J. Paul Councill with his wife, Eugenia (left), and sister-in-law Sally MacLellan Councill ’46 at the 21st commemorative session of the General Assembly in Williamsburg, Va.
It's an unfortunate but well-known fact that politics can be a nasty business. All too often members of opposing sides allow their feelings to be governed by party principles instead of consideration for what might be best for the populace. One politician who deplores such party politics and refuses to participate in it is J. Paul Councill Jr. '44, a veteran Democrat of the Virginia General Assembly. And by this time he should know what works best and how--a representative in local and state government for 34 years, he was re-elected last November to his 13th term.
After attending Swarthmore for two years, Councill volunteered and went into the U.S. Air Force. Obtaining his commission and wings there, he then attended Naval Flight School in Pensacola, Fla., and spent the last part of World War II performing air-sea rescue work in the South Pacific Theater. Returning to his home state of Virginia after the war, he joined the family farming business, at that time a large vegetable plant operation, which shipped its produce--cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and tomatoes--all over the Northeastern United States and Canada. Councill describes himself as semiretired and employs a manager to run the farm. Yet far from being able to enjoy more leisure time, he is now more active than ever in the state Legislature.
It was after 10 years in local government that Councill was urged to run for the House of Delegates. He says: "I do not consider myself a particularly partisan politician. I ran as a Democrat because Virginia at the time was predominantly Democratic." He was elected as representative for the 75th House District of Southampton Southside 24 years ago and has been there ever since.
As a senior member of the majority party, Councill's responsibilities are considerable: Not only is he chairman of the House Education Committee and its subcommittees, he's vice chairman of the Conservation and Natural Resources Committee and the State Water Commission. Add to this membership on several other committees including the House Appropriations Committee and involvement in a number of study groups and you begin to get a picture of his demanding schedule, which requires several weekly trips to Richmond. "Somehow, you just find the time" says the 76-year-old Councill, leaving still to question where he finds the energy.
Since Councill's early days in the assembly, when there were only 12 Republicans in the 100-member House, things have changed a little, and the two parties are closer to being equally represented--there are now 46 Republicans, and the governor, George Allen, is also a Republican. Councill says that he is "probably the most conservative Dem-ocrat we have," and he feels that he enjoys as much support from Republicans as he does from his own party.
One of the issues that Councill feels most strongly about is education. Currently involved in the process of overhauling Virginia's public education system, he is a member of a group of lawmakers that support the option of charter-based schools--institutions that are individually created outside the bounds of conventional teaching methods, curricula, and policies--for those districts where they would be beneficial. Councill describes the charter-school issue as something of a "political football," claiming that "most of the Democrats oppose it simply because our governor is a Republican and in favor of it." He defends the bill, which was defeated last January but which he hopes will be passed next time around, by explaining: "The legislation we propose is a local option, not mandatory on any school division. They can try it if they want to, and it would free them from some of the bureaucratic rules and regulations, giving them a little more leeway in trying out innovations. I think it puts a little more competition into the education system, and that's a good thing."
Beside creating favorable scholastic opportunities for Virginia's children, Councill is also quite concerned with the co-existence of industrial development and a healthy environment. In a state that offers a tremendous mix of mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and natural wonders, Councill says of industrial expansion and nature conservation: "We have to have both of them. I've sponsored legislation on several occasions that I feel presents a balance, both protecting us and yet at the same time giving business an opportunity to move forward in a reasonable manner." He cites a couple of cases where industries were interested in establishing themselves in areas that had been subject to environmental damage. They were allowed to proceed on the condition that they implemented a remedial plan to eradicate whatever problems had existed before they came.
"I've always tried to do what was best for Virginia," says Councill. "I love my state, and I love my community; and I just want to do what I can to make it better." All of which explains why he's still around in the Assembly and still going strong.
--Carol Brevart
Gerry Dewees is a volunteer brakeman on California's Niles Canyon Railroad. More than 50,000 passengers rode the historic line last year.
Gerry Dewees used to enjoy model trains, but he's traded up to some much bigger toys.
The former Lionel Lines O-gauge hobbyist now serves as a brakeman on the "real thing," California's Niles Canyon Railroad. Dewees is among the hundreds of rail buffs who have developed the line into a popular tourist attraction--and one of the most important railroad collections--in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"You've heard of the Golden Spike that was driven in Promontory, Utah?" asks Dewees in a phone interview from his home in Pleasanton, Calif. "Well that was a publicity stunt. The actual completion of the transcontinental railroad happened here in Niles Canyon four months later, when the Central Pacific finished its line between Sacramento and Oakland. The final spike was driven here." Trains came and went through the canyon from 1869 until 1983, when the Southern Pacific abandoned the historic route and tore up its tracks.
Today's train lovers can once again ride through Niles Canyon in restored coaches pulled by one of the three locomotives (two of them steam) that are operated two Sundays each month by the all-volunteer Pacific Locomotive Association (PLA). "We've rebuilt the whole thing, inch by inch," says Dewees, an engineering major at Swarthmore who spent his career with Proctor & Gamble, Crown Zellerbach, and the Clorox Company.
Dewees joined the PLA in 1987. He has since been involved in the restoration of all types of equipment and in the laying of more than six miles of new track along the steep creekside right-of-way that the association leases from the Southern Pacific. The first train ran up the valley three years later, and in 1988, steam railroading returned to the canyon for the first time since the 1950s.The PLA now has nearly two dozen locomotives and about 50 pieces of rolling stock, all in various states of repair and restoration. The pride of the collection is a 4-6-2 Baldwin P-8 Pacific Class steamer built in 1921 for the Southern Pacific's passenger service. This behemoth weighs 150 tons, and with its six-foot drive wheels is one of the largest locomotives ever built.
Dewees and the PLA are now fixing up one of the two remaining "heavyweight" dining cars on the West Coast. "These heavily built steel cars with concrete floors were used in cross-country passenger service during the height of American rail travel," says Dewees. It's slow work, and he's always on the lookout for fixtures and parts that will make the all-mahogany car a period showpiece on the Niles Canyon line. The railroad also boasts an old baggage car that is being converted into an open-air "dance car," complete with two 30-foot dance floors and a bandstand.
More than 50,000 passengers rode through Niles Canyon last year, enjoying such specialty runs as the "Polar Express" at Christmastime. Dewees and his fellow volunteers run this train at night, with each car outlined in Christmas lights.
Dewees plans to retire from Clorox in June, when he will be able to spend more time than ever on his unusual hobby. He's even looking for a promotion--to conductor, or maybe even engineer. (Wait--didn't he major in engineering?) Railroading is in his blood, he says. After all, his great uncle, George Rhoades, was once head of locomotive testing for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
--Jeffrey Lott
Caroline Cox edits the Journal of Pesticide Reform at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.
For Caroline Cox '75, to "think globally, act locally" is all in a day's work. At the end of her two-mile commute to downtown Eugene, Ore., she carries her bicycle upstairs to the citizen's organization Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP), where she has worked for seven years.
There, as editor of the Journal of Pesticide Reform, Cox's role is to help local people--from Idaho potato farmers to garden-variety concerned citizens--talk intelligently and act effectively on pesticide management issues.
A scientist by training (she majored in biology), Cox translates complex technical data and scientific studies on pesticides and pesticide regulation into everyday English accessible to the lay person. "I can no longer quote you a line of Beowulf," she says, remembering undergraduate courses in Old English and modern theater, "but I do a lot of writing in my job. All those English classes help."
Cox's writing in the Journal of Pesticide Reform ranges from fact sheets on the ecological effects of widely used insecticides like chlorpyrifos--which has been shown to kill bees, fish, birds, and mammals and is a suspected cause, through synergistic interaction with other chemicals, of Gulf War syndrome--to less technical articles on such subjects as airline pesticide spraying, "sane cockroach management," and the life cycle of the flea.
"Pesticide issues are almost always political," she says. "Most of our members aren't scientists. A lot of them were thrust into the issue because they got sprayed and didn't like it. But you can't argue persuasively before a county commission or a local school board without having your science straight. It's better to come armed with information than to stand up and say, 'I don't like this pesticide.'"
Cox regards pesticides with a mixture of curiosity and respect: "Pesticides are amazing. They have so many effects. For instance, methyl bromide (commonly used on strawberries) is an ozone depleter. On a molecule-by-molecule level, it is more potent than the CFCs in air conditioners. Who would ever have thought there was a connection between eating a strawberry and stratospheric ozone depletion?"
Cox grew up as a Quaker, and she thinks her concern about ecology in general and pesticide reform in particular "has something to do with Quakerism." She describes her "strong sense that people can't be the center of the world, that we've got to pay attention to all the other creatures that live here as much as to ourselves."
In addition to editing the NCAP's journal, Cox also directs the coalition's campaign for the disclosure of inert ingredients that are found in virtually all 18,000 pesticide products registered in the United States. The health and safety tests conducted on pesticides are on the active ingredients, she says, not the inerts.
"Pesticide manufacturers claim that these ingredients are a trade secret. That's misleading. They're not biologically, chemically, or toxicologically inert. We have a big concern that people are being exposed to hazardous substances without their knowledge or consent."
Last fall a federal judge agreed with NCAP that inert ingredients don't meet the government definition of a trade secret, paving the way for interested parties to obtain data on individual products by using the Freedom of Information Act.
The coalition, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, counts among its early successes its actions against the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which were using the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, best known for its use in the Vietnam War, to kill the competitors of Douglas fir in Pacific Northwest forests.
These days, much of the action on pesticides is on a grassroots level. "If there's a pesticide issue in a certain town, we can offer strategies and ideas. Lots of people call for personal reasons--a neighbor's out spraying the blackberries, or they're worried about their kids' exposure to pesticides at school. In rural areas, roadside spraying is a constant issue.
"It's easy to get information on what pesticide would be good to kill X, but it's almost always difficult to get information if you oppose the use of pesticides," observes Cox, who is "amazed at how seriously the pesticide manufacturers take what we have to say. Except for groups like ours, the only information on pesticides come from the manufacturers, who make sure their message is reassuring and minimizes potential hazards."
--Cathy Cockrell '76
Swarthmore College 1998. All rights reserved.