World War II really never ended

Veterans returning from World War II were grateful to get any kind of employment as they married, started families and attended college on the G.I. Bill.  They were unconcerned that old line companies like General Motors, General Electric and Westinghouse continued to produce military weapons and supplies, even as they resumed production of automobiles, refrigerators and washing machines for a starved domestic market.

In Upstate New York, old line cotton mills and glove factories that had supplied uniforms and parachutes during the war, closed their doors.  Chamber of Commerce officials heralded the “Loom to Boom” transition that brought in military contractors to take their place.

By the 1950s, the military-industrial complex was entrenched, and Uncle Sam was the principal customer.  When Dwight Eisenhower completed his second term in the White House, he warned that reliance on war production to provide jobs in peacetime would change the character of our nation.  He was prescient.  But few were listening.  It was as if World War II had never ended on America’s production lines.  The military services continued to prepare for battle, vowing never again to be caught as short handed and as ill-equipped as they were when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Industry and the defense department collaborated on the design and production of new jet aircraft, tanks, machine guns, submarines and landing craft.  The Army, Navy and Air Force were the principal customers. Foreign customers were welcome, even if their people were starving and their leaders had to borrow the money from us to purchase the weapons.

We became the world’s biggest arms merchant, and the world’s superior military force.  We located our troops in many parts of the world, bolstered our intelligence capability, and believed we were ready for any contingency. Militarily.  Even if we had to deal with despots to assure a flow of oil and permission to locate our airfields and to secure deep harbors for refueling and repairing our ships.

But many observers believed we contributed to making the world a more dangerous place and that we added to our list of adversaries. Involvement in Korea was deemed unavoidable.  But Vietnam was a quagmire to be avoided.  Once engaged there, we would not admit error.  President Johnson’s contrived Bay of Tonkin episode drove us deeper into the muck.  We would not admit error when we knew we could not win, and thousands upon thousands of our men had lost their lives.  The nation was subjected  to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s weekly body counts: we killed more of them than they killed of us, so of course we were winning.  Sickening.  McNamara knew it was cruel folly and eventually resigned.  Johnson did not seek re-election, knowing his defeat at the polls was as certain as our country’s defeat in Vietnam.  We left that country in chaos.  Military leaders said lessons were learned, that we would be wiser, better informed in the future.

But the horror of September 11, 2001 revealed our sleuthing was woefully inadequate and that there were outrageous communication gaps between our CIA and FBI.  We did have military might, and used it, as if we were responding to an attack from a nation state rather than a band of terrorists operating from several countries.  We sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan to find a single individual said to have planned the horrendous attacks on American soil, Osama bin Laden. 

Intelligence identified his location in Pakistan nine years later, and a brave, highly-trained group of Navy SEALS killed him and brought back his plans for further destruction for review by our military and CIA.  But by then our financial surplus had evaporated into staggering debt from fighting two unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, chiefly on borrowed money from China, with little thought to the long-term political, humanitarian and economic consequences.  We really had learned nothing from our experience in Vietnam. 

Looking back, the whole world was in chaos from the 1930s through the 1940s, and in the early years of that global conflict, the outcome was uncertain.  So the idea of building an enduring military defense following World War II was entirely appropriate.  But we have gone far beyond that.  

The character of our nation has been changed.  We have conducted torture, sanctioned by the White House; ignored The Geneva Conventions, and intervened in other nations selectively, based on political considerations, not consistently on the basis of professed American values.   At home, divisions deepen, economic disparities widen, and the sense of unity that kept us working together through World War II is missing.  We cannot restore America without it.  ***

Carlton E. Spitzer                                                                                                                          

Similarities, but no match between FDR and Barack Obama

Political pundits often compare the challenges faced by Barack Obama in 2008 to those faced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.  Both entered the Oval Office after the nation’s wealth had plummeted from a huge surplus to a devastating deficit. 

      But times were quite different.  FDR had to create mechanisms to restore stability and replace fear with hope.  Obama’s challenge was to skillfully use  mechanisms FDR had invented.

      FDR worked with a panicked Congress that welcomed his leadership and supported his programs.  Albeit, with mixed emotions. 

     Obama had to convince a sharply divided Congress to come together to preserve the republic.  Both men had to urge legislators to put nation before party, and seek middle ground. 

      FDR heard the rumblings of war in Japan and Germany, but at that moment faced no immediate threat from outside his own beleaguered nation.  Those threats would materialize soon enough into World War II, with devastating consequences.

      Obama, on the other hand, inherited two unnecessary wars financed with borrowed money, chiefly from China.  The staggering costs of those wars were not included in the nation’s budget.  And they continue to burden our nation and take the lives of our troops;  wars seemingly without end.

FDR’s first 100 days: 

     Within his first 100 days in office, FDR regulated the banking system and created millions of jobs that would, in a remarkably short time, restore the nation’s infrastructure, provide flood control, and build schools, dams, roads, and parks.  He stopped foreclosures, worked with farmers to assure a return on their investment, and created the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

      Obama propped up the automobile industry until it could again function  on its own, infused failing markets with cash, but believed private industry in all fields would provide the jobs.  Sadly, employers’ confidence is not yet fully restored.  Major firms tend to build up reserves rather than create jobs.  Too often, they transfer manufacturing facilities offshore where operating costs are lower. Unemployment in the U.S. remains disturbingly high, except, of course, on Wall Street where market manipulators who created the financial crisis are still operating handsomely with few constraints.

      Both FDR and Obama crossed swords with the Supreme Court,  believing its decisions undercut their initiatives and blunted the will of both Congress and the people. 

      FDR clumsily tried and failed to pack the Court with his own appointees, an effort roundly criticized by his supporters and his opponents.  Obama has publicly voiced his displeasure with the Court’s rulings. 

       FDR-type programs had a rebirth in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” with the passage of Medicare, Civil Rights legislation, expanded educational opportunities, the “war on poverty,” and the Freedom of Information Act.  But conservative have been trying to destroy Franklin Roosevelt’s programs ever since the 32^nd president put them in place during his unprecedented four-term administration that stretched through the Great Depression almost to the end of World War II. 

       And those efforts to destroy the last remnants of FDR’s “New Deal,” John Kennedy’s, “New Frontier,” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,”  have never been more strident than today.  Social programs are anathema to those who believe government should shrink overall and abandon or dilute its hand in the social welfare of the people.

Medicare as a single payer system:

       When Medicare was written in 1965 as a single payer system managed by government, with major, essential participation of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, conservatives screamed to the white House and Capitol Hill that a single payer concept was blatantly socialistic.

       After fierce lobbying, and with great reluctance, the bill was substantially modified.  Medicare’s primary author, Wilbur Cohen, who as a young social welfare professor at the University of Michigan had helped to draft FDR’s Social Security legislation, was then undersecretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare.  He was bitterly disappointed.  But as a veteran of dozens of legislative battles, Cohen was a key force in implementing the version enacted, with the fervent hope the original concept might be employed at a later time.

         Cohen’s original draft would have avoided the multi-layered, unnecessarily costly program legislators are trying to rewrite today.  Only the very bold even speak of single payer today, although privately most agree it would work most efficiently and cost-effectively.  The basic, long unresolved question, of course, is the legitimate role of government.

       Conservatives do not revere Franklin Roosevelt’s memory, or the course he set for the nation.  But the poor and voiceless of that era revered him.  The rich and powerful said he was a traitor to his class.  Their descendents on Capitol Hill and in the marketplace are the ones who rail against President Obama today.

       Obama has had to defend himself against ridiculous, scurrilous accusations about his citizenship, his scholarly achievements, his community accomplishments, and even his commitment to democracy.

       FDR was compared to Italy’s strutting dictator, Benito Mussolini. When he ran for a second term in 1936, his opponents circulated thousands of fliers saying his disability from polio was actually third stage syphilis.  FDR’s satisfaction was a resounding victory.  But he did not forgive the outrageous attempt to defile his character.

        In FDR’s time, national radio was the principal means of communicating with the people, and he used it masterfully, delivering dozens of “fireside chats” to inform and inspire the people.  In a conversational style, he took the people into his confidence, explaining his plans, later reporting on the progress of  the war, and emphasizing the need for national unity.

        He could not have imagined the range of instant communication media that Obama has at his fingertips today.  President Obama is a masterful orator.  He has a brilliant mind and a thoughtful demeanor.  Perhaps he will  learn to be more conversational. 

        The question today is how well and how honestly leaders in government and business employ modern communication. Truth is still elusive.  Clever propaganda is too often applauded.  And vicious, unfounded accusations still characterize political campaigns.

        On that President Obama and FDR would fully agree.

                                                      ***    

Carlton E. Spitzer

Success comes from how well one listens

What motivated a girl from New Jersey to study journalism in Maine, theatre arts in the nation’s capital, and then move to the Eastern Shore to eventually become Talbot County’s economic development director? 

      Paige Bethke says her youthful career transitions and diversified responsibilities in private industry and state government over the years help her do her job every day.  She’s been director since 2006. 

     The oldest of six children, Bethke grew up in New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia, and has worked since she was 14.  “My first job was a part-time telephone bill collector for a hospital.  I learned I never wanted to do that again,” she laughs.

     She attended college in Maine chiefly because living in New England had always appealed to her.  “But my dad, an engineer with advanced degrees, lost his job when I was in my second year.  I learned from his experience that no job is absolutely secure, and that the general economy, more than one’s degrees, governs stability.”

     Her father’s new job brought the family to Maryland. Bethke entered  Montgomery Community College before studying theatre arts at Catholic University, graduating in 1977.   “Between journalism and theater, I learned how to present ideas creatively.”   

     She developed training materials for satellite tracking stations for a NASA contractor, maintained retail and commercial accounts for a newspaper chain, provided marketing and sales expertise for a tri-sate computer company, directed the Center for Business and Industry at Chesapeake College, and was business development representative for the State of Maryland’s Department of Employment and Economic Development.  “I learned that success comes from how well one listens.”

     She was regional manager for Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development in the 1990s. and worked as a commercial real estate appraiser before being named Talbot County’s economic development director.  “I’ve had good mentors, perhaps the very best mentor was Jim Brady, Secretary for Maryland’s Department of Economic Development.  I’ve always tried to live up to a sign he had on his desk: ‘No whining. No Surprises’.

      “I fell in love with the Eastern Shore years ago and decided to move here in 1982 with no job offer.  I’ve never had second thoughts.”

     As Talbot’s economic development director, Bethke manages an office of one, and says all of the experience she’s acquired is put to use  planning future activities, contacting prospective industries, creating new jobs and increasing revenues for the county.  “The principal task is building partnerships with current employers, prospective investors, town, county and state officials, educational institutions, Chambers of Commerce, and the real estate industry. 

     “We won’t be disappointed if we’re realistic about the kinds of firms we  can attract,” she says.  “Environmental companies and research groups are well established here and their expansion is important.  Cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and maintaining its health is a top priority for business and government, working together.”

      While each county is focused on boosting its own economic base, sometimes the best way to do that, Bethke says, is to collaborate to bring a major industry to the Eastern Shore, no matter where that industry might settle and build.  “A big employer is going to benefit all of us.”     

                                                    *** 

Carlton E. Spitzer

Stigma delays help for brain-damaged veterans

In all wars, soldiers who lost limbs were welcomed home as heroes.  Their mentally scarred buddies were shunned and pitied. That cruel stigma continues to burden veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

    A wounded infantryman, captured by the Germans in World War II, could not erase the experience from his mind after he came home to work in his father’s automobile agency. He committed suicide two months later.

     A veteran fighter pilot in Korea taxied to the end of a runway for his 30^th sortie, but could not bring himself to open the throttle and takeoff.   He was sent home.  “Had I been shot down I’d have been a hero,” he said.  “But I had the shakes and went home in shame.”

     A Marine who served two combat tours in Vietnam came home a mental wreck, and for 20 years rampaged through dozens of menial jobs and three brief, unfortunate marriages before he was diagnosed with PTSD and put in a Veteran’s Hospital in Denver.  He still receives weekly VA counseling with a dozen other Vietnam veterans in Cambridge.

      “After combat, a soldier wants to go home, not to some hospital,” he said.  “And if he admits he has screaming nightmares and tremors during the day, he knows he’ll be a marked man, whether he stays in service or tries to get a civilian job.  One of my pals said we’re ‘lepers without lesions’. I agree.”

      Only in recent days have military commanders sent condolence letters to families of veterans who took their own lives, whether in a combat zone or after returning to the United States.  That negative attitude toward mental distress has delayed evaluation of brain-damaged veterans and contributed directly to an increase in suicides, family violence, broken homes and homelessness.

      Since 2005 the Veterans Administration, Walter Reed Hospital Center and the Pentagon have promised to speed diagnostic and rehabilitative services for veterans with PTSD.  It hasn’t happened.  The unconscionable waiting time, even to receive evaluation, much less rehabilitation, affirms stigma’s power.

     “Frankly, I’m dismayed that a whole new generation of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan fare little better than we did when we came home from Vietnam 40 years ago,” said the Marine combat veteran.  “It’s inexcusable.”

     William Schoenhard, the VA’s deputy undersecretary for health operations and management, agrees the VA has not been as quick as it should have been, and that simply tracking only the time it takes for new patients to get their first appointment is unacceptable.

     George Arana, VA’s acting assistant deputy undersecretary for clinical operations, apologized for delays that spawned hundreds of horror stories across the country when he testified last week before the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

      Stigma has placed a heavy burden on brain-damaged veterans in every conflict and motivated soldiers to deny their illness, knowing admission would diminish any chance of promotion should they stay in the military, and be detrimental to civilian employment should they leave.

      Apologies from VA’s mid-level administrators don’t solve the long-festering problem. Only a mandate from the president, the VA administrator and Murray can break through the logjam of pending cases and give top priority to treating the signature wound of the Iraqi and Afghan wars: brain damage.

     

                                                          ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

Crusade for freedom gives hope to the world

In late June, China’s Premiere Wen Jiabao surprised his British hosts by calling for more freedom and democracy. Corruption and income disparities were harming China, he told his London audience.  Skeptics pointed to China’s recent crackdown on mere talk of a people’s uprising.  But Jiabao has consistently called for reforms to safeguard his nation’s economic growth, and his latest message was received with a measure of hope.

     That same week in Cambodia, four surviving Khmer Rouge leaders went on trial in Phnom Penh before a United Nations-sponsored tribunal seeking belated justice for an estimated 1.7 million people slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.  Few had imagined those responsible would ever be brought to account.  

     But the most powerful evidence that a crusade for truth and freedom is underway throughout the world is displayed by the courage of  thousands of average citizens in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria who braved armed resistance as they demanded removal of tyrants and a voice in their governments.

     They have succeeded with minimal bloodshed in Tunisia and Egypt, but Libya is engulfed in a desperate civil war, with NATO forces aligned with insurgents.  The outcome there  is uncertain.  Syria’s armed repression has already taken many lives and no nation has come to the aid of  the oppressed. 

     America’s engagement in these uprisings has been hesitant and selective:

Aggressive military support for insurgents in Libya, on-the-scene diplomatic assistance in Tunisia and Egypt, but only distant pronouncements on Syria.  . 

     America has courted despots who could assure access to oil and would  permit us to build airbases on their land.  Others let us use their deep water ports to service our Navy.   Thus we maneuver carefully in the midst of uprisings to protect our interests, even as we support their people. Our professed values are often in conflict with political and commercial realities.

      We work through the United Nations where we can, but do not hesitate to go it alone.  America’s military might is second to none and we are called on to be the world’s policeman.  Our diplomats are global mediators.  And our intelligence services monitor the world.  Our drones are so effective that adversaries are in a fierce competition to replicate them.

     Precise intelligence, verified by multiple sources, guided a small band of SEALS to Osama bin Laden’s walled compound in Pakistan.  Proof that our sleuthing has vastly improved since 9/11.

      Lack of communication between the FBI and CIA was a contributing factor in failing to stop terrorists who took over jet airliners and used them as weapons.   Flight schools had notified the FBI that Arabic students paying cash had shunned jet simulator instruction on takeoffs and landings and wanted only to learn to control big jets in flight.  That they were not apprehended still boggles the mind. 

      Today the thirst for freedom is palpable and persistent, even in Syria where peaceful demonstrations are met with gunfire, and in other nations where women have suffered second class citizenship for generations, denied the right to vote, to travel alone or drive a car.

      Technology aids in the quest for freedom.  Instant messages, including photos, are transmitted from hand-held devices to every corner of the earth.  Dictators can no longer control communication.   But the people can.. 

                                                         ***  

Carlton E. Spitzer      

Do actors have hidden brain powers?

I am in awe of actors.  Spencer Tracey said it was all a matter of remembering lines and not bumping into furniture.  But memorization alone is a formidable challenge.  And literally becoming the person one is portraying to bring a rapt audience to tears and laughter is a rare gift.

     Perhaps actors synapses work overtime between the brain’s Hippocampus and Neocortex, giving them extraordinary powers of memorization and creativity.  My friend David H. Foster, who has played dozens of roles over the years with amazing skill, says one memorizes a page at a time, then focuses on character development.  He makes it sound so simple.  Admirers know it is not.

     The late Jim Peyton, a frequent performer with local theatre groups for many years, personified an actor’s determination to “get in character.”  He often performed, “Lepers Without Lesions,” a monologue on the life of Frank Spillman, a Vietnam veteran who still suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.   He met Frank, and they talked for hours.  Frank sometimes accompanied him to performances to respond to questions from the audience.  They did not resemble each other physically.  But on stage, Jim was Frank.   Eric Mihan has performed the role with equal conviction since Jim’s passing. 

     Bob Chauncey, executive director, the Hugh Gregory Gallagher Motivational Theatre, Inc., is a strong believer in educating the public through dramatizations of real life experiences.   But performances must be convincing as well as entertaining, he says.  Chauncey often performs, “My Black Bird Has Flown Away,” on Gallagher’s life.  He studied films of Gallagher’s presentations, read his books, and had long discussions with Gallagher’s friends and family before he premiered the play.

     Actors bring stories alive, and make us believe the characters they portray live once again.  It is enormously hard work.  The best actors make it look easy.  The shrug of a shoulder, the raised eyebrow, the movement of a hand, the change of tone, or the pregnant pause add meaning to the words. 

     Washington, D.C. actor Jabari Exum performed my monologue on Frederick Bailey (Douglass)  June 17 as part of the Frederick Douglass gala weekend, culminating in the unveiling of a statue of Douglass on the Talbot Courthouse green.  Exum was to have performed from a small stage.  Lighting was arranged accordingly. But when the moment came, musicians had failed to remove band instruments from the stage.  Sizing up the situation as he entered the back of  the Tidewater Inn’s Gold Room, Exum chanted slave songs as he made his way to the front of the room, casually placed a chair in front of the stage he used as a prop, and interacted with the audience for the next twenty minutes as if it had all been arranged that way. 

     Not only did the versatile actor give a brilliant performance, but adjusted so smoothly to the unexpected circumstance that no one but the two masters of ceremonies and myself knew.  Synapses in Exum’s extraordinary brain work overtime.   No doubt about it.   Little wonder I’m in awe of accomplished actors.

                                                   ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

We can defeat stigma, day by day

Inspired by the late Alan Reich, the first person to address the general assembly of the United Nations from a wheelchair, 1981 was designated The Year of the Disabled Person.  It recognized that millions of blind, deaf, paralyzed, and mentally challenged men, women and children in developing nations were shunned by their governments, ignored by their neighbors, and often abandoned by their families.

      In the United States at that time, a White House Conference on The Disabled Person, designed and directed by persons with disabilities, addressed issues of parity in education and employment.  It recommended workplace accommodations, such as audio instruction for the blind and visual instruction for the deaf, to enable qualified persons with disabilities to be employed in factories, shops and offices. 

      Reich, a brilliant scholar fluent in several languages, including Russian, had been an All American track star at Dartmouth.   He became quadriplegic from an accident while picnicking with his family.  He’d been a corporate executive, but after rehabilitation formed the National Organization on Disability and devoted his life to helping other persons with disabilities.

      But it would take another decade of unceasing effort to pass the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and even today, compliance with its provisions often meets with resistance.  

      Progress has come slowly, with no easy victories.  Twelve years after passage of the ADA, James D. Wolfensohn, then president of the World Bank and former board chairman of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, said the lives of 400 million persons with disabilities in developing countries were further burdened by poverty, isolation and despair.  “Stigma prohibits them from going to school, finding work or even being visible in their own neighborhoods,” he said. 

     Vaccines available in industrialized nations prevent childhood diseases, such as measles and polio, but those diseases continue to plague children in developing countries.  A partnership between Rotary International and The World Health Organization has greatly reduced polio cases throughout the world, but polio still disables thousands of children every year who have not received vaccines.  Sadly, misinformation plays a role.  Some parents have been conditioned to fear vaccines and prohibit their children from receiving them.

      Stigma has burdened persons with disabilities generation after generation.  Sometimes with brutal consequences. In Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the Third Reich systematically murdered thousands upon thousands of helpless disabled persons.  In less barbaric form, stigma is always deeply hurtful and demeaning.

     On the Mid Shore, an Anti-Stigma Coalition has held annual events for many years to reduce stigma and open doors for persons with disabilities.  The disAbility Coalition of Talbot County is a staunch advocate for improving public transportation and accessibility.  The Hugh Gregory Gallagher Motivational Theatre dramatizes real life experiences to educate the public through entertainment.  All of these efforts are commendable and deserve support. 

        But stigma is a daily burden that cannot be addressed by occasional exposure to those who suffer from it.  Their lives are restricted in ways able-bodied persons could not imagine.  So a constant drum-beat is needed to defeat stigma’s presence.  The words we use when we speak of persons with disabilities, the acceptance we demonstrate, the employment opportunities we provide, and the personal responsibility we assume for making sure a neighbor or fellow parishioner with a disability can get to church, attend the theatre, or dine out is important.  It’s a matter of reducing stigma person to person, day by day.  

                                                  ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

Yes, we have come a long way, baby

Franklin Roosevelt’s long cigarette holder held the same lethal cancer-causing cigarettes as the ones inhaled by the man on the street.  Tobacco has always been an equal opportunity destroyer.

     Consumption of booze and smokes increased in the 1930s as prohibition vanished and the economic depression worsened.  But even then, in the midst of rampant unemployment, malnutrition and homelessness, addiction to nicotine and its effects on the human body were questioned by medical researchers.

     It wasn’t a new concern.  Although King James 1^st in the 16^th century thought tobacco, “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs,” it became the mainstay of Virginia and Maryland economy in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and has been strongly identified with the history of the Chesapeake Bay.  Profits have often collided with principles in the development of our nation.  Slavery was a lucrative business.  So was growing tobacco.

      Research reports of the 1930s, indicating that smoking caused a decline in physical and mental efficiency, were largely ignored.  But researchers labored on during the war years and into the 1950s, confirming statistical relationships of smoking to lung cancer, bronchitis, emphysema and heart disease.   

     The public, however, was captivated by cigarette advertisements featuring fearless cowboys, handsome men in uniform, and beautiful women at the seashore, personified by the Virginia Slims Cigarette girl celebrating women’s right to smoke, “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

      Smoking was accepted.  Thousands of physicians smoked.  And during the war, hometown newspapers often sent cigarettes to men and women in uniform, provided by tobacco companies.   It seemed the nation was addicted to nicotine, and that most citizens viewed smoking as a harmless, social habit; some even thought it a bit glamorous.

     Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney’s report in 1957 that the U.S. Public Health Service had evidence of a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer was denounced as alarmist by Tobacco companies.  Its executives blamed the rising rate of lung cancer and emphysema on asbestos contamination, air pollution, and most anything but cigarette smoking.  Their denials persisted for decades, culminating in the spectacle of tobacco company presidents assuring a congressional committee in unison that they had never been made aware of nicotine’s harm to those who smoked. 

     Persistent efforts of a coalition in 1961, headed by the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the National Tuberculosis Association, and the American Public Health Association, persuaded President John Kennedy to convene a national commission on smoking.  Surgeon General Luther L. Terry invited the Tobacco Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and the American Medical Society to join the effort.  Ten representatives from diverse fields were named to the commission.  None had publicly stated their views on tobacco use.  They included experts from pharmacology and medicine, but not psychology. 

      Consultants helped the commission review more than 7,000 scientific articles and studies between 1962 through 1964.   Knowing the report would stir the political pot and upset the tobacco industry, Terry selected a Saturday to announce the commission’s findings to minimize the immediate effect on the stock market.

      Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, was front page news and the lead story on radio and television. It said cigarette smoking was responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality of smokers over non-smokers, and that smokers were at high-risk of developing lung cancer, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and coronary heart disease

      The public paid heed.  Gallup compared its poll in 1958, when only 44 percent of the people believed smoking caused cancer, to its 1968 poll,  when 78 percent believed it.  Angered rather than chastised, the tobacco industry applied enormous pressure on elected representatives from tobacco-growing states, as well as the White House.  Scientists were paid handsome sums to write articles questioning the commission’s conclusions.

      When John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare,  sought support from the White House for placing warning labels on cigarettes, President Johnson put a big arm around Gardner’s shoulder as he escorted him from the Oval Office, “Now, John, howd’ya feel if your pappy was a tobacca farmer?” 

        Postmaster General Larry O’Brien made silly excuses for failing to place a public service banner on Postal vehicles that read, “100,000 doctors have stopped smoking.”  Tobacco companies remained in denial, even as warning labels on cigarette packages were finally approved: “Smoking may be dangerous to your health.”  They responded  by stepping up marketing efforts to recruit young smokers and paid celebrities huge fees for touting their products, and producers for using them on stage and in films. 

       Yes, graphic, disturbing photos of tobacco’s devastating consequences will appear on cigarette packages this year.  They will present a realistic picture for the first time, affirming that King James’ assessment was spot on centuries ago, and fulfilling the Virginia Slims girl’s proclamation in a way she could not have imagined: we have come a long way, baby.

                  

                                                            ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

     

     

She forgave him a bumpy flight over Niagara Falls

She was four years old when her mother died of pneumonia, the third of four children and only girl.  Her handsome father, a young attorney making his mark in New York, cried through the night, holding his children close in their Tarrytown apartment, the baby only a year old.  Their maternal grandmother came to live with them.

When her father was named general counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, the family moved to an apartment adjacent to Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan, across from Mother Cabrini’s Shrine, to shorten his commute.  St. Elizabeth Hospital was at the corner, where years later three of her seven children would be born. 

Her father, John Patrick Smith, was born in Buffalo, a single child whose father died when he was a boy.  He was a good student, graduating from Canisius College in 1918.  He met lively Honora “Norine” McNamara in the “Big Apple” during World War I, where he served as an Army private in chemical warfare.  Norine had come from Selby, England to live with cousins working in Vaudeville. 

John’s “barrack” was a nicely furnished apartment he shared with two Army buddies in the Theatre District, “loaned to the war effort” by a generous actress.  The lass from North Yorkshire lived across the street and fell in love with the lad from Buffalo. 

When the “war to end all wars” was over, John attended Fordham Law School, courting Norine until he graduated and they could marry. Kevin was first born, then Don and Joan.  Jimmy was the baby.

Joan was 16, helping her grandmother prepare dinner when her grandmother suddenly collapsed, sliding to the floor.  She died a day later.  With World
War II raging in Europe and the Pacific, and her older brothers in military service, Joan and Jimmy were enrolled in boarding schools. 

Joan graduated from Ladycliffe on the Hudson, dating boys from West Point Academy nearby, and was attending Good Counsel College  in White Plains when she met her future husband in June, 1945 while visiting cousins near Buffalo.  She didn’t like the guy one bit.  He was home on hospital leave from the Army and eyed her girlfriend as he sipped his beer.

When she visited in July and August, 1946,  he was flying every day at an airfield 35 miles east and didn’t ask for a date until summer’s end when she was packing to return to college.  Nor did she react kindly to their first real date in 1947, a bumpy flight in a small plane over Niagara Falls.  But romance blossomed.   They were engaged during her Christmas visit, on her birthday, December 31.  And married in Buffalo on July 15, 1948.  Unpretentious and private, with a lovely smile and big, beautiful, expressive eyes, Joan has been her husband’s pride and joy, the center of his life.

Joan was devastated by the premature birth and death of their first child on April 3, 1949.  He would have been named Michael.  A holiday in Mexico failed to lift her spirits.  A doctor in Rochester told her she would never conceive again.  Her husband always intended to look him up as years passed and their family grew: Kathryn, Nancy, Mary, Susan, Patricia, and John were born between 1951 and 1957.   Thomas lived just a half day on February 6, 1960, born with acute respiratory failure.  Amy’s arrival on March 30, 1966 was a joyful surprise.

Joan never complained that seven years passed in the 1950s before the family could take an overnight holiday in the Adirondacks.  Her husband worked two jobs to make ends meet.

She rejoiced when her father retired from the law in 1961 and studied for the priesthood at Beta College for late vocations in Rome.  Ordained in 1965 at age 69, he was chaplain for a retirement community near Buffalo for 17 years.  When he visited his daughter and son-in-law, he celebrated mass at their dining room table.  Father John died in 1985, the year Joan and her husband visited the small room he’d occupied for four years at Beta College. 

Patient and loving, Joan shouldered most of the burden of the terrible teen years while her husband’s work, first with government, then with an international company, kept him away days at a time.   He often tells her there’s no way to express his gratitude  and appreciation for her strength and wisdom.  She’s buoyed family spirits through numerous address changes and adjustments to new schools; through illnesses and keen disappointments, broken hearts and broken bones. 

She’s as unassuming today as she was in 1948, now 14 times a grandmother, and 13 times a great grandmother.  Her children call daily to chat about their lives, get advice and comfort, and express their love. 

Life changed on May 20, 2010 when she suffered a left brain stroke and was airlifted from her home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a medical center in Baltimore where she remained in intensive care a full week.  She returned to the acute rehabilitation center at Memorial Hospital in Easton, just minutes from her home, where she was treated for three weeks before moving on to continuing rehabilitation at William Hill Manor in Easton for another five weeks.

She has made good progress, uses a walker only when she leaves the apartment, but still receives speech and hand therapies in the hope more recovery is possible.  Although she sometimes gropes for familiar words and forgets what she has read, she is in remarkably good spirits.  Her husband is chef, housekeeper and grocery shopper. 

Joan is still a very private person who may not be overjoyed I have written this column.  But I wanted to tell her once again, as we approach our 63^rd wedding anniversary, how much I love her, admire her, and respect her, and how grateful I am she forgave me that bumpy flight over Niagara Falls in 1947.

                                                          ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

Close your eyes while you shave

My father, Rudy, said he never felt old except when he looked in the mirror.  Asked what he did about that, he said he closed his eyes while shaving.

The wide-eyed boy who arrived from Austria-Hungary in 1905 before his 12^th birthday, helped to found the Buffalo Eye Bank and Research Society at age 54.  He modified a Thermos jug to transport eyes, donated after death, to surgeons who performed corneal transplant surgery.  He managed the eye bank until he was 79.  Rudy was also a founder and board member of the Eye Bank Association of America.  His four sons proudly attended annual dinners where former blind persons stood to be recognized, their sight having been restored through corneal transplantation.

Rudy’s second son died in 1977.  He grieved deeply, asking why it could not have been him, rather than Bob, only 55, who left a loving wife and seven children, the youngest only 12.  Rudy’s Irish “Dolly,” our mother Margaret, had died in 1974.

Rudy’s buddies visited almost daily to play nine-ball on his well-used pool table.  It was around that table he would tell his sons about the old days as they lined up shots.  If you sat him in a chair and asked questions he wouldn’t say much.   Playing pool was the time to listen carefully.

Rudy’s sudden interest in church organ music tipped us off to a change in his life in 1976.  Other than boarding school as a very young boy in Hatszeg, Austria, where religious instruction was mandatory, Rudy’s visits to places of worship had been confined to weddings and funerals. 

Tall, stately, smartly dressed Loma, widow of  a minister, was the recipient of both the organ music recordings and Rudy’s affection.  A dozen years younger than Rudy, Loma had married very young when her older husband was already well established in his ministry.  He and Rudy were fellow members of the Kenmore Lions Club. 

Loma was shy and reserved, loving and gentle.  Rudy, 84, sought the approval of his sons to marry Loma, a kid of 71.  They were happy together, and his sons were happy for them. 

In October, 1981, Loma, who had a chronic heart problem, was taken to the local hospital by ambulance.  Rudy followed in his car, anxious and upset.  Medics hospitalized him as well.  Rudy’s anxiety attack passed quickly and he returned home the following day.  Loma never came home again.  Cancer was discovered.  She was moved to The General Hospital in Buffalo.  Rudy visited every day.  She suffered so much for three months that we offered a prayer of thanksgiving when she died in January. 

There was a new look in Rudy’s eye; not only grieving, at almost 89, but an awareness that life was running out and he would finish his years alone.  He still lived in the same house where his sons had grown up.

His sons decided to celebrate Rudy’s 90^th birthday a little early, in October,  1982, rather than February, 1983, since few people welcomed invitations to Buffalo in the winter.  Rudy put a Post-it over the October date on his kitchen calendar: “The big party.” 

I found Rudy dead in his bed on the eve of the party.  He has passed peacefully in his sleep.  Family and friends who’d arrived from all parts of the country to celebrate his birthday celebrated his life.  Rudy never knew an annual award had been established in his name by the Buffalo Eye Bank and Research Society.  That was to have been a surprise announcement at his birthday party. 

Only a month before Rudy died, I asked him the secret of his active life, positive attitude and good humor.  “Don’t worry about yesterday,” he said, looking up from the pool table.  “And always have something important to do tomorrow morning.”  Then he lined up his cue and made one of his incredible bank shots.

                                                     ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

Leave when they want you to stay

Twelve-year-old Rezso from Austria-Hungary became Rudolph with the scratch of an immigration officer’s pen at Weehawken, New Jersey in January, 1905.  His little brother Bela became Albert, and his beautiful older sister Eugenia became Jenny.  Welcome to America!

Everybody called him Rudy, even his children and grandchildren, for almost 90 years.  Except, of course, his wife’s relatives, who called him Billy.  But I get ahead of my story.

Rudy’s parents sold almost all they owned to move to the new world.  Rudy recalled the voyage as an uncomfortable adventure: his first train ride, north to Germany, with stone-face soldiers coming aboard to haul off young men seeking to escape forced conscription; of using a flush toilet for the first time, and sailing rough seas for twelve days in bitter cold.

Friends who had preceded them from Europe took them in to their cramped apartment in snow-bound Niagara Falls, New York.  Rudy’s mother, Rosa, cried herself to sleep.  His father, Sigmund, lost his smile and grew quiet.   Niagara Falls was nothing like beautiful Totesd, a hamlet surrounded by verdant pastures on the Banat Highway where Rosa and Sigmund had operated a roadside inn.  At Totesd there was singing and dancing , good food and good cheer, and a covered outdoor bowling alley to pass the time.

Rudy, Albert and Jenny struggled to learn English at a public school.  They learned well.  In later years Rudy became a proficient writer of informative, humorous newsletters for his beloved Kenmore Lions Club and Buffalo Eye Bank & Research Society, affiliated with the University of Buffalo’s Medical School.

In the 1930s, with the United States in the midst of a devastating depression and all of Europe fearing war, letter’s from Rosa’s sister ceased.  In their grief for the unknown fate of relatives, Rudy’s parents never again debated their decision to come to America.

Rudy named himself Billy to make himself more American to a beautiful Irish girl, Margaret Carney from nearby Lewiston, a picturesque village on the Niagara River below the famous falls.  Rudy had discovered his artistic talents and was designing window displays and lettering signs for a drugstore chain.  Margaret worked as a secretary.  The photo taken on their wedding day in 1914 shows a pretty girl with a tiny waist, dark hair and big eyes smiling happily next to a really handsome guy with hair.  Rudy didn’t keep the hair for long.

The name Billy stuck with the Irish side of the house.  Rudy’s four sons accepted the fact that on Sunday’s with the Clark, Maloney and Carney clan their father was Billy, and on alternate Sundays with the Spitzer, Sauber, Singer and Simon families he was Rudy.  It worked out just fine for a lifetime.  He was addressed by both names with equal affection.

Rudy was fun to be with.  He did funny things accidentally.  He loved golf and swung from the left.  When a local municipal course was opened, Rudy was elected president.  His honor was to drive the first ball from the first tee, then retire to the clubhouse for refreshments with the mayor and fellow members.  Rudy hit a long drive and started down the fairway, never looking back, leaving the mayor, his pals and a local reporter speechless as he took his second shot toward the green.

During the Great Depression, Rudy had no money to buy Christmas presents for his sons, so he built things with his hands: a huge fort with drawbridge, a Ping Pong table, and a 21-foot bowling alley in the basement with a return rack for leaded croquet balls used to knock down duck pins.  The basement became a neighborhood social hall.  The backyard was a neighborhood playground.  A blade of grass never had a chance.  Rudy built a big swing, and a slide wide enough and steep enough to sled down in the winter when snow was packed solid for weeks around Buffalo.

Rudy could kick a football 50 yards, left-footed, and beat almost anyone at Ping Pong.  He bowled lefty, with a wicked hook.  He was a smiling competitor who rarely lost his temper, but liked to win and could be stubborn.  But his good cheer was overwhelming.  Rudy worked through illness, sometimes sitting up half the night bent over a steaming pail of water with a blanket over his head to curb his asthma, then go off to work early in the morning.  Snap shots show him painting vertical letters on a 200-foot smokestack, and dangling off the stern of a freighter, lettering the ship’s name.  His sons never heard him complain, and he spent time with doctors reluctantly.

During World War II he worked in a defense plant and hated it.  But was grateful for the job and knew he was contributing to the war’s end.  Three of his sons were in military service.  To surprise them, he build a recreation room in the basement.  A pool table was the main attraction, with a cushioned Pin Pong table that fit over the top.

Hi passions were his family, golf, bowling, shooting pool, the Lions Club, eye research and sight restoration, and having fun.  He wrote funny newsletters, right-handed,  He made people laugh.  He made them happy.  It was such a natural talent that it wasn’t until Rudy was well into his 80s that his sons fully appreciated the precious gift he had bestowed all his life.

After Margaret died, he visited his sons as often as possible.  When he packed to go home his grandchildren would beg him to stay.  “If I stay they’ll want me to go,” he would laugh,  “Better that I go while they want me to stay.” 

                                                        ***

Carlton E. Spitzer

(I want to tell you more about Rudy, my father.  So I’ll do a second column in a day or so.)

Why do we incarcerate 2.5 million people?

We close mental hospitals and shutter schools but find money to build new prisons.  Our nation now incarcerates 2.5 million men and women, chiefly for nonviolent crimes dealing with the use of illegal drugs.  Eighty percent are black or Hispanic, although multiple studies affirm that drug usage among ethnic groups is roughly the same.   That’s why the racial disparity in our prisons is deeply troubling.  And why many law enforcement officers believe we need to examine our policies and priorities.

     Until President Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” people arrested for smoking pot would serve a few days in jail, at most, and be put on probation.   Michelle Alexander, a former ACLU attorney and author of, The New Jim Crow, says the escalating rate of incarcerations in the past 30 years has created both a humanitarian and a racial crisis. 

       Indeed, it took a Supreme Court decision to force California to release tens of thousands of inmates from prisons that were so dangerously overcrowded they spawned chronic violence and disease.  Investigators said prison conditions constituted, “cruel and unusual punishment.”

       But the high court’s 5-4 decision was based on economics, not humanitarian concerns.  California was broke and couldn’t build more prisons.  Had money been available, prisoners would still be serving time. 

       While many wardens provide drug rehabilitation and counseling during incarceration, which greatly reduces recidivism, the staggering number of drug users sentenced to long terms overwhelms resources within the prison system.

        The release of California’s inmates generated fears that “dangerous people” might suddenly descend upon peaceful neighborhoods.  But these former neighbors were never violent.  

         In fact, the former inmates have the most to fear.  They face legal, economic and social discrimination: shunned by most employers, barred from public housing and denied many public benefits.  One wonders if our society really wants to rehabilitate offenders and give them a second chance.  And if a truly commensurate effort is being made to curb drug traffickers and the devastating violence they bring to communities bordering Mexico. 

       “If we abided by the rate of incarceration in the 1970s, we would have to release four out of every five people now behind bars, “ says Alexander.  Today, the “War on Drugs” commonly catches the person who buys a small quantity for personal use while the big fish who control distribution swim away on plea bargains negotiated by high-priced lawyers. 

        Neill Franklin, a law enforcement officer 33 years, including service as a narcotics officer for the Maryland State Police, is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).  LEAP’s members believe the fundamental error has been trying to curb drug use by focusing on supply rather than demand.  “We believe that by eliminating prohibition of all drugs for adults and establishing appropriate regulation and standards for distribution and use, law enforcement could focus more on crimes of violence, and stop sending people to jail for non-violent personal drug use,” Franklin says.

        LEAP’s membership includes judges, prosecutors, wardens, and FBI agents.  Its partner organizations include the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project.  Franklin says the 40 year “War on Drugs” has not achieved results and that legalization is a legitimate subject for debate.

        Frank Lawlor of Royal Oak, who has a degree in theology and a doctorate in science education, agrees a new approach is desired.  “Only Russia incarcerates more of its people than we do.”  

        Davis Bobrow of St. Michaels, a former University of Pittsburgh professor, observes that financial pressures may create opportunities for unlikely alliances, as was the case in California.  “But racial injustice in sentencing is the most troubling aspect of the problem,” he added.

        One thing is clear: a new approach is necessary, with all options on the table for debate.

                                                        ***

Carlton E. Spitzer