Awestruck
Karl Lindholm’s story about Jon Coffin ’67 struck a chord as I read it—riding the bus home with the 94th Army Band. Our left turn at the Ayer, Massachusetts, Town Hall had given me a view of a young trumpet player who had just rejoined our reserve band after a tour in Iraq. He’d volunteered to drive for the 167th Transportation Company. He extended his tour to join his buddies in the 3rd ID Band, with whom he’d served in Kosovo. Some time into his tour, he received an Article 15 for refusing to play Taps for one more dead soldier. I won’t forget the way his hand trembled, as his fellow soldier blew Taps, surrounded by a thin crowd of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, veterans, and politicians.
As one of those who found refuge in the Army Reserves back in 1970, I now find myself in awe of the idealism and professionalism of young soldiers today.
I salute Coffin for his service to the brave men and women of the Vermont National Guard—and Lindholm, too, for sharing his experiences with his Middlebury students.
Jim Woodworth ’69
Wethersfield
, Connecticut
Tragedies of War
I was moved by Karl Lindholm’s profile of psychologist Jon Coffin ’67 (“The Mind of The Warrior,” spring 2006) and the role Coffin plays in depressurizing and cushioning the return from war of Vermont’s National Guard soldiers.
As a conscientious objector caught up in the political resistance to the Vietnam War, my experience of that war was perhaps at odds with Coffin’s. However, in conversations with (among others) my closest high school friend, whose divergent path was through West Point and many years in the Army Reserves, I came to differentiate the combat soldier, often tragically placed in horrific life or death situations, from the civilian decisionmakers, whose political choices consigned others to that fate.
As a teacher who has worked in many contexts with individuals confronting substance abuse and emotional trauma, I appreciate the important and necessary work that Coffin and others provide for those returning soldiers. The tragedies of the Iraq War are manifold and to be mourned, even here in Vermont.
David Brautigam ’69
Huntington
, Vermont
Coming Full Circle
Reading “Stop the Presses!” in the spring 2006 issue revived fond memories of the Middlebury Campus newsroom of the 1930s. Some things never change. We, too, worked in cramped quarters, battled relentless deadlines, and had a lot of fun.
A few things were different then. We didn’t have Dunkin’ Donuts. Computers, cell phones, and pizza were not around, and we lacked the luxury and convenience of the Hepburn basement. Our workplace was the second floor of the old Middlebury Register building, downtown on the main drag. When the presses rolled on the ground floor, the building shook, and we were happily deluded into thinking we were working on a big-city daily. Coffee, of sorts, was available across the street at a diner called, for unknown reasons, the “Dog Cart.”
One of our perks was something called “Campus cuts,” which allowed us to skip daily chapel. This proved to be a powerful incentive when recruiting new staff members. In our upper-class years, some of us watched grades tumble because we were spending more time at the Campus than on our studies. My consolation prize in 1937 came when I landed a job on a small-town daily after pounding the pavement for three months during the Depression. It wasn’t my Middlebury diploma that impressed the editor. It was a single copy of the Middlebury Campus. He looked it over briefly and said, “You’re hired.”
Walter Mears ’56 of the Associated Press said in the article that the Campus was his “journalism school.” As managing editor, one of my jobs was teaching the basics of newspaper writing to freshmen tryouts, and indeed I felt like a professor, especially since the College itself offered only one course in creative writing. We used to say that a regular journalism school “taught you how to write, but not what to write about,” whereas at Middlebury you had the best of both worlds.
For more than a century, the Campus has produced leaders in the field of communication. Our little group included Jack Steele ’36, later a White House correspondent who earned a Pulitzer for his paper; Everett Allen ’38, who wrote the classic hurricane book, A Wind to Shake the World; and W.C. “Bill” Heinz ’37, the war correspondent who became one of America’s best sportswriters.
The Campus started me on a wonderful ride in journalism, public relations, magazine editing, and professional fund-raising. Now, at 89, I work with an enthusiastic bunch of senior volunteers, putting out an 80-page tabloid that is read (we hope) by 15,000 adult-community residents. We work in cramped quarters, battle relentless deadlines, and have a lot of fun. I have come full circle.
Marshall Sewell ’37
Whiting, New Jersey
Community Spinnin’
Thank you for the update on WRMC (“What’s Spinnin’ at WRMC,” spring 2006). I know the station has grown by leaps and bounds since I left just a few years ago, yet WRMC has managed to maintain its unique character and dedication to community service and edification. In Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), the Supreme Court characterized radio broadcasters as community “fiduciaries.” WRMC appears to be living up to that lofty goal. Keep on spinnin’, WRMC.
Zachary Manganello ’03
South Royalton, Vermont
The writer was general manager of WRMC in 2002–2003.
Stop Preaching
The letter “Still Lacking after 39 Years” (Letters, spring 2006) preaches that the College has not lived up to its duty to teach “Contemporary issues.” If anything fails to qualify as “contemporary,” it is the writer’s stuck-in-the-sixties visions of student indoctrination disguised as legitimate course descriptions.
Obviously the writer feels that she was too hip for 1968 Middlebury and that the College has not quite caught up today. At least in 1968, however, the author made an attempt at objectivity by admitting there were several sides to the Vietnam issue.
Conversely, her versions of “contemporary” course descriptions are nothing but shrill, shopworn dogma. They would have no legitimate educational purpose. They merely demonize the writer’s hatred of people and politics of the moment and seek to provoke fear and anger by claiming a presumptive theft of rights and entitlements. Little more can be gleaned other than an implied lionization of the manipulative and illogical style of long since discredited Marxist/Leninist/Maoist/rants and slogans.
Contrast the letter’s subjective tone with a review of the College’s current course descriptions. They are detailed, multireferenced, and relevant. They clearly describe the challenges that are expected to be met and contain considerable “response to social issues” without preaching. The only challenge a student would have with the letter writer’s proposed courses would be how to regurgitate a minimum amount of expected one-sided propaganda so as to ensure an easy A.
While I am sure Middlebury has something of a soft spot for aging 1960s-style mantras, a college that prides itself in teaching critical thought must never seriously consider courses described or instructed in this manner simply because some remnant from the New Left’s glory days has decreed otherwise.
Randy Houser ’74
Charleston
, South Carolina
Unwise Choice
Given the College’s commitments to international studies and civic engagement, as well as its location in rural Vermont, the choice of Ann Veneman as commencement speaker would have seemed an inspired one: she was raised on a “family farm in a small rural community” and became the first woman to serve as secretary of agriculture before her most recent appointment as executive director of UNICEF. (It should be said, however, that the “small rural community” was outside Modesto, California, an agribusiness hub whose current population exceeds 200,000, and that the patriarch of the “family farm” represented Stanislaus in the California Assembly and later served as an undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Nixon.)
After some reflection, however, we became concerned that the choice was inconsistent with the values of the College and with the values of most Vermonters. Those who applaud the College’s efforts to support local farms, for example, would find her long association with agribusiness and genetically modified foods troubling, to say the least. Between her tenure as deputy secretary of agriculture in the first President Bush’s administration and her appointment as secretary of the California Food and Agriculture Department in the mid- 1990s, she served on the board of directors at Calgene and represented Dole Foods in Washington. As agriculture secretary, she would receive a letter from the members of Vermont’s congressional delegation, who cited the treatment of dairy farmers as an example of the administration’s “farmer unfriendly” policies.
Environmentalists will likewise be troubled that, in her role as overseer of the United States Forest Service, she led the administration’s efforts to reverse the Clinton administration’s protection of 60 million acres of public lands from road construction, logging, and other development. As a Washington Post editorial noted, the new policies, intended to ease land use restrictions, “would . . . eviscerate protections for some of the country’s last unspoiled wilderness.”
Those concerned about the effects of “unchecked globalization” on nations both rich and poor will perhaps also be disappointed. Since the Uruguay Round of GATT, at which she served as a negotiator, former Secretary Veneman has been a prominent advocate of unfettered trade. Indeed, her positions on agriculture and trade are related: as secretary, she opposed the “precautionary principle” that would allow countries or, in the case of the European Union, groups of countries, to regulate imports of genetically modified foods pending further research.
It comes as no surprise, then, that her appointment as executive director of UNICEF has drawn criticism. In a recent column for The Nation, John Nichols quotes from a letter from Ravi Narayan of the People’s Health Movement to Secretary General Kofi Annan, in which Narayan concludes that “her performance in [her previous positions] has been characterized by the elevation of corporate profit above people’s right to food (U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25). Such a philosophy and practice would reverse almost six decades of UNICEF’s proud humanitarian history and prove disastrous for the world’s children.” Furthermore, a recent article in Planned Parenthood’s Choice! raised concerns about her positions on women’s rights and sex education, and their implications for UNICEF’s mission.
We do not mean to suggest that there is nothing to admire in her record or that other colleges and universities would not find her an inspirational commencement speaker. We believe, however, that our own commencement should have celebrated better the particular values that characterize Middlebury, both college and town.
Peter Hans Matthews,
Economics
Michael Olinick, Mathematics
David H. Bain, English
Jeffrey Carpenter, Economics
David Dorman, Mathematics
Elizabeth Endicott, History
Gloria González Zenteno, Spanish
William Hart, History
Kamakshi Murti, German
Margaret Nelson, Sociology and Anthropology
Ellen Oxfeld, Sociology and Anthropology
Paula Schwartz, French
Slipped Up
Loved the article on Middlebury hockey (“Panther Hockey from A to Z”) in the spring issue, but if you please, we’d like to point out a couple of mistakes.
It is “St. Norbert,” not “St. Norberts” (although we wouldn’t be surprised if they would have liked to have doubled themselves on the ice against Midd), and it is “Manhattanville” and not “Manhattan.” The [Manhattan] Jaspers play a pretty good brand of basketball, but to our knowledge have never put blades to ice.
Dave ’55 and Joanne Kittell Corey ’55
Brattleboro
, Vermont
Editors’ Note: We apologize for the errors. That’s five minutes in the penalty box for the editors!
Missing Dotty Already
When we learned that the esteemed Dotty McCarty would be retiring as Middlebury Magazine’s alumni editor (“First Class,” spring 2006), we felt joy for her but sadness for us.
For more than 25 years, Dotty has been the magazine’s Carrie Nation, protecting us all from the dreaded dangling participle and the terrible split infinitive. Her editorial skills hopefully made us write as if we had at least a little college education. But most of all, she was helpful and most responsive to our many inquiries. All alumni have benefited from the excellent way she did her job.
Bill ’46 and Jan Shaw Percival ’46
Cataumet
, Massachusetts
Dotty Made Us Look Good
One thing I learned from Professor David Littlefield early in life was that I would never make a good writer. So I spent much of my professional life editing the words of others. To this day, I’m not sure which task is more difficult: being a writer or an editor. Both are daunting responsibilities. Writers’ egos can be easily bruised, if not broken, by an editor.
As a class secretary, I can truthfully say that [alumni editor] Dotty McCarty has always made my “job” a genuine pleasure. On many occasions, she’s willingly published the lengthy “autobiographies” submitted by some classmates. At other times, she’s patiently researched other print media to confirm the accuracy of information the College had received. At all times, she’s made our jobs so easy and conducted herself with such grace that it is almost impossible to “retire” when perhaps we should.
So I join the legions of other Middlebury alumni who salute Dotty on the occasion of her passage to another phase of her life. I’m confident that whatever roles she undertakes, she’ll accomplish them with the same diplomatic flair that has characterized her time with us.
T Tall ’65
Cornwall
, Vermont
This Is News?
The first thing I do when the Middlebury Magazine arrives is to read the class notes, and it leaves me with the following questions: Do you print anything and everything anyone sends? And are all the members of my class, 1936, dead? I’m “glad” to know about Isabel Emmerich’s knitting—can she play the piano, too? Should I ask Louise, the class secretary?
I fill in those questionnaire cards the College sends me, but I didn’t realize you wanted to know if I could crochet, sew, or needlepoint. Well, I can also water my garden, play the organ, and use a cell phone.
Roxana Lewis Blackmore ’36
Schenectady
, New York
Letters Policy
Letters addressing topics discussed in the magazine are given priority, though they may be edited for brevity or clarity. On any given subject we will print letters
that address that subject, and then in the next issue, letters that respond to the first letters. After that, we will move on to new subjects. Send letters to:
Middlebury Magazine
Meeker House
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
E-mail: middmag@middlebury.edu