Though
my family escaped its worst ravages, the Depression formed my social
conscience," says Mary Lou Rogers Munts '45. "I became a Roosevelt
admirer in 1932, when I was 8." Almost 70 years later, she's still a
Democrat, and her lifelong commitment to social justice has brought
many accomplishments and honors.
Munts came to Swarthmore at a critical time in the College's--and the nation's--history. Two student groups started her on a path of public service: the Swarthmore Student Union (SSU) and the Committee on Race Relations, which convinced the Board of Managers to open the College to black students.
World War II gave Swarthmore women unusual opportunities, says Munts, and in 1942, she was selected to attend the International Student Service Leadership Training Institute at President Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island, Maine. Molly Yard '33 was a staff member at the institute and became a lifelong friend and mentor. After Campobello, Eleanor Roosevelt invited several of the students to her New York apartment, where Munts remembers spending the night in a "spacious nightgown" borrowed from the First Lady.
Munts' sophomore year was busy. Elected executive secretary of the SSU, she scored a coup when Mrs. Roosevelt accepted an invitation to speak on campus. In May 1943, she was elected president of the U.S. Student Assembly at its inaugural convention.
In the fall of 1944, Munts took a leave of absence from Swarthmore to run the student campaign for Vernon O'Rourke, the political science professor who was making a second run against the Delaware County Republican machine for a seat in Congress--this time in absentia. Though O'Rourke was serving on a destroyer in the Pacific, he lost only by a narrow margin.
After the election, Munts took a job in a tank factory instead of returning to college. After the war, she finished her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, where she not only received a master's degree in economics but met her future husband. Ray Munts was then a graduate student in political science, later receiving a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM).
After her marriage, Munts' activism continued along themes established at Swarthmore. In the 1950s, she threw herself into building a new Democratic Party in Wisconsin. The early 1960s found her in Bethesda, Md., where she and Esther Ridpath Dela-plaine '44 led efforts to pass a groundbreaking public accommodations ordinance. The Munts family--by then with four children--returned to Madison in 1966, where Ray taught at the university's School of Social Work.
Battling her grief over the 1967 death of their son, Roger, Munts entered the UWM Law School in 1970. Again, she interrupted her studies to win a seat in the Wisconsin Assembly in 1972, 1 of 7 women in the 99-member body. Her consensus-building talents produced many legislative successes, including divorce reform, marital property reform, solid and hazardous waste legislation, and reform of antitrust and mental health laws. She earned her law degree in 1976, while a member of the Assembly.
Asked about her greatest legislative accomplishment, Munts points to marital property reform. She credits UWM Law School Professor June Miller Weisberger '51 as the "intellectual architect" of the bill that made Wisconsin the first--and thus far only--state to change long-standing separate property laws to become a community property state. (Eight other states, largely those with French or Spanish colonial legal influence, have long had community property laws.) In 1984, after six terms in the Assembly, she retired to take a seat on Wisconsin's Public Service Commission, where she became a leader in energy conservation efforts, serving until 1991.
Ray's death in 1992 forced Munts to rebuild her life, assisted by her three children and seven grandchildren as well as her passions for gardening and travel. Polly, her lesbian daughter; Polly's partner; and their three adopted children of color have given Munts a special opportunity to make her civil rights advocacy personal.
In December 1999, hundreds crowded into a 75th birthday party for Munts. "Words like 'tireless' and 'incredibly effective' floated among the red and white balloons," reported the Wisconsin State Journal. The Madison Capital Times said, "Munts' faith in democracy demanded a commitment that was--and is--extremely rare." Jona-than Barry, a former county executive who served with Munts in the legislature, summed it up for everyone when he said at the party, "She's just a Wisconsin gem."
--Ralph Lee Smith '51
What
if Timothy McVeigh were not the sole perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma
City bombing? Or if a window washer were responsible for the 1954
beating death of Marilyn Sheppard?
Both these contentions are discussed in books by Northeastern University Press (NEUP). We may never know the truth about either event because the window washer is dead, and McVeigh faces execution. Yet, if the arguments presented offer different and significant viewpoints, then they have achieved something important, says Bill Frohlich '57, founder and director of NEUP. He sees book publishing as a gratifying way of investigating significant issues, of debating society's behavior, and of imparting values that were strengthened in him during his years as an Honors history major at Swarthmore.
Frohlich came to Northeastern University in 1976, after 16 years in commercial publishing, as head of the institution's Publishing Group, which provided printing and publishing services to the university. The idea of publishing scholarly books appealed to him, and, in 1977, the university approved his proposal to start a university press. The university was thriving financially, and its sympathetic president could afford to let him experiment. Nonetheless, Frohlich knew that the press could not grow on scholarly works alone, for they garner little media attention and rarely sell more than 600 copies per title. With a small press budget and limited appeal to scholars and other authors, the fledgling press needed a mix of books that advanced scholarship, sold into university courses, and attracted more general interest--not to mention that of book review editors.
In the early years, university support and the ability of Frohlich and his staff to find promising niches in the market for high-quality books brought rapid growth. Annual sales rose in the first 10 years from $9,000 to $355,000. Drawing on the strengths of the university and its editors, the press developed lists in American history (especially regional titles), criminology, women's studies, and music. However, since that first glorious decade, budgetary crunches at colleges and universities reduced library sales from 1,000 to 300 copies per scholarly book.
By restricting its publishing to a few areas, NEUP has done well. Frohlich admits that growing is now a challenge. Still, he says, "If I look at the books we published many years ago, I can see a considerable difference, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. And I think what keeps me going at 65 is that, even though it never gets easier, I enjoy it."
Speaking of the press's success, Frohlich prefers emphasizing specific items. He mentions a popular African-American fiction reissue series. The press has a strong music list, and it also publishes widely in the area of criminology, enjoying a fine reputation for its books on capital punishment. A new book on terrorism, In Bad Company by Mark Hamm, is due in the fall; it suggests that McVeigh collaborated with the Aryan Republican Army, a small terrorist group that robbed banks in its quest to fund overthrowing the federal government. Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sam Sheppard Murder Case by Cynthia Cooper and Sam Reese Sheppard illustrates injustice in the Ohio legal system and offers a contribution to the quest for truth because it uncovered the identity of the real murderer. A contract with Hollywood-based Fox Studios will mean the filming of Final Confession by Brian Wallace, an account of the exploits of eminently successful Boston thief Phil Cresta, now deceased. Rumor has it that Robert De Niro is interested in playing Cresta.
Despite current sales of roughly $1.5 million, the press has yet to become profitable, not unusual for a publisher as small as NEUP. And, in any case, Frohlich wishes to focus on more than commercially successful books. He wants NEUP's lists to address significant issues like capital punishment and the corrupting nature of campaign finance. Often, in his search for fine books, he's discouraged by what he learns. "But," he says, "if you don't continue to roll the rock up the hill; if you don't continue to fight executing human beings, often innocent; if you don't try to show the injustice of our system--such as keeping two million people behind bars, many on minor drug offenses and most of them minorities--then you're not doing anything significant or at least trying to improve our society in some small way. So we try."
--Carol Brévart-Demm
Sometimes
it looks like Noah's ark in the waiting room," says Thomas Goldsmith
'75, a private-practice exotic animal veterinarian. Devoting more
than 60 hours a week to the care of animals, including all the big
cats, primates, and birds, Goldsmith says it's not unusual to see a
16-foot trailer pull up outside his Bird and Animal Hospital of
Pine-crest, in south Miami, and unload a 650-pound male Bengal tiger
with a tooth problem that he must diagnose from a distance. To
anesthetize the animal and get a closer look could break its trust;
so when sedation is necessary, it is usually delivered through a blow
dart.
"Projectile medicating can be tricky," says Goldsmith, who is frequently called on by clients to use his blow-pipe skill. "You have to determine whether it's justified. You have to consider all the options in terms of the animal's psychology and physiology."
Goldsmith, who is also the chief veterinarian for Monkey Jungle, a Miami tourist attraction and primate center with more than 400 primates and the back-up veterinarian for Miami's Metro Zoo, stresses the importance of taking a holistic approach when caring for an exotic animal, whether it lives in a zoo or private residence. In addition to his veterinary degree from the University of Georgia, Goldsmith earned two degrees in animal behavior, and has done graduate study at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Atlanta. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of each animal's needs.
"If an animal doesn't have emotional and nutritional health, it can't ever have physical health," he says. "Far too often I encounter clients lacking the knowledge to properly care for their animal. In order for them to properly understand and appreciate the animal in their care, a large part of my time is spent educating my clients regarding the biology, psychology and ecological origins of their chosen pet."
Goldsmith, who shares his Coconut Grove, Fla., home with two cottontop tamarin monkeys and two Irish wolfhounds, has traveled most of Africa and South and Central America, working on behalf of zoos, governments, educational facilities, importers, breeders, and private business owners. But doing so can often be dangerous.
In 1985, during an eight-week assignment in Cameroon, he was imprisoned twice: once for not having his passport while standing in front of his hotel, and on another day while in the bush, he was presumed to be a gun runner from Nigeria and held in a hut for three days.
On a third occasion during this trip, he was informed the army was looking for him. With the help of a British Petroleum (BP) engineer who was working in Cameroon, Goldsmith was whisked out of the country and put on a BP oil rig, from where he was shuttled by helicopter to safety in Gabon.
Goldsmith believes this incident was instigated by a vindictive man whose animal exporting business he reported as being un-scrupulous.
"It's a risk you must be willing to take," says Goldsmith nonchalantly. "You can be nauseated and walk away from these commercial setups or swallow your pride and try to make a difference. I can't change the world, but I can change a tiny corner. Somebody's got to try to put these people out of business." Because of this incident and concerns for his safety, Goldsmith says, "it would not be wise for me to return to Cameroon."
Currently, Goldsmith is working on developing a sophisticated Internet conservation portal with the help of Neil Gershenfeld '81, of the MIT Media Lab. Jane Goodall, with her years of work with chimpanzees and dedication to environmental causes, is lending her name and support to the project.
"The site will be a ground leveler for all conservation sites. This portal will encompass many of the world's leading organizations as well as innumerable lower -profile efforts. People will also find volunteer and employment opportunities and information on ecotours that don't destroy the environment they bring tourists to. It will also be a highly secure site for charitable donations to all the organizations connected to the site," he says.
"There's great soul satisfaction in what I do. You want to save all the animals. But you get to the point where you stop celebrating the successes because you can't save them all. And that's hard. But it is what drives people in this type of medicine--the wanting to," says Goldsmith. "I've always felt an affinity with animals. They've always been my destiny."
--Audree Penner
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