Bayard D. Clarkson: Taking on the Challenges of the Unknown
SPRING 2014:
Bayard D. Clarkson: Taking on the Challenges of the Unknown 2 Trailblazing Women of AFS: Jane and Jill Dinwiddie and Suzanne Allen 6 100 Years! AFS Gets Ready to Celebrate Its Centennial 8 How an AFS Exchange Launched an Astronaut’s Career: The Story of Luca Parmitano A. Piatt Andrew’s Red Roof: Gone but Not Forgotten 12 Letter from the AFS International President 14 AFS WWII Ambulance Drivers Last Post 15 Fantasizing for the Future of AFS 16
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Bayard D. Clarkson: Dear AFS Friend, Preparations for the celebration of the Centennial of the founding of the American Field Service continue at a rapid pace. The websites for “The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919” and for the Centennial celebrations are both up and running (see “AFS Centennial Celebrations: SAVE THE DATES!” for more information on the planned events and the exhibition). This issue’s feature article explores the life and choices of an exemplary AFS Ambulance Driver and an extraordinary man of science, Dr. Bayard Clarkson. We spent an unforgettable afternoon in his office at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center listening to him recount a life as dramatic as he has been prolific. Our “Trailblazing Women of AFS” series continues with the story of two outstanding women who happen to be mother and daughter: Jane and Jill Dinwiddie. Intergenerational commitment to AFS is not unusual. However, the Dinwiddies’ involvement, which started more than a half-century ago and has no foreseeable end thanks to the scholarship fund the family established, truly stands out. In “A. Piatt Andrew’s Red Roof: Gone but Not Forgotten,” we visit Red Roof, AFS founder A. Piatt Andrew’s legendary home in Gloucester, MA, that was full of art, books, AFS memorabilia, and hidden rooms. Now demolished, Red Roof still lives through a remarkable pictorial record and the objects it preserved within its walls. This being the year of our Centennial celebrations, it is entirely appropriate that we get a glimpse of the future through an AFS Returnee’s activities in orbit around the Earth, perhaps as a hint of future extraterrestrial AFS exchanges. Luca Parmitano’s (Italy to the US, ‘93–’94) experiences as an astronaut for the European Space Agency provide a fascinating glimpse of the possibilities that may open up as a result of an AFS experience. We thank you for your support of AFS and its programs.
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
Taking on the Challenges of the Unknown
“AFS does a wonderful job bringing countries together; it’s a remarkable operation.”
Bayard Delafield Clarkson was born on July 15, 1926, in New York City. His family has deep roots in the US, having arrived in the 1600s. His ancestor, Matthew Clarkson, was appointed secretary of the colony after the British took over New Amsterdam from the Dutch. Clarkson Street in Manhattan is named after a later Matthew Clarkson, who fought in the Revolutionary War and was later a state senator and president of New York Hospital. World War II broke out while Bayard was attending St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. In December 1943, Bayard enlisted with the naval aviation program. Unlike several of his fellow recruits, however, he never received his orders before graduating in June. The navy doctor who had examined him found latent signs of tuberculosis (TB), but forgot to notify him and have him sent to a sanitarium. Finding himself unexpectedly ineligible for active duty, even though his TB was not active, Bayard signed up with the American Field Service (AFS). After receiving his orders from AFS in late summer 1944, Bayard traveled on an overnight train to Fort Patrick Henry, VA, for two weeks of basic training. He learned to fix ambulances, double clutch, and use gas masks. In August he was sent overseas with Unit CM 90 and after a month-long ocean crossing, they landed in Bari, Italy, from where they were taken to Florence to receive their ambulances. His AFS unit was attached
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Bayard Clarkson (back row, second from right) with other AFS Drivers at a forward battalion aid station in December 1944. Photographer unknown. Photograph courtesy of Bayard Clarkson.
The last Bergen-Belsen prisoner block being burned, May 1945. Photographer unknown. Photograph courtesy of Bayard Clarkson.
On the cover: Bayard Clarkson, undated. Photograph by Irving Penn.
to the British 8th Army, which brought together Polish, Italian, South African, and Indian divisions, and which had participated the previous year in the hard-fought battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio. Dangerous Times in Italy From early September through March 1945, Bayard and his unit worked behind the lines picking up casualties—including the occasional German casualty—as the combatant armies fought over control of northern Italy. The close proximity of the German forces meant Bayard and his unit could never completely relax. German 88mm artillery guns picked off a motorcycle courier right outside the drivers’ sleeping quarters (referred to by Bayard as “the hovel”) in Fontanelice. In a separate incident, the lives of everyone in his unit were saved by the quick action of a South African Armored Division machine gunner. In spite of having been shot in the leg by German troops, the gunner crawled back into the lookout and drove off the German soldiers who were advancing
to where Bayard and his unit were sleeping. In spite of these incidents, Bayard remembered that the “Germans were pretty good about not targeting ambulances.” One exception made an impression. Fellow ambulance driver Ed Williams didn’t return for an unusually long time after embarking on a routine run. He finally did return after dark, but “his ambulance looked like a sieve.” They learned a couple of days later from an army forward observer that the Allies had hit a German ambulance by mistake, so the attack on Williams was probably in direct retaliation. As Bayard was telling his story to the AFS Janus, he illustrated each phase of his history with AFS with photographs and maps that were part of a presentation about his World War II experiences that he gave at Clarkson University. (The name is no coincidence. Clarkson University was founded by Bayard’s ancestors.) The photographs showed bombed out areas recently captured by the Allies, the shell hole that was created when the motorcycle courier was killed, German propaganda
leaflets dropped in dummy shells, and a shell-torn sign that read, in English, “Road clear, houses all booby trapped.” By early April, the fighting in Italy was almost concluded and the Allies were advancing into Germany. Bayard and his unit spent a relatively relaxed week in Livorno playing softball, then embarked with their ambulances to Marseilles and traveled in a convoy through France and Holland, ending up in Germany. Volunteering for the Unknown There wasn’t much for Bayard and his unit to do in Germany as the war wound down. One day a British officer approached them and asked for volunteers. Other than mentioning horrendous conditions in a nearby internment camp, the officer didn’t go into detail about the assignment. It was non-mandatory due to the prevalence of typhus and TB, which were deadly at that time since effective antibiotics were not readily available. Bayard was undeterred by the threat of TB—“Well, I’ve already got that!”—and volunteered. As he put it, “I was 18, so anything new
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AFS Driver Bill Congdon’s drawing of the “human laundry” just outside Bergen-Belsen. Image courtesy of Bayard Clarkson.
was exciting.” As Bayard and the rest of the world were soon to learn, the nearby camp was Bergen-Belsen, or, as it was more commonly known, Belsen. Not even his commanding officers had any idea of the scale of what had been happening there before the British 11th Armored Division liberated it on April 15. Everyone was therefore totally unprepared for what they found when they arrived to evacuate the former inmates. There was a routine to the difficult work Bayard and his unit undertook. After breakfast, they put on canvas suits with big gloves and were then sprayed with DDT to prevent typhus (years later, Bayard’s mother threw the gloves away when she found out what he had used them for). Their job was to go into the prisoner blocks and carry out people who were still living—usually in their arms because the survivors had lost so much weight and stretchers were unwieldy in the overcrowded blocks. They then removed their striped uniforms and wrapped them in blankets for transport to the “human laundry,” where German nurses would delouse them. There was no hierarchy for this assignment; the young volunteers were therefore in charge of deciding whom to carry out and whom to leave. “But it was pretty obvious,” Bayard recalled. If someone was clearly not going to make it, they were left behind. “It sounds dramatic but it wasn’t. It was just urgency.” With an estimated death rate of 500 a day, they had to decide quickly
Bayard Clarkson revisiting Bergen-Belsen in 1997. Photograph courtesy of Bayard Clarkson.
who had a chance to survive. At the end of the day they scouted the block a final time to make sure they hadn’t missed any of the living. In the mornings the Germans, now themselves prisoners, carried out the dead to burial pits. It took a couple of weeks to empty the blocks of the living and the dead. Blocks were burned down as they were emptied because of the typhus; by the end, they were all gone. The British NCOs gave the volunteers mock medals for their service. One day Bayard and his team managed to evacuate 800 people. When they finished clearing the main camp, they went to work in the former SS barracks outside Belsen that had been converted to halfway houses for the evacuees. Conditions there were little better than in the camp because there were no medical personnel or beds, and the former inmates were often too weak to care for themselves. Bayard was still working at Belsen when the war in Europe ended in May 1945. At the very end, a German general’s house was commandeered for a celebration, during which Bayard ran into some fellow AFSers he hadn’t even known were working in the huge camp. Bayard recalled that when he entered the camp for the first time, “the smell was something you don’t get in the pictures.” As Americans, he and other AFS Drivers were asked to show visiting American military officials around the camp. Some of them vomited in spite of being hardened by years of war. He didn’t dwell on the impact that the
Belsen experience had had on him as an 18-year-old: “You adapt pretty quickly. Everyone does.” A Career in Medicine and Return to Belsen Bayard shipped out from Copenhagen in July 1945. His next move was entering Yale, which started the fall semester late to accommodate so many veterans. Influenced by his war experience, he studied international relations. That didn’t sit well with his father, who had been the president of Chase Bank and the chairman of American Express and wanted Bayard to go into business. But that career plan in turn didn’t sit well with Bayard. Having been warned off working for the State Department (lest he become a “cookie pusher”) by Robert Lovett, a family friend who became the secretary of defense during the Korean War, Bayard chose “something easier.” That turned out to be medicine. After graduating from Yale as a premed student, he went to Columbia Medical School and did his residency at New York Hospital. Whenever he saw a patient with a concentration camp tattoo, he would ask in which camp he or she had been. When the answer was Belsen, he would tell the person that he’d been there too, to which their response was often, “then you know.” His residency was interrupted by the draft for the Korean War. By that time married and with a child on the way, he and his family spent the majority of his
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two-year enlistment at Fort Knox, where he served as a doctor. Even though he described Fort Knox as “a vacation after his internship,” it was not always easy. At times he found himself on night duty or screening young recruits with maladies of varied severity early in the morning. Most were relatively trivial, but a few were truly life threatening, such as acute appendicitis and meningococcemia. Usually he was the only doctor available for the 400 or so recruits lined up for medical attention. He found himself drawing on the same kind of triage skills he’d had to use at Belsen. During medical school, he decided to study cancer, having become immediately fascinated by the slides of cancer he’d studied in pathology courses. As a young oncologist, Bayard once again found himself wading into unknown territory, explaining, “I didn’t even know what cancer was when I entered medical school.” Indeed, cancer was not well understood by most doctors at the time, and there wasn’t any treatment. During his residency, most of his supervisors would disappear to Fire Island on the weekends, leaving the residents to figure things out. Since there were few cancer experts then at New York Hospital, the residents would call one of the pioneer oncologists, Dr. David Karnofsky, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center across the street for advice. Bayard started moonlighting at Sloan Kettering after hours and wound up working there his entire career. During the course of that career, Bayard wrote more than 400 academic papers and book chapters, ran a research lab, and served as Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine as well as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR). In addition, he and his wife Ginny raised four children. He has been on the board of Clarkson University for several decades and also on the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for about 25 years, serving as president of both boards. “I had a pretty busy life,” Bayard noted drily. With all of
Bayard Clarkson in his office at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, March 2014. Photograph by the AFS Janus.
this activity, he said that his WW II experiences were relegated to the back of his mind. That changed in 1995. While attending a medical meeting in Germany, he was unexpectedly catapulted into his past when he ran into a colleague who mentioned having visited Belsen. When Bayard learned that it was only 100 kilometers away, he decided to skip a conference session and rented a car to travel to the camp. He arrived early in the morning and was the only one there. The visit remained unemotional while he was in the room of the museum that contained a model of the camp. But when he walked into the next room he was confronted with very large photographs of the camp during its operation. “That undid me. It all came flooding back. I burst into tears, and I don’t do that. It’s not my style.” Even though the visit was difficult, he returned to Belsen a few years later with his wife Ginny to show her what it was really like in April and May 1945. Still Trying New Things Seven decades after he joined the AFS straight out of high school, Bayard is still very busy. He continues to work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the molecular pharmacology and chemistry program. One of his current
projects is proteomics, the large-scale study of proteins. In his characteristic understated tone Bayard said, “I don’t know anything about proteomics, but he does,” referring to a young colleague who had poked his head in Bayard’s office for a quick consultation during the interview with the AFS Janus. Another colleague he ran into in the elevator wanted to share his news of a data mystery concerning antibodies. In 2012 Bayard received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, which had previously instituted the “The Bayard D. Clarkson Symposium on Stem Cells and Cancer,” an annual scientific session in his honor. He said his busy life had kept him from keeping in contact with other AFS Ambulance Drivers. Nevertheless, he believes that AFS does “a wonderful job bringing countries together; it’s a remarkable operation.” He hasn’t consciously made a connection between his AFS service and how his life unfolded afterward, but there is clearly a lifelong pattern that embodies the spirit of AFS: being willing to enter terra incognita and, once there, to work hard, learn, and lead, no matter how difficult the circumstances.
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Trailblazing Women of AFS:
Jane and Jill Dinwiddie Ingrid and Jill in 1956. Photograph courtesy of Jill Dinwiddie.
In August 1956, an AFS Participant from Sweden named Ingrid Gustafsson arrived in Michigan to live with the Dinwiddie family. More than half a century and four generations later, the ripples from her arrival are still spreading in the Dinwiddie family—and beyond. Jill Dinwiddie was a high school junior when Ingrid was hosted by her family. The Dinwiddie family enjoyed Ingrid’s stay so much that both Jill and her mother Jane deepened their involvement with AFS. Jill went on an AFS summer exchange to Turkey the following year and, a year or so later, Jane began working for AFS and stayed for nearly a decade. Described as a “take-charge person” by Jill, before long Jane was the field representative in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Jane became good friends with Stephen Galatti, who stayed at the Dinwiddie house whenever he came to Detroit. Jill witnessed her mother’s AFS experiences from a very personal vantage point. “Like some people collect stray animals, my mother collected stray foreign students.” On top of her official AFS work, Jane would temporarily bring students home who were having difficulties
with their host families. Jill remembers AFS Participants as being “in and out all the time.” Jill soon got her own opportunity to be responsible for large numbers of AFS Participants. In the summer of 1962, she and an AFS colleague chaperoned one of the bus trips that AFS used to organize for students at the end of their stay in the US to show them more of the country. The bus departed from Michigan and traveled up and down the East Coast. Her short-term motivation to chaperone the trip was to travel, “even on a bus full of teenagers,” but once again her involvement with AFS had long-term consequences. In Cazenovia, NY, the woman who had organized home stays in town for the students hosted Jill at her own house. Jill met the woman’s son there and, a year later, he became her first husband. They had two daughters, one of whom went on an AFS exchange to Mexico. From 1964 to 1969, Jill was an AFS Volunteer with local committees in Rochester and Syracuse, NY, Washington, DC, and Chapel Hill, NC. She became a staff member when AFS opened a regional office in Durham. AFS decided to relocate the office after a year, and so Jill’s official
career—though not her connection— with AFS came to an end. Jill’s subsequent career moves were strongly influenced by her AFS experiences. After meeting with the dean of students at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to see how she could get involved
“What was launched by AFS opened up this huge world for me.” with international students, she was offered a job as a foreign student advisor. She went on to create and then direct the UNC International Center, which brought international students and faculty to the university and sent students abroad. Later, she served on the national board of the Association of International Educators and became the chair for the National Council for International Visitors, through which distinguished international visitors were hosted in local communities across the country. “What was launched by AFS opened up this huge world for me.” When Jane Dinwiddie died in 1998, many people came to her memorial service to express their respect and
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Suzanne Allen
Jill, Jane, Jill’s sister Sue, and Ingrid during Ingrid’s visit to Detroit to celebrate Jane’s 80th birthday. Photograph courtesy of Jill Dinwiddie.
love. The Dinwiddie family chose to honor her by setting up the Dinwiddie Family Endowed Scholarship with AFS-USA. Jill, her sister, and members of the younger generation still regularly contribute to the fund, which has been supporting American students to go on AFS exchanges since 1999. Although Ingrid from Sweden will probably never meet any of them, these scholarship recipients are clearly her successors. Jill recounted how she made a list of all of her AFS connections before she was interviewed by the AFS Janus. “It was empowering to think back and see the impact that AFS had on
my life. It’s just incredible . . . . AFS opened up my eyes to . . . the impact that allowing people to go back and forth and get to know each other can have on future generations. It started with my mother and then me and then my daughter. It goes on for generations and generations, so thank you, Mr. Galatti.” She believes the work she, Jane, and hundreds of thousands of other people have done with AFS has made a difference on a personal level, just as the original AFS motto proposed: “Walk together, talk together, all ye peoples of the Earth; then and only then shall ye have peace.” Photograph from a Durham Morning Herald article headlined, “AFS Regional Office Finds Home in Durham.” Pictured are AFS staff Barry Bem (left), Jill (center), and Jenny Blanford (right). Photograph by Jim Thornton, copyright 1973, The Durham Morning Herald. Reprinted with permission.
One good thing often leads to another. The AFS Janus is very fortunate that our summer 2013 feature article about Sachiye Kuwamoto, “The Right Woman at the Right Time,” which recounted her career with AFS in its early days, inspired Suzanne Allen to write to us to share her own memories of that time. Suzanne worked closely with Sachiye and also helped shepherd AFS through its growing pains. The following are excerpts from her letter: “ . . . this summer 2013 issue of the Janus, with Sachiye’s face on the cover has brought back so many GREAT memories . . . I found AFS through the employment service of Smith College and went to work for Stephen Galatti (for $60 a week) in 1957 immediately after I graduated . . . Sachiye and Alice Gerlach kept us very busy . . . I was one of the lucky ones who went with Sachiye to read applications in sunny Florida. And I was lucky to be the one whose name Stephen Galatti drew out of a hat to accompany an ill boy back home to Japan. ‘The boss’ insisted I stay to see a bit of Japan, as well as meet with the young applicants to AFS, and with parents of students then in the USA . . . ” Allen’s other adventures with AFS included co-leading “the trans-Atlantic crossing of a shipload of 500 teenagers (how did I ever survive that, and the tales I could tell!), summer travels to Denmark and to Franco’s Spain advising the next year’s accepted AFSers, [and] being charged with smuggling (!) out the money Spain owed AFS.” Suzanne went on to be a sending and hosting parent who is still friends with AFSers from each phase of her life. Thank you, Suzanne! AFS JANUS • SPRING 2014 • 7
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AFS Centennial Celebrations: SAVE THE DATES! AFS Intercultural Programs recently sent out an AFS Centennial “Save the Dates” email to many of our friends and supporters. We realize that not all of our readers received this email, so we would like to share it with you here. The Board of Trustees, the AFS International Administration, and the AFS Network Partners invite you to SAVE THE DATES for the AFS Centennial Celebrations that will be held in Paris, France, in November 2014. Please plan to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event and invite your friends to join the festivities.
November 5-9 100 Years Young! AFS Youth Workshop & Symposium Package A two-day interactive workshop—plus virtual pre- and post-event activities—for AFSers and friends ages 30 or younger that will culminate in a special open-to-the-public youth-led symposium at the UNESCO headquarters on Saturday morning. We will celebrate the next century of AFS and debate the actions that people worldwide must take in order to learn to live together as global citizens. Includes all meals and lodging plus participation in the AFS Global Intercultural Education Symposium on Saturday afternoon and the AFS Centennial Gala Dinner.
November 7 AFS Returnee Day The reunion you’ve never had but always wanted with AFS friends—old and new—from all over the world. This all-day event for AFS Returnees will include panels featuring prominent AFSers addressing topics of interest, videos, entertainment, and exhibitions. There will be time to catch up with AFSers of all ages.
November 8 Learning to Live Together—from Ideas to Action: AFS Global Intercultural Education Symposium Held at the UNESCO Headquarters on Saturday afternoon, AFS will host Nobel laureate Óscar Arias, former UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, and other luminaries to debate: Who is ultimately responsible for driving global citizenship education? What interests, challenges and value systems influence that process? And how do we develop active global citizens who are prepared to address the challenges of our interconnected world? Join us as we help shape the future of AFS and beyond.
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November 9 through 12 Various events and activities include walking tours of Paris and catching up with friends and great meals in a beautiful city. Special activities are likely to include: • November 9: Four-day trip to the WWI battlefields of Northern France and Western Belgium (Flanders Field) followed by a celebration in Brussels with optional home stays • November 9: Walking tours of Paris • November 9: A visit to Versailles • November 9: A bus trip to the WWI Museum in Meaux • November 10: Two-day trip to Verdun, one of the major battlefields of WWI, where AFS Ambulance Drivers toiled day and night. If there is sufficient interest among those who would like to extend their stays, we may also offer additional excursions to Normandy or the Loire Valley through an independent travel agency. For those who would like to stay with the group, hotel rooms have been reserved at the Hyatt Regency Étoile Hotel for participants who purchase one of the AFS Anniversary Packages. We are still finalizing packages and pricing and will be inviting you in midMay to register for the events that interest you. For more information about the AFS Centennial events please visit the AFS Centennial website at centennial.afs.org. The best way to ensure you will receive registration information for these events is to fill out your contact information at www.afs.org/about/ centennial-save-the-date/.
The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919 In addition to the Centennial Celebrations in Paris, AFS will present a traveling one-of-a-kind interactive museum exhibition commemorating the heroic service of American international volunteers—from World War I American Field Service ambulance drivers through present-day international humanitarian aid organizations. “The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, 1914-1919” will open at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, MO, in Spring 2015, and then travels to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Musée Würth in Alsace, France, and other European and US venues through 2018. For more information on the exhibition please visit thevolunteers.afs.org.
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How an AFS Exchange Launched an Astronaut’s Career: The Story of Luca Parmitano 1
The AFS Janus is grateful to Intercultura (AFS Italy) for sharing the interviews with Luca Parmitano. In particular we thank Roberto Ruffino, Secretary General, and Raffaele Pirola, Marketing and Communication Manager.
I
talian AFS Returnee and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano gave a 13-minute video interview last July. His audience was 500 AFS Participants from five continents whom Intercultura had gathered in Frascati on the last day of their exchange programs in Italy to ask him how his own AFS experience had influenced his life and career. The reason the interview was so short was that Luca was making an in-flight call from the International Space Station, 400 kilometers above Earth. A Chat from Space with AFSers In response to an AFS Participant from Romania who had asked him which experience was more frightening, leaving home at the age of 16 to live for a year in the US on his AFS program or his space adventure as the spaceship pilot and flight engineer for the Volare mission to the International Space Station, he said, “It’s true that my experience abroad at the age of 16 had a completely different impact than if I had done it later or while in college
Photo of Luca in his spacesuit autographed for Vincenzo Morlini, president of AFS Intercultural Programs. Photograph courtesy of Intercultura.
or while working. The age of 16 has a particular significance concerning one’s knowledge of oneself. To find myself abroad for one year alone without the support of family and friends brought out in me resources I wasn’t aware I had, resources we all have, but don’t think about and use . . . These resources are the same ones I use every time I find myself in difficult moments . . . This consciousness of myself served me when I had a grave accident while in flight [while piloting a military plane] and also during the [ESA] selection process. I’m sure that in these six months in space I will rely on those resources again.” He added, “You don’t need to be afraid of fear. True, I’m experiencing
a strong emotion at just the idea of a space walk. But what will push me outside the space station will be my desire to do it, the same desire that motivated you in leaving your country to come to Italy.” The desire Luca spoke of served him well. During his second space walk with Volare, a leak developed in his spacesuit that slowly filled his helmet with water, creating the risk that Luca would drown. Fortunately, the flight controllers terminated the space walk early, and he was able to return safely to the International Space Station. The rest of the 166-day mission, which launched from Kazakhstan on May 28, 2013, on a Soyuz rocket with a Russian cosmonaut and a NASA
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astronaut on board with him, passed well. After three years of preparation, Luca became the first Italian to do a space walk. He also took part in approximately 20 ESA experiments covering a variety of scientific areas such as human physiology and biology, fluid physics, and materials science. AFS Sparks a Career Not only did Luca’s AFS experience help advance his career and serve him well during a time of crisis, it also got him started as an astronaut. “I always had a dream of becoming a military pilot and then an astronaut, but this desire became even stronger when I was hosted in America . . .
“I always had a dream of becoming a military pilot and then an astronaut, but this desire became even stronger when I was hosted in America” My host father from the little town of Mission Viejo in California was a F18 military navigator and often he bought me to air shows. That, in a way, was the beginning of my career in aeronautics.” It was not just this specific stroke of luck that helped Luca succeed, however. During his conversation with AFS Participants, he described several benefits that arise from all AFS exchanges and that can be applied to many career paths: “I remember with pleasure . . . how my knowledge of the English language allowed me to attend flight courses in the US. The advantage of knowing American culture helped me to integrate myself in the flight school and to know how to manage myself abroad.” “A thing I learned and like to repeat is that my experience was not just academic; American schools at that time were very different from the Italian and trying to compare them
Luca with AFS Participants during his preflight tour in February 2013. Photograph courtesy of Intercultura.
was impossible, but the human experience accompanied me for the rest of my life.” Luca considers all the international experience on his resume to have been the “ace in the sleeve” in his being selected as an ESA astronaut— only six people were selected from 8,500 candidates, one of whom was Luca’s fellow Italian AFS Returnee Samantha Cristoforetti. Learning to Be Humble Perhaps the most profound change Luca experienced during his AFS exchange will never show up on his resume. “The principal aspect of my personality that I discovered was that as a Sicilian, I was kind of rigid, proud, and hard in my points of view. I believe the experience abroad taught me to be more open and to look for compromise much more than confrontation. And it taught me humility. It taught me to
listen and that we cannot always be 2 first and the best and, certainly in my case, to appreciate and seek the intelligence of others . . . I believe these are the most important aspects of my experience, this opening that manifested itself.” Luca’s high level of accomplishment, including attaining the rank of major in the Italian Air Force, being awarded a Medaglia al Valore Aeronautico d’Argento by the President of Italy in 2007 and, as of April 11, 2014, being named as Italy’s ambassador during its upcoming sixmonth presidency of the European Union Council, has not prevented him from making time to listen to current AFS Participants on Earth. They may not end up walking in space, but his advice will surely help them wherever they go: “Keep yourself curious and full of interests! With Intercultura you are already on the right path.”
Luca making a video call to students and teachers in Milan from the ESA headquarters in Germany in 2010. Video images courtesy of Intercultura.
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A. Piatt Andrew’s Red Roof: Gone but Not Forgotten After founding and leading the American Field Service (AFS) during World War I, A. Piatt Andrew returned to the US and was elected to represent Massachusetts in the House of Representatives in 1921. His escape from the nation’s capital was a house in Gloucester, MA, that he named “Red Roof.” The house had an extraordinary life until it was demolished in December 2012. A House Just Like Its Owner Red Roof was not an ordinary house because Andrew was not an ordinary person. Designed and built under Andrew’s direction in 1902, the house was as multi-faceted as he was. His intellectual and public policy careers—before World War I he was an economics professor at Harvard who predicted the financial panic of 1907 and then became Director of the US Mint and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury—were manifested in his 5,000-volume library. His aesthetic sensibility was apparent in the art that was everywhere in the house. But Andrew was definitely not one for all work and no play. He loved to entertain and had a keen sense of humor, both of which were abundantly visible in Red Roof’s design. There were secret rooms, one of which necessitated dismantling a sofa to access. The room concealed a Prohibition-era wet bar and a player piano. Guests in the living room could therefore hear
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the music but didn’t know its source. Andrew also created elaborate entertainment for his guests by organizing themed dinner parties, musical performances, and skits in full costume. His guests included interior decorator and longtime AFS supporter Henry Sleeper, the portrait painter John Singer Sargent, art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“AFS was his [Andrew’s] crowning achievement, and it is my view that the two creations, AFS and Red Roof, should be linked together.” The AFS years of Andrew’s life were given full expression at Red Roof. The main secret room also contained a dugout that was filled with World War I and AFS artifacts such as nearly 1,500 war posters, AFS recruitment slides, shell fuses (a favorite souvenir of AFS Drivers) and trench art. Axel Jansen is a history professor who has studied American volunteers in France. He visited Red Roof in 2007 and what struck him
most was the extent to which it was “almost a shrine to World War I,” showing how much Andrew truly was a veteran of the war. Red Roof did not just preserve the AFS’s past. Andrew entertained AFS drivers there after the war, and according to Ronald Poteat, a longtime collector and student of World War I and the AFS, the house served as the de facto AFS headquarters after the Paris headquarters closed in April 1919. Andrew had AFS file cards, personnel information, correspondence, and other AFS materials brought from France and he kept them at Red Roof. These materials were put to use. For example, the three-volume set of AFS history was largely compiled and edited at Red Roof. Thus Red Roof played a role in keeping the AFS alive after World War I ended (and in creating the foundation for the AFS Archives). Poteat believes that the fact that AFS materials were housed in one place was a major factor facilitating the reconstitution of the AFS during World War II, which in turn led to the creation of the AFS of today. Even after AFS operations moved elsewhere, the Red Roof connection continued: after Andrew died in 1936, his sister took over the house and hosted AFS students there after 1947.
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Saving Red Roof’s Contents Decades after Red Roof’s heyday, it became prohibitively expensive for Andrew’s descendants to care for the house and its contents. In an effort to raise money and secure the bulk of Andrew’s belongings, in 2007 a family member invited interested parties, including Marianne Meyer of the AFS Foundation and Poteat, to stay at Red Roof and purchase the contents they wanted. Axel Jansen stayed for a week, photographing every corner of the house and grounds to document the way it looked in Andrew’s time. The AFS Foundation acquired enough to fill eight boxes and Poteat, after
reconstructing the World War I dugout in his North Carolina home and he created a blog about Red Roof, which he considers “a memorial to the house and its founder though photographs and objects.” Poteat shared with the AFS Janus a quote about Red Roof from Issac Patch, one of Andrew’s living descendants: “AFS was his [Andrew’s] crowning achievement, and it is my view that the two creations, AFS and Red Roof, should be linked together.” Thanks to the concerted efforts to save Red Roof’s contents, the chances are very high that AFS and Red Roof will continue to be linked together, albeit no longer in Gloucester, Massachusetts. several additional trips, purchased a significant amount of the contents. Red Roof’s Next Chapter A 1922 article in the North Shore Breeze captured a visitor’s reaction to Red Roof, “This is not a house; it is a passion!” The physical structure of the house is now gone but its spirit still inspires passion. Poteat said he wasn’t thinking specifically about what he would do with the things when he was collecting them; his goal was to save and preserve as much of the contents as possible before they were lost or scattered. He is waiting for an epiphany; in the meantime, he is considering
To read Ronald Poteat’s blog, please visit apiattandrewredroof.blogspot.com.
1. Exterior of Red Roof. 2. Interior of secret dugout with view of player piano. 3. Entryway to secret dugout through dismantled couch. 4. A. Piatt Andrew on the grounds of Red Roof before World War I. Photograph by T.E. Bro and Son. Photographs 1, 2, and 3 taken in 2007 by Axel Jansen for the AFS Foundation. Photos of Red Roof taken with kind permission by the A. Piatt Andrew Estate.
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Vincenzo featured on the cover of International Education Exchange magazine in 2013. The cover caption reads, “Vincenzo Morlini: Building the Bridge of Intercultural Communication.” The article discussed Vincenzo’s journey to become the president of AFS International and his commitment to intercultural education. AFS International is grateful to AFS China for sharing its International Education Exchange magazine.
Letter from the AFS International President In my last letter to our AFS Janus readers, I wrote about the exciting events AFS is preparing to celebrate its Centennial. Since then, we have made much progress with our plans. We now have websites for the exhibition, “The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I: 1914-1919,” and for the AFS Centennial celebration. I encourage all our AFS Janus readers to visit the websites. We hope you will join us in what promises to be a fantastic celebration of the founding of the American Field Service. I have some good news to report about the AFS Network, particularly about AFS China and AFS India. AFS started its programs in China in 1981 through the former Bureau of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Education, and it was operated under the authority of the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE), a governmentaffiliated, not-for-profit organization.
This government affiliation prevented AFS China from being considered a full AFS Partner. However, the AFS Board of Trustees created a new category of partnership that allows for organizations with government affiliation, with the result that, as of April 2014, AFS China is an Affiliate Partner. With this change, AFS China will be the first volunteer organization in the country to promote AFS values and pursue the AFS mission. Congratulations to AFS China for reaching this milestone designation. AFS was active in India in the 1960s and 1970s, after which it ceased operations there. AFS India restarted operations in 2005 by sending a group of 45 students to the US, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Japan. During the past four years, AFS India has quadrupled its capacity, sending more than 200 students on exchange programs. I would therefore also like to congratulate AFS in
India for becoming self-supporting and for being prepared to accept new AFS Volunteers and new challenges. Finally, the entire AFS Network is preparing the agenda for our leadership meeting, the AFS World Congress, in Paris this November. The AFS Network will be asked to assess how our traditional secondary school programs can be most effectively and successfully implemented in a global market whose only constant is change. I believe these changes reflect the spirit that has sustained AFS into the eve of our second century. Thank you for your support.
Vincenzo Morlini President and CEO AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc.
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AFS WWII Ambulance Drivers Last Post Richard C. Anderson
John B. Ferguson
William R. Hirschberg
(CM 62)
(IB 13)
(ME 2, FFC)
Richard Craig Anderson passed away on December 11, 2013, at age 88. He was born on August 31, 1925, in Chicago, IL. He volunteered with AFS in 1943 and took part in the Italian Campaign. He was captured in Italy; from June 1944 until April 1945 he was a prisoner of war at Stalag VII in Germany. He was repatriated in June 1945 and awarded an Italian Star. In 1949, he received a B.S. in mathematics from Purdue University. After graduation, he started working at the Los Alamos National Lab, where he worked until his retirement in 1986. He is survived by three children and nine grandchildren.
Irving R. King (CM 92, IB 59-T)
Irving Ray King passed away on September 20, 2013, in Mechanicsville, VA, at age 91. He was born on June 19, 1922, in Richmond, VA. He volunteered with AFS in July 1944 and served in the Italian Campaign before transferring to India in July 1945. He was repatriated in November 1945. A graduate of the University of Richmond, he was a research physicist at the Experiment Inc./Texaco Research Lab and taught physics at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond. In 1964, he was elected chairman of a Physics Symposium at Cambridge University, England. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a grandson.
John Becker Ferguson passed away on September 8, 2011, in Thousand Oaks, CA, at age 96. He was born on July 24, 1915, in State College, PA. He graduated from Penn State in 1937 and volunteered for AFS in October 1943. He was sent overseas in November 1943 and was attached to the British Fourteenth Army, serving in the India-Burma Campaign. He served until April 1945. He was a resident of Moorpark, CA and was preceded in death by his wife and son, Thomas Burton Ferguson.
William Roberts Hirschberg passed away on April 29, 2013, at age 92. He was born on September 3, 1921, and was a graduate of the Choate School and Brown University. He volunteered with AFS in November 1941 and arrived in Suez in March 1942. He volunteered for service with the FFC (Forces Françaises Combattants), then part of the British 8th Army, and served in the African Campaign in the Western Desert. He was repatriated in February 1943. He was associated with the law firm Hirschberg, Pettengill and Strong for 40 years and was a lifelong resident of Greenwich, CT. He is survived by two daughters, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Arnold Motz
John S. Wires
(ME22)
(ME 32, FFC)
Pastor Arnold Motz passed away on August 15, 2013, in Portland, OR, at age 98. He was born on May 18, 1915, in Portland, OR. He was sent overseas with AFS as an ambulance driver in September 1942, and served in the African Campaign in the Western Desert and the Italian and France-Germany Campaigns. He assisted in the evacuation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in May 1945 and was repatriated in August 1945. He was the pastor of Woodland Park Chapel in Portland for 58 years. He was preceded in death by his wife La Verne.
John Stanley Wires passed away on July 1, 2013, in Montpelier, VT, at age 91. He was born on March 3, 1922, in Wellesley Hills, MA. He was sent overseas with AFS in November 1942 and repatriated from Algiers in October 1943. He graduated from Haverford College and Columbia Teachers College and taught science and education at various institutions in New York. In the early 1960s, he moved to Vermont and became an early pioneer of the state’s back-to-theland movement, living in a hand-hewn cabin without electricity or plumbing and raising trees that bear edible nuts and fruits. He is survived by two children and three grandchildren. AFS JANUS • SPRING 2014 • 15
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Notizie da Anna:
Fantasizing for the Future Note from the AFS Archivist: This article was the first in a series of posts on our website by Anna Beltrami, the Fondazione CRT Intern in the AFS Archives. To see her future posts, please visit www.afs.org/archives. This year, thanks to the celebration of the Centennial of the American Field Service, AFSers all over the world are discovering, sometimes rediscovering, the history of AFS. It is an “unusual history” as World War II Driver and former AFS President Arthur Howe, Jr. stated in a 2000 speech, having its origins in the hybrid nature of an organization “founded in idealism, and in volunteerism through humanitarian service in two wars,” followed by more than a half-century of student exchanges. A better understanding of AFS history leads to questions on the present state of the organization and, inevitably, on its future goals. “Where are we going?” was the
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central question also in 1971, the year of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the post-war student exchange programs. A few months before the opening of a convention commemorating the anniversary, some staff members in New York found a very unusual way to reflect on issues to be raised at the convention: they imagined AFS in 2014, at the time of its one-hundredth anniversary. The members of this “2014 committee” jokingly imagined a space-age AFS, with interplanetary student exchanges and giant computers doing student-
family placement. Nevertheless, some of their predictions (including the idea of a more decentralized structure) have become reality. The 1971 convention ultimately brought together more than 2,000 international delegates with the common goal of defining new directions for the organization. Note from the Editor: Although AFS is not yet organizing interplanetary exchanges as predicted in 1971, we have indeed become space-age thanks to Luca Parmitano’s call with AFSers made from the International Space Station in July 2013! Please see page 10 for details. Drawing by Lailson de Holanda Cavalcanti. Excerpt from “Fantasizing for the Future: AFS in the Year 2014,” Our Little World, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1971.
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