Amherst victims of September 11

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, the college learned that three alumni had lost their lives. Several others were directly affected by the tragic events, and the campus reacted to the devastation with observances, meetings and discussions.

A search of the college's database shows that 12 alumni had given the World Trade Center as their work address. The three alumni who lost their lives were Frederick C. Rimmele III '90, a physician from Marblehead, Mass. who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, which struck the South Tower of the Trade Center; Brock Safronoff '97, a programming analyst for the Marsh & McLennan Company on the 96th floor of the North Tower; and Maurita Tam '01, who worked at the Aon Corporation on the 99th floor of the South Tower. President Gerety, professors, coaches, classmates and friends attended memorial services held for each of the three graduates, and there were ecumenical services on campus for all the attack victims. Along with these alumni, the dead or missing also included family members of several Amherst students.

At Amherst, Rimmele, who grew up in Clifton, N.J., majored in chemistry and English, rowed crew, and graduated magna cum laude. He attended medical school at Duke University and chose to specialize in primary care. He practiced in Danvers, Mass., and taught medicine at the Beverly (Mass.) Hospital residency program. Rimmele was married to Kimberly Trudel four years ago. An Eagle Scout in high school, he was a nature enthusiast who loved bird watching, canoeing and hiking. He was flying on September 11 to attend a medical conference in California and planned, while there, to do some bird watching in Monterey. Rimmele was 32. A memorial service was held September 24 at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Marblehead.

Safronoff, who grew up in Traverse City, Mich., majored in chemistry at Amherst and was a starting pitcher in baseball. For two of his four years on the team, Safronoff led it in earned-run average and was an excellent all-around player. In his studies he originally planned to enter medicine after college but became fascinated by computer programming, which led him to the job at Marsh & McLennan. He also was studying for a master's degree at Columbia University. He and an Amherst classmate, Tara Neelakantappa '97, began dating each other at Amherst in freshman year, and they were married last August 3, only 40 days before the fatal attack. Safronoff was 26. A memorial service was held on September 29 on Staten Island.

Tam, an economics major at Amherst who sang with the Women's Chorus and the Concert Choir, grew up in New York City and took her job there after graduating from college last May. A second-generation Cantonese-American, she was involved with the Asian Students Association on campus. Tam was 22. A memorial service for her was held October 6 at the United Nations Chapel. Led by Director Mallorie Chernin, 22 members of the Choral Society attended the service and sang selections from the repertory of the overseas tour that Tam and other Amherst singers had taken last summer. The pieces included Randall Thompson's "Alleluia," Lewis Levandowsky's "Enosh," and Zoltan Kodaly's "Esti Dal." President Gerety read excerpts from an essay Tam had written about her family.

The shock of the airplane attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania spread quickly September 11 as students, staff and faculty followed the harrowing developments on campus television screens. In the first of many college-wide e-mail messages he sent over the next few days, President Gerety called a general meeting that was held at 4 that afternoon in LeFrak Gymnasium. Athletic practices were canceled and he urged that other activities "be structured, if possible, to provide solace to those members of our community who may be directly affected, particularly our students."

A crowd of nearly 1,700 filled the gymnasium to hear Gerety, professors and students share thoughts and emotions about the morning's events. Michelle Oliveros-Larsen, a senior and president of the Student Government Organization, told the gathering: "What we need now is community. We need a community to harbor us from the cruelty of what has transpired, and of an unsure future. . . . We feel targeted and unsafe. But as a community we can make a difference for one another . . . we must offer each other this place, this school, as a refuge."

The meeting was followed over the next several days by an ecumenical service in Johnson Chapel, two candlelight vigils, panel discussions, a moment of silence at the War Memorial, and separate demonstrations for nonviolence, and for patriotism, at the Keefe Campus Center. The Homecoming activities program for October 20 was rearranged to include an Interfaith Service of Remembrance attended by more than 400 alumni and others in Johnson Chapel.

In a letter mailed October 1 to alumni and parents, Gerety wrote that, "as we reflect on the horrific events of recent days and face the uncertainty of the months ahead, we are reminded of the importance of bringing people together to discuss important ideas, the value of diversity and exposure to those whose backgrounds and experiences are different from our own, and the strength that is to be found in community, especially the small, personal and intellectual community that is Amherst College."

A student-led Assembly for Patriotism on October 18 took an unexpected turn as it drew to a close outside the campus center. Organized by students, the event was a wide-ranging discussion by liberals, conservatives, radicals and pacifists of what it means to be an American. It ended with participants reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Suddenly a small group of non-Amherst students—one with a sign saying "This flag is about bigotry"—stepped forward and burned two small American flags.

In response to unconfirmed reports that at least some of the protesters were students from Hampshire College nearby, Hampshire's President Gregory S. Prince issued a statement noting that freedom of speech "means hearing things we do not like and with which we strongly disagree" but adding: "At the same time, while strongly defending the right of the protesters to express unpopular views, I object to their methods and especially to their insensitivity to the nonpolitical goals of those who organized the event . . . ."

The college did what it could to correct inaccurate news reports that suggested that the flag-burners were Amherst College students.

Meanwhile, the campus received reports of other Amherst lives touched by September 11. The New York offices of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW), an investment bank founded nearly 40 years ago by Harry V. Keefe '43 and two partners, was on the 88th and 89th floors of the South Tower. Keefe, who is retired, was not there at the time. The loss, though, was devastating. The firm lost nearly a third of its employees, 67 lives.

Joseph Spalluto '81, KBW's managing director who works in the company's Hartford, Conn. office, was unable to reach its New York headquarters by telephone when he learned of the attack. He finally reached a company officer who was in midtown Manhattan. "When I was on the phone with him, the building collapsed,"Spalluto told The Hartford Courant. "And from there on, it was just a series of bad news." He said employees who survived are driven by a simple imperative: "If we don't rebuild," he said, "we're not going to serve the memory of those who died."

Donn Monroe '87, a marketing director from The Colony, Tex., was on a business trip to New York on September 11, staying at the Marriott Hotel next to the Trade Center. "I was in the shower when the first plane hit and didn't hear the announcement to evacuate," he recounted. "So I stayed in my room, ironing my clothes, packing for my trip that morning to Detroit, and hanging out until the second plane hit. Then I turned on the TV and looked out the window and saw fiery debris falling.

"Then someone was shouting in the hall, asking if anyone was left. I opened the door, and a hotel employee said I had to leave ASAP. I grabbed my luggage and ran down the stairs and out the front door, zigzagging across the street to avoid falling debris."

Russ Hanser '94 of Alexandria, Va., was driving that morning on Washington Boulevard past the Pentagon to his job in the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. "Traffic was awful," he remembers. "We inched forward. Then, I heard a very loud 'boom' and felt a shock wave coming from behind me. I instinctively whipped my head around and saw a giant fireball. The plane had struck [the Pentagon] about 400-500 feet from my car.

"In the following minutes, there was pandemonium. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper, so it was impossible to get away . . . . about a quarter or half mile ahead, there was a break in the divider, and people were crossing to the traffic-free southbound lane. I waited as we crept to that point, then turned around to drive home."

Paul Rieckhoff '98 is a second lieutenant in the 105th Infantry Battalion of New York's National Guard. He was in midtown Manhattan when he saw the second plane hit the Trade Center. He went home, put on his uniform, and got to the conflagration before Building 7 collapsed. His unit was activated and reported to the scene several hours later. It spent the next couple of weeks working first at the attack site and, later, providing security at New York-area bus and air terminals.

At ground zero, Rieckhoff said, "the first several hours were hectic, just trying to see what was going on. There was nobody in control, and you couldn't see: it was just a cloud of dust." Pieces of buildings were still falling and workers had to stop their rescue efforts and dash from the site whenever they heard a piercing three-whistle alarm. Then the New York Fire Department took charge, and "the way people came together was really incredible," he said. "I've always respected fire-fighters, but this was another whole level.

"The outpouring of civilian support was enormous; the emotion was overwhelming." Strangers seeing the uniformed workers hugged them and offered them dinner, and there was "just a deeper look in everyone's eyes," Rieckhoff said—"a little more respect, a little more honesty."

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Stiglitz wins Nobel

Joseph E. Stiglitz '64, a professor at Columbia University, who has served as an Amherst Trustee since July 2000, was one of three economists awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in October. He and the others, George A. Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley and A. Michael Spence of Stanford University, were honored for their work describing how imperfect or "asymmetric" information available to sellers and buyers can disrupt competitive equilibrium in the marketplace.

Stiglitz has cited, for example, the financial marketplace, in which people would buy corporate stock without sufficient knowledge to determine proper value if it weren't for the full disclosure requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Nobel laureates' research, conducted mostly in the 1960s and '70s, persuaded many economists that government must often play a strong, corrective role in market systems. Stiglitz told The New York Times that, in selecting this year's winners, the Nobel committee reflected "where much of mainstream economics is today, which is that competitive equilibrium is not a useful model." In making its award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three laureates' "contributions form the core of modern information economics," and that Stiglitz "is probably the most cited researcher within the information economics literature—perhaps also within a wider domain of microeconomics."

Stiglitz became a professor at Columbia earlier this year after being a member of the Stanford University faculty for 13 years. He served as a member and then as chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors from 1993 to 1997, and as chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 through 1999.

One of Stiglitz's teachers at Amherst, Ralph E. Beals, Clarence Francis Professor of Economics, said his former student "ranks among the very best economists certainly of his generation and has had vastly more influence than most economists of any time."

Stiglitz is the third Amherst alumnus to win a Nobel Prize. Harold E. Varmus '61, now president and chief executive officer of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, was one of two scientists who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in medicine for their discovery that cancer genes in certain viruses are altered forms of normal animal genes. And the late Henry W. Kendall, who was a professor at M.I.T. and chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was among researchers who won the 1990 Nobel Prize in physics for work providing the first experimental evidence for sub-nuclear particles called quarks.

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Nothing he couldn't handle

David Moore, an Amherst senior and hockey player from Randolph, Mass., traveled across the country last summer—on roller blades.

Before he left Nantasket Beach near his home on May 27, he secured pledges from fellow students, friends, relatives and strangers who agreed to donate certain amounts of money for each state he crossed on the trip. He planned to raise the money for the fight against cancer—specifically, for the Cam Neely Foundation of Boston, a charity established by one of Moore's hockey heroes, the former star forward of the Boston Bruins.

Moore, who roller-bladed across 16 states and reached the Pacific Coast at San Diego on July 31, raised pledges for the foundation totaling $10,000.

He did all his publicity ahead of time; there was no ballyhoo along the way, just the compact and wiry, solitary figure under the sky pressing forward at the edge of the highway. Often the only onlookers were cows.

A boyhood friend, Andy Wood, drove ahead of Moore in a car loaded with supplies and camping equipment. Cell phones kept them in touch, with Wood driving past the horizon each day and Moore catching up. Moore says he skated eight hours a day, aver-aging 60 miles a day and 7.5 miles an hour. He had three pairs of roller blades and wore out more than 80 wheels. He kept a journal (posted for all to see at www.amherst. edu/~dnmoore/charityskate.html).

Writing his final entry on July 31, Moore admitted: "I had to fight the urge to quit a few times, but it seemed like every time I was at the end of my rope the roads got smoother, or we stayed somewhere nice on the water, or there was someone around to point me in the right direction when I was lost. There wasn't anything we couldn't handle."

Because he had to stay off superhighways, he chose smaller routes by studying bicycle road maps. But the map he remembers most is a tapestry of impressions. The worst hills were in Pennsylvania, where the highways have seven- and eight-percent grades; some of the friendliest people were farmers in Kentucky; Kansas was incredibly flat "but the wind in your face made it worse than the hills"; he "raced" a slow train in New Mexico; there were dust devils and wild boars in Arizona.

Before setting out, Moore made 15 mixed tapes of favorite songs and listened to them on his Sony Walk-man as he crossed the country. He won't mind now if he doesn't hear some of those songs ever again—such as "Higher," by the rock band Creed, with its lyrics: "Can you take me higher? . . . Up high I feel like I'm alive for the very first time."

"I was in the mountains," he said, "and I got sick of that one."

But he's glad he persevered. He was blessed with fair skies and good health almost from start to finish; there was only one day of rain, a blister for the first few days, and a strained leg muscle near the end. And to the Cam Neely people, he's a hero.

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Keg and Bones

A pretty well authenticated [college] tradition tells of many quaint societies . . . . Of the convivial class, was the Society, whose headquarters were in the cellar of Middle (now North) College. Rooms were secretly fitted up in this underground apartment, and its culinary fixtures were said to be quite complete. The entrance was by a concealed trap door, and so secret were its proceedings, that, for years, their midnight banquets escaped the notice of vigilant officials. However, it was at last discovered, in consequence of the trap door being accidentally left open, and President Humphrey [Heman Humphrey, Amherst president, 1823 to 1845] was the first one to enter and explore the mysteries of the place. The wine kegs, chicken bones, bottles, etc., found amid the debris, told wondrous tales. It is said that this society was known as the H.E.O.T.T. Society, which motto being interpreted would read, "Ho Every One That Thirsteth!"

—from Student Life at Amherst College: Its Organizations, Their Membership and History (Amherst, 1871)

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Verbatim

A Compilation of Recent Remarks Made at Amherst

"On this shockingly sad day, I would like us all to begin with a few moments of silence, if you will."

—President Tom Gerety, Opening an all-college convocation. LeFrak Gymnasium, September 11, 2001

"All of a sudden you feel attacked. It's horrible, because it doesn't let you grieve"

—Sahar Siddiqui '02, co-chair of Noor, the Muslim students' organization, reporting that her mosque in Washington, D.C., had been vandalized. At a campus teach-in Cole Assembly Room, October 3, 2001

"Getting rid of an Afghan government is not the most difficult thing in the world. The Soviets got rid of four. The hard part starts after the Taliban is overthrown. A stable government—that's a very hard thing to get right"

—Journalist Robert D. Kaplan, speaking on "Security Challenges for a New Age." Merrill Lecture Hall I, October 15, 2001

"What I learned more than anything else at Amherst is the inquiring spirit that you ask questions . . . . This spirit of questioning authority is at the heart of the liberal arts education and is also at the heart of democracy."

—Economist Joseph Stiglitz '64, who had received a Nobel Prize the previous week. In a campus talk as the college's McCloy Lecturer, October 17, 2001

"I rank many 'New Agers' pretty high on a scale of know-nothingism."

—Ian Hacking, University Professor in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Lecturing at Amherst on "'True,'Values, and the Sciences," October 4, 2001

 

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From the Folger

Scholars have managed to solve the problem of what people read in past times. Fortunately, a number of early private libraries survived more or less intact, while the contents of many others came down to us through manuscript inventories. Early wills often provide evidence of estates that included books and manuscripts. Journals and diaries, as well as school and university curricula, printers' and booksellers' business records, and even advertisements offer further testimony as to the sources of literate culture. The history of the book has been adequately, if not completely, excavated. In contrast, we know a great deal less about how the earliest generations of readers of books approached, experienced and understood that activity—that is, the actual practice of reading. Now, the Folger addresses that intriguing set of issues with its fall exhibition, "The Reader Revealed." Accompanied by a splendid volume consisting of nine essays and detailed catalogue of the works exhibited, this show explores the politics, economics, and technologies involved in producing and consuming books in the Renaissance. It is especially informative on the act of reading itself, which it approaches through analysis of marginal notes, commonplace books, and other sources. Among the many writers whose notebooks preserve passages they thought worth recording was one Sir William Drake, a man deeply influenced by Machiavelli's disillusioned views of the evils of human nature. His commonplace book offers a worldly cynicism that runs counter to the poetic miscellanies usually associated with this era.

Visitors to Washington from now to January 19, 2002 might find this show an intriguing complement to the usual museum fare. Learn more about it, and about the Folger itself, on the web at www.folger.edu.

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