June 1998
(At left: William Capron and his wife Margaret "Peg" Morgan.)
It's no secret that Swarthmore College produces extraordinary individuals who lead extraordinarily active and successful professional lives, which often extend into their retirement years. Still, how many septuagenarians can claim to have avoided bombs planted by the Tamil Tiger rebels in the streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka; or, while on assignment, admired the freshly regilded "mushroom domes" of Kiev's churches strung out along the banks of the Dnepr; or sailed down the Yangtze River in China?
William M. Capron '42 can. He did all of this after "becoming inactive" as professor of economics at Boston University in 1991. Capron, 78, has worked in Sri Lanka, Zambia, Macedonia, the Ukraine, and China as a member of a team of economists. Capron's role has been advising the ministries of finance of developing countries on how to improve their budgetary systems. "There's this myth," says Capron modestly, "that I know a lot about public budgeting - and, well, I don't do a lot to kill the myth."
Besides, it really isn't a myth. An economics major at Swarthmore, Capron's interest in government budgeting was stimulated in Roland Pennock's seminar on public administration. He graduated with high honors in 1942. Capron's career since then includes graduate work at Harvard; a stint with the Rand Corporation; seven years on the faculty of the Economics Department of Stanford University (where he is still a visiting scholar); and service on the Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, D.C.
The high point of his professional life, he says, came when he was appointed assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget under President John F. Kennedy. He was involved in developing the Great Society programs, in particular the War on Poverty, but left during the Johnson administration when the war in Vietnam diverted both funding and the president's attention from the programs. Later, as associate dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Capron helped build its Public Policy Program. In 1977 he assumed the chairmanship of the Economics Department at Boston University.
During consultation visits of typically four to eight weeks, Capron becomes familiar with extreme geographical, climatic, historical, and political differences in the settings of his workplaces. He describes Sri Lanka, which he visited in 1991, as a "tragic country," whose long-lasting conflict with the Tamils paralyzes the government and obstructs enduring positive change. A year later he was called to Zambia, where within the framework of sweeping economic reforms, Zambian finance ministers made efforts to improve their budget systems along the lines suggested by the American group, yet political instability in the country makes consistent growth difficult.
In Macedonia, a former province of Yugoslavia, in 1993, Capron became "passionate" about a nation eager for autonomous government, but, like many other Eastern European countries, they are struggling in the midst of the transition from a centrally planned to an openly democratic market economy. No longer mere administrators following orders from Belgrade, the Macedonians have become policy-makers with little experience of making policy.
A similar situation exists in the Ukraine. Capron bemoans the fact that, because of political gridlock in the parliament, one of the most potentially productive countries of that part of the world is languishing. When in China last summer and fall, he was surprised to find a much more decentralized political system than he had expected. "It's not run with detailed control from Beijing at all," he says. "When we hear of this communist country with everything being controlled right up there at the center - well, it just ain't so." He believes that China, though facing formidable challenges as it shifts toward a market economy, will continue to gain in importance as it becomes more democratic. "It's wonderful, fascinating, and absolutely puzzling," he says, and he looks forward to returning for a follow-up visit.
Despite the varied national scenarios, Capron says, "I've been more surprised at the similarities than at the differences." He finds that a common budgetary problem in both well-developed and underdeveloped countries is that the top political leadership, although having a general understanding of which areas need improvement, is often ill informed on how money is actually spent and, therefore, incapable of assessing what remedies should be recommended.
"We don't advise them on specifics," he says. "We're not telling them if they should run a deficit or not. We're telling them how they can improve the way their systems function." Capron and his fellow consultants propagate systematic analysis of public programs; they suggest to the ministries of finance methods of collecting and organizing information in such a way that they will be in a better position to make decisions on resource management. At the same time, they try to balance these more global suggestions by encouraging the idea of decentralizing the detailed management of the programs down to the level where services are actually delivered.
Although positive results of his work are not immediately visible, whether because of political unrest or the natural resistance of bureaucracy to change, Capron hopes that their suggestions will make a positive difference in time.
And it wouldn't be the first time Capron has won out in the face of resistance. During his Freshman Week at the College in 1938, he met classmate Margaret "Peg" Morgan. "I knew right away whom I was going to spend the rest of my life with, but she was a slow learner," he jokes. They have been married for almost 60 years. And she joined him on the Yangzte &endash; "the highlight of my overseas trips." Now there's a system that has endured.
- Carol Brévart
President Bill Clinton's nomination of James C. Hormel '55 to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg has languished in the Senate for more than six months because of opposition by a small number of lawmakers who argue that Hormel, who is openly gay, will promote a gay rights agenda in the tiny European country. In March Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott rejected pleas from 42 senators to lift "holds" that four senators have used to block a vote on the nomination.
Hormel, who has been a member of Swarthmore's Board of Managers since 1988, is chairman of Equidex Inc. in San Francisco. The firm manages Hormel family investments and philanthropy.
After graduating from Swarthmore, Hormel received a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and later served as assistant dean of students there. He has been active in Democratic politics and was appointed by President Clinton as alternate U.S. representative to the U.N. General Assembly, receiving easy Senate confirmation in 1997. Hormel has also been a delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. He was a founding member of the Human Rights Campaign.
Hormel is a member of the board of directors of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and serves on the board of the San Francisco Symphony.
In mid-May an effort was being made by the administration to force a floor vote on the ambassadorial nomination, which had been reported out of the Foreign Relations Committee in November 1997. As he awaited Senate action, we asked Hormel to comment; he told the Bulletin that he could not discuss the nomination pending confirmation.
But his son, James C. Hormel Jr., had no such constraints. The younger Hor-mel, 37, argued in the following editorial, which was published in several newspapers across the United States, that his father should be confirmed.
When I was 11 years old, my father, James C. Hormel, told me that he was gay.
I didn't find this an easy bit of information to digest, but I heard my father's great concern for how this disclosure would affect his son. This was not a lifestyle choice. Being gay was part of his personal makeup, something he had struggled with greatly his whole life.
Now President Clinton has nominated my father to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. This has made us, as a family, quite proud. When my father sat before the Senate at his confirmation hearing, the entire family - including my mother and stepfather - attended to show our unified support. After hearing nothing but high praise from committee members and other senators, we felt sure that a vote of approval would follow.
A week later we learned that several senators had placed "holds" on the nomination. The reason, they said, was that they thought my father would use his position as ambassador to further a "gay agenda." This delay in the confirmation process gave other senators time to launch a smear campaign.
My father has dedicated a majority of his work throughout his life to philanthropy and diplomacy. He is committed to helping others. His qualifications as a diplomat have never been disputed.
For these reasons I have concluded that those senators blocking his nomination do so as a simple matter of discrimination.
Those who oppose my father's nomination on the premise that sexual orientation affects "family values" are not familiar with the strength of our family. While I was growing up, my father never tried to influence my sexuality in any way. What he did teach me was kindness, acceptance of others, honesty, self-esteem, and standing up for what you believe.
I have just returned to California from Washington, D.C., with my father, three of my sisters, my brother, two brothers-in-law, my wife, two nieces, one nephew, and my father's partner. We were in Washington for a meeting about our family's foundation, which my father established to encourage us to participate in philanthropy.
He has taught us through his own giving, to organizations like Swarthmore College, the Holocaust Museum, Virginia Institute of Autism, the University of Chicago, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the Breast Cancer Action Network, and the San Francisco Symphony, that to give as a family is one more way to strengthen our ties.
My father's agenda for our family is to encourage closeness and integrity. His agenda as ambassador to Luxembourg is to represent our country. It just so happens that he is gay. The Senate deserves the opportunity to act on the American agenda - to deliberate and vote on my father's nomination.
- James C. Hormel Jr.
Reprinted by permission of the Pacific News Service.
By Stacy Chase
It's Sunday afternoon, and Cheryl Warfield Mitchell '71 is knitting a baby sweater for a friend, softly clicking the needles in the sun- room of her home in pastoral New Haven, Vt. More than a distraction, the sweater binds together the threads of Mitchell's personal and professional lives. The coarse, cobalt blue yarn she uses was spun from wool from a flock of 80 Finn-Cross ewes just outside her door. And the baby who wears it will be just one more child helped by Mitchell, deputy secretary of Vermont's Human Services Agency.
In 1993 Gov. Howard Dean appointed Mitchell, 50, to the No. 2 post at the agency, which employs about 3,000 people and spends $700 million annually - roughly one-third of the entire state budget.
Human Services is the umbrella agency responsible for more than 10 divisions, including the departments of Public Health, Medicaid, Social and Rehabilitative Services, and Corrections. Mitchell sets state policy for family and children's services. Yet she says: "If things are going to go well for kids in this state, it cannot be top-down, where the state mandates what's going to happen. It needs to be a partnership among families and communities and state entities."
Part of her work is oversight of Vermont's "Success by Six" program and other initiatives in early childhood education. "What I'm passionate about really has to do with the way we, as a society, support - or fail to support - families with young children," Mitchell explains. "I think that if we got organized to do that well when kids were babies, we'd end up being in great shape as kids got older."
As a country we are doing an "abysmal" job of supporting families with young children, Mitchell says. However, Vermont is consistently ranked as one of the nation's leaders in prenatal care, childhood immunization, and child support collection. It also has the lowest teen birthrate in the country.
Before being named deputy secretary, Mitchell spent 12 years as co-founder and co-director of the Addison County Parent-Child Center in Middlebury, Vt., which provides family support and education to about 1,600 families in rural Vermont.
Mitchell has served as either founder or president of numerous organizations dedicated to the welfare of children, including the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children, the Vermont Child Care Association, the Vermont Children's Forum, and the Vermont Day Care Council. As early as 1974, she was director of a day care center in Middlebury.
When she and her husband, author and shepherd Don Mitchell '69, moved to Vermont, Mitchell had aspirations of being a high school English teacher. "I always took care of kids. In some ways I fell into it," she says of her career.
She earned a master's degree in education from the University of Vermont in 1981 and is currently pursuing a doctorate in social policy and spiritual practice from Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, through a guided independent study program.
Mitchell has been spotted around the Vermont Statehouse carrying paperwork in a wicker basket instead of a briefcase. She wears loose-fitting floral dresses - and shoes (secondhand sandals, with socks in winter) only when she has to. It's as if being barefoot is precisely what keeps Mitchell so grounded.
Mitchell's job consumes 70 to 80 hours a week. She begins her day at 5:30 a.m. by feeding the sheep and leaves for her Waterbury, Vt., office two hours later. En route, she dictates reports and letters; she works on projects at home in the evenings and on weekends.
Husband Don runs Trelevan Farm, the family's 138-acre commercial sheep farm perched on a rocky landscape in the shadow of Snake Mountain. The Mitchells' passive-solar home, without a single television set, features a breathtaking view. Cheryl says her home feels "absolutely like the center of the universe." They have two children, Ethan, 21, a crew manager for Habitat for Humanity in Baltimore, and Anais, 17, soon to be a senior at Mt. Abraham High School in Bristol, Vt.
"People in politics like to use the concept of boardroom decisionmaking. It's really bottom line driven, sort of high-powered," she says.
In her public life, Mitchell says she's grateful for the things Swarthmore College taught her. "The way decisions were made at Swarthmore, by consensus, has always been the way I've run organizations ever since," she says. "It often seems as if positive changes come from a sort of kitchen-table approach. People who really care about something come together and say, 'What can we do to make this different?' and then they do it."
Mitchell recalls when she and her husband moved to the farm in the spring of 1973.
"People from the Soil Conservation Service stopped by, and they said, 'We're so glad you're here' and what could they do to help? The guys from Forest Management stopped by, and they said, 'We're glad you're here. Any questions?' And the Agricultural Extension Service offered classes on canning or gardening or something," Mitchell says.
"But when you had a baby in those days, nobody said anything."
So Cheryl Mitchell set out to do her part to make a difference.
"It feels as if it's going somewhere," she says. "When a national report comes out that says Vermont's got the lowest teen pregnancy rate in the country or that Vermont's got the best welfare system in the country, I'm part of that. A world that's full of healthy, happy kids is a much more pleasant world to live in. And it's not that hard to do."
Stacy Chase is a reporter for the Burlington Free Press.
By Terri Pyer '77
One can hardly imagine words you'd rather hear from your doctor than, "You're fine, don't worry." For years, this is just what every doctor told Amy Verstappen '83, despite her having been born with a heart defect. And to be fair, Amy was fine: She felt healthy, grew normally, and engaged in normal activities. But in 1995, two years after the birth of her daughter, Amy was hearing quite different words: "Your heart has deteriorated so badly that the only hope is a transplant."
"I just flipped out. My echocardiogram showed that the valve was completely shot and the heart muscle was so damaged that the right ventricle was not working the way it should," recounts Verstappen. "Everyone had always told me that I was going to be fine. But it turns out that I was profoundly not fine."
At birth doctors could tell that Amy had a heart defect because her skin was blue and she had a heart murmur. It was not until a catheterization was performed when she was 4 years old that the precise nature of her condition was discovered: congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries. "It's as if someone took the lower half of my heart, my ventricles, and rotated them," Verstappen explains.
Approximately one of 125 babies is born with a congenital heart problem. More than 100 types of defects exist, and some children are born with more than one. About 10 percent have a transposition. When the transposition is incomplete, blood moves through the body without ever making it to the lungs, and these patients need immediate surgery or die soon after birth. Verstappen's condition is called "congenitally corrected" because the ventricles and the valves are completely reversed, allowing blood to be oxygenated as it moves through the system.
In Verstappen's case annual visits to cardiologists never revealed new problems. Some time after marrying Richard Gilbertie '82, Verstappen asked her doctors about the advisability of becoming pregnant. She was assured that her heart was fine and should not be affected by a pregnancy. Lena Margaret Verstappen was born in 1993.
Two years later, when Verstappen and her husband were considering adding to their family, Amy just didn't feel like herself; she had never regained the energy she had before her pregnancy. She returned to a doctor to inquire about her fatigue and was eventually given surprisingly bad news. She was told she had dilated cardiomyopathy, a swelling and thinning of the heart muscle. Without a transplant, doctors told her, she would die.
How could this be? How could all her previous doctors have been so wrong? Verstappen sought answers.
Many factors emerged to explain why Verstappen's case had been mismanaged. When Verstappen became an adult and needed advice on matters of family planning and adult health maintenance, few doctors could meet those needs. Though the entire patient load of pediatric cardiologists typically comprises congenital cases, most adult cardiologists deal almost exclusively with noncongenital cases. Until fairly recently, children with serious heart defects usually did not survive into adulthood, so adult congenital cardiology was virtually nonexistent. A new cardiology specialty is slowly emerging, but there are obstacles to it.
Verstappen says that the current competitive model for the delivery of American medical care discourages the creation of regional centers where such expertise can be concentrated.
"If you see doctors who have few
congenital patients," Verstappen explains, "there's an extremely low chance that they will ever have encountered anyone with what you have."
In 1997, Verstappen was finally seen at two national adult congenital heart centers - in Cleveland and at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota - where she was told to her great relief that the previous diagnosis of dilated cardiomyopathy was incorrect. In fact, her heart could stand surgery to replace a deteriorating valve. She did not need a heart transplant - at least for now.
Amy Verstappen had successful heart valve replacement surgery on March 15. "I feel like I have been given this huge gift, which is that I have 15 to 20 years to not worry about dying. I value my time in a different way. I spend more time with my daughter and my husband, and I have a more balanced life. I tell people that this is the best thing that ever happened to me," says Verstappen.
One of the saving graces for Verstappen was the information and support she found on the Internet. "The Canadian health care system is light-years ahead of us in regionalizing knowledge and services, and the Canadian Adult Congenital Heart Network has a great Web site where I got a lot of information," exclaims Verstappen. "Another thing that was really helpful was talking to other heart defect patients on the Internet. Without the Internet I would have gone through life without ever meeting another individual with the same defect."
Her thoughts for others in her situation: "Be an advocate for yourself. Make sure that you are getting the best possible care. Know all you can about your condition. And get on the Internet."
Verstappen may need a transplant at some point in the future, but she says "treatments change so rapidly. You just don't know." In the meantime she is working with others to create a national support and information network to serve adults with congenital heart defects.
To join in an Internet conversation on adult congenital heart defects, send an
e-mail message to majordomo@tchin.org and include as the subject "subscribe achd." The Canadian Adult Congenital Heart Network's Web address is http:// www.cachnet.org.
Swarthmore College 1998. All rights reserved.