What Lies Beneath 40 Years Later Signal Strength a Match Made in Academic Heaven Departments

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Features: What Lies Beneath 40 Years Later

Signal Strength A Match Made in Academic Heaven

Departments: DoreWays In Class VJournal The Arts & Culture 1,000 Words S.P.O.V. The Campus A.P.O.V. Sports The Classes Vanderbilt Holdings Southern Journal Bright Ideas

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/publications/contents_sp05.html7/27/2005 9:23:13 AM VMagSpr05_pg4-7.P2 4/12/05 11:55 AM Page 5 DoreWays From the Editor From the Reader Returning Wrong Words The magazine is now wonderful, [with] great articles, and very informative— n July of 1961, Professor Fernando F. Segovia boarded a plane worth reading. in La Habana, Cuba. His destination: the United States of America. For 41 years But why include that statement by Bush Cuba remained fixed in his memory, frozen in the chaos of revolution, with

A forum for exchanging ideasA forum for exchanging on page 14 [Fall 2004 issue]? Granted, it is contemporary life in his former home experienced only through stories told an honor to have the president visit Vander- by others or realities created through his own imagination. For Segovia, bilt, and he expressed some excellent thoughts Cuba represented a complex mixture of sensory details and emotional turmoil. about Vanderbilt which could have been Many, probably most, of us can only imagine his experience. included. However, that statement you includ- II’m grateful for Segovia’s generosity in allowing Vanderbilt Magazine to help give ed has very little evidence to support [it], and voice to his story. For helping me understand—just a little bit—the experience of is probably incorrect. You should have checked an individual exiled who, in returning to the country of his birth, rediscovers his past, with your medical school and law school fac- who out of that rediscovery begins to hope that he can take part in what is to come. ulty about “frivolous lawsuits running up the His story is at once a memorial to the people and the country he loved and a prayer cost of medicine”—it is my impression from for that country’s future. It’s a story of a life lost, and it’s a story of a life found. It’s a the literature that malpractice costs [make story of humanity. up] less than 1 percent of the cost of med- “I walked through the city with ical care and are insignificant in explaining full remembrance of things and the rapid increases in medical-care costs. places, people and events, dates Dr.G.Octo Barnett,BA’52 and stories. I knew where to go Newton, Mass. and where to turn, what I would find and what had happened there. The Right Perspective I was in my city and among my I’m writing because I’m disturbed people, and my memory, physi- by the tone of three letters [“From the Read- cally triggered into action after a er”; DeMain, Fall 2004 issue, and Conner and long hiatus, gushed abundantly Smith, Summer 2004 issue] which, taken and endlessly.” together, suggest that you and your maga- With these words, Segovia zine should do something to revise its ide- begins the process of coming to ological stance, specifically, to move it to the terms with the emotional and right. physical geography of return- Divinity Professor Fernando F. Segovia returned in 2003 to his homeland of Cuba for the first time since depart- Don’t you dare do any such thing. And ing to his native country. And ing in 1961. Accompanying him was his wife, Elena don’t, for god’s sake, try to be ideologically with these words, Segovia gave Olazagasti-Segovia, senior lecturer in Spanish at Van- neutral. Because there is no such thing. me an entry into his struggle— derbilt. Segovia’s homecoming story begins on page 44. There are, however, important issues at and, I would argue, our strug- stake. Allow me to state the important issues gle—to lift Cuba from the confines of perceptions based on a past defined by revolution, as I see them: and allow it the opportunity to create a future. 1. Whether all Americans and their insti- “The living and the dead intermingled at will,”Segovia writes of his experience in tutions have the right of free speech, regard- Cuba.“I was young and old at the same time. In this enchanted and enchanting world, less of what they say, and regardless of when I could not but think of the future.” or how they say it; Ken Schexnayder 2. Whether or not we must be compelled to support a war based on a false pretext, i.e., that Saddam Hussein threatened the securi-

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ty of the United States. The people of Iraq, {Featured Letter} Perry Wallace one of the oldest cultures on Earth, have the As a member of the first graduating misfortune of living atop 13.5 billion barrels class of a public high school in the South to of oil reserves. In a world of rising oil demand be integrated (Oak Ridge, Tenn., 1956), the and ever-shrinking reserves, I’m afraid they’ve article about Perry Wallace brought back only begun to suffer for it; and memories of a black high-school classmate. 3. Whether or not we will continue to have Fred was also a basketball player who played our personal freedoms put under attack on in home games and only those road games the pretext of national security. The actions in which the opposition would allow him to of the 18 Saudi men who hijacked four airplay—one all season. He wasn’t a great play- Confederate Hall planes cannot be undone. But we must resist er, but a proud young man who had to suf- being controlled by fear. In the last election, Please poll the alumni to fer the same indignities of the times as did politicians on both sides used our fear in see how many think the famous Perry Wallace in the ’60s. order to manipulate our opinions, and politi- Fugitives of Vanderbilt would take As Perry Wallace, student athlete, found cians on both sides today continue to do so. their stand for “Confederate Hall” a mentor in Ron Brown, the later secretary But fear puts our personal freedoms under to remain on the building in con- of commerce, it is only fitting to mention direct attack. troversy. Thanks. that, like Wallace, Brown’s successor in the Thanks also to the writers of the letters I Jack D. Walker, A’49 Clinton cabinet was also a native of Nashville, referred to above. Their expression of thought Antioch, Tenn. a Vanderbilt varsity athlete (baseball) and moved me to write this letter. The struggle lawyer, Mickey Kantor (BA’61). for truth continues. Dr. Arthur E. Diamond, A’60 Patrick F. Feehan, BE’72 Melbourne, Fla Columbia, Mo. Gerald Holly I just wanted to thank you for the Uganda wonderful article you had in Vanderbilt Mag- Thank you for publishing Lisa azine about my father, Gerald Holly [Fall 2004 DuBois’ article “Singing for Survival: the issue, “The Eloquent Eye,”p. 28]. My family Music of AIDS in Uganda” in your Fall 2004 and I are so glad that no one has forgotten him. He was a wonderful photographer, whom continued on page 84 no one will ever forget. He was a wonderful husband, father and grandfather, and a won- Letters are always welcome in derful friend. I hope the young people who response to contents of the magazine. want to be photographers will look at his pic- We reserve the right to edit for length, tures as signs of how hard work and deter- style and clarity. Send signed letters to the Editor, Vanderbilt Magazine, mination can be an inspiration for life. VU Station B 357703, 2301 Vanderbilt Carol Holly Place, Nashville, TN 37235-7703, or Grand Ridge, Fla. e-mail [email protected].

6 Spring 2005 VMagSpr05_pg4-7.P2 4/12/05 11:56 AM Page 7 VJournal

A Civilized Greed life on campus Perspectives

A bibliographer’s shopping sprees require a certain forbearance for ferocious dogs, officious inspectors and Sputnik-era transportation. By PAULA COVINGTON, MLS’71, MA’94

colleague of mine once out her White-Out to blot out my name. said that if the acquisition So, technically, I’m still in Mexico. Ah, well, of books for a university it’s a beautiful country, the people are so research library were com- friendly, and the books can be such bargains. pared to military maneu- vers, the acquisition of Latin Vanderbilt has a long history

American materials could be likened to of collecting Latin Americana and a KEVIN MENCK Aguerrilla warfare. There have been many highly regarded program in Latin times when I thought that analogy was too American Studies. At Chancellor Harvie close for comfort. Branscomb’s behest, Vanderbilt in 1947 I’ve been collecting books for Vanderbilt developed the first Brazilian center in the where recent revolution has occurred. Once since 1976. As Latin American and Iberian United States. the dancing in the streets has ended, poetry, bibliographer for the Heard Library, my Trips to Latin America help us locate older fiction, treatises, political propaganda, mem- quest for books has taken me to Brazil, Colom- materials not listed by any booksellers oirs, and a profusion of other literature about bia, Guatemala, Cuba, and other Latin Amer- and identify potential library collections for the revolution emerge. And these are hard to ican countries. My colleagues are quick to sale. We also lay the groundwork for regular get when publishing is erratic. say, “Never travel with Paula.”It does seem exchanges of publications between Vander- My first venture to an immediately post- my buying trips should be less eventful. In bilt and local research institutions, universi- revolutionary society was to Nicaragua after Guatemala I once boarded a plane that was ties, banks, and government agencies and the Sandinista revolution. A group of U.S. a reject from 1950s Russia. In Nicaragua my non-governmental organizations that pub- librarians was invited to meet with the first plane ticket was stolen. In Costa Rica there lish materials not for sale. Discounts avail- professional librarians in the country, along was an earthquake and a bomb in front of able on the spot (the result of low in-country with poets, writers and other notables. Little my hotel. In Bogotá there was a riot while I costs of publication) often save us enough to did we know one of the notables would be was in the bookshop. offset most of the cost of the trip. Comandante Tomás Borge, the only sur- Then there was the time in the Yucatán The Latin American book market is not viving founder of the FSLN (Frente Sandin- when I wasn’t allowed to board the ship geared for export. An average print run for ista de Liberación Nacional), leader of the because I had stupidly mailed my visa home some Latin American countries might be 125 Sandinista Revolution and head of internal with the books. My husband had already copies. In the U.S., publishers supply the security forces. Borge materialized one night boarded and was in the ship’s dining room Library of Congress with copies of almost all from a grove of trees, complete with armed enjoying salad for the first time in weeks, new books; in many Latin American coun- entourage, as we were about to return to our oblivious to my predicament. After pleading tries, books never make it into the national Managua hotel. He kept our group of 10 up with intransigent local police, I was taken library and are often unavailable in any pub- half the night to discuss our impressions of aside by one official who agreed to look the lic library. In some fields, a university library Sandinista Nicaragua, U.S.-Nicaragua rela- other way if I could persuade the Norwegian in the U.S. has a more extensive collection tions, and his concerns for Nicaragua’s secu- purser to take my name off the ship’s pas- than can be found in Latin America. rity. Talk of invasions and bomb plots created senger list. No problem, she said, and whipped Buying trips are important in countries continued on page 84

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Legend of the Moon Goddess Graduate student Yang Geng rehearses for a March 5–6 production of “Moon Goddess” at Vanderbilt’s Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts. Presented by the Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville, the production featured 25 performers in modern and traditional Chinese dance. In the legend of the moon goddess, a mortal woman named Chang-e takes three pills that make her a goddess and transport her to heaven, where she can be seen sitting under a laurel tree in the face of the full moon. Lonely and remorseful for having taken the pills, she makes a wish that people on earth live in harmony. Photo by Neil Brake.

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TheCampus“Some toddlers are consuming incredible amounts Sof

When It’s More Compounding the problem music with a library of more Than Baby Fat are cultural differences.“Weight than 800,000 songs from major A new childhood is not viewed as negatively in and independent record labels. obesity clinic opened some cultures as in others,”he Last October the University at Vanderbilt Chil- says.“Each brings a separate set launched VUmix, a compre- dren’s Hospital in of challenges.” hensive download service. A December, and not a Plemmons realizes he has discounted price of $16 per moment too soon: A recent an uphill battle. About 30 academic year gives students report by the American Heart percent of families who unlimited listening to full- Association states that 10 per- come to childhood- length songs and a variety of cent of children ages 2 to 5 are obesity clinics never other features. In addition, stu- overweight, up from 7 percent return. The rate of suc- dents can purchase songs and in 1994. cess in the best pro- albums from Napster to burn Dr. Greg Plemmons, assis- grams is about 30 or transfer to an MP3 player or tant professor of pediatrics, percent. CD for 99 cents a song, or as directs the clinic. “Several of “I try to help fami- little as $9.95 per album. our pediatricians had been see- lies come up with their “VUmix is a continuation of ing these kids in our consulta- own plan,”he says.“If our efforts to educate students tion clinic,”says Plemmons. about the very real problems of “Our endocrinology clinic also piracy and theft of intellectual was being inundated because property,”says Chancellor Gor- most families think it’s a thy- don Gee. “As citizens and repre- roid problem, but 99 percent of sentatives of Music City, the time it’s not.” Vanderbilt students now have a Parents don’t know where to way to be leaders in the music begin to help their children. “Some toddlers are consuming they make the choices, they are world through VUmix.” “Adults try rapid weight-loss incredible amounts of juices more likely to follow through. In establishing the agree- programs or even surgery, but and milk,”says Plemmons. “For Most parents and children are ment with Napster, the Uni- we don’t generally recommend instance, on-the-go sippy cups already aware of the health risks versity worked closely with either of those things for chil- are now the norm. Thirty years and don’t want to be lectured. the Campus Action Network dren because the science is not ago, when bottles were made of We encourage the family to (CAN), an initiative led by available to prove it’s safe,” glass, parents never let kids come up with simple goals.” Sony BMG Music Plemmons says. “Our goal is to walk around and drink out of Entertainment and catch the weight problem early them. We’ve seen 2-year-olds All Music, other record com- and stabilize it as they grow take in 60 or 70 ounces a day, All the Time panies that are into their size or, if a child is just carrying those around. Vanderbilt students dedicated to facili- truly obese, help them lose “No one walks to school can now get and share their tating the intro- weight slowly while creating anymore, and almost 85 per- music safely and legally duction of safe, better habits that will last.” cent of children now have TVs thanks to a University part- legitimate digital Changes in lifestyle are fuel- or computers in their bed- nership with Napster, one of music services to the campus ing the obesity epidemic. rooms.” the largest providers of online environment.

10 Spring 2005

VMagSpr05_pg10-17.P2 4/19/05 9:37 AM Page 11 “ s Spring2005of juices and milk. We’ve seen 2-year-olds take in 60 or 70 ounces a day. —PROFESSOR GREG PLEMMONS

$10 Million Grant to Help Produce Practical Theology Teachers A landmark $10 million Distinguished Professor of grant from the Lilly Endow- American Religious History. ment Inc.—the largest ever “While this has produced received by Vanderbilt Divinity tremendous advances in scien- School—marks the beginning tific knowledge, there’s a need of a move by the School and for developing scholars to think the Graduate Department of through how their knowledge Religion to address a nation- will be put to use.”

wide shortage of practical the- Beginning ministers face a NEIL BRAKE ology professors. variety of challenges—people Vanderbilt will use the fund- who have little or no history {Details} ing to create the Program in with organized religion, home- New Life to an Old Building Theology and Practice, which is less addicts who repeatedly seek The Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center hosted a intended to produce more and money but don’t seek to change, grand reopening in February after a $2.5 million expansion better teachers for theological and efforts to reach across con- that nearly doubled its size. Affectionately termed “The schools. “Graduate education gregations sharply divided over House” by students and faculty, the original structure, in the United States is geared to politics, among others. which includes this arched window, dates back to 1900. the development of research The Program in Theology The center is named for Vanderbilt’s first African-American knowledge and skills in isolated and Practice is designed to pre- student, Joseph A. Johnson Jr., who later became a bishop fields,”says James Hudnut- pare future professors to help of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Beumler, dean of the Divinity clergy respond wisely to School and Anne Potter Wilson unforeseen circumstances.

“Through this project, Vander- Plans call for the first class bilt will play a crucial role in in the new program to begin in reshaping how future seminary the fall of 2006. The program professors are trained and have will add up to one year of study a powerful impact on the edu- to the Ph.D. curriculum for cation of new generations of students who participate. ministers,”says Craig Dykstra, Goals for the program include the Lilly Endowment vice pres- attracting 50 new graduate stu- ident for religion. dents in teaching for the min- “The ultimate beneficiaries istry, and involving 25 will be the congregations and divinity-school faculty mem- members of religious commu- bers and 20 area clergy in an nities whose leaders are shaped innovative curriculum. Vander- by a program that has no paral- bilt will partner with at least lel in higher education today,” eight seminaries in the region

KRT/ROBERTO GONZALEZ Hudnut-Beumler says. as part of the program. >>

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Health Assessment Gives Schools a {Inquiring Minds} Blueprint for Action Nearly 72,000 school Using the CDC instruments, Treatment May Work Better Than Transplantation Up to 20 percent of heart-trans- children will be the beneficiaries each school will receive a plantation candidates die while of a new partnership between description of the school’s over- waiting for a donor organ. Now a Vanderbilt and all 129 Metro all health. The assessments are study comparing outcomes of Nashville Public Schools to scheduled for completion by patients from a decade ago to a provide health assessments April. Plans that capitalize on more contemporary cohort sug- based on the Centers for Disease the schools’ strengths and facili- gests that many patients who meet the criteria for transplantation have outcomes comparable or Control’s school health model. tate improvement of school- even better with medical therapy than with transplantation. Thomas H. Cook, assistant health needs will be developed Dr. Javed Butler, medical director of the heart transplant professor of nursing, has been with each of the schools. program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and col- appointed school health director “The Metro School System leagues evaluated the criteria used to assess eligibility of for Vanderbilt Children’s Hospi- will have a comprehensive pic- patients with heart failure for cardiac transplantation. “A lot of patients currently listed for transplant could be tal and is overseeing the effort. ture of the health of its system,” safely managed with medical therapy if the criteria were changed and we only transplanted the sickest of patients,” Butler says.The research was highlighted in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Increase in Novel Antipsychotics for Kids Questioned Researchers at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital report that— following concern about the overuse of the medication Rital- in—a new class of antipsychotic medications is being prescribed for an increasing number of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) despite few studies of their benefits and risks when used in this fashion. The study, published in the Aug. 3, 2004, issue of Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, revealed that between 1996 and 2001, the proportion of children on TennCare (Ten- nessee’s managed care program) who were new users of powerful atypical antipsychotic medications almost doubled.

“We would like for physicians to think very carefully KRT/CHARLES BERTRAM before prescribing these drugs to children,”says Dr.William Cooper, associate professor of pediatrics. Last August he, along with stu- says Cook. “They’ll have in dents in the School of Nursing, their hands a blueprint for Stimulating Nerves with Laser Precision Vanderbilt Sports Medicine action.”Cook, no stranger to Biomedical engineers and physicians have brought the day trainers and other Vanderbilt Metro Schools and health ini- closer when artificial limbs will be controlled directly by the volunteers, began assessing each tiatives, in 2002 received a brain by using laser light, rather than electricity, to stimulate and control nerve cells.The researchers discovered that low- Metro Nashville school. National Institute of Health intensity infrared laser light can spark specific nerves to life, Each grade is being assessed grant to study nutrition and exciting a leg or even individual toes without actually touch- using the CDC’s guidelines of physical activity in three Metro ing the nerve cells. nine components that create a Nashville schools. It has been “Using lasers, we can simultaneously excite and record healthy school—health educa- demonstrated that excess the responses of nerve fibers with much greater precision, tion, physical education, health weight in children follows accuracy and effectiveness,”says Assistant Professor of Biomedical services, nutrition services, those children into adulthood Engineering and Neurological Surgery counseling, psychological and and is a risk factor for cardio- DANIEL DUBOIS Anita Mahadevan-Jansen. social services, healthy school vascular disease, diabetes, The method was developed by environment, health promotion arthritis and some cancers. He Mahadevan-Jansen; Duco Jansen, for staff, and family/community is still analyzing the data, but associate professor of biomedical engineering and neurological surgery; involvement. Cook, working results to date indicate Dr. Peter Konrad and Dr. Chris Kao, with Vanderbilt’s child develop- increased health knowledge both assistant professors of neurological ment program, also has added and increased leisure activity surgery; and biomedical engineering an assessment for pre-kinder- time in the children who were Mahadevan-Jansen doctoral student Jonathon Wells. garten development. in the study. >>

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Ritual by Fire Peabody student Rashidah Bowen (center) lights the candle of a fellow student during a Martin Luther King Jr. Candlelight Vigil on Jan. 17 in Benton Chapel. Part of the annual MLK Commemorative Series, the vigil this year honored tsunami disaster victims. DANIEL DUBOIS VMagSpr05_pg10-17.P2 4/12/05 12:09 PM Page 14

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Medical Reserve Corps to Aid in

Is space real? Or is Emergencies it just a useful idea? Vanderbilt School of “Is time something our “ Nursing and the Department brains impose on the of Emergency Medicine at external world to Vanderbilt are helping build a local Medical Reserve Corps of provide order? health-care professionals who could respond to a mass casualty or other community emergency. The Medical Reserve Corps was established in conjunction with the Nashville-Davidson County Health Department and the Mayor’s Office of Emer- gency Management after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “The Vanderbilt University School of Nursing received federal funding to begin work on RUSTY RUSSELL building a Medical Reserve Corps program in Middle Ten- Business Savvy pany and a McKinsey & Com- says. “Employers must have nessee, in part because of the in Four Weeks pany consultant, says the pro- new hires who can accelerate School’s creation of a National A new program at the Owen gram was developed in concert quickly and become as produc- Center for Emergency Prepared- Graduate School of Manage- with business leaders and tive as possible in a short time.” ness,”says Colleen Conway- ment will help undergraduates recruiters to produce more Accelerator’s curriculum Welch, professor and dean of and those who have just gradu- marketable and productive focuses on strategy, financial the School of Nursing and ated to acquire business skills to employees from their first day accounting, managerial eco- founder and director of the help them succeed on the job. on the job. nomics, marketing, finance, International Nursing Coalition Accelerator-Vanderbilt “In working with numerous operations, human resources for Mass Casualty Education. Summer Business Institute, companies, I noticed they and organizational behavior, “We’re looking for nurses, open to students in any major, shared a common challenge: business ethics, problem solv- physicians, pharmacists, denis designed to provide an No matter how bright and ing, communication, teamwork tists, respiratory therapists, immersion into busi- and career planning. mental health specialists, emer- ness life. The four- Participants will devel- gency medical technicians, and week program will be op a business plan for other health-care and public- offered for the first their own small busi- health professionals,”says Dr. time May 28 through ness and apply all the Seth Wright, associate professor June 25. Taught by a lessons against that of emergency medicine and team of Owen School plan. director of the Middle Ten- faculty, it will include Graduates will leave nessee Medical Reserve Corps academic instruction, the program with a (MTMRC). practical job-skills portfolio of relevant “We are particularly inter- development, real work experience to ested in recruiting health-care project experience, present at interviews. workers who may be licensed and networking with the busi- determined the recent gradu- For information about the pro- but not working full time or are ness community. ates they employed were, they gram, call 615/343-6291 or go retired, or people who wish to Faculty director Mike weren’t used to the business to www.owen.vanderbilt.edu/ learn how to become involved Sicard, former chief operating world and tended to slow the vanderbilt/Programs/accelerator/ in building a plan to help our officer for a $650-million com- pace of the company,”Sicard index.cfm. community in a disaster situa-

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tion,”says Carmen Rich, direc- The process evaluates the entire tor of recruiting for the program of human research- {To p Picks} MTMRC and a nurse in the participant protection, of pediatric and adult emergency which the Institutional Review Peabody Professor Leads Homelessness Taskforce Douglas Perkins, associate professor of departments at Vanderbilt Uni- Board (IRB) is the largest part. human and organizational development, has versity Medical Center. Since 1999, says Robin Ginn, been selected by Nashville Mayor Bill Pur- The MTMRC will cell, JD’79, to facilitate the Mayor’s Task- offer health-care assis- force to End Chronic Homelessness. tance in the event of an Sparked by a federal initiative under the emergency situation in National Alliance to End Homelessness, the taskforce has been working on developing a 10-year plan to Nashville or surround- end chronic homelessness in Nashville. ing communities. Vol- “It’s important to stress the word chronic,”says Perkins. unteers may be called “These are people who have been homeless for at least a on to staff vaccination year and who generally have some form of disability, typically clinics, provide educa- a serious mental illness or substance-abuse issues.The reason we’re targeting that core group is because they take up the tional support, and vast majority of resources.” assist other health-care The problems of America’s homeless have consumed the providers in Middle greater part of Perkins’ professional career. He has worked Tennessee. with several grassroots volunteer organizations and local gov- The MTMRC will ernment agencies. educate and credential Award Aids Blindness Research volunteers to be a part John S. Penn, professor and vice chairman of the local community of the Department of Ophthalmology and response team. The Visual Sciences, has received a Senior required time commit- Scientific Investigator Award from the New York-based Research to Prevent Blindness ment for most mem- Inc. (RPB). The award provides Penn a ANNE RAYNOR bers will be minimal. To stipend to support his research efforts and is his third award find out more, log on to from RPB. Penn’s research focuses on angiogenesis in the eye, an www.mtmrc.org. KRT/WILLIAM MEYER important feature of diabetic retinopathy, macular degenera- tion, retinopathy of prematurity, sickle cell retinopathy and Human Research executive director of research other conditions, and is the leading cause of blindness in Program Receives informatics and regulatory developed countries. Two of the angiostatic compounds Penn National Recognition affairs, “We have completely investigated under industry contract in 2004 recently Each year thousands of revamped the human research received FDA approval for use in the treatment of eye dis- patients, students and volun- protections program here at ease. Penn came to Vanderbilt in 1998. teers help advance our under- Vanderbilt, and this accredita- Ivey to Head American Folklore Society standing of science and tion is proof of what we have Bill Ivey, director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and medicine by taking part in accomplished.” Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, is the new president- research studies at Vanderbilt. “It’s external validation that elect of the American Folklore Society. Ivey, chairman of the Recently, Vanderbilt’s program our program meets high stan- National Endowment for the Arts from May 1998 to Septem- ber 2001, took office as AFS president-elect on Jan. 1. to protect human research par- dards for human subject pro- Ivey was director of Nashville’s Country Music Foundation, ticipants was awarded full tection,”adds Gordon R. which manages the Country Music Hall of accreditation by the Associa- Bernard, medical director of Fame, before being appointed by President tion for the Accreditation of the Institutional Review Board Clinton to head the NEA. At the Curb Cen- Human Research Protection and assistant vice chancellor ter he directs cultural-policy research efforts toward programs that will nurture Programs (AAHRPP). for research. “We’re among the creativity and enhance understanding of Vanderbilt is only the 13th first two or three major med- America’s complex arts and media systems. organization to achieve this sta- ical centers to achieve this The center is funded by Vanderbilt, a $2.5 million endowment tus. The AAHRPP accreditation accreditation.” from music-industry executive Mike Curb and the Curb Family is voluntary and includes a self- Vanderbilt will submit annu- Foundation, and multiple project grants from major foundations. assessment process and on-site al reports and must be reac- Based at Ohio State University, the American Folklore Society has more than 2,200 members. evaluation by peer reviewers. credited every three years. >>

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Penn’s Rubin Named by alumnus Garner Anthony Jr. such as economics, sociology, federal research and develop- Law School Dean to honor Wade, who was dean political science and organiza- ment dollars that institutions Edward Rubin of the from 1952 to 1971, and Syverud, tion theory.” receive are compiled annually University of Pennsylvania Law dean since 1997. He is author of numerous by the National Science Foun- School has been named Rubin says he articles, chapters and books, dation (NSF). These statistics the John Wade-Kent was drawn to Van- including two volumes forth- do more than allow the nation’s

Syverud Professor of STEVE GREEN derbilt by the coming this year—Beyond universities to compare their Law and dean of Van- dynamic scholar- Camelot: Rethinking Politics success in obtaining federal derbilt University Law ship, teaching and and Law for the Modern State funding; they also are consid- School effective July 1. research activity at and Federalism: A Theoretical ered one of the more objective Rubin is the Theodore the Law School, Inquiry, which he co-authored measures of research quality. K. Warner Jr. Professor including a new with Malcolm Feeley. “It’s a landmark accomplish- Rubin of Law at Pennsylvania, program in law ment,”says Dennis Hall, associ- teaching administrative law, and business, a Vanderbilt 25th in ate provost for research and commercial law, and seminars new international master of Federal Research graduate education, of Vander- on topics ranging from admin- laws degree, and partnerships and Development bilt’s rise to 25th from 31st in istrative policy to law and tech- with other academic units. Funding the latest ranking.“It reflects an nology, human rights and Vanderbilt, he says, is in a An increase in funding of institutional desire to make punishment theory. position to move forward with nearly 100 percent in four years more of an impact on the world “Ed Rubin is one of the most a major reformulation of legal has put Vanderbilt among the by means of research.” distinguished legal educators of education for the 21st century: top 25 U.S. universities for the Federal support for research his generation,”said Vanderbilt “In the 19th century, legal first time in recent history in projects at Vanderbilt nearly Provost and Vice Chancellor for scholarship and education was terms of the amount of federally doubled to $215.5 million from Academic Affairs Nicholas Zep- self-contained. Now, in our supported research and develop- $108.3 million between fiscal pos in announcing the appoint- complex modern world, it must ment projects it conducts. years 1998 and 2002 (the latest ment.“He is an innovative and reach out to other disciplines, The national rankings of the year for which national statis- creative thinker, a preeminent tics are available). Among the scholar, and a widely respected top 40 ranked institutions, Van- teacher.” Virtual Vanderbilt derbilt’s 99-percent increase was second only to the 131- Earlier in his career Rubin http://www.vanderbilt.edu/webcam/ taught and was an associate percent gain by the Baylor Col- dean at the University of Cali- lege of Medicine. fornia, Berkeley, School of Law During this period, 77 per- (Boalt Hall). Prior to that he cent of the total increase in fed- was an associate with the law eral research and development firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, funding occurred in health and Wharton & Garrison in New human services, driven by a York, where he practiced enter- doubling in funding at the tainment law. He holds a bach- National Institutes of Health elor’s degree in history and mandated by Congress. anthropology from Princeton Vanderbilt Medical Center’s University. After earning his associate vice chancellor for law degree from Yale Universi- research, Jeff Balser, attributes Students hurrying to class cast long shadows in the late ty, he clerked for Judge Jon O. Vanderbilt’s growth in part to afternoon sun. A squirrel sprints across outdoor tables in Newman of the U.S. 2nd Cir- the University’s investment in search of cast-off sandwich crusts. On Vanderbilt’s cuit Court of Appeals. recruiting science superstars. slightly voyeuristic, oddly addictive webcams, you can He succeeds Kent Syverud, “We now have a substantial peek in on campus life from the vantage point of half a dean and Garner Anthony Pro- number of faculty capable of dozen sites: the Sarratt Student Center Gallery, the Rand fessor of Law, who announced pulling in large-scale extra- Wall, Rand Terrace, Featheringill Hall Atrium, the lobby last year that he would step mural research programs, such of the Faye and Joe Wyatt Center for Education on the down as dean. Rubin will be the as NIH-funded centers, which Peabody Campus, and the Peabody Library Terrace. first to hold the John Wade-Kent dramatically impacts our rank- Syverud Professorship, endowed ings,”he says.

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From 1999 to 2003, Vander- reform bills, and we’ll have to versities were to receive only images down to the molecular bilt’s ranking as a recipient of follow them all until we figure half that of students attending level and will ensure VUIIS National Institutes of Health out which ones have legs. In the public universities. remains at the forefront of funding rose to 17th from 21st. end, we’ll probably end up testi- “We’re very strategic about research in magnetic resonance This rise was powered by a 22.4- fying or trying to persuade peo- what we sponsor,”Nixon says. imaging (MRI). percent annual increase in fund- ple on 50 to 100 bills a year.” “We’ve never lost a major bill. “One reason we’re getting a ing, the highest of any university Because of the magnitude of We try to lay the groundwork 7 tesla magnet is to perform medical center in the country. bills proposed every year, Nixon and build a big support system more advanced magnetic reso- Although the Medical Center and her team have studied for what we want to do, and we nance spectroscopy,”adds insti- accounted for the lion’s share of almost every issue imaginable, only take issues that are really tute director John Gore.“MR the increase, research activity on from child-restraint legislation important to Vanderbilt.” spectroscopy uses the same the part of the central campus to the viability of chelation ther- technology as magnetic reso- also increased substantially, Hall apy, a treatment for cleaning the Institute of Imaging nance imaging (MRI) and func- says.“The funding level on the blood. One of the most pressing Science to Include tional MRI, but it produces ... central campus is approaching current issues involves TennCare, Powerful Research biochemical information from the same level as that of the specifically the proposal to slash Magnet small volumes within the body. entire University, including the 323,000 adults from its rolls. As Construction began this For example, in the brain you Medical Center, just five or six the largest single provider of spring on a $26.7 million Van- can measure the levels of cer- years ago.” TennCare in the state, Vander- derbilt University Institute of tain neurotransmitters. ... You Imaging Science (VUIIS). The can get a very precise assay of four-floor, 40,000-square-foot each of these molecules.” facility will occupy space for- That’s important not only for merly taken by the old emer- studying brain disorders such as gency room parking lot addiction, but also for determin- between two wings of Medical ing the effects of some drugs in Center North. the brain. Seven million dollars of that Another MRI technique cost will purchase one of the already being tested at Vander- world’s most powerful research bilt is dynamic contrast imag- magnets. The 7 tesla magnet will ing, which uses a contrast agent be installed, with 400 metric to generate images that provide Vanderbilt representatives at the state capitol in downtown Nashville tons of steel shielding around it, information on angiogenesis, DANIEL DUBOIS on the ground floor. new blood-vessel formation Pressing Issues: bilt has an enormous interest in “Vanderbilt University Med- required for tumor growth. Vanderbilt Lobbies the outcome.“If this change ical Center is making this This method one day may pro- the State goes through, it will have a investment now to assure that vide a way of determining the Vanderbilt University has tremendously negative financial it captures the best opportunity effectiveness of potential new a vested interest in many of the impact on the institution and an to attract top-notch scientists cancer drugs. 4,000-plus pieces of legislation even greater problem for the and government research The facility will provide proposed at the Tennessee State patients,”says Nixon. grants,”says Jeffrey R. Balser, research space for 18 faculty Capitol every year. It is the job The Tennessee Lottery associate vice chancellor for members and more than 40 of Betty Nixon, assistant vice scholarships represent another research. “If you delay for six graduate students and post-doc- chancellor for community, area of concern. Vanderbilt has months, it really limits the toral fellows in biomedical sci- neighborhood and government already had some success in opportunity in this fast-paced ence, engineering and physics. relations, and her department to this area, working with the Ten- field of science.” Three existing research mag- determine which of the pro- nessee Independent Colleges A tesla is a unit of magnetic nets and other imaging systems posed bills affect Vanderbilt and and Universities Association to field strength. One tesla is used in animal studies will be then garner support from local win equity for students attend- roughly 20,000 times the moved to the second floor. A and national organizations. ing private and independent strength of the magnetic field new facility also will be provided “We’re usually following sev- institutions when the Hope of the earth. The 7 tesla mag- for imaging non-human pri- eral hundred bills at a time,” Scholarships were first drawn net, one of only about seven or mates, and a new 3 tesla human Nixon says.“Right now there are up. Originally, students who eight in the United States, will MRI scanner will be placed adja- around 50 proposed insurance planned to attend private uni- enable researchers to generate cent to the 7 tesla system.

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Measuring Up

Sports athletics at Vanderbilt A look Josie Hahn, All-American, is every inch a winner. By NELSON BRYAN

resh pair of socks? Check. for the U.S. Olympic team. She was named morning jog before settling in for breakfast. Ponytail adjusted? Check. Shoes Vanderbilt’s Female Athlete of the Year and “When I’m running, I have a fast song stuck tied tight? Check. All systems was chosen the Female Amateur Athlete of the in my head, just any random song, at a fast are go. Ignition. Thrusters Year by the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. speed, as fast as my legs will go.”She says she’s engaged, Josie Hahn hurtles off “My goal last year had been just to make it not superstitious, but admits that she does the launching pad, soars sky- to the Olympic trials,”she says.“It was a very change her socks before each event.“I redo my ward and, for a brief moment, emotional roller coaster just trying to get there. ponytail before each high jump. I don’t know slips the surly bonds of Earth. Vanderbilt, we It was an awesome experience to be around why. But I do it even if it’s not messed up. I Fhave liftoff. As she settles back to Earth on such great athletes. I didn’t perform as well as tighten my shoes. I keep retightening my shoes touchdown, the All-American has broken the I’d hoped”—she placed 20th overall in the all the time in the high jump, too. I jump as Vanderbilt high-jump record—her own— heptathlon—“but my goal was to make it there, high as I can. If I miss, I’m thinking, ‘It’s the clearing the bar at 6 feet. so I was really excited to be there.” shoes, gotta tighten the shoes.’” Hahn, who stands less than 5 feet 6 inches Hahn sees the high jump, javelin and 800- Hahn, a senior from Clinton, Tenn., chose tall, has distinguished herself as a high jumper meter run as her best events but is careful not Vanderbilt over Clemson, Auburn, Colorado, and multi-event standout. In to think ahead in multi- and other more track-specific schools. 2004 she broke Commodore event competition.“I try “At first, the only thing I knew about Van- high-jump marks in five sep- to take each event indi- derbilt was that it was a really good academic arate competitions, extending vidually because if you school,”she says.“My high school coach kept both indoor and outdoor think of the 800, at the telling me,‘The Vanderbilt coach is calling me. school records to 6 feet. She very end of the hep- She’s really persistent. She really wants you to also set new records in the tathlon, you’re going to come for a visit.’I was pretty convinced I want- multi-event pentathlon and psych yourself out for the ed to go to Colorado, but my mom kept drop- heptathlon, and used a fifth rest of it,”she says.“I think ping hints that she didn’t want me to go far school record in the javelin to about how every inch away. She’d leave notes around the house— earn the SEC individual hep- counts. Even if you do ‘Somebody told me that Vanderbilt has a real- tathlon title. mess up in the high jump, ly good premedical program’—little things “Josie is remarkably tal- Coach Shepard’s persistence paid you have so many other like that. I thought about it, prayed about it, ented, but quite unique size- off with Hahn’s performance. events to make it up in. and decided this would be the best place for wise in her premier events,” You have to approach me, academically and athletically.” says Lori Shepard,Vanderbilt’s track and field each event individually.You don’t want to give Her major is interdisciplinary neuroscience coach. “But what she lacks in size, she makes up any points by missing half an inch in high with a biology bias. Her intention is to become up in heart.” jump or a fourth of an inch in long jump. an orthodontist or pediatric dentist.“I worked In the process, she earned NCAA All-Amer- It’s more like maximizing everything you can for a pediatric dentist in Clarksville [Tenn.] a ica honors indoors in the pentathlon and out- get out of each event.” couple of summers ago and really enjoyed it,” doors in the heptathlon and earned a tryout As part of her regimen, Hahn goes for a continued on page 84

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Hahn PHOTOS BY NEIL BRAKE VMagSpr05_pg20-21.P2 4/12/05 1:05 PM Page 20

S PORTS

Vandy in the NFL: gery for a neck injury and returned to the am very proud of Nicki and Courtney as they Chavous and Winborn team after six months of rehabilitation. are the first representatives of our program Win Courage Awards Proceeds from the awards banquet after the to make the LPGA Tour,”says women’s golf season benefit the Ed Block Courage Award coach Martha Freitag. Former Commodores Corey Chavous and Foundation’s Courage House National Sup- The pair likely will split their playing time Jamie Winborn have been selected as recip- port Network. A Courage House is a facility in 2005 between the LPGA Tour and the ients of the prestigious Ed Block Courage that provides support and quality care for abused Futures Tour. “The top five members of the Award. Each was chosen for the award by his children and their families. Ed Block was the Futures Tour automatically receive an LPGA teammates. former head athletic trainer for the Baltimore card,”Cutler explains, “so it will take some Chavous is a safety in his third season with Colts and a respected humanitarian. thought to determine how to divide our time the Minnesota Vikings. He was an All-Pro between the two tours.” pick last year and two-time Pro Bowler for Cutler resides in Phoenix while Wood the Vikings. Off the field, he is the Vikings’ Ex-Vandy Stars returns to Nashville in the off season. team spokesman for the Ronald McDonald Qualify for LPGA House and “Kids Voting Minnesota” cam- Former Vanderbilt All-American golfers Nicki paign. He also participates in quarterback Cutler and Courtney Wood have earned non- In Memorium: Daunte Culpepper’s African-American Adop- exempt status at the LPGA’s Qualifying School Kwane Doster tion Agency Holiday Party. in Daytona Beach, Fla. Non-exempt players Kwane Doster, a junior Winborn is a linebacker with the San Fran- are eligible for the LPGA tour if open slots running back and kick- cisco 49ers and ranks among the team’s lead- are available in a given event’s field and they return specialist on the make the first-round cut. football team, died Dec. ers in tackles and sacks. Off the field he has Doster made the community of the Bay Area a pri- They played their way into the “Q School” 26, 2004, of injuries sus- ority. In December 2003 he underwent sur- after performing well on the Futures Tour.“I tained in a shooting in his hometown of Tampa, Fla. One of the team’s most popular players, the 21-year-old was a three-year letter winner and recipient of the 2002 South- eastern Conference Freshman of the Year Award. “We are shocked and heartbroken,”said Coach Bobby Johnson in a prepared statement. “Kwane’s death is a terrible and tragic loss to our Vanderbilt family.” A contingent of Vanderbilt athletes, coaches and friends flew to Tampa for a memorial service Dec. 31. The same day, a suspect was arrested and charged with first-degree murder for Doster’s death and two counts of attempted murder against Doster’s companions. Doster was the first Vanderbilt player recognized as SEC Freshman of the Year, after set-

NEIL BRAKE ting a team record of 798 rushing yards. He also earned Freshman All-America honors Beth Tallent, BS’93, MEd’95, still holds the Vanderbilt record in women’s track for the from various publications. A human and orga- 3,000-meter run (indoors and outdoors) and the indoor mile. These days, Beth Tallent Sheridan holds the hands of her sons, Brennen, 4, and Brooks, 2, in Franklin, Tenn. nizational development major, he had 1,621 After earning her master’s degree in health promotion and education at Peabody, Sheridan career rushing yards and ranked third all-time ran student leadership programs sponsored by the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletics at Vanderbilt with 1,759 kick-return yards. Association (TSSAA) and the Baptist Sports Medicine Center.That yielded a job at Nashville’s He is survived by his mother, a brother, a Christ Presbyterian Academy (CPA) teaching sixth-grade grammar and coaching girls’ cross Christ Presbyterian Academy (CPA) teaching sixth-grade grammar and coaching girls’ cross sister, an aunt and numerous other relatives. country and track. “I left that job after the first of my two sons was born,” she says, “but I continued coaching A memorial fund has been set up for the a family at home.” She has now returned to the CPA middle school to teach life wellness. Doster family by the fathers of three members Her husband, Seth Sheridan, is the track coach at Belmont University. They met through run- of the Vanderbilt football squad. Contribu- ning during college. “I got kind of burned out after college,” she says of her running. However, tions can be made to the Kwane Doster Memo- she still manages to run 20 to 40 miles per week and has competed in several marathons. rial Fund c/o Cumberland Bank, 5120 Maryland Way, Brentwood, TN 37027.

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{Sports Roundup} Baseball: High Marks in with the play of Chris all fall,” says Coach Men’s Soccer: MVC Honors Preseason Polls Martha Freitag of the victory. “It was great to Two men’s soccer players received Missouri Vanderbilt baseball has been recognized as a see Chris finish her fall with such an outstand- Valley Conference honors last November. John top-25 team in preseason polls, and two returning performance.” Krause, a junior for- Krause ing players have been named preseason All- Brady had won the Texas Betsy Rawls ward, was named Americans. The recognition comes in the wake Longhorn Classic and was co-medalist at the to the MVC All- of last year’s remarkable performance, the best Kentucky Wildcat Invitational as a freshman. Conference Second Team.This was his in Vanderbilt baseball history. Women’s Soccer: Baseball America magazine ranked the first year with the Players Win SEC Honors Commodores as the No. Commodores, having Four members of the women’s soccer team were 17 team in the nation in transferred from named to the All-SEC team last November. its preseason poll, which Boston College. Sophomore goalkeeper Tyler Griffin was named marked the first time in Freshman forward Joe Germanese was named First-Team All-SEC. This was her first season the school’s history to Freshman of the Year while being named to the with Vanderbilt after transferring from the make the poll. The team All-Freshman Team. University of North Carolina in 2003. also was ranked No. 18 The Commodores finished the season with Junior midfielder Meghan Hagib was named by SEBaseball.com and a 7-9-1 record, 3-7 in the MVC. All-SEC Second Team, and freshmen No. 38 by Collegiate Sarah Dennis (forward) and Baseball magazine. Junior second baseman Football: Two Named Meredith Kohn (midfielder) Warner Jones and junior pitcher Ryan Mullins Freshman All-SEC were named to the All- were named to Baseball America’s Preseason Two Vandy newcomers who worked their way Freshman SEC Team. All-America Team, selected by major league into the starting lineup were named to the The women finished scouts. fifth annual Southeastern the season with a Vanderbilt finished the 2004 season with Conference All-Freshman 7-7-5 record. the best record in school history, logging a 45- Team following a vote of 19 overall record (16-14 SEC) on the way to the conference’s 12 coaches. its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Super Jonathan Goff, a red- Regional. shirt freshman from Lynn, Mass., was one of five Women’s Golf: Brady Wins linebackers named to the Third Collegiate Tournament defensive unit. Hamilton Sophomore Chris Brady shot a 4-under-par 68 Holliday of Marietta, Ga., to win the Landfall Tradition Tournament in was one of five offensive Wilmington, N.C., last October, her third colle- linemen named on the giate-medalist finish. “I have been very pleased coaches’ ballots.

Ashley Eckles, a sophomore on Vanderbilt’s equestrian team, practices the jumps aboard Sugar at Hunter’s Court Farm in Murfreesboro. PHOTOS BY NEIL BRAKE

Vanderbilt Magazine 21 VMagSpr05_pg22-23.P3 4/12/05 1:15 PM Page 22 Va n d e rb i l t Holdings Collections and collectibles Collections Girl Power in the Victorian Age

Peabody’s Bert Roller Collection preserves the life and times of an American icon. By MICHELLE JONES

ane Roller Sights, BS’41, was er Bostonian” and explains that her family’s began to see a lot more books that would always happy at Peabody. Her father, minister in Nashville, a native New Englan- entertain children.”This was when Alcott’s Bert Anderson Roller, was a professor der, had written ahead to friends, asking them publishers approached her about writing a of children’s literature at the College from to look in on the Rollers. book for girls, something, explains Neely, that 1922 until his death in 1934, and Sights A bond quickly formed between the fam- would counter the types of books—the Hor- attended Peabody Demonstration School. ilies, with Mrs. Roller and Miss Wendte attend- atio Alger books, for example—being writ- Before that the elder Roller met his future ing plays together and the elderly Mrs. Wendte ten for boys. “Little Women was a very big wife, Helen, when he took a psychology sharing stories about her famous relative. success because girls were seen as capable Jclass at Peabody while enrolled as a part- “She was so happy to have someone inter- of doing things that they had not been seen time student at Vanderbilt. Given her fami- ested, who knew something about it,”Sights as doing in past books for children.” ly’s long connection to the College, it is no explains.“So the dear old lady told my father Though Alcott died more than a century surprise that Sights chose to entrust Peabody a whole lot of things … little things that ago, her popularity continues. Fans delight with her collection of early children’s liter- nobody would have known about.”Bert Roller in adaptations of Little Women, ranging from ature. Known as the Bert Roller Collection, incorporated those tidbits into a series of arti- the 1933 film starring Katharine Hepburn to the 200-plus books include works by such cles he wrote about Alcott. the more recent Winona Ryder version. The famed illustrators as Kate Greenaway and In addition to visiting the Wendte house- characters also show up in modern fiction, Randolph Caldecott. The true highlights of hold, the Roller family spent their weekends in Katherine Weber’s The Little Women (2003), this collection, however, are the many books making excursions in the area, visiting neigh- which transports the March sisters to mod- by respected children’s author Louisa May boring towns and significant places such as ern-day New York City and New Haven, Conn., Alcott (1832–1888) and the relationship that Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, burial site of Ralph and in Geraldine Brooks’ March (2005), a developed between the Roller and Alcott fam- Waldo Emerson, Alcott, and other luminar- novel about Mr. March’s experiences fight- ilies over the years. ies of American literature.“I was only 6 or so, ing the Civil War. Time and time again, Jo In 1927 Professor Roller moved his wife and mother and I had just read Little Women emerges as the all-time favorite character. and three daughters to Cambridge, Mass., and were beginning Little Men,” Sights says. A young Jane Roller also connected with where he was to spend a year studying at Har- The family visited the home of Emerson and the book’s heroine.“I liked the fact that she vard. The experience made toured Orchard House, where Louisa May was a tomboy and I was, too,” Sights says. a lasting impression upon Alcott wrote and set many of her books, includ- “I thought that was something that hardly young Jane Roller, who ing the seminal Little Women (1868). anybody at that time ever wrote about. They talks of the adventure “She was really the most significant author, were trying to be little ladies, and she liked as though it all hap- woman author, in a time when we had the to run and climb and ride. She didn’t care pened last week. Not long turn towards adventure stories for children,” a thing about being in a ball gown or dress- after the family settled into says Peabody College’s Ann Neely, associate ing up.” their new quarters, Frederika Wendte, daugh- professor of the practice of education, about While in New England, the Roller family ter of one of Louisa May Alcott’s cousins, Alcott. “Previously, books for children had frequented bookstores as Professor Roller came to call. Sights describes her as “a prop- been mainly didactic. In the late 1800s we indulged his passion for rare children’s books.

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“Father was always darting into bookstores,” Along with the desire to make the books Digging through boxes filled with books Sights says. Many of the purchases he made accessible, their preservation was another still in protective plastic bags, Weiner pulls that year are now in the collection at Peabody. concern in the recent overhaul and was one out some for show. “Here’s one from 1859,” Most intriguing, however, are the books of the reasons Sights donated the books to she says. “That’s 1827,”she says, holding up he didn’t have to purchase—the the library in the first place. On another,“but you can see, this book is in awful- Alcott books.“Mrs. the day of her graduation from ly good shape for 1827.”Some of the Bert Wendte’s daughter Peabody, Jane Roller married Roller Collection books needed special boxes, continued writing Air Force pilot Pete Sights and and covers in charcoal or deep wine colors to us after we came began a life of world travel. were made for especially fragile books. Those back to Nashville,” She left her beloved books showing signs of deterioration got special Sights says. “She with her mother in Nashville. treatment. New bookplates were added, with would send us little “It was safer for her to keep Sights joining Weiner and library assistant things for Christmas, them,”Sights says. When Sights Lara Beth Lehman to place them. and then she would send finally moved back to the area, The next step is to install the books in one poems [by Alcott] that had she became concerned about of the new archival-quality display cases— never been published. It protecting the books. At first recent gifts from Charles Kurz II of Philadel- was such a good friend- she considered giving them to the phia, father of a current Peabody student— ship because nobody University of Virginia and even went to in Peabody Library’s ground-floor reading up there at that time par- Charlottesville to discuss the matter.“I came room. Weiner stresses that the entire collec- ticularly cared about [col- home and talked to the family and decided tion, all 200-plus books, will be kept togeth- lecting works by Alcott], and we we could see them here [at Vanderbilt], where- er in the case. How is it possible to fit all those were fresh to the thing and were just as we’d have to make a trip if books in one case? “Some of the books so excited about it.” they were in Virginia.” are very tiny, only about These items—the books, some of the let- The collection came to one-inch square, so they ters and the poems—will be incorporated into Peabody in 1983, but things don’t take up that much a new display in the recently renovated Peabody did not get off to a promis- space,”Weiner explains. Library. There had been a display on the third ing start; in fact, not much The display case also will floor of the library, but some changes were happened for several years. hold paper dolls contem- necessary. For one thing, the books hadn’t been When Sights learned porary to Alcott’s time and catalogued, explains Sharon Gray Weiner, direc- about this, she “bor- a bonnet-shaped pin cush- tor of the library, so the staff spent nearly two rowed” the books until ion, one of the last items years entering the books into the Online Com- they could be proper- Alcott sent to her cousins. puter Library Center’s (OCLC) WorldCat data- ly cared for. “When I “She was confined to a nurs- base.“If anyone is searching for materials about got here a couple of ing home for a long time Louisa May Alcott and they go into this data- years ago, I saw in the before she died, and she base,”says Weiner,“they will find the materi- files that this had sewed all the als that we own here.” happened, time,” Sights Among those likely to seek out the col- and I called says. “What a lection are scholars, researchers and afi- Mrs. Sights,” sweet thing.” cionados of Alcott’s work. Neely says she likes Weiner says. to share the collection with her graduate students as they study the history of children’s literature. Those who do seek out the collection will find Flower Fables (1855), a two- part edition of Little Women, and an edition of Little Men from 1875. There are also several books featuring perennial favorite Jo, including Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag, v. 2: Shawl Straps (1872) and Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag, v. 5: MiChelle Jones is an assistant editor at BookPage An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (1882). Var- and a freelance arts writer. She earned her bache- ious collected letters, journals and short sto- lor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a ries round out the 17 Alcott books in the master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School Roller Collection. of Journalism. She lives in Nashville.

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Bright“ IdeasThe frogs were so loud I couldn’t sleep. How Good Is Your environments with regular Biological Clock? day/night cycle and totally disappear in conditions of con- A traveler stant illumination. experiences jet lag “Circadian clocks are so when his or her inter- widespread that we think they Research and scholarship roundup and scholarship Research nal clock becomes must enhance the fitness of out-of-synch with the organisms by improving their 1.environment. Seasonal Affec- ability to adapt to environmen- tive Disorder, some types of tal influences, specifically daily depression, sleep disorders, and changes in light, temperature problems adjusting to changes and humidity,”says Carl H. in work cycles all can occur Johnson, professor of biological when an individual’s biological sciences and Vanderbilt clocks act up. Recent studies Kennedy Center investigator, have even found links between who directed the study. “Some these molecular timepieces people have even suggested and cancer. that, once invented, these Microscopic pacemakers— clocks are such a powerful also known as circadian organizational tool that clocks—are found in every- their benefits go beyond thing from pond scum to responding to external cycles. human beings and appear to However, there have been prac- help organize a dizzying array tically no rigorous tests of of biochemical processes. either proposition.” Despite the important role they To test these ideas directly, play, scientists are just begin- Johnson’s research team used ning to understand the benefits genetic engineering techniques that these internal pacemakers to completely disrupt the bio- provide when they work and logical clocks in one group of the problems they cause when algae and to damp the frequen- Carl H. Johnson they malfunction. cy of the clocks in a second NEIL BRAKE A study performed by group. The researchers were day/night cycle, the normal University and Takao Kondo researchers at Vanderbilt Uni- careful to employ “point” algae grew dramatically faster from Nagoya University. In the versity and published in the mutations in the clock genes than those that lacked func- previous experiments the Aug. 24 issue of the journal that didn’t stunt the growth of tional internal timers. The nor- researchers created two new Current Biology sheds new light the microscopic plants. mal algae also outperformed algae strains with clocks of 22 on this issue. Using blue-green They then mixed the algae the algae with the damped hours and 30 hours. (The fre- algae—the simplest organism possessing disrupted clocks clocks, but by a smaller margin. quency of the biological clocks known to possess these mecha- with algae possessing normally The result was presaged by a in normal blue-green algae is nisms—the researchers report functioning clocks. When the series of experiments Johnson 25 hours.) They created mixed that the benefits of biological mixture was placed in an envi- conducted in 1998 with Susan colonies by combining the clocks are directly linked to ronment with a 24-hour S. Golden from Texas A&M strains in pairs: wild type and

24 Spring 2005

VMagSpr05_pg24-27.P2 4/12/05 2:29 PM Page 25 “

I was fascinated by how the synchronized calling moved around. —KENNETH D. FRAMPTON

22 hour; wild type and 30 placed in a chamber with con- Sensor Network Mimics hour; 22 hour and 30 hour. stant light, however, the re- the Synchronized Calling Then they put these mixed searchers were surprised to of Frogs, Cicadas cultures into incubators with discover that the shoe was on three different light-dark the other foot: The algae with The modern cycles—22 hours, 24 hours and the disrupted internal clock world resonates 30 hours—and monitored divided and grew at a slightly with the uncoor- them for about a month. faster rate than their clock- dinated beeping When they pulled the cul- watching cousins, both those and buzzing of tures out, the researchers found with natural biological clocks 2.countless electronic devices, that the strain whose internal and those whose clocks were so it was only a matter of time clock most closely matched the damped. before someone designed an light-dark cycle invariably out- “This was the most surpris- electronic network with the grew the competing strain. In ing result of our study,”says ability to synchronize dozens of fact, they found that the selec- Johnson. “Under constant tiny buzzers in much the same Isaac Amundson—with the tive advantage of having the conditions, the circadian clock way that frogs and cicadas coor- task of simulating this complex correctly tuned biological clock system is of no benefit and, dinate their nighttime choruses. natural behavior using a wire- was surprisingly strong: The in fact, might even be bad for “Several years ago I was on less distributed sensor network. strains with matching frequen- the algae.” a camping trip, and we pitched They presented the results of cies grew 20 to 30 percent faster The scientist doesn’t know our tent in an area that was their project Nov. 16, 2004, at than the out-of-synch strains. for certain why this happens, filled with hundreds of tree the annual meeting of the The second part of the cur- but he has some ideas. The frogs,”says Vanderbilt’s Ken- American Acoustical Society rent experiment was designed microscopic plants use their neth D. Frampton, assistant in San Diego. to test whether the biological biological clocks to turn their professor of mechanical engi- Consulting literature about clocks also provide an intrinsic photosynthesis system on and neering, who dreamed up the animal vocalizations, the engi- advantage, a hypothesis off. In a normal 24-hour project. “The frogs were so loud neers discovered that a number advanced by the late Colin Pit- day/night cycle, this allows the that I couldn’t get to sleep. So I of different theories have been tendrigh of Stanford. He sug- microscopic plant to maximize began listening to the chorus advanced to explain such natu- gested that circadian clocks the amount of chemical energy and was fascinated by how the rally occurring synchronized might be beneficial even in an it can extract during daylight. pattern of synchronized calling behaviors. They may have unchanging environment. “In constant illumination, moved around: Frogs in one evolved cooperatively in order There was some indirect sup- however, the biological clocks area would croak all together to maximize signal loudness, port for this proposition. In may keep shutting down pho- for a while, then gradually one to confuse predators, or to one experiment, for example, tosynthesis in expectation of group would develop a differ- improve call features that populations of the fruit fly the darkness that never comes,” ent rhythm and drift off on attract potential mates. Or they (Drosophila melanogaster) were says Johnson. its own.” may have evolved competitively raised in constant illumination Co-authors of the study are Last summer’s emergence of in order to mask or jam the for hundreds of generations. post-doctoral fellows Mark A. cicada brood X brought back calls of nearby animals. Nevertheless, their biological Woelfle and Yan Ouyang and that memory and prompted “Whichever theory is true, it clocks continued to function, graduate student Kittiporn Frampton to assign undergrad- is clear that these behavior pat- suggesting that they continued Phanvijhitsiri. The research was uates Efosa Ojomo and Praveen terns are complex and offer an to have adaptive value. supported by the National Mudindi—working under the interesting inspiration for group When the algae strains were Institutes of Health. supervision of graduate student behaviors,”says Frampton. >>

Vanderbilt Magazine 25 VMagSpr05_pg24-27.P2 4/12/05 2:30 PM Page 26

Kenneth D. Frampton programmed differently. They not resynchronize with the were instructed to listen with original group. Rather, the their microphones for a call that omega node eventually recruits was sufficiently loud, to esti- a growing number of nodes to mate its duration and frequen- its calling cycle until a “balance cy, and then begin calling in of power” is reached with the synch with the detected call. alpha node. The eventual bal- “Although this behavioral ance between the two groups algorithm is quite simple, it depends strongly on the initial produces some interesting arrangement of the sensors. group behaviors,”Frampton “While this is a rather whim- reports. sical application of a sensor net- When all is quiet and an work, it demonstrates the alpha node begins calling, at unique system behaviors that first only those beta nodes can arise in truly distributed nearby hear the call and processing,”says Frampton. respond. Then, as more betas Even when nodes follow very swell the chorus, nodes farther simple rules, the behavior of the away hear the call and join in. group can be quite complex. In this fashion, synchronized Although this project is not calling gradually spreads con- likely to improve knowledge centrically out from the alpha about synchronized calling in node until all the nodes are nature, Frampton says it does synchronized. demonstrate the types of com- A second interesting behav- plex behavior patterns that will ior occurs when a beta node be important for future devel- “hiccups” and starts buzzing opments in sensor networks. out of synch with its neighbors. NEIL BRAKE Such hiccups can be caused by A Nose for One thing these behaviors wireless network of 15 to 20 measurement noise, operating- Fast Food have in common is that they are “Motes,”a wireless network system jitter and other factors. The star-nosed produced by groups of animals designed by computer scientists Occasionally, when such a hic- who are in communication at the University of California– cup occurs, neighboring nodes mole gives a whole with each other but who are Berkeley and manufactured resynchronize to the errant new meaning to the acting on their own. Networks commercially by Crossbow Inc. node. Normally, these tran- term “fast food.”A consisting of nodes that com- These are small microprocessors sients quickly disappear as the study published in municate with each other but equipped with wireless commu- wayward group resynchronizes 3.the Feb. 3 issue of the scientific act independently according to nications. The researchers with the larger group. journal Nature reveals that this simple rules are becoming added a microphone and a The most interesting behav- energetic burrower can detect increasingly popular and were buzzer to each node. ior pattern appeared when the prey and gulp them down with the obvious system to use. To mimic synchronized call- researchers introduced a third a speed too fast for the human “There is a great deal that ing behaviors, the researchers kind of node that they labeled eye to follow. we do not yet know about the first programmed a single “omega.”This node was pro- It takes a driver about 650 group behavior of such sys- leader, dubbed the “alpha node,” grammed identically to an milliseconds to hit the brake tems,” says Frampton. “So, in to begin calling (buzzing) with alpha node but set to a different after seeing the traffic light addition to being a lot of fun, an arbitrary duration and fre- duration and frequency. When ahead turn red. In half that the synchronized calling exper- quency. The alpha node was set introduced into the array, an time, the star-nosed mole, in iment is adding to our under- so it called at this rate regardless omega node begins to attract the Stygian darkness of its bur- standing of the behavior of this of any other calling in its vicini- neighboring nodes to its call row, can detect the presence of kind of network.” ty. The remainder of the devices, cycle. Unlike the hiccup case, a tasty tidbit, determine that it The engineers began with a referred to as “beta nodes,”were however, the omega group does is edible and gulp it down.

For more information a

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“Most predators take times speed video. After touching a ranging from minutes to sec- small piece of food, it took the onds to handle their prey,”says moles only 230 milliseconds Kenneth C. Catania, assistant to identify and eat it. The professor of biological sciences, researchers discovered that who directed the study of the the unusual mole is moving mole’s foraging speed. “The almost at the speed limit set by only things I’ve found that even its brain and nervous system. come close are some species The star-nosed mole takes of fish.” about 25 milliseconds to decide The secret to the star-nosed whether an object is edible, mole’s impressive ability is the then about 12 milliseconds for star-shaped set of appendages a signal to travel from the that ring its nose. Its fleshy star mole’s star appendages to its makes the mole one of the odd- brain, and another five mil- est looking members of the liseconds for the muscles to mammal kingdom. respond to signals from the Star-nosed moles range brain. This leaves only eight Kenneth C. Catania from Canada, down through milliseconds for the mole’s NEIL BRAKE the Eastern United States as far brain to make an identification. ability to handle prey so quick- gain from eating it. as Georgia, but are rarely seen Given the split millisecond tim- ly and efficiently appears to The insight that the star- because they live in marshes ing, it is not surprising that it provide the star-nosed mole nosed mole has specialized in and wetlands. Because they live frequently makes mistakes. with a real competitive advan- minimizing handling time for in darkness, the moles have When researchers set out worm tage. By reducing its handling small prey helps clear up a very poor eyesight. They con- sushi for the moles, they found time to a fraction of a second, number of the mysteries that tinually survey their environ- that one-third of the time the star-nosed mole gains ener- have surrounded this unusual ment by touching their moles started to move in the gy from chowing down small mammal, Catania says. For surroundings with their star wrong direction and had to insect larvae, tiny worms and years, scientists advanced dif- appendages. suddenly reverse themselves. other food. Predators that take ferent theories about the mole’s Catania, working with Researchers in behavioral a few seconds to handle each star-shaped appendages. It laboratory assistant Fiona E. ecology invest considerable prey animal, on the other hand, wasn’t until 1995 that studies Remple, captured the moles’ time and thought studying use more energy catching and performed by Catania and oth- feeding behavior with a high- how different animals eat. The eating small prey than they ers led scientists to agree that the star appendages were super-sensitive touch organs. Now Catania thinks he knows why the star appendages are so large: The 22 appendages that ring its nose have a surface area eight times greater than the nose of its close cousin, the eastern mole. Its flexible fingers also allow the star-nose to tap objects at a faster rate. Taken together, these advantages mean the star-nosed mole can find 14 times the number of small snacks its close cousin can in a given amount of time. The unusual star-nosed mole eats its prey at lightning-fast speed. KENNETH CATANIA n about stories in Bright Ideas, visit Vanderbilt’s online research journal, Exploration, at http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu.

Vanderbilt Magazine 27 VMagSpr05_pg28-31.P2 4/19/05 10:14 AM Page 28 InClass

Voice of Reason

Before the camera and behind the scenes, Dr. William Schaffner A spotlight on faculty and their work on faculty A spotlight strives to improve public health. By LISA A. DUB OIS

t was Oct. 5, and members of lic health professional to admit there may be Vanderbilt. National reporters respect him the National Vaccine Advisory Com- deaths because of the flu-vaccine shortage. and know he’ll deliver a message that’s on mittee, who were gathered at a meet- “Bill is not a government employee, but as target and timely.” ing in Washington, D.C., had hardly a senior spokesman for the communicable- As a result, Schaffner is constantly called finished their first cup of morning disease sector, he can be as frank and as hon- upon for insight and advice about an aston- coffee when someone walked into est as he wants to be,”says longtime friend ishing range of public health concerns. He has the room with the news. British reg- and colleague Dr. Allen Kaiser, chief of staff either authored papers on or been quoted in ulators had shut down Chiron Corp. at Vanderbilt Hospital.“He’s a world author- scientific journals and in the public media on because of poor manufacturing practices, ity on vaccines. And the social, ethical, moral such topics as influenza; smallpox vaccine; and the 46 to 48 million doses of this Hepatitis A, B and E; emerging diseases; Iyear’s influenza vaccine the United States water-quality investigations; tuberculo- was expecting to receive would not be sis outbreaks; SARS; HIV/AIDS; menin- coming. That meant the U.S. was short gitis; streptococcus; tick-borne diseases; about half its needed annual supply. rabies; bioterrorism; food-borne ill- Soon afterwards the phone rang in nesses; and the perceived relationship the office of Clinton Colmenares, sen- of childhood immunizations to SIDS ior information officer and national news and autism. director for Vanderbilt University Med- “The usual mode is for investigators ical Center. It was Dr. William Schaff- to pick a narrow area and to become ner, speaking in hurried, hushed tones, evermore expert,”says Schaffner. “I’ve “Clinton, you’ve got a story here. This is done the exact opposite. I’ve taken a dis- big time. Huge.”Schaffner told him what cipline—epidemiology [the study of was happening with the flu vaccine. KRT/ORVILLE MYERS the causes and transmission of diseases “OK,”Colmenares responded.“When are and economical issues surrounding vaccines within a population]—and I’ve applied it you going to be available for interviews?” are enormous.” broadly and almost exclusively to issues of By that evening Schaffner, chairman of Since 1962, when Schaffner first arrived communicable diseases and how they occur Vanderbilt’s Department of Preventive Med- at Vanderbilt as an intern, he has worked in the community or among patients in our icine, had already conducted a number of tel- on honing his skills, not only as an expert in hospital. Also, the prevention of those com- evision, radio, print and online interviews, communicable diseases and international municable diseases, particularly through the assessing the problem and explaining strate- public health policy, but also in articulating use of vaccines, has evolved into another pre- gies for addressing the vaccine shortage. Aware complicated health matters in a way that is occupation of mine.” of the potential for a national panic attack, understandable to the lay public.“He knows he tried to be balanced and optimistic, but that by talking to one reporter, he can deliv- Right: A world authority on vaccines, Dr. he also chose to shoot straight about the seri- er a public health message and patient edu- William Schaffner articulates complicated ousness of the situation. Later that night in cation to the entire country,”Colmenares health matters in a way that is understand-

a CBS interview, Schaffner was the first pub- says.“In the eyes of the media, Bill legitimizes able to the lay public. DAVID JOHNSON

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The seeds for this preoccupation were ed a grant to begin an emerging diseases proof that,”he says. planted during Schaffner’s only departure gram. “The Medical School’s infectious dis- When the National Vaccine Advisory Com- from Vanderbilt—a two-year period, from ease division has offered us tremendous lab mittee advisers heard about the flu-vaccine 1966 to 1968, during which time he fulfilled support. We’re partnering with the Univer- shortage, they first experienced a wave of his selective-service obligation as a com- sity to address major public health issues like shock, then depression. However, they soon missioned officer in the U.S. Public Health emerging diseases.” took a collective breath and switched into Service and was assigned to the state health In addition to Craig, other Schaffner pro- coping mode. “That’s what we do in public department in Rhode Island. There he devel- tégés who chose to stay in Nashville are Dr. health,”Schaffner says. “We’re always given oped a determination to “bring the public Timothy Jones; Dr. Connie Hadley, now direct- lemons, but boy, do we know how to make health sector in this country closer to the aca- ing the state tuberculosis control program; lemonade.” demic structure.”In other words, he was going and Dr. Kelly Moore, who runs the state immu- Immediately, representatives of the CDC to come back to Vanderbilt and establish nization program. Although Dr. David Kirschke convened an emergency teleconference with close ties between the Medical Center and the left Nashville, he is now working in the North- members of the National Vaccine Advisory Tennessee Department of Health (TDH). eastern Tennessee regional public health office. Committee and others to plan the steps nec- At the time this concept of bridging the “We bring great talent into the state, and essary for addressing the problem. They were gap between public health and academia was we keep it!” crows Schaffner.“Our state health able to clarify how many flu shots were con- more radical than it may now seem. Public department’s communicable disease control taminated and therefore missing; how many health, after all, has little to do with the diag- division is now, in terms of talent, second to would be coming from the other manufac- nosis and treatment of patients, so crucial to none in the country.” turer, Aventis; and how many doses of the medical education. Instead it focuses on pre- Medical practitioners, he says, have always non-injectable FluMist vaccine its manufac- venting illness in whole populations. been referred to by two terms. One is “physi- turer, MedImmune, could provide. They then “I thought assisting, collaborating and cian,”from the Greek physic, meaning “med- began to adjust the national recommenda- cooperating with state health providers would icine” and referring to those who diagnose tions for who should have access to the lim- bring added value to our school of medicine,” and treat. But more commonly, they are known ited supply. And, in order to reduce public Schaffner says. “Rather than having bits of as “doctor,”from the Latin term for “teacher.” confusion, they had to make certain that every- excellence, rather than being insular, I want- “The teaching is as much a part of the prac- one who would be quoted in the press or on ed Vanderbilt to reach out and be part of the tice of medicine as the physic,” Schaffner says. television would be trilling the same tune. warp and woof of the community. So I devel- Back at Vanderbilt, in his role as chairman By noon Schaffner and others were ready oped a relationship with the people at TDH. of preventive medicine, Schaffner has over- for their cue to go on. Looking distinguished And I like to say I have a foot in each camp.” seen the development of two training pro- and reassuring with his silver hair and white In fact, Schaffner has become a pillar of the grams: the master’s program in public health, lab coat, he began speaking to the major news local, regional and statewide public health created by faculty members Wayne Ray and outlets.“Supplies are a little tight right now,” infrastructure. Starting in 1971 he began men- Dr. Marie Griffin, and a biostatistics training Schaffner said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We toring public health physicians who had been program, which has grown so large that it has have to realize that the era of dirt-cheap vac- assigned by the Centers for Disease Control spun off into its own department chaired by cines is over,”he told the New York Times. “If and Prevention (CDC) to carry out their two- Dr. Frank E. Harrell Jr. Since 1970, Schaff- you want some redundancy in the system to year tours of duty in Tennessee, just as Schaff- ner also has headed VUMC’s Infection Con- help you deal with glitches that will occur ner had been assigned to Rhode Island. trol Committee. from time to time, you need more [vaccine] In 1995, Schaffner scored a major break- “Bill’s forte has been in reading all the manufacturers,”he said to the Los Angeles through on this front. After training at the information from around the globe and being Times. And on he went over the next several TDH, Dr. Allen Craig decided to stay on and a leader in containment strategies for com- weeks, providing informed analysis to a wide is now Tennessee’s state epidemiologist and municable diseases,”says Dr. Allen Kaiser. spectrum of news sources. director of its Communicable and Envi- “Probably more than anybody else, he knows Schaffner compares this aspect of his ronmental Disease Services section. Craig what happens when germs are spread with- job to a physician caring for patients in an was the department’s first epidemiologist. in a community. He represents Vanderbilt, intensive care unit, having to make quick Today there are five, and Schaffner has been and as a fellow member of Vanderbilt, I am decisions based on inadequate informa- involved in training four of them. more respected around the country because tion. He says, “In public health we’re always “The collaboration between the state health of what he’s done.” making decisions based on inadequate department and Vanderbilt University is out- Schaffner, in fact, is profoundly aware of information. But there’s one difference: standing and is probably unique in the coun- his responsibility as one of the Medical Cen- When we make those decisions, we’re on try,”Craig says, adding that through the strength ter’s more visible ambassadors.“Believe me, camera. As soon as you make a decision in of Schaffner’s support, the TDH was award- every time I open my mouth I am mindful public health, somebody sticks a micro-

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The Flu Vaccine Delivery System: Tottering on the Edge of Disaster

he October surprise concerning this year’s flu-vaccine who believe they’ve had a bad reaction must file a complaint shortage was like the final burp from Yertle the Tur- within that program. Ttle, creating a domino effect that sent the vaccine- Even with that protection in place, vaccine manu- delivery kingdom tumbling into the mud. Yet, in hindsight, facturers have continued to drop out, lured away what happened was hardly a surprise at all. by the prospects of giant profits from so-called First, vaccines have become increasingly expensive blockbuster drugs—medicines that people must to manufacture and deliver. Influenza viruses typi- take on a regular basis for a long period of time. cally originate each year in the Far East, often Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Insti- in chickens and other fowl before being trans- tute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently ferred to humans. Because flu strains mutate explained to the Associated Press that a year’s quickly, one strain that appears one year will supply of Lipitor costs $1,608, and the equiva- not necessarily emerge the following flu sea- lent supply of Viagra, $3,500. Compare that to son. As a result, influenza experts gather annu- the $7 to $10 drug companies earn from flu ally in Geneva to determine which strains are vaccine. Plus, because the flu vaccine is recon- on the horizon and will cause the most disease stituted each year, any doses not used in a

worldwide. JULIE NOTARIANNI/KRT given season must be discarded. Past suppli- Manufacturers then spend the next six months growing up those ers have been forced to destroy millions of unused dosages—liter- strains in chicken eggs—typically one egg per dose of vaccine. That trans- ally watching their profits go up in smoke. lates to thousands of chickens that produce the 100 million doses of In light of this history, the U.S. was down to two manufacturers, vaccine required by the United States each year. Once a vaccine is mixed Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, for the flu shot deemed safe for the gener- into pharmaceutical form, it still must be delivered—and at a price afford- al public, and one manufacturer, MedImmune, for the inhaled FluMist able to the average citizen. vaccine, recommended for healthy people ages 5 to 49. It’s no won- In the 1980s and early ’90s, vaccine manufacturers began to exit the der, then, that when Chiron was shut down because it failed to meet qual- business. The FDA was ramping up costly safeguards to protect against ity-assurance standards, America’s public health officials, lacking a contamination, pharmaceutical companies were merging into massive backup supplier, suddenly began scrambling. conglomerates that considered vaccine production a low priority, and sup- Ironically, many of these same public-health officials have long warned pliers grew increasingly fearful of liability litigation if patients suffered that the nation’s current vaccine-delivery system is a house of cards. side effects. To stem the exodus, the United States implemented the “Perhaps,” Vanderbilt’s Dr. William Schaffner told the New York Times, National Vaccine Compensation program, placing a small surcharge on “this event will be like the drunk who has to bottom out before [he] seeks each dose of vaccine sold. Now, rather than sue the vaccine maker, those therapy.” —LISA A. DUBOIS

phone in front of you and asks, ‘Why did Schaffner insisted, “is an adult immuniza- and families, public health doctors have to you make that decision?’ I’ve always consid- tion program for diseases that kill tens of get their kicks out of implementing pro- ered that a challenge and great fun.” thousands every year.” grams and looking at curves on graphs that This attitude that embraces both good Perhaps government officials should show a reduction in disease, he says. “It’s an and bad press coverage has made Schaffner pay attention to his argument. For 42 years interesting and curious way to get satisfac- somewhat of an anomaly in academic med- he has been crusading on behalf of public tion,” Schaffner admits. “But I feel it’s the icine—a part of Vanderbilt, but also apart health initiatives, and again stepping back greatest kind of achievement when you from it. In a field of work that requires to get the global view, he sees the payoffs don’t have to build a children’s hospital with attention to the minutest of details, he has starting to roll in. a polio ward.” made a career out of stepping back and “We just built a new Vanderbilt Chil- assessing the big picture. dren’s Hospital,” he says. “What ward didn’t Lisa A. DuBois has been a freelance writer In the New York Times, he recently noted we put in it? We didn’t put in a polio ward. since 1985, penning stories for newspapers, that the Bush administration promised to Why? Vaccine! We’re now on the lip of elimi- magazines, radio and video. She has worked dedicate $5.6 billion for developing vac- nating polio from the world. Tell me that pre- as a regular contributor to several Nashville cines against anthrax and other biological vention is not the highest goal of medicine!” publications, including the Tennessean news- agents—for diseases that don’t exist any- While other physicians gain immediate paper. Her husband, Ray, is on the faculty at where in the world. “What we need,” gratification from interacting with patients Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Vanderbilt Magazine 31 VMagSpr05_pg32-37.P2 4/12/05 3:00 PM Page 32

The truth about a steamy campus underworld your Vuceptor never showed you.

By C LAIRE V ERNON S UDDATH, BA’04

Vanderbilt—a vibrant university full of students, professors, deans, assistant deans, associate deans, vice chancellors, assistant vice chancellors, and the people who make smoothies at Rand— has been one of Nashville’s most prominent landmarks since 1875. But there’s much more to the school than freshly cut lawns and well kept buildings. There’s also a reliably unlucky football team. But underneath the football team’s stadium—underneath the entire Vanderbilt campus, actually—runs an extraordinary series of underground tunnels that carry electricity, steam, telecommunications lines, and the occasional sneaky undergraduate. PHOTOS BY NEIL BRAKE 32 Spring 2005 VMagSpr05_pg32-37.P2 4/12/05 3:01 PM Page 33

WHAT LIES

BENEATH PHOTOS BY NEIL BRAKE VMagSpr05_pg32-37.P2 4/12/05 3:02 PM Page 34

Like most Vanderbilt students, I had heard many rumors about the infamous tunnels. I believed that one could use the tunnels to travel anywhere on campus without ventur- ing outside. I was told that a student caught in the steam tunnels earned immediate expul- sion, and I even heard the completely unfounded rumor that some people had once become trapped inside the tunnels and had never escaped. They resided underground, much like Danny DeVito’s Penguin character in “Batman Returns.” In truth, there are no giant, mutated penguin-people underneath Vanderbilt. There are, however, two types of tunnels: pedestrian tunnels that connect Stevenson Center buildings to the Vanderbilt University Med- ical Center, and the deep, dirty utility tunnels that run between 60 and 110 feet underground. The steam tunnels can reach temperatures of 120 degrees and require pas- sengers to travel in an uncomfortable crouch- ing position. The folks at Vanderbilt Magazine asked me to explore this often ignored side from discerning either my location or direc- of the University and find out what life among tion within its system. At one point we wan- the tunnels is really like. Needless to say, as a dered through one of the tunnel’s offshoots journalist, I decided to explore the spacious, and ended up in a hallway full of classrooms. air-conditioned pedestrian tunnels first. “Hey, I had a health economics class in that Vanderbilt Greenhouse Manager Jonathan room!” I exclaimed, pointing to a locked class- Ertelt, who once had an office near a tunnel room on my left. “But that means we’re in entrance, volunteered to take me through the the Math Building, which is on the other side pedestrian tunnels underneath Stevenson of Stevenson Center. How did we get over Center. An amiable man with a gray beard here?” Ertelt smiled at my confusion. and an almost fantastical adoration of plants, The Stevenson Center tunnels have cream- Ertelt spends most of his days in the brightly colored cinderblock walls and speckled tiled lit, climate-controlled greenhouse rooms atop floors—the same materials out of which every the molecular biology building. But today he elementary and middle school in America is and I would travel underground to a darker made. Because the tunnels lead to the Med- area of Vanderbilt. Or rather, one with bad ical Center, travelers encounter that distinct fluorescent lighting. hospital smell of disinfectant and illness. “They’re not that exciting,”Ertelt warned Unused gurneys and dumpster-shaped con- me as we took an elevator to the basement of tainers that bear the words “Hospital Linens” the molecular biology building.“I mean, the line the walls. tunnels are a lot of fun, but you’re not going During the day, busy commuters flutter to be surprised or anything.”The elevator through these pedestrian tunnels, traveling doors opened, and we walked down a bleak to and from the Medical Center like busi- hallway with yellow fluorescent lights. Ertelt nesspeople on a downtown city sidewalk. led me through a pair of swinging doors, and Nurses with clipboards take notes in front of suddenly the basement turned into one long, broken or excess inventory; people in hospi- narrow tunnel. The tunnel twisted, turned tal scrubs—doctors? med students?—run by and formed various offshoots, preventing me in a hurry; and maintenance men ride around

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on miniature versions of airport courtesy tunnel runs continuously from Sports Club Ertelt had shown me. From there we found carts, beeping at people to move out of the Field at the corner of 25th Avenue and Chil- a small, unlocked door that led to the util- way. An occasional undergrad may be found dren’s Way, past the Mayfield apartments, ity tunnels. I cannot divulge the exact loca- walking through the tunnels, but the popu- underneath Branscomb Quadrangle, and tion of this door—Vanderbilt doesn’t need lation is almost entirely professors, mainte- ends nearly half a mile away, just short of the hundreds of people running around under- nance workers and hospital employees. power plant. The Peabody College campus ground, but, more important, I’m not entirely At one point, Ertelt and I passed an open and main Vanderbilt campus are joined by a sure where the door actually is. closet filled with clear plastic tubes and com- tunnel running beneath 21st Avenue. The door was heavy, and although both plicated medical appliances. “What do you The oldest tunnel dates back to the early sides had handles, I worried that it would think those are?” he asked me. I stared at the 1920s, and Vanderbilt continuously constructs lock behind us. A thick metal tube lay on the hospital supplies and shrugged like the igno- and repairs its utility system every year. Petty ground near the door, so I propped it up and rant English major that I was. I never enjoyed explained that to build deep, underground used it as a doorstop. Once Paul and I were science in school and avoided it as much as tunnels, a crew must first dig out the space. sufficiently satisfied that we wouldn’t get possible during my undergraduate career at “Then they pour concrete over the sides and trapped inside the tunnels, we passed through Vanderbilt, choosing instead to focus on writ- floor. Once it dries, they lay the steam and the door and into the dark.“Oh, this is awe- ing and literature. I spent four years poring electrical lines and pour more concrete to some!” Paul cried. He ran off in front of me over term papers about Hemingway and cover it up.”The process is tedious and dis- while I looked around and wondered what I Chaucer while someone else at the University rupts Vanderbilt’s aesthetics, but without the had gotten myself into. The utility tunnels learned how to attach the clear plastic tubes tunnels the University could not function. were hot and dirty, and I was standing in a to lifesaving machines. I had no interest in I asked if students entered the tunnels on shallow puddle of an unidentifiable liquid these machines, but knew that one day I might a regular basis.“Not anymore,”Petty replied. that I hoped was just water. I had only been need one. There was more to this University, “A few years ago we found a Web site by a here for a minute, but already I was starting to Vanderbilt, than I would ever know. group called the Urban Explorers. They travel to sweat. This was not my idea of fun. We continued along the tunnels, walking around the country and hike or spelunk “Maybe we should go back,”I shouted among nurses and medical technicians. Ertelt through manmade buildings. They had a page to Paul, who was already yards ahead of showed me a few more passageways and short- about the Vanderbilt tunnels. They actually me, ducking under pipes and running around cuts, but my mind stayed with the machines went in the tunnels and took pictures, and corners to see where the tunnel led. I followed and the thought that the same University that we didn’t even know about it.”Vanderbilt after him slowly, watching where I walked. I taught me about T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland subsequently installed an alarm system and stepped around puddles, a dead cockroach, could also save my life. locked all the entranceways to the tunnels. and an empty soda can. Paul and I moved Ertelt knew everything there was to know I knew that students occasionally entered down a passageway, past humming steam about the pedestrian tunnels underneath the utility tunnels, and I was curious to see pipes and electrical lines. A thermometer Stevenson, but he couldn’t tell me much if I still could. Armed with a digital camera hanging from the tunnel ceiling indicated a about the deeper, mysterious utility tunnels. and a vague notion that the Stevenson Cen- temperature of 95 degrees. The further we For that information I had to go to Mark ter pedestrian tunnels somehow connected explored, the sweatier we became. The tun- Petty, director of buildings and utilities in to the utility tunnels, I resolved to enter the nels were exciting, but only because the act Plant Operations. underground world of Vanderbilt. I brought of visiting them felt daring and subversive. I found Petty in his office during lunch- along my boyfriend, Paul, for protection. I Aside from the initial thrill that came with time. He sat at a round wooden table in his told him it would be an exciting adventure, breaking the rules, they were humid and sticky first-floor office of the Bryan Building. A Diet but I really just wanted someone to keep me and gross and I didn’t feel the need to ever Coke and a poster-sized map of Vanderbilt company if I got arrested. visit them again. sat in front of him. Four large lines and many Paul and I entered Stevenson Center around Vanderbilt students would never use the smaller ones had been drawn on the map. 5 p.m. one Wednesday, after classes had ended tunnels to travel across campus; they’d arrive Petty explained that these lines represented but before the buildings were locked for the at class drenched in sweat and grime. The tun- the utility tunnels, round passageways lined night. I led the way through the basement of nels would probably make a good hazing test with cement, just small enough to require Stevenson, Paul following hesitantly behind. for fraternity pledges— not that hazing occurs pedestrians to crouch in an uncomfortable “Are you sure we should do this?” he asked. at Vanderbilt, no, definitely not —but a large position. More than two miles of tunnels “The tunnels probably won’t even be inter- group of people would make too much noise lie underneath Vanderbilt, most of them esting.”After wandering around aimlessly, and almost certainly be discovered. No, the stretching diagonally across buildings in a opening doors and peering down hallways, utility tunnels are best left to the workers at seemingly haphazard fashion. The largest we located the pedestrian tunnels Jonathan Plant Operations—people who know what

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each wire and pipe is for, and whether or not rels onto a truck. A van pulled up to the load- it’s safe to touch anything. The occasional stu- ing dock as another one drove off. People dent or sneaky Vanderbilt Magazine journal- moved to and fro, hauling this and moving ist might climb down there every once in a that, working to make Vanderbilt run as while, but conditions are uncomfortable and smoothly as possible. they probably wouldn’t stay very long. Paul and I stood off to the side, watch- After 10 minutes or so, Paul and I turned ing the spectacle.“I’ve never seen this side of around and retraced our steps to the heavy Vanderbilt before,”he whispered to me as a metal door. We left the underground tunnels man walked by with a large wooden crate. I and closed the door behind us, returning the was about to reply in kind, but the men rolled doorstop to its original location. But instead the nitrogen tanks toward the doors and we of going home, we decided to explore the jumped out of the way to let them pass. “I pedestrian tunnels once more. think we’re in the way,”I said. “We should Paul and I walked down the linoleum hall- probably go back.” ways of the Stevenson Center tunnels, happy We walked back through the tunnels, past to be away from the steam lines and high tem- doctors and dockworkers and people in uni- peratures. We entered the Medical Center forms I couldn’t identify. This was not the and looked at the unused gurneys and sur- Vanderbilt with which I was familiar. When gical equipment. Paul noticed a pair of dou- I graduated last May, I told myself that it was ble doors and wanted to see where they led, time to go; I had seen and done all this Uni- so we opened them and peeked inside. The versity had to offer. But in reality, the Uni- doors opened onto a Vanderbilt Medical Cen- versity had a whole other side I had yet to ter loading dock. A shipment of some kind explore. Professors and students take most had just arrived, and teams of workers were of the credit for Vanderbilt’s accomplish- unloading enormous metal tanks with the ments—scientific breakthroughs make the word “Nitrogen” printed on the front. To the local and national newspapers, alumni mag- side, other workers were rolling yellow bar- azines publish the achievements of notable graduates — but nothing would be possible without the employees to lug the nitrogen or the underground tunnels to carry hot water and telephone lines to the dormitories. Under- neath the green, manicured lawns at Van- derbilt lies a system of filthy steam pipes and electrical lines. Behind every beautiful building is a loading dock with unsightly tanks, barrels, crates, and workers who never went to college yet still work to make this one great. They are rarely recognized and almost never thanked, but they contribute more to Van- derbilt than I did with my term papers on Jane Austen or the football team with its occasional touchdown. Next time you’re at Vanderbilt for an alumni reunion or event, walk around campus and explore the areas you rarely ever see. Take time to appreciate the people and products that made your college experience possible. But don’t run around the utility tunnels or you’ll get me in trouble. V

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How to Build a Tunnel Underneath Vanderbilt in 12 Easy Steps (as explained by Jim Galbreath, mechanical engineer,Vanderbilt Department of Campus Planning and Construction)

Step 1: Figure out where you want the tunnels to go. You may want to Positioning System (GPS) is used. All the rock drilling is uphill so that run steam tunnels to the site of the new Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, if the tunnel floods—you’re 100 feet underground, beneath the water but you have to know where exactly to put them. Keep in mind that the table, after all—the water will drain away instead of drowning your tunnel construction site is very large and very, very deep underground. workers and equipment.

Step 2: Decide on the path you want the tunnels to take. Will they run Step 9: When your tunnel is drilled and you want to stop, you’ll need a in a straight line or curve around the buildings? Tunnels can only be way to get the drill out of the tunnel. You’re nowhere near the 100- drilled through solid rock, so you’ll probably want to design your path foot hole anymore, so you’ll need to make a new hole on the other around that fact. side. Use a caisson rig auger to “core drill” to the end of the tunnel.

Step 3: Dig a huge hole.To do this, you Step 10: Pull out the drilling equipment, and remove the train tracks. must first dig small holes with rock drills, then use explosives to blast the Step 11: Lay your steam lines, electric and fiber-optic cables, and any- rock. Dig more small holes, blast more thing else you want to put in the tunnel. rock, dig, blast, and so on until you have achieved your large hole, 100 feet deep Step 12: Erect buildings on top of the vertical holes, with stairways with a diameter of 60 feet.This may that lead to the tunnels.This is how you’ll get into the tunnels for take awhile. maintenance and repair work.

Step 4: Back on ground level, dig small holes along the path you want You’re done! the tunnel to take, to make sure you will be drilling through solid rock. If you encounter something that isn’t solid, return to step 2 and try again. Interesting fact: Every tunnel underneath Step 5: Lower the drilling equipment into the hole. Before you can do Vanderbilt has water running along its this, you must begin digging into the sides of the giant hole in the floor.Vanderbilt has tried several things areas where you want the tunnels to go.This must be done with rock to stop it, but nothing seems to work. drills. Dig a few feet on either side of the hole, so that when you bring Instead, they just pump the water out. the drill down the hole, you have extra room to back it up and position A quarter million gallons of water are it just right. pumped out of the tunnels every day. This water is used to irrigate the Student Step 6: The machine that makes the tunnels is an oversized drill called Recreation Center’s playing fields. a “rock boring machine,” with a drill head that’s 8.5 inches in diameter. As it turns, it fractures the rock into fist-sized bits that are carried away by little train cars, Problems you may encounter during the drilling process: similar to the ones coal miners used to carry their coal away. Scenario 1: Sometimes the rock is not drillable, but you won’t realize Like real trains, these cars run it until you try to drill it.This happened north of Olin Hall during the on train tracks, so you will need recent Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital tunnel construction. to lay down a few feet of track Vanderbilt hired an independent company to pump concrete in front of to get the drill going.This is the the drill.Then it drilled through the concrete instead of the rock.This same type of drill that was used added an extra $180,000 to the total cost of the project. to build the Chunnel, the rail tunnel that runs underneath the English Channel and connects England Scenario 2: Your tunnel could flood.This happened underneath Morgan to France.The Chunnel drill, however, had a drill head that was 25 feet Hall. Water gushed out and, as with a normal pipe leak, the engineers in diameter.Vanderbilt’s drill is tiny in comparison. plugged it up. A metal plate was placed over the leak to act as the plug.The plate had a pipe with a pressure gauge to show how much Step 7: The drill stations itself with little metal feet that press against water was pushing down on the tunnel. It turned out they were drilling the rock as it drills.To begin drilling, pour concrete along the sides of 40 feet below the water level, so the engineers laid some pipe and ran the tunnel so the drill can get a good grip. the water back to the power plant, where it was used to make steam.

Step 8: Start drilling! The drill is driven by electrical power and can Scenario 3: The tunnel could collapse.The rock may start to crumble, in only move four to five feet at one time. After that, it retracts its legs, which case you can cover it with a thick wire mesh to keep it in place. moves up and repeats the process. It moves very slowly. As it drills, you’ll need to continue laying train tracks and hauling fractured rock Does this sound like fun to you? For the low price of $7.65 million, to the vertical hole.The train cars are then hoisted to the surface by you too can build tunnels exactly like the ones underneath the new crane and hauled off by truck.The old drills used a laser to help the Children’s Hospital. operator steer them in the right direction, but now a Global —CLAIRE SUDDATH VMagSpr05_pg38-43.P2 4/12/05 3:12 PM Page 38

Signal Strength PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT BAUMGARDNER By PAUL KINGSBURY, BA’80

Mark Mays, BA’85, was approaching graduation at Vanderbilt, he was his brother’s recruiting pitch,“and said,‘Look, the rules have changed; we’re going to start Asat an age-old crossroads: Would he join the family business? growing.’” His father, Lowry Mays, had founded and headed a small but successful The “rules” were the Federal Communi- cations Commission’s longstanding limits on group of radio stations headquartered in San Antonio. In 1984 the elder radio-station ownership by single companies. In the ’90s, a rising tide of media dereg- Mays took the company public and expanded to 12 stations. Signs looked ulation swept through Washington. No one good for the company’s future. There was never any pressure to join his was more poised for explosive growth than Clear Channel and the Mays triumvirate, father’s company, Mark says, but still it was something he wrestled with. though few people outside the company had “You know, you have those thoughts: What do I want to do? Do I always any clue at the time. When the dust cleared in 2002, Clear Chan- want to live in my father’s shadow? Or do I want to do my own thing?” nel had grown from 16 radio stations to more than 1,200 and had become America’s largest Mark decided to go his own way. He grad- evision station. The company also had devel- single owner of radio stations by far. (Its clos- uated with a degree in economics and went oped a dependable business model for growth: est competitors, Cumulus and Citadel, own into investment banking in Dallas, then “Find a station in debt, buy it, and turn it just over 200 apiece.) But that’s just the tip earned an M.B.A. at Columbia University around,”as a 2003 Fortune article succinctly of the iceberg; today Clear Channel is a diver- in 1989. The spring he was finishing up at put it. Part of Mark’s job was to build rela- sified media company with 39 TV stations, Columbia, he was weighing offers from Wall tionships with banks to finance that growth. more than 770,000 billboards and outdoor Street investment firms when his father He did his job very well, and the company ad displays worldwide (they’re No. 1 in China), phoned and asked if Mark would consider continued to prosper. In 1993, Mark per- and more than 100 U.S. concert-perform- joining the family business as company treas- suaded his younger brother Randall, who had ance venues, and the company is America’s urer and head of finance. an M.B.A. from Harvard and was working in leading concert-booking firm. In addition to “Dad had just lost his finance guy that mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs, being the top radio-station owner, arguably spring,”Mark recalls, “and he said, ‘If you to join the company as treasurer and chief Clear Channel also has the most bankable want to come, now is a good opportunity.’ I financial officer, while Mark moved up to stable of syndicated radio talent in the coun- thought, OK, I’ll try it for a couple of years.” president and chief operating officer and dad try through its Premiere Radio Networks sub- When Mark joined, Clear Channel Com- remained CEO. sidiary, which brings listeners such well known munications had 16 radio stations and a tel- “Mark called me one day,”says Randall of radio celebrities as Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT BAUMGARDNER Vanderbilt Magazine 39 Schlessinger, Casey Kasem and Glenn Beck. No one was more poised midday shift for San Antonio. Thanks to tech- Add it all up, and in 2003 Clear Channel’s nology, he can run the program just as if revenues were nearly $9 billion; as of late 2004 for explosive growth than he were in San Antonio. its market value was $19 billion. “Our guy out of Atlanta gets information This past October, after 10 years as chief the Mays triumvirate. via the Internet on what the station’s involved operating officer and 15 years overall with with and what we’re doing,”says Glade. “He the company, Mark Mays, aged 41, was con- When the dust cleared, is a weather guy, so when he is sure of the firmed as CEO of Clear Channel by the 10- weather patterns, he’ll talk about it being sunny member corporate board of directors. He had Clear Channel had grown and bright and in the 90s today. He is really been serving as interim CEO since May 2004, good at what he does and very effective. The when his father eased into the role of chair- quality of this guy out of Atlanta is far bet- man of the board for health reasons. from 16 radio stations ter than what we could afford if [we had to In this age of internal corporate power add this person to our staff]. And that’s our struggles (Walt Disney, Viacom) and family to more than 1,200— goal: to bring the best possible voice or host dysfunction, one of America’s most success- to make it as great a station as we possibly can. ful media companies is essentially run by one America’s largest single You can actually get 56 signals in San Anto- family in a harmonious, low-profile way. How nio—and obviously we’re fighting to get as do they make it work so well? And yet why owner of radio stations. many of those ears as we can.” have they encountered flak from the media Welcome to radio in the 21st century. These along the way? days Clear Channel’s program directors put together a menu from a smorgasbord that lear Channel owns seven radio sta- where the DJs, news staff and program direc- includes prepackaged, nationally famous syn- tions in San Antonio (in addition to tors handle the broadcasting. I remark that dicated programs (Rush Limbaugh, Casey Can NBC-affiliate TV station and a the operation is surprisingly compact con- Kasem’s Countdown), voice-tracked DJs from concert amphitheater). The radio stations are sidering that seven stations are broadcasting anywhere in the Clear Channel family, and all housed in an unobtrusive, two-story gray out of it. “Well, that’s the world of deregu- staff employees who are “live and local.” building with blue awnings, located on an lation and consolidation,”says Glade.“We’ve The goal is to deliver the most compelling access road just off a busy interstate about a really functionalized everything.”Housing programs at lowest cost because compelling 20-minute drive from headquarters. It’s the stations together is a cost-saving hallmark of programs deliver good ratings, which deliver kind of boxy, suburban building that could Clear Channel. good-paying advertisers. easily hold a bakery and a dentist’s office— We walk upstairs to see where the broad- Critics of today’s radio have complained as it did before Clear Channel expanded and casting happens. There are 11 small stu- that the sheer size of Clear Channel and other filled the building in the past few years. You dios upstairs: one each for the seven stations large radio groups—coupled with the use of might not know that this was a radio beehive and four production studios. They ring the voice tracking and syndication—has led to if not for the large radio tower rising over the perimeter of the building, each with win- a homogenization of radio and a one-size- roof from the back of the building. dows on one side that look out on the world fits-all series of playlists. But Randall Mays, Tom Glade gave me a quick tour of the and weather, and windows looking into the company CFO, vehemently disagrees. He facility. Glade is the San Antonio market man- the interior hallway. As we walk around, of says each station’s programming is tailored ager, the man in charge of all seven radio sta- the seven stations that are on the air, four of specifically to its local market.“I think prob- tions. He presides over a staff of just over 100 them have DJs working in them. The other ably the most fundamental misconception full-time employees and numerous part- three are empty, but they’re on the air. Through today is that radio is becoming a homoge- timers. A friendly, energetic guy in his 50s the miracle of satellite feeds and DSL lines, nized medium, that every station plays the with a Midwestern accent and wire-rim glasses, they are carrying prerecorded programming same songs. That just couldn’t be farther he tells me he’s been in radio for 30 years and from elsewhere. In the radio trade, this phe- from the truth. At the end of the day, a radio with Clear Channel for the last three. nomenon is called “voice tracking.”With station only exists to serve its listeners. With- “When I started my career,”he says,“you voice tracking, a radio personality can record out listeners we don’t have a business model. could only own 12 stations in 12 different a program in advance—perfectly synchro- Our product is one of the very few products markets. Deregulation has altered it more nized with the music and ads—which is then in the world that someone gets for free. As than any other single change. And Clear Chan- available to stations near and far, including long as we can attract listeners, we can then nel and the Mayses took the greatest advan- the home station. Today Rush Limbaugh is sell advertising. But if we can’t attract an tage of that opportunity.” going out over WOAI-AM through syndi- audience, we have nothing. We spend hun- The ground floor houses the sales, pro- cated satellite feed. Over on Soft Rock 101.9, dreds of millions of dollars every year in motion and business functions. Upstairs is a Clear Channel jock in Atlanta handles the research and billions of dollars on pro-

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gramming [over the long term] to figure out on the ground floor in radio. His introduc- to build and to be aggressive,”says Mark of what our listeners want to hear. And we play tion to working in radio was a summer job at his father,“but I think he would tell you that what they want to hear.” one of his father’s San Antonio stations. So he didn’t feel like he’d built it, and then turned what sort of cushy, glamorous music gig did it over to me. I think he would tell you that owry Mays got into the radio business the teenager score? Construction work. Ham- Randall and I were partners along the way.” quite by accident in 1972. He was an mering. Putting up dry wall. Hauling mate- In this day and age, though, it’s highly Lestablished San Antonio investment rials.“I was the schlepper and the construction unusual for a multimedia entertainment cor- banker when he loaned a friend $125,000 to guy,”Mark recalls with a laugh,“building out poration of Clear Channel’s size to be man- buy a struggling local FM station. When a radio station with a hammer and nails.You aged essentially as a family business. Lowry, the friend was unable to repay the debt, Lowry get those jobs for a summer, and you realize Mark and Randall Mays have worked together was stuck with a radio station. Mays asked why you want to go to Vanderbilt.” running Clear Channel since 1993, and they’ve another friend, a used-car dealer, to help him Lowry Mays was the founder, CEO and presided over its remarkable growth. (In addi- run the station, and they made it work. public face of Clear Channel for more than tion, Mark and Randall’s older sister, Kathryn Three years later Lowry Mays bought 30 years, until a blood leakage in his brain, Johnson, is vice president of communica- another San Antonio station, this one an AM and subsequent surgery and convalescence, tions for the company.) Many families find talk station, WOAI, with a license to broad- required the 69-year-old patriarch to turn they can hardly get along during holiday get- cast at the FCC maximum of 50,000 watts. It over the reins. (At press time, Lowry Mays togethers. How do the Mayses manage to run was a “clear channel” station, one of only a was back visiting the office twice a week.) I a successful Fortune 500 company together? few with its own nationwide frequency. And asked Mark if he had been prepared to suc- “I think the reason you see so many dif- from that station a company name was born, ceed his father as CEO so soon. ferent families fall apart is because every- and perhaps also a long-term vision. body’s got a different agenda,”says Mark. Though it’s now an international com- “Randall and I have a similar agenda. We not pany with a presence in 65 countries, Clear only respect each other’s point of view but Channel is still based in San Antonio, about also each other’s goals in life. Luckily, our five miles north of the city center in subur- goals have been pretty similar.” ban Alamo Heights. The company head- “We can be absolutely honest with each quarters is tucked into a cozy spot with a golf other because we know there are no hidden course immediately behind and the well- agendas,”adds Randall in a separate inter- heeled and sprawling Alamo Quarry Market view.“Mark and I are comfortable in our own shopping center just across the street in front. abilities. We’re not trying to prove anything. The Clear Channel building is handsome, a We’re just trying to run a good company. tasteful blend of the rustic Southwest and We’re both hypercompetitive, but we’re not high-tech polish. It is modestly sized for a competitive remotely toward each other. And multibillion-dollar media company, with so we channel that competitiveness externally nothing about it that remotely suggests the “Mays is the one rather than internally.” power and reach of this company. we’re going to be The Mays family certainly was ready to reading about,” On a rainy Monday morning in Novem- compete in the ’90s. When Mark joined Clear friends back in ber, Mark Mays welcomed me into his roomy, college predicted. Channel as treasurer in 1989, the FCC had a well-lit second-floor office that overlooks the strict ceiling on radio ownership: a maximum golf course and is adjacent to his father’s of 24 radio stations nationally and no more almost identical space. On the wall above than two in any single city (one FM and one Mark’s classic banker’s wooden desk hung “I already had the title of president and AM). Such caps on broadcast ownership date snapshots of his wife and children. chief operating officer,”says Mark, “and all back to the 1940s with Franklin Roosevelt’s Mark was dressed casually in short sleeves, the reports reported in to me. So I’m not sure administration; initially, owners were lim- light slacks and tasseled loafers befitting it’s a whole lot different today than it was a ited to just one station. The FCC’s original the warm south Texas weather. Trim and year ago. We still have his guidance and wis- intent was to encourage business competi- youthful with an easy smile and a strong hand- dom. And we’ve always talked about succes- tion and to discourage monopolies of the shake, he comes across as relaxed, patient with sion planning. I don’t think it was a shock to public airwaves because of radio’s power to others and comfortable with himself, the sort many people.” influence mass opinion. But the landscape of of person who puts you immediately at ease. Though Mark is the first to admit his father media and communication changed dra- Definitely not your classic monomaniacal, deserves much of the credit for the company’s matically with the rise of broadcast televi- Type-A-personality CEO. expansion, he sees himself and his brother as sion in the 1950s, cable television in the ’70s You could say that Mark Mays started out equal partners. “He definitely had the drive and ’80s, and the Internet in the ’90s. In

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response, the FCC loosened media owner- was what you did, he used Wall Street money driven but always balanced. Academically, ship restrictions over the years. Beginning in and high leverage when that was what you he would be doing great”—to which she adds the ’80s the FCC took an increasingly free- did to grow, and now that conservative bal- with a laugh,“but he didn’t spare any fun.” market approach, reasoning that the prolif- ance and dividends are back in, that’s what Patti double-majored in elementary and eration of media platforms meant that it he steered it to. … And he was always very special education (“graduated No. 2 in her would be increasingly difficult for a few com- good at managing the company to make the class,”Mark says), then went on to teach fifth panies to monopolize media voices and that best returns and the fastest growth and high- grade for three years in a public school in her radio stations that served listeners would be est growth possible.” hometown of St. Louis. All the while, she and rewarded with high ratings, while those that “When you link good operations with Mark kept the relationship going long dis- had unappealing programming would lose desire and access to capital, it enables you to tance while he was in Dallas and New York. ratings and, as a result, the ad dollars that are grow quickly,”says Mark.“Everybody had the In 1989 they married, and Mark took the job radio’s lifeblood. same opportunities as us. It’s just the focus with his father. Slim and spirited, Patti Mays In 1992 the FCC loosened ownership and desire. And as I always say, it doesn’t hurt comes across as a very good match for her restrictions to 36 radio stations nationally, being in the right place at the right time.” husband. No longer a schoolteacher, today and then to 40 stations in 1994. But the big she is a full-time homemaker and mother of transformation came in 1996, when Presi- five boys and a baby girl: Ryan (13), Patrick dent Clinton signed the Telecommunications (11), Daniel (9), Andrew (6), Matthew (2) Act, which had been overwhelmingly passed and Maggie (1). by both houses of Congress. The nationwide Asked about the perks of being in the limit on stations was completely removed, media business, Patti notes the regular oppor- with restrictions only on the number of sta- tunities to take the older kids to selected con- tions a company may own in a single market certs at Clear Channel’s San Antonio (eight being the absolute maximum in the amphitheater and for occasional family travel largest markets). with Mark. Mostly, though, she appreciates “I would suspect,” says Lon Helton, the balance that Mark has struck between Nashville bureau chief for the trade maga- business and family, despite the corporate zine Radio & Records, “if you had asked in demands. She points out Mark’s involvement March of 1996 when the Telecom Bill was Mays on his personal with coaching his sons’ basketball and soc- passed who was going to emerge as the biggest listening preference: cer teams, church and school events, and reg- player, most radio professionals would not “I’m a news/talk junkie.” ular outings with the boys to hike, fish and have said Clear Channel.” camp. “I can definitely sense that our chil- Through a series of bold acquisitions, dren look at him as a dad who’s there for Clear Channel quickly leapfrogged over the ark’s wife, Patti Sullivan Mays, them, who’s around,”she says. competition. In 1996 Clear Channel went BS’86 (Peabody), has been watch- Music is a big part of their lives. Patti and from 43 radio stations to 101. In the next Ming the growth of Clear Channel some of the boys are taking piano lessons; three years, they grew to 557 stations and and Mark’s growth as an executive for a long another son plays percussion in the school more than 500,000 billboards. In 2000 they time. She and Mark began dating at Vander- band. Mark confesses to having had piano les- completed two huge deals, adding 443 more bilt when she was a freshman and he was a sons that didn’t really take, and just enough stations by acquiring rival company AMFM sophomore. At that time, Clear Channel had, guitar to learn four chords—enough to get for $23.5 billion and then diversifying into she thinks,“maybe seven stations. So it’s been him through most country songs, he laughs, concert promotion, performance venues and amazing to see the growth of the company. as country star Vince Gill once told him onstage. talent management when they acquired SFX I’ve had a front-row seat.” Asked to name his favorite artists, Mark Entertainment for another $4.4 billion. Patti says that even though it wasn’t cer- recalls a recent weekend drive with the boys “They built a very large, profitable com- tain Mark would go to work for his father, it as a good example and reels off the CDs that pany,”says media consultant Robert Unmacht seemed clear early on that he had the drive were in the player: the Rolling Stones, Brooks of in3Partners. “I mean, look what they put and focus to be a top corporate executive.“One & Dunn, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson. On together. They have consolidated this thing of the first things I noticed when I met him is the radio, Patti tends to tune in soft rock, very quickly and efficiently and without that he was energized. And he always had an while Mark’s No. 1 choice is talk radio (“I’m too many missteps. Made some people mad, agenda, whether it was socially or academi- a news/talk junkie”), followed by country and but so has every other big company. I think cally. I saw right away that he was able to soft rock. The kids listen mostly to current Lowry is very good—he knows Wall Street. balance a lot, and his friends would tease him hits. “I try to listen to my kids’ music,”says If you go back over the history of the com- about that. They would say, ‘Mays is the one Mark, “except the kids now want to listen pany, you’ll see that he used debt when debt we’re going to be reading about.’He was very to hip-hop, and I can only take that for so

42 Spring 2005 long.”He chuckles as if to say,“Hey, you know inks,”which would allow Clear Channel to Clear Channel operated how it is: I stick it out as long as I can.”Through change billboard displays inexpensively at Clear Channel technology, the family has different hours. Imagine, says Mark: “Star- underneath the radar piped-in access to the entire company’s radio bucks in the morning going in and Seagram’s library of thousands of songs, which they play in the evening as you’re going home.”Clear while it grew large and around the house regularly, sampling differ- Channel has already installed changing LCD ent stations around the company. Mark says advertising displays at high-traffic locations successful. But since its there’s no rule requiring the family to listen in New York. only to Clear Channel stations, though he Investors and Wall Street have been big fans emergence as the giant, happily sticks to his company’s lineup in his of Clear Channel’s management and growth. own listening. In 1999 the Wall Street Journal named Clear Typically, Mark says he works from about Channel the fifth-best-performing stock of the Clear Channel has been 8 to 6:30 weekdays at the office, plus another ’90s. Anyone who had invested $1,000 in the hour or two of late-night computer work after company when its stock was first offered for questioned by many his children have gone to bed. He travels reg- sale in 1984 and held on to it would have made ularly, about five or six days a month.“Time $132,000. In 2004 Fortune named Clear Chan- about the concentration management is by far the most challenging nel the fifth-most-admired entertainment com- aspect of everything I do,”he says.“You just pany in its list of “Most Admired Companies,” of media power. have to prioritize which things you need to an annual poll of 10,000 business executives get done.”It helps that he lives just five to 10 and stock analysts; this is the third straight year minutes from the office.“Two stoplights,”he Clear Channel has made the list. says with the knowing chuckle of someone For nearly 30 years Clear Channel oper- “Hackers attack Microsoft because it’s who’s won the commuting lottery. ated underneath the media’s radar while it Microsoft. A lot of it has to do with sheer size. grew large and successful, and it didn’t devote Like anything else, the 2,000-pound gorilla oday Clear Channel is a diversified much time to public relations. But since its gets the most attention.” media company, with a revenue mix emergence as the giant of radio, Clear Chan- Some of the very things Clear Channel has Tof 65 percent from radio, 20 percent nel has been questioned and sometimes crit- done to grow its business and improve its bot- from outdoor advertising, 5 to 6 percent from icized by news organizations, public-interest tom line so successfully have also drawn the concert business, and 3 percent from tele- groups, Web sites, the FCC, even a Senate Com- criticisms of media. Take, for example, its use vision.“Most of our businesses are advertis- merce Committee investigation on radio con- of voice tracking and syndication. Mark Mays ing driven,”Mark points out. Since they have solidation—many voicing concern about the notes that, on average, only about 8 percent acquired television stations, billboards and concentration of media power within the hands of Clear Channel programming is voice tracked live entertainment businesses in addition of fewer corporate owners and sometimes sug- and that voice-tracking DJs never pretend to to their radio stations, the Mayses have made gesting that Clear Channel’s very size is threat- be somewhere they’re not. Yet, Clear Chan- cross-promotions a key part of their busi- ening. This past fall both Forbes and Rolling nel is often held up as the poster child for ness, linking radio-station promotions to Stone did major stories that revisited old com- bland, deceptive, non-local corporate radio. concerts to billboard advertising. A rock singer plaints. Then in November, David Letterman Clear Channel’s synergy between its radio booked, for example, by Clear Channel into used a guest appearance by shock jock Howard and concert divisions has also come under Clear Channel venues also can be promoted Stern to bring up the Rolling Stone article and fire. There have been allegations that Clear on Clear Channel radio and TV stations and toss a few barbs Clear Channel’s way. Channel unfairly withholds airplay from on Clear Channel billboards nationwide. Sim- To be fair, says media consultant Robert musical artists who don’t tour with Clear ilarly, in those cities like San Antonio, where Unmacht, Clear Channel “did what they were Channel and denies competing concert pro- the company owns TV as well as radio sta- allowed to do by the Telecommunications moters choice advertising slots on Clear Chan- tions, Clear Channel utilizes air talent on both Act of 1996. … And that spurred a giant con- nel stations. Clear Channel has stated repeatedly to reinforce air-personality familiarity and solidation—all approved by Congress—and that these charges are untrue. Mark Mays the station brand. Clear Channel shouldn’t be faulted for tak- notes, for example, that when pop singer Brit- Clear Channel has bought and is working advantage of what the law said it could ney Spears complained about reduced air- ing on technological innovations that improve do. But guess what, it made people unhappy! play when she didn’t tour with Clear Channel, the delivery of information and entertain- So now they’re horrible for doing what the the company pulled out their logbooks and ment. The company’s Instant Live technol- law said they could do.” was able to show that they had actually played ogy offers concert-goers live CD recordings “Whenever you’re the biggest in any busi- her more than when she had toured with the of Clear Channel concerts immediately after ness, you get the most attention and the most company. And though the charges of anti- the show. On the horizon are so-called “magic arrows,”adds Radio & Records’ Lon Helton. continued on page 86

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During the summer of 2003, Vanderbilt University Divinity School Professor Fernando F. Segovia directed a travel seminar titled “Religion and Society in Cuba” for Divinity School students and alumni. After 41 years of absence, he returned to his native country with his wife, Elena Olazagasti-Segovia, senior lecturer in Spanish in the College of Arts and Science. Segovia recounted his experiences during a community breakfast sponsored by the Divinity School last April. The text of this article is derived from his remarks. Accompanying Segovia’s homecoming story are photographs by Peabody College alumnus E. Wright Ledbetter, MEd’00, who traveled to Cuba five times between 1997 and 2001 in an effort to capture the small Caribbean island’s mystery, culture and people with his camera. In 2002 the University of New Mexico Press published Ledbetter’s stun- ning collection of photographs in the book Cuba: Picturing Change, which may be purchased from booksellers including amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. The images seen here are from that book. Vanderbilt Magazine is grateful to Professor Segovia for granting permission to publish his lecture, and to Wright Ledbetter for allowing the use of his photography in this issue. 40 Years Later VMagSpr05_pg44-53.p3 4/12/05 11:06 AM Page 45

“Untitled #11,” 1999 VMagSpr05_pg44-53.p3 4/12/05 11:07 AM Page 46

Given my still-raw memories of our departure, our characterization and treatment as the dregs of society, I had come prepared for the worst.

“Parked Car,” 1999

orty years later, I returned. On July European nations, formerly members of the before the Transition itself. From a personal 10, 1961, I boarded a KLM flight Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Eco- point of view, such a trip was both overdue from La Habana, Cuba, to Miami, nomic Assistance (COMECON), were to be and imperative. Way overdue, because I had U.S.A. It was the height of the Cold found at various stages in the process of join- long wanted to share my Cuba with my wife, War, indeed one of its hottest ing the European Community and the North just as she had shared her Puerto Rico with Fmoments: Three months earlier, in April, the Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Rus- me, bringing me back to the magic and tragedy Bay of Pigs invasion had taken place; a month sia itself was but a specter of its former impe- of the Caribbean after years of absence. Highly later, in August, the building of the Berlin rial presence and power. My envisioned sojourn imperative, because not only was my own life Wall would begin. Mine was to have been a in the North had by then become a lifetime. beginning what I can only hope will be a broad temporary absence—a period of brief exile Why did I return at this point? From a his- turn toward fulfillment, but also because the in el Norte. On June 4, 2003, I boarded an torico-political perspective, the time was ideal. death of my father in the spring of 2001 had Aeroméxico flight from Cancún, Mexico, With the myths and stereotypes of Cuban awakened in me a profound desire, a deeply to La Habana. The Cold War was by now a reality and experience in swift collapse, both felt need, to go back—to resume the begin- distant memory, frozen in time. More than on the island and in the diaspora, the sense ning of my life, to see where we had lived, and a decade had elapsed since the demolition of of a forthcoming and inevitable transition to walk where we had walked. the Berlin Wall (1989) and the dissolution of was unmistakable. This would be a chance to Indeed, this was a return haunted by spir- the U.S.S.R. (1991). The socialist block of observe and analyze the transition at work its. Spirits of the past, to be sure, but also spir-

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its of the present and of the future. The sight- and events, dates and stories. I knew where to modations and attractions, conditions in the ings weaved in and out at will and without go and where to turn, what I would find city are desolate indeed. There was little fail. These were insistent spirits—forcing and what had happened there. I was in my new construction, none of note, since the their way upon me, claiming my attention, city and among my people, and my memory, 1950s; the existing construction, much of it pointing the way. I should like to share a few physically triggered into action after a long dating from the first half of the 20th century, of these encounters with you. hiatus, gushed abundantly and endlessly. was in a state of thorough abandonment and From the moment I set foot on the tarmac As I wandered around La Habana, an severe disrepair. Buildings and houses colin Cuba to the moment I boarded my flight habanero re-found, I was struck by the unreal lapsed and close to collapse; overcrowded out, I was met with nothing but warmth and combination of magnificence and deteriora- homes and precarious living arrangements; hospitality from the people of Cuba. Given tion of the city. The city finds itself, at pres- worn-out paint, condemned balconies and my still-raw memories of our departure, our ent, in an advanced and advancing state of doors, boarded-up windows. Yet, behind characterization and treatment as the dregs decay. Aside from the outstanding project such signs of moribund neglect, still very of society, I had come prepared for the worst. of renovation and reconstruction at work in much a glorious city, even in ruins. Its dis- Not once, however, did I receive or hear a the Old Quarter, La Habana Vieja, and away tinguished perch on the sea; its broad and challenge or an insult, neither from the peo- from the well-kept areas of tourist accom- elegant avenues; its magnificent street por- ple on the streets nor from governmental authorities. Going through customs upon arrival, I was asked how long ago I had left the country and then greeted with a word of welcome. Going through customs for departure, I was asked whether the trip had been fulfilling for me and then invited to return. In between: openness, helpfulness, friendli- ness. Such was the Cuba I remembered. I was overjoyed to see and feel such sentiments again, despite all the conflicts and the tra- vails, though I would readily confess to a touch of sadness as well, for a people too kind for its own good—the mark and scourge of the Caribbean in general. Throughout, not only did I feel Cuban again, in a way that I had not in decades— not even in Miami, the capital of the diaspora—but also I was acknowledged as Cuban everywhere and by everybody. From the hotel porter who brought our bags to the room on the very night of our arrival, to all sorts of individuals with whom I had dealings, to people on the streets with whom I would exchange pleasantries or have a chat. All, without fail, would remark,“But, you are from here” and, similarly without fail, would proceed to ask me how long I had been away. Then, upon learning of the circumstances of my visit, my long absence and first return, they would express profound sympathy for the emotions surmised at work within me—many pointing to their own hearts, with a palpitating gesture, as they spoke—and welcomed me back. Such identification was not simply a matter of language. It was that, to be sure, but far more as well. Indeed, I walked through the city with full remembrance of things and places, people “Boris y Anicia,” 2001

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I distinctly recall the early tirades against the exploitation of women, most concretely in terms of prostitution, and the social and cultural conditions responsible for such practices. All would be equal, women and men, with full access and full dignity.

“Liliasne, Santiago de Cuba,” 2000

tals for blocks on end, providing shelter from culture and society. Access to certain facili- white and all shades in between. But I expe- the furious rain and the merciless sun of the ties and spaces reserved for foreigners and rienced racial discrimination everywhere. I Tropics; its striking architecture, from the denied to locals. visited tourist facilities with not one person colonial to the modernist, all thrown together I distinctly recall the early tirades against of color on the staff and where persons of in delirious mixture. From across the bay, the exploitation of women, most concretely color were denied access, creating difficult taking in such splendor and degradation at in terms of prostitution, and the social and situations for foreigners of darker skin. I also once from the ramparts of the old fortress cultural conditions responsible for such prac- observed a preponderance of people of color of La Cabaña, I could not but intone a solemn tices. All would be equal, women and men, in the poorer neighborhoods of the city and hymn of praise and lamentation. with full access and full dignity. But I heard their absence from the circles of the elite. Despite undeniable achievements in the many stories of ongoing machismo and saw I well recall the tirades against the excesses social realm, such as education and medicine, few women among the circles of the elite. I of wealth and the presence and consequences I found the contradictions at the heart of the also witnessed the trade of sexual tourism at of poverty. All would share all. But I encoun- system overwhelming, beyond all expectations. work, openly. Mostly, local women courting tered signs of poverty everywhere: people I well remember the early denunciations foreign men—strikingly attractive young begging for anything in the streets; stores with against the virtual system of separation at women and strikingly repulsive older men— next to nothing on the shelves; clinics and work in society and culture, with access to in search of a few dollars for themselves and pharmacies almost entirely devoid of med- certain properties and spaces reserved for the their families. icines; a measure of homelessness; sharp upper classes and denied to the lower classes. I well remember the early denunciations unemployment and underemployment. I also All would belong to all. During this visit, against racial discrimination in society and encountered signs of wealth, none more lac- though, I witnessed ongoing separation in culture at large. All would be equal, black and erating than the abundance of goods in phar-

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macies and stores trading in foreign curren- exchange views on any subject. This they did I came back as a man in full maturity, older cies, both the dollar and the euro. in the open, without any palpable sense of than most, a fountain of information and an Such a house—a house that has created so fear, even when there were authorities round object of deference. I, unlike so many others many well trained men and women in so many about. With me in particular, once identified now, had known the times prior to, of, and fields, some of whom we had the privilege of as Cuban and further established as born in following the Revolution. I, unlike all, had meeting—I reflected to myself, cannot stand, the island but living abroad, the lines of inquiry known the world of Cuba and the world out- not given its principles and commitments. were broad, rapid, endless. side Cuba. I was a window on history, an As I made my way around the city, with Through such exchanges I learned much informant on the world, and an invaluable the group in tow, I was fascinated by the num- about the situation and concerns of the peo- one as well. The years weighed upon me, but ber of people who would come up to us. Every- ple in general: how many had relatives living lightly so. Such curiosity, I thought, would where—in parks and plazas, churches and in exile, everywhere and for any number of stand us all in good stead for the future. monuments—individuals, young and old years; the great thirst for information or news These conversations on the street further and in-between, would approach. Some would of any kind, beyond official government revealed, quite often and to my utter stupe- do so in order to sell something, from draw- channels; the open desire to talk about those faction, not only scant devotion to the ideals ings to peanuts; to ask for something, money who had left and the phenomenon of exile of the system but also open criticism of it. or other items; or to offer something, serv- as such; the conditions of everyday existence Nowhere did I come across—aside from the ices ranging from music ensembles to home and the hopes for the future. In these exchanges official media, its outlets and spokespersons— restaurants. Most simply wanted to strike a I learned much about myself as well: I had the kind of consuming commitment to the conversation. They sought to find out where left the country as an adolescent in bloom, faith of the Revolution, passionate apologetic we were from and what we were doing; to younger than most, taught to show respect for its creeds and practices, and rapturous inquire about life outside the island; to for and to learn from those older than myself; exercise of its rituals that I remembered from

“Window,” 2001

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the formative years. Not among the young; ment; rejection of paternalism on the part of for exits, from the informational to the sym- not among the old; not among anyone in- the leadership and its maximum leader in bolic to the supernatural.A people, I observed, between. The Revolution—once a driving particular, often painted in terms of senility ready to move onward. faith and organized religion, with its pan- or madness; discontent with the lack of options Throughout, I had the intense feeling of theon of deities, foreign and local, its dog- across the whole of society. being observed, followed, even directed. Not mas and codes, its liturgical ceremonies—no Not uncommonly, such critique emerged by the populace as such, constant and curious longer appeared to be a subject of impact, a from religious circles and in religious language, witnesses of our presence and movements— subject of relevance, a subject for conversa- across the spectrum: from predictions of a forth- always forthcoming and inquisitive; nor by the tion. It seemed displaced, and utterly so. coming transcendent event of supernatural security apparatus, mostly in evidence around Other topics prevailed: the harsh demands character, to appeals to the Bible as the ultimate hotels and points of interest—courteous and of life in general; the way of life on the out- source of all power and authority, to devotions helpful at all times. It seemed, rather, as if I side, at any level, from the political to the to Mary as the queen of Cuba. In other words, had entered, through a deployment of mag- musical; the life of exile and the relationship batteries of religious beliefs and practices, once ical realism, a world where various temporal between those outside and those inside. More dismissed as retrograde and superannuated, and spatial dimensions intersected and inter- than occasionally, I also ran into critique, hammering away at the ideological ramparts acted with one another, a world where vig- from the mild to the severe: dissatisfaction of the Revolution. To me this was a supremely orous presences long vanished and active with the legacy of the revolutionary experi- tired people, ideologically devastated, looking spirits long departed were juxtaposed along-

To me this was a supremely tired people, ideologically devastated, looking for exits, from the informational to the symbolic to the supernatural. A people, I observed, ready to move onward.

“Irmel,” 1999

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side and consorted with present-day actors and realities. This I sensed all around the city, as events and faces manifested themselves as if still unfinished, ongoing. Posing for pictures at the corner of Carlos III and Marqués González, I saw the leaders of the Revolution, arm in arm, leading a march after the sabotage explo- sion of a freighter, La Coubre, in the harbor; standing before my old school, the Colegio de La Salle in El Vedado, I felt my father’s hand as he rushed me out of the building and home, having just learned of the attack on the Pres- idential Palace and having just witnessed the assassination of José Antonio Echevarría, a foremost student leader. Sitting by the water- front, across from the Parque de las Misiones and looking towards the Morro Castle, I heard my parents’ call, after a full Sunday afternoon of play, that it was time to go home. I sensed it keenly in the streets of La Habana Vieja, the old center of town, where so many of my relatives had lived—grandparents and great-grandparents; great-aunts and great- uncles—and where a maternal great-grandfather had owned a hat store on Obispo Street in the 1920s. I saw their silhouettes as I looked at the buildings where they had lived and the balconies where they had once stood—places where I had visited as a child; balconies where they had waved greetings or goodbyes; individuals on whom I could always count for a drink or a snack. I sensed it as well in my old neighborhoods, where old friends of the family had lived—people who had held me as a baby in their arms, who had looked after me while “Denia,” 1999 playing in the streets or at the park, who had 2 million habaneros lie buried. There, in front the idealist students coming down the steps, shared life with us through so many personal of the tomb where so many of my relatives locked in arms and bearing political banners; and national events. There was Ester Pon- continue their daily chats and repasts, I stood, the repressive guards coming up the steps, sada, our next-door neighbor, now in her 90s as I had done many times as a child. Always bearing wooden sticks and water cannons. and confined to her bed. As I embraced her, on Sundays, as flowers were laid upon the tomb. I heard my grandmother open the street door, I heard her making music with her husband, As I read the inscriptions, I saw their smiles ready to take students, now in retreat, through both members of the Philharmonic, and lead- and felt their caresses as I bore greetings from the adjacent streets, seeking a place to hide; ing a slide show in the open patio after one afar, from exile—from the living, for the dead I smelled the café con leche she always pre- of their many travels abroad. And Daisy López, had already, no doubt, paid their visit. pared for them, as we all waited for the tumult from around the corner, in her 80s and ever I sensed it most acutely perhaps at the top to die down. Next to the Alma Mater, I heard so thin. As I opened my arms, I felt her kiss of the esplanade where sits the majestic old my father, both a graduate and a faculty mem- upon my cheek as she met my mother and campus of the University of La Habana, there ber of the university, speaking of his ideals me on the way to the Aguirre Park, right across where the conscience of the nation has always for the country, as I felt the touch of his hand from her house. resided and where the statue of the Alma upon my right shoulder. I sensed it deeply at the Colón Cemetery, Mater extends its arms wide open to city and Not only did I feel watched and accom- that magnificent necropolis where more than population alike. I cringed at the encounter: panied, I also felt driven. Places where I had

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lived opened their doors to me. Someone just ciations of fidelista intransigence and appeals Central America. From without, individuals happened to be there and bid me in. I took to a Nuremberg-like defense, they shall try to and companies will seek to exploit the dire in rooms and walls, patios and porches, of hang on to political leadership. If need be, they conditions of the population by bringing long ago. Old friends were found and hugged. shall bury the knife deep into castroite entrails, the country under the aegis of globalization, Someone just happened to be nearby and and thus one another as well. It will not work; singing the glories of the world economy and pointed the way. I continued conversations it never does. The alternative may very well be the virtues of free-market capitalism. This shall interrupted many a year ago. A place of bur- the development of a powerful mafia, in con- be done through the establishment of a ial disclosed itself forthwith. Someone just trol behind the scenes, relying on an extensive maquiladora-style economy, with low wages happened to know where to look for the old client network and wielding vast sums of money. and no benefits for the workers, whose entire registry card. I nipped a wildflower from the This option is not only feasible, but it will hap- social apparatus would be brought down. This ground and set it upon the tomb, for the first pen, to one degree or another; already cor- social net is already beyond the breaking point. time in decades. I felt here and there. Past and ruption reaches into the highest levels of the This shall be done as well through the pro- present had come together, indeed pushed leadership elite. motion of a tourism industry based on resorts together, in a magical world of (un)real fusion. Just as easily Cuba could follow the path of and casinos and sexuality. Such industry is The living and the dead intermingled at will. many countries in the Caribbean Basin and already very much at work and advertised as I was young and old at the same time. In this enchanted and enchanting world, I could not but think of the future. What will the future bring for Cuba? To Cuba could easily go the way of Russia and be sure, such a future is already here, its traces all about. I saw it and I see it. Beyond all doubt, other post-Soviet states. Individuals and the transition has begun, both within the island and in the diaspora, among Cubans as well as factions among the elite will make every in the eyes of the world. The tropical experiment in real socialism is in its final throes, kept afloat by a leadership elite whose devo- attempt to remain in power. If need be, tion to caudillismo—that oh-so-traditional mixture of authoritarianism and paternal- they shall bury the knife deep into castroite ism—remains unflinching, indeed growingly defiant, driven by sheer panic in the face of entrails, and thus one another as well. implosion and annihilation. This experiment has been severely compromised from within and has lost its luster from without. In body and face, its supreme leader reflects the exhaus- tion and the madness of the system. For this future, only the Transition remains, inevitable and ever closer. At the same time, the future is not yet, its ultimate configuration(s) beyond precision at this point. What follows the Tran- sition is not at all clear. This future I did not see as such. On this score, I am afraid, the spirits were silent, much too terrified perhaps, and the living reticent, just trying to survive. Still, on the basis of what has transpired both in Cuba and elsewhere, it does not take a visionary to conjure up the various options possible, and by no means mutually exclusive. Cuba could easily go the way of Russia and other post-Soviet states. From within, individuals and factions among the elite will make every attempt to remain in power, officially or unofficially. Rapidly discarding their previous identities and loyalties, with loud renun- “Cleudis and Osmel,” 1999

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such. This option is not just theoretical; it too shall happen, to one degree or another: The social net has been largely replaced by remit- tances from abroad, and the sensuous image of the island has replaced, with official sanc- tion, the virtuous image once cultivated by the Revolution. Workers by the tens of thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands, will seek to go north, in search of jobs and food; barred from doing so, absolute poverty and rampant criminality will go through the roof. Among Cubans themselves, a bloodbath, actual or metaphorical, may ensue. The use of Manichean discourse and practices for so many years and in such unrelenting fashion cannot but create problems for the future. Everyone, whether with the Revolution or in the opposition, fell under its trance, to one degree or another. Such raw exercise in inclu- sion and exclusion cannot but engender, as it has, a poisonous atmosphere of mutual rejection, mutual abuse and mutual hatred— a spirit of repudiation alongside a spirit of revanchism. Those whom the authorities have taken pleasure in calling “worms” have always retorted that, in the end, it is the “worms” that devour the “corpses.” Those who were forced to abandon everything, in a circus-like atmosphere, remember who it was who shouted slogans against them, who took inventory of each and every one of their belongings, who moved into their apartments and houses. Those who have experienced years of banishment from education or work or public life on account of real or

suspected dissident beliefs, who have under- “Honor Cuba,” 1997 gone the unremitting surveillance of the security apparatus, down to the local Committees massive poverty and massive emigration; accord. A hope that perhaps all spirits on both for the Defense of the Revolution in each and severe rupture in the body politic at all lev- sides of the Florida Straits—surely reconciled every block, who have endured years of impris- els of society and culture. A chaos, in other by now and shaking their heads in horror as onment in conditions beyond human imag- words, of apocalyptic proportions. they look back, around and ahead—will finally ination—they too remember, and they have Against all hope, my own hope is for a dif- push us all beyond that hurricane out of the faces and names and addresses to go with ferent option altogether. It is the hope of a Cold War that ensnared us, beat us mercilessly such memories. This option, I regret to say, reconciliation based on truth and justice. A about, and left us in tatters. is also unavoidable: Long-standing and recent hope based on the best instincts already in A hopeless hope, I readily admit, but a scores will be settled on the perpetrators, per- evidence within a transition already at work, hope to which I have no option but to devote haps their children, and perhaps even their where mutual myths and stereotypes con- the rest of my life, for the spirits will have it children’s children. tinue to give way to visions of understanding no other way. V The future, therefore, will, in all likelihood, and solidarity. A hope grounded in a funda- involve all of these options at once—absolute mental respect for human dignity and, thus, Professor Segovia’s recollections of his Cuban chaos. Desperate hanging on to power, along- with eyes set undeviatingly on human and homecoming originally appeared in The Spire, side powerful and violent cartels; utter finan- social rights. A hope that all religious groups the alumni publication of Vanderbilt Divinity cial collapse leading to massive exploitation, and all Christian churches will raise in loud School.

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Cornelius VanderbiltA George Peabody MATCH MADE IN ACADEMIC HEAVEN VMagSpr05_pg54-61.P2 4/12/05 10:18 AM Page 55

To old-timers on the scene, it’s still an unusual sight: Since 2002 a footbridge has spanned 21st Avenue South at the Edgehill intersection, connecting the Vanderbilt and Peabody campuses. This sturdy overpass structure does more than convey book-toting University students across a busy street. It carries some heavy symbolism, too. Today the bridge is the most physical, public declaration of the official merger of the two institutions. It happened in 1979—a decision that startled alumni on both sides, outraged many, and caused a Nashville sensation. For nearly a century the very idea of a bridge linking the two institutions had been unthinkable. Twenty-first Avenue served as a necessary divide, a political frontier separating two worlds that defied each other—Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College for Teachers. Both were proudly private institutions with national reputations, but their missions, styles of learning and institutional loyalties were never quite in sync. When they finally overcame their mutual reluctance, the merger launched the University, along with the new Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, on a new adventure in national identity and ambition.

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The merger of Vanderbilt University and n 1979 few dared to hope this much for “At the time of the merger, we weren’t for Peabody (actually, Peabody was annexed into Peabody’s new relationship with Van- it,”says Peabody alumna Melody Engle, BS, Vanderbilt) was ambitious, contentious and I derbilt. It wasn’t clear at the time of who graduated in 1980. For 25 years she has risky. Some said it was inevitable and long merger that Vanderbilt-Peabody was a match been a special education teacher, now work- overdue; others complained it was a hostile made in academic heaven. But circumstances ing in the Wilson County, Tenn., school sys- takeover by Vanderbilt made possible by pushed the two suitors into marriage, ready tem.“Vanderbilt students tended to snub their Peabody’s poor and declining financial health. or not. noses at Peabody students. It was painful. So Either way, it posed a culture clash—the For decades their destinies had been very we did little things to protest. We boycotted ancient tensions between liberal arts and edu- different. Vanderbilt, much the larger and the Vanderbilt yearbook, for instance. But we cation—that still lingers today. richer, was a preeminent Southern enclave of knew the merger was the only way to save Some veterans of the merger still find it liberal arts and conservative instincts, aim- Peabody. Vanderbilt has tried really hard to too emotional to talk about on the record: ing to join the elite universities of the nation. make the merger a success. And Peabody still “We at Peabody struggled to be accepted,” Peabody, meanwhile, as Nashville’s oldest has its good name.” says a former Peabody student who now educational institution, had had a spectacu- Why did Peabody and Vanderbilt merge? teaches at Vanderbilt, speaking anonymously. larly complex history of transformations What’s the verdict 25 years later? “Peabody always rejected elitism, and still going back to 1785. Since 1914, when the Col- Last fall the ironic twists and turns of does. Twenty-first Avenue is still a big gulf.” lege moved from its original downtown site merger were rehashed by a panel of Peabody Nevertheless, a quarter century later, by common consent the merger has strength- Strong emotions among older alumni still ened both institutions remarkably. Vander- bilt saved Peabody from financial doom. flare: Did Peabody and Vanderbilt have to Peabody gave Vanderbilt an added dimension of public service and renown—Peabody’s passion for improving public education and merge at all? Alliance had been rumored for solving problems of human development and community life. Each institution has enhanced nearly a hundred years. Events in 1979 the prestige of the other. The vast merger project began amid anx- made it a matter of urgency. ieties and hard feelings, especially on the Peabody side. The positions of some 40 Peabody pro- and reopened at its current location, it had faculty who witnessed the tumult of ’79. Two fessors (a third of the faculty) were eliminated. solidified an identity of community service, emotions rang clear as they spoke to a room- Some well regarded Peabody departments were earning national acclaim for its commitment ful of Peabody alums: pride in Peabody’s post- shut down to avoid duplication with Vander- to public school teaching, social betterment, merger achievements, and relief that Peabody bilt’s. And Peabody students ultimately had to pragmatic education philosophies, improv- managed to keep an identity intact through pay Vanderbilt’s higher tuition costs. ing the lives of people with mental disabili- the last 25 years of quickened evolution. Eventually, though, a changing world took ties—an egalitarian spirit of collegiality and “People were afraid we’d become ‘just like the new relationship in surprising directions. mutual support housed in its orderly, dra- Vanderbilt,’”says Robert Innes, Peabody asso- By the 1980s, education had become a national matically pillared quad. ciate professor of psychology, who was a priority again, and Vanderbilt-Peabody was If Vanderbilt was classical and traditional Peabody teacher at the time of merger and positioned to join the national conversation in its philosophy, looking back to European stayed on to become one of the shapers of the and lead it. The turbulent first years of merger models of rigorous learning, Peabody was new Peabody. “We’ve benefited enormously soon yielded to a clearer focus and division entrepreneurial, empirical, people-oriented, from Vanderbilt.Yet somehow we maintained of labor. Vanderbilt administrators and opin- service-minded and “applied,”springing from our character. It’s a real feat to have moved ion-makers—on both sides of the street— pragmatic, reformist American thinkers like Peabody to its current intellectual level and now call Peabody, with its top-ranking John Dewey. dramatically change the intellectual climate, programs in education and its research-driven When it finally and suddenly happened, the and still keep the soul of the place.” faculty, a crown jewel of the University. Vanderbilt-Peabody merger was an exercise in Others recalled the dread and grief of the “Its value to Vanderbilt is immeasurable— mutual discovery, an institutional gamble, a time—also the disdain of Vanderbilt loyal- the quality of the faculty, the quality of stu- kind of cultural exchange, a bold lunge into ists who perceived a school of education’s dents, the national visibility it gives to us, the the future. For years after, both parties worked curricula to be less rigorous than other aca- leadership it gives to issues of public educa- hard on the necessary details of consolidation. demic disciplines. tion,”says Chancellor Gordon Gee.“Peabody They also eyed each other warily. The past’s Peabody protesters of the merger draped is at the center of our life.” emotional baggage weighed heavily. black crepe paper across their beloved build-

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ings. Forty tombstones were planted on the Peabody lawn to honor the faculty who lost their jobs (23 had tenure). Bitterness was palpable; Vanderbilt, after all, suffered no job losses in the bargain. “I remember the merger vividly,”says Janet Eyler, Peabody professor of the practice of education. She was teaching at Peabody but survived the merger.“When they start putting little numbers on the furniture, it’s time to dust off the résumé.” Peabodians mourned. Their school could claim a unique heritage as the nation’s only private, independent college devoted to teaching. Now, they feared, it would be swallowed Peabody and Vanderbilt up and vanish. students at an ice-cream “There was an assumption that Peabody sundae mixer organized would become a small institution like VIPPS by administrators after [the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Stud- the merger ies],”Eyler recalls,“and the rest of the buildings would be taken over by Vanderbilt.” Merger came, but such doomsday scenarios did not arrive with it. Peabody dipped into its own legacy of adaptability and changed with the times. Coordinating with Kirkland Hall, Peabody did a handful of things that won it a place as a glittering equal among the nine other colleges and schools of Vanderbilt University. As a new college of an ambitious Univer- sity aiming for world-class distinction, Peabody was mandated to maintain prestige in education instruction, attract new students, be intellectually rigorous, and operate in the black. For the first decade after merger, Van- BILL WELCH derbilt committed $750,000 annually to Center came to national prominence as a “Those of us who stayed were very much Peabody to help shore up the college and pur- place to find innovative ideas designed to use committed to Peabody and wanted it to thrive, sue these aims. applied technology for public education. but most felt Vanderbilt was acting from expe- Under a new dean, Willis Hawley, Peabody Not least, Peabody created an undergraduate diency. We very much wanted Vanderbilt to aggressively recruited a more research-oriented degree program that became a huge success— understand what a treasure they had—beyond faculty. It made tough decisions to delete depart- the human and organizational development the real estate. And we needed to work hard ments that were not bringing in sufficient (HOD) program, which generated needed to make that happen. Schools of education revenue—for instance, the small but presti- tuition income and resurrected a Peabody sometimes have a reputation as fluff, no sub- gious library science program, an action in spirit of hands-on, community-oriented study stance. But Vanderbilt has always valued teach- the 1980s that outraged many alumni. But and focus. ing. Once they understood that there’s truly the College received sympathetic nurture Peabody had found momentum. an academic dimension to teaching, the rela- from pro-Peabody leaders at Vanderbilt early “A lot of colleagues went through dis- tionship improved. We made a lot of progress on, notably Chancellor Joe B. Wyatt. tressing life changes, as I almost did,”says on the ‘them-versus-us’ issue.” A few years later the second dean, cogni- Elizabeth Goldman, whose mathematics edu- Today Peabody has Vanderbilt’s highest- tive psychologist James Pellegrino, perceived cation position at Peabody was reduced to rated programs in the annual U.S. News & the importance of using technology to enhance half-time tenure after merger. She eventually World Report magazine evaluation of Amer- education in the classroom. Through his work returned to full-time teaching and adminis- ica’s graduate schools: Peabody ranks fifth and that of other colleagues with national tration, retiring in 1999. overall among the nation’s 249 doctorate- funding, the College’s Learning Technology “It was a difficult balance,”she explains. granting education schools (Harvard is first,

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UCLA is second, Stanford is third, and Teacher’s nations, starting in pre-statehood 1785, when Avenue. That normal school unit was renamed College at Columbia is fourth). Peabody’s Davidson Academy was established in Nashville Peabody Normal College in 1888. special education program is ranked first in by the North Carolina legislature. Conkin’s ear- By the turn of the century, trustees of the the nation. lier history of Vanderbilt, Gone with the Ivy: A Peabody Education Fund, with a fresh infu- Peabody is now home to high-profile schol- Biography of Vanderbilt University (University sion of Peabody money, were eager to start a ars whose research attracted some $17 mil- of Tennessee Press, 1984), includes much of full-fledged George Peabody College for Teach- lion in grants in fiscal 2004. The College carries Peabody’s story as well. ers to replace Peabody Normal. After much on deeply rooted community work in Nashville It’s plausible to say the merger of 1979 was debate, the trustees voted in 1909 to build and beyond through the transinstitutional set in motion some 80 years before, when it near Vanderbilt. Kirkland had hoped for Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Vanderbilt Chancellor James Kirkland started this; his lobbying had paid off, it seems. The decision was mutually beneficial. Peabody Peabody protesters draped black crepe could save money by drawing on some of Vanderbilt’s liberal arts departments, and paper across buildings. Tombstones were Vanderbilt could draw on Peabody’s education emphasis. Nevertheless, this created no official connection with Vanderbilt. Peabody planted on the lawn to honor faculty who lost stressed its own independence. When it opened in 1914 on its present-day site, with 1,108 jobs. Bitterness was palpable: Vanderbilt students and 78 teachers, it was in no mood to merge. It was a private college on its own. suffered no job losses in the bargain. It had a mission to raise public education in the South. Human Development and the Learning Sci- lobbying hard to get a new Peabody Col- Peabody’s first president, Bruce Payne, ences Institute, and through the Susan Gray lege built near Vanderbilt. enacted this autonomy in all sorts of ways. School, the Leadership Development Center, Kirkland wanted to create a great univer- Peabody even looked different. The new the National Research and Development Cen- sity center in a South still stricken by defeat Peabody campus’ Greek and Roman-inspired ter on School Choice, and other entities.“We in the Civil War. He saw Peabody’s com- architecture paid homage to Payne’s beloved now have six academic programs with top- mitment to public education as a vital com- University of Virginia, not Vanderbilt Uni- 10 status and strong indicators from several ponent of that redemptive vision. As early as versity. More crucially, Payne brought an others that are right on the verge of breaking 1898, Kirkland was dreaming of somehow enthusiasm for the procedures of educa- through,”Peabody Dean Camilla Benbow affiliating Vanderbilt with Peabody, Conkin tion philosopher John Dewey, his former declared in the Peabody Reflector alumni mag- reports. Vanderbilt was only two decades old, teacher. It caused strains with Kirkland. azine last summer. but Kirkland had ambitions to strengthen its “Payne’s education philosophy, his con- work, broaden its influence, and attract sup- cern for mass education and new teaching id Peabody and Vanderbilt have port from national foundations. Drawing techniques, placed him at an opposite pole to merge at all? Strong emotions Peabody into the fold would help. from the classical educational elitism of Kirk- Damong older alumni still flare. At His model of affiliation was the Teacher’s land,”Conkin writes in Gone with the Ivy. the time, the merger picture was clouded College at Columbia University. But this would “Payne’s more egalitarian social outlook also by public speculation, misconceptions, secret be no easy feat. A new Peabody was already contrasted with Kirkland’s staunch advocacy initiatives, mutual coyness and frustration. on the drawing board, poised to replace its of law and order and of highly nuanced south- Murmured rumors of alliance had been part forerunners to become a high-profile college ern racial and class relationships. Payne proved of the landscape, part of the Vanderbilt- in its own right, with its own dreams. to be as much an educational entrepreneur Peabody ecology, for nearly a hundred years. Peabody’s antecedents had started a cen- as Kirkland, and for a time he seemed even Events in 1979 conspired to make it a matter tury before—first as Davidson Academy, more successful. ... Payne very much wanted of urgency once and for all. which became Cumberland College in 1806, to be his own man and Peabody to be a dis- The whole unfolding drama—at least one then the University of Nashville in 1826. tinct and separate institution.” authoritative version of it, told with narra- George Peabody, the Massachusetts-born fin- Vanderbilt-Peabody relations eventually tive verve and candor—is found in Paul Conkin’s ancier, entered the picture in 1867, trans- thawed, and cooperatives emerged, involv- 2002 book, Peabody College: From a Frontier forming the story. He made a $1 million gift ing course sharing, student exchanges and Academy to the Frontiers of Teaching and Learn- to improve education in the postwar South. sports teams. By 1936 Peabody and Van- ing (Vanderbilt University Press). Conkin,Van- As a result, in 1875 a State Normal College derbilt (along with Scarritt College) cre- derbilt Distinguished Professor of History, to train teachers was added to the University ated the Joint University Libraries (JUL). In emeritus, chronicles Peabody’s successive incar- of Nashville, located downtown on Second 1952 Vanderbilt and Peabody jointly created

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a master’s-degree program in teaching, though host universities. The image of professional universities, to no avail. it only lasted three years as a joint entity. educators was never lower.” Then came electrifying news. Tennessee In 1961 the idea of greater cooperation Following a lackluster fund-raising cam- State University, the traditionally African- surfaced again, with more discussion of a for- paign, the Peabody board decided in 1978 to American public university based in Nashville, mal affiliation but still short of merger. How- take the big dreaded step: Seek a merger with was interested in merging with Peabody. TSU ever, talks eventually collapsed. The only result, Vanderbilt. Secret talks ensued between hoped to start doctoral programs in educa- Conkin notes, included a combined Vander- Peabody President John Dunworth and Van- tion, and Peabody reportedly was willing to bilt-Peabody band and continued sharing of derbilt officials, notably Chancellor Alexan- oblige. A merger agreement was quickly and course work. der Heard and President Emmett Fields. But secretly outlined. But secrets ended when the negotiations faltered by early 1979. story broke in the Tennessean newspaper he 1970s changed everything. “It all came up at a very poor time,”recalls on Feb. 13, 1979. The news distracted the Peabody’s enrollment started Fields, who retired as Vanderbilt president in whole campus and Nashville, too. The secrecy T falling—and so did its fortunes, 1982.“We were in a period when we were try- of the plan alienated Peabody faculty, but one as Peabody’s finances were tied heavily to ing to cut down on expenditures—it was a poll nevertheless showed Peabody professors tuition. The decade was a low ebb for schools time of high inflation.”Under the circum- strongly favoring a merger with TSU if fac- of education nationally, says Conkin. The baby stances, Vanderbilt balked at Peabody’s fal- ulty could keep their jobs. boom had ended; the number of children tering financial profile. “The board of trust Influential Vanderbilt supporters were entering grade school was declining. The nation decided to stop talking [about merger alarmed. Race likely played a role in the reac- suddenly had a teacher surplus. Prospects and prospects],”Fields says. tions of many, but Conkin says a more emo- morale were dismal.“Teaching jobs were scarce, Peabody started looking elsewhere. It had tional issue took the fore: football. Since the particularly in secondary schools, so fewer to move fast. Its reputation was large, but its early 1970s the NCAA had allowed Peabody young people chose teaching as a career,”Conkin deficits were growing and its endowment students to play on Vanderbilt’s football team writes in Peabody College. “This meant that evaporating, along with its bargaining posi- and other athletic squads. A TSU merger education schools lost favor, often ran deficits, tion. The school explored possible relation- with Peabody would likely kill Vanderbilt’s and were a financial burden in most of their ships with both Duke and George Washington athletic cooperation with Peabody. Some 50

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Peabody students played on the football team done by July 1, 1979: George Peabody Col- preneurial. We keep redefining ourselves to fit in 1979. They would no longer be allowed lege for Teachers became the Peabody Col- the time, and we’ve survived. That’s very Peabo- if a TSU-Peabody merger carried the day. lege of Education and Human Development dian, and it’s been the key to our success.” The immediate result would be disaster at of Vanderbilt University. One of the most visible signs of this entre- Dudley Field: There was excitement and giddiness, but preneurial success is the human and organi- “Vanderbilt might have difficulty fielding also pain and anger—the loss of beloved pro- zational development curriculum (the HOD football and basketball teams in the fall of fessors (severance packages for the older ones), degree program), which currently enrolls 1979, for most of the Peabody athletes could the nixing of entire departments (art, lib- some 700 undergraduates—one in nine Van- not meet Vanderbilt’s admission require- eral arts and music), and the annexation of derbilt students. (It’s the most popular under- ments, were majoring in subjects not taught the College to Vanderbilt after nearly two cen- graduate major on campus. Next is biomedical at Vanderbilt (primarily physical education), turies of tradition as an independent institu- engineering, with 392 students; then eco- and cost Vanderbilt $1,000 less than if they tion.“We hoped there could be another way,” nomics, with 346 students; and mechanical were Vanderbilt students,”Conkin writes.“If recalls Elizabeth Goldman. “But Vanderbilt engineering, with 238.) any prospect stunned the local Vanderbilt made things possible that Peabody didn’t have. HOD is not always easy to describe, as board members, this was it.”Fields disputes To survive, any institution must evolve.” some of its own supporters admit. It’s been this assessment about the urgency of athlet- Looking back on the event in a 1999 inter- called an applied social-sciences degree, an ics. “I never heard even one board member view, Chancellor Alexander Heard, who was applied liberal-arts program. Its aim is to help mention the subject,”Fields says. deeply involved in the negotiations, said he students understand human behavior in Nevertheless, the TSU wrinkle did galva- was grateful it succeeded.“A great many peo- groups and organizations, teaching them how nize Vanderbilt and “get us to look at the merger ple over there understood the potential for all to solve problems (managerial or interper- possibilities again,”he says.“I can’t say it made this,”he recalled. “They loved Peabody and sonal) in a business or nonprofit setting. Stu- the difference. We decided we’d better swal- were trying to save it for its own sake, but also dents encounter ideas and experiences through low the financial numbers and do it. It was a the functions of Peabody, the education func- a battery of methods—seminars, role play- risky thing to do, but I think it was mandated tions. They thought they would be enormously ing, case studies, group projects, field expe- by history. … I always thought fate was written into the land assignment of Peabody settling near Vanderbilt.” Merger came, but doomsday scenarios did Vanderbilt officials now made new entreaties to Peabody. The sudden prospect of losing not arrive with it. Peabody dipped into its Peabody altogether threatened other existing, durable Vanderbilt-Peabody arrangements— own legacy of adaptability and won a place the JUL library agreement,Vanderbilt’s rental use of two Peabody dorms, the enrollment of as a glittering equal among the colleges and hundreds of Vanderbilt students in Peabody courses, and scores of joint scholarly projects. schools of Vanderbilt. By April a firm offer from Vanderbilt was on the table. Peabody would be a professional enhanced, and they thought they would improve rience and interaction with professionals. It school at Vanderbilt comparable with others Vanderbilt in the course of it. A lot of us shared requires a semester-long internship in the at the University. A number of Peabody trustees that. I think there were a lot of common feel- corporate or nonprofit world. HOD values would join the Vanderbilt board. Peabody ings, common beliefs, common attitudes and experiential learning, hoping to ready stu- would keep its endowment for support of the values, on both sides of campus. dents for real-world problems, workplace College. Vanderbilt would get the 50-plus- “Not everybody was happy, but there dynamics, and interaction with co-work- acre campus. was enough bedrock view to make the thing. ers, bosses and employees. The TSU proposal was left behind. In any I didn’t even think it was a risk. There were HOD has been a source of criticism and case, would a TSU-Peabody merger actually inevitable problems, and frankly there were misunderstanding from the start. It was have been accomplished? Not likely in 1979, fewer than I was prepared to say that we should accused of having a lack of theoretical rigor Conkin speculates. The state legislature would address.” and too much jargon. In the early post-merger have had to approve it, and opposition was Current Peabody Dean Camilla Benbow days, HOD was known to some as the foot- already mounting, especially from Murfrees- says a knack for adaptation is a Peabody qual- ball degree because it attracted various Uni- boro, home of rival Middle Tennessee State ity that has been pivotal to the school’s sur- versity athletes. (It still does. In fall 2004, for University. It faced resistance on the Peabody vival.“Peabody has always been here to help example, 37 students on the 94-man Van- board as well. humankind and build human capital,”she says. derbilt football roster were HOD majors). So the Vanderbilt-Peabody marriage was “And those values are still here. But we’re entre- But administrators stress HOD’s standards

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A Snapshot of Today’s Peabody College

A quarter century after the stormy events of ’79, Vanderbilt The Leadership Development Center is a Peabody-led administrators can check off a long list of Peabody accomplish- partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools, the State ments and initiatives: of Tennessee and other agencies that aims to better prepare Peabody now has its largest post-merger faculty ever—about school leaders in areas of learning theory, leadership skills, 130. organizational development, and the political context of public school life. Peabody ranks No. 5 among the nation’s 249 graduate schools of education by U.S. News & World Report, just behind Peabody’s Susan Gray School for Children carries on its Harvard, UCLA, Stanford and Teachers College–Columbia. long-standing education program for young children (those Peabody’s program in special education ranks No. 1. with and without disabilities). The School’s mission is to provide services to children and their families; train students Enrollment is about 1,200 undergraduates; in 1979 it was who want to be teachers, health-care providers, therapists 600. In graduate studies, 459 are pursuing master’s and pro- and researchers; demonstrate education practices; and fessional degrees; another 200 are enrolled in Ph.D. work. assist in education research. The fall 2004 freshman class at Peabody had mean SAT Peabody researchers working with 36 preschool classrooms scores exceeding 1300 for the first time. Mean GRE scores in seven Tennessee school districts are part of a landmark for graduate students currently rank third highest among the national study that, for the first time, will help determine nation’s graduate schools of education. which preschool programs work best for which children. The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human A $10 million federal grant was awarded recently to Professor Development, involving many Peabody faculty researchers Kenneth Wong in Peabody’s Department of Leadership, Policy and still housed on the Peabody campus, thrives now as a and Organizations to establish the National Research and transinstitutional entity with University-wide support. It is one Development Center on School Choice. of 14 national research centers devoted to understanding mental retardation and human development, preventing or A $5 million grant from the Institute for Education Science solving developmental problems, and helping individuals with was awarded recently to Professor David Cordray in developmental disabilities lead fuller lives. Peabody’s Department of Psychology and Human Development to fund pre-doctoral training for a new cadre The Learning Sciences Institute, another transinstitutional of education scientists charged with determining which Vanderbilt unit involving Peabody, focuses on new K–12 kinds of K–12 programs work and which ones don’t. teaching methods, curriculum development, assessment and other learning tools.

have been beefed up considerably under Dean ious world that needs education, compassion, Vanderbilt’s newcomers. A massive con- Benbow, who arrived in 1998. and humane solutions to its problems. struction project accompanies the plan, and One undergraduate says the criticism is “The world in which we live is recogniz- groundbreaking is proposed for this year. unfair.“It’s different from other degrees, but ing with increasing urgency that education These plans call for a practical detail that doesn’t make it less valuable,”says Brittany is central to political, economic and social that deepens the symbolic link: A second Oakes of Ohio.“It’s practical. It’s teaching success,”says Vanderbilt Provost Nicholas bridge will be built one day across 21st Avenue you how to work with people in a business set- Zeppos. “The integration of Peabody into South, probably south of the current bridge, ting. You can’t say HOD is an easy major. We Vanderbilt, and Vanderbilt into Peabody, has to carry freshmen back and forth across this have to take Arts and Science courses to be in been a tremendous success. Peabody certainly one University called Vanderbilt. HOD. But the culture here [at Peabody] is more has made Vanderbilt greater, and Vanderbilt, “Imagine 1,500 kids walking across the relaxed, more welcoming, less stressful.” I believe, has made Peabody greater.” bridge to Blair, to physics, to English, and walk- The two erstwhile rivals are now knitting ing back to Peabody,”Zeppos says. “In that y now, Peabodians are accustomed an even closer connection. The Peabody cam- traffic pattern there’s no greater symbol and to going against the current in the pus will be the site for phase one of Van- witness to the fusing of the University.” V B name of public service—and accus- derbilt’s historic new residential colleges tomed to scrutiny and misapprehensions. And concept for undergraduate life—“Freshman Ray Waddle, MA’81, is an author and colum- Vanderbilt officials say the lingering emotions Commons”—where the entire freshman class nist who teaches a writing seminar at Van- of the merger are overshadowed by a larger will live together, starting in 2008. The goal derbilt Divinity School. His latest book is called and more important drama, the forward tra- is to promote a strong intellectual and social A Turbulent Peace: The Psalms for Our Time jectory of Vanderbilt-Peabody into an anx- experience and sense of community among (Upper Room Books).

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The“Carter’s PianoArts Concerto is a kind of metaphor ... with the piano VISUAL ARTS: Throughout October, At the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Gallery Gallery, “Morality Tales: exhibited works by sculptor Engravings by William and fiber artist Jan-ru Wan in Hogarth” was exhibited “Everyone Looking for Good through early December. Life.” Influenced by Taoism and Considered to be a leading fig- Buddhism, her central theme is ure in British art of the first the human longing for a life of half of the 18th century, fortune. Using a multiplicity of Hogarth is best remembered small images, details and for his satirical engravings, par- objects symbolic of both the ticularly pointed critiques that individual and the universal, revealed a number of the less- Jan-ru employs repetition of than-savory aspects of English form and the discrepancy society of the time. This exhibi- between materials to produce a balance between the chaotic, tion presented five of his most Jan-ru Wan important sets of engravings, DANIEL DUBOIS the sublime and the beautiful. all based on paintings he him- sions of the companion engrav- self created. Included in the ings “Beer Street” and “Gin The Fine Arts Gallery launched exhibit were “A Harlot’s Lane” (1751), and an insightful its spring program in January Progress” (1732), “A Rake’s self-portrait, “The Painter and with “Gestation: Recent Works Progress” (1735), “Before and His Pug,” engraved by by Nicole Pietrantoni.” After” (1736), “The Four Times Benjamin Smith in 1795 after Pietrantoni is the recipient of of Day” (1738), and two new a painting by the artist of the the 2003 Margaret Stonewall acquisitions, lifetime impres- same title. Wooldridge Hamblet Award in studio art. She earned her B.S., magna cum laude, in both art ACCOLADES history and human and organi- Susan DeMay, senior lecturer zational development in 2003, in art, participated in traveling extensively after grad- “Primary Colors: A Survey uation to Iceland, England, and of Contemporary Craft in throughout the United States. Red, Yellow and Blue” at the The pieces in “Gestation” were Virginia Artisans Center in created in 2004 using a combi- Waynesboro. A wall platter nation of printmaking, paint- past 18 months of travel, work titled “Pathways” was selected by ing and collage that incorpo- and the everyday.” the Tennessee State Museum for its permanent collec- rates whimsical characters from tion. In November a two-person exhibit at the Heydel damsels in distress to bees, “The Fat Cat” was the unifying Fine Arts Center at Cumberland University featuring crows and nesting birds. theme for an art exhibit on DeMay and textile artist Diane Apple was supported in Pietrantoni described the view through March at the part by grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission. pieces in the exhibit as “a series Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. of maps and records from my Developed by Pacesetters Inc.,

62 Spring 2005

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beingCulture the individual and the orchestra representing the state. —BLAIR SCHOOL DEAN MARK WAIT

“She’s going to run away” by Nicole Pietrantoni Memphis, Tenn., artist Jed Jackson showed paintings at Sarratt in his November show, “C.E.O.” Placing the viewer in the position of voyeur, Jackson exposes slick characters from society’s underbelly who “call less for a review than for an exorcism.” Showing influences as diverse as French culture, traditional landscape painting, urban genre and popular culture, his images contrast with “Eat Caviar” by Jed Jackson implied metaphors that are expressed in cartoon thought Denim: Essays, Sedaris is best balloons and movie iris shots. known for the strange-but-true tales of his job as a Macy’s elf It has been 20 years since the in the “Santaland Diaries” on first Margaret Stonewall National Public Radio’s Wooldridge Hamblet Award “Morning Edition.” Sedaris’ was presented by Vanderbilt’s sardonic humor and incisive Department of Art and Art social critique earned him History. Works by some of the Time magazine’s “Humorist of former recipients were gathered the Year” recognition in 2001. for the Hamblet Anniversary Show at Sarratt in January and A new ark is needed. With the February. extinction of perhaps 50,000 species per year, mankind is at BOOKS & a critical juncture in history, WRITERS: according to a book by alum- David Sedaris entertained a nus Michael Gunter, BA’91. sold-out audience in Langford Ominous storm clouds have Auditorium in October as part gathered, he argues, to threaten of the Great humanity’s most basic the art is based on a Danish folk munication skills as well as the Performances resource of all, the tale about a cat that was so fat self-esteem of the adults who Series at diversity of life on earth. and greedy he consumed every- participate in the program, Vanderbilt. In his book Building the thing in his path. The exhibit fea- which is one of the largest com- Author of the Next Ark: How NGOs tured two-dimensional artwork munity-based day-training and current best- Work to Protect Biodiver- in a variety of media. Pacesetters’ residential programs serving seller Dress sity, the Rollins College art program is designed to people with developmental dis- Your Family in professor concludes that enhance verbal and visual com- abilities in Tennessee. Corduroy and nongovernmental organ-

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T HE A RTS &CULTURE

izations (NGOs) are the best he begins to take resourcefulness beauti- THEATRE and perhaps only actors situated a special interest fully… tremendously AND DANCE: to negotiate the powerful array in her 5-year-old touching.” Performance artist Will of political and economic sister, Emma, Power conducted a master interests involved in species loss Carrie realizes Novelist Julie Otsuka class at Vanderbilt in November. as well as species preservation. that keeping read from her debut A pioneer in hip-hop theatre, Emma by her novel, When the Emperor Power explores race, HIV and Elizabeth Brack Flock’s side won’t shield Was Divine, in Nov- violence by fusing original (BA’87) novel Me and Emma is her sister for very ember. Her critically music, rhymed language and narrated by 8-year-old Carrie long. Kirkus acclaimed novel is the intense choreography. Power Parker, a precocious child Reviews characterizes this sec- story of a Japanese-American performed “Flow,” a b-boy whose daydreams and hiding ond novel from former print family separated and interned fairy tale about the quest for places cannot veil the violent journalist and CBS correspon- by the U.S. government during survival in urban America, reality of her life with her abu- dent Flock as “captur[ing] World War II. Otsuka graduated in Blair’s Ingram Hall as part sive, alcoholic stepfather. When Carrie’s powerlessness and magna cum laude from Yale of the University’s Great Per- University and received her formances Series. M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. She is a UPCOMING 2004 Guggenheim Fellow. The event was sponsored by the ART English department and the “Diverse Visions” highlights a Gertrude and Harold S. Van- broad range of work in vari- derbilt Visiting Writers Series. ous media by faculty of the Vanderbilt Department of Art and Art History. The exhibit runs through May at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. “The Visionary” by Marilyn Murphy

THEATRE Actors Bridge Ensemble, a professional, nonprofit theatre company formerly based at St. Augustine’s Chapel at Vanderbilt, presents “Jesus Hopped the A Train” by Steven Adly Guirgis April 22–24 and April 28–May 1 at the company’s Neuhoff site in the Germantown area of Nashville.

MUSIC The Curb Youth Symphony, Nashville’s pre-collegiate symphony based at the Blair School of Music, plays a free concert Monday, May 9, NEIL BRAKE in Ingram Hall, with Benedict Broy as the featured violinist. DANIEL DUBOIS “Emergence!!”

64 Spring 2005 VMagSpr05 p60-65 4/8/05 2:12 PM Page 65 PHILLIP FRANCK

plot follows the antics of 27th year last October at Figaro, the barber, as he aids Vanderbilt and expanded to Count Almaviva in wooing— consider genocides beyond and ultimately kidnapping— those perpetrated by the Nazis. the beautiful and The series was feisty Rosine from renamed the her guardian, Dr. Vanderbilt Bartholo. Bernard Lecture Sahlin’s new adap- Series on the tation and transla- Holocaust tion bring Beau- and Other “Company” marchais’ classic Genocides. tale of the poor Included this During Vanderbilt’s Home- Are love and marriage actually valet who beats the year were coming/Reunion weekend in necessary? Is getting married odds and outwits discussions everyone, including of the Sudan, November, Nashvillians and today more important than “The Barber of Seville” Vanderbilt alumni alike wit- finding happiness in a relation- his own master, into DAVID CRENSHAW Rwanda, the nessed “Emergence!!” Four ship? Stephen Sondheim, the the 21st century. former Yu- new works by up-and-coming acclaimed genius of American goslavia, and present-day choreographers merged with musical theatre, asked these HUMANITIES: anti-Semitism in France. music by Blair composers— questions in his landmark One week before election day “We think it’s entirely con- performed by Blair musicians show “Company,” performed in November, Joe Klein, polit- sistent to the spirit of the series and danced by members of by Vanderbilt University ical columnist for Time maga- to take a hard look at genocide the Nashville Ballet—to Theatre last November. The zine and the author of Primary wherever it occurs or may give the audience the Tony Award-winning work Colors, discussed on campus occur,” said Robert Barsky, opportunity to see explores the benefits and bur- the issues at stake in the 2004 director of the 2004 lecture works in progress dens of being single in modern presidential election. A politi- series and a professor of performed in society as we strive to find love cal journalist for 35 years, French and comparative litera- an informal, and companionship. Klein highlighted the impor- workshop In February, VUT produced tance of issues such as Iraq, the style, with “The Barber of Seville,” the impending Social Security and commentary first installment of the famous Medicare burden for the baby- from the artists. “Figaro” trilogy by French boom generation, and massive playwright Pierre Augustin de trade and budget deficits, then Beaumarchais. Full of slapstick led these issues back to his own and wit, the deceptively simple profession, seeing this time as a revolutionary moment for political journalism. The lecture was sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Klein’s Joe Klein

Primary Colors often is com- DANIEL DUBOIS pared to, and was clearly influenced by, Warren’s political ture in Vanderbilt’s novel All the King’s Men. Department of French and Italian. The theme of the 2004 The longest continuously held series was “The Fragility of Holocaust lecture series at an Democracy.” American university began its

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Bernice Johnson Reagon, a in the Civil Rights Movement. Smithsonian renowned scholar and artist in A singer and composer, Institution’s African-American cultural Reagon recently retired after 30 National Museum music and history, delivered years of performing with Sweet of American the keynote address for Honey in the Rock, the inter- History in Vanderbilt University’s 2005 nationally renowned a-cappella Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King ensemble she founded in 1973. Commemorative Series, which Reagon produced most of the Other events dur- took place Jan. 17–27. This group’s recordings, including ing the Martin year’s events, which marked the Grammy-nominated “Still Luther King the 20th anniversary of the Commemorative series, kicked off with a candle- Series included an light vigil at Vanderbilt’s exhibit of the Benton Chapel, sponsored by Harold Lowe the Organization of Black Civil Rights Graduate and Professional Photograph Ethel Students. The vigil featured a Collection at the talk by Bishop Joseph W. TAKING A Schulman Center Walker III of Nashville’s for Jewish Life Gallery. The on the Move” event of the Mount Zion Baptist Church STAND collection of black-and-white season at Zeitgeist Gallery in STUDENTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS photographs documents the Hillsboro Village, sponsored and a performance by the MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. University’s Voices of Praise COMMEMORATIVE SERIES Civil Rights Movement in by Fugitive Art Center. In addi- gospel choir. CELEBRATING Nashville and was exhibited tion, the Blair School of Music Reagon’s keynote address, 20YEARS courtesy of the Nashville sponsored a master class with “Over My Head I See Freedom VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY JANUARY 19–27, 2005 Public Library’s Special the quartet prior to the in the Air: A College Student Collections Division and evening performance. Steps Across the Line of Safety the Same Me.” She is the Cosby Nashville Room. and …,” on Jan. 19, highlighted Chair and Professor of Fine “Extreme Strings,” a con- the 2005 series theme, “Taking Arts at Spelman College in MUSIC: cert by the entire string faculty a Stand: Students and Civil Atlanta, professor emerita of Last October at the Ingram of the Blair School of Music, Rights,” and explored the history at American University, Center for the Performing Arts took place in November at important role students played and curator emerita at the on campus, Ethel, the hippest Ingram Hall. The event featured quartet since Kronos, took the Kathryn Plummer, associate stage for what was a passionate professor of viola and chair of ACCOLADES and entertaining example of the string department, who Georgia Stitt, BMus’94, served as musicianship at its finest. The celebrates 30 years with the production music coordinator for night before, Ethel kicked off School this year. This was one a remake of “Once Upon a the Vanderbilt Great Perfor- of several concerts celebrating Mattress” for a “Wonderful World mances Series’ first “Performance Blair’s 40th anniversary. of Disney” episode to be aired this year on ABC television. She was Kathryn Plummer Works by BMI vocal coach to the production’s stars, including Tracey Composer-in- Ullman, Denis O’Hare, Tommy Smothers, Brooke Residence Shields and Carol Burnett. “Sing Me a Happy Song” by Michael Torke Stitt was included on Broadway star Susan Egan’s new were heard in a solo album. The University of Michigan is producing November con- “The Water,” with music by Stitt, lyrics by Jeff Hylton, cert in the Steve and book by Jeff Hylton and Tim Werenko. and Judy Turner Recital Hall at NEIL BRAKE

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the Blair School of says of Upshaw, Music. Best known as “All the world, it a post-minimalist who would seem, loves Mark Wait, dean cut short his graduate Dawn Upshaw. of the Blair School of study at the age of 23 And there is sim- Music and holder of the Q& to begin his profession- ply no reason not Ingram Dean’s Chair, received al career, Torke to succumb to two Grammy nominations in A became an her versatility, December as piano soloist on exclusive her ingenuity, an album recorded at Blair’s recording her questing mind, Ingram Hall. He was nominated artist with her exquisite tone, along with the Nashville Sym- Argo/Decca her dazzling tech- phony Orchestra, conducted by records and began a nique or—best Kenneth Schermerhorn, in the five-year collabora- of all—her Best Classical Album category tion with Peter emotional for “Elliott Carter: Symphony

Martins and the New directness.” No. 1, Piano Concerto, Holiday DANIEL DUBOIS York City Ballet. His com- Michael Torke Upshaw also Overture,” released on Naxos. He also was nominated for position “Adjustable Wrench” conducted a voice master class Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) for also was featured in a new at Blair as part of her visit. the same album for his work on the Piano Concerto. dance piece by Nashville Ballet artistic director Paul Vasterling The Blakemore Trio is the Q: What is the background of [Wait played the piece with in “Emergence!!” earlier that newest signature ensemble at the Piano Concerto? the Nashville Symphony at weekend. the Blair School of Music. A: the Tennessee Performing Carter composed this Arts Center as part of the In January composer Joan Performing in their second piece in Berlin in 1964 and Symphony’s “Piano Extra- Tower came to Blair as BMI season, they already are being 1965 at the height of the Cold vaganza” on Oct. 25 and 26, Composer-in Residence. Her praised by critics as one of the War. The Berlin Wall was up, 2002, then recorded it with visit culminated in a concert in area’s best chamber-music and Carter, in fact, was living the Symphony at Ingram Hall Ingram Hall featuring the ensembles. With Amy Dorfman near an American military on Oct. 27]. Just getting it up Vanderbilt Wind Symphony on piano, Carolyn Huebl on base, where he could hear to tempo, up to the speed it’s and Chamber Winds, the Blair violin, and Felix Wang on machine-gun fire regularly. supposed to go, was a real String Quartet, and the cello, the Trio performed Carter has said that the Piano challenge. The Orchestra was Concerto is a kind of metaphor Vanderbilt University works by Beethoven, Schnittke magnificent. Kenneth for the struggle of the individ- Orchestra featuring Blair and Dvorak in a January pro- [Schermerhorn] had actually ual against the state, with the conducted it before, and he School Dean Mark Wait as gram at Ingram Hall. piano being the individual and piano soloist. Tower’s compo- knew the piece quite well, but the orchestra representing the the orchestra had never sitions are a standard against state. So when it’s seen in those played anything like that. which many contemporary terms, the conflict in the piece works are measured, and have makes a good deal of sense. Q: What was it like recording been performed by hundreds the piece in Ingram? Q: It strikes one as more a of major symphonies around mathematical composition A: It’s a dream. The acoustics the world. than a melodic one. How did are wonderful. Because I you prepare for playing it? know Ingram Hall well, I felt Hailed around the world for very comfortable during the A: It’s ferociously difficult; her extraordinary grace and recording process. Naxos had learning it had to be a very flawless voice, soprano Dawn everything miked very clearly, methodical process. I started Upshaw and I really enjoyed it. We returned to Ingram about six months before and Hall in January for a much- recorded the whole thing in worked quite intensively on it. about three and a half hours. anticipated reprise of her 2002 The Blakemore Trio

concert. The Los Angeles Times DANIEL DUBOIS

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Truth and Consequences Student Point of View Student Point * Does America have a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of a newspaper? By EVA N MAYOR, BA’05

t’s the best thing I never want Sometimes the criticism helped us make the want to read about or discuss—something to do again” is the most appropri- paper better, and I took each suggestion seri- I think for-profit dailies should attempt to ate cliché to sum up my editorship ously. I enjoyed receiving letters to the edi- do more often. of the Vanderbilt Hustler.Don’t get tor, and we printed all the letters we received, In the past year the Hustler news section me wrong: Running the student even when they were critical of our work. contained a number of stories about drugs, newspaper at Vanderbilt was an Although I attempted to deal with the rape, eating disorders and racism on cam- incredibly rewarding experience, criticism in a professional manner, it always pus. Some students said we were just look- but after time the criticism gets to you. bothered me when people questioned our ing for ways to start controversy, calling much “IAngry readers have cussed me out on reasoning for printing an article or a col- of our reporting sensationalistic. We did numerous occasions. One reader asked umn. I am of the opinion that people should attempt to capture peoples’ attention. We me if I had a soul, and another reader want- not go to college and step immediately into revealed the process a woman goes through ed to know how I could live their comfort zones. to report a rape on campus, and we talked with myself. (Coverage receiv- College is a place where with women who suffered from anorexia ing the harshest response beliefs are questioned and bulimia and printed their stories. Many included our decision to print and reinforced or rede- of these news pieces were followed by can- the name and mug shot of a fined; it’s a time when did dialogue in the opinion section through student involved in a DUI-relat- students learn how to guest columns and letters to the editor, ed accident on campus last year, defend what they believe discussing solutions to the problems college our coverage of athletes who in. And I believe the role students face. Witnessing and facilitating this were arrested, and the contro- of the student newspa- exchange of ideas was the most rewarding versy surrounding the name per is to facilitate this part of my job. change of “Confederate Memo- discussion, however During the recent presidential election rial Hall” to “Memorial Hall.”) imperfect the process campaign, students criticized the Hustler for I am sure a number of jour- may be. being either too liberal or too conservative. nalists out there would tell me The Hustler is a stu- As I sat in the Hustler’s windowless office in it’s part of the job, and that I dent-run newspaper the basement of Sarratt attempting to respond

shouldn’t take it personally. NEIL BRAKE with a $300,000 budg- to the influx of criticism, I realized that there When I received these calls and e-mails, I et. We do not receive any student activity- seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding kept telling myself that we were doing some- fee money, but instead are completely within the campus community about the thing important; we were informing the self-sufficient through ad sales and sub- function of a newspaper. And I don’t think University community about the news, good scriptions. Unlike many for-profit newspa- this problem is unique to Vanderbilt, or even and bad. pers, the Hustler doesn’t have to worry about to college newspapers. Many people don’t But just as the First Amendment gives appeasing readers. Student newspapers are understand the difference between news and the press the right to print what it wants, in a unique position to inform the com- opinion content. I can’t tell you how many it also gives the public the right to criticize. munity about issues they don’t necessarily letters I received from students criticizing

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opinion columns for being biased. News arti- work, any objective reporting they do will be derbilt, which facilitated our transition to cles are stories told through sources, and a placed in the conservative category. Politi- publishing three times a week this year (a reporter’s beliefs or opinions should not be cians can downplay a news report as slanted, first in the paper’s 117-year history). I think evident in the writing. News articles contain which takes away the media’s ability to hold Vandy students now are more passionate, opinions, but they are the opinions of the the government accountable. intelligent and motivated than they were four sources involved. Opinion pieces, however, are Journalists have a responsibility to present years ago, which is a testament to Chancel- supposed to be biased. lor Gordon Gee’s vision Columns are supposed for the University and to take a side on an issue the hard work of the and convince the read- admissions office. er why that side is best. Informed criticism News reporters present is healthy, and I am by the facts of a given topic no means saying that and the opinions of those the Hustler is beyond sources who have knowl- reproach. We made our edge about the topic, and fair share of embarrass- columnists interpret this ing mistakes during my information and advo- tenure as editor of the cate a position. paper. Students are shy- Although newspa- ing away from entering pers have clearly defined the profession because news and opinion sec- of the dismal picture tions, the line between media critics paint of the these two types of jour- press today (a picture nalism is less clear in the reinforced by many broadcast-media world. classes at Vanderbilt). Many television news Most students who work programs meld opinion on the Hustler staff don’t with news, and some want to be journalists; shows are correctly they are simply building labeled as ideologically their résumés. Because liberal or conservative. Vanderbilt doesn’t offer In my opinion this type a major in journalism, of journalism is bad for NATALIE COX MEAD staffers don’t receive any democracy, and these labels can be found in all the facts objectively, and they shouldn’t take credit for their work and there are little or reference to the newspaper business as well. this responsibility lightly. Hustler reporters no opportunities for training. It is truly on- The credibility of a newspaper is harmed and editors don’t work for countless hours the-job training, and we learn from reading severely by these labels, and newspapers are every week to figure out new ways to slant other papers and from our mistakes. slowly losing their ability to be effective news pieces along ideological lines. From the Americans shouldn’t take freedom of watchdogs. limited number of conversations I have had the press for granted. Each story, report or So many of my classes at Vanderbilt have with professional journalists, this doesn’t critique should be examined on a case-by- focused on this ideological bias—teaching seem to be happening in the nation’s news- case basis. Labeling entire media outlets as students how to pick out bad journalism— rooms either. conservative or liberal serves no purpose but what about good journalism? If a net- That being said, the Hustler had a liber- but to diminish the credibility of the news work like Fox News or CNN reported objec- al opinion section [during my tenure as edi- media as a whole. This country needs more tively on something, would we be able to tor] in the sense that we printed most of the good journalists who are dedicated to objec- recognize it? It seems that nowadays if a neg- pieces students submitted to us. This policy tive reporting and—dare I say it?—fewer ative report comes out in a newspaper or on had as much to do with my belief that col- media critics. As for me, I am currently look- television and a person quoted in it doesn’t lege is a time to challenge beliefs as it had to ing for a job in journalism that will help me like the story, he/she simply can say, “Well, do with the fact that we needed to fill our pay off my student loans. But who knows? I that’s a liberal newspaper anyway. They took opinion pages. I will say, however, that there could be off to law school in a year. my quote out of context.” Since many crit- has been a noticeable increase in opinion ics regard Fox News as a conservative net- submissions since my freshman year at Van-

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The Power of Stories Alumni Point of View Point Alumni * It’s an interesting notion: Stories are easy; sentences are hard. By JAMES PATTERSON, MA’70

y so-called writ- I got my first criticism as an undergrad- changed for the better, was the day I stopped ing career started like uate. I was told that I wrote OK but should writing sentences and started writing stories. this: I’m working my stay away from fiction. It was good advice Sentences are really hard. But if you write way through college which I didn’t take. a story, it just flows out of you. It’s an inter- as a psych aide in a When I came to Vanderbilt to graduate esting notion: Stories are easy; sentences are mental hospital out- school, I was a little bit hippyish. I befriend- hard. side Cambridge, ed a guy named Walter Sullivan who was a I wrote a love story, a little maudlin but Mass. James Taylor is a patient, also his broth- very conservative professor, but he loved me with some nice things in it, called Suzanne’s Mer Livingston and his sister Kate. Robert Low- and I loved him. And he said,“Write fiction.” Diary for Nicholas. The second day I was on ell is a patient. Ray Charles is a patient. After That’s what I wanted to do, so I listened to tour for the book, I was on TV and the host his drug conviction, the deal was that every him instead of the undergraduate guy. said that the night before, he had given time Ray came to Boston he had I wrote a novel, Suzanne’s Diary to his wife to read, and that to check in at McLean Hospital and 31 publishers she was still reading it when he went off to for two or three days before he turned it down with bed. At 2 o’clock in the morning, she came could do a concert. Which was extreme prejudice. in and woke him up. And she said,“I just fin- great if you worked there. Then that same ished that book and I’m sorry to wake you There was a story every day. novel won the up, but I had to hug you.” One day I notice they’d just put Edgar Award as the I’ve had experiences like that thousands in Plexiglass windows on the best first mystery of of times. There’s really nothing like the feel- hall where I worked. A patient— the year in Ameri- ing you get from something you’ve done— John C., we’ll call him—is walk- ca. If you get turned a book, a painting, a poem, a newspaper ing down the hall and he’s on down by any New column, cooking dinner for your wife. What- double specials, which means York publisher, take ever it is, it’s exhilarating. there has to be an aide on both it as a good sign. When I was on tour in Lexington, Ky., a sides within arm’s length, and For the last few well-dressed lady told me,“Before I read Along all of a sudden he takes off in his SUE SOLIE PATTERSON years, I’ve been the Came a Spider, I never read. Now I’ve read bathrobe, bare feet, pajamas, and goes run- biggest-selling novelist in the United States. several of your books, and reading is such a ning down the hallway. He gets about 10 feet I have this wonderful day job—I write about huge part of my life that I read every day.” from the nurse’s station, launches himself at 355 days a year because I love it. Somebody People have told me,“My husband is read- the window—boom!—and clunks against said you’re lucky if you find something you ing again,”“My wife is reading again,”“My the new Plexiglass windows. He knocks him- like to do, and it’s a miracle if someone will kids read.”This past year I did a children’s self out. I run up to him and he says,“When pay you to do it. That’s my situation. book for Christmas, which was fun to do. In the hell did they put those in?” I write in longhand. I don’t use a com- April I have a young adult series starting. I say to myself, I’ve got to start writing this puter. The day it started to be fun, the day Oprah has a different approach. She has stuff down. everything clicked for me, the day that it the world reading classics like Anna Kareni-

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na. I question that, to be honest. My approach ilies. Our parents have a story about us, and which at the time had a very bad story. Ford is that we’ll all read something we’re going to it’s never going to change no matter what we had become known for its acronyms: Found love, especially kids. Some of us are going to do. We have stories that were known at school On Road Dead. Fix Or Repair Daily. But Ford get Tolstoy and some of us aren’t. But all of and stories at work. started improving its car lines. They redid us are going to have passion for this wonder- Cities have stories. Neighborhoods have the Thunderbird and came out with the Tau- ful thing called books and reading, rather than stories. Vanderbilt has a story. When I came rus, which at the time was moderately rev- being turned off about olutionary. With Ford’s it, which has happened help we changed their to so many people. story, and for a while they ... were known as the high- I was in Marrakesh once, est-quality American car the location of the sum- maker. It was a new story. mer palace of the sultan. The power of stories According to Koranic law, is unbelievable. During the sultan has to meet the 1992 primary, Bill with his subjects every Clinton’s story was: A day to hear their com- slick Southern yuppie, plaints. Because of this educated in silver-spoon custom they have built schools, a draft dodger a public square outside who smoked pot and the palace, and every cheated on his wife. night this square fills Not a good story. with people. Research by a group One night I was there in New York called the sipping a pastis and Manhattan Project watching all this amaz- uncovered another story: ing stuff, bartering for Bill Clinton is the mid- monkeys and perfumes dle-class son of a sin- and all sorts of things. gle mother who worked Suddenly, the crowd his way up to the parted and a very large Arkansas governorship, guy in indigo and saf- where he made remark- fron robes showed up. able progress in his poor Some of the dye had NATALIE COX MEAD state by focusing on job actually tinted his skin. He opened a large here they used to talk about Vanderbilt as the creation and education. wicker basket, and people started throwing “Harvard of the South.”At the time it was A much better story, and it helped elect money into it. probably an effective story. Now it may be him president. I asked the waiter at our table,“Who is this condescending to say that. My own opinion of Bill Clinton shifted guy?” and he said, “He’s the greatest story- These stories about us can either push us radically the day he was to be questioned teller. When he gets a sufficient number of forward or hold us back. Sometimes people about Monica Lewinsky by House prosecutors. coins, he begins to tell his stories.” have to leave a job because they need to On that Monday a photograph of Clinton This guy was a magnificent dancer and a change their stories, especially young peo- appeared in thousands of newspapers. In that great gesticulator. He shouted to the heavens ple. Sometimes people have to move away photograph he was saluting a Marine as he at times, and then he would whisper loving- from their families just because they need to stepped off a helicopter from Camp David. ly to the women and to the men. I must have change their stories. And under his other arm, plainly visible, was watched him for an hour and a half. I was Storytelling has been a part of my life a copy of my latest book. mesmerized. I couldn’t turn away. I didn’t for a long time. In the beginning I made a My respect for the president, his intelli- understand a single word he said, but I loved good living telling stories to and for business gence, his taste in literature, soared. his stories. people. What are frequently called brands or I got out of advertising. I’ve been clean for The power of stories in our lives is incred- corporate images are really just stories. about 10 years now. And I’m lucky enough ible. We don’t think about it as much as we I worked for J. Walter Thompson, which to write fiction—not great fiction but good should. We all have stories—just a couple of was the world’s largest advertising agency. escapism. I don’t like this “guilty pleasure” lines—and that’s how we’re seen in our fam- One of our clients was the Ford Motor Co., continued on page 87

Vanderbilt Magazine 71 TheClasses “ “ Andy Baker Darlington, BA’62, has been named National Educator of the Year by the Christian Educators Association International. Please note: Class Notes only appear in the print edition of this publication.

A Record Reunion/Homecoming Record attendance and giving highlighted Reunion/Homecoming Weekend last November. Attendance totaled 5,465—a 50-percent increase over 2003. The weekend included educational events, class parties, a Brad Paisley concert and Vanderbilt pep rally, tailgating, the Vanderbilt-Florida game, and “Dynamite Blast,” a family-friendly party. Giving by all reuniting classes totaled $41.4 million. If you missed out, it’s not too late to catch up. Update your information online with Dore2Dore at www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/onlineserv.htm and join your class’s discussion group. Mark your calendar now for Reunion/Homecoming 2005, set for Oct. 14–15.

PHOTOS BY NEIL BRAKE, DANIEL DUBOIS AND PEYTON HOGE

72 Spring 2005 Vanderbilt Magazine 73 T HE C LASSES “ “ Donald Quinton Cochran Jr., BA’80, JD’92, has been awarded for his successful prosecution of Bobby Frank Cherry for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Nora Wingfield Tyson, BA’79 Barbara Brooks, CASEY L. JAMES/U.S. NAVY EMBA’85

GREG EMENS Front and Center Horsing Around When Nora Wingfield Tyson speaks, more than 1,200 sailors and Marines listen. As commander of the USS It’s spring, and the verdant pastures and rolling hills of Bataan, a Wasp-class naval amphibious assault ship, she Painted Springs Farm glisten with life. But Barbara and her crew have made two trips to Kuwait to transport Brooks has eyes only for the colts cavorting with their personnel, equipment, and Harrier jets that use the mothers on the Middle Tennessee farm she owns with her Bataan’s 844-foot deck as a runway for the Iraq War. husband, Kix Brooks, half of the country-music duo Brooks The Memphis, Tenn., native and Vanderbilt English & Dunn. major finds it rewarding to help those serving under her to “For my 40th birthday, Kix gave me a painted thor- grow into the demands of military life, take responsibility, oughbred mare,” says Barbara. “We got another horse for and learn to make good decisions. “The majority realize him with the idea of breeding them.” But at an auction she they are a part of something bigger than themselves and saw a cutting horse work, and the dream of riding compet- give everything to preserve the freedoms we hold dear,” itively and a passion for building a business around breed- says Captain Tyson.“I’m entrusted with the care of these ing, training and selling horses were born. “I’m a firm folks, and the decisions I make affect their lives.” believer in the saying that the outside of a horse is the In civilian life, Tyson, an avid golfer, lives in Williams- best thing for the inside of a man,” she jokes. burg, Va., with her husband, Wayne. It’s a conviction that draws her most days to the stables “I’ve been well prepared,” says the 24-year U.S. Navy where she works beside her staff of nine, caring for and veteran. “Even so, you have to reflect on what you’ve training horses. While she finds satisfaction in the growing learned and count on your gut to guide you. For me, it’s success of the stock bred at Painted Springs, her deepest paramount that when I look in the mirror, I can honestly pleasure is a simple one, she says. “When I look at what say,‘I did the right thing.’” we’ve accomplished here and see my little buddies out in the field, nothing makes me happier.”

74 Spring 2005 Vanderbilt Magazine 75 T HE C LASSES “ “ Leanne West, BA’91, has been named among the “Top 40 Under 40” in the state of Georgia by Georgia Trend magazine.

Keith Alberstadt, BA’95

NEIL BRAKE Enter Laughing Laughter is Keith Alberstadt’s business. “When I was 16, a For the best selection of Official friend dared me to go to open-mike night at a comedy club,” says Alberstadt, an emerging stand-up comic. “I’ve Licensed Vanderbilt merchandise: been hooked ever since.” On the road four days a week doing gigs around the country, he finds his material in life’s little ironies. “My Visit the mom keeps sending me newspaper clips about my high- Vanderbilt Bookstore school friends who are getting married,” he says. “So I send her nursing home brochures.” On his days off, Alberstadt, who was an interdiscipli- Shop online nary communications major at Vanderbilt, works on his routines. When he thinks he has a nascent joke, he tries it 24 hours a day on another comic for feedback. He believes the work is at efollett.com paying off. XM Satellite Radio has broadcast some of his material, and he was a regional finalist for NBC television’s “Last Comic Standing” competition in 2004. “Comedy is like golf,” he says. “You can watch it on TV and go to the driving range, but you’ll never be good unless you play and play.” Fundamentally, Alberstadt says, his work is about good material, engaging the audience and honing his craft. “Making people laugh is a rush,” he says. “I’m hooked on that rush.”

76 Spring 2005 Vanderbilt Magazine 77 T HE C LASSES “ “ Ingrid Schuster Tighe, BA’98, an Army captain and Signal Corps officer serving in Baghdad, Iraq, has worked with the first group of Iraqi women to join the country’s military. VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2004–2005 NEW MEMBERS For a complete roster of board members and club liaisons, go to http://www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/alumassoc.htm EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: President: Sharon Munger, BA’68 Immediate Past President: Ronald D. Ford, EMBA’92 Past President: James H. Morgan, BA’69 President-Elect/Vice President: Karen T. Fesmire, BS’80 Appointed: Billy Ray Caldwell, BA’85 Bruce Elder, BA’92, MBA’93 Brian Morris, BA’84 Tony Tillis, BA’87

NEW REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES: Region I (Nashville) Billy Ray Caldwell, BA’85 Howard H. Lamar, BA’83, JD’89 Ann Marie McNamara, BA’65 (Martha) Paige Orr, BS’97 Brooke Reusch, BA’98 Jerry Southwood, BA’67 Region II (Tennessee exclusive of Nashville) Brandon Morrison, BA’87, MBA’88 John T. (Buddy) Fisher Jr., BA’50, L’54 Region III—Southeast (MS, AL, FL, GA, SC, NC) G. Marc Hamburger, BA’64 Joy Irwin, BE’89 Region IV—Northeast (KY and VA northward) Frank Walter, BA’78 Region V—West (all states west of the Mississippi River) Steve Ditto, BE’84 Region VI—International John Hindle, BA’68, PhD’81

NEW ALUMNI CLUB LIAISONS: Atlanta, GA Virginia Hopkins, BS’94 Chicago, IL Melanie Oh, BS’97 Memphis, TN Greer Redden, BS’96 Nashville, TN Lynn May, BA’60 New York, NY Meghan Abraham, BA’97 SCHOOL LIAISONS: Blair School of Music: Lauren Utterback, BMus’90 Divinity School: Sandra Randleman, JD’80, MDiv’99 Owen Graduate School of Management: Jeffrey Kudlata, BA’85, EMBA’96 School of Engineering: James Johnson, BE’63, PhD’72 School of Medicine: Joseph Little III, BA’72, MD’77 EX-OFFICIO DIRECTORS: Divinity President: Linda T.White, MDiv’94 National Chair of Reunion and Annual Giving: Mark P.Mays, BA’85 Nursing President: Robin Shanks Diamond, MSN’78 Medical President: John Neeld, BA’62, MD’66

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82 Spring 2005 Vanderbilt Magazine 83 From the Reader continued from page 6 ART. Among these, more than 26,000 are VJournal continued from page 7 issue [p. 52]. It captured the difficulties as direct beneficiaries of the president’s Emer- tense undercurrents, but Vanderbilt now has well as the innovative approaches used in the gency Plan. By October 2005, we estimate a sampling of books, political pamphlets, struggle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in that our efforts will result in more than 43,000 papers and posters from that early Sandin- Uganda. Regrettably, however, the article gives Ugandans treated. These medications are not ista era. Our students and scholars can glean the erroneous impression of slow delivery of only reaching the urban minority, but are a sense of those turbulent times. anti-retroviral medicines to Uganda through being delivered through more than 50 health Some of my best finds have been on per- President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS facilities throughout the country. The U.S. sonal trips. A bookseller in a remote Vermont Relief. Centers for Disease Control and Preven- farmhouse sold me one of the best early Latin In fact, the U.S. Mission team is quite proud tion has pioneered a home-based AIDS-care American travel accounts we have in Special that within five weeks of the appropriation strategy [that is] delivering ARVs to rural Collections. A driving trip to the village of passing Congress, we were delivering anti- homes, now adopted as a model by other bookshops in Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh coun- retroviral medications (ARVs) to some of organizations to reach Africans most in need. tryside yielded a collection of 19th-century Uganda’s poorest and sickest residents in The struggle to address AIDS in Uganda Mexican materials belonging to a Benedic- March 2004. remains massive, but efforts are in full swing tine monk. Not yet thoroughly unboxed or Since then we have built on our speedy and expanding constantly. We are proud of priced, it was a steal. Several small public response—really an unprecedented per- our efforts and will work to build upon them library book sales in New England have turned formance—to accelerate the delivery of drugs in the future to help Uganda turn back the up other early travel accounts. These lucky and expand the number of recipients. Over tide against this killer disease. finds, however, are no substitute for trips the past year the number of Ugandans receiv- Michael C. Gonzales to Latin American countries. ing anti-retroviral therapy (ART) has tripled, Deputy Public Affairs Officer Archaeological discoveries at Maya sites with more than 35,000 Ugandans receiving Embassy of the U.S.A., Uganda in Guatemala and digs by members of Van- derbilt’s anthropology faculty have inspired us to work toward becoming a national resource Sports continued from page 18 in Mesoamerican anthropology and archae- she says.“I’ve always wanted to work with kids, overall sports program ranked 28th in the ology. Stretching the library budget to aim so that’s a big part of it.”She volunteers two nation out of 278 institutions, a rise from 54th for such strength has required creativity and hours a week rocking premature infants in place the year before. “If anything we do as resourcefulness. I was in Guatemala when a Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital’s neonatal unit. athletes helps promote the school in general, noted archaeologist was selling his private Hahn’s success has translated into success I think it’s great,”Hahn says.“I love being here, library, and the Friends of the Library (Van- for the University’s overall athletics standing and I want everyone else to enjoy this as much derbilt’s donor society that supports the Uni- as well. Thanks in large measure to her per- as I do.” versity library system) gave us funds to buy formances on the national stage,Vanderbilt’s a portion of it. Over tea in his lovely colonial

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mansion in Antigua, the man regaled me with escalating. Several Cubans expressed concern a Maymester course, but now there were too stories of his explorations. When I returned that Bush might invade their homeland. many for their 70-pound limit. I located a that evening to make my final selections, I was Newly announced restrictions on travel cargo company that would ship to Canada greeted by a male servant holding a lunging to Cuba and on dollars sent to families caused and spent half a day in a high-security area Doberman. Books were spread around a patio, hardship for many Cubans. Several times peo- of the airport making the arrangements. The and the servant chained the growling dog to a ple asked me to buy milk for their babies. office walls were covered with photographs post. I spent a nerve-wracking evening select- Food was scarce, and the people were expe- of El Presidente Castro and reverent quota- ing books and praying the chain wouldn’t break. riencing the worst drought in 40 years. Eco- tions. The agent sported a Tommy Hilfiger Last year, when a frustrated Ph.D. stu- nomic hardships mean private libraries are shirt, a new fax machine, and a computer the dent from Spain said she was going to Cuba being broken up for resale, and stolen books likes of which no one else owned in Havana. to find the books and journals she needed are not uncommon. After endless paperwork I was taken to a load- since Vanderbilt and other U.S. libraries did Hardships notwithstanding, the govern- ing dock with my many bags of books. A not have a number of recent writers’ works, ment promotes a profusion of publishing and young but intimidating customs official looked I realized I had put off too long the prob- cultural events. UNEAC, the writers’ and at every book and pored over the pages. We lem of obtaining Cuban materials. A pro- artists’ union, is a busy and exciting spot filled were accompanied by the desperate squawks fusion of new Cuban writers has generated with authors, students and lecturers. The gov- of thousands of tiny parakeets stuffed into research by students and faculty in the Span- ernment subsidizes publishing, so books can open pallets bound for Spain. The promised ish department at Vanderbilt. An NEH-fund- be amazingly cheap (three to five books per boxes to pack my books were nowhere to ed international collaborative project to dollar). Bargaining and buying of antiquar- be found. When the severe customs official digitize decaying colonial documents in ian books in the plazas and from other places finished, he smiled and pitched in as agents Cuban archives is being directed by Van- can be the opposite, however, and one must scoured the airport for gunny sacks and boxes derbilt historian Jane Landers, and the library obtain a comprobante to be able to take pre- and packed. is supporting this effort. 1940 imprints out of Cuba. I left Cuba knowing the new acquisitions As I headed to Cuba last May, I reflected Despite the lack of resources, Cubans are would help students and faculty at Vander- on parallels between that trip and the one to upbeat and vibrant. When I arrived at the bilt and from other parts of the world with Nicaragua. From the plane the long, thin national library to visit librarians I had met their research, whether they were looking for island I had peered at with curiosity so many at a conference in Cartagena last year, the elec- a single fact or for a range of sources on a times en route to Latin America came into tricity was out, so I was unable to see their theme. Acquiring the right resources is vital view. As we prepared to land, most passen- duplicate exchange collections. They closed to good research, and it’s rewarding to see gers made the sign of the cross followed by the national library that afternoon because students become independent researchers thunderous applause and cheering. It was 9 they could not serve employees a meal. On and learn something they can put to use in p.m. when I arrived at the Havana airport a return visit, I noted computers were so old their careers. with $4,000 in cash in a money belt. U.S. banks they lacked virtually any memory—only after Two students wrote recently to thank my cannot do business with Cuba, and U.S. cred- three tries were they able to type a letter giv- co-teacher in Latin American research meth- it cards are not accepted. The Cuban crime ing me permission to take a duplicate collec- ods and me and to say they are using these rate is reportedly very low, but such a sum tion of a Cuban literary journal. The box of research skills from the class. Let’s hope they must be a powerful temptation in a coun- floppies and pens I brought them were care- truly learned them since one is in the White try where the average monthly income hov- fully parceled out to staff. Despite their prob- House and both are working on counterter- ers around $20. The night before my arrival, lems the librarians took the time to help an rorism. the student from Spain had sent me a cryp- American research library fill in journals and I’m not sure where my next opportunity tic e-mail from Cuba warning me to “take books we lacked. The Vanderbilt graduate stu- to strengthen the collection may take me. So care—all is in upheaval.” dent from Spain put me in touch with a pro- many other great finds are waiting to be dis- After a lengthy search of my baggage, I was fessor of Cuban literature who spent several covered … and in so little time … but what relieved to find an official had come to meet days helping me locate new writers’ works. wonderful places and people to get to know me, and I was taken through a crowd to a People in the plazas wanted to give directions along the way. locked van and driven to the city. We passed and talk about the U.S. Despite protests in the the dwindling crowds of a May Day protest— square, they were friendly, separating U.S. pol- In addition to her work as Latin American and more than a million people organized by Cas- itics from individual North Americans. Iberian bibliographer for the Jean and Alexan- tro to protest President Bush’s announcement I acquired so many books and journals der Heard Library, Paula Covington also co- of a nearly $60-million appropriation for that I began to worry about getting them out teaches an interdisciplinary course in Latin anti-Castro efforts to liberate Cuba. Tension of the country. I had considered parceling American research methods and helps students continued during my trip with the rhetoric them out to Vanderbilt students in Cuba for and faculty with research.

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Signal Strength continued from page 43 For the first time earlier this year, we said,‘You Mark Mays seems bullish on radio’s contin- competitive practices toward concert pro- can run whatever you want, but you can’t run ued viability, however that may play out in moters did result in a lawsuit by a Denver this because the FCC has come out and said future technologies. firm, that has been settled. that’s illegal.’So we had to set a company-wide “People have enormous passion for their Then there’s the scrutiny from the FCC. line that the FCC set for us. And it is some- particular radio station,”Mays says.“So how Clear Channel has a longstanding policy, thing we still struggle with internally. Where do we take that passion and move it into the states Mark Mays, of letting individual sta- does indecency stop, and where do First Amend- digital world of tomorrow? There’s going tions determine their own programming. It ment rights come in? I empathize with our to be more competition in the future. There worked well for years until 2004, when the talent who are trying to be innovative and already is with satellite radio. There are going FCC cracked down on broadcasting inde- fresh and creative every day. There’s no bright- to be more people listening online, more peo- cency in the wake of the Janet Jackson Super line test of where indecency standards are set, ple downloading. Bowl incident. Suddenly, its DJs had too much and that’s a challenge for me.” “But, you know, over time people will freedom: Clear Channel found itself hit with In response to the media flak, Clear Chan- come continually back to radio as the stal- hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for nel has increased its public relations and Wash- wart. It’s got the local news, local informa- the freewheeling chatter of Bubba the Love ington lobbying efforts. The company’s large, tion, local weather, local sports teams. That’s Sponge (whom Clear Channel fired) and well-stocked Web site offers pages such as still going to be a compelling mixture. I think other on-air talent. Clear Channel respond- “Know the Facts,”which takes on Clear Chan- radio has a tremendously bright future. It’s ed quickly with a company-wide Responsi- nel’s critics point by point, and dispenses online just going to have to adapt. … We’re out there ble Broadcasting Initiative to give on-air talent copies of recent letters Mark Mays has writ- looking at technology and trying to figure out decency guidelines, and in June 2004 the com- ten to Forbes and Rolling Stone, which refute ways to use current technology to further pany settled the FCC’s indecency claims against many of those magazines’ derogatory claims enhance our distribution platform. How can its stations by agreeing to a one-time $1.75 about Clear Channel. Overall Mark Mays seems we take our content and deliver it in other million payment to cover all its fines. more disappointed than perturbed over accu- ways—whether that’s over the Internet, whether Ironically, Clear Channel also has been sations that persist in the media. that’s through wireless technologies?” charged with too much control of its stations: “I think we’ve done a good job over the Today Mark Mays seems right at home at Allegations surfaced in 2003 of politically last couple of years of getting out there with the helm of Clear Channel, the family busi- motivated censorship in regards to airplay of the facts and saying, ‘Come on, guys,’”says ness and the multibillion-dollar public cor- the Dixie Chicks, following their lead singer’s Mark.“Yes,we are capitalists. And yes, we do poration.“The great thing about what we do criticism of President Bush in 2003, as well try to improve the bottom line, and we’re out is that there’s something new and different as rumors of a Clear Channel edict against there to improve cashflow for shareholders. every day,”he says, reflecting on what moti- playing certain songs company-wide. But a lot of claims people have made are vates him. “The opportunities excite me, As Mark and Randall Mays both point absolutely false.” whether that’s outdoor, entertainment or out, the charges of censorship simply don’t radio or television. Just coming in and hav- stick. It was a Clear Channel rival, Cumulus, hat’s in store for Clear Chan- ing the opportunity to help shape and mold that issued a company-wide ban on the Dixie nel? Forbes and others have sug- is exciting.” Chicks in 2003; Clear Channel never did. Sim- Wgested that Clear Channel’s days As I walk down the corridor on my way ilarly, a fall 2001 New York Times story report- of massive growth through radio acquisitions out of Mark Mays’ office, Randall Mays passed rumors that in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist are over. But with the bulk of its business in es me, says a quick goodbye, and greets Mark attacks, Clear Channel had issued a compa- radio, TV and billboards—all advertising- with some information that is just out of my ny-wide ban on certain songs. Says Randall dollar magnets—Clear Channel has a busi- earshot. Then there’s a big, double-barreled Mays, “It never happened. But especially in ness model that generates very steady cashflow brotherly whoop of celebration behind me. this day and age, with the Internet, sometimes in the billions, so there are always opportu- I have no idea what went down, but if I were these things take on lives of their own. And nities for other kinds of growth. a betting man, I’d have my money on the it’s difficult to get the truth out.” Naturally, Mark Mays plays his cards close Mays boys. V As for the FCC crackdown, Mark Mays to his vest when asked what those opportu- says he is happy to comply with the govern- nities might be. Some financial pundits have An English major when at Vanderbilt and now ment’s more stringent position on indecen- speculated that TV-station growth may be a Nashville freelancer, Paul Kingsbury, BA’80, cy, but it has taken some work company-wide. next. Others note the recent hiring of Evan is the author of books about the Grand Ole “It was a change for us,”he says.“We’ve always Harrison, former head of America Online’s Opry and Nashville’s historic Hatch Show Print had decentralized operations, and we’ve said music efforts, to spearhead Clear Channel’s poster shop. His articles have appeared in Enter- [to our programmers], ‘Run whatever you move into Internet radio, which remains large- tainment Weekly, US, Nashville Life and other think, as long as it’s within FCC guidelines.’ ly virgin territory for advertising. Regardless, magazines.

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A.P.O.V. continued from page 71 When I was in my early 30s, I was very much cream and frozen food. At 4 o’clock in the thing—I wish everyone would stop that. It’s in love with a woman in New York City. One morning, we would get up and pack up his OK to read an escapist book. It’s OK to go to Saturday morning we went out to get break- truck. By around 5 o’clock we’d be going over the movies. fast and stopped in the post office on Broad- Storm King Mountain in the direction of West Earlier this year I came across something way, and she fell over in the post office. We Point. That’s not the most glamorous thing Flaubert said that captured the way I feel when both thought she was dying. It turned out that to be doing six days a week—packing the I sit down to write stories. It’s part of the rea- she was having a seizure. And it ultimately truck at 4 in the morning, getting home at son I get so excited to do this so many days turned out that she had a brain tumor and a 6:30 at night, delivering frozen food. of the year: very limited amount of time to live. My grandfather was a joyful guy who’d “It is a delicious thing to write … to be no People react to situations like this in a lot lived through the Depression, and virtually longer yourself, but to move an entire uni- of different ways. Some people will spend the every day I was with him he would go over verse of your own creating. Today, for instance, rest of their time together shaking their fists Storm King Mountain singing at the top of as both man and woman, both lover and mis- at the sky and saying, “Why us?” Some peo- his lungs. He had a terrible voice. He’d sing tress, I rode in a forest on an autumn after- ple will weep and weep and weep. all those old songs—“Oh! Susanna,”“Put noon under the yellow leaves, and I was also What we did was to tell each other a story. Another Nickel In,”“She’ll Be Coming ’Round the horses, the wind, the words my people The story and the point of view we took was: the Mountain”—and he said to me, “Jim, I uttered, even the red sun that almost made Isn’t it lucky that we have this time? Isn’t it don’t care what you do when you grow up. them close their love-drowned eyes.” lucky that you didn’t die in the post office I don’t care if you become a truck driver or Go write a book. It’s fun. and we have this day to take this walk? Isn’t a surgeon or the president. Just remember, On the other hand, sportswriter Red Smith it lucky that you didn’t die in the post office when you go over the mountain to work in once said, “Writing is easy. All you do is sit and we have today to spend with our friends? the morning, you have to be singing.” staring at the blank piece of paper until the That story, that point of view, made that year And I do. I hope you do, too. drops of blood form on your forehead.” and a half the most precious of my life...... Best-selling author James Patterson, MA’70,has Here’s a great sports story: When I was at Van- One last story: When I was a boy, I grew up nearly 30 books in print encompassing the mys- derbilt as a graduate student, Vanderbilt beat in a farm town on the Hudson River. In the tery, suspense, science fiction, romance and chil- Alabama in football. summer my grandfather used to take me on dren’s genres. This essay was adapted from his ... his truck route once a week. He delivered ice address as part of the Chancellor’s Lecture Series.

Southern Journal continued from page 88 both of them so ’fraid of women, woman and there was a mourning noise under the a stick and it scattered in a hunnert pieces. was to come to their house, they’d fight each house; we thought it was a sign, but come Later on, they’d come back together. other to see who could get up the chimbley to look, it was just dogs fightin’. Well, when we come back to the river first. Well, after Lim married, Abe bought Then spring come and Digs got well. One it come up a cloud, and me and Will run him a house there in Buena Vista; place was day she run in the house with mud on her and got in a hollow oak tree there by the hainted. One day he was out in the stable hands and left a handprint on the screen river. Biggest tree I ever did see. So big in and he heard the ghost a-mumbling some- door there. That summer we put her out in there I took a 16-foot fence-rail and held it thing—mumbling and mumbling. Well, the sunshine with Little Roy and had her out level and I could turn plum around in Abe said to it, “In the name of Jesus, speak picture made. Digs pulled up the blanket in there. And if you don’t believe it, you can to me,”and he said that three times and the her mouth just as they made the picture— ask your Uncle Will. ghost had to answer him—told him to go that’s the only picture we have of her. over there in the south corner of the stable When Christmas come, Opp give us a Hampton and dig there—and sure ’nough there was hoop of cheese out of the store. Little Digs I jes’ barely remember Ol’ Ebb Hampton. a iron dinner kettle full of gold money. never had had any before and she ate so much He was a old, old man when I was a little it give her the colic. They called Dr. Massey girl. Him and his daughter Rosey and his Lillie Loreen from Buena, but he couldn’t do nothing. daughter Lindie used to go around, sing at We named her Lillie Loreen—Lillie after When we moved away from there, we churches. They was awful religious folks. Pa’s sister, but we called her Digs ’cause of throwed the broom back in the house because Old Ebb died with a cancer on his face. They the way she walked, her toes diggin’ in the it’s bad luck to move a broom. But we took had put him up in a screen-wire cage to keep ground. down the screen door and moved it with the flies from a-blowing him, ’fore he died. We thought she was going to die that first us—there’s the print of her hand on it in Lim and Abe was his boys—they was winter. The deathwatches ticked in the wall mud.

Vanderbilt Magazine 87 VMagSpr05_pg88.P2 4/19/05 10:01 AM Page 88 SouthernJournal Reflections on the South Simple Annals

Stories from an American family By ROBERT HOWARD ALLEN, MA’85, PHD’90

hese stories are based on fam- awfully curious—she had her ways. So I went ily legends and folk tales that back to sleeping on my little trundle bed, and Robert Allen heard as a child first thing I knowed I had head lice. Aunt Call- in rural West Tennessee. They ine had left ’em in the bed you see. Well I done form part of his collection Sim- ever’thing I knowed to get rid of them head ple Annals: 200 Years of an lice—washed my head with lye soap and American Family, published in 1997 by Four ever’thing. Finally somebody told me to wash TWalls Eight Windows. my head with coal oil and that would kill ’em JIM HSIEH off. Well, I took a quart of coal oil and I went organ if she wouldn’t have nothing to do with Aunt Ida’s Hair down to the spring and I done it. And shore me. She always wanted a parlor organ and It’s getting grey now and that’s the third color enough ever’ hair on my head fell out. I’se as she’d tuck him up on it. Give them vases to it’s been. They say, though, you’ll never be baldheaded as a watermelon there, but it was Zade when I married her. They was curious whiteheaded if you’s ever redheaded and I in the summer time. Come to grow back, it people, them Gooches was, cur—riss, I tell was redheaded as a pecker-wood when I was growed in black—just as black as a crow and you. a girl. One time Aunt Calline Bateman come I’d had the prettiest red hair ’fore that—took to stay with us. She was Granma Thomas’ sis- after Pa’s folks, they was all redheaded. An’ Pa Buys Salt ter—married Henry Bateman—he died right that’s how come me to be getting the third One time me and Will drove over to Perryville after the War and Aunt Calline stayed around color of hair now. They say, though, that you’ll to buy salt—that was right after the War and with her folks after that. She’s a big, fat woman, never be whiteheaded if you’se ever redheaded, salt ’us scarce—people used to dig up the like Granma and nasty! She never would and that’s why it’s coming in in streaks. Killed dirt under their smokehouses, boil it in a change her dress—she wore one dress over them lice, though. washpot, then pour off the water, and boil the other and when one of ’em got too dirty that down to get back the salt that had been she’d just pull it off and there was another Jim a-Courting spilled. dress under that. She dipped snuff and there I went over to Ben Gooch’s for Sunday din- We bored a hole up in the underside of the was always a ring of snuff around her mouth— ner one time—that was when I’se courting wagon tongue, put our money up in there and never did wash nor nothing. Mandy and come to set down to eat, her put a stopper in it, so if there was any bush- Well, she slept on my bed. I had a little old old mammy tuck the biscuits and put ’em in whackers stopped us, they couldn’t find our trundle bed—rolled back under Pa and Ma’s a basket, kept ’em in her lap—anybody want- money. We crossed Tennessee River there at big bed during the day. That was that big old ed a biscuit she’d reach down there and pass the Puryear Ferry, and got our salt. There was bed of theirs Pa made when they first got mar- ’em one. I didn’t know what to think of them. hoop snakes over there in Perry County— ried, called it the Horny Bed. Aunt Calline Well, I’d ’bout decided to marry Mandy we’se coming downhill one time and one of stayed with us sev’l weeks and I slept on a pal- and I bought her a set a’ vases and bowl of them took out after us—put its tail in its let on the floor. the prettiest Carnival glass—give nearly fifty mouth and rolled down that hill like the Well, after that Aunt Calline went to stay cents for ’em at Opp’s store. I’se gonna ride rim of a wagon wheel—went right past us, with Uncle Zer—heh! She didn’t stay long, over and propose to her that Sunday. Well, on down the hill. I seed a joint snake too— though, cause Aunt Mary couldn’t put up come Friday I got a letter from Mandy—said put together in joints, like cane. I hit at it with with her—poor old thing!—Aunt Mary was her Daddy had promised to buy her a parlor continued on page 87

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