Your letters have a way of making me happy, and, for a long time after receiving them the feeling persists. For example, the other morning, I awoke, not feeling too "hot" and was handed a stack of mail. One after another I opened the letters with the mechanical precision and expression of a robot. Then your letter loomed up and then--a smile--a sitting up in bed--a slight quickening of the pulse--a careful read of your sweet letter and the day was made for me....
Love, George
This excerpt of a letter from George Gershwin to Rosamond Walling '31 dated October 10, 1929, is just one of dozens of letters Rosamond received from the renowned composer while she was a student here. Their voluminous correspondence spans a five-year period that ended shortly after Rosamond's marriage to Rifat Tirana in 1932, with whom she had three sons. Some letters are flirtatious; others are filled with witty sarcasm about friends or events. Most, however, chronicle activities in their respective lives and plans for their next get-together. The entire collection of mostly handwritten letters was given to the Library of Congress last year.
Rosamond's life first became intertwined with Gershwin's when she was 9, and they met at the 1919 wedding of her cousin Emily Strunsky to Lou Paley. Gershwin, then 21 years old, was in attendance because his brother, Ira, was married to Emily's sister, Leonore.
Their worlds continued to touch, and the relationship changed from friendship to a more romantic one. They often met at family gatherings, or Rosamond would be Gershwin's guest at a musical he had written--as was the case when she attended shows that opened in Philadelphia while she attended Swarthmore.
In an interview from her New York home, Rosamond's younger sister, Anna Walling Hamburger '33, who attended Swarthmore for two years, remembered being a "chaperone" on one of those dates: "It was great to go to play openings such as Girl Crazy in Philadelphia or even out to lunch with them."
Anna says Rosamond and Gershwin "had a very real friendship." She continues: "You have to un-derstand the times in which they lived. There was no physical contact except maybe a kiss goodnight on the cheek--a peck--at the door," she recalled with a quiet laugh.
Rosamond was not only the recipient of Gershwin's affection but also of his gifts. While at Swarthmore, Rosamond received from Gershwin one of the first portable radios. "Anna came down to my room," said Rosamond in a recent interview at her Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. "She saw that I had the windows wide open, and my roommate and I had our coats on. She asked, 'Why do you have the windows open?' I said, 'We can't close the windows because we have to let in the airwaves.'"
With a degree in history, Rosamond went to England to do graduate work at the London School of Economics but found fulfillment in painting, primarily landscapes. It was an avocation in her years with Gershwin that later became a vocation, and her work has been ex-hibited in galleries across the country.
Although family members say Rosamond would never have married George Gershwin, she was one of only a few women with whom Gershwin had seriously discussed marriage and children. "Gershwin asked me to marry him several times. When I asked him why, he would always say, 'because if you do, it would be good for my health and digestion,'" Rosamond recalled. He hadn't said she would be good for his heart, a romantic sentiment she thought was missing and wanted to hear.
Anna agrees that Gershwin loved Rosamond, but she was not in love with him. Rosamond once wrote that she believed George wanted what has now become known as a "trophy wife," which she knew was not a strong basis for a marriage. When George Gershwin died at the age of 38 in 1937, he had never married.
Today, at age 89, Rosamond can no longer easily hear the strains of Gershwin's compositions because of a profound hearing loss, and she spends much of her day reading books. But her apartment walls are covered with fond memories. Among her own colorful paintings and those of Edward Corbett, her late second husband, are two 8 x 10 photographs of Gershwin.
One shows George sitting at his piano, with the handwritten inscription: "For Rosamond with admiration and affection, George--November 29, 1928 (Thanksgiving)." Next to the words is a hand-drawn musical staff with the opening bar to "Rhapsody in Blue."
Rosamond gave the original of this photo and three other Gershwin photos to the National Photo Gallery. As the first photographs the gallery has ever had of Gershwin, Rosamond's cherished memories are now documented for a nation.
--Audree Penner
On
Sept. 29, 1998, Valerie Prescott Bradford '78 was walking in her
Willingboro, N.J., neighborhood--without her pager. It was her first
free afternoon away from her office since taking a new job in April
1998, and she meant to take advantage of it.
While she walked, her husband, Reginald, was driving around, frantically looking for her. Their teenage son was at home, glued to the 5 p.m. news, watching live pictures of a fire high on a cable of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. "Mom, mom, the bridge is on fire," he yelled as she came in the door. Workers 377 feet above the Dela-ware River had accidentally ignited materials on their work platform. Traffic was halted while firefighters put out the blaze. And Valerie Bradford, bridge manager since April, was headed back to work and stayed well into the night.
On a frigid January day four months later, she pointed out the spot on the 30-inch cable where the fire had occurred--and where she had climbed the next day to inspect the damage. "There were plenty of experts up there," she said, "but it was something I wanted to do. I'm an engineer."
She's the first engineer, in fact, to hold the top management position at the 72-year-old span. And the first woman. And the first minority. Though she's a pioneer of sorts, Bradford takes a pragmatic approach to advancement. "I've never felt hindered in my career. In every job I've held, I've had to start producing very quickly, and I've been judged by my performance. That's the way the system should go."
Bradford also attributes her success to a "deep, active faith in God, who has blessed me with vigor and opportunities." She is involved in Bible studies at her church and is a regular with the Swarthmore Alumni Gospel Choir.
After nine months on the job, Bradford is clearly enjoying the new challenge. On a tour of the 7,870-foot bridge, she clambers up stairs and down ladders in a silk pantsuit and worn leather work boots. Seven lanes of traffic, two commuter rail lines, and a spectacular pedestrian walkway cross the river on a steel deck suspended from twin 350-foot towers. The main suspension cables are anchored in massive piers at either end, splaying out to giant eye-bolts embedded in tons of concrete. From atop the towers, says Bradford, you can see the roadway suspended on hinges that allow the whole dynamic structure to move as it shrinks from the cold and sways in the wind. We won't go up there today, but she says the view is "breathtaking."
There's history here too. Nestled inside the east tower is a never-used rail station, complete with a decaying tiled concourse and ticket booths. Another station was planned for the Benjamin Franklin Plaza on the Philadelphia side, where Bradford's construction and maintenance supervisor swings open massive steel doors to reveal a three-story-deep cavern beneath the lightning-bolt sculpture that commemorates Franklin's famous experiment. Lying awkwardly on their backs in the gloom are three 10-foot seminude bronze angels. At one time, says Bradford, they--and a fourth already crated for storage--graced fluted pedestals at the bridge entrances.
Back in her sunny corner office overlooking the Camden toll plaza, the energetic Bradford says that being an engineer is an asset in this job but having a liberal arts background has really made it possible for her to oversee the bridge's $6.5 million operating budget, deal with revenue and public safety issues, and supervise a staff of 100. "It's one thing to be able to crunch the numbers and solve the engineering problems," she says, "but in a business setting, being able to communicate and to step back and look at the big picture is very valuable." She's clearly found work that combines the two passions that she says originally drew her to engineering--a desire to work with people and an interest in problem solving.
The 72-year-old bridge presents plenty of problems. (Engineers call them "projects"; "I'm very project oriented," says Bradford.) The 30-inch bundles of wire that hold up the deck have never before been unwrapped, inspected, and repaired. When that's done, the span will need another paint job, this time blasting down to bare metal to remove eight layers of lead-based paint. Then there's ongoing deck maintenance, electrical system upkeep, running new fiber-optic lines, rebuilding the toll plaza, and installing the new EZ-Pass electronic toll system.
Bradford says her new job has "been an adjustment from being in the engineering division--the kind of challenge that makes for growth." Near her desk is a wood plaque bearing two sturdy leather gloves and two hanks of frayed, slightly charred nylon rope. It's handmade, but she treasures it be-cause it commemorates her Sept. 29 cable climb. "The bridge maintenance guys gave it to me the very next day," she explains with a smile. "It was kind of the old-boy network's way of saying, 'welcome to the club.' Little things like that make this job very rewarding to me."
--Jeffrey Lott
The
7,200 miles separating Baltimore from Kampala is only one measure of
how far Ted Silver '94 has traveled for his job with the World
Rehabilitation Fund (WRF)--and probably the least significant measure
at that. "Provoked," as he says, by theorists he encountered in
classes with Professor Steven Piker and inspired by the Quaker ethic
so prevalent at Swarthmore, Silver knew that he had to choose a
future that included traveling, interacting with people from other
cultures, and making a difference in the world. By all accounts, he's
been wildly successful.
After college, Silver volunteered in Zaire with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, teaching English to refugees and translating for physical therapy sessions. He developed a close friendship with a refugee named Jean-Paul, who had lost a leg to a land mine while trying to flee the genocide in Rwanda. When Silver's volunteer stint was finished, he returned to the United States determined to send his new friend a limb. He contacted hospitals that had unwanted prosthetic limbs and arranged for them to be sent back to the refugee camp. To his delight, Jean-Paul received a limb and was able to come to America and resume his education. "That experience--knowing him and being involved with prosthetics in that way--was very inspiring to me to continue this work," explains Silver.
"I like to see things tangibly. I like to taste things so that I can understand them. My work in the camps made me realize that I wasn't interested in the relief effort as a massive logistical en-terprise. But helping a person walk was something I could really do." So Silver trained in the South Bronx for a year to be a prosthetic orthotic technician and contacted everyone he knew in Africa, trying to find a way to do this work over there. He hooked up with Rotary International, volunteering with its limb-making project in Kigali, Rwanda. There he pledged to do similar work in Uganda. One contact he made, a Ugandan physician named Wanume, proved especially valuable, and Silver credits his ongoing support and expertise for the success of the Uganda work.
Silver is now project director of WRF's Uganda Project, a grassroots-international partnership that is bringing prosthetic technology to Ugandans. Silver sings the praises of the "Jaipur Foot" that the project uses. "It is by far the best appropriate technology. The foot itself costs about $10, is incredibly strong and durable, is good for barefoot walking and farming, is waterproof, looks like a real foot, and is dark skinned. "People like it, and it works."
WRF's main partners are Bhagwan Mahaveer Vikland Sahayata Samiti, an Indian organization that innovated the Jaipur Foot, and Rotary International, through the Rotary Jaipur Limb Project. These groups were brought together in Uganda largely by the dogged determination of Silver himself. "Giving someone a limb does more than just giving them a limb. It allows adults to support their families, it allows kids to play with other kids, makes them healthier, and gives them hope."
After nearly a year of frustrating bureaucratic delays, the project got under way in May 1998 with the training of seven local prosthetic technologists to make and fit limbs and train amputees in their use at Kumi Hospital. Within months
of opening the doors to the Kumi project in eastern Uganda, 200 people were fit with artificial limbs. Another project is under way in the north, where the needs are even greater. "The choice of a local facility is really key to the sustainability of this project," explains Silver. "We need to find an established site that has its own means of support and a good record of offering services at low or no cost, which could add prosthetics to their repertoire.
"Creating this project from nothing in a developing country has taught me to be patient and learn what's really happening, which is not always easy when you are operating in another culture." With approximately 17,000 amputees in Uganda alone, about half of whom are victims of land mines and most of whom are extremely poor, there is a lot of work yet to be done. But Silver will continue for as long as he can: "When you sacrifice yourself to a project, you have to say, 'whatever happens, I'm in.'"
--Terri-Jean Pyer '77
For more information on the Uganda Project, contact WRF at (212) 725-7875.
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