Steve Alter

Homeward Bound

Stephen Alter ’74

In 1933, my father, Robert Alter, travelled “home” to America for the first time in his life, at the age of five. Born in Srinagar, Kashmir, he was the youngest of four brothers. His parents, Martha and Emmet Alter, had come to India from the United States as missionaries in 1916. Until their retirement in 1952, they lived and worked in towns like Sialkot, Abbottabad, Rawalpindi, Srinagar and Mussoorie. For our family, “home” has always been an ambiguous concept, at best. Nevertheless, we use the word freely, despite the uncertainties it evokes, wound up inside a ball of nostalgic sentiments, displaced identities and a lost sense of direction. Of course, as a young boy, my father didn’t care about these things. He was setting off on an exciting adventure, through lands he’d never seen before, to destinations he’d only heard his parents speak about. New York and Boston sounded as exotic and foreign as the halts along the way – Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Famagusta, Istanbul and Venice.

Today, we travel nonstop from India to the United States in less than fifteen hours but for my father and his family it was a journey that took three months. In Karachi they caught a steamship to Basra from where they travelled upriver by boat and train to Baghdad. My grandfather was an avid photographer and he took hundreds of pictures along the way. In many of the photographs of monuments and landscapes, he posed one of his sons in the foreground to provide scale and perspective. He also had a fascination for motorcars and his pictures often include the vehicles in which they travelled.

To cross the desert to Damascus, they hired a weather-beaten Nash convertible. My father sat on his mother’s lap for twenty-four hours as the family squeezed into the dusty car, along with all their luggage. In those days, there was no road between Iraq and Syria. They simply drove across open miles of sand. After reaching Damascus, they continued overland through Trans-Jordan to Palestine, stopping at the Dead Sea, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Heading north into Lebanon, they took several ferries and boats to Cyprus, Rhodes, Istanbul, Athens and Naples (where the boys scrambled about near the smoking crater of Mount Vesuvius). Eventually, they ended up in Genoa, where a statue of Christopher Columbus stands watch over the harbour. Here, they boarded another steamer, the USS President Polk of the Dollar Line, on which they crossed the Atlantic. For more than a hundred years our family has lived between east and west. Though I grew up in India and consider this country my home, I am always conscious of being perceived as a “foreigner.” At the same time, whenever I travel to the United States, where my passport and ethnicity allow me to blend in, I feel an underlying sense of alienation. All of this has led me to question the concept of national homelands, which have become more and more insular and divided. At this point in history, when strident voices are clamoring against immigration and people are being excluded on account of their geographical origins, religion and race, it is important to recognize that someone can be both an outsider and an insider at once.

I’ve always liked a quote from Gustave Flaubert, the French novelist: “As to the idea of a native country, that is to say a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from other bits by a red or blue line: no. For me, my native country is the country I love, meaning the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much Chinese as I am French, and I cannot rejoice about our victories over the Arabs because I am saddened by their defeats.”

In 1977, returning home to India from the United States, after finishing college, the cheapest flight I could find was a one-way ticket to Delhi on Syrian Arab Airlines. When we broke journey in Damascus, there was a twelve-hour delay. The transit lounge was a large, windowless room with broken chairs and a framed picture of President Hafez al-Assad on one wall, along with a makeshift canteen serving bitter coffee and dry, day-old sandwiches. However, my brief incarceration hardly compared to the fate of two Palestinians in their twenties who befriended me. They spoke English well enough for us to carry on a conversation and I learned that they had been stranded here for almost a month. The pair had arrived on a flight from Beirut but there were “problems” with their papers. The Syrian authorities would not allow them to leave the airport and they had no money to buy a ticket to somewhere else, so they were essentially trapped in that bleak, no man’s land of the transit lounge. One of them

pointed to a small heap of luggage in the far corner of the room, where they slept on the floor. I bought them a cup of coffee each, for they seemed to be surviving off the charity of fellow travellers. The Palestinians asked me about America and what it was like to live there, with a hopeful inquisitiveness that made me uncomfortable. When I explained that I was leaving the US and going home to India, this puzzled them. What was it about India that appealed to me? Why would I leave America?

Whenever I think of those two men, I realize that I am fortunate to have a place that I can call home. Mussoorie is where I was born, and where my parents and grandparents lived. Over the years, my wife, our two children, and I have lived in many other places – Delhi, Cairo, Hawaii, Boston and Denver. In some ways, I consider each of those points on the map to be home, even if I always return to the familiar foothills of the Himalaya. Yet, equally important, Mussoorie is also a place from where I depart. Journeys define us as much as the passports we carry. Having travelled all my life – on work, for leisure, or because of family – I am constantly reminded that whenever I leave home my identity may be challenged, confirmed or sometimes even changed by the destinations I choose. In many ways, I feel most at home being a foreigner, crossing borders and going to places where I don’t belong.

Inscribed on the ruins of a temple on the Turkish coast, close to the border of Syria, along the route my father travelled in 1933, are the words of the second century philosopher Diogenes of Oenoanda. In a prayerful meditation on the meaning of displacement, he advocates compassion for, "Not least of those who are called foreigners, for they are not foreigners. For, while the various segments of the Earth give different people a different country, the whole compass of this world gives all people a single country, the entire Earth, and a single home, the world."

After the successful Parker Hall Reunion earlier this year, a group of Woodstock Alumni artists have come together to create the Woodstock Artists Affinity Group. The group will comprise of Woodstock alumni and friends, working in the Arts. The group aims to provide opportunities to learn, network, share and collaborate, support alumni artists and current students in the Arts, and provide activities that enrich the members' practice or lives.

Some of the core goals for the group are:

- Monthly Zoom meetings for people to interact/connect and showcase their work - Artist talks and critiques - Network with other art practitioners across disciplines - Collaborate on projects - Support art and artists at the school.

To begin, we are looking for artists and friends from our community interested in the Arts. You can write to alumni@ woodstock.ac.in to register or if you're interested in future WSAAG events.

Woodstock School Distinguished Alunus 2021 Glenn Conrad ‘68

Glenn Conrad has been honoured as a Distinguished Alumnus of Woodstock School for a lifelong achievement in philanthropy and voluntary service. A 1968 graduate of Woodstock, Glenn arrived in India as a one year old child whose parents, a doctor and a nurse, began service at Dhamtary Christian Hospital in the middle of rural Madhya Pradesh. They served under the Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities having first started a hospital in rural Ethiopia shortly after the end of WWII. From the onset Glenn was exposed to meaningful and fulfilling volunteer service.

After graduating from Goshen College (which included a stint as a professional musician) his first job was as an award winning reporter for a newspaper in Rexburg Idaho and ended up as the Managing Editor. Next, off to law school at American University Law School in the DC area (graduated 7th and Summa Cum Laude out of a class of 341). Upon graduation he joined the law office of Piper and Marbury. He then helped in a start-up NGO/NPO, PRISM which worked in agriculture, rural development and public health primarily in Peru and Bangladesh. After this start up he went into business as a private consultant.

In early 1989 he served on the staff of Idaho Congressman Richard Stallings and following him another Congressman from Idaho, Larry LaRocco. He remains friends of these men to this day (see accompanying letters of commendation).

Starting in 1984 Glenn began his involvement with Woodstock through WOSA-NA, Woodstock Old Students Association-North America. Then, in the late 1980’s Glenn was recruited to the Board of Directors of the KWI (Kodai Woodstock International Foundation) and became very active in promoting the activities of Woodstock Alumni in North America through WOSA/NA which was part of KWI. In 1994 Glenn and his wife Peggy (and their two sons) joined the Staff of Woodstock School and Glenn initiated a development and public relations office for the school. This led to even greater involvement in promoting WOSA (Woodstock Old Students Association) in North America, India and around the world.

Upon his return to the US, Glenn was once again active with KWI and served on its Board at the time that KWI was successfully devolved into two separate organizations for the two schools. Glenn took over the leadership of Friends of Woodstock School in 2006 and has remained active in its success since that time. FWS has been successful in raising significant funds for Woodstock School and currently has about $6 million earmarked and designated for the advancement of the school. The groundwork for these gifts can be attributed to the efforts of Glenn to set up a meaningful process whereby alumni, staff and parents could donate to the school. He has also been involved with and served on the Boards of both WOSA and FWS, for 36 years as President, as a Board member and is currently an Emeritus Board Member (and the only one of those).

In 2000, working with another Woodstock alumnus, Jeet Singh, Glenn helped establish and became the Executive Director as well as a board member of the Winterline Foundation whose mission was to support “global citizenship through education”. Woodstock was a primary beneficiary of this foundation (to the tune of something over $2 million to date). In 2018 the name “Winterline” in that Foundation was changed to “Timberline”.

Glenn and Peggy live in Tetonia, Idaho having recently built a house and retired (such as a peripatetic and lifelong service oriented person can).

Glenn clearly demonstrates the type of world citizen Woodstock produces and who has shown himself enthusiastically dedicated throughout his career to volunteering at many levels in a significant number of institutions including Woodstock. His focus on enhancing and advancing the philanthropic objectives of others has resulted in significant funding for a variety of institutions and particularly Woodstock School.