ANDOVERBULLETINFa

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GETTING A LIFE: BIOGRAPHERS ON BIOGRAPHY

Fall 2004 and Report of G

iving

Think you’ve seen it all thisautumn, when it comes to nasty

politics?Think again.To get viewers in the spirit of the

season, the Addison Gallery ofAmerican Art features a small exhibi-tion of political images from theAddison’s permanent collection.Titled Getting Nasty: Politics, Patriotismand Works on Paper, the show contin-ues through Jan. 5, 2005.

Curated by Brian T. Allen, theAddison’s new Mary Stripp and R.Crosby Kemper director, Getting Nastyruns the timeline from 1854 to around1981 and includes works in engraving,wood engraving and photography. Ithangs in the Addison’s central corridorgallery, which Allen hopes to turn into

Getting Nasty at the Addison

Stump Speaking [The County Election] shows a give-and-take between candidate and crowd in an atmosphere of fundamental sanity and civility. Anengraving on paper, it was created by John Sartain (1808–1894) in 1854 from an original by George Caleb Bingham, an early chronicler of American campaigning. Bingham helped define democracy in the popular imagination as asystem best equipped to air and to decide issues of civic importance.

More Bravado, above right, a wood engraving on newsprint by Thomas Nast (1840–1902), appeared in Harper’s Weeklyin 1877. According to Allen, it is part of a trio of cartoons in the exhibition where Nast “considers the disputed 1876 presi-dential election, a contest with many parallels to the 2000 election.” Here, the voter appears to be blindfolded. In anotherof the works, which Allen calls “gravely insulting,” Nast suggests that recently freed and uneducated African-Americans inthe South and recent immigrants in the North were manipulated by both Republican and Democratic bosses in equal mea-sure to keep or gain power. Above left, much as Nast’s cartoons helped define the public’s view of politics, by the 1960stelevision was crafting the period’s civic icons. This photographic montage by Donald Blumberg represents a 1969 TVaddress that “suggests the multiple agendas and frequent repositionings for which Richard Nixon became famous,” Allenwrites.

ANDOVERBULLETIN

The ANDOVER BULLETIN is publishedfour times a year, fall, winter, spring andsummer, by the Office of Communicationsat Phillips Academy, 180 Main Street,Andover MA 01810-4161.

Main PA Phone 978-749-4000

Changes of address and death notices:978-749-4269; alumni-records@andover.edu

Phillips Academy Web site:http://www.andover.edu

Bulletin Phone 978-749-4040 Bulletin Fax 978-749-4272 e-mail: tpease@andover.eduPeriodical postage paid at Andover MA and at additional mailing offices. Postmasters: Send address changes to: Andover Bulletin,Phillips Academy, 180 Main Street, Andover MA 01810–4161ISSN-0735-5718

Fall 2004Volume 98/Number 1PublisherMichael EbnerInterim Secretary of the AcademyDirector of CommunicationsSharon BrittonEditorTheresa PeaseDirector of Editorial Services Art DirectorEllen HardyDirector of Design ServicesAssistant EditorsSharon MagnusonPaula TrespasClass Notes CoordinatorMaggie CarboneContributing WritersKennan DanielTana ShermanDesign and Production AssistantKennan DanielPublications CoordinatorJennifer BarczaPhotography: Elaine Crivelli, LionelDelevingne, Sheva Fruitman, José Ramon Garcia, Ellen Hardy,Newsweek, Theresa Pease, J.D. Sloan, Bethany Versoy

All photos copyrightedPrinted on recycled paper

FEATURES

2 GETTING A LIFE:BIOGRAPHERS ON BIOGRAPHY

by Theresa Pease

From the gilded halls of Versailles to the tuberculosis clinics of poverty-ravaged Haiti, four alumni biographers experience the thrill of the hunt.

3 The Patriot as IngénueStacy Schiff ’78 on Benjamin Franklin

6 A Flawed and Sympathetic HeroEvan Thomas ’69 on John Paul Jones

9 A Biography in DeedsTracy Kidder ’63 on Paul Farmer

13 A Game of Hunt and SeekWill Watson ’50 on Ernest Hemingway

16 WHO’S HOT? Taking Down the Marlboro Manby Bella English

Kathy Mulvey ’84 saved lives by going head-to-head with the big tobacco lobby and helping negotiate the world’s first public health treaty.

REPORT OF GIVING 2003-04Our annual summary of philanthropic donations to Andover begins facing page 72.DEPARTMENTS

18 Sports Talk

20 Time & Treasure

24 News Notes

25 Alumni News

27 Class Notes andAlumni Profiles

71 In Memoriam

IBC Andover Bookshelf

22

18

16

Cover:Illustrations by Luba Lukova

Getting a LifeBIOGRAPHERS ON BIOGRAPHY

Articles by Theresa PeaseIllustrations by Luba Lukova

“The history of the world,” Thomas Carlyle once wrote, “is but the biogra-

phy of great men.” But English author Philip Guedalla, in Supers and

Supermen, a collection of historical profiles and skits, treats the subject a little less

seriously, saying that “biography, like big-game hunting, is one of the recognized forms

of sport.” Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff ’78, on the other hand,

likens the challenge to the work of an investigative journalist or private eye. “What

makes a biographer,” she confides, “is the ability to ask the hard question, to find the

errant detail and pursue it with amazing perseverance. A lot of it is sleuthing; a lot of

it is Nancy Drew on a higher level.”

Be they historians or athletes, detectives or tough-minded reporters, four alumni

biographers who recently discussed their profession with the Andover Bulletin agree

there is something of the thrill of the hunt involved in trying to encapsulate another

person’s life.

3

Biographer Stacy Schiff launched her career inwhat some may think an unlikely way. With little

background in history and no experience as a journalist orauthor, the Williams College graduate quit a job in theNew York publishing industry, picked a somewhat obscureliterary figure as her subject and within two months man-aged to get an advance for her first book.

But, then, Schiff says, there really is no preordainedpath for aspiring chroniclers of lives. Kids don’t just walkinto their kindergarten classrooms and declare, “I wantto be a biographer when I grow up.” Other than workingas, say, a private eye or an investigative journalist, theonly adequate preparation is exercising a voraciouscuriosity about lives. Schiff had that.

The result of her derring-do was a biography ofAntoine de Saint-Exupery, known to most as the author ofThe Little Prince, but not much recognized as the aviator-adventurer Schiff limned in her book. Titled Saint-Exupery,it received smash-hit reviews and made her one of two run-ners-up for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in biography. When shecalled her agent following the announcement—none too

shabby an achievement for a first-time author—the womanreminded her, “Stacy, that means you lost.”

Undaunted, Schiff made an even more audaciouschoice for her second foray into the literary world. InVera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), she wrote about the self-effacing figure behind the controversial novelist. For herefforts at shedding light on Russian émigré Vera SlonimNabokov’s subtle and not-so-subtle influence, her steelywill and the unusually symbiotic relationship the coupleshared, Schiff got another set of exuberant notices andthe 1999 Pulitzer.

With a winning formula beginning to shape up, onemight expect Schiff to go poking again behind the cur-tains and masks of the literati, turning up another little-known subject to highlight. Instead, she directed herattention to one of the most written-about figures in his-tory—American patriot, statesman and inventorBenjamin Franklin. Type his name in the “subject” lineon amazon.com, and you’ll get 27,817 hits. Seek it in the“title” line on barnesandnoble.com, and you’ll get 1,302.

What inspired Schiff to go for 1,303?

Stacy Schiff ’78 on Benjamin Franklin

The Patriot as Ingénue

6

“Asking a biographer how she chooses her subject islike asking how she chose her spouse. You can’t alwaysexplain your reasons, and as the intimacy deepens yourreasons change. All I can say is that Ben Franklin isuncommonly charismatic. There was an enormous pullthere for me. Also, I had written twice about the 20thcentury, and I wanted to try something different. I hadwritten about one life, and then about two lives, but Iwanted to do something bigger. I wanted to illuminate aperiod of American history that was discordant withwhat we generally think of as the American character,”she says.

The period she chose to focus on was an eight-yeartour of duty Franklin spent in France, cosseting theFrench court and trying—successfully—to engage theirfinancial and military assistance for American patriotsin the revolution against England. It was a period whenthe ferociously independent America of simple farmersand tradesmen, sons and daughters of folks who had leftEurope for an unknown wilderness rather than bow toOld World aristocracy, was willing to beg on Versailles’doorstep for assistance. They needed that help to throwoff France’s longtime adversaries in London.

And the period was as uncharacteristic of Franklinas it was of the fledgling nation he represented. Hereyou had this fiercely independent, plain-spoken son of aBoston candlemaker, a man who tinkered with inven-tions that required the rolling-up of sleeves, incongru-ously replanted in the breast of the French court. Therehis charge was to primp and pamper, flatter and be flat-tered, always wearing the mask of the career diplomat.“He was completely out of his element,” says Schiff, whomarveled in one essay that the nascent republic had“sent Franklin—stout, balding and 70—to play the roleof seductive ingénue.”

Many people, Schiff acknowledges, have managedto amass a blend of facts and mythology about Franklin’syears in Paris. They know (or think) that he was a bonvivant, regarded by sophisticated Europe as both the“noble savage” and the consummate ladies’ man, andthat he was, along with Voltaire, one of the two mostpopular men in the world, his image emblazoned on sou-

venirs from medallions to snuff boxes. They have heardthat wives thronged flirtatiously to him while husbandslooked the other way. His charm captured the imagina-tions of creative minds who spun fanciful yarns; forexample, his visit is the subject of a romantic Germannovel, and in 1965 Robert Preston played the title char-acter in the Broadway musical Ben Franklin in Paris.

Schiff feels bad about debunking some of the moreromantic notions of Paris’ famous visitor. “There aresome serious flirtations, but no big sexual episodes inthis book, and, contrary to popular lore, he was not awild-haired man costumed for effect in Quaker clothes,”she says. “It is a little disappointing to let some of thoseold legends die.” What she hopes to add to the story ismore to the point, though. Even people who revel insalacious and charming stories about the popular grand-pere tend to forget the serious business that sent him toFrance.

“They don’t understand how essential his role was tothe success of the American Revolution. They tend to for-get the debt we have to France, and how France’s partici-pation was the direct outcome of work done byFranklin—not Franklin the toast of the town, but Franklinthe polished and able career diplomat,” Schiff says.

In other words, Americans owe Franklin not just forbifocals and cottage stoves; we owe him for our nationalsovereignty.

Schiff began her research in 1999. Unlike when shewas preparing for the Saint-Exupery and Nabokovbooks, she obviously could not interview friends, ene-mies, lovers, servants and colleagues of people who knewher subject. This time she was alone with the documentsof history.

Several things helped facilitate the work. First, shesays, Franklin was a clear and articulate writer. “I don’tthink he was capable of constructing an awkward orincomprehensible sentence, and his wit just sparkles offthe page. When he wanted to wax rhapsodic about thefuture of America, nobody, but nobody, could do it bet-ter,” she says. Also, Franklin’s time in Paris was his mostwell documented. In fact, Schiff says, there are two-and-a-half times more documents surviving from Franklin’s

“Asking a biographer how she chooses her subject

is like asking how she chose her spouse.

You can’t always explain your reasons,

and as the intimacy deepens your reasons change.”

7

Paris years than from the rest of his life combined.Though delved into by diplomatic historians, this trea-sure trove was little used by Franklin biographers, whohave been hesitant to research American history on aforeign shore. The location was not a disincentive toSchiff, though. Fluent in French, she moved her familythere for a year while she did her research.

Biographers often speak of intimate connectionswith their subjects: knowing them, loving them, feelingangry or disgusted with them sometimes and eventuallybecoming almost inextricably enmeshed with them.Schiff says she can’t read a newspaper nowadays withoutregistering two reactions to each headline: hers andFranklin’s.

But getting inside Franklin’s mind was harder for herthan melding with Saint-Exupery and Nabokov.

“At first it took me a long time to figure out why,”she says. “Then I realized I was focusing on a situation inwhich it was essential for Franklin constantly to pose.As a diplomat, he had to play his cards very close to hisvest. Also, it was the 18th century. I had to keep inmind cultural differences, including the lack of timelycommunications with America. A letter, in the best ofcircumstances, could take three months to reach its des-tination; for Franklin, Yorktown didn’t even happenuntil two months later. What’s more, I could not see inmy mind the places where the events took place. Apartfrom Versailles, Paris in Franklin’s day looked and feltlittle like Paris today.”

The hardest part?She hesitates little before answering, “It is discon-

certing that I could not hear his voice in my mind.Saint-Exupery had made little wax recordings of himselftalking to his filmmaker friend Jean Renoir, and in hear-ing them I could understand his considerable, seductivecharm. I had also heard recordings of Vera Nabokov’svoice, which was helpful. Franklin wrote eloquentlyabout how much he liked the Boston turn of phrase, butwhat did he sound like? None of us knows how an 18th-century American talked. Did Franklin have a mid-Atlantic accent or a Boston accent? Did he sound likean Englishman? It bothers me that I do not know.”

Another challenge, Schiff admits, is attaining theright balance between storyteller and documentarian.Franklin’s is a fascinating narrative, but some of themost delicious anecdotes she has been unable to docu-ment—so out they go. “You’re very tempted to use themost colorful material you’ve got, but it’s got to pass thelegitimacy test,” she says sadly.

What’s it like for a biographer to develop an inti-mate relationship with a non-living subject?

She laughs at the question, but responds,“Sometimes you do feel like you’re running a strangeand upscale kind of séance. You surround yourself withyour subjects’ relics, you learn their favorite sports, youscent yourself with their perfume—there is something ofthe weirdly mystical about it. You hope that if you cansomehow burrow deep enough into their favorite novelsor immerse yourself in their favorite music you’re goingto start thinking like them.”

Stacy Schiff’s book A Great Improvisation: BenjaminFranklin, France and the Birth of America will be pub-lished in spring 2005 by Henry Holt and Company.

Getting a Life

Americans owe Franklin not just

for bifocals and cottage stoves;

we owe him for our national sovereignty.

Stacy Schiff

6

When Newsweek editor and Robert Kennedybiographer Evan Thomas decided to pen his

fifth book, he didn’t have to thrash around very long fora subject.

“John Paul Jones,” he says, “was my childhood hero,but in recent decades he had become a forgotten figure.I had suggested a book about him to my agent severaltimes, but she didn’t think it would sell.”

Her hesitation was not surprising. After all, naval his-torian Samuel Eliot Morison had produced a more or lessdefinitive book about Jones in 1969, and, besides, whowanted another dry biography of some dead white guy?

That was then; this is now. In recent years the emer-gence on the best-seller list of books about the FoundingFathers and the success of such films as Master andCommander had whetted the public’s appetite for bothRevolutionary War history and lore from the Age ofSail. When David McCullough’s John Adams passed 1.5million copies in sales, Simon & Schuster gave Thomasthe go-ahead to begin researching the storied father ofthe American Navy.

It was not an easy challenge. Although his fatherwas a book publisher, Long Island-bred Thomas was, as amagazine writer and editor, accustomed to using a jour-nalistic approach. His previous volumes—which, besidesthe RFK biography, included books about the foreignpolicy establishment (The Wise Men, written withWalter Isaacson), the CIA (The Very Best Men), andnoted trial lawyer Edward Bennett Williams (The Manto See)—had relied heavily on face-to-face interviewswith people who knew the subjects. The records he hadneeded were not far away from the Washington, D.C.,office of Newsweek, where Thomas is assistant managingeditor. Further, life within the Beltway had immersedThomas in the culture he was covering.

More daunting was John Paul Jones himself.Thomas faced the tricky task of portraying the romantic,sympathetic and heroic sides of Jones while also settingdown a realistic portrait of a man who constantly fellvictim to character flaws that might today have a recog-nizable clinical diagnosis and be subject to medicalintervention.

Evan Thomas ’69 on John Paul Jones

A Flawed and Sympathetic Hero

7

Scottish-born Jones, who adopted America as hiscountry and fought against the British on the colonies’behalf, was on the one hand a brilliant thinker with amasterful instinct for naval warfare. Audaciously, heblended the techniques of pirates, guerillas and evencurrent-day terrorists to keep his enemy off-balance.Further, he had incisive thoughts about the future ofU.S. naval warfare. His valor was almost superhuman. Aromantic by temperament, he wrote flowery poetry.

On the other hand, he was arrogant, self-absorbedand foppish to the point where he devised his own elabo-rate regalia rather than wear the standard-issue uniform. Ifnot wholly paranoid, he was at minimum easily given topersonal offense. He was a notorious womanizer whoseconquests spanned the continents and social classes, yethe was never able to form any lasting relationship.

Most tragically, he lacked the political and diplo-matic skills to put forth his best ideas. For example, hiscontinuous whining about the need for a permanentU.S. navy and a naval academy fell on deaf ears duringhis lifetime—probably in large part because his personal-ity alienated even those who were initially his allies.Such traits also kept him from getting prime commandsand the U.S. admiralty he sorely desired. As Thomasputs it, “He was hard-wired to be obnoxious.”

Still, Thomas had several things working in hisfavor. For starters, his efforts were fueled by his own life-long attraction to Jones as a romantic and heroic figure.And though Morison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Sailor’s Story threatened to cast a long shadow overThomas’ work, the contemporary author thought hecould tell a better tale.

“Morison,” he explains, “was a very proper BostonBrahmin, and Jones, the son of a Scottish gardener, waskind of a parvenu. Although Morison celebrated Jones’exploits, he disdained him. I thought I could write moresympathetically about Jones, presenting a flesh-and-

blood figure who, though flawed, worked heroically toconquer his demons and accomplished a lot.”

The times were also on Thomas’ side. “Narrativehistory,” he says, “has become more vivid sinceMorison’s time. Modern historians are better at paintinga living picture. For example, Morison hardly mentionsthe life-threatening storm Jones survived off the coast ofBrittany on the Ariel. I do a lot with that storm.”

Indeed, Thomas’ book reads like a well-craftedadventure novel. Nautical terminology is richly used andminutely explained. The storm scene aboard the Ariel ishair-raising, and Thomas’ description of the famous bat-tle between the British Serapis and the massively out-gunned American Bonhomme Richard could cause thereader to have nightmares. Even in Thomas’ accounts ofthe quiet times—those periods when Jones is without acommand—the author’s insight into his subject spell-binds the reader.

Critics and ordinary readers alike have heapedpraise on Thomas for making history come alive, butone cranky on-line reviewer challenged, “Where doesEvan Thomas get off telling us what Jones was thinking?How did he know what Jones was thinking?”

In fact, there’s an answer. Jones lived in an agewhen virtually the only communication medium waspaper, and people set things down in letters, journals,logs and other documents. In Jones’ case, the survivingletters numbered in the hundreds; his notes and journalentries are copious and revealing.

“It is important for biographers to try to put them-selves in the mind of the character they are writingabout,” Thomas says. “I owe it to the reader to not onlyput myself on deck alongside Jones, but insofar as theevidence supports it, to try to think the way he wasthinking and feel what he was feeling. It’s a little bit ofpop psychology, a little bit of literary insight, a little bitof looking at the way I would feel about things. I have to

Audaciously, John Paul Jones blended the techniques of pirates,

guerillas and even current-day terrorists

to keep his enemy off-balance.

Getting a Life

10

be careful, though, as a middle-aged white male living inWashington in 2004 not to assume other people, inother times and places, might think and feel just as I do.You can’t make the mistake of judging people by thestandards of your own era.”

An example of the cultural extrapolation that hadto be made is the exaggerated 18th-century notion ofhonor; Jones flew off the handle at the merest perceivedslight to his “honor,” and he had a few narrow escapesfrom fellows who wanted to duel with him in honor’sname. On the converse side, Thomas includes an amusing tale of Jones’ “honor” prompting him to returnthe family silver, many years later, to the abode of anEnglish nobleman whose estate Jones’ men had ran-sacked in a botched attempt to kidnap him. Kidnappingan earl was honorable; looting silver was not.

To date, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of theAmerican Navy has sold about 70,000 copies. It had a positive review on the front page of The New YorkTimes Book Review, and it made The New York TimesBest-Seller list.

How does Thomas, who also makes frequent TVand radio appearances and teaches media and freshmanwriting courses at Harvard, balance life as a biographerand life as a full-time magazine journalist?

“It’s a juggling act, and it’s very demanding. On theother hand, the two careers are complementary, becausemy kind of journalism is immediate, topical and a groupprocess. My book writing, though, takes years to do andis very solitary. With journalism you rarely get a chanceto step back and go deep, so doing both affords me theopportunity to have my cake and eat it, too,” says

Thomas, who holds a B.A. degree in history fromHarvard and a law degree from the University ofVirginia.

Recently Thomas began his research for a sixthbook, again with a maritime theme. Focused on WorldWar II and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, it is about fournaval leaders—two American and two Japanese—andhow, in Thomas’ words, “they dealt with the difficultdecision of how and when you die for your country.”

“My view of all the characters I write of,” he says, “isthat they did great things and they did terrible things,but they were, at the end of the day, human. I try to helpthe reader to understand what about their human naturemade them do those things.”

“It’s a little bit of pop psychology, a little bit of literary insight,

a little bit of looking at the way I would feel about things.”

Getting a Life

Evan Thomas

11

Researching Tracy Kidder’s first biography did notrequire scanning old documents for arcane clues

to his subject’s comings and goings or delving into dustyarchives for enlightenment. It did, however, require 11-hour hikes over rough country terrain, as well as planerides to Siberia, Peru and Cuba. It required visiting aMoscow prison where tuberculosis was rampant. Itrequired so many trips to disease-ridden and poverty-torn Haiti that Kidder eventually stopped counting.

For three years, Kidder followed his subject, physi-cian and anthropologist Paul Farmer, from free medicalclinic to fund-raising call, up hills and across oceans,into emergency rooms and into boardrooms. Routinelyhe stared dirt, death and disease in the face. And whenday was done and he settled down to rest, it was often ina twin-bedded hotel room alongside the man some havecalled a latter-day Albert Schweitzer. Kidder was, as heputs it, “a guest in another person’s life.”

If the prep work for Mountains Beyond Mountainssounds excessive, consider that when the Pulitzer Prize-

winning Kidder decided to write Among Schoolchildren, abook about elementary school life, he spent an entireschool year sitting in a third-grade classroom making10,000 pages of handwritten notes. To prepare for OldFriends, a book about aging and friendship, he visited anursing home daily for two years, filling 89 spiral-boundnotebooks with observations.

Although The Baltimore Sun terms him the “masterof the non-fiction narrative,” Kidder found he facedsomething of a mountain himself in taking on Farmer, athin and unimposing-looking man with a story thatseems larger than life. Raised in what Kidder calls“eccentric circumstances,” Paul Farmer grew up livingon a recycled bus and later on an old boat moored in anAlabama bayou. Identified as a gifted child, he won ascholarship to Duke University, where he studiedanthropology. A visit to Haiti inspired him to earn anM.D.-Ph.D. degree at Harvard in the hope of havingsome impact on that country’s horrific health scene. Theorganization he founded, Partners in Health, established

Tracy Kidder ’63 on Paul Farmer

A Biography in Deeds

12

projects aimed at infectious-disease control principallyin Haiti, but also in Latin America, Russia and theUnited States. In advancing its work, Farmer enlisted thehelp of an army of volunteers, paid Haitian staffers, drugmanufacturers, the Boston medical community and phil-anthropic partners that included the Bill & MelindaGates Foundation, George Soros, Tom White and theU.N. World Health Organization. Recipient of aMacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Farmer presentsan enigmatic picture. He is both an international forceon the public health scene and a patients-first doctorwho will walk dozens of muddy miles to make a housecall, all the while holding positions on the Harvard fac-ulty and in several distinguished Boston teaching hospi-tals. He has been called both a hero and a saint.

“Attempting to capture a living person on paper—especially a person as extraordinary as Paul Farmer—seemed enormous, almost overwhelming,” Kidderconfesses. “Someone once said a day in Paul Farmer’slife was like a month or a year in someone else’s—areally intense, packed time. On top of that, I knew itwould be not just daunting, but sometimes depressing.”

Kidder first met Farmer on a 1994 trip to Haiti,where the writer was working on a story about U.S. mil-itary involvement there. Like many Americans, Kidderfound Haiti disturbing. Apart from Haiti’s heritage asthe only nation founded by rebellious slaves, and evenapart from its long saga of political turmoil and ques-tionable treatment by the United States, it is the site ofdire suffering. Kidder calls it “one of the most miserableplaces on earth.”

The Andover- and Harvard-educated son of a NewYork lawyer, Kidder says, “For years after that trip I tried

to find a way to digest what I’d seen, to reconcile thefact of Haiti with my privileged life and hang onto myconviction I had somehow earned my privileges. I thinkI knew if I started following this guy Farmer around hewould disturb my peace of mind. He did that, and healso made Haiti comprehensible to me.”

At first, Kidder approached Farmer only to be thesubject of an article in The New Yorker. Coaxing him sub-sequently to figuratively sit for a book-length living por-trait was a bit more difficult. “He really didn’t want anypart of it, but his friends persuaded him it would be goodfor Partners in Health,” Kidder says. From their first meet-ing to the start of their collaboration took six years.

“I knew at the outset I would need not just to inter-view him, but to be with him. This is a man who travelssome quarter million miles a year to save umpty-umpthousand lives, and it was essential for me to travel withhim. Some of the best talks I had with him were eitheron airplanes or on long hikes. Sometimes I would sit inhis office and watch him work. He pretty much took meeverywhere; there were only a few meetings I couldn’tenter,” Kidder says.

Moments of tension punctuated the prolongedforced intimacy (sometimes when Farmer felt he hadanswered the same question too many times), Kidderallows, but on the whole he found Farmer an affabletraveling companion. Often the doctor slowed down ona hike to accommodate Kidder, who is 14 years older,and once Farmer “busted his toe,” as Kidder put it,rather than switch on a hotel room light and wake theslumbering biographer.

Which brings us to the problem of Farmer’s good-ness. Even supposing the reader accepts Kidder’s charac-

Getting a Life

Paul Farmer is both an international force on the public health scene and a patients-first doctor

who will walk dozens of muddy miles to make a house call.

13

terization of Farmer as “the wedding of idealism to com-petence and brilliance,” how could Kidder get people tobelieve how utterly good the man is?

“When someone is as good as Paul Farmer,” Kiddersays, “you risk having the reader become cynical andthink, ‘Oh, this guy is not for real.’ Believe me, it wouldhave been easier to write this book if I had uncoveredsome dirty little secrets about Farmer, but there simplyweren’t any. A person like Farmer can stand as an affrontto a certain kind of person. Instead of saying, ‘Look atthis amazing guy; I’m glad he’s in the world,’ people who

have not lived the idealistic lives they once envisionedcan actually feel diminished by his existence and resent-ful of it.”

How long did it take him to get a handle on Farmer?“I wouldn’t begin to claim I’ve ever ‘gotten’ anyone

I’ve written about,” Kidder says. “I want to capture thereflections of people on the page, but you can’t capture ahuman being, and the more interesting the human beingis, the more he escapes you.”

One path to understanding Farmer, Kidder says, waslearning the verbal shorthand adopted by his Partners inHealth colleagues—a kind of sarcastic, sassy way ofabbreviating complex ideas. For example, they say“WL”—for white liberal—and a flood of good and badconnotations accompanies the letters.

More challenging were some of the catchphrasesFarmer uses to express his personal philosophy. “He wouldsay, ‘All suffering is not equal,’” Kidder says, “and at first Ihad a very hard time getting my mind around that. Butthen he said to me, ‘You know, when a woman inWellesley is dying of leukemia, I think it’s terrible. I wantto stop it; I want to cure her. But it’s not as bad as dying ofthe same disease in a hut in Haiti when you don’t haveenough food to eat and the roof leaks and you’re lying ona mud floor and you know once you die your kids aregoing to starve to death.’ I found it hard to dispute that.

“What was really interesting to me about Partners inHealth is how closely the group’s philosophy matches itsactions. It’s a biography written in deeds, really, ratherthan in words. After awhile, I felt like Paul Farmer wasrevealing part of the world to me—and it was a part ofthe world we’d rather not think about.”

It was not, however, a part of the world Kidder

“I think I knew if I started following this guy

Farmer around he would disturb my peace of mind.

He did that, and he also made Haiti comprehensible to me.”

Tracy Kidder

14

Getting a Life

John F. Kerry:The Complete Biography by the Boston GlobeReporters Who Know Him Bestby Brian C. Mooney ’69, Nina J. Easton and Michael Kranish

PublicAffairs, 2004

Based on a series about Senator John F. Kerry that waspublished in The Boston Globe when Kerry became a

Democratic candidate for U.S. president, this is the first in-depth book about Kerry’s life. It was the extensive researchdone for the Globe profile that uncovered family history pre-viously hidden from Kerry himself—his paternal grandfather’sJewish heritage. It is the grandfather’s story that begins thenarrative. The book then attempts to go beyond the well-known stories about Kerry as the decorated Vietnam vet,antiwar spokesman, high-speed sports enthusiast, foreign pol-icy expert and senator.

Brian Mooney has worked as a reporter and columnist atThe Boston Globe for the past 16 years. He lives with his fam-ily in Andover, Mass.

Captured LivesTwo additional biographies by alumni authors

landed in the Andover Bulletin’s in-box this summer. They are briefly noted below.

could easily leave behind. Since completing MountainsBeyond Mountains, the Western Massachusetts residenthas been writing a book on his experiences during theVietnam War. Titled My Detachment, it will come out infall 2005. At the same time, though, he remainsenmeshed with both Haiti and Partners in Health. Incontact with Farmer daily, Kidder has found himselfproselytizing and serving on a committee attempting tosecure endowment funding for the organization, whichhas made remarkable progress against diseases like AIDSand tuberculosis in various parts of the world. He likensthe group to “a little square of light moving through thishorrible darkness.”

What’s more, the author has become politicallycharged by his experiences. As he tells it, “It’s very hardto get Haiti out of your mind once you’ve seen it. Itbothers me immoderately. As a writer, I used to be delib-erately apolitical, but since learning about Haitian

A Jackson Man:Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracyby Donald B. Cole ’40

Louisiana State University Press, 2004

Amos Kendall, chief adviser to President AndrewJackson, played a strong role in the transforma-

tion of a young America into a capitalist democracy.Born in Massachusetts and educated at Dartmouth,Kendall lived much of his life in Kentucky, where hebecame one of the few national antebellum politicianswith experience in both the North and South. A self-made philanthropist, he was deeply involved in the riseof the telegraph and expansion of the post office, work-ing as U.S. postmaster general. He also founded theschool for the deaf that became Gallaudet College. Thisis the first biography of Kendall.

Donald B. Cole, a retired professor of history atPhillips Exeter Academy, lives in Exeter, N.H. He haswritten several history books, including The Presidency ofAndrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren and the AmericanPolitical System. —Sharon Magnuson

history, I find the American policy toward Haiti sooffensive and so unnecessarily cruel that it’s made mefeel strongly political.”

Kidder stresses he speaks not for Paul Farmer andPartners in Health, but for himself, as he criticizes notjust the United States’ immigration policies towardHaiti, but also “the almost completely naked decisionour country made somewhere along the way to get ridof the constitutionally elected government of Haiti.”

“We blocked international loans to Haiti forthings like cleaning up water supplies in order toweaken the Aristide government and make room forthe current puppet government that’s basically sup-porting the small mercantile elite of Haiti,” he says.“What I am convinced we should have done was toset ideology aside and try to find the best ways to alle-viate Haiti’s misery.”

15

Ernest Hemingway was a hard-living, hard-drink-ing malcontent known for his macho passions

and dissolute ways. While he wrote some of the mostmoving and beloved novels and short stories inAmerican literature, he is remembered for his torturedsoul and eventual suicide as well as he is for his tenderlove tales and thrilling adventure scenes.

What is he doing in the life of a history teacher?“Ernest Hemingway was something of an accident,”

says William B. Watson, professor of history at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, who has spentdecades in quest of Hemingway’s shadow. His researchfocuses primarily on the Spanish Civil War, whichHemingway covered as a journalist and used as the back-drop in For Whom the Bell Tolls, his reputed masterwork.It is the fodder for Investigating Hemingway, which theprofessor hopes to see published next year.

Like Hemingway, Watson is a doctor’s son whodeclined to walk in his father’s footsteps. When Watsonleft the family’s Pittsburgh suburb for Andover, his med-ical career seemed preordained. But it was in an 18th-

century history class and political science courses atHaverford College that he found his calling.

“I discovered at Haverford I liked engaging peopleand ideas more than I thought doctors could.Intellectually and emotionally and personally, medicinewasn’t as appealing to me as it had been,” he says.

With his dad’s reluctant support, Watson earnedM.A. and Ph.D. degrees in medieval history at Harvard.His thesis dealt with 15th-century commercial relationsbetween the great cities of the Mediterranean and thewool-producing regions of Northern Europe. The Italianmerchant cities were already saturated with researchers,so Watson took his pursuit of data about captains, car-goes and vessels to London and Barcelona.

It was in Barcelona that the Hemingway accidentoccurred. Fluent in Spanish from his Andover days,Watson mastered Catalan and became increasinglyabsorbed with stories of the Spanish Civil War—at thetime relatively recent history.

“I was fascinated to find two groups of people inSpain who had two entirely different memories. On the

Will Watson ’50 on Ernest Hemingway

A game of hunt and seek

16

How could a war correspondent obtain permission

not only to accompany combatants as what we now call

an “embedded journalist,” but actually to take part

in a crucial guerrilla operation? It didn’t add up.

one side you had people who remembered nothing priorto the Spanish Civil War’s outbreak in 1936, but couldonly remember the horrors of the occupation and theFranco years that followed. Then, on the other side,there were those whose memories ended in 1936; theyrecalled only the violence, suffering and chaos thatplagued the Second Spanish Republic and justified tothem the arrival of General Franco and the impositionof a strict authoritarian regime,” he says.

By the time he accepted a teaching position at MITin 1960, Watson had switched his focus from medievaleconomic history to modern Europe.

Watson’s fascination with Hemingway began whenhe attended a rare screening of the film The SpanishEarth. Weeks earlier, Watson had read an article byJohn Dos Passos that originally appeared in Esquire in1937. It chronicled the assassination of landowners, theseizure of towns and the collectivization of bakeries andother local enterprises during the 1936 revolution. Onevillage it described was Fuenteduena, 35 kilometers eastof Madrid, where, Dos Passos wrote, a new irrigationproject would provide Spaniards an array of fruits andvegetables. In Dos Passos’ account, Spanish peasantsprior to the war ate a monotonous diet of beans, grainsand olives because the landowners chose to farm forcommercial purposes, rather than for consumption bythe locals. The Spanish Earth, made by Dutch filmmakerJoris Ivens and written and narrated by Hemingway,presented a different picture, omitting all the horrorsenumerated by Dos Passos and explaining the irrigationproject in Fuenteduena as a way to grow more food forthe people of Madrid. “There was no mention of politicsin the film,” Watson says.

Initially confused by the disparity, the historiansoon realized The Spanish Earth was a propaganda vehi-cle. In the ’30s, he said, most American newsreels onSpain were confusing and reflected a pro-Nationalist,Catholic viewpoint emphasizing the burning ofchurches and the killing of nuns and priests. The SpanishEarth, on the other hand, had been bankrolled by peo-

ple from the leftist world of arts and letters—amongthem Lillian Hellman and Archibald MacLeish—whowanted to shine a more positive light on the revolutionwithout having their film derailed by U.S. censors.“Even the word ‘fascist’ was taboo,” Watson says. “Inthis soundtrack, one of the few recordings we have ofhim sober, Hemingway says, ‘They took the land awayfrom us.’ He never says who ‘they’ were.”

Watson began planning what he calls “a triple polit-ical and personal biography” of Ivens, Dos Passos andHemingway—three artists who went to the war withwidely divergent perceptions and political philosophies.

He’ll still write that book, Watson says, after hisretirement next year from MIT, where he not only teacheshistory and serves as housemaster in a dormitory, but alsooffers a literature course called Hemingway in Context.

Meanwhile, Watson has probably amassed moreknowledge about Hemingway’s Spanish Civil Warinvolvement than any other living person. Not shyabout admitting to that distinction, he maintains, “Eventhe late Michael Reynolds, who wrote five intelligentand compassionate volumes about Hemingway, neverhad the opportunity to do all the investigation I havedone about the Civil War. I know a heck of a lot morethan he had the time to find out.”

Along the way, Watson’s unearthing of a previouslyforgotten Spanish Civil War article Hemingway wrotefor Pravda led to its worldwide syndication. For aHemingway Review edition marking the 50th anniversaryof the conflict, Watson edited all 31 articles Hemingwayfiled from the front, where he worked as a correspondentfor a U.S. newspaper syndicate. Because cables wereexpensive to send, Hemingway’s original, unedited man-uscripts had never seen print. “His dispatches,” Watsonexplains, “had to be condensed for economy’s sake, withall the pronouns and conjunctions and articles squeezedout. It was like dehydrated copy; the editors had to addwater, and sometimes they made a mess of it.”

As its title suggests, Investigating Hemingway is notjust about Hemingway, but about the quest. “In some

Getting a Life

17

sense, it’s about the adventure and thrill of research,”admits Watson. While he never gained much insightinto Hemingway’s often-cited cruelty to women or hiscatastrophic drinking habits, Watson developed adeeper understanding of the author’s machismo pas-sions by attending a bullfight, trying his hand at deep-sea fishing and visiting the Spanish Civil War zone.

Watson says the biographer’s chore is “a hunt-and-seek game that requires luck as well as skill.”

A lucky break in Watson’s quest was the discoveryof a trunk in the late 1980s at Sloppy Joe’s bar in KeyWest, Fla., which the literary figure was known to fre-quent. Most of its contents were junk, but Watson says,“In junk there are often things terribly exciting to histo-rians.”

Documents from Sloppy Joe’s helped solve a mysteryrelated to For Whom the Bell Tolls. The novel centers ona single event: the blowing up of a bridge by a band ofguerrilla revolutionaries. The eerie precision and tenserealism with which Hemingway describes the insurgents’lives and accurately sets the tone of despair and decayhas long confounded military observers. When Watsonsubmitted the text to demolition experts to ask whetherthe fictional deed was done properly, one specialist toldhim, “You have to do it that way; do it any other wayand you’re dead.” Watson says sections of the novel wereeven translated into Russian during World War II as amanual for partisan operatives.

How had Hemingway managed to describe thescene so effectively? The Polish writer AleksanderSzurek had averred in his memoirs, half a century afterthe war, that a fellow Pole named Antek Chrost had ledthe way. Szurek said Chrost claimed to have served asHemingway’s model for Robert Jordan, the Americanprotagonist and explosives ace in the story. Further,Chrost said he had, as the leader of a guerrilla brigade,taken Hemingway with him on a mission to blow up atrain near the city of Teruel in October 1937.

At first, Watson was incredulous, calling Chrost’sstory “more like a Grimm fairy tale than an actual event.”Authors simply didn’t participate in guerrilla operations,and Hemingway had never mentioned such a trip.Martha Gellhorn, who lived with Hemingway in Spain,denied such a foray had taken place. Besides, Watsonasked, How the hell could a war correspondent obtainpermission not only to accompany combatants as what wenow call an “embedded journalist,” but actually to takepart in a crucial guerrilla operation? It didn’t add up.

Nevertheless, Watson was haunted by Chrost’saccount, which sounded oddly persuasive to him.While he discounted that Chrost could be a singularmodel for the fictional Jordan, the biographer wasmoved by Chrost’s vividness and detail. He was alsostruck by the story’s overall consistency—particularlyregarding Chrost’s discomfort at having a civilian alongon such a sensitive and dangerous mission.

In a 1991 North Dakota Quarterly, Watson told how,with the help of chauffeur’s receipts that had emergedfrom the Key West trunk and other documents, he wasable to reconstruct the previously unknown journey. Bystudying safe-conduct passes and calculating gasolinemileage, revising some assumptions about Hemingway’scalendar, driving the supposed route and even walkingpart of the treacherous terrain Chrost described, Watsonestablished to his satisfaction that the secret trip reallydid take place. Hemingway scholars were stunned by therevelation that the author had literally risked his life toget his facts straight.

“I hope,” Watson says, “readers of my book will beable to set aside Hemingway the man and find a newregard for Hemingway the artist, who put his life onthe line to guarantee that when he talked about guer-rilla operations he knew what he was talking about.Hemingway, I think, needed the bedrock of absoluterealism in order to play his games of imagination. Mybook will show how hard he worked for that.” nn

Will Watson

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Kathy Mulvey ’84helped negotiate a treaty that, if ratified, wouldban tobacco advertising, promotion andsponsorship.

by Bella English

Kathy Mulvey hasattended every

annual meeting of PhilipMorris USA for the past10 years, but she’s not ashareholder interested inthe dividends of theworld’s most profitabletobacco company. In1995, she helped unfurl a200-foot banner withphotos of people whose illnesses ordeaths were smoking-related. At lastyear’s meeting, after Philip Morris’parent company changed its nameto Altria, she held up a canvasdepicting the Marlboro Man as askeleton wearing a red bandana withthe Philip Morris/Altria logo. Shethen stepped to the microphone andsaid that despite a huge increase inadvertising Philip Morris ranked59th of 60 companies in a Harrispoll on corporate reputations.

Taking Down the Marlboro Man

To gain access to Altria’s annualmeetings, Mulvey borrows the prox-ies of two convents that own a fewshares of Altria stock, purchasedsolely to be able to attend its annualmeetings, where the nuns or their fel-low activists lodge protests.

Mulvey is the executive direc-tor of Infact, a 27-year-old Bostonnonprofit that targets what it callscorporate abuse. Infact has had acouple of big successes—notably, theNestle boycott that brought about

reforms in the marketingof infant formula indeveloping countries anda boycott of GeneralElectric that forced theindustry leader out of thenuclear weapons busi-ness. Infact was, in fact,originally shorthand forInfant Formula ActionCoalition.

Today Infact is poisedto score its biggest coup:the ratification of theworld’s first public healthtreaty. The treaty wouldban tobacco advertising,promotion and sponsor-ship, meaning Altriawould have to do awaywith its iconic MarlboroMan and stop sponsoringathletic and culturalevents in the countriesthat ratify it. Cigarette

brand names would no longer appearon billboards, hats, bags, café umbrel-las and other merchandise.

After three years of negotia-tions, 192 countries, including theUnited States, last May adopted theFramework Convention on TobaccoControl in Geneva, a ground-breaking treaty that could changethe way tobacco companies do busi-ness around the world. At least 40countries must ratify the treaty for itto become international law; it

19

WHO’S HOT?would take effect only in the ratify-ing countries.

After the world public healthcommunity broached the idea of atreaty at a Paris conference in 1994,Infact was one of the first public inter-est groups to join the cause, mobiliz-ing public support behind it. Duringthe negotiations, Infact providedresearch on tobacco to developingcountries, exposed Big Tobacco’sopposition, helped organize demon-strations and rallies and met withgovernment officials to build support.

“A company like Philip Morrishas annual revenues that dwarf thegross domestic product of manycountries where it operates,” saysMulvey, who has never smoked.“That’s why global cooperation is soimportant.”

How did a small group of peoplefunded almost entirely through pri-vate donations take on Big Tobacco?Much of the answer lies withMulvey, a 38-year-old activist whohas the tenacity of a pit bull latchedonto an ankle. Mulvey grew up inAndover, where she attendedPhillips Academy. At the Universityof North Carolina, she studiedEnglish and French, and upon grad-uation she taught in China. Shereturned to the Boston area in 1989to be an organizer for Infact, whichhad begun in 1977.

The group’s mission has becomeher life: curbing what it calls life-threatening abuses by corporationsand increasing their public account-ability. Mulvey, who lives inRoslindale, Mass., is not an in-your-face firebrand. She uses facts andargument rather than bullhorns andbully pulpits. When she was inChina after college, she was sweptup in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy uprising.

“I had been saying I wanted todo social justice work, but I didn’treally know what it meant until Isaw the risks people took to makechanges they believed in. It was verypowerful,” she says. She also creditsgrowing up in the Unitarian-Universalist Church as a spur for herinterest in social action.

After its success in the infant for-mula arena, Mulvey’s group launcheda successful consumer boycott of GE,once the leading producer of nuclearweapons components. The boycotttargeted everything from light bulbsto refrigerators and the big-ticketitems such as CT scanners and MRImachines. To give the campaign thevisibility it needed, Infact produced afilm, Deadly Deception: GeneralElectric, Nuclear Weapons and OurEnvironment, which won the Oscarfor short documentary filmmaking in1992. Organizers were able to docu-ment $75 million in lost sales for GE,which eventually announced it waspulling out of the nuclear industry.

Infact next trained its sights onthe tobacco industry because of thenumber of deaths caused by tobaccoproducts, which the World HealthOrganization puts at nearly 5 mil-lion a year. Infact organized a con-sumer boycott of Altria and itssubsidiary, Kraft Foods. In 1993 ahandwritten note from one PhilipMorris executive to another said ofInfact’s Kraft boycott, “This groupcould be real trouble. We are gearingup to defend.” Mulvey smiles. “Theyhired public relations firms and sentpeople out to monitor the boycott,”she says. “They were trying to makelemonade out of lemons, but it didn’t work.”

When the tobacco treaty wasapproved, Infact lifted its Kraft boy-cott. But the campaign won’t be over

until 40 countries ratify the treaty,the first ever negotiated under theauspices of the World HealthOrganization. Mulvey notes that theUnited States has not yet ratifiedit—nor does she expect it to. In fact,she says, the U.S. delegation was“obstructionist.” Before the finalround of negotiations, she says, theU.S. delegation sent faxes to variousembassies warning them that healthshouldn’t interfere with trade.

Mulvey isn’t optimistic aboutsupport from either the Bush admin-istration or the Senate. “We stillhaven’t overcome tobacco’s stran-glehold on Congress,” she says.

Mark Berlind, legislative coun-sel for Altria, says the corporationsupports the treaty in its final form.“We have changed our policies alot,” he says. “We agree that smokingcauses cancer, that it is addictive,and that the best thing is to quit.”Still, Altria, like the United States,opposes the ban on advertising, atleast to adults. And because thatpart of the treaty would conflictwith the U.S. Constitution, it wouldnot be enacted here even if thetreaty were ratified.

As of September, 10 countrieshad ratified the pact: Norway, Malta,Fiji, the Seychelles, India, Mongolia,New Zealand, Palau, Sri Lanka andHungary. Now Infact is working toget 30 more countries to follow.

Mulvey is optimistic. “Thistreaty will save millions of lives andchange the way Big Tobacco oper-ates globally,” she says. “It is truly avictory for people’s health over theprofits of giant corporations.”

Bella English is a staff writer for TheBoston Globe. This article has beenadapted and reprinted with her permis-sion and that of The Boston Globe.

20

Sports Talk

As a member of thePatriots’ “brain trust,”Ernie Adams ’71 strategizes for the Super Bowl champs.

by Andy Cline

M any New England Patriots fansstill have to pinch themselves

to be sure they didn’t imagine theirteam won two Super Bowl champi-onships in the last three seasons.But the folks on the inside, the play-ers, coaches and leaders of thePatriots, know the hard work andunselfish dedication that went intomaking this level of success possible.Head Coach Bill Belichick ’71, thechief architect, richly deserves thecredit he receives for guiding histeam through two successful playoffruns. But while there are manymembers of the Patriots organizationmore visible, there are few who con-tribute more to the team’s successthan Ernie Adams ’71, sometimesreferred to as the head coach’s right-hand man. Belichick and Adams,offensive line mates on an unde-feated 1970 football team atAndover and friends who spent time

HEEDING THE CALL

in the dormitory drawing up footballplays on scrap paper, are still collab-orating 33 years later with tremen-dous success. They have workedtogether professionally with theNew York Giants, the ClevelandBrowns and, for the past four years,the Patriots.

Adams, whose jobs in the NFLhave ranged from position coach todirector of pro personnel, is thePatriots’ football research director.When asked what a footballresearch director does, Adamsreplies succinctly, “Think of thingsto help us win.”

He is both a generalist and aspecialist. He helps to put togetherthe scouting report and game planfor each opponent and regularlywatches up to two years of gamefilms for college players the team isconsidering drafting. But he is alsogiven specific assignments byBelichick that might have him

devising offensive or defensivestrategies for certain situations orrecommending personnel moves tostrengthen the team in a particulararea. At practices Adams watchescarefully to see whether the plansdesigned on paper are going to besuccessful when implemented on thefield. He also pays particular atten-tion to monitoring the progress ofthe younger players. With only ahandful of exceptions, most rookiesare not ready to play in the NFLwhen they arrive. They have thetalent, but it is the coaches and vet-erans who will show them, motivatethem and guide them in their devel-opment. Adams likens it to admit-ting ninth-graders to Andover: “Youhope that by the end of senior yearthey’ve made some progress.”

During games, one of Adams’primary responsibilities is to adviseBelichick about whether to chal-lenge a referee’s ruling. Such things

21

as fumbles, pass receptions andinterceptions, whether a player is inbounds or out, and even the place-ment of the ball after a tackle canhave a tremendous impact on agame. However, an NFL team isallowed only two challenges in agame and is assessed one of its pre-cious timeouts if a challenge is notupheld. So Adams must be very sureof himself before radioing the headcoach, and he must make his deci-sion within less than 40 seconds.From his vantage point in thepress box, Adams can watchthe game live but can also seereplays on his monitor. Hemust know the rules thor-oughly, and he must be sure thereplay, when viewed by thehead referee, will provide indis-putable visual evidence thatthe call should be reversed.

Whether sitting at hisdesk looking at game tapes,meeting with coaches, watch-ing practice, diagramming newoffensive and defensiveschemes or recommending in-game adjustments, Adams is doingwhat he loves, studying the intrica-cies of the game of football, a pursuitthat has quite literally filled much ofthe 33 years since he graduated fromPhillips Academy.

Adams’ first job in professionalfootball was with the New EnglandPatriots in 1975 under head coachChuck Fairbanks. A native ofBrookline, Mass., Adams joined thePats fresh out of Northwestern,where he had majored in educationand produced scouting reports eachweek for the Wildcat football team’supcoming opponent. During a four-year stint as an assistant coach with

the Pats, Adams impressed receiverscoach Ray Perkins with his knowl-edge and work ethic. When Perkinsbecame head coach of the New YorkGiants in 1979, he hired Adams asan offensive assistant. Also joiningthe Giants coaching staff that yearwas Belichick. On two occasions, in1985 and 1996, Adams left footballto work on Wall Street, but bothtimes he came back to the NFLwhen Belichick became a headcoach—at Cleveland in 1991 and at

New England in 2000—and wantedAdams on his staff.

Now, with the Patriots, Adamsprovides scouting reports and muchmore. “It’s an intricate game,” saysAdams. “With every team in theNFL working full time to study theiropponents and prepare their teamsto compete, the margins are small,and it is often the details and thesubtleties that can give one team anedge.” And it is precisely thosedetails and subtleties that are at theheart of Adams’ passion and his spe-cial talent. Watching a game, hespots things others won’t see untilthe Monday morning film session,

and, whether scouting an upcomingopponent or evaluating a prospec-tive college draft choice, he spendsendless hours looking at video tapein his office at Gillette Stadium.

Adams joins offensive coordi-nator Charlie Weis, defensive coor-dinator Romeo Crennel and vicepresident of player personnel ScottPioli on what Boston Globe colum-nist Michael Holley calls Belichick’s“Coaching Cabinet,” the brain trustthat has led the Patriots to two

Super Bowl championships inthree seasons. An ethos of hardwork, unselfishness and dedica-tion to team goals is establishedby Belichick and permeates theentire organization, as doesattention to every detail.Adams combines a sharp, ana-lytical mind with a deep pas-sion for the game and a genuineappreciation for the peoplewith whom he works. Andwhat is it about these peoplethat has made them so success-ful? “We have a group,” Adamsexplains, “who are not afraid to

work hard and are not out to satisfytheir own egos.” Instead, he stresses,“They are committed to gettingalong and being on the same page.Everyone knows there is plenty ofglory to go around if we win.”

Andy Cline is Andover’s sports information director.

Belichick and Adams, offensive line mates on an undefeated 1970

football team at Andover and friends who spent time in the dormitory drawing up

football plays on scrap paper, are still collaborating 33 years later with tremendous success.

22

Time

Treasure&tw

AN UPDATE ON ANDOVER PHILANTHROPY AND VOLUNTEER SERVICE

When world-renowned skin doc-tor A. Bernard Ackerman ’54

gave a gift to Harvard University in2002 to endow a series of symposiacalled “The Culture of Medicine,” hemight not have thought it would haveramifications for Phillips Academy.

But ripples from the pebble throwninto the Cambridge water have reachedAndover. In 2003 Ackerman pre-sented Head of School Barbara LandisChase with an intriguing proposal for acollaborative, interdisciplinary educa-tional effort on a related topic. Theproject he envisioned will link PA andHarvard faculty.

To mark his 50th PA reunion,Ackerman provided $30,000 in seedmoney for the program, to be called“Medicine in Society.” As now pro-posed, it will use resources availableat Harvard to help Andover studentsexplore the crossroads of society andmedicine, examining such issues aspolitics, economics, clinical practice,science, ethics and the history ofmedicine. It will be directed at PA bymolecular biology teacher JeremiahHagler, who will work in concertwith Allan Brandt, professor of thehistory of science at Harvard MedicalSchool and the Amalie Moses Kassprofessor of the history of medicineat Harvard University.

“I am extraordinarily optimistic,”Ackerman says, “that this endeavornot only will wed faculty at Harvardand Andover, but will redound to thebest interests of both institutions andthe society beyond them.”

Envisioned is a three-year rolloutof the program, including one-yearplanning, implementation and assess-ment phases. The implementationphase might entail curricular changesin existing courses and introductionof a Harvard-Phillips Academyschoolwide symposium on medicineand society.

Curious, at first, whether such anesoteric topic might be applicable atthe high school level, Ackerman metwith several PA faculty members,including Hagler, then-Dean of StudiesVincent Avery, School Physician

Richard Keller and History and SocialScience Instructor Chris Shaw ’78, toget their reaction. Barbara Gross, asenior development officer at Andover,says Ackerman “got everybody’s juicesflowing. … We sat back thinking itwould be hard to envision a topic thatwould lend itself as richly and fully toan interdisciplinary approach as medi-cine and society.”

Avery, who teaches philosophyand religious studies, is equally enthu-siastic. “The program will enrich theopportunities for interdisciplinarystudies and provide a platform for col-laboration with faculty at the HarvardMedical School that is without prece-dent at Phillips Academy,” he says.

Ackerman is the founder anddirector emeritus of the AckermanAcademy of Dermatopathology in NewYork, the world’s largest training centerfor dermatopathology, the study of dis-eases of the skin. He graduated cumlaude from Princeton University in1958. After receiving an M.D. degreefrom Columbia University’s College ofPhysicians and Surgeons, he trained indermatology at Columbia, theUniversity of Pennsylvania andHarvard and in dermatopathology atHarvard. Author of some 40 books andhundreds of scientific articles,Ackerman founded the AmericanJournal of Dermatopathology andDermatopathology: Practical andConceptual, the medical publishinghouse Ardor Scribendi, and theCoalition and Center for EthicalMedical Testimony. He continues toteach, train students and write.Previously, Ackerman donated someearly works of artist Frank Stella, hisclassmate at Andover and Princeton, tothe Addison Gallery of American Art.

—Paula Trespas

Examiningmedicine in society

Ackerman gift will link PA and Harvard faculty.

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATIONRichard Lindsay ’48 exemplifies a grandfather’s contribution

23

Richard D. Lindsay is a fixturearound the town of Andover, as wellas on the campus, where three gener-ations of his family have studied.

Born and raised in Andoverand the owner of the AndoverAnimal Hospital for the past 46years, Lindsay still treats and per-forms surgery on the dogs and cats oflocal residents. In his spare time, heserves on several community boardsthat support education, children andhealthcare. In addition, he and hiswife, Betty, just completed a two-year term as Grandparent Fund co-chairs, raising $52,160 towardthe Andover Fund.

“When you meet Dick andBetty for the first time, you feel asthough you’ve known them forever.That’s just the kind of wonderfulpeople they are,” says SandraButters, director of the Parent Fund.“Their warmth, Andover family his-tory and travel adventures withtheir grandchildren are instant mag-nets of interest. I am grateful fortheir friendship and for their com-mitment to the Grandparent Fund.”

With his characteristic sense ofhumor, Lindsay says, “It was a niceexperience—interacting with some ofthe wealthier grandparents I couldbadger into giving a little money.” Hismotto is, “If you never ask, you neverget anything.” He even called the lateRichard Gelb ’41 for a contributionto the Grandparent Fund shortly afterGelb had given $11 million for thenew science center that bears hisname. “I asked him for $10, tellinghim we need every grandparent’s par-ticipation,” says Lindsay. “He gaveanother $2,000.”

Although he was the first mem-ber of his family to attend PA,Lindsay was not ambivalent abouturging subsequent generations to fol-low in his footsteps. “I thought theeducation I received was marvelous,”

he says. Alumni include his son, R. David Lindsay Jr. ’73, also a veteri-narian, and three grandchildren—Sarah Lindsay ’00, Douglas Johnson’02 and Carolyn Johnson ’04.

Attending Andover as a daystudent, Lindsay felt he had the bestof two worlds. “On the weekends,unlike the boarders, I could go to adance at a local ballroom or at oneof the other high schools,” he says.In the classroom, he loved English,especially Shakespeare and poetry,and he enjoyed math and history.But from the time he was 14, heknew he wanted to be a veterinar-ian. It was a decision he neverregretted.

After receiving B.S. and D.V.M.degrees from Michigan State Univ-

ersity, he joined the U.S. ArmyVeterinary Corps as a first lieutenantand became the post veterinarian atFt. Jay on Governor’s Island in NewYork City. He had already purchasedland on Lowell Street in Andover, andhe built the Andover Animal Hospitalafter completing his military service.

Today, Lindsay is activelyinvolved in the Merrimack Valleyand serves on the boards of directorsof the Lawrence Boys and GirlsClubs and the Friends of MerrimackCollege. He is past president of theMen’s Guild of Holy FamilyHospital and a former director ofCommunity Savings Bank inLawrence. He is a past president ofthe Massachusetts VeterinaryAssociation, from which he receivedthe Distinguished Service Award,and past president of the NewEngland Veterinary Association.When he was awarded theDistinguished Citizen Award by theYankee Clipper Council of the BoyScouts of America in 2000, hisdaughter, Diane Tower, said, “Hejust does everything for everybody.”

As Grandparent Fund co-chair,Lindsay was actively involved inplanning and promoting Grandpar-ents’ Day, an annual event in Maywhen grandparents visit campus andattend classes and athletic eventswith their grandchildren. He workedon his 50th Reunion Gift Committeein 1998 and also was a volunteer forCampaign Andover.

“Three of my four grandchil-dren went through PhillipsAcademy,” he concludes. “I feel anobligation to support the school.”

—Tana Sherman

24

TIME & TREASURE

Building GuanxiOscar Tang’s vision deepens understanding and appreciation of China.

by Tana Sherman

For Oscar Tang ’56, president of theAndover Board of Trustees, there isno question that China, the countryof his ancestry, will soon be the mostimportant country with which theUnited States has a bilateral rela-tionship, if it isn’t already. Yet heworries that Andover’s well-edu-cated and knowledgeable facultydoesn’t have enough understandingor appreciation of Asia in general orChina specifically.

“How can you teach in thisworld today without having thatdirect experience?” asks Tang, whosegenerosity recently made it possible,for the second time, for Andoverfaculty to visit China. Twenty-onemembers of the PA community par-ticipated this summer in a study tourplanned by Tang with Yuan Han,chair of the Chinese department.

From the Great Wall in Beijingand the Terra Cotta Army in Xi’anto the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet,the Three Gorges Dam on theYangtze River and the sand dunes ofthe Gobi Desert, the group exploredcenturies of tradition alongsidemodern innovations. The itineraryalso included visits to Ren MinHigh School in Beijing and Da TongHigh School in Shanghai, with

opportunities to discuss students,classes, curriculum and pedagogywith Chinese teachers.

Each day during the three-weektrip, a different Andover faculty mem-ber or spouse wrote about his or herexperiences. These descriptions wereposted on a Web journal for those athome to read.

“What other group, besides thefaculty of Andover, would I rathersee have this kind of eye-openingexperience?” says Tang. “As I readthe journal entries, it gave me greatpleasure to see the excitement andinterest this trip created.”

For example, CatherineTousignant, instructor in English,described her visit to the home of aChinese teacher: “Our hosts arewarm and gracious beyond anyexpectations. They teach us to makedumplings, and their children tell usstories in polished English. In ourprevious travels, we have beendrawn to architecture as a windowinto history and culture, but not soin Beijing. Here, it is the peoplewho draw our gaze.”

According to Tang, it was hisfirst wife, Frances “Frankie” YoungTang ’57, who suggested they finance

the first faculty trip to China in 1991.She became too ill that summer, thelast of her life, to join the group ofmore than 60. Instead, she enjoyedthe notes and postcards they sent toher as they traveled.

“The trip,” says Tang, “had morethan one benefit. First, it helped toelevate knowledge about China, aswe had planned. In addition, theteachers found that in traveling andexperiencing these things togetherthey developed a special bondamong themselves.”

After Frankie died, Tang made asizeable gift to the academy, partly inher memory. One piece of that con-tribution funded the Frances andOscar Tang Faculty Endowment,meant to allow a group of facultyperiodically to learn a new field orvisit a new geographic area together.He has since focused the endowmenton improving understanding andexchange with China specifically.

The group prepared for thisyear’s trip with classes on Chinesehistory and culture during winterterm, followed by weekly Chineselanguage classes all spring. Theywere aided in learning to speakChinese by a student tutor, Leah

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Russell ’04. Participants representeda wide range of interests and exper-tise, including instructors in art,athletics, Chinese, English, French,mathematics and Spanish, as well asadministrative faculty.

Bonding certainly occurredamong the travelers. Photos on theWeb journal and in the travelers’personal photo albums show smilingfaculty members linked arm in armatop the Great Wall, in TiananmenSquare and in front of the MogoaCaves in Dunhuang and laughing asthey tried their first taste of yakburgers in Tibet.

A sense of awe surrounded muchof the adventure. “I am visually cap-tured and quickly humbled by themajestic natural beauty of the land-scape, the grandness and power ofthe mountains, the swelling of theflowing rivers, the vastness of spaceand the bright blue skies,” said ElaineCrivelli, chair of the art department,of her first glimpse of Tibet.

The people of China won thehearts of the visitors. Women con-struction workers sang as in regi-mented rows they tamped a clay,marble and stone mixture into therooftop at Norbulinka, the DalaiLama’s summer palace in Tibet. In

Chengdu, a Chinese girl approachedone PA faculty member in a grocerystore and asked if she could practicespeaking English. The student hadtraveled to this large city on herschool vacation just so she couldfind English-speaking tourists.

Understanding sometimesdawned in ways the travelers had notanticipated. At the Museum of theNanjing Massacre, they learned ofthe horrific murders of hundreds ofthousands of civilians in 1937.

Other moments provided light-hearted fun. Visiting a panda-breedingcenter in Chengdu, Carole Braver-man, instructor in English, said, “Thepandas are slow, slumbering creaturesin the summer heat. It takes one ofthem 15 minutes to climb downfrom his perch to his handler, butwe cheer on every advance as ifhe were an Olympic gymnast.”

’Cilla Bonney-Smith, asso-ciate dean of students, enjoyed“the playful exuberance of thebig sand box” as she sleddeddown 60-foot sand dunes in theGobi Desert, then took a briefcamel ride. The next week, inSichuan province, she gracefullyled more timid faculty membersacross a 660-foot swaying rope

and plank bridge over the raging MinRiver.

In Shanghai, the group dinedwith Shirley Young ’51, who isFrankie Tang’s sister and is a foundingmember of the Committee of 100, agroup largely composed of prominentChinese-Americans who seek toimprove understanding between thetwo countries. Young pointed out thehigh value the Chinese place onguanxi, or relationships, and said it isincumbent upon educators to under-stand China better.

Oscar Tang agrees. “This is sucha different country and culture thatif we sent one or two faculty mem-bers they might be excited abouttheir trip, but they could never havemuch of an impact on the commu-nity,” he says. In addition to periodi-cally sending additional facultymembers to China, he challengesthose who went on this year’s trip toexplore how the program can beimproved and used to deepen under-standing and appreciation.

“My specific wish is that we as acountry can come to understandChina much better,” concludesTang, “and vice versa, for them totry to understand us.”

For a day-by-day account of the 2004faculty study tour of China, visit theWeb journal at www.andover.edu/.

(Opposite page, far left) Theresidents of the ChengduPanda Preserve are capturedin a drawing by art instruc-tor Emily Trespas, who kepta sketchbook of the sights shesaw in China. (Oppositepage, right) Cruising downthe Yangtze River aboard theVictoria Katerina offersspectacular views of theThree Gorges region. (This page, left) 'CillaBonney-Smith, associatedean of students, observesthe dragon protecting theSummer Palace in Beijing.

Carole Braverman, Tana Sherman and ElaineCrivelli atop the Great Wall in Beijing.

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New students, faculty welcomed

Blue Key Society members, the

academy’s school spirit organi-

zation, gave a raucous welcome

Saturday, Sept. 11, as 333 students

arrived on campus for student orien-

tation. Of that group, 196 were

members of the Class of 2008—59

day students and 137 boarders, from

37 states and 19 countries. The

orientation began on Sunday

with, among other initiations,

“Thinkfast,” a quiz-show type game

that tested students on facts about

the academy and pop culture.

Earlier, on Aug. 31, Head of

School Barbara Landis Chase had

welcomed 33 new faculty members

at Moses Stuart House. Included in

the group were four alumni:

Christine Cloonan ’98, teaching fel-

low in Spanish; Eli Lazarus ’00,

teaching fellow in English; Matt

Wilder ’97, teaching fellow in math;

and Teri Moss-Tyler ’00, admission

counselor. Also, the school wel-

comed back two (MS)2 alumni:

Emeka Ajene ’99, teaching fellow in

math; and Rubani Trimiew ’99,

admission counselor.

An initiative to promote aware-ness and discussion between

Phillips Academy Summer Session students and their peers in Israel,the West Bank and Gaza was held atAndover in July. Focusing on theroots of the Middle East conflict,the three-day conference examinedways in which high school studentsfrom around the world may takesteps to prevent further conflict andpromote peace.

Twenty-eight students, whostudied international relations withSummer Session teachers CharlesNewhall and Richard Collins ’49,prepared by e-mailing Israeli andPalestinian teen-agers with ques-tions about conflict in the MiddleEast. Then the Summer Sessionstudents were assigned roles of keystakeholders—moderate Palesti-nians, radical Palestinian extremistleaders, Israeli moderates, the

Israeli right wing, members of theU.S.-led Quartet and neutral medi-ators—to negotiate the future of Jerusalem. At daily negotiationsessions, they explored the historyof the Middle East conflict andunderlying religious, cultural andeconomic differences.

“We wanted to teach studentsabout the Israeli-Palestinian con-flict,” says conference organizer andSummer Session teacher CarlHobert, “and to model and teachinternational conflict resolutionskills they can use in their own livesas future leaders.”

Culminating the program wasan all-school meeting attended by550 Summer Session students,where the international relationsstudents debated the issues. Theconference was featured on the frontpage of the July 28 Education Week.

N E W SN O T E S

Grogan named interim director of Summer Session

Following Ralph Bledsoe’s departure fromPhillips Academy, Summer Session Dean of

Admission Maxine Grogan has agreed to serve asinterim director while a search for a new directoris conducted. Grogan joined Summer Session andthe Phillips Academy faculty in 1989. In the last15 years, she has also contributed to the commu-nity as an adviser, serving most recently as a mem-ber of the Advising Council. She has also servedas a complementary house counselor, a track offi-cial and a Life Issues teacher.

Exploring solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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New members ofthe Alumni Councilmake their debut

During Leaders’ Weekend, Oct.22–23, Grace Curley ’81, presi-

dent of the Alumni Council, wel-comed the following new members tothe council: Michael Ain ’80,Christopher S. Auguste ’76, ThomasA. Beaton ’73, Alfred A. Blum Jr. ’62,Rosalina Feliciano ’81, Bayne S.Findlay ’85, Serena C.M. Fong ’89,Betsy J. Gootrad ’74, Susannah L.Gund ’04, Sara Su Jones ’91,Jonathan P. Kukk ’86, WilliamKummel ’81, Daniel A. Lasman ’83,Thomas H . Lawrence ’ 55 , Sara Livermore ’45, Joseph B. Musumeci ’03, Robert J. Ramsey ’81,David N. Schwartz ’72, Amanda L.Senatore ’04, Mary-Ann Somers ’82,Fredric A. Stott ’36, Alex Thorn ’04and Clement B. Wood ’04.

The Alumni Council providesadvice and counsel on a range of edu-cational, administrative, admissionand financial aid-policy issues.

A L U M N IN E W S

Young Alumni team up with Regional Associations

To encourage young alumni to keep close to the academy and each other,the Young Alumni Program and the Regional Associations Program

have joined forces in a series of events where grads can meet and mingle. Thefirst, held on the Brown University campus in September, attracted 30 localalumni of different ages, including those now attending Providence-area col-leges. Associate Head of School Becky Sykes was the guest speaker.

Yale University’s Rose Alumni House was the site of another joint fallevent. English teacher Seth Bardo was the guest speaker. More than 40alumni, spanning the generations, and their guests attended the receptionand enjoyed cocktails, dinner and discussion. How young is young?

The Young Alumni Program, now in its third year, has expanded toinclude alumni through their 10th Reunion. Previously, the programincluded classes only up to the fifth reunion. Benefits for young alumniinclude discounted fees for Regional Association events and non sibi giving atlower levels. Also, Jenny Savino, director of the Young Alumni Program,hosts events for young alumni in different parts of the country. If you havequestions about the Young Alumni Program, contact jsavino@andover.edu orvisit www.andover.edu/alumni/young_alumni/index.

Andover in ParisHead of School Barbara Landis Chase was one of severalAndover teachers and administrators who spoke at a weekendconference in Paris in September. Called “Andover in theGlobal Community,” it brought together European alumniand parents for a discussion on how the rapid and dramaticeffects of globalization influence Phillips Academy’s approachto education. David Ensor ’69, CNN’s national security cor-respondent, was guest speaker at Saturday’s luncheon. Atleft, an after-dinner discussion engages (from left) CharlesTreuhold ’48 and his wife, Faye Field, who flew in from NewYork; Debbie Stahl Hannam ’80 and her husband, IanHannam, who live in London; and Head of School Chase.

Young alums gather in Providence. Among 30 alumni attending a regionalassociation alumni event held at Brown University in September are, fromleft, Brown students Michael Ruderman ’03, Itiah Thomas ’03, ElizabethThorndike ’02, Natalie Ho ’02, Sebastian Benthall ’03 and Jason French ’04.

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Chicago golf tourneyincludes PA alums

The third annual Greater

Chicago Boarding Schools

Association Golf Tournament saw

72 golfers representing six schools

tee off at the Merit Club in

Libertyville, Ill., on July 12. Host

Bert Getz, Lawrenceville ’55,

celebrated his school’s four-stroke

victory over second-place Choate

Rosemary Hall. The Andover team

of Blake and Vicki DeBoest ’73,

Dave Castle ’85 and Lee Eddy ’66

edged out Exeter for fifth place.

ALUMNI NEWS

Class of ’56 looks ahead to 2006Thirty-four members of the Class of ’56 met at the Yale Club New York inSeptember for a minireunion and 50th reunion planning session. Shown,from left, are reunion leaders David Paresky, Betsy Parker Powell, OscarTang, Mollie Lupe Lasater and Garland Lasater. Tang is president of theAndover Board of Trustees, Powell is a trustee emerita, and Mollie Lasateris a charter trustee.

Volunteers feted

A reception to thankAndover volunteers for theirservice was held at the homeof Tom Fox ’57 and his wife,Elizabeth, in Washington,D.C., in the spring. Thehosts get together, above,with alumni trustee and guestspeaker Gary Lee ’74, left.

Gabriela Ardon of the Office ofAlumni Affairs compiles the newsfor this section.

1993 girls’ basketball team inducted into Hall of FameThe 1993 Phillips Academy girls basketball team, Coach Karen Kennedy andthree-time New England tournament MVP Becky Dowling Adams ’94 wereinducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame on Sept. 24. Those pre-sent for the induction ceremony were (l. to r.) Kennedy, Jill Imbriano Day ’95,Margi Johnston ’93, Emily Kalkstein ’94, Adams and team captain Carter MarshAbbott ’93. PA joined the 1997 Suffield Academy team as the only two prepschool girls’ teams to be honored by the Hall of Fame to date.

ANDOVER BOOKSHELF

All the Stops: The Glorious PipeOrgan and Its American Mastersby Craig R. Whitney ’61PublicAffairs

Craig Whitney’s well-researched bookchronicles the history of pipe organs in

America and the people who made them andplayed them from 1800s New England to thepresent day. Whitney brings to light many ofthe larger-than-life personalities associatedwith the rarefied world of organ building andperforming. Currently assistant managingeditor of The New York Times, Whitney hashad a lifelong passion for pipe organs and hasplayed them all over the world.

Palladioby Jonathan Dee ’80Doubleday

Jonathan Dee’s fourth novel follows closelyon the success of his third, St. Famous.

Palladio tells the story of a New York ad man haunted by memories of “the womanwho got away” and the man’s involvementwith an eccentric advertising visionary. Deelives in New York City and is also the authorof The Lover of History and The LibertyCampaign.

Inside a Catholic Church Slow Downby Joseph M. Champlin ’47Orbis Books and Sorin Books

Inside a Catholic Church is subtitled A Guideto Signs, Symbols and Saints and serves as an

introduction to the functions and symbolismof all the various parts of a Roman Catholicchurch. Slow Down is subtitled Five-MinuteMeditations to De-stress Your Days and wasadapted from a series of popular radio mes-sages delivered by the Rev. JosephChamplin. It comes with a money-backguarantee: If a reader regularly uses it 101times and doesn’t experience a reduction instress, the author offers a full refund.Champlin, rector of the Cathedral of theImmaculate Conception in Syracuse, N.Y., isthe author of more than 40 books.

American Merchant Seaman’s Manualby William B. Hayler ’40 and John M.KeeverCornell Maritime Press

This seventh edition brings up to date themanual first published in 1938. It intro-

duces the fundamentals of navigation, shiphandling, seamanship, ship safety and life atsea—all topics a new mariner needs to know.Hayler is also editor of the Merchant MarineOfficers’ Handbook. After retiring from theU.S. Navy, Capt. Hayler began teaching in1970 at the California Maritime Academy,where he is now professor emeritus.

Skellig Michaelby George Beatty ’50Xlibris Corporation

George Beatty’s first novel is an interna-tional thriller. The story involves ter-

rorism, espionage, romance and chase scenes,and sometimes serves as a metaphor for otherlife issues. Beatty lives in Washington, D.C.,having retired from a career there as anappellate lawyer for the U.S. Department ofJustice and as a lawyer in a tax firm.

A Rendezvous with Deathby William Y. Boyd ’44Elton-Wolf Publishing

This World War II frontline action novelportrays the horrors of war while telling

the gripping story of the investigation of themysterious murders of an American soldierand a civilian woman. Boyd’s earlier WWIInovels, A Fight for Love & Glory and TheGentle Infantryman, have recently been reis-sued in paperback editions. A decoratedWWII combat infantryman, Boyd is chair-man of the board of the Boyd SteamshipCompany and lives in Panama City and NewYork City.

These capsule notices were prepared by Sharon Magnuson.

Path Through the Fire: A Cancer Storyby Wendy Allen Wheeler ’53Self-published

Through journal entries and creativedrawings, Wendy Wheeler tells the very

personal and moving story of her breast can-cer discovery and subsequent treatment.While in the process of chemotherapy andradiation, Wheeler discovers the healingpowers of art therapy as “soul medicine.”Wheeler lives in Connecticut and is a thera-pist, wife, mother and grandmother.

A Mountain Too Farby Karl H. Purnell ’52New Horizon Press

In trying to come to grips with the moun-tain-climbing death of his 28-year-old son,

Christopher, Karl Purnell retraces Chris’climbs—from Yosemite to the French Alpsand Himalayas. Purnell movingly recountshis own exciting, life-threatening climbingjourney and his resultant understanding ofthe power and attraction that climbing musthave held for Chris. Karl Purnell is a prize-winning newspaper editor and journalist wholives in Pennsylvania and runs theChristopher S. Purnell Foundation, whichrestores Tibetan art and architecture.

The People of Pleure: Portrait of a French Villageby Hale Sturges II1st Books

This little book is a series of portraits ofthe people who live in Pleure, a small

town of 364 in central eastern France. Thebook grew out of a sabbatical Sturges spentliving in Pleure and serves as a sociologicalstudy of the villagers’ daily life and as amicrocosm of typical French village society.The book is available throughwww.AuthorHouse.com. Hale Sturgesrecently retired from a 39-year career as aFrench instructor at PA and now lives inBoston and Maine.

ANDOVERBULLETIN

Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts 01810-4161ISSN 0735-5718

PeriodicalsPostage Paid atAndover, MAand additional

offices

Households that receive more than one Andover Bulletin are encouraged to call 978-749-4267 to discontinue extra copies.

BUSH RECAPTURES OVAL OFFICE

By a popular vote of 51 to 48 percent, George W. Bush ’64 was elected to a secondterm as president, besting Senator John F.Kerry of Massachusetts in one of the hardest-fought presidential campaigns in U.S. history.

Andover drew students into the campaignby presenting a series of speakers and throughpanel discussions on the presidential debatessponsored by the Department of History andSocial Science. Clubs and radio station WPAAheld spirited election discussions, and studentsstaged a mock election.

Speakers who addressed all-school meetings on election-related topicsincluded Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek Evan Thomas ’69; BarbaraBodine, former coordinator for post-conflict reconstruction for Baghdad and former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Yemen; Vanessa Kerry ’95,daughter of the democratic presidential candidate; and Roger Porter, policyadviser to presidents Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush ’42.