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Class Notes - January 28, 1998
Class notes features
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N.Y. Times reporter Johnny Apple '57 has covered the world Now, with his latest assignment, he can go anywhere and write about anything IT'S HARD to imagine a more adventuresome life. He was under fire in Vietnam. He has felt the stings of racists during civil-rights demonstrations in the South. He has hobnobbed with African chieftains, and he was there when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. R. W. Apple, Jr. '57, otherwise known as "Johnny" (after Johnny Appleseed), has done it all. He is best known for his work covering politics and presidential elections for The New York Times, but he was also the Times's Saigon bureau chief from 1966 to 1968, a critical period in the Vietnam War, and he has served as chief of the Times's bureaus in Moscow, Nairobi, and Lagos. For most of the past five years, Apple headed the Times's bureau in Washington, D.C. In September he became the paper's chief correspondent, a newly created post that calls for him "to go anywhere and to write on anything that interests him," says Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld. In his new role Apple has been busily fulfilling that wide charter. He has written pieces on the flowering of Cleveland's cultural scene and on New Zealand wines (he is a regular contributor to the paper's Food section), as well as some bread-and-butter political pieces, including a front-page profile of Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold, the coauthors of the campaign-finance bill. "It's been very invigorating," Apple says. "The Times has given me wonderful latitude to follow my interests." A. M. Rosenthal, a former managing editor of the Times, admires Apple's ability to turn a complicated subject into highly understandable prose and to do it under deadline pressure. "He has no weakness as a reporter," he says. Apple can pound out a 1,200-word article in 45 minutes and, according to the newsroom legends that have grown up around him, can do it equally well whether sober or running on gin. While politics has been his meat and potatoes, Apple knows plenty about lots of other things. His 1987 book, Apple's Europe, is in large measure a review of Europe's best restaurants. He is an accomplished cook, who contributes regularly to magazines such as Saveur and Gourmet, and he can also write knowingly about opera, ballet, or any other topic that strikes his interest. On assignment in Africa in the late 1960s, he wrote about the Biafran Civil War, Togo's beer (regarded as the continent's best), the hereditary chief of Yorubland, and the meaning of ceremonial headdresses. "I don't know anybody who can do as many things well as Johnny Apple," says novelist Ward Just, a fellow reporter in Vietnam. At Princeton, Apple worked virtually around the clock at The Daily Princetonian and left school before graduating to write for The Wall Street Journal. After a stint in the Army as a general's speech writer, he joined NBC News. In 1963 he moved to the Times, where, in his first year, 73 stories ran on the front page under his byline. Over the next dozen years he enjoyed a succession of plum assignments--overseas in Vietnam and Africa, and in the U.S., covering national politics out of the paper's Washington bureau. Beginning in 1977, he spent 10 years as the bureau chief in London, where his sense of pomp and pageantry mixed well with British tradition. He fitted himself out with a top hat to cover the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Di, he cov-ered the Falklands War and the ascendancy of Margaret Thatcher, and he did lighter stories on everything from cricket to the architecture of Christopher Wren. In 1988 he returned to the Washington bureau and four years later became its chief. When the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, he assigned no less than eight reporters to cover Capitol Hill. While continuing to write stories himself, he enjoyed the opportunity to hire and develop younger reporters, who praise their former boss for "stringing" for them when they couldn't break through to high-level sources. Says Apple, "One of the great things about being the Times's Washington bureau chief is that people tend to return your phone calls." Since 1989 Apple and his wife, Betsey, have owned a 50-acre farm outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he repairs on weekends and for heavy writing stints. Stuffed with knickknacks he's collected from decades of global travel, it is the perfect setting for Apple to play the squire-cum-raconteur. He frequently takes over the kitchen and is adept at whipping up French bistro dishes and Thai specialties. In many ways, Apple's broad-based role mirrors the changes going on at the paper where he's worked for 34 years. "When I first came to the Times in the mid-'50s," he recalls, "leisure reporting pretty well consisted of the bridge column. Now we continue to do our primary job very conscientiously, but we also try to speak to the whole man and the whole woman. We provide extensive coverage on restaurants, the arts, health, and leisure-time activities. We've come to the view that we can do what's important without being stuffy." --Marvin Zim '57 Demaree Peck '81 finds joy in her work FOUR YEARS AGO, my husband and I would wake every morning to the rattle of a toy plate spinning on the stairs. Our two-year-old son, Caleb, had begun his daily routine. After breakfast, he would spin soup cans and Tupperware lids in the kitchen. Then, on his morning walk, he would scratch every manhole, bolt, penny, or hubcap in his path, until he became known by the city workers as the "hubcap kid." So mesmerized was he by shiny, round surfaces, that he would not look up when we called his name. I have come to regard Caleb's tactile fascination with circular objects as a search for symmetry and order in a world that for him is disorienting. He struggles with a developmental disability about which little is known, even though it is the third most common in the country: autism. Children with autism have deficiencies in verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction, and play activities. They find it difficult to understand or relate to the outside world. The doctor who made the diagnosis when Caleb was two gave us no advice, but handed us a box of tissues. Faced with a devastating diagnosis that the specialists seemed to think was irremediable, I felt alienated and alone, as if Caleb and I had been pushed overboard without a life-preserver. After sifting through a confusing myriad of fads and false promises promoted by autism gurus, I learned there is no universal cure. However, there is an educational approach supported by empirical research that can brighten the future for autistic children. Known as "applied behavior analysis," the technique breaks down skills into small, discrete tasks that are taught and monitored according to a highly structured sequence of trials. When Caleb was three, I began a second career as the coordinator of such an intensive 40-hour-week, home-based therapy program. In addition to recruiting and training college students, making teaching materials, documenting progress, and working as Caleb's advocate with the school district, I am Caleb's primary teacher, often putting in as many as 20 hours a week. On a typical Saturday morning, while my husband takes our two younger daughters to the zoo, I ignore my writing projects, exercise, the dishes, and the piles of laundry so that I can make the most of Caleb's narrow window of developmental opportunity. The key to his learning is to structure an environment so arousing that he does not need to stimulate himself. In the boisterous and loud three-hour session, I work hard to make myself more unpredictable and exciting than the motes of dust in the sunbeams. For example, I give the command, "Build this." Caleb imitates building a random eight-block structure that I have built behind a screen. Elated, I shout, "Eureka!" and dance with him standing on my feet. In another drill, I make the request, "Put with zebra." Caleb matches the written word--in his lexicon of over 300--to the corresponding picture. "A-plus. You are a superstar!" I cry, as I crack an imaginary egg over his head. "Touch balloon." Unbelievably, Caleb picks out the balloon from a field of several other objects. Hallelujahs ring as I rock him upside down over my shoulders like a human roller coaster. Caleb laughs, makes great eye-contact, and jumps up for more. We are connecting. I am jubilant; he is developing auditory discrimination so as to identify objects, colors, and shapes by name. On this past Christmas, Caleb learned the word "star"--for me, it was a perfect gift. At Caleb's diagnosis, the doctor told me that if he did not learn to talk by the time he was four, he would be lost to me. At that moment, I made it my mission to save my son. The next day, as I watched him ritualistically peering inside each mailbox on the street, as if trying to see something in the inner emptiness, I wondered how I could send him a message that would help him to communicate. Although Caleb is not yet talking, he has become such a nagging communicator, eagerly giving me sentences like "I want silly putty" made from picture symbols that I can barely get the dinner on the table. In this way he competes for my attention with his two younger sisters, Catherine and Savannah. As long as I keep my faith in my son, I do not believe that he will ever be lost to me. As Caleb and Catherine unbuckle their seatbelts, to tumble joyfully together on the floor of the van, I keep driving. Caleb's breakthrough from a physical restraint is a bold liberation from social isolation. Raising a son with autism continues to be a risk-laden, yet exhilarating project, requiring that I, too, continually push beyond safe and comfortable limits imposed by my son's condition, the low expectations of doctors and teachers, and the economic priorities of school administrators. Working with Caleb has taught me that autistic children--like all children--can become only what we imagine them to be. Caleb and I are in the business of chasing rainbows, and in his remarkable progress, I find my pot of gold. Although Caleb has not fully recovered, we have, nonetheless, witnessed a miracle. No longer seeking gratification from circular objects, Caleb reaches out to me and his sisters in games of "Ring Around the Rosie," to create a family circle. By expanding our capacity for love, Caleb has himself been a miracle worker. --Demaree C. Peck '81
Shetal Shah '96 meets harambee, Kenya's overriding philosophy
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