From the Archives
Class Notes - February 9, 2000
Class notes features
J. Lewis Kirby, Jr. '46, class president, crowns actress Virginia Mayo
queen of the Bicentennial Class at a dance in Procter Hall on April 25,
1947. Paw reported on the visit of "the blonde MGM star" to campus
in its May 9 issue, calling her the "platinum-haired mesmerizer."
Her escort for the weekend was C. Grove Smith '46, and the two "spent
the big weekend being photographed, partied, queried, partied, interviewed
and partied." Smith was asked a number of times what Miss Mayo was
"really like," but he admitted he hadn't had too many opportunities
to get acquainted during the hectic weekend.
Hearing the written word
Richard Scribner '58 continues a Princeton tradition at Recording
for the Blind & Dyslexic.
Richard O. Scribner '58, since January 1999 president of the Princeton-based Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, has long wanted a last career-something that would allow him "to make a contribution in education or the not-for-profit world." So, after leaving his position as managing director at Salomon Smith Barney, he took on a job that seems to offer even greater challenges.
Scribner, who holds an LL.B. from Columbia, now manages "a complicated little business," with an annual budget of approximately $20 million. RFB&D, which provides recorded books to students who are visually impaired and reading disabled, currently offers 78,000 titles, everything from microbiology texts to Dr. Seuss. In 1998-99, Scribner says, RFB&D produced and distributed 240,000 books. The huge tape library, as well as the facility that translates the reels of tape to cassettes or, shortly, to digital format, is located in Princeton, as is the mailing department.
Except in administrative and production areas, the RFB&D staff is entirely volunteer-over 5,500 volunteers nationwide. Some read aloud, others monitor the reading. "We have 20 units around the country," says Scribner, "which operate 33 separate recording studios."
RFB&D offerings are uniquely helpful to its 70,000 users, Scribner believes, "especially in technical areas. We not only read the text in its entirety; we also build a lot of structure into the books. We include page numbers, so the user knows exactly where he or she is, and can find particular items. All equations, diagrams, and charts are described verbally by people who know the field."
There is a one-time registration fee of $50, and a $25 annual fee, but no charge per book. Fees are waived, he says, if finances are a problem, and many schools, including Princeton, provide texts to students for free under RFB&D's institutional membership plan. And any visually impaired or reading disabled person can be a RFB&D user.
According to Scribner, RFB&D was founded in 1948 "to ensure that WW II veterans blinded in the war could receive the education guaranteed them under the GI Bill of Rights." Over the years, the organization expanded its offerings from college texts for GIs to any book for blind or visually impaired students. Twenty years ago, it became clear that taped books also helped students with learning disabilities, and in 1995 the organization changed its name to Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, recognizing those people who now constitute about two-thirds of new users.
As president, Scribner carries on something of a Princeton tradition; former presidents include Burnham Carter '22, Stuart Carothers '45, and, most recently, Ritchie Geisel '67. Scribner also points out that the late Peter B. Putnam '42 *50 was "a strong supporter of the organization and lifetime member of the board."
To Scribner, RFB&D represents "the kind of volunteerism that is the distinctive hallmark of this country." Scribner has logged more than a few volunteer hours himself: he is a former chair of the Alumni Council, current chair of the Annual Giving Committee, and a member of the university's Board of Trustees. In addition, he served on the board of RFB&D and cochaired its 50th anniversary campaign.
-Caroline Moseley
When Ken Brenner '89 and his wife, Amy, discovered in 1998 that their infant daughter, Allie, had spinal muscular atrophy (SMA-I), a fatal disease, they began Eyes of Hope Foundation, which is dedicated to raising awareness about the disease as well as research funds.
Drawing on Ken's background in sports marketing, their first endeavor was to raffle Ken's 1999 Super Bowl ticket for $10,000. Last year, the foundation raised more than $120,000.
SMA is a term for a group of diseases in which a faulty gene fails to produce enough of the proteins that enable normal muscle strength and development. Types of SMA vary in severity; SMA type 1, the severest form, usually appears in the first six months-the child is never able to sit up without support, and death usually comes before age two. The babies cannot smile, they lose their ability to move, and respiration eventually fails. Like many other type-1 victims, Allie remained conscious and aware until she died last April. (Allie's twin brother, Jake, does not have the disease.)
SMA affects more than 20,000 people and is the leading genetic cause of death among infants. The Brenners discovered, however, that there is little awareness of the disease, which is sometimes misdiagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Another important goal in their struggle is to help coordinate the fragmented efforts of other organizations.
-Michael Arges '75
Eyes of Hope Foundation, 1129 E. 17th Ave., Denver, CO 80218; 800-270-1338;
www.eyesofhope.org.
Researching the mafiosi
Coleen Friel '92 spent three years sifting information for a book
on the mob
When Coleen Friel '92 was researching Gotham Unbound: How New York City
Was Liberated from the Grip of Organized Crime (New York University Press,
1999), she kept a watchful eye on her New York University Law School doorstep,
lest she arrive one morning and discover a dead fish sitting on it. Fortunately,
she never found one. But one night when Friel was walking through New York's
famously mobbed-up Fulton Fish Market trying to do some on-site research,
she had to scramble to escape a barrage of frozen fish and ice thrown by
workers protesting recent anti-mafia reforms.
Though Friel wasn't a direct target, she'd walked into a very unhappy place. "Members of the fish market liked the status quo," says Friel, who for the last year and a half has worked as an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling. "But I was assured by the FBI that I wasn't in any real danger."
Thanks to the fish market's court-appointed trustee-who is charged with ridding the market of mob influence-Friel wound up visiting Fulton several other times. She also immersed herself in another institution with a history of mafia influence: JFK Airport's air-cargo operation. In the end, Friel survived to see Gotham Unbound roll off the presses late last year. (In an unusual move for an academic book, Friel and her fellow research associate, Robert Radick, received coauthorship credit on the book's cover, along with their NYU professor, James B. Jacobs.)
Friel, a Philadelphia native, played rugby and studied urban affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. After graduation, she interned for then-Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell and, in the space of two years, rose to become his assistant deputy mayor. Friel's portfolio included dealing with 180 labor unions and enforcing labor-standards laws for government contracts-an ideal foundation for her application to become one of Jacobs's research assistants.
Friel and Radick began the three-year project by studying official documents and newspaper clippings dating back to the turn of the century. They then interviewed scores of prosecutors, FBI agents, government regulators, crime-beat journalists, political operatives, industry executives, judges, and union officials, almost all anonymously.
About the only people Friel didn't talk to were mafiosi. "We did talk to some victims of intimidation-would-be competitors, rank-and-file union members," she says. "The FBI could have arranged for a meeting with people in the witness protection program, but we decided not to do so because of the danger involved."
One of the more striking conclusions arrived at by Friel and her colleagues is that La Cosa Nostra rarely had to resort to violence. "There were very few complaints because there was an economic self-interest involved," she says. "If you cooperated, it was very profitable-you were able to fix prices, eliminate competition, and have labor peace. Even after you paid off the mob, the profits were astounding." The main victims were ordinary workers, who were shortchanged by corrupt bosses, and consumers, who were forced to pay artificially inflated prices.
These days, an accumulation of political, prosecutorial, and judicial efforts has left the La Cosa Nostra in its weakest position in decades. Today's most worrisome gangs, Friel notes, hail from places like Russia, Asia, and the Caribbean. For better or worse, these outfits, unlike La Cosa Nostra, have shown little interest in infiltrating "legitimate" businesses, preferring drug-running and other illicit (and more violent) endeavors. And for law-enforcement officers, that's a whole other kettle of fish.
-Louis Jacobson '92
Designing homes for migrants
Bryan Bell '83 helps the 2 percent lowest-income people
Architecture for low-income people? At first glance, the concept seems to make as much sense as an economy-model Rolls-Royce; only the wealthiest 2 percent of new home buyers in America work with designers. Yet architecture for the masses is exactly the mission Bryan Bell '83 is pursuing with his Gettysburg, Pennsylvaniabased Design Corps, a nonprofit agency that is building architecturally thoughtful homes for migrants and other low-income agricultural workers.
"Architecture has become an exclusive service, out of the reach
of most people," says Bell, who was on the Princeton campus in November
to give a lecture in Professor Robert Gutman's architecture class and to
recruit interns for Design Corps. "Architecture is not just about social
status and comfort; it should be about addressing our most significant social
issues."
A New Orleans native, Bell followed the traditional architect's career path after graduating from Princeton as an art history major and earning his master's degree at Yale in 1988. He did award-winning work for a prestigious firm in New York, designing interiors, lofts, and the like. It was everything a young architect could hope for, but it didn't satisfy Bell. Why, he wondered, did he and other architects have almost no role in the design of the buildings that usually matter most to people-their homes?
Since then, Bell has been blazing a new path, one that he hopes will make it easier for future generations of architects to pursue more socially useful work. (Bell has little doubt that plenty of young architects are interested; a Carnegie Foundation report finds that 22 percent go into the field with the aim of "improving their communities.") After serving as a housing consultant to various nonprofit agencies, Bell established his own agency in 1997. Now, with the help of interns recruited through the federal service program AmericaCorps, he is organizing the construction of homes for the Mexican and Puerto Rican migrant workers who pick fruit around Gettysburg each summer and fall.
Bell, who splits his time between Design Corps and teaching architecture at Auburn University in Alabama, has devised a program that makes it relatively easy for farmers to participate. The farmer contributes the land, sewer, and other utilities, takes responsibility for maintenance, and puts up half the cost of materials and construction. Design Corps, using grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, covers the rest of the construction costs. More importantly, Bell and his interns work with the eventual inhabitants-people usually stuck in barracks-style shacks with outhouses-to design efficient housing that meets their practical and cultural needs. So far, eight homes have been built under the program, at a cost of $40,000 per unit, or $29 per square foot.
Design Corps expanded into the Carolinas last year with a slight variation. In addition to replicating the Pennsylvania program, Bell and his interns are designing homes for former itinerant workers who have "settled out" of the migrant stream.
"If I can demonstrate how to help the lowest-income 2 percent," Bell says, "I figure that working in the middle 96 percent will be possible."
The architect's most important trait, in Bell's view, is the ability to listen to clients. In-depth discussions with the Latino farm workers in Pennsylvania revealed aspects of their culture that are now reflected in Bell's designs. For instance, Mexicans don't feel the same need as most Americans to have bedrooms and bathrooms tucked away in private locations in a house. Knowing this, Bell designed the homes without hallways and thus saved valuable space. Another example: You can't cook a tamale on an electric stove. Bell makes sure the homes have gas ranges.
"In the end, the house should express and exalt the people living in it," he says. "That's my goal."
-Tom Krattenmaker
Tom Krattenmaker is the director of public relations at Swarthmore College. The Design Corps Website is located at http://www.designcorps.org.
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