bulletin

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•

M ay 1990

At the Scottish ball
held each year,
the pipes call
reeling dancers
to fling their
annual hope to
Tarble’s roofbeams:
Lang may yer lum reek,
long may your luck hold.

COLLEGE BULLETIN • MAY 1990

2
The Totally Different W orld o f Student Teaching
It’s frustrating. It’s tiring. It’s exhilarating and fun. Student
teaching offers more than a taste o f the real world

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By M

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Editor:

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Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49

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8
Bicycling
The sport attracts racers, holiday-goers, even families with small
children— if they have a built-in roll cage on the children’s trailer.

Managing Editor:

B y J o h n S c h u b e r t ’7 4

Roger Williams

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Assistant Managing Editor:

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G il l e s p ie ’4 9

6
Emergency R oom
Hawkeye Pierce lives! The “M.A.S.H. ” character is embodied in
real-life physician Dr. Patrick Connell ’71', acting head o f
emergency medicine in an Oakland, Calif, county hospital.
By R oger W

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P r o f il e s B y M

aralyn

O r b i s o n G il l e s p ie ’4 9

Kate Downing
Editor for Copy and Class Notes:

Nancy Curran
Assistant Copy Editor:

Ann D. Geer
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: Melissa Edwards ’90 in the
classroom. Photo by J. Martin
Natvig.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume
LXXXVII, number 5, is published in
September, twice in November, and in
February, May, and August by Swarth­
more College, Swarthmore, PA 190811397. Second class postage paid at
Swarthmore, PA, and additional mailing
offices. Postmaster: Send address changes
to Swarthmore College Bulletin, Swarth­
more, PA 19081-1397.

-^rgg

16
The Consummate Politician
Carl Levin ’56 may be “Mr. Ethics. ’’And he has never lost an
election. But the Republicans have marked him for a fall in 1990.
B y P a t r ic ia E d m o n d s

. W:\
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DEPARTMENTS
20 Crostic Puzzle by Carol Dubivsky Becker ’57

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21
24
26
50
57

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The College
Class Notes
Deaths
Recent Books by Alumni
Alumni Council

The Totally Different
World of Practice Teaching
by Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
You have to get to bed by 11, just when
everybody else in the dorm is getting revved
up, so you can get up at 7 to meet your 8
o’clock class. You’re constantly being
watched. You get your hair cut a half inch,
and it’s noticed,*
Seniors Melissa Edwards and David Lebson are not morning people. “My ideal
lifestyle,” says Lebson, “would be to have
my first class at 11 and then work until two
or three in the morning.” As practice
teachers in Swarthmore’s Program in Edu­
cation, they perforce changed their nightowlish habits in order to make the transition

—

PHOTOS BY J. MARTIN NATVIG
«M l

Above: A fter a writing class, Melissa Edwards works one-onone with a student to help him strengthen his composition
Facing page: Edwards, surrounded by some o f her students,
was sometimes mistaken fo r one o f them by colleagues.

2

into the totally different workaday world.
They also agreed that Practice Teaching,
a double-credit course, and its required part­
ner, Curriculum and Methods Seminar, a
one-credit course, left little time for anything
else. While three credits is a recommended
course load for practice teachers, Edwards
also took Urban Education and Lebson
wrote a senior thesis. Lebson gained time by
giving up his Chester Tutorial work, life
guarding, and cutting rehearsals with the
a capella group 16 Feet. Edwards too sac­
rificed activities and found she “didn’t have
much of a social life” while she was teaching.
Both were responsible for teaching two
classes for 10 weeks, and a third class for five
weeks at the end of the semester.
Edwards and Lebson were supervised in
the classroom by a faculty member of the
Swarthmore Program in Education, Peter
Corcoran, and by a cooperating teacher
from the school. The Swarthmore supervisor
visited the classroom at least once a week;
the cooperating teacher sat in at least part of
the class every day. Each critiqued perfor­
mance and gave suggestions for improve­
ment. The students also kept daily journals
to record their experiences.
Both found that their experience in the
classroom put into practice the theories they
learned in their education courses and
brought into sharp focus their own educa­
tion, but there the similarities end; the
differences in teaching unrelated disciplines
and between teaching in an inner-city high
school and a suburban middle school loom
large. Edwards’ experience in the Bartram
School for Human Services, an annex of
John Bartram High School, in West Phila­
delphia, and Lebson’s in the Nether Provi­
dence Middle School in Wallingford, reveal
what is both common and dissimilar in
student teaching.
* Lisa Smulyan ’76, Assistant Professor of
Education
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

W

'hen a student understood something and
was able to explain it clearly with arguments begin the course with Steinbeck’s O f Mice
and Men, but she let Edwards choose the
that made good sense ... when it all came together,
Shakespeare play which would follow. Ed­
I think the students were happy too. ”
wards chose Othello. She thought her stu­
Melissa Edwards ’90
“In the beginning it was hell,” remembers
Edwards, who taught two English courses.
“It gets so much better towards the end. At
first I felt like I was getting 100 suggestions
[from the cooperating teacher and Swarthmore supervisor], but'near the end there
were hardly any.
“Some days you felt really discouraged.
Especially at the beginning. One day a
student came in and he was really upset, so
I had to calm him down. There were other
students to deal with. My lesson plan went
out the window. You can’t predict what will
happen and all kinds of things can set them
off—rain, snow, assembly. Just having a
nice, normal day was something to look for­
ward to.
“I learned a lot. I always got along with

the students, especially before class, when
they would tell me what they did on the
weekend, etc. After the bell rang, it was a
contest to keep things under control. They
pushed to see how far they could go and get
away with it.”
One particularly helpful device to Ed­
wards was a tape made of one of her classes.
Edwards noted in her journal: “I listened to
a tape of myself from Tuesday, and I repeat
directions too many times. I am very kindly
(too much so). I could reduce the time it
takes to quiet this class. I move around well,
but I say ’urn’ more than a few times,
particularly when beginning the lesson. I
come back to students’ comments, and I can
capture and use their interest construc­
tively.”
Edwards’ cooperating teacher in eleventh
grade English, Anita Spiegel, planned to

dents, some of whom were from mixed
marriages, would relate well to this Shake­
spearean drama. In lively class discussions
she found that the girls were especially
interested in the roles of women in the play
and in the absence of women actors during
the Elizabethan period. An entry in Ed­
wards’ journal reads: “Othello is working
out fine. Anita gave me a compliment on my
teaching yesterday. The students have read
aloud in roles, interpreted, made journal
entries, acted, rewritten scenes in modem
English, written letters from one character to
another, taken quizzes. I’ve had fun so far!”
What were the high points of practice
teaching? “When a student understood some­
thing and was able to explain it clearly with
arguments that made good sense. When
students were able to put something of
themselves into it and support their thinking
with the text. When it all came together, I
think the students were happy too.”

hrough the combination o f the theoretical
course work and the practice teaching, I
have learned how to think about learning and
to evaluate my own ability to learn. ”

T

David Lebson ’90

Above: Rapt seventh graders watch David
Lebson dissect a pig’s heart in a life sciences
class. Right: Lebson uses his classroom
experience to fin d out what works fo r
individual students.
4

“I am trying as many techniques and strate­
gies as I can to make the most of the practice
teaching situation,” says David Lebson. In
this spirit of experimentation, Lebson, a life
sciences teacher in the Middle School of the
Wallingford-Swarthmore School District,
asked his seventh graders to work in groups,
listen to short lectures, teach each other,
dissect frogs, and work individually with
limited help from him.
He assigned independent research projects
in the library, borrowed from the physical
resources in the nearby high school (such as
plastic models of a heart and a lung) and
invited into his classroom a fellow teacher to
show the students his collection of skulls and
talk about the evolutionary relationships be­
tween reptiles and mammals.

Lebson entered Swarthmore as a premedi­
cal student, and although he has fulfilled all
of the recommended premed courses, he
now has no plans to go to medical school.
A psycho-biology major, he is writing a
senior thesis on the effect of the environment
on the development of drug tolerance and
addiction, based on data from his laboratory
research on rats. His interest in education
began in the Introduction to Education
course which he took as a sophomore to
fulfill a College distribution requirement.
“Students say it’s an excellent course. It
was, and it was a lot of work; but it stimu­
lated me to take more education courses and
eventually to work toward certification and
a job teaching.”
Through the combination of the theoSWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

retical course work and the practice teaching
in the classroom, Lebson says, “I have
learned how to think about learning and to
evaluate my own ability to learn. I can look
critically at the teaching of my own profes­
sors; and, for example, I am trying to adapt
into my own teaching the dynamic lecture
style of Professor Allen Schneider and the
devil’s advocate, questioning style Professor
A. J. Levine uses to provoke discussion.
“I was angry at myself today for not
employing positive reinforcement with one
group in my third period class. The students
in this group had been off the wall yesterday,
but today they were much more cooperative,
and I forgot to congratulate them.”
Lebson himself receives significant posi­
tive reinforcement from his supervising pro­

fessor, Peter Corcoran, as well as many
suggestions for improvement. Corcoran, says
Lebson, stresses creating a classroom free of
gender bias. Corcoran also urges Lebson to
be explicit in phrasing a lesson goal. “Stu­
dents will be introduced t o . . . , ” wrote Leb­
son, and Corcoran replied, “That sounds as
though students will be merely present when
the lesson is presented.” He suggested instead
a more specific goal: “Students will be able
to name four parts of the heart.” Lebson has
a second mentor: Joseph Hampel, his co­
operating teacher in the middle school, who
helped enhance Lebson’s confidence by of­
fering him large responsibility early in the
semester.
Lebson’s day at the school begins at eight
a.m., and he is not back on campus until

three or four. “It’s exhausting,” he says. “I
try to nap occasionally between four and
five.” After dinner he prepares his lessons for
the next day and thinks about how the
following days will tie in to them, keeps up
the reading for the Curriculum and Methods
Seminar, and plugs away at his senior thesis.
There’s little time for anything else.
“Part of what makes all this worthwhile,”
says Lebson, “is that I love working with
kids. I have worked with kids in summer
camps and with the Boy Scouts. In Scouting
I learned give and take and take and give.
The skill you learn today you may be teach­
ing tomorrow. I have tried to carry that
philosophy into my life; I want to be able to
give back what I have taken. Teaching offers
me that opportunity.”

Education: The process itself in
a liberal arts setting
Practice Teaching is one of 16 courses
listed in the College Catalogue under the
Program in Education and is a prerequisite
for secondary certification. The program’s
most important goal, according to the cata­
logue, is “to help students learn to think
critically and creatively about the process of
education and the place of education in
society.” Seven of the courses in the program
are cross listed in other academic depart­
ments: psychology, linguistics, political sci­
ence, and sociology/anthropology.
Students who take courses in the Program
in Education major in one of the traditional
disciplines—there is no education major;
however, special majors involving education
and another social science are not uncom­
mon.
Those who seek secondary certification,
in addition to taking a series of prescribed
courses, must also do supervised teaching
and concurrently take the Curriculum and
Methods Seminar. Students who wish ele­
mentary certification can student teach in
elementary classrooms and then do some
course work at Eastern College in suburban
Philadelphia, which can then certify them.
The Education Program normally has
some 16 practice teachers every year. One
third of a given graduating class has probably
taken Introduction to Education, with 25
students in each of four or five sections every
year.

5

Emergency Room
“I f he can't save them, then G od wants them. ”
—ER Nurse about Patrick Connell, Jr., M.D., ’71

he first time Patrick Connell ’71 just walked into the back office and told this
walked into an emergency room as a senior physician, who was sitting back there,
young doctor, naively reassured, per­ that I was going home for the night. ‘But you
haps, by his new medical school degree,
just got here,’ he said. I said, ‘Yeah, and I’m
something terrifying happened.
leaving now.’ That’s the only time I saw a
“This guy was writhing around, vomiting supervising doctor during a shift in L.A.”
green and yellow, and I didn’t know what
More than a decade has passed since
the hell the problem was,” recalls Connell. Connell graduated from Tulane Medical
“I had absolutely no idea. I looked around School and traveled to Los Angeles “for the
for somebody to help, and there was no one. warmth” and to begin his career. From his
So without thinking I said, ‘I’ll go get a green arrival at King to his current hardeneddoctor,’ and the guy shouts, ‘Well, what are veteran status as acting head of emergency
you?’ And he was right, I was it. I was medicine at Oakland’s Highland-Alameda
standing there alone with the white coat and County Hospital, he’s never worked outside
the stethoscope. I was terrified.”
of emergency rooms in county hospitals.
That patient, suffering from a survivable
A tone of irreverence touched by self
case of alcoholic pancreatitis, had just come mockery creeps into his voice when he de­
into Martin Luther King, Jr., Hospital, a scribes the two medical school rotations
county hospital located in the Watts section through family clinics that he once endured
of Los Angeles. And Connell had just begun with the idea of becoming a family doctor:
a two-year emergency medicine residency in “You went in, you saw patients—they didn’t
an ER so rough he not-so-jokingly compares get any better, they didn’t get any worse.
it to Dante’s seventh ring of hell.
And you didn’t feel like you were intervening
“King was located on the border between in their lives.” There is a pregnant pause,
Crips and Bloods territory,” he recalls, citing followed by wry understatement. “I found I
two of the city’s infamous gangs. “Let’s was not attitudinally suited to this.”
see—PCP or angel dust was the drug of
Why, then, did he choose emergency
choice around there in those days. You had medicine, a specialty so unappealing that in
some people strapped down, others literally those days it had a reputation, according to
lying dead in the comers, people walking in Connell, of “attracting people who were one
with gunshot wounds or knife wounds all step ahead of malpractice”?
the time, and interns and residents who had
In part because the Air Force had helped
way too much freedom because the place put him through medical school and thought
was peculiarly managed. Essentially it was it was a good idea, he says, and in part
run by moonlighters.”
because he knew he could succeed at it. “I
Only once in two years there, he reveals, found I didn’t like getting to know the
did he ever see a supervising physician on patients. But I was good at intervening, at
the floor during his shift, and that was after being in the hot seat.” Besides, he adds, he
a near tragedy for Connell A “duster,” a quickly became “an adrenalin junkie.”
man out of control on angel dust or PCP,
Connell has other reasons for working in
fired a weapon at him from nearly point- emergency rooms that service the poor—
blank range, and missed. “I jumped on dramatic, difficult environments where many
him,” Connell says, “and when I finally of the patients arrive without medical insur­
realized what was happening, a cop was ance and are not likely to bring profit to the
holding me and telling me I could stop hospital—reasons not so easy to assess. He
stepping on the guy’s arm. I was OK until
I moved away. Then I started shaking, my
hands were trembling uncontrollably. So I
by Roger Williams

T

6

is almost certainly inspired, to some degree,
by a self-described “lapse into idealism” not
immediately apparent in the relative rough­
ness of his speech and anecdotes.
And, he admits candidly, private hospitals
just won’t hire him. “It’s an attitude thing,”
he explains, “and I have a bad one. One
doctor, he was honest, sat me down and
said, ‘Look, Connell, the reason they won’t
take you in a private hospital is because you
don’t always make the other physicians feel
good. You’ve got to make them feel good.’
And he was right. If I don’t think they’re
performing well, I’ll tell ’em. I couldn’t care
less whether they feel good about it.”
Apparently, Connell doesn’t suffer fools
lightly.
There is a hint of swagger, of bravado in
this good doctor, and his experience suggests
he’s probably as tough as he sounds. But
underlying the bloody, sometimes funny
stories is a thoughtfulness seemingly wired
to a core of compassion.
His concern about people, securely var- j
nished with the detachment and dark humor
necessary to survive daily emotional gashes,
nevertheless remains in evidence. One so­
bering statistic suggests how hard his world
is: He says that on the average over 10 years
he has lost one patient every shift, and on
one sad night he lost six people in 10 hours.
he ones you don’t like are the ones
who come in talking to you and don’t
make it out,” he admits in a matter-offact tone. “I had an 18-year-old kid come in
who had been shot by somebody in a rival J
gang that was going around and systemati­
cally exterminating the smaller gangs. Their
trademark was to shoot their victims with a
shotgun from point-blank range, and this
kid had a hole bigger than my hand in his
middle. When I put my hand inside, his
whole liver was gone, completely gone. How
he got to the hospital alive is a mystery to
me; it just didn’t seem medically possible.
And this kid was even conscious and talking, i
He looked at me and said, ‘Am I gonna die?’

T

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

“ ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘you are.’
“He said, ‘Shit, I thought so.’ And then he
went.” Connell relays the story calmly, but
his dismay is obvious and intense. The
varnish, though, protects him: “That was
an interesting case,” he notes clinically.
“Around here, you see, the definition of an
interesting case is a tragedy.”
Connell says that he cares about perform­
ing well, whatever the circumstances. But he
seems to mean more than that; his game
attitude suggests that he wants to perform
miraculously, to achieve results no one can
believe. His reaction to questions of life-ordeath is characterized by a cool, to-hellwith-the-odds sentiment, according to pho­
tographer Steven Goldblatt ’67, a former
medical student himself who spent a shift
photographing Connell in the ER at High­
land. Goldblatt adds that as a teacher of
interns and residents, Connell appears “arti­
culate, knowledgeable, compelling to watch.
And deeply respected.”
Some of what Connell teaches those
young doctors implies a careful, almost
delicate balance of personal attitudes about
mortality, ethics, and behavior. Like a classic
protagonist in a Greek play, what he thinks
and believes, what he intends, is revealed
best not by what he says but by what he
does.
He describes one man who arrived in the
ER with ventricular fibrillation, a heart
attack in which the muscle quivers without
beating. Connell and his team went to work,
trying everything at their disposal to get the
heart pumping, from drugs to electric shock.
“We couldn’t stabilize him long enough to
get him up to the ward,” the doctor recalls.
“Usually when we can’t stabilize them in 30
or 40 minutes, they’re dead. But we worked
on this guy for almost four hours. We’d

Continued on page 54
Wielding electric paddles sometimes required to
save heart attack victims, Dr. Patrick Connell
71 heads emergency medicine at Oakland’s
Highland-Alameda County General Hospital
MAY 1990

7

No
longer
ju st for
the elite
by John Schubert 7 4

he bicycle is unique among all vehicles.
None other, from wheelbarrow to
stealth bomber, can achieve many of
its properties.
It weighs one-sixth as much as its payload,
goes briskly on only one-tenth horsepower,
pollutes not, is quieter than walking, and
leaves its rider refreshed.
Oh, and it’s great exercise too.
Bicycles can help make our cities quiet
and less odorous, while increasing the ca­
pacity of city streets by 600 to 800 percent
(a remarkable figure documented by traffic
counts in the 1980 New York transit strike).
They can take us camping deep in peace­
ful woods, or racing 100 miles in four hours,
combining marathon endurance with the

T

intrigue of a pitchers’ duel in baseball.
I’m greatly charmed by these attributes,
and I was drawn to cycling professionally
because of them. For me, a former news­
paper reporter, “professional involvement”
now means a book in print, articles in 10
magazines, a stack of owner’s manuals, and
lots of advertising copy. I also design bikes
and accessories as a product management
consultant and appear as an expert witness
in lawsuits involving bicycles.
So what are my thoughts about this
wonderful vehicle and my involvement with
it? They go like this:
You may remember the bike boom of
1972-74.1 do, with surprisingly limited af­
fection.

■ i l ' i!
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

K H

M

Some 43 million bikes were sold in the
U.S., most by people who knew not what
they were selling, to people who didn’t know
what they were buying.
That’s enough bikes to reach over 45,000
miles if they were laid end-to-end, and yet
their influence on U.S. cycling was disap­
pointingly small.
These bikes were crude. They had teeth­
ing problems.
Today cycling is much improved. And
most people will tell you the improvements
are technical: the carbon fiber this, the
aerodynamic that, the aircraft aluminum
alloy the next thing.
Well, I disagree.
I enjoy those technical improvements, but
far more important is that our industry now
makes cycling more easily available to many
people.
Those 1970s bikes had their mechanical
flaws, but the gravest flaw was the complete
lack of accompanying information. The
$300, bike I triumphantly bought in 1972
came without any owner’s manual, not even
in the manufacturer’s native French. (Neither
did the $65 bike I bought in 1965.) Books?
Magazines? The bike shops sold neither.
Americans, bred on Western Flyers and
Huffys, didn’t realize what a travesty this
was. You hop on and go, right?
Well, yes, you can do that. But the results
are just as satisfying as “hopping and going”
on skis. And about as safe.
Back then, cycling was a hobby, like ham
radio. It was part of the fun to hunt for
esoteric parts, modify components to make
them work better, and hold “home remedy”
seminars on the back porch of Mary Lyon
(frequent participants: ^Crispin Miller ’71,
David Thurber ’71, Glenn Swan ’76, Bruce
Vermeychuk ’71, Bruce Caster ’72, Gus
McLeavy ’73, and many others).
That was a fun diversion from schoolwork, but it’s a lousy way to make cycling
popular among the masses.
Bicycling is a fam ily affair fo r John Schubert,
his wife Anne, and their children Derick
(only helmet visible) and Maria—passengers
in the trailer with a built-in roll cage.

MAY 1990

Today cycling is much more prepackaged.
You buy a bike, a helmet, some clothes and
accessories, my book, and you’re done! One
strike of the Mastercard sets you up. No
pesky return trips or home remedies neces­
sary.
Bikes have become well-made commodi­
ties, much like VCRs and microwave ovens.
Virtually all brands work well, and seldom
does a bike need owner modifications.
But more important is the easy availability
of information. When cycling was a young
cult, its gurus passed out dribs and drabs of
information (and misinformation). A new­
comer was told that this activity was quite
complicated—and that admittance to its
inner circle was guarded.
Want to know how to keep your spokes
from breaking? According to the old school,
you had to spend years apprenticing to a
master wheelbuilder, who had just the right
touch.
But in reality it shouldn’t take that long to
learn.

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n 1981 I published a magazine article Racing is fo r the risk-takers and strategists
that demolished that “master wheel- and those willing to train 40 miles a day.
builder” mystique and replaced it with
accurate step one, step two directions. Now
anyone who could pick up a wrench and
follow directions could solve the problem
himself.
You don’t pick up wrenches yourself? You
will still benefit. Bike shop mechanics learn
from those same sources. You get a bettertrained mechanic.
The magazine I worked for at that time
slayed a mighty dragon of mystique with
that article and with many others. We
replaced innuendo with facts.
No longer do readers try to glean infor­
mation from articles that say, “This builder
has such vast experience and has built
frames for all the great champions so his new
bike must be great.”
Now the better writers in this field are
more specific: “This builder decided to use
0.6 mm tubing instead of 0.7 mm tubing,
sacrificing 14 percent of rigidity to shed 16
percent of weight.” Nice to see some facts in
print.

I

Again, even if you don’t care to learn
about 0.1 mm of tubing, the dissemination
of this information helps you. The people
who design bikes learn from the same
sources as bike mechanics and bike enthu­
siasts. When they learn more, they can make
better decisions.
But the greatest expansion has been in the
information every rider needs to know: how
to ride gracefully.
Form is everything. You go faster, ache
less, and smile more if your position on the
bike is tweaked for comfort and efficiency,
your pedaling motion is smooth and fluid,
and you can mesh comfortably with other
riders.
That information was virtually unavail­
able in the 1970s; today a bit of reading can
make you look and feel like a seasoned
cyclist. Spend two evenings in your arm­
chair, curled up with a good book, and
you’ll learn really important things the Mary
Lyon bunch never did find out.
Less apparent to most riders but critically
important is a mature understanding of
bicycle safety. Thanks to a wave of engineer­
ing studies conducted under Presidents
Nixon, Ford, and Carter (mostly Carter), we
know where accidents come from.
Accidents come from cross traffic at inter­
sections, not so much from behind you.
Thus, separated bikepaths have been found
to increase accident rates dramatically—
because they increase the number of inter­
sections, louse up visibility, and put road
users outside of each other’s normal visual
scan.
Speaking of safety, the hardshell helmet
I bought in 1975 weighed almost 2 pounds.
Now they weigh 6 ounces, look and feel
much nicer, and have greater crash protec­
tion. Ah, progress!
Also important has been the improved
availability of products that have always
been around but very hard to find. A prime
example is bikes for short women. Today a
4-foot-11-inch woman can probably buy a
good adult bike in her hometown. Ten years
ago I knew of a short woman who had to
travel to Europe and have a custom frame
built to get a bike that fit. I’m sure she
enjoyed her trip to Europe, but it shouldn’t
be a prerequisite to riding a bike.
And Americans have forever changed the
sport we imported from Europe. There, the
major market share will soon be occupied
by an American invention, the mountain
bike. (It’s already two-thirds of the adult
bike market in the U.S.)
10

You’ve probably noticed mountain bikes,
with their fat knobby tires and upright
handlebars. They apply advanced engineer­
ing, lightweight materials, and an efficient
rider position to the fat-tire bikes we rode as
kids.

bike, you go faster—and you and your
partner can converse all the while without
shouting.
My own riding is a smorgasbord of styles.
One day I might take the family out on bikes
and trailers; that’s more of a family fun
activity than it is an exercise bout. The next
he result: Today’s mountain bike day I might ride several hard hours on my
weighs under 30 pounds, withstands road-racing bike with my bike-racing bud­
teen-age abuse, and is easy to control. dies, riding elbow-to-elbow in a tight pack.
When snows make road riding inadvisable,
Designed for extreme conditions on rough
trails, it’s very reassuring on ordinary roads. I take my mountain bike up to central
Invented in the California garages surround­ Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountain, where I can
ing Marin County’s Mount Tamalpais, it is explore a network of hiking trails and fire
a fantastic bike for young athletes and timid roads.
Are there disappointments in this idyllic
seniors alike, and it is our country’s gift back
sport? I have a few:
to the Europeans.
Cycling is still driven by the image of
Cycling has many other alluring faces
bike-racing heroes. They’re great athletes
beyond the “road or dirt?” choice.
It can provide a fantastic family outing, and good people to know, but seldom do
with a picnic or swimming hole as its they help cycling reach out to the elderly, the
destination. Small kids are no problem. sedentary, the overweight, and the nonLoad them into the trailer (preferable to a athletic. Cycling is for these people too.
We aren’t done with the “safety thing.”
child seat because it has a lower center of
gravity and a built-in roll cage and also The annual death toll from bicycles is about
because the kids get to bring toys and stuffed the same as that from boating or general
animals). When the children grow older, a aviation. Those other two activities have
“kid-back” tandem lets a child as young as extensive, and very good, safety programs.
Cycling doesn’t. Bicycles, which kill more
5 pull his/her own weight.
Touring is the epitome of a stress-reducing children than drugs do, get all of 61 cents per
vacation. You take a multi-day trip on your child (and nothing per adult) spent on
bike and supply your own housing each bicycle safety education, according to a
night. You may use either a tent or an nationwide survey conducted by Dan Bur­
American Express card for housing. (I’ve den of the Florida Department of Transpor­
evolved from the former toward the latter.) tation.
Is there risk in cycling? Absolutely. But
Having burned 5,000 calories each day, you
get to treat yourself to plenty of fine dining. the risk diminishes to a tiny level with a
If you love both speed and camaraderie, modicum of training. Most of those child
you’ll want a tandem. You get two engines, deaths are preventable.
Bike racing is a tiny, minor sport. There
and with the same wind resistance as a single
are all of 30,000 bike racers in the U.S.—
less than 5 percent of the number of active
triathletes! Why the puny numbers? It’s a
very political sport, and most cyclists don’t
find racing worth the aggravation.
Commuting by bike is still unfashionable.
Real Americans drive cars to work. (Peter
Gram Swing is still ahead of his time.) It’s
a shame; we could save energy and make our
cities cleaner and quieter. The Germans and
Dutch do it, and their densely populated
countries are much more livable as a result.

T

Americans are
changing the sport we
imported from Europe.
There, the major
market share will soon
be occupied by an
American invention,
the mountain bike.

John Schubert 7 4 is technical editor o f
BikeReport m agazine, a consultant in the
bicycle industry, and author o f the B allantine
book Cycling for Fitness. H e was fo u n d in g
ed itor-in-chief o f Bicycle Guide m agazine
and ed ito r-in -ch ief o f The, Phoenix.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Swan finished second in his age category at the National Championships in 1989.

Glenn Swan ’76
“Biking helped me survive the intensity of
Swarthmore,” remembers Glenn Swan ’76.
“Swarthmore had a team of only three riders
at that time, but we finished near the top of
intercollegiate competition. I won the cham­
pionship race at West Point my sophomore
year. The only recognition we received from
the school was when the Athletic Depart­
ment once gave us some sweats, sort of under
the table. We were self-motivated since there
was no structure to encourage us.”
Swan says he was first identified as a
“bikie” at Middlesex School, where he fin­
ished second in the school’s annual bike race
for four years in a row. His roommate, who
was to become a member of the U.S. Olym­
pic team, finished first. Twenty years later
Swan remains a “bikie,” called by some a
“cycling guru,” for his experience and in­
volvement with the sport during the off
hours from his job building research equip­
ment in a materials science and engineering
laboratory at Cornell University.
He coaches the Cornell Intercollegiate
Cycling Team and acts as mentor for several
MAY 1990

other schools that race in the spring in the
Eastern Intercollegiate Cycling Federation.
During the summer he coaches the Corning
Bike Club and the Finger Lakes Cycling
Club, and he has turned his skills at building
custom bicycle framesets into a business
selling bikes, components, and accessories
and doing repairs.
Swan also races. In 1989 he finished
second in his age category (35-39) at the
National Championships and won his State
25-mile Time Trial Championship for the
seventh time in eight years. He has led his
region to a dominant position in the Empire
State Games for the last seven years. Racing
has taken him from coast to coast and
outside the borders of the U.S.
A typical year’s schedule for Swan begins
in winter with cross-country skiing until
March, when he starts cycling 25 miles a
day. In April he does some short races and
pushes up to 50 miles a day. In May he gets
serious, adding one 50- to 100-mile day a
week to his schedule. Racing reaches an
early peak in June, when competitors strive

to qualify for the National Championships
and the Empire State Games. Then he rides
with a cycling club 25 to 100 miles a day and
races three times a week. This intense level
continues through September, when he
backs off a bit and races only twice a week.
In October he combats mental burnout with
mountain-bike riding and racing. In Novem­
ber it’s time to prepare for the cross-country
ski season again.
“What makes racing interesting outside
of the physical achievement,” says Swan, “is
that it’s a giant chess game, which includes
strategy, mental strength, timing, concentra­
tion, and intense psychological games. If it
weren’t for the complexity of the experience,
I would have become bored with it and quit
racing long ago.
“Imagine yourself in a pack of 30 riders.
There is someone close enough to touch
your left elbow. Another is that close on the
right. You are a few inches behind the wheel
in front of you, and there is someone just as
close behind you. Now imagine that you are
all going around a street corner at 30 mph!
Don’t forget that each of you wants to be the
first one to reach the finish line that awaits
you just around the next turn! Races are like
a high-speed dance with skillful dancers
moving together with a communication and
coordination based on skill and trust.
“I usually race as part of a team of three
to five riders. We work out strategy based on
our strengths and a commitment to coopera­
tion. Race tactics are very situation specific,
so there is rarely a specific game plan. The
common denominator in race strategies is a
plan to conserve our energy while forcing
others to expend extra effort. When a stra­
tegic opportunity is recognized, an attack
may be launched with some hope for suc­
cess. Team members will help to support the
advantage gained by another teammate’s
attack by discouraging others from pursuing
him, or if they do pursue him and catch him,
by launching a counterattack. Seize the
opportunity and maintain the offensive!”
Swan has encountered his share of inju­
ries. “I’ve been hit by cars, crashed in almost
every imaginable way, and left parts of
myself on roads all across the U.S. In the
National Criterium Championships in Som­
erville, N.J., in 1984, I was accidentally
pushed off the road during the final sprint.
I flew over the heads of several rows of
spectators and struck a 4-inch steel pole in
midair, shattering my helmet and opening
the back of my head. I accept these sorts of
risks as part of the game and don’t let them
11

bother me. I was back racing the next
weekend.
“Through sports you learn the extent of
your endurance; you voluntarily put yourself
through hell, and you learn it’s not so bad.
You can endure. Your mental strength is
tested when you push yourself to the limits
and feel the discomforts of your body, and
you decide to push just a little harder to see
what lies beyond.”
Diet is crucial to racing performance.
Swan’s diet is primarily vegetarian, with
plenty of potatoes, pasta, and rice, “with lots
of flavorful sauces to make them appealing,
so eating remains a pleasure and doesn’t
become just work.” When he’s training
many miles each day, Swan eats four or five
meals in order to consume enough calories
to fuel his body. “Our problems are the
opposite of the average dieter. Getting a
balanced diet with enough vitamins, miner­
als, protein, etc., is no problem since we eat
such quantities and varieties of food. We
literally have to eat some calorie-rich junk
foods just to get enough concentrated calo­
ries. Pass the cookies, please! It sure beats
being on a diet.”
Swan sums up his love of cycling: “It’s a
good way of meeting and relating to people.
Cycling has given me people whom I love
very much, whom I trust, and who trust me.
I enjoy setting goals and trying to reach
them. Along the way, you spend a lot of time
with yourself and have a chance to think
about who you are.”

k-S&m
ItY -S RumtNG

Serious bicyclists Smiga and his fiancee “never have a day off; we work intensely and bike intensely.'

names and addresses in a wallet-size address
book.
An enthusiastic cycler in high school, as
a Swarthmore freshman he stowed away his
bike on the top shelf of the closet in his room
in Pittinger and filled his nonacademic time
with wrestling, lacrosse, and theater. He
took the bike out in the spring and on his
first ride hit a rock and fell going around a
curve. He never cycled again at Swarthmore.
Brian Smiga ’76
As a graduate student in Ireland, studying
Irish
and Anglo literature, he took up cycling
Brian Smiga ’76 changed his career and life­
style because of his love of cycling. To gain again, and he remembers that the two weeks
the necessary time to pursue it seriously, he touring Normandy, Brittany, and the Loire
created a business in which he could work Valley “were the most fun I ever had in my
half the week at home, do some business life. I arrived in France by a late ferry at
traveling, and go into New York City just 3 a.m., and I started biking in a full moon.
once a week. Self-employed, he develops I had no possessions except for one pack and
software for Macintosh computers and in my passport. I was in France for the first
September began marketing a new product, time, and I felt very free.”
When he returned to the United States
Dynodex, an address data base that prints
portable pages for Filofax and other personal and moved to New York City to teach in a
organizers. He co-founded his company, high school and later to try an acting career,
Portfolio Systems, to develop everyday soft­ he stopped cycling because of his city loca­
ware tools—address book, calendar, etc.— tion and lack of time. “When I hit 30, I
that print in portable formats. Not surprising looked around for something else to do and
for someone who spends 10 to 20 hours a bought a Mac computer to learn word
processing. I didn’t even know how to type.
week on a bicycle!
On a six-day, 600-mile cycling tour in I got into editing, scripting, and training
Florida in February, his software enabled corporate executives on the Mac. Once I
him to take along his personal file of 800 had a new career of developing computer

software, I finally had some freedom and I
started to cycle.”
As cycling influenced his choice of career,
so it also dictated where he lives. He chose
Rhinebeck, N.Y., an area of farmland with
mountains always visible in the distance.
“It’s one of the best areas for cycling,” he
says, “and the roads are excellent. I bike for
aesthetics and meditation as much as for
competition.”
He met his fiancée, Amelie Chapman,
last year in a computer class. “She’s more of
a serious cycler than I am and is a member
of the Mazda-Michelin team. During the
winter to stay in condition we work out in
the gym two hours a day over the noon hour.
During the season we work at our computer
software business in the morning, cycle from
noon to four, and work until early evening—
this schedule works well with our West
Coast business.
“We are both in the lowest level—IV—
of skill as defined by the U.S. Cycling
Federation.” Smiga raced for the first time
in 1989 and plans to do more this year.
“Racing requires a big commitment in time.
We never have a day off; we work intensely
and bike intensely.”
Smiga says the dangers in touring and
training come almost entirely from motorists,
who wage silent, cold war with cyclists. As
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

a cyclist, he says defensively, “I feel I’m
entitled to a 4-foot swath; I don’t want to
ride on the cinders, where I can encounter
glass or hit a rock and fall. Motorists should
treat cyclists as slow-moving traffic. In Man­
hattan I was better off riding in the middle
of the street.”
Dangers in racing can be extreme, Smiga
says, pointing to two deaths last year in the
over-35 category. At the same time, he says,
“the dangers are part of the thrill. Bike
racing demands all the skills of car racing.
You move in a fast-traveling group—30 mph
on level ground, 60 mph down hill—inches
apart. I’m amazed at the things you can do.
A biker falls. Everyone manages to go
around him. The unconscious is at work;
you are peripherally aware, using a part of
yourself you don’t usually experience.”
Smiga also speaks of the pain in the sport.
“It’s like long-distance running with pain in
your legs and lungs. You learn to work
through the pain. The cyclists we most
admire (Greg Lamond and Glenn Swan ’76,
for example), besides being excellent strate­
gists and risk-takers, are the ones who can
endure the most pain.”
Although competition is important to
Smiga, he maintains: “It is still the aesthetic
and spiritual experience on the open road
that motivates me. The competition helps
me to become a better cyclist and to test
myself, but five years from now I will be
back to cycling for the scenery.”

Ben Bowditch ’41 and
Jim Bowditch ’48
Ben Bowditch ’41 began cycling when he
was 50 years old. “I liked the exercise, and
I got tired of commuting in heavy traffic by
car from Cambridge to Lexington, where I
taught school.”
By age 70, in 1988, Bowditch was so
enthusiastic about the sport that when he
heard his brother Jim ’48 was retiring as a
teacher/coach, he talked him into joining
him on a 3,300-mile cross-country ride.
“Jim was in good physical condition but
was not a cyclist. He had to buy everything.
The bike. The gear. Everything. This bike
trip was Jim’s baptism.”
The trip began on May 16 in Seattle and
ended July 7 in Conway, Mass., Ben’s home.
The brothers averaged 60 miles a day and
were slowed down by only one broken
spoke and six flat tires throughout all 3,300
miles.
“Of course, there were moments when I
reflected on what we were doing,” Jim says
wryly. “On our fifth day out, we were
climbing up the highway through the Cas­
cade Mountains, and it took us seven hours
to go 30 miles. If it had been raining, I think
I would have coasted right back down and
gone home then.” But the nice weather held,
and so did the brothers’ resolve.
“Cycling is a great way to see the country,”
says Jim, but most memorable for the broth­

ers was the friendliness of the people they
met. At breakfasts, Jim noted, people seemed
particularly inclined to chat leisurely with
them. They camped out two or three times
a week and spent the other nights in motels.
In a talk to a local senior citizens group in
Conway after his return, Ben described
“peddling on the ‘granny’ gear going up the
sharp mountains outside Glacier National
Park in Montana, feeling the huge blast of
air from the lumber trucks as they passed,
the searing heat in the plains at the height of
the drought, and the warmth of the family
in Kalispell, Mont., who invited them to stay
overnight in their home.”
Ben continues his seasonal regimen of
biking 150 to 200 miles a week, traveling
about 12 to 18 miles per hour. “I usually ride
alone. I can’t hit the hills fast enough to cycle
with 25- to 3 5-year-olds, but I’m a more
serious and experienced cyclist than most of
my contemporaries. I usually cycle three
hours a day three days a week after every­
body has gone to work. One day a week I’ll
take a longer trip.”
In midwinter his 18-speed touring bike
sits up on training wheels in his basement.
When he can’t get outside to ski, he uses it
to keep in condition.
Ben and Jim eschew what Ben calls
“high-tech” clothes, the lycra shorts and
tights favored by many cyclists. “I’d feel silly
cycling in lycra shorts; I prefer wool in
winter. On kayak trips to the Canadian
Arctic, I learned that when your wool clothes
get wet, you wring them out at night, put
them on when you go to bed, and when you
waken in the morning, they’ll be about dry
and keep you warm in the process.”
Ben looks forward to short trips this
summer around New England with Jim and
to the Valley Century, a 100-mile trip up
and down the Connecticut River Valley. A
three-year veteran of that ride, he has set for
himself a goal of completing the ride in
seven hours this year.

Hospitality fo r the Bowditch brothers (Ben,
S fa r left, and Jim, third from left), cross-country
£ bikers, in Deer River, Wis., included free
2 dinners in the Vet’s Club.

MAY 1990

13

Cycling puts my mind at ease, ” says Beatson,
who rode 7,800 miles in 1989.

Tom Beatson ’54
Tom Beatson ’54 is a retired computer
engineer from Honeywell living in Phoenix.
On his daily schedule he breakfasts before
sunrise. After he dons his cycling gear,
including safety helmet, a one-inch diameter
rearview mirror attached to his eyeglass
frames, and cleated shoes, he’s ready to
mount his bicycle to ride one to two hours
to a restaurant, where he eats a second
breakfast. He heads home by a different
route, traveling, in all, about 30 miles in
three hours, including the breakfast stop. On
Sundays he rides with the local bike club, of
which he’s an officer.
According to a small, specialized cycling
computer attached to his cycle, he rode
7,800 miles in 1989. For 111 of those miles,
he cycled in the El Tour De Tucson, an
annual event around the perimeter of Tuc­
son. More than 3,300 riders participated.
“Some treat it as a race,” says Beatson, “but
most of us treat it as a challenge.” For
Beatson, a diabetic for 47 years, the biggest
challenge is to maintain the delicate balance
among exercise, food, and insulin. “In 1988
I had my slowest time, so this year I wanted
to prove that age hasn’t caught up with me
yet. I succeeded, because my time (8:46.16)
was faster than in any of my four previous
El Tours. Finishing ahead of me were 1,553
riders, and the fastest time was 4:41.50.
“I had another challenge too. In all those
previous years, the American Diabetes As­
sociation was the charity that benefited from
El Tour, but this year the relationship be­
tween El Tour and the ADA was severed, so
I decided to make a pledge to the ADA
based on my time—the faster I rode, the
more it cost me!”
Beatson also rode in another distance
event last year, the Historic Route 66 Tour,
a 172-mile round-trip between Seligman
and Kingman, Ariz., on two successive days.
Beatson started riding seriously 12 years
ago. As a volunteer for the ADA, he was put
in charge of a local fund-raising bike ride. “I
thought maybe I should cycle myself to find
out what we were asking the youngsters to
do when riding for us in our events. Now I
am completely involved in riding and no
longer in fund-raising.
“Cycling puts my mind at ease,” says
Beatson. “I hope to continue for at least
three more years so I can observe my 50th
anniversary as a diabetic riding in El Tour
De Tucson.”
14

PHOTO BY DERRIAK ANDERSON

Gay Burgiel ’61
Gay Burgiel ’61 is seeing the world: Alaska,
England, France, Spain, Italy, China, Aus­
tralia. “Not so noteworthy,” you may say,
until you hear her method of transporta­
tion—an 18-speed bicycle.
Noncyclists may surmise that cyclists look
for flat routes, but mountains have domi­
nated Burgiel’s trips: Calgary to Vancouver
through the Canadian Rockies, Barcelona to
Bordeaux across the Pyrenees, and this
summer Munich, across the Alps through
the Grossglockner pass to Italy and thence
by a combination of ferries and cycling rides
through Yugoslavia, Greece, and finally Istan­
bul.
Such vacation trips are not for the out-of­
shape. Burgiel, an advertising copy writer
for a textbook company, tries to stay in good
condition year-round, because “it takes a
fair amount of work to get in the shape
. demanded by our mountain itineraries,” she
says. In winter she attends an aerobics class
three times a week at 6 a.m. With better
weather in the spring, she will first ride 20
to 25 miles a day (two to four hours),
working up to a peak of 40 to 50 miles. She
bikes about 12 to 13 miles an hour.
Burgiel started cycling in 1976. Hunter­
don County, N.J., where she lives, “is pretty
country for it.” She notes that it is still
partially farmland and biking is popular.
She was attracted to biking vacations
through neighbors, who in 1979 invited her
to join them in France. Since then they have
been her cycling companions every year
except two, and the group has enlarged to
include two other cyclists from their local
bike club and a cyclist they met on a
previous trip. Her son, Stanley ’92, has gone
on two of the trips.
Burgiel recommends cycling as a way to
sightsee. “You are more accepted by the
local people; they are interested in you.
Towns in Europe are closer together, and
you see more of them from a bike than from
an automobile or train.” She says they also
bike to save money, which they then spend

Burgiel uses her 18-speed to see the world

on good restaurants and overnight accom­
modations.
Burgiel and her companions have had
only two or three bike spills and no major
injuries on their trips. They carry everything
with them—their personal belongings as
well as a repair kit for their bikes with
patches and spare tires, spokes, and tubes.
For neophyte cyclists intrigued with the
idea of cycling vacations, she recommends
starting out with commercial bike touring
groups, and for those readers with a few
birthdays behind them, she says from expe­
rience that she thinks riders can do distance
better as they get older. “You learn to pace
yourself and not to give up.”
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

“The rest o f my life is under control when I
am in control with biking, ” says Dixon.

Alan Dixon ’82
Cycling, for Alan Dixon ’82, “is part of
what I do, like eating,* sleeping, breathing.
It’s my own personal form of meditation.
When I am out on my bike, I am in a free
state of mind, away from all daily concerns.
After riding I feel very invigorated and
refreshed, both mentally and physically. My
body and mind are purged of stress and
frustration.”
Cycling was not always so positive for
Dixon. As a teen-ager he felt pushed by his
father, a racing cyclist; at Swarthmore he
was not in shape and cycling was a painful
reminder of suffering up long hill climbs in
MAY 1990

California with his father. In 1985 he re­
turned to cycling when his knees gave out
from jogging.
By 1988 he was racing in 33 events,
winning some and placing well in others,
and in racing heirarchy he moved up a
category, from IV to III. He raced only five
times in 1989. “I just ran out of time. Racing
eats up an incredible amount of time, more
than I was willing to spend on it. I know a
lot of bikers who have divorced themselves
from family life, and I want to spend time
with my wife and children.”
In midwinter Dixon was weight-training
and riding as if he planned to continue
racing in 1990. “If I do, I will do fewer and
they will be closer to home.” He rides 10 to
15 miles a day on weight-training days, 20
to 40 on other days. He gets up before 6 a.m.
to train on weights before going to his job
as an engineer with Magnavox; he rides
during lunch hour, ferrying his bike back
and forth on top of his car.
Dixon says that like most racers he has
endured his share of crashes, including hit­
ting a van, which turned in front of him, at
35 mph. He walked away with a broken
shoulder. “It is inevitable if you log in a lot
of miles that you are going to crash. I’m a
good sprinter. I sit back in the pack and try
not to do too much work and stay reasonably
fresh. In the last 200 to 300 meters, I go like
a banshee at 40 mph. Racing is not friendly.
It tends to get very aggressive, and what
other racers do makes a big difference.”
Most races are won by less than a bike
length, and cameras monitor the finish line.
Cycling will remain an integral part of
Dixon’s life whether or not he continues to
race. He looks forward this summer to
continuing the tradition of an annual family
bike trip with his father and brother along
the coast of northern California.
“The rest of my life is under control when
I am in control with biking. When the riding
is going well, everything else in my life
seems to go well. One particular experience
a couple of years ago is vivid. I was cycling
Mount Diabolo near San Francisco, and I
decided to go up as fast as I could. It was a
beautiful, clear day. You could see for miles.
It’s a gorgeous mountain. Tons of views. My
lungs were burning, my legs hurt from the
effort, but I could still enjoy the views. Being
able to revel in the pain of the fast ascent and
admire the beauty of the mountain at the
same time meant a real sense of control for
me.”

Buying a bike? A condensed
shopper’s guide
• Most new cyclists prefer mountain bikes.
A diet of aircraft-grade metals trims these
bikes to about 28 pounds. They’re rugged,
extremely easy to ride, and reassuring for the
novice. Invented in America, most are made
in (where else?) Taiwan.
• Road bikes (“ 10-speed racers”) are still
with us, and they remain the vehicle of
choice if you are comfortable with the
dropped handlebars and plan to ride far
and/or fast on pavement.
• Remember when 10 speeds sounded
like a lot? Most road bikes now have 14;
mountain bikes have 21. But don’t worry
about complication; click stops make the
shifters goof proof. And the range of gears
helps you feel just right on every hill, head­
wind, or glorious descent.
• Prices have risen along with the yen. A
bike you won’t outgrow quickly costs about
$400; if you’re feeling flush, you’ll want to
spend $500 to $700. Budget another $100
for a helmet, small tool bag, and pump. Your
next budget item is clothing: $125 or so for
shorts, tights, and shoes. They will make
your riding much more enjoyable.
• Quality isn’t hard to find. Bicycles are
pretty consistent across the board. Find a
shop where they care about your needs;
that’s more important than the brand you
buy.
• It’s still a male chauvinist sport (I know,
there were no women on the back porch of
Mary Lyon). Women, especially those 5 feet
4 inches or shorter, need to look a bit harder
to find a bike that fits. Make very sure the
shop cares about your needs and stocks
brands that come in the right sizes for short
women. (Yes, bikes come in sizes. Not wheel
sizes, but frame sizes.)
• Have you been sedentary? Over 35?
History of any medical trouble? Spend the
cheapest 50 bucks of your life and get a
physical before you start riding. Nip big
problems in the bud.
• Whether or not you’ve been active in
other sports, start out gently. The overuse
injuries that overeager bike riders can inflict
on their muscles and tendons are no fun.
• Make doubly sure your new bike fits
well. A good-fitting bike will make you
enjoy living up to your training schedule.
You’ll feel stronger and more relaxed as you
bask in the fresh air and chase away stress.
— John Schubert 7 4
15

T he C onsum m ate I

Friends and fo es alike

recognize his scrupulous
honesty and effectiveness.
But what motivati
Michigan Senator

W Bm

Levin *5
PHOTOS BY STEVEN R. NICKERSON

by Patricia Edmonds

n a brisk Saturday morning in
Washington, D.C., Michigan
Democratic Chairman Tom Lewand, his wife, Kathy, and their four chil­
dren wait on the steps of the U.S. Capitol,
watching for their distinguished host. At
length, a rusting green hulk coughs its way
up the drive, its passenger’s trench coat
flapping through a seam in the front door.
The car rolls to a stop near the Capitol steps
and disgorges a rumpled, unshaven figure
clutching a sack of bagels and chicken salad.
He greets the Lewands warmly, ushers the
family into the Capitol, and leads them
toward the Senate side. Abruptly, a guard
steps forward to challenge the group.
“I’m sorry,” the guard says to the un­
shaven man in the trench coat, “you can’t go
in there.”

O

The Lewands stifle giggles. The man in
the trench coat appears startled. Then he
smiles.
“It’s OK,” he says, “I’m Senator Levin.”
The guard hesitates, appraising the stubble
and the chicken salad.
“Oh . . . yes, of course, Senator.”
He is no one’s idea of the senator from
central casting, and, like the TV detective
Columbo, he is easy to underestimate. He
stands about 5-foot-10 in his solid, graceless
shoes, and to save precious time each morn­
ing—nerd alert!—he waits until he must
stop for a red light on the way to work to
tie them. He parts his salt-and-pepper hair
a couple of inches above his left ear and
brushes it over his presumably bald crown,
but sometimes the conspiracy between the
longer, swept-over hairs and the shorter,
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Politician
brushed-down hairs breaks down, and wild,
wiry strands flap loose. Until 1988, when he
upgraded to a 5-year-old Plymouth, he
arrived at the Capitol each day in a 1974
Dodge Dart with a hole in the floorboard
and a rolled-up ace bandage propping his
Senate ID plate in the windshield.
Scurrying to a roll call with his burden of
bulging cardboard files, fishing through
pockets brimming with scraps of paper for
a phone number, explaining a policy posi­
tion to reporters at such length, in such pre­
cise detail that it makes his TV-savvy aides
wince, he seems an easy mark for a new
generation of spit-shined mediameisters
schooled in the sound bite. He has won two
elections by the thinnest of margins, and the
Republican Party’s national strategists have
made this year’s campaign to unseat him a
top priority. That means the party likely will
shower the Republican nominee with the
maximum donation of more than $650,000;
help with organization, fund-raising, and
research; and send President Bush and other
GOP stars to Michigan to campaign.
And so it is easy to suggest that the
incumbent’s time has run out, easy to chortle
at this refugee from the radio age, easy to
forget one nagging detail about the man
Newsweek magazine called America’s most
underrated senator: Carl Levin has never
lost an election—not once in a quartercentury, not even in 1984, the year Ronald
Reagan swept so many of his Democratic
compatriots into oblivion.
He is up for re-election in 1990, but Carl
Levin does not want to talk about that. The
truth is that Levin has always enjoyed doing
the job a lot more than he enjoys the selling
of the doing of the job, and he tends to put
off the latter as long as he can.
Not all of his colleagues see it that way.
For many senators, the campaign runs con­
currently with the term, and fund-raisers are
as much a part of the weekly routine as roll
call votes. Several incumbents seeking reelection in 1990 already had raised $6
million or more by the fall of 1989; Levin
had raised only $1.5 million, and most of
that came in the first half of 1989. Fund­
raiser Ruth Brody says Levin will have to
sustain that pace until election day to raise
the $5 million to $7 million he has estimated
he will need for the 1990 race.
Aides say Levin likes the opportunity
MAY 1990

campaigns give him to mingle with constit­
uents, but he begrudges the time he must
carve from his legislative schedule to make
fund-raising calls. “There’s too much em­
phasis on money in politics, too much time
spent raising it, and I want to minimize
that,” he says. “If I want to be an effective
senator, it’s a full-time job for me.”
hio Sen. John Glenn, a Democrat
who works with Levin on both the
Government Affairs and Armed
Services committees, calls Levin “one of the
most active senators we have—and I don’t
mean he’s doing a lot of stuff just to put out
a press release. We have some senators like
that around here, but Carl’s not one.”
Indeed, Levin’s studied low profile some­
times confounds his staff, who worry that it
puts him at a disadvantage in the sea of selfaggrandizement that is the U.S. Senate. “I’ve
spent 11 years trying to get him to be more
of a press hog,” says Ken Smyth, who directs
Levin’s 26-person Michigan operation.
But Levin resists the sort of designer
politicking in which aides are dispatched to
find a telegenic location, a propitious time,
and a sexy issue to fashion into an event with
media appeal. Linda Gustitus, staff director
of the oversight committee Levin chairs,
says Levin “likes good press; any senator
does. What he doesn’t have that lots of sena­
tors have is the chutzpah or arrogance to
move into a situation and take advantage of
it for himself.”
Last July, when a train derailed in a small
Michigan town, Levin changed his schedule
to drive to the site but forbade his staff to
notify the news media. Republican Con­
gressman Bill Schuette, whose district in­
cludes that town, circulated among reporters
at the accident site, then held a formal news
conference at a nearby hotel. In September
Schuette announced his candidacy for the
Republican nomination to challenge Levin
in 1990.
Carl never-uses-his-middle-name-Milton
Levin was born in Detroit. He entered
public life as a Michigan assistant attorney
general in 1964, then ran the public defender
program for Detroit’s needy. Despite deep
racial divisions inflamed by the 1967 riots,
he drew votes from blacks and whites to win
a Detroit City Council seat in 1969 and the
council presidency in 1973.

O

After leaving City Council and working
briefly for a Detroit law firm, Levin ran for
the Senate in 1978 and narrowly defeated
incumbent Republican Sen. Bob Griffin. He
retained his seat by a similarly slim margin
in 1984, turning back a challenge by former
astronaut Jack Lousma.
People close to Levin, including his wife
and veteran aides, say the City Council days
remain a touchstone for his beliefs about
government. Although his record on domes­
tic issues is widely regarded as one of the
most liberal in the Senate, Levin’s local

Levin rushes to a Senate vote while a fleet aide
briefs him on late-arriving information.

17

government experience “did something to
him pretty deeply, made him different from
most other progressive Democrat legisla­
tors,” contends Gordon Kerr, Levin’s top
Washington aide. “He’s got a suspicion of
big government. He has seen in his own
neighborhoods that it can be unresponsive
and unfair.”
Some colleagues call Levin “Mr. Ethics,”
and even those who are appalled by his
politics concede that his personal conduct as
a senator has been scrupulous. So few
accused him of grandstanding in 1987 when,
as chairman of a subcommittee on govern­
ment oversight, he hectored then-Attorney
General Edwin Meese about omissions from
a financial disclosure form Meese had filed.
“I mean, you are the No. 1 lawyer in the
country,” Levin snapped after Meese had
dodged more than a dozen questions de­
signed to pin him down on the disclosure’s
shortcomings. “You are our attorney gen­
eral___Why did you not do what the law
said you had to do?” Levin’s cross-examina­
tion continued until Meese conceded that
18

yes, he had erred in not listing a certain
investment deal on the report.
evin and his wife, Barbara, keep an
apartment in Detroit’s Lafayette Park
and a two-bedroom Capitol Hill townhouse and generally live modestly. Sen.
David Boren, a conservative Democrat who
has taken sides against Levin on some issues
but remains a good friend, notes that Levin
never has taken honoraria—speaking fees
that can bring senators more than $35,000
a year—“even though he’s had to struggle
financially to follow that policy while putting
his children through school.” Recently, when
Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell
appointed a Democratic task force to address
the thorny questions of revising Senate ethics
laws, he chose Levin to chair it.
Depending on whom one talks to, Levin’s
voting habits in the Senate are either more
evidence of his integrity, or proof that he’s
out of touch with his constituents. The
Almanac o f American Politics, a widely
respected guide to federal lawmakers, de-

L

Guest on a talk show, Levin responds to
questions with serious, in-depth analyses that
do not patronize listeners.

scribes Levin as “willing to stick his neck
out,” and he has opted off congressional
bandwagons more than once—opposing the
death penalty for drug-related homicides,
voting against the 1981 tax cut and the 1986
tax reform package—in the face of contrary
opinion polls.
Levin says he views his duty differently
from Senate colleagues who are “there to
reflect the popular will. My view of my role
is, I’m there to listen, think, be accessible—
but when it comes down to it, to do what I
believe is best for my state, whether or not
it’s popular at the moment.” Gustitus, the
oversight committee staff director, says that
in trying to persuade Levin on a point, “the
worst reason you can give him for anything
is that it would be politically helpful.”
While he can be almost reverent when
discussing the obligations of public office,
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Levin has a low tolerance for the formality underbrush but have planted another patch.
and pomp that sometimes pervade the Sen­
Along with his self-effacing manner, Le­
ate. He loves coney dogs, Chips Ahoy cook­ vin’s mastery of legislative detail has won
ies, and virtually all junk foods—“anything,” him more than perfunctory bipartisan plau­
he says, “that comes out of a machine.” He dits. Earlier this year, when Newsweek mag­
drinks diet soft drinks and Stroh’s Light; azine bestowed yearbook-style superlatives
until Barbara and others prodded him to upon his congressional colleagues (Least
give up cigars about eight years ago, he Likely to be President: Sen. Ted Kennedy,
indiscriminately smoked “everything from D-Mass.; Class Bully: Rep. John Dingell, Dnickel rum-soaked ‘crooks’ to expensive Mich.), it called Levin “Most Underrated.”
cigars.” In his office lobby, a computercontrolled sculpture by Michigan artist Jim
ven conservative Republicans marvel
Pallas is wired so that when the Senate calls
at his preparation. “When I’m doing
for a quorum of members, a balloon-like
battle with Carl, I have to be on my
part of the sculpture fills with hot air and toes,” says Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. “And I
lifts a genuine cow chip aloft.
enjoy trying to match wits with him—few
At times, he appears to revel in his do it successfully. He does his homework,
elaborately casual demeanor. A few years and he can be dogged.” Wyoming Sen. Alan
ago, a magazine article evaluating the sex Simpson, the Senate’s minority whip, says
appeal of various senators dismissed him as he and Levin “don’t vote together very
“disheveled, balding, plump, perhaps the much” but praises Levin for doing “a pro­
worst-dressed man in the Senate and any­ digious amount of work” and possessing “a
thing but glamorous.” In a response inserted great deal of enthusiasm.” Simpson, known
in the Congressional Record, Levin con­ for his sharp tongue and wit, says he’ll work
ceded the magazine’s judgments on his girth, hard to elect Michigan’s Republican nomi­
hairline, and wardrobe, but added that his nee to the Senate this year, “but in the course
wife had certified him sexy nonetheless.
of that, there will be no negatives rolling off
Spencer Abraham, Michigan’s Republi­ my lips about Carl Levin.”
can Party chairman, suggests that Levin’s
Ah yes, the election. While the rumpled
frumpiness is “almost a studied style of his incumbent reluctantly girds for another sales
own, an attempt to come off with a little less job, two telegenic Republican challengers
blow-dried look.” But Levin scoffs at the are throttling up their campaigns. Whoever
suggestion that his appearance is contrived: emerges from the so-far-gentlemanly Re­
“I’ve never dressed for effect. I’m not more publican race will find a national organiza­
or less rumpled now than I was five years tion eager to enlist in the campaign against
ago or 20 years ago.” The truth, he says, is Levin. Richard Shelby, political director of
that “I wish I looked like Tom Selleck. The the National Republican Senatorial Com­
top half. The bottom half. The left or right mittee, says the Michigan race will get top
half, I don’t care.”
priority—read cash and campaign appear­
Away from the Senate, Levin dotes on his ances by nationally known Republicans—
three grown daughters—Kate, Laura, and from the party.
Erica—and his wife of 28 years, a woman
Shelby says Republicans like their chances
whose history includes working for a Wash­ against Levin in part because Levin retook
ington defense information agency, building his seat in 1984 with only 52 percent of the
her own harpsichord, and getting a law de­ vote. Former Levin campaigner Rick Wie­
gree at age 40.
ner counters that Levin won in 1984 despite
Almost as close is older brother Sander “a Reagan landslide and despite Republicans
Levin, a Democratic congressman from making him one of their top targets in the
Southfield, Mich. Carl Levin still keeps the country.” For all the talk of Levin’s vulnera­
toy box and beds in the room he and Sandy bility, Wiener said, “you are still talking
shared as boys. The brothers maintain a about a man who in his political life is
squash rivalry that dates to their college days undefeated.”
(2,500 wins, 2,500 losses each as of last
Attempts persist to drag down Levin by
winter) and jointly own about 100 acres in linking him to his schoolmate Michael Du­
Michigan, between Milford and Fenton, kakis ’55. State Republican Chairman Abra­
where they’ve gone since their kids were ham insists that the parallels between Levin
babies to camp, play volleyball, and cook and Dukakis are “remarkable. They went to
out. In recent years the Levin brothers have the same college at the same time, the same
taken up amateur farming, planting apple law school at the same time, their views on
and cherry trees and a stand of asparagus.
Continued on page 56
They lost the first asparagus harvest in the

E

MAY 1990

While the incumbent
reluctantly girds fo r
another sales job , two
telegenic Republican
challengers are throttling
up their campaigns.

19

CROSTIC

by Carol Dubivsky Becker ’57
DIRECTIONS
To solve this puzzle, write the
words that you can guess
from the definitions in the
num bered blanks provided
and then transfer the letters
to the corresponding num ­
bered squares in the dia­
gram. W orking back and
forth, a quotation will ap­
pear in the diagram reading
left to right. W hen all the
words have been filled in, the
author and source from
which the quote was taken
will appear as the first letter
o f each word reading down.
The solution can be found at
the end o f the College sec­
tion (page 24).

DEFINITIONS

WORDS

DEFINITIONS

A. Spicy relish

M. Final, extreme
71

127

78

86

30

175

15

98

B. Perennial flower
C. "To place any depend­
ence upon m ilitia is,
assuredly, resting upon
a broken
.”
(W ashington, Letter
to Congress)
D. W est Indian cane cutter

174

96

27

148

100

132

103

154

93

79

75

60

9

183

129

149

158

87

120

125

176

118

43

54

117

33

102

19

67

185

56

124

177

162

143

5

69

114

182

168

190

72

157

139

50

65

97

45

55

145

39

1

22

160

26

34

35

10

24

3

108

137

23

61

128

113

189

53

21

4

142

57

89

121

163

141

46

12

107

122

40

151

83

64

172

109

63

28

170

13

92

42

130

82

134

85

31

52

155

126

37

G. Tall flower

is crowned
Q, "N o
b u t in the sweat o f his
brow .” (St. Jerom e,
Letter)
R. Alignm ent key on a
com puter
S. U nw anted flower

90

47

112

20

153

169

16

99

187

150

84

44

104 .116

58

156

77

138

136

T. Make operative again
68

159

106

181

152

179

38

184

51

29

146

131

91

123

8

80

188

171

U. Degenerate, unfruitful
165

166

186

32

14

147

59

133

76

119

41

11

110

178

161

94

17

111

180

105

140

88

6

25

115

74

36

18

173

95

62

49

2

K. C ost o f m aintenance

20

7

P. W oodland flower

F. Speckled flower

L. "T he D ead Sea has no
outlet. It
to
keep.” (H arry Em erson
Fosdick, The Meaning of
Service)

167

O. M ake operative

66

J. H othouse flower

101

N. Shrub flower

E. Equal legged (G reek)

H. "To live is like to love—
all reason is against it
and all healthy
for it.” (Sam uel Butler,
Notebooks)
I. 19th-century thick
G erm an fabric

WORDS

73

V. Biennial flower

W. "A m erican life is a
pow erful
. It
seems to neutralize every
intellectual effort.”
(Santayana, The Ethics
of Spinoza)

48

164

70 .

81

191

144

135

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

ËCOLLEGE
New members of the
Board named

Dulany Ogden Bennett ’66

M. Jane Holding 72

James W. Noyes

Six new members of the Col­
lege’s Board of Managers have
been elected by the Board to
serve four-year positions be­
ginning in January; two other
members, Nancy Y. Bekavac
’69 and Lloyd W. Lewis ’49,
have been reappointed to
second terms.
Joining the Board for the
first time are Dulany Ogden
Bennett ’66, head of Wilming­
ton Friends School; M. Jane
Holding ’72, a volunteer
teacher and hospice worker in
Chapel Hill, N.C.; James W.
Noyes, president of Corroon
& Black/Noyes Services in
Media and a graduate of
Amherst College; Barbara
Hall Partee ’61, professor of
linguistics and philosophy at
the University of Massachu­
setts; Edward J. Steiner ’60,
president of Clover Yarns,
Inc., of Milford, Del.; and
George M. Wohlreich ’65,
medical director of the North­
western Institute of Psychiatry
in Fort Washington, Pa. Hold­
ing and Wohlreich were nomi­
nated by the Alumni Council
as Alumni Managers.
Bekavac will become presi­
dent of Scripps College in
July, and Lewis is executive
director of Kendal-Crosslands
in Kennett Square, Pa.
The College’s Board of
Managers numbers 35 mem­
bers.

Black History Month
features Tutu
In the 64th year of February
celebrations honoring black
history in America, Naomi
Tutu, daughter of Bishop
Desmond Tutu, challenged an
audience of some 200 at the
College to continue to press
the South African government
for liberation of its black
citizens.
Highlighting the month­

long series of events, Tutu
pleaded, “Please don’t stop
your active support of our
liberation struggle. Now more
than ever we need those
actions to intensify.”
Other events in February
included a one-man per­
formance by actor Phillip
Walker depicting nine African
American leaders, and a per­
formance of African folktales
by storyteller Charlotte Blake
Austin.

Barbara Hall Partèe ’61

Edward J. Steiner ’60
MAY 1990

George M. Wohlreich ’65

The fastest scholar wins! But only at 10 p.m. on a winter’s night in the
bottom o f McCabe Library, where the annual McCabe Mile, a.k.a.
Run fo r the Rolls, speeds around the stacks. The winner receives one
roll o f Scott tissue; all gam er the satisfaction o f a race thunderously
applauded by Swarthmoreans in every academic track and field.
21

E

C

O

L

E

G

E

phoenix idealism revealed in
. Social A ction W eek VO

A

The wistful observations of a
few faculty members and stu­
dents, that the idealism of the
’60s was reborn on campus
during the week of February
11, may have been mildly
exaggerated.
But Social Action Week,
embellished by such speakers
as Molly Yard ’33, Eugene
Lang ’38, and Victor Navasky
’54, and illuminated by work­
ing tours to Chester to help
restore houses, special benefit
performances, and a volunteer
fair, proved to be the first
carefully scripted week de­
voted exclusively to volun­
tarism in a long time.
Sponsored by Swarthmore
CIVIC, an acronym for
Cooperative Involvement &
Volunteers in the Community
(formerly the Volunteer Pro­
gram), the week was the
brainchild of CIVIC coordina­
tor Martha Easton ’89, senior
Michelle Hines, and sopho­

mores Markus Goldstein,
Jenny Pizzolo, and Justin
Powell.
“We invited alumni who
were activists as undergradu­
ates and have carried that into
their working lives,” said
Easton. “We wanted students
to see that intellectual detach­
ment at Swarthmore is not al­
ways necessary or helpful.”
She added that the College
community, “from David
Fraser to the housekeepers,”
offered extra effort to make
the week successful.
“After volunteer week we
have had, suddenly, a lot more
grant applicants to the
Swarthmore Foundation,” she
revealed. “Normally we have
at most 10 students who apply
for monies from the founda­
tion to do various service proj­
ects. But in the last round of
proposals we had 19. That’s
remarkable.”
Call it ’90s idealism.

NOW is the time for all good feminists. . . . An animated and inde­
fatigable Molly Yard ’33, president o f the National Organization fo r
Women (NOW), spent two days with students on campus. Yard said
that in addition to abortion rights fo r women, her organization’s agenda
includes the ongoing effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and
the passage o f a federal bill to allow a new parent or the parent o f a
sick child to take an unpaid leave o f absence. She invited students at
the College to participate in the “Summer o f Freedom, ” a door-to-door
campaign to promote women’s rights, scheduled to begin this summer.
Defining a fem inist as “someone who believes men and women
should be treated equally, ” Yard noted that women can and should be
required to serve in combat on an equal footing with men.

22

Sweat of brow, compassion of heart: Kent James ’84 (left), Doug
Stewart ’89, and work foreman Ron Hinton stand in a Chester home
purchased fo r $3,000 in a tax sale. Their organization, the Chester
Community Improvement Project (CCIP), buys rundown houses, re­
stores them using grant monies and volunteer help, and resells them—
at little or no profit— to poor working people in the community. During
James’four-year tenure as coordinator o f CCIP, the organization has
restored 13 houses. “I f we had more support in monies, we could do
more fo r this hard-time town and its people, ” he says unequivocally.

Volunteer students from Swarthmore and Haverford devote an after­
noon to scraping and patching in an empty Chester house.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The gadfly of good journalism: Irascible. Irreverent. Inspiring. Stu­
dents used these words to characterize Victor Navasky ’54, editor o f The
Nation and author o f Naming Names. Dismissing the idea o f objectivity
in journalism as unreal, he noted that every publication offers a specific
ideology even in its selection o f what to print. He added, however, that
“good journalism doesn’t leave out inconvenient facts. ”

Doctoring Stats
Surpassing the average
Swarthmore senior acceptance
rate to medical school of 91
percent, 16 of 17 applicants
in the class of 1989 were
accepted to schools around
the country, or 94 percent, ac­
cording to Barbara Yost
Stewart ’54, associate profes­
sor of biology and health
science advisor at the College.
Steyvart said all eight
alumni applicants during 1989
were accepted.
Nineteen of the total 24
students accepted to medical
school majored in at least one
hard science. Only two, both
alumni, chose no science
major.
Grade point averages of
those accepted ranged from a
high of 3.85 to 2.48; Medical
College Admissions Test
scores (MCATs) varied from
72 out of a possible 90, earned
by an alumna who majored in
art history, to 52.

Isabel Jenkins Booth ’16
dies at 96

Paul Booth ’64, director
o f field services fo r the
American Federation o f
State, County, and Muni­
cipal Employees, once
played a prominent role
at Swarthmore as a
member o f Students fo r a
Democratic Society
(SDS). Stating that “the
government is now in the
hands o f ideological
reactionaries, ” he en­
couraged students to
'
carry on the organized
protest movements o f the
1960s with the same
spirit wielded then.

MAY 1990

Isabel Jenkins Booth, an
emeritus member of the Board
of Managers, died March 1,
1990, in Kennett Square, Pa.
Booth served on the Board
from 1939 through 1942, and
again from 1951 through
1966, becoming an emeritus
member in 1967.
The Board of Managers
passed a minute noting that
Booth was “a woman who
*
represented a great tradition at
the heart and conscience of
Swarthmore College. She and
her good friends Eleanor
Stabler Clarke T8 and the late
Helen Gawthrop Worth T8,
three Quaker women de­
scended from Swarthmore
families, served on the Board
of Managers across two gen­
erations. . .. Isabel was known
for a fine sense of humor, her
generosity, and her ability to
be farsighted and flexible
while respecting the traditions
that she cherished.”

President Fraser teaches
epidemiology
College President David
Fraser could be found peri­
odically this semester in the
classroom with 13 students
enrolled in Biology 41—
Epidemiology.
Fraser, whose specialty is
acute infectious diseases, was
joined by co-teacher Paul
Stolley, the Herbert Rorer
Professor of Medical Science
and co-director of the Clinical
Epidemiology Unit at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Stolley’s research has included
a range of chronic diseases;
each took primary responsi­
bility for half the course.
In exploring the nature of
epidemiology and the manner
in which the science has been
used to attack specific prob­
lems, Fraser led class sessions
on infectious diseases and en­
vironmental hazards. Students
read original scientific papers
on such subjects as toxic
shock syndrome, Legionnaires’
disease, the health problems of
asbestos workers, and side
effects of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings, among
others.
The students also studied
the environmental and dietary
causes of cancer, as well as the
use of epidemiology to dis­
cover the “causes” of homi­
cide and substance abuse.
“When reading primary
scientific papers,” notes
Fraser, “students may some­
times spot flaws, see how
scientists may have drawn the
wrong conclusions, and deter­
mine how some theories
require further testing.”
More than 10 students had
to be turned away from the
class when it quickly filled
during enrollment.
23

E
Reports from the
sporting life
Men’s Basketball (9-16):
Although finishing with four
wins and six losses in the
Middle Atlantic Conference
(MAC), the Garnet earned the
acclaim of its fans by winning
when it counted—against
Haverford both at home (7457) and away (60-46), dem­
onstrating that the right wins
count more than many wins.
Chris McCabe ’90 completed
his three-year career with 523
points and 237 rebounds.
Women’s Basketball
(8-17): Not to be outdone or
outgunned by the men’s team,
the Garnet skillfully derailed
Haverford both at home
(58-56) and decisively on the
Ford’s court (68-52). The
team’s 3-9 record in MAC
play failed to reflect its pre­
mier achievement—rebound­
ing successfully from a diffi­
cult ’88-89 season. Liz Clarke
’90 scored 1,304 career points
for the Garnet.
Men’s Swimming (6-6):
No sooner had it toweled off
from a fiercely competitive
.500 season than the Garnet
dove into the MAC cham­
pionships, navigating to a
second-place finish behind
Gettysburg and leaving 12
other teams in its wake. But a
close, thorny defeat had its
rosy side: Tim Childers ’91
broke the College record in
the 1,000-meter freestyle,
defeating a Gettysburg alsoswam by .01 seconds.
Women’s Swimming
(7-6): The tough, well-condi­
tioned Garnet performed effluently in a record-breaking sea­
son that included two national
qualifiers: Gretchen VandeWalle ’90 broke the Ware
pool record by 15 seconds and
qualified for nationals in the
1650-meter freestyle, swim­
ming the distance in 18:15.23,
and Caroline Soter ’90 broke
a pool record and College
record in the 200-meter but­
terfly, qualifying for nationals
with a time of 2:13.76.
24

G

E

Wrestling (10-10): Win­
ning eight of its last nine
matches in the regular season,
the Garnet stepped out of
boundaries in January to win
an international wrestling
tournament against seven
other teams in Mexico City.
Back at Swarthmore, the team
pinned the Fords 28-14.
Badminton (10-2): After a
superb regular season, Karen
Hales ’91 and Elizabeth
Grossman ’92 won the wom­
en’s doubles at the Northeast
Regional championships and
were named to the All Re­
gional Team.
Tallying winter victories in
basketball and wrestling, the
Garnet entered the spring
sports season with a leg up on
Hood Trophy competition,
leading Haverford 6-3.

Crostic puzzle
solution
(See page 20 for puzzle.)
C[ourtney] C[raig] Smith
Inaugural Address: “It is not
enough to develop intellect,
for intellect by itself is essen­
tially amoral, capable of evil
as well as of good. We must
develop the character which
makes intellect constructive,
and the personality which
makes it effective.”
A. Chow Chow
B. Columbine
C. Staff
D. Machete
E. Isosceles
F. Tiger Lily
G. Hollyhock
H. Instinct
I. Nettle Cloth
J. African Violet
K. Upkeep
L. Gets
M. Ultimate
N. Rose of Sharon
O. Activate
R Lady’s Slipper
Q. Athlete
R. DECTAB
S. Dandelion
T. Revive
U. Effete
V. Sweet William
W. Solvent

;
—

7

-

m
m

M i'

party’s success,” writes Carla Kolin,
Emma’s daughter.

Clementine Huiburt Gibson
died on Jan. 2, a month before her
103 rd birthday. Serving faithfully
for 52 years as class secretary, she
commented once in her notes: “Just
a word to you youngsters in your
80s. You have years of fun and
service ahead. I did volunteer work
until I was 97 and loved every
minute.”
Clementine grew up in Swarth­
more, where she was active for
many years in community affairs
and as a member of the singing
group Guys and Gals. She was a
lover of poetry and wrote verse for
numerous occasions. She is remem­
bered for her youthful and positive
spirit, unflagging in her efforts to
keep Swarthmore alumni in touch
with each other. She is survived by
a son, John Davis, of Mesa, Ariz.;
two grandsons; five great-grand­
children; one great-great-grandchild;
three nephews, Robert Douglas
’31, James Douglas, Jr., ’32, and
Gordon Douglas ’47; and a greatnephew, G. Allen Douglas ’72.
We honor Clem for her many
years of outstanding service to the
College; she will be greatly missed.

“Emma Marshall Clausen of
Pinellas Park, Fla., had help from
the Texas branch of her family in
celebrating her 99th birthday on
Dec. 8. Her great-grandchildren
Faith, 5, and Scott, 1V2, ensured the

Mary Harvey Burn writes:
“The printed word begins to blur,
so television becomes more impor­
tant as a window to watch events
beyond my nice room at the
Friends Boarding Home in Kennett
Square. My son and daughter-inlaw, Ev and Betsey Cuddy Burn,
both ’52, are happily retired in
South Hadley, Mass.”

Elizabeth S. Douglass
234 Kings Road
Madison, NJ 07940
In his eagerness to share news,
Wallace Spring tore off the begin­
ning of his letter. What survived
follows: “Your old 91-year-old
uncle has just put away his roller
skates and given up golf. I enjoy
our cottage at Ocean City, Md.,
and the wonderful ocean. Keep
things going for our dear old Col­
lege, and may God bless you all.”
Grace Wilson Miller and
husband Birney are living at Cross­
lands. They enjoy activities there
and have found many friends.
I had the good fortune to see all
four sons in November, traveling to
northern New York, to South
Carolina, and No. 2 son lives in
New Jersey and met me on my
return.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

The Theology of the Hammer
There are points in our lives
when we can find ourselves
on a less traveled path. For me
one of those came last Sep­
tember, when I joined a Vir­
ginia construction delegation
to work with Habitat For
Humanity International in
Nicaragua.
Back in the summer of
1987, our son, Allen, and
daughter, Liz, arrived in the
Roanoke Valley as co-leaders
with a service project trip for
Quaker teens-—the group
worked hard to help build
two new houses for Habitat
for Humanity here during a
“house raising week,” and I
became interested in the local
project. Newly retired after 30
years in the railroad industry,
I soon began serving on the
local Habitat board.
My Habitat work in south­
west Virginia has included
digging footings and sewer
lines and pounding nails, in
keeping with Habitat For
Humanity’s “theology of the
hammer.” So when the co­
director of our local peace
center began organizing a
Habitat work project for Nica­
ragua, I thought for many
weeks about joining up. I’d
never traveled to any setting
like Nicaragua. My decision
came after Liz, by then study­
ing and living in Buenos Aires,
strongly suggested during a
phone conversation that this
would be an opportunity for
me to put some of my ideals
into practice. It’s not the first
time in my life that I found
our daughter serving as an
effective one-person clearness
committee!
We arrived in Managua,
spent a busy two days in brief­
ings, and loaded our supplies
into a Habitat pickup truck to
head out for the work project
in Mulukuku, a relatively new
village about 180 miles to the
northeast. It was a nine-hour
trip through beautiful country­
side over increasingly rough,
bone-jarring roads. Two of the

36

by Robert P. Fetter ’53

other norteamericanos we
teamed up with were traveling
to Mulukuku to begin three
years’ work there with Habi­
tat—our group from Virginia
would be there just eight days.
Mulukuku seems reminis­
cent of a cattle town in the
American West, circa 1890,
except that in addition to the
horses and vaqueros and pack
mules, there were a few vehi­
cles that could get stuck in the
mud (as our pickup truck did
about 15 miles from our desti­
nation). The electricity there
was vintage early Rural Elec­
trification—available in part
of the town (not ours) for
three or four hours a day.
To get better into the
rhythm and style of life in this
remote area, I traveled with no
watch—the rooster we lived
with let us know when to get
up. We stayed next to the day
care center at the edge of
town; the floods that followed
Hurricane Joan in October
1988 had washed away not
only most of the houses, but
also a huge highway bridge
the Nicaraguans had worked
eight years to construct across
the Rio Turna.
Hurricane relief is one rea­
son why Habitat for Hu­
manity International serves in
Mulukuku, working with
local Nicaraguan prospective
homeowners and two churchand peace-related groups—
CEPAD (The Evangelical
Committee for Aid to Devel­
opment) and Canadian
Farmers for Peace. The objec­
tive over the next few years is
to build at least 200 houses on
a higher-ground town site,
well above Rio Turna; inci­
dentally, this new town site
was laid out by the Swiss.
Each morning we would
cross the Rio Turna in large
dugout canoes handled by
skillful oarsmen. Once across,
we walked less than a mile to
the Habitat work site. Work­
ing with beautiful boards cut
locally at the Habitat sawmill,

our main task was construct­
ing and fabricating roof
trusses. Next to us, a women’s
collective manufactured the
bricks for use in building
lower curtain walls of the
houses. The heat? I never
bothered to find out the tem­
perature, but the first workday
seemed especially hot. I found
myself working slowly after
something I ate drastically
reduced my appetite for six
days. The group’s productivity
improved each day as more of
the villagers, who work to­
gether on the Habitat houses
in teams of nine families,
joined in the work.
The Nicaraguan people
were wonderful to meet and
work with. Their dignity and
tenacity reflect a determina­
tion to surmount the daily dif­
ficulties they face—perhaps
like the determination of Lon­
doners during the Blitz of
World War II. Most people
seemed strong: Many walked
miles each day, though they
accepted any offered rides.
Regarding diet, some children

seemed to crave sweets, and
some adults’ teeth showed the
ultimate consequences of too
much sugar. We had plenty of
good food in our comedor
meals—the same 20,000 cor­
doba (80 cents) price for
breakfast or dinner. In mar­
kets, meats, baked goods,
staples, and fruit (bananas or
citrus) were always for sale.
But if you were a Nicaraguan
with a job earning the equiva­
lent of two or three dollars a
day, you’d still have to watch
your cordobas. Cokes and
Pepsis as a luxury item were
available for 40 cents (10,000
cordobas), but you could
forget about ice. Mulukuku’s
sole refrigerator was in the
health clinic—furnished by
UNICEF.
Unfortunately, Contra
activity continues in the area.
During our time in Mulukuku
three farmers were killed in a
raid only 40 miles away, leav­
ing three widows and fourteen
fatherless children. The high­
way out of Mulukuku closed
every afternoon at four, re-

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Continued from page 7
given him the shock so many times—over had a knife,' he said. I sewed him up, and
4 0 ,1 think—that you could smell the tissue he started talking about going back to get
on his chest starting to burn. I didn’t even that guy with a gun. I said, ‘Man, this is one
want to think about the question of brain guy you better leave alone.’
damage after that length of time.” Finally
“So he left, and a couple of hours after
exhausted, admits Connell, he lost his cool that he was brought back in. He’d been shot,
over the unconscious man. “I yelled at him. but he was alive and conscious. He was still
I said, ‘Look, either live or die, but make up determined to go back and get that guy.”
your mind because we can’t do this much
The story would be funny—in a fairy
longer.’ ”
tale, in a cartoon, in a vaudeville routine
Eventually the patient was stabilized, to where violence is a parody and some char­
everyone’s surprise, and moved out of the acters walk away looking only foolish and
ER. “We were sure we’d see his name on the a little the worse for wear.
coroner’s list the next morning.” But a year
later a man walked into the ER looking for
hat’s tragic, in Connell’s wideConnell. “It was this guy. He told me he just
open eyes, is the effect of drugs
wanted to thank me for what he heard had
on this subculture, in particular
been some hard work on our parts. He also
the effect of crack cocaine. He
said he felt that he was floating above nothing in his experience, including PCP or
himself for the entire four hours, and that his heroin, shows the same capacity to destroy
body appeared to be surrounded by nurses human bonds so thoroughly, so quickly.
and birds wearing white coats. The guy said
“Every time a new wave of drugs hits the
that one bird was wearing glasses and carry­ shore, I think, ‘Now they’ve got one that will
ing a notepad from time to time. I knew he kill us all.’ But the addictive potential of this
meant me. Then, to my surprise, he repeated stuff is worse than all the others. It’s a ‘jones,’
what I had said to him almost word for a habit, that doesn’t ever go away. You do
word: ‘Either live or die, but make up your it once, and you’ve got it.”
mind.’
The proof of its ability to destroy human
“That taught me something,” he reveals beings, though, is that it will make a user do
quietly. “Now I watch what I say around anything to get it, says Connell. He offers a
these people. When I have somebody who simple litmus test: “In any community,
I know is going to die, I make it a point to despite what happens to some people, the
say something nice. Whether they’re con­ bond between mothers and children will
scious or not, I tell ’em, ‘You’re going to be usually stick. Well, I’ll tell you, crack severs
leaving us now. Good luck and happiness on that. You see old grandmothers bringing in
your next adventure.’ Something like that. I sick kids because the mothers don’t care—
think it’s important.”
they’re out trying to get the next fix.”
Connell has learned two things from 10
His solution to the drug problem: Take
years in the ER, he says. One is that life is away the profit motive, legalize and tax the
tenuous, “a crapshoot.” And the other is a drugs, and pour the money into communities
social lesson. “You realize there’s a whole and rehabilitation programs. “This war on
subculture out there with no values at all drugs is like prohibition—it isn’t working,”
relative to mainstream American society. he observes. “As soon as I say that, though,
Violence is casual, part of business. They I don’t know what I’d do about crack.”
come in cut up, you put ’em back together,
When Connell was interviewed for a
and they’re back again.
story in The New York Times last fall, he
“One guy came in from a bar fight with described ope teen-ager who was brought in
his lip cut up pretty bad, in a rage. He said with his face lacerated and $700 in his
the only thing he wanted to do was go back pocket. Perceiving that the youth was unusu­
and get this person—with a knife.
ally bright, Connell enlisted him in conver­
“I figured he’d cool off, but a couple of sation while stitching his face, asking the
hours later he showed up with his chest cut boy where he got that kind of money and
wide open. ‘Man, I didn’t know the sucker suggesting that he save his life by getting off

W

54

the streets and going to school.
“The reason I mentioned that story to the
reporter was the kid’s attitude about busi­
ness,” notes Connell. “This kid told me
confidentially that he was the bookkeeper
for a street gang. He said to me, ‘Listen, I
make $2,000 a week tax free. How much do
they pay you?’ It’s a cottage industry. You
have hostile takeovers, like in legitimate
business, except on the street you get shot.
“There are no short-term, sexy solutions,”
he concludes. “It’s much sexier to go to
Panama than to say we need long-term
solutions. People don’t want to hear it.”
Drugs, crack especially, are an immediate
problem, short-term solutions or not, in
Connell’s mind. But long-term health care
says
maythat
be an even larger difficulty. “If we do
not make comprehensive changes in the
health care system and in our attitudes
toward health care, we will have a catastro­
phe the likes of which we’ve never seen,” he
states unequivocally. The question, he be­
lieves, is how to create a system that allows
physicians to make money from healthy
patients, not from sick ones.
“We have to rethink the economics of
this,” he says. “The healthy patient doesn’t
produce profit. I’m not necessarily in favor
of socialized medicine, but I am suggesting
national health insurance, or something like
it. The way it is now, doctors have a vested
interest in patients who are unhealthy and
paying.”
he implicit question in his conversa­
tion concerns the people he works
with—those who are unhealthy, unin­
sured, and unable to pay.
Not surprisingly, he is armed with numer­
ous stories about the effect of the current
system on poor or uninsured patients, those
who can’t pay. Though emergency rooms
are required by law to accept anyone who
walks through their doors in need of imme­
diate care, Connell says, that doesn’t mean
that every needy patient receives appropriate
attention, let alone appropriate care.
“You find patients who do get substandard
care,” he admits. “The M.D.s may think
they’re ‘dirtballs,’ or these patients may have
no insurance—who knows what. And doc­
tors know that at the county hospital, if we

T

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

have no beds, we won’t accept transfers
from the private hospitals. So they’ll put the
patient in a car and send him over. You can’t
close the door to walk-in traffic.
“And sometimes doctors will lie.” Connell
says that one private-hospital M.D. in Los
Angeles used to lie to him about the condi­
tion of patients, periodically sending unin­
sured people in desperate straits into the
emergency room at King.
“Finally I threatened him,” he admits. “I
told him I’d make him a patient if he did it
again. I was fed up.”
Connell says that a few months later a
man arrived from that hospital who had
been shot through the lung, another unin­
sured, nonpaying patient. “This physician
had called and said the guy was stable, that
there was no blood in the tube —this means
a main vessel wasn’t nicked. So I said we’d
take him. About 20 minutes later the man
came in with a cardiac arrest after a ‘coastto-coast’—meaning he had a bullet hole all
the way through him, in one side and out the
other. Sure enough, there was blood in his
tube, and damn it, he died.”
Connell’s voice takes on a quiet, danger­
ous edge. “I knew what the shifts were at that
hospital, so I went over and waited for him
in the parking lot. When he came out, I beat
the crap out of him. He threatened to sue,
but I suggested he could either put up with
a broken nose, or I’d try to splash the story
all over the Los Angeles Times where a good
friend of mine was a reporter. There was no
suit.”
Connell says that in his two-year service
as acting chief of the department of emer­
gency medicine at Highland, he has dis­
covered what he long ago recognized: “I
don’t have the soul of an administrator.”
Though he doesn’t sound disappointed about
that, he seems unhappy with the fact that he
gets to work only about two graveyard shifts
a month, nowadays. He wants action, in part
because he knows he’s good at it.
According to the colleagues who work
closely with him, for those in trouble, Com
nell is the best around. And the most trouble
comes on the night shifts when administra­
tors don’t work.
“You know, I can’t see doing this forever,”
he admits. “But I don’t know what comes
after.” He doesn’t have time to speculate,
though, because duty is a hard master. As
evening approaches, he is drawn inexorably
toward another shift in the ER at Highland.
“Necessity brings him here,” wrote Dante,
“not pleasure.”
THE DOCTOR IS IN fin e form: Wearing a
Phillies ball cap and an anything-it-takes
attitude, Connell appears unflappable.
55

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Levin is proof to many that a scrupulous politician is not a contradiction in terms.

Continued from page 19
taxes, capital punishment, and a balanced
budget are identical.”
Another former Levin campaign man­
ager, Robert Seltzer, contends that the com­
parison won’t stick because “Carl, unlike
Dukakis, is a known commodity in Michi­
gan. . . . ”
But even if the effort to yoke Levin and
Dukakis falters, the Republican recipe for
victory in Michigan will probably be similar
to the one Bush used in the 1988 election.
Apply the L-word to your opponent early
and often, and keep him on the defensive
with blunt, concise allegations that can be
parried only with detailed, confusing expla­
nations.
Michigan State Democratic Chairman
Tom Lewand contends that while Dukakis
wasn’t able to respond effectively to the
Bush attack, Levin will be. “While Carl does
like detailed explanations—and he has them
for everything he does—I think he’ll be very
good at the quick punch-counter-punch,”
Lewand says. But Seltzer worries that Levin
may be “vulnerable to caricature. If he had
the time and the resources to fully explain
his positions, I don’t think he’d get beaten on
them. But it takes 10 seconds for an oppo­
nent to say ‘Levin opposed a constitutional
56

amendment,’ and 10 minutes for Carl to ex­
plain why.”
Levin has always been loathe to see
complex actions of government boiled down
and served up as glossy, media-ready mor­
sels. When the Supreme Court forcefully
affirmed the constitutionality of a law that
empowers independent counsels to inves­
tigate and prosecute top administration of­
ficials—a law Levin had championed—
reporters sought the Michigan senator’s com­
ments. Gustitus recalls that Levin wanted to
say something “serious and complete.”
But aides pressed him to be punchy and
quotable—why not call the court’s action “a
slam-dunk decision”? Levin objected that
the staffs wording was “too cutesy—we’re
talking about the Supreme Court”—but
ultimately relented. Gustitus says he “looked
a little sheepish” when the quote was widely
published and ended up as a Time magazine
headline.
Today Levin acknowledges that in the
televised campaign, the margin goes to the
politician whose message is “clear and
short.” But while his head has come around
to that conviction, his heart lags behind.
Whether Levin will prove effective at
translating his positions into digestible cam­

paign McNuggets remains to be seen. But
aside from a self-conscious effort to jettison
the loaded L-label in favor of “Midwestern
progressive,” he has shown little inclination
to mute, much less change, his stripes.
When his opposition to the death penalty
for drug-related murders is assailed, for
instance, the incumbent reiterates his long­
time conviction that execution can be “a
mistake you can’t correct.” (As a public
defender in Detroit, Levin helped free a man
who served 30 years in prison for a crime he
did not commit.) But Levin adds that he
supports other anti-drug measures and au­
thored the law that mandates time in jail for
anyone selling drugs near schools. And he
says he’s “as tough on crime as folks who
voted for that [death penalty] bill, which
permits parole,” because he proposed a
measure that would sentence the same crimi­
nals to mandatory life sentences with no
parole.
Levin is equally unrepentant about his
votes against tax cuts (1981) and tax reform
(1986)—two fiscal measures his Republican
opponents say were widely favored by Le­
vin’s constituents. Levin continues to main­
tain that cutting taxes in 1981 was irrespon­
sible given the huge federal deficit and that
the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was “a lousy
bill—the wealthiest people got tremendous
tax cuts and lots of middle-income people
got increases.”
Still, the tax reform vote is just the kind
that his chief aide predicts Republicans will
brandish as proof that Levin is out of step.
When it passed 97-3, “I was one of the
three, and that makes me look outside the
mainstream,” Levin acknowledges.
“But,” he adds, “it was the right vote.”
Patricia Edmonds is a writer in the Washington
bureau o f the Detroit Free Press. Story and
photos courtesy o f the Detroit Free Press.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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1

ALUMNI COUNCIL

Try Reconnecting: Discover the merits of
Swarthmore Connections

!

Swarthmore Connections were instituted in
1982 by the Alumni Association and the
Alumni Office to help alumni stay in touch
with each other and with the College. Con­
nections are located in ten metropolitan
areas—Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Los An­
geles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco,
Seattle, South Florida, and Washington,
D.C.—in which 8,500 alumni and parents
live.

What is a Connection?

|

It’s a regional organization of alumni and
parents that “facilitates their continuing in­
volvement with the College in ways that are
mutually beneficial and rewarding,” accord­
ing to the Connections Handbook. Connections plan events and activities that intermingle
intellectual and social interests. They may
strengthen admissions outreach, develop ca­
reer counseling programs for students, and
create a local network for Swarthmore alumni,
parents, and friends in the area.
Connections have varying degrees of formal
organization. One of their chief characteristics
is their flexibility, so they can easily reflect
regional differences and individual prefer­
ences. The Los Angeles Connection, covering
a metropolitan area of hundreds of miles, has
a formal committee structure and telephone
network. The South Florida Connection, on
the other hand, operates through the chair­
person without a committee, reflecting the
smaller number of Swarthmoreans in that
region.
All Connections chairpersons are members
of Alumni Council by virtue of their office.
Connections must hold at least one event a
year, and several of the more populous ones
hold five or more.
Connections collect no ddes, nor do they
attempt to raise funds for the College at their
events. Events are priced to cover only ex­
penses of the events themselves.

Washington, D.C., a talk by Professor Charles
E. Gilbert in Chicago, an Actor’s Playhouse
performance in South Florida, a panel on arts
and community in New York, and a ski
weekend in Waterville Valley, N.H., spon­
sored by the Boston Connection. In addition
Connections have organized admissions re­
ceptions, young alumni parties, and career
panels.
If you live in or near a Swarthmore Con­
nection, you are invited not only to attend the
events but to get in touch with the chairpersons
listed on this page to give them your ideas for
future programs. The Connections always
need more volunteers to help with events and
would welcome your assistance. You can do
this with only a small commitment of time.
If you do not live in a Connection area and
would like to discuss the possibility of starting
one in your city, please contact Maralyn
Orbison Gillespie ’49 or David Allgeier ’86 in
the Alumni Office. Being part of a Swarth­
more Connection offers the challenge and
excitement of contact with the College as well
as the reward of being in touch with Swarth­
moreans.
—Freeman Palmer 79

Chairman, Connections Committee
of Alumni Council

MAY 1990

BOSTON
Virginia Mussari Bates ’73
115 Ashland Street
Melrose, MA 02176
BOULDER
Diana Royce Smith ’68
1930 Oak Avenue
Boulder, CO 80302
CHICAGO
Mary Schless ’81
1946 North Seminary, 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60614
Sally Vongsathorn ’86
1488 W. Cornelia, #2
Chicago, IL 60657
LOS ANGELES
Consuelo Staisey Woodhead ’70
500 Prospect Boulevard
Pasadena, CA 91103
NEW YORK
Donald Fujihira ’69
1199 Park Avenue, Apt. 7B
New York, NY 10128
PHILADELPHIA
Carolyn Morgan Hayden ’83
116 Willow Way
Folsom, PA 19033
SAN FRANCISCO
Sohail Bengali ’79
3643 Glenwood Avenue
Redwood City, CA 94062

An Owl Prowl in Boston attracted Swarthmore
parents Barbara and Joseph Piffat and Donald
and Jeannette Yeaple.

SEATTLE
Constance Gayl Pious ’53
3602 East Schubert Place
Seattle, WA 98122
SOUTH FLORIDA
Craig E. Stein ’78
5700 Collins Avenue, #8M
Miami Beach, FL 33140

Connections offer an eclectic
range of events
True to their purpose, Swarthmore Con­
nections have organized a remarkable variety
of programs to appeal to alumni and parents
with wide-ranging interests. A sampling of
events in 1988-89 includes a distance run in

Connections Heads

Peter Schickele ’57, third from left, visits with
Jerry Cohen ’61, Norm Mathews ’83, and Sylvia
Crowley Holmes ’81 after his P.D.Q. Bach con­
cert in Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON D.C.
William R. Carroll ’38
4802 Broad Brook Drive
Bethesda, MD 20814

57

re you still at Swarthm ore?’ Not the

A

most gracious of questions, but one that
many senior faculty face from time to
time. A fair translation might be, ‘Why is a
serious scholar like you still teaching at a little
undergraduate college?’
“My own answer takes two words: ‘humane
excellence.’ Swarthmore is a rare community in
which excellence in scholarship, excellence in
teaching, and humaneness in personal relations
are all cherished. It’s a precious combination,
and expensive. I think it will take our best
shared efforts to protect these values, never as
trade-offs but always in the balance needed to
sustain us as an educational community.”
l

—Jennie Keith, Professor of Anthropology
Jennie Keith, an internationally recognized
researcher on aging, is co-director of Project
A.G.E., a study of the lives of old people in
Africa, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the U.S., spon­
sored by the National Institute on Aging. She
serves as chair of Behavioral and Social Sciences
for the Gerontological Society of America and
has written extensively about her research. Her
publications include the books Old People, New
Lives (University of Chicago Press) and Old
People as People (Little, Brown and Company).
Faculty research funds and the Joel Dean
fellowships, both supported by alumni contri­
butions, have enabled many undergraduates to
participate in her research, some of them later
entering the field of gerontology.
The Campaign for Swarthmore will help
ensure that teacher-scholars like Jennie Keith
continue to find Swarthmore professionally at­
tractive. The Campaign will end June 30, 1990.
Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in the
future of the College.