AFS Janus - Summer 2013

A PUBLICATION OF THE ARCHIVES OF THE AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE AND AFS INTERCULTURAL PROGRAMS

Sachiye Kuwamoto The Right Woman at the Right Time

SUMMER 2013: Sachiye Kuwamoto, The Right Woman at the Right Time 2 Trailblazing Women of AFS: Karin Eisele 6 Letter from the AFS International President 8 An AFS Ambulance Driver Connects with Current AFS Participants 8 The “Reconnect with AFS Project” and One Ambulance Driver’s Family Experience 9 Love Letters from the Front 10 Remembering Papa: My Family’s AFS Story Comes Full Circle 12 AFS WWII Ambulance Drivers Last Post 14 Two Brothers: Stories from the Front Lines of World War I 16

Sachiye Kuwamoto The Right Woman at the Right Time

A PUBLICATION OF THE ARCHIVES OF THE AMERICAN FIELD SERVICE AND AFS INTERCULTURAL PROGRAMS

Dear AFS Friend, Spring is quickly turning into early summer here in New York City as we prepare to send our most recent edition of the AFS Janus to press. This spring we turned our thoughts to the early years of AFS and to the remarkable group of AFS staff that drove the organization’s growth in the first decades of its existence. Stephen Galatti had a genius for recruiting the right people, at the right time, to help him transform his ideas and hopes for AFS into reality. Among the many remarkable people that he brought to work at AFS were many outstanding, hardworking, and dedicated women. Without them, AFS would not be what it is today.

In this issue’s feature article, we honor Sachiye (Sachi) Mizuki Kuwamoto, AFS Life Trustee and Galatti’s “right hand woman” during the early years of the organization. Sachi and many other women built a strong foundation for AFS. To recognize them, and in no particular seniority order, we begin a series in this issue of the AFS Janus titled “Trailblazing Women of AFS.” In this issue we highlight Karin Eisele.

You will also find stories about how searching through an old box of papers in an attic led to a new and vital connection to a family member in “Remembering Papa: My Family’s AFS Story Comes Full Circle”; how the relationship between a famous writer and her husband, an AFS Ambulance Driver, forged new AFS connections today in “Love Letters from the Front”; and how an AFS staffer’s efforts have opened up a new world of discovery for many AFS Ambulance Drivers’ family members in “The Reconnect with AFS Project, and One Ambulance Drivers’ Family Experience.”

As we approach the centennial of the founding of the AFS, which will be observed in 2014-2015, our history and the living links that it has to our present have acquired a renewed importance. As we work to make this history more accessible to all, we are grateful for your support and your commitment to AFS. We hope you enjoy this issue of the AFS Janus.

Carlos Porro, Editor carlos.porro@afs.org AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc. 71 West 23rd Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10010-4102 USA tel: +1.212.807.8686 fax: +1.212.807.1001 www.afs.org

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“The crux of the organization and the program is personal commitment and personal concern for another human being. No matter how large the staff gets or how professional it becomes, it still has to have this spirit for the program to keep on going.”

Sachiye (Sachi) Mizuki Kuwamoto, currently a Life Trustee of AFS Intercultural Programs, has a distinguished history with AFS. Among the many women who have made lasting contributions to the organization, Sachi stands out as one of the most dedicated individuals. From the very beginning of the AFS exchange programs and for decades afterwards, her dedication and love for AFS helped build a foundation for the future of our student exchange programs.

The Early Years and the Impact of World War II Sachi was born in Sanger, California, and grew up in a rural community as a self-described “California farm girl.”

She attended the local school and enjoyed a happy and fulfilling life, in many ways similar to other American young girls of the time. But with the entry of the United States into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sachi’s life underwent a radical and unexpected change.

With the issuing of Executive Order 9066 in 1941 by then president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, persons of Japanese ancestry were evacuated from a “zone of exclusion” that included the West Coast of the country and were relocated to remote internment camps.

Sachi and her family, along with 120,000 others, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were ordered to leave their homes, jobs, and schools and moved to the camps set up by the government.

Sachi and her family ended up in the Colorado River Relocation Center. In an interview with Sachi for this article, she recalled this difficult experience: “We were in one of the

Sachi with Stephen Galatti, AFS Director General, at an AFS function in Pakistan, 1961.

Sachi with Galatti, 1965.

On the cover: Sachi’s portrait taken at an AFS Board of Trustees meeting, 1978.

three separate camps which made up the Colorado River Relocation Center near Poston, Arizona. People from various areas of California were in Poston II. Housing was tar paper-covered wooden barracks partitioned into six ‘apartments’ or rooms. A family was assigned to one unit. We were six in our group and had one room. My dad used sheets to partition different areas. There was a separate mess hall, where we ate our meals. There was also a latrine for everyone to use. It was really communal living.”

“There were schools set up in the camps. The relocation authority run by the US government recruited teachers to teach the children of school age. The Quakers had a program that helped students that had completed a secondary education to leave the camps and get placed in colleges willing to accept Japanese-American students. As part of that program, I was able to leave camp and go to Bucknell University in central Pennsylvania. One of the camp teachers offered to escort a group of us to Philadelphia. We took the train and stayed overnight with the teacher’s family in Wisconsin before arriving in Philadelphia.

Two of us from that group were selected

to fill two openings at Bucknell.”

Sachi tried to make the most of her college experience and made many friends, including one of her professors who was very active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) “He was one of the few people who knew about the Japanese-American experience at that time,” Sachi remembered. “Even today people ask me about my internment experience when they first learn about this bit of American history.”

Calling New York City Her Home “Back East” The first summer before Sachi began her studies at Bucknell, she found a job as a baby sitter with a family who had a summer home in Long Branch, New Jersey, and needed help with the children. They became her family “back East.” She spent her summers with them while in college and spent the rest of her free time with them, as well, when they moved from New Jersey to New York City. When Sachi finished college, she had a home base in the city. Eventually she found an apartment with former classmates.

An Illustrious AFS Career That Spanned the Decades A well-timed telephone call in 1948 allowed Sachi to play an enormous role in shepherding AFS from its infancy as an intercultural exchange program into what it is today. She had signed up with an employment agency and gone out on several interviews, but it was Robert “Bob” Applewhite, a World War II AFS Ambulance Driver who was working with Stephen Galatti in New York, who was the first to call and make a firm employment offer.

Sachi started her career at AFS as a temporary worker for Stephen Galatti, who was desperate for someone to help him type his letters after his secretary went on vacation. Her starting salary was thirty dollars a week, which an AFS colleague calculated to break down to 15 cents an hour! Sachi sometimes found the pace of New York and AFS to be too much and thought about looking for another job. She never acted on this impulse since, “it was just then when I was thinking about leaving that Mr. Galatti would seem to need me the most and suddenly I’d stop looking.”

When Sachi started with AFS in the

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summer of 1948, the first contingent of 50 AFS students was already in the United Sates. Of these 50 students, 29 participated on the famous first bus trip. That trip, chaperoned by another remarkable AFS pioneer, Dot Field, took the lucky students on a 24-day, 5,500mile bus trip across the United States.

Galatti spent most of his time on Wall Street working for Paine Webber in the early days, so Sachi usually found herself alone in the office—at that time housed in an old mansion just behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As a result, she had often to figure out what to do on her own. AFS was such a small operation then that everyone did a little of everything. Galatti was a very motivational leader and always encouraged his staff to work as hard as they could. Sachi summed up his attitude as “let’s do it.” This included improving work conditions and providing some relief from the constant pressure to perform, sometimes to a surprising degree. Sachi recalled that one winter the office in the 30th Street building was having trouble with its ancient furnace, so she expressed how nice it would be to be able to read the applications for the upcoming summer program somewhere warm. Galatti made it happen, arranging with a friend in Florida to provide a small motel room for the Summer Program staff to read the applications in comfort and with dispatch.

In the all-hands-on-deck atmosphere that Galatti fostered, Sachi’s responsibilities gradually evolved from deciphering his “terrible” handwriting to supervising AFS bus trips, editing the AFS publication titled, Our World, working in participant placement, and running the Americans Abroad program in which American students spent one academic year with host families and attended secondary schools in their host countries. Initially, the program placed students in various European countries and New Zealand. It later expanded to other regions of the world.

In 1949, the local secondary school in Elkhart, Indiana, which had learned about the AFS exchanges, successfully hosted two international students. As other schools around the country learned about AFS’s innovative program, they also wanted to participate. In the publication

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1. Sachi (standing, 3rd from left) and Galatti (center) with AFS Participants and others at Iran American Society, 1961.

2. Sachi (6th from left) with a group of Family Basket Picnic attendees held on Presque Ile Peninsula in Erie, PA. The Picnic was attended by AFS bus trip participants and more than 200 Lawrence Park parents and children in the summer of 1952. Photograph by A. L. Shumaker Studio.

The AFS Story: Journeys of a Lifetime, published in 1997, there is an account of the experience, “It [the exchange program] worked so well that the US Department of State, which was already cooperating by helping to screen the applicants abroad, asked AFS to create a teenage program for Germany. After consultation, the Department of State accepted the AFS scheme and, under its terms, 130 German students were selected to come to the United States in 1950-1951.” This was a radical undertaking, happening just a few years after Germany and the United States had been at war.

Sachi remembered that the concern that some had over hosting German students turned out to be unfounded since they were warmly welcomed by their host families and communities. Having students attend public schools instead

of boarding schools meant that housing arrangements had to be made and a local school and community chapter structure had to be created to ensure the students’ welfare and the financial stability of the program. Each member of the staff, including Sachi, contributed his or her expertise to make this happen. Soon after their return to Germany and with encouragement from Galatti, the German AFS Returnees formed an organization and invited a group of 54 American teenagers to spend the summer with German families.

In 1952, the Allied High Commission, through which the United States, France, and Great Britain supervised West Germany, was still operational. The High Commissioner from the United States, John McCloy, was not a fan of the idea of sending a group of 54 American

teenagers to Germany for the summer.

Galatti persuaded him to allow the exchange, but a reluctant McCloy gave the condition that a “responsible person” oversee the program. Galatti chose Sachi to be that person but she wasn’t sure she could do it, protesting, “You can’t do that—I’ve never been to Germany!” As he had done with McCloy, he convinced her to go ahead with the plan. The AFS students were warmly welcomed in Germany.

AFS’s first experiences sending American students abroad were a success and a turning point for the organization, but there were definitely growing pains.

Sachi has a vivid memory of one such event that happened in Metz, France, on the way to Germany. Tired after being cooped up in the train, the AFS Participants had gotten off to stretch their legs. The train pulled out of the station backwards, catching them off guard and leaving three students stranded in Metz.

Sachi had visions of having to cable New York to report three lost young people a continent away, but she never had to. She was able to locate an AFS Returnee in the area and ask him to go to the station to see if he could help. He found that

the French railway officials had put the students on the next train and they made it to Germany safe and sound.

Although Sachi’s overall responsibility was to help Galatti with administrative work, AFS was not an average organization and Galatti was not an average boss, so she felt fortunate to be asked to accompany Galatti on trips all around the world to do AFS’s work. She considers Galatti to be “…really an original.

His ability to engage a person to join him in this exciting adventure was what AFS was all about in the early years.”

Even though Galatti was the engine driving AFS at its beginning, Sachi recalled that there was a smooth transition after his death when Art Howe, Jr., eventually took the reins. Thinking back on Galatti’s influence on her personally, she said, “I always wondered how my life would have been different if he had not been such a persuasive mentor.”

Sachi’s last position at AFS was assistant director of programs. This position required her to continue taking AFS into new territory, this time organizational rather than geographic. As a 1971 profile of Sachi in Our World noted, “bookcases

full of AFS guidelines and handbooks flowed from Sachi’s typewriter.”

It is Sachi’s belief that “the crux of the organization and the program is personal commitment and personal concern for another human being. No matter how large the staff gets or how professional it becomes, it still has to have this spirit for the program to keep on going.” She embodied this belief by continuing to correspond with former students even as her increasing level of responsibility moved her away from that pleasurable task.

In 1968 Sachi left AFS to get married, ending her remarkable twenty-year career as an active staff member. She was appointed a Life Trustee two years later, starting a new chapter of her involvement with AFS. When we asked Sachi what she would say to a prospective young AFS Participant she said, “I would tell them that it would be the experience of a lifetime. It would change their life, actually, if they let it. Some kids go and treat it as a lark, but for many I think it is something very, very special.”

Sachi (center) with George Edgell, AFS director of programs (back row, first from left,) Art Howe, Jr., AFS president (back row,last on right) and other AFS International and AFS Philippines staff, 1967.

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Trailblazing Women of AFS:

Karin Eisele Karin Eisele and Sandy Mitchell, AFS International consultant, ca. 1978.

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arin Eisele started working with AFS in 1959, just one day after graduating from Smith College. As an educated and accomplished young woman in the late 1950s, Karin found, as many of her contemporaries did, that the job market did not offer many opportunities beyond what was considered “traditional” work roles for women.

She was clear about one thing: “What I knew was that I didn’t want to work in some office typing letters. I was neither interested nor qualified to be a teacher or a nurse.

I wanted to do something that I perceived had value in the world.

That’s how AFS grabbed me, in addition to the fact that I had spent my junior year of college abroad and thought it was an enormously transformative experience. I felt that having the opportunity to live abroad should happen more often for more people, and I was old enough to understand that it might have been an even more

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meaningful experience had I been younger. All these things captured my imagination as I thought about the possibility of working with AFS. And when I went to the interview with Stephen Galatti, he hired me right on the spot. The next thing I knew, before I’d even worked for a day in the office, I was a twenty-yearold chaperone on a boat bound for Europe filled with AFS Participants.”

Karin stayed with AFS until 1979.

In those twenty years she assumed progressively more significant responsibilities as the director of development, director of admissions, supervisor of selection and placement, and the director of the AFS Midwestern Division, among other roles in her remarkable career with AFS. As a director, Karin often visited the states where she had placed students, spending time with them and supporting the local AFS chapters.

From today’s vantage point, we may not realize how unusual it was at that time for women—

Karin Eisele dancing with Ward B. Chamberlin, Jr., AFS Life Trustee and World War II ambulance driver.

Karin Eisele and Sachi Kuwamoto at an AFS event.

especially young women—to have been entrusted with so much responsibility. She recalls that the AFS New York staff “was very competent and very close since many of us came from similar backgrounds. But many other women who worked for AFS as volunteers out in the field were older—sometimes quite a bit older than we were. For them, AFS was a vehicle for making the world a better place. They, too, were not able to find professional situations in which they were comfortable. But many of them, in my opinion, could have been CEOs of major companies. They assumed enormous responsibilities related to the functioning of AFS across the United States. Those volunteers were extraordinarily organized, dedicated, focused, and knowledgeable. I was too young to understand how unusual the AFS staff in New York and across the country were. AFS would have never become what it is now without those women in the field. Under Galatti’s leadership, AFS

able to listen to what they were saying and address their concerns effectively. The same listening skills were important with our volunteers.

When I went out into the field in my early 20s I was telling people who were decades older than I how they might better perform their job duties, and I had to do that in a way that was not defensive or arrogant.

That was a tricky thing, but a very valuable skill to acquire.”

“Back then,” said Karin, “we didn’t have a human resources department, formal training, or rigid hierarchical structures. We were passionate about what we were doing and we had impressive management from whom we had full support at all times. We were in a job in which we were continually learning. That was the most important thing for me in retrospect.We were learning about the world and about our own country.

AFS was an extraordinary idea in the hands of unusual people. I look back on my AFS experience with enormous gratitude.”

became an employer that was truly ahead of its time.” Karin is indeed an example of the type of accomplished and motivated AFS employee who moved the organization forward with an unstoppable momentum.

After leaving AFS, Karin had a distinguished career and held a number of high-level executive positions with organizations such as the Coro Foundation, Project Orbis, and the Institute of International Education. She also served as a member of the AFS International Board of Trustees and the AFSUSA Board of Directors, and was a recipient of the AFS International President’s Award in 2010. Karin recalls how she developed important skills at AFS that served her very well for the rest of her professional life. One of those skills was to listen carefully to what others were sharing with her. “We were told early on that we were the single most important person in a young AFS Participant’s world during their stay in the United States and that we needed to be

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Letter from the AFS International President I join the editorial board of the AFS Janus in honoring the women who, in the early years of the AFS exchange programs, made significant and lasting contributions to the organization. I know that their dedication to the work of AFS allowed us to build a solid foundation for our future development as a preeminent intercultural education organization.

A number of exceptional women were inspired by the mission and ideals of AFS, which was headed at the time by Stephen Galatti and supported by an exceptional and legendary staff. These women transformed the ideas and dreams of the AFS leadership into reality. They also made great contributions to how well these ideas were implemented in the field and left an indelible mark on a promising and growing AFS. They made us a much better organization.

The upcoming observance of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the AFS in 2014–2015 will give us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leverage our legacy of volunteer service as a springboard into our future. AFS began as a volunteer organization of ambulance drivers whose objective was to aid those wounded on the battlefield, often irrespective of their national allegiances. In times of peace, one of AFS’s most important objectives is to provide quality intercultural learning opportunities to develop inclusive communities of global citizens determined to build bridges between cultures. We are proud to carry on with our founders’ tradition of cross-cultural engagement and to offer our intercultural education programs to increasingly diverse young people across the globe.

We are committed to continue to build an effective organization, powered by the energy of its volunteers, and to craft AFS programs that are innovative as well as mission-driven.

We hope you will continue to support our work as we prepare for the celebration of our centennial year.

Vincenzo Morlini President and CEO AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc.

An AFS Ambulance Driver Connects with Current AFS Participants When Robert Sawhill, a former AFS World War II Ambulance Driver, heard that the AFS North Valley Chapter in Arizona was having a holiday gathering this past December, he quickly agreed to attend. “It means a lot to me to be able to share my adventures and the adventures of my colleagues during the war with young AFSers,” he said. “I believe that the history and legacy of AFS should be a part of their learning experiences.”

He met with 24 current AFS exchange program students from twelve countries around the world who are currently hosted in the United States. Many former AFS Ambulance Drivers are still actively connected with young AFS Participants, and Mr. Sawhill did not want to miss the opportunity to join in the event. He spoke about his experiences in India as a member of AFS unit IB 57 in 1945. He was assigned to the Indian Red Cross in Calcutta to help Allied ex–prisoners of war from Japanese camps get home or find their old units.

Cindy Gort, the president-elect of the North Valley Chapter, said, “we were fortunate to have Robert Sawhill at the event. He shared his memories and mementoes of his service with AFS, and delighted the young AFS students, host families, and volunteers in attendance with his stories. He was a great addition to our holiday celebration.”

AFS Participants hosted by the North Valley Chapter/Grand Canyon Area Teams surround Robert Sawhill (center) at the event.

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The “Reconnect with AFS Project” and One Ambulance Driver’s Family Experience Some months ago, Paul Gamner, the development associate at AFS Intercultural Programs, was working with our internal database that lists the AFS Ambulance Drivers from World War II. Paul realized that there were approximately 1,000 AFS World War II Drivers whose whereabouts were unknown, as over the years they had lost contact with AFS. He used the records of the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS Archives) to gather background information on those “missing drivers,” and started searching for clues regarding their whereabouts.

As a result, Paul found 35 drivers who were still living and AFS was able to reach out to them and offer to reconnect them with the organization. Additionally, and as an unexpected outcome, he found that in many cases in which the drivers were unfortunately deceased, he was able to find hundreds of their surviving family members.

We decided to call his initiative the “Reconnect with AFS Project.”

AFS initiated contact with these newfound family members by sending them a copy of the AFS Janus. One such recipient was Maria Kiesling, the widow of World War II AFS Driver Irving Kiesling (IB 1).

When Mrs. Kiesling received a copy of the AFS Janus, she wondered about AFS and its connection to her family and decided to call us to find out more about the organization.

Paul picked up her call and told Mrs. Kiesling about what AFS is today, how it began as the American Field Service during World Wars I and II, when nearly 5,000 men volunteered as ambulance and camion drivers, and that her late husband Irving had

been one of these volunteer drivers during World War II. In a phone interview with Mrs. Kiesling she told us, “First I could not believe that what I was hearing was true. I was hearing things about Irving’s past for the very first time!

Irving was a very quiet person, and very seldom said anything about his past. We knew he had been involved in World War II, but we had no idea that he was an ambulance driver with the AFS. It was like a whole new world opened up to us.”

“Paul gave me the phone number for the AFS Archives and when I called I was told that they had pictures of Irving driving ambulances and more information about his time with the AFS. I had a daugther with Irving whom we named Kit, and when I told her what I had discovered, she was overjoyed. You see, Kit adored her father, who passed away in 2004.

His death left an emptiness in her that she tried to fill with memories that were limited to our lives together. She would always ask me a lot of questions about Irving’s life for which I had only bits and pieces of information to give her. When she learned that the AFS Archives would be sending us photos of Irving’s time with the AFS, Kit ran to the store to get an album for the photos in anticipation of their arrival.”

AFS continues to work to reconnect our drivers and their families with the organization. We continue to look for family members of deceased World War II AFS Drivers and soon we are planning to extend the project to the survivors of the World War I drivers in time for the 100th Anniversary.

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“I am sure that we are not the only ones to whom this effort to reconnect with AFS is bringing so much happiness.”

“If the experience for others was anything like it was for us, it will bring a breath of fresh air to the families to learn about their loved ones’ pasts. I very much appreciate AFS contacting me about their project. Nobody could ever know the happiness it brought to our home.”

1. Irving Kiesling with ambulance, ca. 1943–1944.

2. Mrs. Maria Kiesling in a recent photograph.

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Love Letters from the Front

At the age of 41, Norton S. Baskin joined the American Field Service (AFS) as an ambulance driver in the India-Burma theater of war. The year was 1943—less than two years after he married Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who was famous for winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for her novel The Yearling.

Although not a celebrated author like his wife, Baskin was nonetheless a talented writer. In an article he wrote for The American Indian, the bulletin of the AFS in India, he brought readers right along with him to experience the challenges of driving an AFS ambulance in wartime. He sketched a vivid scene of transporting a gravely injured Indian Army officer to the hospital, whom he had been told probably wouldn’t survive the trip. Baskin and his partner tried to drive gently over the badly rutted roads in order to spare the Indian officer additional pain, and in the process exhausted themselves: “As always when transporting the wounded, you become so tense and feel each jolt so acutely that you feel you have carried the patient and the ambulance on your shoulders.”

Baskin’s main writing outlet during the war, however, was the numerous letters he wrote to Rawlings, who

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in turn, wrote Baskin nearly every day of the eighteen months he was overseas with the AFS. Baskin left the couple’s letters along with his papers and her books to the University of Florida, which used them to create the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers.

From an Archival Collection to the Stage Deborah Dickey, a retired professor of Theatre from the University of Arizona and graduate of the University of Florida, found the couple’s letters in her alma mater.

She had found her way there after directing a play about Rawlings which had prompted her to learn more about her subject’s life. What she found inspired her to take the creative leap to writing her first play. She described the experience of reading the letters as “amazing.”

“When I started to read the correspondence, and again, realizing that I was sitting in a library all by myself reading these handwritten notes, the immediacy of the letters really struck me. It was as if Baskin and Rawlings were just speaking in the present moment. You know how that is, when you’re reading a letter, it’s just as if time has not passed.

They revealed their hopes and their

fears, chronicled their daily routine.

It was a very life altering experience for both of them and particularly for Norton.”

All of Baskin’s letters started “Dear Honey” and ended “All My Love.”

His open admiration for his AFS colleagues was a recurring theme in his letters to Rawlings: “This field service is absolutely terrific. It is made up of a bunch of individuals who for the most part joined the outfit so that they could preserve that individualism.

And do they resent all attempts at regimentation and pride themselves on being non-conformists. . . . There are about forty men in our barracks now and the only possible way you could get any two of them classified into the same group would be to make it an age group. In my next letter I will give them to you man by man and you can see what I mean.

(10/8/43).” A month later he wrote, “Most of these chaps had tried to get in every branch of the service and had been turned down and joined the AFS only because they refused to be left out of the show. My respect for them grows every day (11/6/43).” Baskin could have been writing about himself.

He was too old at age 41 to serve in the active military, so he joined the AFS because he knew he “had to do something.”*

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The result of Dickey’s research was the two-person play “Cross Roads: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Norton S. Baskin in Unguarded Moments.”

The play, produced by A Classic Theatre, opened in May 2012 in St. Augustine, Florida, and covered the couple’s correspondence from 1938 to 1944. Dickey provided the narrative background, including a slide show of the real couple’s world, including Baskin’s Castle Warden Hotel in St. Augustine. For the most part, however, the Rawlings and Baskin characters spoke through the letters, discussing issues such as Rawlings’ reluctance to remarry after a difficult first marriage and their mutual interest in theater and books.

An AFS Reunion In March of this year, the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Yearling inspired the staging of a number of encore performances of Dickey’s play. This time around, the audience’s connection to the World War II AFS experience did not end when the curtain fell; World War II AFS Ambulance Driver Dr. Alan Gilbert (CM 93, IB 59-T) attended one of the performances and spent time talking with the actors about his own memories of his service with the AFS. Thanks to the efforts of the AFS

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Florida Team Chair Ed LaComb, audience members also had the opportunity to connect to the AFS of today. A returnee from Finland and current participants from Finland, Norway, and Latvia talked to the audience after each of the three performances about their own AFS experiences, and volunteers manned an AFS information table in the lobby of the theater.

“A Very Typical AFS Experience” These post-play encounters among the actors, Ambulance Driver Gilbert, various representatives of AFS, and the audience reflected the AFS spirit of intercultural engagement sixty years after Baskin’s evocative letters from India did the same. Dickey recounted, “Really, the world was opening up to him, and I know that that is a very typical AFS experience.

And even though they were seeing the horrors of war, and I know he went on these long, harrowing trips in the ambulance, he also writes lovingly about the beauty of the world that he’s seeing around him, how beautiful India was. Seeing not only the juxtaposition of the cultures but also the coming together of cultures. I think he had a great appreciation for that. I am a great believer in the transformative nature

of exploring new places, it really expands our world when we can see how other people live and that they sometimes live very much like we do and they have similar experiences. I think that’s such an important thing for young people, and for people of all ages to experience.” Thanks to Dickey’s play, that bit of the typical AFS experience has been brought to a far larger audience than Baskin could have ever imagined.

*Excerpts from Norton S. Baskin’s letters published with permission from the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville.

1. Norton and Marjorie Baskin (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her husband) at Union Springs. Photograph from the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers, Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville.

2. Norton Baskin, ca. 1943–1944.

3. Nancy Grote as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, AFS Driver Dr. Alan Gilbert, and Kelly McTaggart as Norton Baskin. Photograph courtesy of Deborah Dickey.

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Remembering Papa: My Family’s AFS Story Comes Full Circle

by Tamara Loring

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n a hot Massachusetts summer day in 1961, my grandfather and I were sitting in the back seat of the family sedan, which was parked by the local ice cream stand. The car doors stood open, and as a cool breeze found its way into the car, Papa, as we affectionately called my grandfather Charles “Judd” Farley, gave me my first family French lesson on how to pronounce the letter “u.” All he said was, “u.” Gently and repeatedly, we batted that French vowel sound back and forth until he was satisfied that I had captured it. I was in fifth grade, and learning French.

In the late 1960s, when I was in high school, a busload of colorful, bright, and bouncy teenagers stopped in our town. One evening in the school cafeteria, they put on an international show that absolutely set me on fire! I learned that these were exchange students, just finishing a year of study in US high schools on a program called AFS. They were touring New England before leaving for home. As I sat transfixed, watching the whirling national dances and hearing their enchanting languages on that stage, I knew what I wanted: to be an AFS exchange student, too!

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My dream came true in 1968: I graduated from high school and boarded a boat bound for Europe on my way to Belgium. I was headed for Dilbeek, in the Flanders region.

Our ship, the Ryndam, held 800 high-spirited teens. Only 26 of us were Americans; the rest hailed from all the corners of the Earth.

By the time we reached Rotterdam, my onboard language classes had given me my first two sentences in Dutch: “I’m so glad to be here!” and “Pass the butter, please” (both were hits). Upon arrival in Belgium, I was immediately embraced by my host family, and in no time became just another little Flemish girl who now had two countries, two families, and a vastly greater outlook on life.

Europe made thousands of impressions on me, but two had a particular effect. My Belgian host mother was telling me about the bombing raids she endured during World War II, and as she spoke I sat at the dinner table, shivering as I realized for the first time that some people had had bombs dropped on them. This was very different from our American experience of the war, an ocean away. And I was fascinated by all the big concrete bunkers looming on the coast. Something

in me grew still and awed when I thought of the wartime danger my host family had faced.

Over the next few decades, I settled in Quebec, Canada, made French my daily language and my livelihood as a translator, married a Quebec man, and raised a bilingual child. I also maintained a loving relationship with my Belgian family that continues to this day.

In 2003 my mother passed on, and my siblings and I had the task of clearing our parents’ home in Massachusetts. While raising the lid of a musty leather suitcase in the attic, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Crammed into that suitcase were photographs, military papers, notebooks, letters, mess booklets, and train tickets—it contained Papa’s entire World War I AFS experience and his subsequent service with the US Motor Transport Corps under the auspices of the US military’s American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) after 1917. I’d known from childhood that Papa had served in France during World War I, where he met my Russian grandmother, but even after my return from Belgium, I had only a fuzzy notion that Papa had been interested in AFS. His remarkable collection prompted me to piece

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together Papa’s wartime story—and I now feel I know him very well.

Judd had joined the AFS in 1916 and helped transport wounded French soldiers from the battlefield to hospitals. He served in AFS Sections 9 and 16 and attended the French officers’ school at Meaux (he spoke French from his childhood stays in Lausanne, Switzerland). He was soon commandeered, like many AFS ambulance men, to join the Réserve Mallet, where drivers hauled all manner of war materiel.

Once he was integrated into the American Expeditionary Forces, Judd became a First Lieutenant in the US Army. During this time, on Thanksgiving Day in Paris in 1917, he made the acquaintance of a young Russian nurse who had come to France in 1916. Judd married Lioubov Vladimirovna Mosolova in 1918, in a civil ceremony in Saint-Servan (now St-Malo). She was on hospital duty and he was attending officer school, and they both returned to their posts an hour after their wedding. Lioubov and Judd sailed for New York in 1919 and lived out their lives happily together in Acton, Massachusetts,

speaking French to one another as their own special language. Papa remained a firm supporter of AFS, not knowing that one of his own would travel as an AFSer herself.

I first contacted the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS Archives) in 2004 right after I discovered my grandfather’s memorabilia. Then, in 2012, when I visited the AFS Archives, I was able to do more in-depth research on his life. I found the name of Judd’s “best buddy,” who was in AFS’s Section 9, along with snapshots annotated in Judd’s own hand, in his signature gold-colored ink. I spent countless pleasurable hours scanning and preserving all of Papa’s history to share with my family. The originals are at the AFS Archives and at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, which is now readying the Farley family collection for public access.

I have the impression of a story come full circle. My dreams had not been so different from Papa’s, and AFS enriched both our lives.

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1. Charles “Judd” Farley (left) with friends in France. The man on the right is probably his good friend George Russell Cogswell.

2. Charles “Judd” Farley (forefront) and ambulance.

3. Lioubov Vladimirovna Mosolova seated and Charles “Judd” Farley standing at the Hotel Victoria.

4. Tamara Loring (standing, second row, 1st from left) and Flemish schoolmates, 1969.

Images 1, 2 and 3 courtesy of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, www.AmericanAncestors.org.

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AFS WWII Ambulance Drivers Last Post Robert W. Balderston

Willard B. Faith

Charles R. Harvey

(ME 37, CM 100, IB 59-T)

(CM 92, IB 59-T)

(CM 42, CM 92)

Robert Walter Balderston passed away on October 1, 2012, in Baker City, OR. He was born on November 10, 1924, in Philadelphia, PA. Shortly after graduating from Westtown School in Pennsylvania in 1942, Balderston volunteered for AFS with his brother, Fred. He served as an ambulance driver until October 1945, when he was repatriated due to the cessation of wartime hostilities. After the war he attended the University of Colorado and managed the Willingson Lumber Company sawmill. Balderston is survived by his wife of 62 years, Dode, and his nieces and nephews.

Willard Boynton Faith passed away on October 26, 2012, in York, ME. He was born on July 9, 1924, in New York City. He attended the Stinson School of Aviation for six months and was employed by American Airlines prior to volunteering for AFS. He was sent overseas with AFS in October 1944, and took part in the Italian Campaign. He was transferred to India in July 1945, but owing to the termination of war with Japan he was repatriated to the United States in November 1945. Faith is survived by his wife, Janet, and children, Niels and Ben.

Charles Randolph Harvey passed away on December 2, 2011, at age 90 in Devon, PA. He was born on July 26, 1921. Harvey was a student at Haverford College when he volunteered for the American Field Service on January 11, 1943. He was sent overseas as an ambulance driver in May 1943, and took part in the Italian Campaign and FranceGermany Campaign before his repatriation to the United States in July 1945 at the end of his second enlistment period. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Julia Rouvina.

Rufus Mathewson

Leonard D. Moore

John M. Parker, Jr.

(IB 42)

(IB 60)

(IB 54)

Rufus Mathewson passed away on November 30, 2012, at age 91. He was born on December 15, 1920, in Buffalo, NY. He volunteered as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service on September 18, 1944, and was sent overseas in November. He took part in the Burma Campaign before he was released from service in November 1945. Mathewson is survived by his wife of 61 years, Dorothy, his sister, Barbara M. Gaul, three children, Ruth M Hays, Lawrence Mathewson, and Martha Mathewson, and two grandchildren, William M. and Andrew M. Hays.

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Leonard Durward Moore passed away on November 26, 2010, at age 87 in Chicago, IL. He was born on March 23, 1923, in Willisville, IL. He volunteered as an ambulance driver on August 5th, 1945, and was released from service in September due to the cessation of wartime hostilities. After the war he worked as an executive with Amstead Industries, was a member of several organizations (including the Belleville Elks Club) and served as a member and Past President of the District 2012 Belleville School Board. Moore is survived by his wife, Leah, two daughters, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

John MacRea Parker, Jr., passed away on February 1, 2013, at age 90, in New York City. He was born on May 20, 1922, in Cleveland, OH. While a student at Yale University, he volunteered for AFS and was sent overseas in March 1945, returning to the United States in December due to the cessation of wartime hostilities. After the war, he joined Brown Harris Stevens Residential Sales, LCC, in 1961 after operating a family farm in Virginia and serving as an agricultural chemicals salesman. Parker received many awards during his career, including the Henry Forster award from The Real Estate Board of New York in 2010.

Kenneth Howes, Jr.

John W. Laverack

Everett C. Leister

(ME 37)

(ME 4)

(ME 1)

Kenneth Howes, Jr., passed away on December 3, 2012, at his son’s home in Darien, CT. He was born on August 8, 1924, in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Milton Academy.

Howes was a student at Harvard when he volunteered for the American Field Service in November 1942. He was sent overseas in January 1943, serving in the Italian Campaign before he was released from service in May 1944.

Howes worked for 35 years at The Boston Company (now Bank of New York Mellon). He is survived by his three children, ten grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren.

John Woodward Laverack passed away on April 7, 2010, at the age of 95. He was born on February 18, 1915, in Buffalo, NY. He graduated from Harvard College in 1937, and volunteered for the American Field Service in February 1942. He arrived overseas in April 1942, and on February 14, 1943, he was released from service to accept a position with the U.S. Department of State in Cairo. He later ran Dampney Co., a family business, back in the United States. Laverack is survived by his three children and eight grandchildren.

Everett Carlton Leister passed away on May 13, 2010, at age 90. He was born on January 5, 1920, in Medina, OH. He volunteered with the American Field Service in October 1941, and was sent overseas in November. He took part in the African Campaign in the Western Desert before being released in November 1942 to the American Mission in the Middle East. After the war Leister was a tool and die maker, a courier, and a deacon at the United Church of Christ Congregational Church in Medina. He is survived by six children, ten grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Frank A. Posselius, Jr.

Paul C. Rodgers

Paul R. Stott

(CM 76)

(ME 32, FR 8)

(IB 9)

Frank Alphonse Posselius, Jr., passed away on February 10, 2010, in Hilton Head, SC. He was born on June 7, 1920, in Detroit, Michigan. Posselius volunteered as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service on February 22, 1944, after having attended the Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. He was sent overseas in April and served alongside the United States Fifth Army in Italy before returning to the United States in September due to poor health. He is survived by his wife, Jean, and several nieces and nephews.

Paul Cochran Rodgers, Jr., (PhD), passed away on July 11, 2010, in Nebraska. He was born on June 20, 1920, in Belmont, MA. He was a student at Harvard when he volunteered for AFS on June 19, 1942.

He was sent overseas in November 1942, serving in the African Campaign in the Western Desert and the Italian Campaign before returning to the U.S. in November 1944. He reenlisted, and served between March 1945 and July 1945 during the France-Germany Campaign. He is survived by his second wife, Mary Lee Moldenhauer, five children, twelve grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, three stepchildren, and two step-grandchildren.

Paul Richard Stott passed away on December 14, 2012, at the age of 91. He was born on June 9, 1921, in Rochester, NY, to Carrie Ellen Steward and Earl R. Stott. Stott was a student at Haverford College just outside of Philadelphia when he volunteered as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service on July 10, 1943. He was sent overseas in September 1943, and arrived in Calcutta in November 1943. Stott served in the Burma Campaign before his repatriation to the United States on February 2, 1945.

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71 West 23rd Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10010, USA

Two Brothers: Stories from the Front Lines of World War I

Brothers and AFS Drivers Edward Dana and Francis Paton Kendall standing in front of American Field Service ambulances in 1917. Photograph courtesy of Timothy Kendall.

Historic New England coordinated a special event about the American Field Service during World War I on Saturday, April 13, at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Archaeologist and curator Timothy Kendall shared the story of his grandfather Francis and great-uncle Edward, who both volunteered as ambulance drivers in the American Field Service during World War I. Serving in the Balkans and France, respectively, the Boston-born brothers documented their experiences in photographs and detailed journals.

The afternoon at the Cape Ann Museum continued with the showing of George King III’s reconstructed World War I AFS ambulance, and concluded with a viewing of Our Friend France, the 1917 film produced by the Triangle Film Corporation for the American Field Service. This film was then used by A. Piatt Andrew and Henry Sleeper, both former Gloucester residents, to recruit volunteers and raise funds during the war. The film screened courtesy of the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.