To the Moon and Back - The Human and Scientific Legacy of Project Diana (blog) - PROJECT DIANA: THE MEN WHO SHOT THE MOON

CELEBRATING DIANA DAY

1/10/2018

Seventy-two years ago today, on January 10, 1946, a handful of scientists at Camp Evans in Belmar NJ, led by Lt Col Jack Dewitt, successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication - and the world has never been the same.

My father, E. King Stodola, was the team's scientific head. It's not hard to guess why he was chosen for this role. He was an engineer with good social skills and expertise in moving target detection (in this case a very large moving target). His approach to everything, from household repairs to shooting the moon, reflected the can-do spirit that Americans brought to World War II - work rapidly and intensively, use and modify materials already on hand, and then test, test, test.

Applying this method to the challenge they now faced, the team heavily modified an SCR-271 bedspring antenna, jacked up the power, and pointed it at the rising moon. A series of radar signals was broadcast, and each time the echo was heard 2.5 seconds later, the time it takes light to reach the moon and return.

As Fred Carl, COO of the InfoAge Museum located on the former Camp Evans site, succinctly put it, "Project Diana was a pivotal event that built on World War II expertise but pointed the way to the future." The conclusive demonstration that the ionosphere could be pierced captured the world's imagination. It opened the door to space exploration and to communication with the universe beyond the earth's envelope.

On January 10, 2016, I launched this blog to celebrate Project Diana in the context of life in postwar America and in particular of my Jersey Shore childhood. My husband thought I'd run out of things to say after a half a dozen posts. Two years later I'm still going strong.

A HOLIDAY GIFT FROM SEARS

12/20/2017

Excitement reigns among nostalgia buffs: As of the 2017 holiday season, the iconic Sears Wish Book is back! Well, sort of. It’s mainly accessible online, but the retailers (subsumed by Kmart in 2005) assure us that “Sears’s best customers will also get a limited edition copy in the mail.” Mine hasn’t arrived yet - guess it would take more than a couple of stops at the Sears watch repair counter to qualify for "best customer" status.

* * * * *

Richard Warren Sears sent out the first flyer for his mail order watch and jewelry business in 1888. He soon branched out into other merchandise, and by 1894 his modest mailer had evolved into a catalog. In 1896 the catalog grew even larger and started coming out twice a year. In 1897 a color section was added. An American tradition was born.

The Sears catalog proceeded to do for mail-order shopping what amazon.com later did for online shopping. In our house, as in many others, the arrival of the Big Book was truly an event. Twice a year, an enormous tome, 2-3” thick, was stuffed into our mailbox, in plenty of time for us to order our back-to-school wardrobe, our Easter finery, and our summertime shorts and halters. My sisters and I pored over its offerings, hoping they would make us look like the models in the pictures. Our choices bookmarked, we measured our chests, waists, and hips (which in fact were all about the same circumference in those days) and traced the outlines of our feet, all in a quest for the perfect fit. Our mom meticulously filled out the order form, which often spilled over onto two or three pages, carried it out to our mailbox, and raised the red flag to alert the carrier to the presence of outgoing mail. Then, biting our nails, we awaited the arrival of our precious cargo.

My all-time favorite was a dress that had also been purchased by the beauteous Ruth Ann, a classmate with an enviable put-together look - not a strand of hair would dare try to escape from her hip-length flaxen braids. The dress featured a quilted blue vest layered over a puffy-sleeved blouse adorned with red polkadots; an enormous red bow at the neck completed the look. It was actually singularly unflattering and made me look like Howdy Doody's twin sister (nothing was ever unflattering to Ruth Ann); but I was proud to share my sartorial taste with this etherial creature and always experienced a frisson of pleasure whenever the two of us showed up wearing "our" dress on the same day.

Although the clothing and toy sections were Sears's little-girl magnets, the catalog also featured sewing machines, sporting goods, musical instruments, saddles, firearms, buggies, bicycles, baby carriages, and oh, so much more. My parents swore by Sears products. As a young adult just starting out on my own, I inherited an ancient Kenmore vacuum cleaner from my parents when they upgraded to a newer model Kenmore. Mine looked like a torpedo, and old as it was, amazingly you could still buy any replacement part you needed. My husband and I used it till we decided we could afford something with more features - disposable bags and a shape better suited to navigating stairs were the big selling points, as I recall. It may have been a mistake; we never had a more reliable vacuum cleaner.

The vacuum cleaner is long gone, but I still have my mother’s Franklin Deluxe Rotary Model sewing machine in its original red-stained wooden cabinet, along with a box full of lethal-looking attachments with names like the Multiple Slot Binder, the Five Stitch Ruffler, the Underbraider, the Edgestitcher, and the Gathering Foot. Alone in an even bigger box is the Adjusting "Famous" Buttonhole Worker. The machine itself is an early electric model with a thigh-operated lever instead of a treadle. I learned to sew on it. Again, I replaced it not because it was broken but because I wanted some fancier and more user-friendly features. I haven’t plugged it in for half-a-century - I now use it to hold my inbox - but for all I know it still works.

They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

* * * * *

Sometime during the fall the Christmas catalog would arrive - the unofficial start of the holiday season, the stuff dreams were made of. This special edition concentrated in one place all the holiday-related merchandise from the Big Book - wax candles for trees, cards, ornaments, stockings, and artificial trees - along with additional items deemed to have an extra measure of gift-appeal. The first edition, in 1933, included the “Miss Pigtails” doll, a battery-powered toy automobile, a Mickey Mouse watch, fruitcakes, Lionel electric trains, a five pound box of chocolates, and real live singing canaries. Yes, it of course included many toys, but even more pages were devoted to gifts for adults. In 1968, in deference to a sobriquet already in wide public use, the book was rechristened the Wish Book.

The Sears folks were well aware that their catalogs were a potential treasure trove for anthropologists. In 1943, the year I was born, the Sears News Graphic referred to it as “a mirror of our times, recording for future historians today’s desires, habits, customs, and mode of living." Producers of Broadway shows and Hollywood movies still turn to the old Sears catalogs for help with retro styles and furnishings.

The Big Book was discontinued in 1993, but Sears was slow (too slow) to introduce online shopping and its fortunes dipped. Wishbook.com was launched in 1998, but the beloved print version wasn’t retired until 2011 - only to be revived this year by popular demand. Whether it will be reissued next year remains to be seen.

* * * * *

Sears's mail order business long preceded the Sears chain of retail stores, which didn’t start opening until 1925 (oddly presaging amazon’s current expansion to brick-and-mortar retailing; been in Whole Foods lately?). There was a Sears store in Asbury Park, memorable to me because my father once “lost” me while shopping in the hardware section. I wasn’t really very lost, of course, but I was frightened enough that a kindly clerk took it upon himself to reunite me with my dad a few aisles away. (My mother never, ever lost track of her children in a store!)

I can't remember why we didn't shop in the store more. I mean, why did we order our clothes from the catalog if we could go and try them on in the store? Perhaps there was no children's clothing department? Or only a limited selection of styles and sizes? All I know is that it never occurred to us not to catalog-shop. Perhaps it's the 20th century equivalent of ordering something on amazon.com that I could easily pick up in the drugstore.

* * * * *

In 1908 Sears outdid itself and started selling prefab houses, to be put together on site by the owner - a process that clearly took "assembly required" to a whole new level. About the only precondition was that the buyer live near enough to a railroad line so that the lumber, asphalt shingles, plaster and lath (later drywall), windows, flooring, hardware, and everything else needed for the project - around 30,000 pieces in all, including 750 pounds of nails and 27 gallons of paint, enough for 3 coats on the exterior - could be delivered in boxcars. Each part was numbered and had to be matched up with the extensive instructions and blueprints that came with the kit. Sears even provided financing; heating, plumbing, and electrical systems were extra. Decorating advice was available on request.

Sears was not the only purveyor of prefab houses nor even the first, but it was the largest and most diversified. Several editions of the 1908 Modern Homes catalog were issued, ending up with a selection of more than 40 house designs, with prices ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. By the time Modern Homes came to an end there were 447 models in all, according to the Sears Archives, in different sizes and architectural styles, stratified into three lines to accommodate different budgets. Some were only offered once; other more popular models were evergreens that reappeared year after year.

After absorbing many foreclosures during the Depression (to avoid giving the impression they were abandoning their customers!), Sears discontinued financing in 1934. In 1940 the last of the Modern Homes catalogs was published, but kits continued to be sold through 1942, including designs from the 1940 issue as well as new designs that had never appeared in the catalog. By then an estimated 100,000 had been built, many of which are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Before my recent visit to Shark River Hills, I emailed my childhood friend Bill to ask if he had any "then" photos to pair with the "now" photos I was planning to take. He responded with two photos of his family's home on South Riverside Drive, taken in 1949. His father later dug out the crawl space beneath the porch to extend the basement and enclosed the porch itself to provide more living space, so the house looks quite different today. But those changes were made after the Stodolas left Shark River Hills; these photos show the house as I remember it. Thanks, Bill!

In his narrative about the house's history, Bill also mentioned - much to my surprise - that it was one of several summer homes built in the 1930's by a developer from Sears kits shipped by rail to Belmar and then transported to Shark River Hills for assembly. Unlike his family's comfortable two-story home, said Bill, most of these houses were smaller, single-story affairs.

"That's the story I heard anyway," he added.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to identify Sears homes. A few years after Sears stopped selling kits, all sales records were jettisoned. Some homeowners did not want it known that they lived in kit homes and destroyed the evidence. Sears offered reverse floor plans and encouraged buyers to customize - to swap out the siding material, to add a dormer - resulting in a certain lack of uniformity. Competing kit home manufacturers often copied design elements from one another, which can also contribute to confusion.

Still, there are a few markers - stamps on the lumber used for framing on houses built after 1916, shipping labels, a small circled "SR" cast into the lower corner of the bathtub in houses built during the 1930s, etc. - that can help to support or rule out a house's pedigree. Paperwork found in the home and legal documents can also provide clues, as can comparison with published house plans. And of course, unless the house was built between 1908 and 1942, it cannot be a Sears home. (See Rosemary Thornton's fascinating books on Sears houses for more help in verifying authenticity.)

Although New Jersey boasts many kit houses, I have yet to uncover any more information about the would-be Sears homes of Shark River Hills. Wouldn't it be cool to develop a Shark River Hills equivalent of this list of kit homes in my current hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, posted by Rosemary Thornton on her blog? On the other hand, it is well to bear in mind that many family legends are simply that, legends, and more people think they own Sears houses than actually do.

Perhaps a loyal reader will step forward to elaborate on the history provided by Bill and to identify additional Sears homes that might, just might, be hidden in plain sight in Shark River Hills.

THE MOON ENTERS THE COLD WAR

12/7/2017

Pearl Harbor, whose 76th anniversary we observe today, marked the end of American isolationism - not just as a political ideology but also as the comfortable assumption that its location beyond two oceans could somehow protect the US from the rest of the world. Pearl Harbor, and the declarations of war by Hitler and Mussolini that followed shortly thereafter, thrust the US into the role of defender of liberty and democracy and leader of what later came to be called the “Free World.”

After the War ended with the Axis powers soundly defeated, the temporary alliance between the Western bloc, led by the US, and the Eastern bloc, led by the Soviet Union, became unraveled by their profound social, economic, and political differences. The result was a Cold War between these two superpowers that lasted for over forty years, sustained by the belief on both sides that only the buildup of arsenals capable of “mutually assured destruction” could keep either side from demolishing the other. It was also characterized by the development of spy technology far more advanced than anything that preceded it - technology that, to remain effective, demanded almost epic levels of secrecy by those in the know.

* * * * *

I have elsewhere referred to Project Diana as the opening salvo in the Cold War, but only recently have I come to appreciate the full truth of this statement. Although much has been made of Jack DeWitt's almost obsessive fascination with the idea of bouncing radar off the moon, it is well to remember that his actual assignment from the Pentagon was to study ways to detect and track Soviet rockets that might, drawing on expertise captured from the Germans, it was feared, be capable of reaching the US. DeWitt argued, with some justice, that since there were no such rockets currently available for testing, hitting the moon would equally well confirm that radar could penetrate the ionosphere.

Not long ago a reader kindly referred me to a recently declassified document, originally published in 1967, in which the author, Frank Eliot, asserts that the “entirely new technique” emerging directly from Project Diana - that is, using the moon to receive and reflect radio signals - offered a possible solution to the thorny problem of how to intercept Russian radar signals in an era when flights over the Soviet Union were prohibited. Although Project Diana involved monostatic transmission - that is, sending and receiving signals in the same location - a Naval Research Laboratory engineer named James Trexler figured out as early as 1948 that signals emanating from one location (e.g., in Russia) could potentially be detected via bistatic transmission to other locations (e.g., in the US) if they happened to bounce off the moon.

Thus was born the highly classified PAssive MOon Relay or PAMOR, code-named "Joe." Initial tests proved so promising that the project was intensified, at even deeper levels of secrecy. As one wag put it, “Leave it to the US Navy to weaponize the moon.”

Moon bounce via bistatic transmission. (Courtesy of Roger Shultz)

The Russians, of course, weren’t bouncing signals off the moon for the benefit of their Cold War adversaries. Indeed, most of their signals simply escaped the atmosphere and disappeared into outer space. Detecting those that did serendipitously hit the moon could only be done at certain times of day, in certain locations on earth where both the sending and receiving elements could “see” the moon at the same time; nor could the lunar terrain be too “rough” for clear reflection of signals. Antennas had to be at least 150 ft in diameter and preferably larger, and only a few were available for that purpose (e.g., those at the Grand Bahama tracking station, the Naval Research Laboratory’s Chesapeake Bay Annex, Stanford University, and Sugar Grove, West Virginia).

There were more ways for this effort to fail than to succeed, but the military got lucky - not only in having favorable antenna locations and encountering favorable lunar conditions, but also, in the case of the “Hen House”, a major anti-ballistic missile operation deep within the Soviet Union, in being able to take advantage of occasional brief practice sessions during which the Russians actually set their radar to track the moon. In the end, PAMOR proved to be an intelligence coup, continuing to yield information until the late sixties, when it was obsolesced by communications satellites.

PAMOR's success led the Naval Research Laboratory, in the mid 1950s, to commission an ambitious spinoff code-named Operation Moon Bounce, a series of experiments to test the feasibility of using the moon as a natural communications satellite. These tests were so effective in refining moonbounce technology that Operation Moon Bounce was used for several years to link Hawaii with Washington DC. Like PAMOR, Operation Moon Bounce was superseded in the late 1960s by networks of communications satellites - networks whose design profited from the experience gained during the Moon Bounce tests.

Moonbounce communication, generally referred to as Earth-Moon-Earth or EME, is now largely the province of amateur radio enthusiasts, who continue to reap the benefits of Operation Moon Bounce and ultimately of Project Diana.

* * * * *

As anyone who follows this blog regularly must be aware, the Army's reluctance to publicize Project Diana has long puzzled me. Based more on my own inferences from my father’s comments than on anything he actually said, I have generally interpreted it as retribution for Jack DeWitt's lack of complete candor about what he was doing, forcing the Army to play catch-up after the fact.

Still, this explanation has never entirely satisfied me. Why should those who left the Signal Corps (that is to say, those over whom the Army no longer maintained control) be selectively denied media attention? Why should my father, even decades later, have trouble gaining access to his own earlier work? Even granting that DeWitt was an ask-for-forgiveness-not-for-permission kind of guy working in an organization that prized discipline, it all seemed - well, a bit of an overreaction on the Army’s part.

The recently declassified article by Eliot has given me a somewhat different perspective on this issue. In short, it suggests that the Army discouraged media attention less because of what the Project Diana team did wrong and more because of what it did right.

The success of PAMOR clearly depended on the Soviets' remaining unaware that their emissions were being monitored, a consideration that makes the Army’s wish to control information that might provide clues about the extent of its capabilities more understandable. Likewise, severely restricting access to information about PAMOR and its debt to Project Diana based strictly on need-to-know provides a more plausible explanation for classifying it above my father’s level of security clearance than an arbitrary determination to curtail access to his own work, even though it did in fact have this (presumably unintended) consequence.

Did my father know about PAMOR? He obviously wouldn’t have told me if he did, but given that documents such as the Eliot article weren’t declassified until 2014, I tend to doubt it. Had he known, he might have been more philosophical about the modest notice given by the Army to Project Diana’s milestone anniversaries.

SHARK RIVER HILLS: A MOMENT IN TIME

11/21/2017

Although people have been living in what is now Shark River Hills since Precolumbian times, its modern era dates back to July 8, 1923, the day that property in this shiny new resort area went on sale. The Shark River Hills Company had actually purchased and platted the 728 acre tract several years earlier, but initial attempts at development had faltered. Now the Company had placed its renewed hopes in the capable hands of Morrisey & Walker, Realtors. The realtors quickly proceeded to live up to their reputation for aggressive marketing, splashing a large ad in the Asbury Park Press on July 7 that proclaimed Shark River Hills to be nothing less than “the LAST HIGH-GRADE DEVELOPMENT NEAR ASBURY.” Parcels could be had for as little as $95, or $10 down and $10/month.

Asbury Park Press, July 7, 1923

Promotional fan, featuring the "Shark River Hills girl"

The pitch was primarily aimed at the summer crowd, who were lured by a vision of a vacation paradise and assured that building “YOUR bungalow on YOUR lot” was a better investment than a series of summer rentals. But those who wished to make Shark River Hills their “permanent house” were welcome as well, so long as their money was green.

* * * * *

"Uppie" Updegraff (Neptune Historical Museum)

A driving force behind this sales campaign was Alice “Uppie” Updegraff, the doyenne of Jersey Shore realtors. For years she commuted from her home in Matawan to her job at Morrisey & Walker in Asbury Park, but in 1924 she decided to set an example for her potential customers by buying - not just any house, but the oldest home in Shark River Hills, built in around 1913, a charming bungalow on Riverside Drive to which a garage was later added. The house appeared in many ads for Shark River Hills property. (Later still, the house was moved to its current location on Glenmere Avenue.)

I knew Uppie from practically the day I was born and have several pictures from a photoshoot on her lawn when I was 4 1/2 months old - me with my parents, me with Uppie's cat - all with her famous house looming in the background, blurred but visible. I suspect Uppie counted my mom and dad as being among a few hundred of her closest friends. More than once I heard the story of her comment when she first saw me as a baby: “Lots of head above the ears - just like her father.” I don’t give her much credit for phrenology; but for finding a way to admire a baby and flatter the baby's father at the same time, she definitely deserved the Dale Carnegie award for knowing how to win friends and influence new parents.

Uppie's home at 645 S Riverside Drive, the first home built in Shark River Hills

"Lots of head above the ears?" Uppie's home can be seen in the background

I remember Uppie as a tiny, wizened old lady though at the time she was probably about the same age as I am now. Living with her in the bungalow were her willowy daughter Virginia - also a real estate agent - and Virginia’s husband, the splendidly mustachioed Alphonse Tonietti.

I always found Alphonse a bit of an enigma, but with the help of my friend Joyce, who has a better memory than I do for these details, and my cousin Alan, who is a better scholar than I am, I've pieced together most of his story. Alphonse was born in 1896 in Basrah (then part of the Ottoman Empire), attended the American College in Beirut, Lebanon, and arrived in the US in 1921, where he graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism. He went on to have what seems to have been a fairly distinguished career, working as editor of the Literary Digest Magazine and serving on the staffs of the New York World-Telegram and the New York Sun.

Then, in the mid-1930s, Alphonse achieved a measure of possibly unwanted fame when he was fired by the Italian language newspaper Il Progresso, followed by a lawsuit that was widely reported in the Communist and liberal press. Amazingly, he won his case and was reinstated with seven weeks' back pay, the Court finding that he had been discharged not because (as Il Progresso claimed) he didn't write in Italian - that had never been a requirement of his position as editor of the American page - but because of his activities as Chair of Il Progresso's chapter of the New York Newspaper Guild.

By the time I knew him, he had moved on to become the owner and operator of the Holy Land Art Company in New York City, a manufacturer of religious artifacts and fabrics. He died in his office on Murray Street in June of 1958, at the age of 61. Virginia Tonietti lived on for another thirty years; she never remarried.

Two details of more than passing interest are missing here - why Alphonse abandoned his journalism career in favor of selling religious objects; and even more intriguing, how on earth he managed to meet an all-American girl from the tiny hamlet of Shark River Hills, New Jersey and persuade her, in October of 1931, to become his bride.

* * * * *

When my parents decided to give up their rental unit on Clinton Place to buy a home of their own in 1947 or 1948, Uppie and Virginia were close at hand to shepherd them through the process. The house they chose was a modest bungalow on Pinewood Drive at the corner of Hampton Court. It seemed baronial to me at the time although it is currently listed on Zillow as being 1879 square ft, a number that includes two large porches that have now been enclosed and a substantial addition. So - a not-so-big house back then. According to Zillow it was built in 1908.

But wait! Wasn’t Uppie’s house, built in around 1913, supposed to be the oldest house in Shark River Hills? Surely Zillow had gotten the date of the Stodola home wrong.

When I visited Shark River Hills this past August, I had a chance to chat with the current owner of the house, who confirmed that yes, indeed, the house was built in 1908 - that's the date shown on the deed. When I observed that the date seemed too early by several years, he told me that the daughter of the previous owner, the one who had bought the home from my parents, had informed him that the house was originally built not as a residence but as a retreat for Roman Catholic priests, on land purchased by the sister of one of the priests. In fact, he said, the house featured two small prayer rooms, one in the basement, the other a second floor enclosure barely larger than a closet that my father had used as his ham shack!

So far my efforts to track down the previous owner’s daughter or to find any corroboration of the house’s supposed history as a Catholic retreat have failed. If anyone reading this blog can provide me with information about the history of my childhood home I would be very grateful.

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - summertime

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - winter scene

* * * * *

Although Uppie and others made it their full time home, Shark River Hills remained largely a resort community for quite awhile. Relics of this history were all around when I was a child; across the street from us on Hampton Court was a log cabin (still there!) that was shuttered most of the year, and our closest neighbor was a tiny cottage only occupied during the summer months. Shark River Hills even had its own boardwalk, running from the Club House to the Tucker's Point Bridge, which had doubled the number of routes between Neptune City and Shark River Hills when it was completed in 1923.

The Shark River Hills boardwalk (Neptune Historical Museum)

Crowds gathered on the boardwalk to watch a sporting event (Neptune Historical Museum)

But the little subdivision was on the verge of a sea change. As our friend and neighbor Mary Jane Evers put it, Shark River Hills in the early 1940s was “a summer development, [with] homes not equipped for year-round living, and about three macadamed roads which the Army had done to get to their own properties in the Hills and to allow the personnel to get to work.” My parents' circle of friends were recent arrivals, just as we were, and they were all full timers.

As usual, Mary Jane had it just right, even if there’s no precise demographic term for an old-timey summer resort proceeding peaceably along its journey toward year-round development when it suddenly finds itself host to an Army base and under pressure to make itself user-friendly for a large infusion of military and associated civilian personnel. My father was part of that Camp Evans infusion, and so it happened that this oddly unique moment in the history of Shark River Hills formed the backdrop for my childhood.

The “great hurricane of 1944” demolished the old boardwalk, and no one bothered to rebuild it. The era of Shark River Hills as a summer resort had come to an end.

* * * * *

To all my loyal readers: A very happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.

Front row: my dad, Aunt June and Uncle Syd (Dad's brother); Back row: my mom holding my sister Sherry, my sister Leslie, me, my grandparents Edwin and Beatrice Stodola

HOMECOMING

10/9/2017

On Saturday, August 26, 2017, my father was posthumously inducted into the “Wall of Honor” at the InfoAge Science History Learning Center, site of the former Camp Evans, for his contributions to long-range radar development during World War II and his leadership role in Project Diana, the first successful attempt to bounce radar waves off the moon.

Among the crowd gathered at InfoAge for the banquet and awards ceremony were my three siblings, my husband, my sister-in-law, and my niece and her family (including my grand-nephew, the youngest and cutest attendee). My brother gave a brief speech accepting the honor on behalf of the family and acknowledging the beautiful plaque to be mounted on the Wall along with Marconi and other Camp Evans notables. It was a moving experience that left much of the audience in tears.

My father would have felt not only deeply honored, but also, in a sense, vindicated. The Army, embarrassed by being caught somewhat off guard by the feat and by early wild press speculations on the significance of the Project Diana experiment (radio control of “space ships”! mapping the surface of the moon! verifying Einstein’s light deflection theory!), adopted a deliberate policy of curtailing further publicity on Project Diana. This meant not only keeping the press at bay but also limiting what publicity it permitted to only those men who remained in its employ, effectively excluding four of the five engineers who formed the core Project Diana team. Jack DeWitt, King Stodola, Jack Mofensen, and Harold Webb had all moved to private industry shortly afterwards, in part to continue pursuing their research careers, since the Army was now jobbing out much of the research that had originally attracted them to Camp Evans.

Although my father never wavered in his gratitude to the Army, the gray-out of Project Diana, which he regarded as the signal scientific achievement of his life, always rankled. As he observed with just a faint hint of pique, “If we had been less vigorous, Dr. Zoltan Bay and his colleagues in Hungary would have been ‘First’ about a month later.” He spent his last few years lobbying first for a full-scale forty-year commemoration and then, when that failed to materialize, for an even more lavish celebration of the fifty-year anniversary. Had he lived he would have seen his optimism dashed once again.

Now, after more than seventy years, the tide has turned, along with a growing realization that this story belongs not just to the Army but to the world. It has great visuals and a compelling narrative. Moreover, history has caught up with this achievement, and many of the preposterous predictions that once made the Army brass cringe have actually come to pass. (See my essay “In Celebration of Diana Day,” posted to this blog on January 10, 2017.) Cell phones and global positioning systems have highlighted the importance of satellite communications. The popularity of Earth-Moon-Earth communication has increased recognition of Project Diana as the locus classicus for this technology. NASA, with its genius for popularizing space age technology and its general focus on peaceful applications of space exploration, has now become an important resource for information on Project Diana. Neil DeGrasse Tyson featured a contemporary newsreel clip in Episode 11 of Cosmos.

* * * * * * * * * *

Part of what was truly remarkable about this event, at least for me, was the venue itself. My father was actually being honored not only in his own country but in the very same World War II radar laboratory buildings where his seminal work was carried out.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, the outside of these buildings was a very familiar part of the iconography of my childhood. On days when my mother anticipated needing the family car to run errands, she drove my father to work in the morning and picked him up again after work, my sister and me in tow. The evening ritual was always the same: We parked and waited, watching for a slight black-haired man in a lumpy overcoat and fedora to emerge and take over the wheel. Never once did any of us go in, even my mother. At the time I’m sure I thought (correctly) that she didn’t want to leave her little daughters alone in the car, but in retrospect it also seems probable that these buildings contained top secret materiel not meant for prying eyes and that no outsider, even a wife, was welcome.

Now, here we were inside - dining, sipping wine, and accepting accolades for his achievements.

All the credit for this unlikely scenario, and at least some of the credit for the current revival of interest in Project Diana, goes to the InfoAge Science History Learning Center and its tireless efforts to preserve the long and checkered past of the Camp Evans site. Just how unlikely? In 1993, with the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense had decided to close many of its military bases, and Camp Evans was on the hit list. But for the remarkable vision of one man, a local history buff and preservationist named Fred Carl, the entire Camp Evans campus with all its rich heritage would have been bulldozed into oblivion. So - very unlikely indeed.

I was originally planning to recount the InfoAge story here but the more I wrote, the more I realized I had veered into a different narrative, one with a different hero, one worthy of consideration in its own right. Accordingly, I will turn my attention to InfoAge in a future post.

SPAM

8/8/2017

I was only two years old when World War II came to an end so have no recollection of the rationing of gas, meat, sugar, or any of the other staples that were distributed to citizens only in controlled amounts because supplies were needed to support the War effort (or for ancillary reasons - but that’s a post for another day). Nor do I remember ever hearing anyone talk about it, nostalgically or otherwise. All rationing ended in 1946, and with a great sigh of relief Americans began consuming with a passion that has only grown since then. Rationing, it seems, was a subject best forgotten.

I do, however, remember two leftovers from rationing that persisted into subsequent years. The first is the zinc-coated steel penny minted in 1943 to conserve copper, which was needed for ammunition and other military equipment. These pennies were lighter in weight than their copper counterparts, and unlike any other American coin ever, they were magnetic. They continued to turn up like - well, like a bad penny - until the 1960s, when the Mint finally succeeded in collecting and destroying most of them. They can now be purchased for a few dollars apiece; only a handful of 1943 copper pennies and 1944 steel pennies, both struck by accident, have any real value.

I had some polished steel pennies made into a chain to celebrate my birth year.

The second is Spam.

Spam is a canned cooked meat product with an almost indefinite shelf life (claims the manufacturer; or 2-5 years if you go by its “best by” date), made with pork, ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate. Natural gelatin is formed during cooking and leaves a jelly-like coating in the can. One 3.5oz serving is laden with enough salt (57% of what you should eat every day), fat (41%), and preservatives to make a nutritionist cringe. On the other hand, it has only six ingredients (not counting water), none of them unpronounceable, bringing it close to complying with the "five-ingredient rule" - Michael Pollan's famous criterion for "real food."

Born of the Depression, Spam was introduced in 1937 by the Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota. The name was invented by the brother of a Hormel executive, who won a $100 prize for his submission. Hormel claims that it means something, but exactly what is a closely-guarded secret (perhaps forgotten by now). Speculations include that it is an abbreviation or acronym for "spiced ham", "spare meat", "shoulders of pork and ham”, “Specially Processed American Meat”, “Specially Processed Army Meat”, and a large number of less printable variants.

Although Spam had already been around for a few years, it was during the War that it became a staple of the American diet - because unlike most other meat products it was not rationed. Because of the difficulty of getting fresh meat to the Front, it was also ubiquitous in the military, serving as the WWII version of MRE. The Army found other uses for Spam as well - to grease guns, for example - and the cans were used for scrap metal. Consequently, the majority of Americans old enough to qualify for Medicare probably remember eating Spam. (And like me, they probably remember the distinctive can that opened with a key.)

My mother, true to her New England roots, served it pan-fried with baked beans. I don't know that I ever clamored for it, but I really don't remember it as a penance, either.

* * * * * * * * * *

Having assumed that Spam had long since been sent to the abattoirs of history, I was somewhat surprised to notice few years ago that it could still be found on supermarket shelves (now with a convenient pop-top instead of a key) and on amazon.com, where Spam Classic boasts a 4.5-star rating. (There are also a dozen and a half Spam spinoffs, including Spam Jalapeño, Spam Chorizo, and Spam with Hickory Smoke, not to mention Spam singles and Spam spread.) In fact, it has never gone away at all. For some it’s a cheap source of protein; for others it’s a comfort food. By 2003, it was sold in 41 countries and trademarked in more than 100 countries (excluding most of the Moslem world). Another Spam milestone came in 2007, when the seven billionth can of Spam was sold. It is still manufactured in Austin, Minnesota, where Hormel maintains a restaurant (Johnny's SPAMarama) with a full menu of Spam dishes and a Spam Museum. (Spam is also manufactured in Fremont, Nebraska.)

Over the years, Spam has taken its place in popular culture, turning up thinly disguised in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (in which Cary Grant, who works for an ad agency, is assigned to the "Wham" account); in 'Weird Al' Yankovic's take-off on the R.E.M. tune "Stand"; as well as in many more obscure locations.

But by far the best-known parody of Spam is an iconic 1970 Monty Python skit in which the server in a cafe offers “her” customers “Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam; Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam, or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and with a fried egg on top and Spam." Meanwhile, a group of Vikings who also happen to be eating in the cafe (where else would a Spam-craving Viking hang his horned helmet?) periodically bursts into song in exuberant praise of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spammity Spam, Wonderful Spam." It would probably be safe to say that the Monty Python sketch is more famous than Spam itself, and that except for the oldest among us, many would never otherwise have heard of Spam. The source for the use of the term "spam" to refer to unsolicited and unwanted email is almost certainly Monty Python and not Hormel.

Is there a connection between spam and Spam, beyond the fact that both are something you might prefer not to appear on your plate? The answer appears to be no. Since the information technology world was (and is) populated by Monty Python fans, the simultaneous appearance of the Spam skit about mystery meat and the felt need for a term for mystery email seems to have been pure serendipity. If anyone has a better answer to this question please let me know!

Will Spam ever make a comeback? Can its humble image be polished? After I learned that some chichi Manhattan restaurants added dishes with tobacco as an ingredient to their dessert menus when indoor smoking was banned, nothing would surprise me. Accordingly, I googled "spam served in fancy restaurants" and sure enough, up (among several entries) popped a 2015 blog post entitled "SPAMalot! Look at How These Trendy Chefs Are Using Spam," featuring such multi-ethnic entrees as Spam Sliders, Spam Sushi Dog, and (in a pairing that startled even jaded diners-out) Foie Gras and Spam Loco Moco.

Shades of Monty Python.

WORLD WAR II: THE AMERICAN FRONT

7/12/2017

Suppose they gave a war and nobody knew?

In the minds of most Americans then and now, World War II was “Over There.” The home front was regarded not as a war zone, but rather as a base of operations for providing supplies and support. America was where Rosie the Riveter kept wartime production going so that our boys could go overseas where they were so badly needed. America was where homemakers like my mom, along with her friends Mary Jane Evers and Ruth Mofenson and all the other Camp Evans wives, got by on a ration of 4 gallons of gas per week so the War effort in Europe could be fueled.

And yet just days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered an attack on America. He had been anticipating the entry of the US into the War, which would likely infuse American industrial might into the Allied effort, and believed that preventing the US from supplying Britain with fuel and arms would be key to a Nazi victory. The Nazis had been fighting what Winston Churchill dubbed the “Battle of the Atlantic" since 1939, including the use of Unterseeboote (U-boats) to attack Allied merchant shipping in an effort to counteract the naval blockade of Germany. The German Kriegsmarine was thus well-poised to add the US to its list of targets. Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), a barrage of submarine attacks on American shipping, was launched in January of 1942, and soon Nazi U-boats were swarming up and down the East Coast, preying on American warships, tankers, tenders, and supply ships.

U-Boat crew watches the sinking of a torpedoed tanker.

The German fleet was ready; the American military was not. The first few months of 1942 were basically a romp for the Germans, who referred to it as the “Second Happy Time” (the first being an earlier naval operation in which little resistance was offered). The British, who had been the victims of the first “Happy Time,” recommended that ships avoid obvious standard routes, that navigational aids such as lighthouses be shuttered, and that a strict coastal blackout be enforced. Whether because of doubts about the soundness of the advice or because it was decided to allocate resources elsewhere, the suggestions of the British were by and large ignored. Although small shoreline communities were politely asked to “consider” calling for dim-outs, fear of negative effects on tourism and business shielded larger cities from such requests. All the U-boats had to do was watch for ships silhouetted against city lights at night.

After a few months the Americans knuckled down and adopted more stringent measures. Blackouts were ordered and enforced, and my husband remembers being scolded, as a young child in Maine, for peeking under a cover draped over a radio to hide the light while the family listened to the news. Peacetime shipping lanes were abandoned and shipping was restricted to daytime in convoys, escorted by British corvettes specially designed for anti-submarine warfare. Unpredictably-timed daily patrols were implemented, and gradually the German “wolfpacks” retired to happier hunting grounds elsewhere in the Atlantic. Eventually German codes directing sub maneuvers were broken by the Allies, and Operation Drumbeat officially ended in July of 1943 - although periodic submarine attacks on American ships continued until just a few days before Germany surrendered in 1945.

Still, although the Allies technically won the Battle of the Atlantic by virtue of winning the War, the overall picture for America did not exactly smell like victory. Indeed, one historian claims that Operation Drumbeat “constituted a greater strategic setback for the Allied war effort than did the defeat at Pearl Harbor." More ships and more lives were lost in the former than in the latter, giving lie to the popular notion that Pearl Harbor and Nine-Eleven were the only two successful strikes against the American homeland. Yet in all, only a handful of U-boats were destroyed.

* * * * * * * * *
So where was everybody while all this was happening?

A few people, of course, were of necessity informed about what was going on in their back yard. My father, in our oral history interview in 1975, told me with perhaps less than complete candor, “There was no attack on the East Coast, at least not at that time [of Pearl Harbor] - although there was some later.” (A better interviewer than I would have pressed him on this issue.) His brother Sid, who was in the Coast Guard stationed in Boston, surely knew. The “need to know” list, however, was apparently astonishingly small - reflecting the succinctly-stated policy of Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations: “Don’t tell them anything. When it’s over, tell them who won.” (This is the same Admiral King whose daughter once remarked that her father was very even-tempered: "He's always in a rage.")

Nonetheless, many individuals were uncomfortably aware that something was afoot, especially after blackouts were systematically mandated and enforced. A number of ships were torpedoed by U-boats within sight of New York and Boston. Other residents near the shore reported seeing eerie lights and other unnatural phenomena that were difficult to explain. Further news about the German presence trickled out when a couple of unsuccessful attempts to land German spies on American shores via U-boat were foiled.

American World War II poster by Seymour R. Goff. (The original "might" quickly dropped out.)

On the whole, however, popular alarm was subdued by nondisclosure (with the rationale that news of sinkings so close to our shores might aid the enemy or undermine morale) and misdirection. No patriotic newsreels about these shoreline attacks were shown at American matinees (whereas German moviegoers regularly saw such footage). Citizens who had actually witnessed a U-boat attack, or the destruction of a U-boat, were asked not to reveal what they had seen. The famous slogan “Loose lips sink ships” was in fact coined to justify this veil of secrecy. The American people were never given a full account of the genuine danger they faced.

Partial knowledge and half-truths, of course, bred speculation and rumor - something that can be more dangerous than the truth. On Saturday August 7, my grandmother noted in the journal she kept in the summer of 1943 during her annual stay on Cape Cod, “Gradually the news comes in with the story of the Busy Blimps. We hear a large convoy was going by and was attacked by a German submarine; that it has been sunk somewhere off our shore. We hear distant guns but never know whether they are real, or target practice somewhere." She drew pictures of her neighbor’s clothesline on successive days, hoping to discern patterns in the size and spacing of the hanging towels that might, just might, be coded messages. Less amusingly, she also identified a potential German spy among the customers at a local bakery. “The authorities think someone is acting as a German agent along our shore. I think so too, but probably have my eye on the wrong person.” Fortunately she was wise enough not to gossip about her suspicions; loose lips may sink ships, but false accusations can do their own kind of damage.

* * * * * * * * *
How close did Operation Drumbeat come to the Jersey Shore?

Very close indeed.

Here as elsewhere along the Eastern Seaboard, residents periodically reported seeing Allied convoys being attacked by the U-boats and being awakened at night by the sound of explosions at sea. But the most shocking evidence came to light in 1991, when a fisherman’s net caught on a massive object sixty miles off Point Pleasant, New Jersey. When a group of recreational divers made the 230-foot descent, they found an intact U-boat, along with its torpedoes and the remains of its crew. No records of attacks in the area or unaccounted-for U-boats could be found to identify the wreck.

Over the next six years, a team of professional divers led by John Chatterton and his partner Rich Kohler made it their mission to determine the identity of the wreck - dubbed “U-Who” because of the uncertainty. Their efforts were hampered by diving conditions so treacherous that they claimed the lives of three divers during the course of the exploration. (See Bernie Chowdhury's The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths (Harper Collins, 2000) for a heart-rending account of the deaths of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, an experienced father-and-son scuba diving duo.)

Chatterton and Kohler's first clue was the discovery of a knife inscribed “Horenburg,” the name of a Radio Operator assigned to U-869, a Type IXC/40 U-boat. Their initial elation, however, was dampened by the news that U-869 had been sent to Africa and sunk off Casablanca on February 28, 1945 by an American destroyer and a French sub chaser. Reluctantly, the “Horenburg knife” was discounted. In 1997, however, serial numbers and other conclusive evidence were recovered confirming the identity of the wreck as U-869. Evidently the commander, Hellmut Neuerburg, had never received the orders diverting the sub to Gibraltar and instead perished off the Jersey Shore just a few miles from where I lived in Shark River Hills; I was two years old at the time.

Crew of the ill-fated U-869.

U-Who continues to hold its secrets close - though not for want of ink spilled on the topic. Chatterton and Kohler, as documented in Robert Kurson’s bestseller Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II (Random House, 2005), concluded that the sub was probably sunk by one of its own acoustic torpedoes. Gary Gentile, another experienced wreck diver, hotly disputed this theory in his book Shadow Divers Exposed: The Real Saga of the U-869 (Bellerophon Bookworks, 2006), citing logs from two destroyer escorts suggesting that they had sunk the sub and also arguing that the damage was more consistent with the destroyer attacks. The United States Coast Guard’s official report, after a lengthy investigation, supported Gentile’s conclusion, but Chatterton and his colleagues continue to believe that the two destroyers attacked the sub after it had been struck by its own torpedo. The truth may never be known.

Yet another piece of the U-Who puzzle was added when a German named Herbert Guschewski, after watching a preliminary version of a 2004 PBS NOVA episode about the wreck entitled “Hitler’s Lost Sub,” approached the producers of the documentary. Guschewski had been the Second Radio Officer assigned to U-869 (and a close colleague of Martin Horenburg, whose knife had given the first hint about the sub's identity) but was hospitalized with pneumonia and pleurisy just before the boat departed and had thus been unable to accompany his crew-mates on their first and only voyage. An interview covering his recollections of life on a U-boat and his feelings about being the sub’s lone survivor is included in the final version of the NOVA program. It is worth watching.

RAISED BY THE BOOK

6/12/2017

In 1946, when I was three years old, a book that changed my life and the lives of many of my contemporaries was published. Almost overnight, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care became the parents’ bible, for many years second only on the bestseller list to that other Bible.

“Trust yourself - You know more than you think you do” was its reassuring mantra. Parents had previously been counseled to adhere to a regular schedule of sleep and feeding, even if it meant leaving an infant sobbing for hours. Picking up and comforting babies would only teach them to cry more, argued such experts as Emmett Holt and the behaviorist John Watson. Not only might it delay sleeping through the night, it could also turn them into failed adults, ill prepared to meet the challenges of the real world. Spock, by contrast, encouraged mothers to rely on their instincts, raising their children not by following a series of rigid rules but by responding to the needs of each child as an individual. What a relief this must have been to mothers, especially those who surreptitiously broke the rules, as I can easily imagine my own mother doing, by soothing their crying infants with forbidden hugs and kisses.

Because Spock lived a long life over which his beliefs and positions evolved, it is difficult not to see the book through the prism of its multiple editions. In addition, his controversial involvement in antiwar activism in the 1960s and early 1970s somehow became entangled in people’s minds with his childrearing advice. The conservative preacher Norman Vincent Peale, in an oft-quoted sermon, blamed Spock's "instant gratification, don't let them cry" approach for the violent demonstrations that occurred during that era. More immoderate commentators went even further, demonizing Spock for single-handedly, through some unholy alchemy of his New Left politics and his supposed advocacy of permissive parenting, causing the sexual revolution, selfishness, lust, increases in crime, and the general moral turpitude they believed was destroying American society.

* * * * * * * * * *

To see the version my mother read - the version born with the Baby Boom and priced at $.25 so everyone could afford it - I purchased a copy of the first edition on eBay. This volume is addressed primarily not to “parents” but to “mothers” - and White middle-class mothers at that. Gay and lesbian families are not anticipated; even divorced and single parents are treated as special cases, tucked away in an Appendix. Worries about childhood obesity are minimal (he devotes 4 pages to “fat children” and 11 to “thin children”), and the vegan diets he later advocated for all children over age two (after crediting such a diet with giving him a new lease on life) are not part of the picture. Circumcision is not yet on the no-list. Sexist language is baked in, despite a certain amount of defensiveness on the author’s part. (He devotes a whole apologetic paragraph to explaining that he’s called the baby “him” throughout, despite his insistence that “girl babies are as wonderful as boy babies.” “Why can’t I call the baby ‘her’ in at least half the book? I need ‘her’ to refer to the mother.”)

Nonetheless, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was revolutionary. Again, it is difficult to perceive how novel and refreshing it must have seemed to his first readers in Postwar America, because his advice and the version of child development on which it is based have been so thoroughly incorporated into our childrearing thinking and practice. Spock was a pediatrician, not a developmental psychologist, but he was deeply influenced by Freud (he himself underwent psychoanalysis). Indeed, Spock probably did more to smuggle Freud into the popular culture than Freud’s writings could ever have done on their own. (At one point he mentions a little girl who complains to her mother, “But he’s so fancy and I’m so plain” - almost certainly the locus classicus for Mister Rogers’s uncharacteristically graphic song “Everybody’s Fancy.”) As Time's obituary of Spock in 1998 put it, “Surmising that new parents were not yet ready to hear of their infants’ oral, anal, and genital stages, Spock simply advised moms and dads not to get alarmed if a baby sometimes behaved, well, oddly. He had learned from Freud that repression could produce catastrophic adult neuroses. Better, he advised, to wait things out.”

Despite accusations of “permissiveness” (always strongly rejected by Spock himself), his approach can be considered permissive only in contrast with the draconian advice then being offered by Holt and Watson. Dr. Spock expects youngsters to be assigned duties, to put things away, to come to the table when dinner is ready, and to be polite to others. He warns against asking “Do you want to...?” or offering too many reasons when requiring the child to do something. It’s okay for a child to make mudpies (“it enriches his spirit”), but not in his Sunday best. Although no advocate of spanking, neither is Dr. Spock uncompromisingly opposed to it, regarding it as “less poisonous than lengthy disapproval.” The best description is perhaps the one Spock himself chose for the first edition of his book, “common sense.” “Trust yourself,” he told young mothers - and they did.

* * * * * * * * * *

So who was Dr. Spock, and how did he come to be tapped for the job of raising a whole new generation of American children?

Benjamin Spock was born in 1903 in New Haven CT, the eldest of six children of a rock-ribbed Republican New Haven Railroad official and his wife. Both parents held firm views about childrearing but it was left to the formidable Mildred Houghton Spock to carry them out. She followed religiously the regimen of Dr. Holt, with his rigid schedules for feeding, bathing, and elimination. She also believed in the moral and physical virtues of a Spartan lifestyle that included sleeping in an icy bedroom and attending a preschool where lessons were taught outdoors, even in winter.

After preparatory training at Phillips Andover Academy, he enrolled in his hometown college, Yale, for his undergraduate education. Though not a particularly distinguished student, he was a superb athlete and after crewing at Yale became a member of the 1924 Olympic team. Following his graduation in 1925, he entered Yale Medical School but later, over the objections of his family, transferred to Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also fell in love with Jane Cheney, a lively and socially conscious Bryn Mawr student, daughter of a wealthy silk manufacturer from Manchester CT, whom he married in 1927. Following an all-too-familiar pattern, Jane worked long hours at Macy's to support her young husband's medical education.

Benjamin McLane Spock

Jane Cheney Spock

Despite coping with various health problems, including the loss of a premature infant, and the onset of the Great Depression, Ben and Jane managed to thrive in the intellectual ferment of New York City, where they were exposed to new ideas and a more diverse society than their rather sheltered lives had previously afforded them. Ben became interested in childhood diseases and in the effects of abuse and neglect. He also discovered a gift for interacting with children. When he graduated from P&S in 1929 he was first in his class. Ben had discovered his metier.

Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ben volunteered for military service but was rejected because of back problems. So the Spocks remained in New York, spending their summers in the Adirondacks. A few years earlier he had rejected a proposal by Doubleday that he write a child care book, saying he didn't know enough. Now, with a little more time to relax than his winter schedule permitted, he began to think once again about such a book - a book that would embody his ideas on child care, a book aimed not at experts but at the end users, the parents.

In the summer of 1943 Ben began writing, with Jane at his side. Well into the night, after regular work hours, Ben dictated and Jane transcribed (and often rewrote), sometimes suggesting new avenues to pursue; during the day Jane conducted followup research and solicited expert commentary. Eventually Ben was able to join the Navy but even while he was on active duty, Jane soldiered on with the book, carrying out final negotiations with the publishers, indexing, and hammering out last-minute revisions in the middle of the night via long-distance phone calls with her husband.

The book was an overnight sensation - "only...limited," remarked the publisher, "by an inability to get sufficient paper to supply the demand." Revised editions were issued about every ten years. It was eventually translated into 39 languages. Meanwhile, the Spocks, now a family of four, continued to maintain busy lives. Ben traded his clinical practice for an academic career, accepting many speaking engagements and writing additional books and articles. With a more comfortable income they spent more time vacationing. Jane gamely though cautiously learned to sail in her sixties. As the Vietnam War dragged on, Ben grew increasingly political, even running as a third party presidential candidate in 1972.

Then, in 1975, Ben announced to Jane that he wished to begin a "trial separation." He went out and rented an efficiency apartment for himself. A legal separation followed shortly, then divorce, and within a few months he married a woman 41 years his junior. Jane was devastated.

What went wrong? Apparently neither of the two was easy to live with. “Though he was blessed with a great deal of energy and maintained a warm and pleasant public presence,” said one Spock biographer, “he held impossibly high standards for himself as well as for those around him.” As Jane herself put it, "Ben seems like this outgoing, loving, easygoing person, but he really isn’t. He's a stern person.” His two sons remember him as a cold and remote father, devoid of the warmth and affection he advised his readers to bestow on their children. One told an interviewer his father had always made him feel "judged, criticized, scared, beaten down." "I never kissed them," Spock himself admitted. For her part, Jane spent most of her adult life in and out of therapy. She was dependent on alcohol and Miltown (the tranquilizer immortalized by the Rolling Stones as "Mother's little helper") and suffered from intense mood swings. She also harbored a deep resentment about her husband’s and society’s failure to recognize the extent of her role in creating the child care book and did not hesitate to berate him in public.

In the end, Benjamin Spock apparently lost the will to do the hard work of keeping the marriage together. Their sons were horrified - so much so that they adopted their mother’s family name. Although they could hardly have failed to notice the constant stream of bitter arguments, after 48 years they had long since concluded that was just the way of things.

The prospects for a divorced 70ish woman were of course much more limited than those for her male counterpart. Jane did her best to make lemonade out of the lemons she’d been handed, advocating and running support groups for divorced older women. By and large, however, she lived out her remaining thirteen years a lonely and embittered woman, institutionalized for six months after breaking down altogether and railing against her ex-husband whenever she had the chance. "If it had been a co-authorship, like it should have been," she told an interviewer, "I would have been asked [to be] on televisions shows, too, and I would have been asked what I thought about things. I might have been more of a somebody. But I don't think he could stand it, sharing the spotlight.”

In the fourth edition of the book, just as their marriage was on the verge of dissolution, Spock finally included a generous though long overdue notice of Jane’s participation in the form of a full-page acknowledgment at the front of the book. Was that good enough, or did Jane, as she claimed, deserve more? Ann Hulbert, in her 2003 history of childrearing advice in America, actually becomes quite incensed on Jane’s behalf - though as a reviewer of her book in the New Yorker cynically observed, “If we had a nickel for every twentieth-century author whose wife was an unacknowledged collaborator on his books, we could probably pay for the war in Iraq.”

Nonetheless, although there is no universal standard by which to judge when transcribing, performing background research, fact-checking, recipe-testing, editing, consulting experts, rewriting, and more cross the blurry line into full-fledged coauthorship, a case could almost certainly be made for Jane’s claim. Of the two, she was the scholar. Spock did little if any research on his own and claimed the book “really all came out of my head.” A talented writer and prolific letter-writer, he was probably responsible for the genial, reassuring tone for which the book is justly famous, and of course he had the medical creds to back up his words. But Jane appears to have contributed intellectual content as well as technical and stylistic support. She was the source of his interest in psychoanalysis, for example, and persuaded him that personality formation was fairly well established by the age of two.

Given the breadth and depth of Jane's participation, I doubt that anyone could have quarreled with a joint authorship had it been proposed - and the official inclusion of a woman’s voice might even have increased its appeal (if indeed that were possible, given the book’s astounding popularity). So - let’s just say the decision to go with a sole authorship was a call. Who knows if Jane's life, and their lives together, might have taken a different turn had Ben called it differently, either from the beginning or with the publication of a subsequent edition?

* * * * * * * * * *

I have always felt deep down, whatever the demographers may say, that I belong to the leading edge of the Baby Boom. I now realize, however, that I have to temper that conviction a little, because my poor mother had to struggle through my first three years without benefit of Dr. Spock. Her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, and when I was born in 1943 (the same year Ben and Jane started working on their book), she feared she was so old (thirty!) that she might never be lucky enough to have another child. In fact she went on to have three more, but when I first arrived she regarded me as little short of a miracle baby. My infancy is so well documented in text, photos, and home movies that I’ve sometimes thought it would be great source material for a doctoral dissertation on child-rearing practices of the World War II era.

So I reviewed my mother’s two baby books on little Cindy for evidence of the childrearing ethos that prevailed before Dr. Spock, and sure enough, there it was: “Cindy started her toilet training on Nov. 19, 1943, her ninth month birthday.” As Spock observed, when a baby appears to be toilet-trained that early, “It’s the mother who’s trained.” Readiness was everything, to Spock's way of thinking. There may be no harm in starting so early; on the other hand, if the mother makes excessive performance demands the child may end up rebelling in his second year. Better to put it off for a few more months.

Standing on the bank of the Shark River with my mom and siblings. I'm on the left, slightly apart from the others - a little preadolescent "attitude", perhaps?

Once The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care came out, it was the first place my mother turned for answers to all her childrearing questions, so much so that I remember sneaking it off her bookshelf to read the chapters on “From Six to Eleven” and “Puberty Development,” just to make sure I stayed out ahead of her. I also remember feeling frustrated and annoyed at her stock dismissal of many issues that seemed desperately important to me (somehow I can’t remember what they were) with the words, “She’s just going through a phase” (her term for what Spock called a “stage”). It felt to me as though she was denying the validity of my concerns in a way that she would never dream of denying her own. I later realized I was probably fortunate that she adopted this relatively relaxed attitude towards my various notions rather than one of worry or revulsion or anger or any one of a number of responses I might have found even less palatable.

As I prepared to write this essay, I was surprised to discover that the man who shepherded me through most of my childhood stages even had a few words of wisdom about my current life stage. In his autobiography Spock on Spock, he described his attitude towards aging as “delay and deny” - an approach I too have found useful.

THEY ALSO SERVED

5/29/2017

Like many others, I posted a photo of a man in uniform on my Facebook page today to commemorate Memorial Day, in this instance a cousin who died a few days after his 19th birthday at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, in a battle fought on perhaps the harshest terrain and under the worst weather conditions ever recorded in the annals of war.

As I recounted his sad story and remembered the family’s grief (still vivid in my memory though I was only seven at the time), I started thinking about all those others who, though they may not have served in uniform, were also required to make heroic sacrifices. I thought of my cousin's parents, whose hopes and dreams for their son were shattered in that long-ago moment. And I thought of all those whose lives have been deflected by a call to arms, individuals without whose material and emotional support such missions, however heroic or futile, could not be carried out.

Of no war is this truer than of World War II, perhaps the last war in American history to have had almost universal public support. It was not only the Great War, it was also the Good War, a war in which we felt clearly aligned against the forces of evil. In his book The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw included within the scope of that term not only those who went off to fight on foreign soil but also those whose productivity at home made a decisive contribution to the war effort. It included not only my father-in-law, who spent most of the War as an Army Surgeon in Italy, but also his wife, left on her own to raise a child - my husband - who essentially never knew his father until he was four years old. It included my stepmother Rose, a true Rosie who put her career as a musician and a grade school teacher on hold to work as a welder at Grumman Aviation on Long Island. These were sacrifices made, and made willingly if not gladly, because Americans saw it as a collective commitment, not just a head count of troops sent by the President to fight and perhaps die in lands whose names they could barely pronounce. As Tom Brokaw put it, it was the “right thing to do.”

My father’s family is a case in point. It has often struck me as interesting and perhaps even a little odd that my father and his two younger brothers all served in somewhat unconventional capacities.

My father, King Stodola, as anyone who follows this blog is aware, worked for the Army as a civilian scientist. There was never any question of his being sent overseas because his work in developing radar was considered essential to the war effort and in the event proved crucial to the Allied victory.
Syd, the youngest of the Stodola brothers and the only one to don a uniform, served in the Coast Guard, the smallest by far of the four branches of the American military and a bit of a neglected stepchild despite a long tradition of keeping its big promise, Semper Paratus (“always ready”). “They don’t get half the credit they deserve,” said one man of his Dad’s Coast Guard career.
Quentin, the middle son, chose the most controversial path (even within his own family), registering as a Conscientious Objector - not a popular position especially during World War II, and even more especially for someone who was not a Quaker.

* * * * * * * * * *

In recognition of Memorial Day, I decided to delve a little deeper into the contribution of these three young men to the war effort, and to invite their mother, Beatrice King Stodola, to help me out. Almost as though she were anticipating my queries, my grandmother was prescient enough to keep a journal entitled “Saint Barbara’s Hill: A Cape Cod War-time Log,” in which she documented her joys and (many!) anxieties, as well as the comings and goings of her “boys,” during her annual stay at Shining Sands, the family’s beloved vacation cottage, in the summer of 1943. (My poor grandfather, except for an occasional stolen weekend getaway and a longer stay later in the summer, remained sweltering at his office job in New York City - but that’s a story for another day.)

I feel particularly blessed to have this journal because it gives me a glimpse of the adult relationship I might have had with my grandmother had she lived long enough. For example, on Thursday, August 5, she wrote, “My husband swims every day, but [I] must confess I only go in when I feel like it, which is not very often.” Friends, does that sound like me or what? I'd enjoy swimming so much more if only I didn't have to get wet! And again, a few days later, on Friday August 13: “I had rather a disturbing letter from one of my sons [Quentin]. He may not bring his wife with him when he comes on furlough. It’s just too bad! Received a letter from the wife of another son [King] with a picture of my grandchild – bless her. It was so nice to have daughters when my sons married.” As the mother of daughters, I feel exactly the same way, mutatis mutandis, about my two sons-in-law!

Shining Sands, site of many happy memories from my own childhood.

My grandmother, presiding on her porch (which by now had acquired a railing)..

My grandfather standing by the door.

Quentin, setting up a dive.

A quiet moment with Syd.

The journal offers fascinating insights into life in the 1940’s in a country at war. My grandmother repeatedly refers to the nightly blackouts and notes her inability to get enough butter to make a blueberry pie. More chilling is the pervasive sense of fear and suspicion that permeates the journal, compounded by the inability to know exactly what’s going on: Is that apparently harmless shopkeeper an enemy agent in disguise? Is that man on the beach really just burning his garbage, or is he sending signals to the Enemy? Although these concerns may seem exaggerated, it is now known that German threats to coastal shipping were much more extensive than previously believed.

Despite her ongoing concern about German submarines and suspicious strangers, however, she seemed to be in greater danger from target practice conducted by the American military on the nearby dunes. The serenity of her vacation retreat was incessantly violated by the sound of the “ack-acks” in the (not-so-distant) distance - accounting for the title of her journal: “We shall have to change the name of this hill to Saint Barbara’s Hill. She’s the patron saint of gunners I am told.” During one of his weekend visits, my grandfather retreated several times one afternoon from the task of putting up screens on the second floor windows because the tracer bullets aimed at the target (towed by an airplane!) were just too close for comfort.

But the most obvious impact on her family, of course, was the involvement of all three of her sons in the war effort. They are here “only in spirit, just now,” she notes. “‘Uncle Sam’ keeps them busy at the moment.”

My father, working overtime at Camp Evans and spending what little spare time he had fulfilling his role as a new father, evidently never made it to the Cape at all that summer. My mother, however, kept the lines of communication open. On Thursday July 29, my grandmother wrote, “Pictures came today of our first grandchild [that would be me] – five months old. We have all been wondering whom she looked like but these snap-shots certainly look as her dad, my oldest son, did when he was a baby.”

My Uncle Syd, a carefree bachelor, seems to have shown up whenever he had a few days’ leave. On Saturday July 24, she wrote, “About noon a telegram came from our Coast Guard son saying he would be in this afternoon between three and four – probably a forty-eight hour leave. He arrived on the four o-clock bus from Boston. The rest of the day was spent in TALK and EATS.... After we pulled the black-out curtains we played three-handed bridge, in the midst of which the mother cat walked in proudly carrying a half-grown rabbit. The little thing seemed partly alive so the Coast Guard rescued it and put it out in the silver leaf." And then the next day, "We went out early this morning to see if the rabbit had escaped safely. It had! Somehow saving the life of a rabbit, and guns on the next hill, seems rather incongruous. …The Coast Guardsman left on the late bus very proud of his new stripe – he is now a seaman first class.” And again, on Sunday August 8: “We sat on the edge of the dune with [Syd] and watched groups of P.T. boats on the horizon…. [He] left at 7:30 with a package of cigarettes given him by the owner of the nearby village store. Those little things mean so much more to the boys than anyone realizes.”

About my Uncle Quentin, whom I later came to know very well and whom I would describe as a perfect blend of severity and saintliness, I will leave the last word to my grandmother, who got it exactly right in her comments on Monday August 16: “[Quentin] is leaving this week-end to work for the Government in New Mexico. He has been at a C.P.S. [Civilian Public Service, which provided American Conscientious Objectors with an alternative to military service during World War II] camp in New Hampshire since shortly after the war began. I stand by all of my sons like the Rock of Gibraltar, whatever their beliefs. Who am I to say what is right or wrong when it comes to creed or religion? He has lost eighteen pounds being a human guinea pig in a diet experiment for the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory. They are trying to find the best food to send to the starving millions abroad. Last year he was a guinea pig for a louse experiment conducted at the camp by the Rockefeller Institute. In the last war thousands of boys lost their lives through disease spread by lice. The powders developed in this experiment came in time to be used by our boys in Africa.”

"Getting our lousy underwear at the Lyceum." Basically the project involved wearing louse-infested underwear treated with DDT.

I

Quentin's granddaughter Sarah Wald and I have donated his collection of photos from his experience as a Conscientious Objector, of which this was one, to the Swarthmore College Peace Project.

On this Memorial Day, I’m proud of all the Stodola boys, for their courage in forging their destinies and for their signal contributions to the war effort. Each in his own way did work that saved countless lives. How many families are vouchsafed such a privilege?

A VISIT TO THE EASTER BUNNY

4/17/2017

Sherry, the younger of my two younger sisters, sent a “Happy Easter” message to our family yesterday, attaching a photo of herself, age 20 months, visiting the Easter Bunny. The look on her face is a perfect combination of bewilderment and fear, and her little left hand is completely drawn up into her sleeve. “The Easter Bunny may have eaten my hand; no wonder I look somewhat skeptical,” she captioned the photo. “Cindy and Leslie also have pics from this visit to the hutch,” she added.

My sister Sherry, age 20 months, with the Easter Bunny.

She's right, I still have my own photo of that outing, taken in the Spring of 1950, shortly after I turned seven. A few years ago I posted it on Facebook on Easter Day, and one of my friends observed that the Easter Bunny looked a little creepy. I can no longer look at the photo without thinking of that comment, and Sherry's “missing hand” photo only serves to increase the vague sense of uneasiness the images evoke. My brother, who missed the Easter Bunny photoshoot for the excellent reason that he hadn’t yet been born, opined that the registration number (visible on both photos) just adds to the creep-factor. (Fortunately for our tender little psyches, I don't think any of us ever believed in the Easter Bunny with quite the same uncritical fervor as we did in Santa Claus.)

My turn.

If Leslie’s photo turns up, I’ll update this blog entry and complete the series.
* * * * * * * * * *
Bunnyland, as I recall, was located in Steinbach’s, which at that time billed itself as “the world’s largest resort department store.” The Asbury Park Steinbach’s, founded in the late 19th century, was the flagship store of what eventually became a chain, with branches dotting the Jersey shore. The store later fell on hard times after racial tensions flared in Asbury Park and was permanently shuttered in 1979, but when I lived there Steinbach’s was in its heyday. The trapezoidal “flatiron” style building that I recall, on Cookman Ave - a real eye-grabber - had been built in the 1930’s with four floors and a basement; by the time I arrived on the scene, a fifth floor and a clock tower had been added.

Steinbach department store in downtown Asbury Park, New Jersey, as it appeared at the time of its closure in 1979.

I actually found Steinbach’s a little intimidating, with its multiple floors of merchandise and elevators run by uniformed attendants, and I don’t recall ever going there alone. I was more comfortable in the “five-and-dime” variety stores like Woolworth’s (sort of like what are now, what with inflation, called “dollar stores”), with at most two floors, connected by moving staircases that offered the illicit thrill of reaching the second floor by running very fast up the down escalator. But when my mother wanted to go a little more upscale - to buy her lingerie, for example - she went to Steinbach’s. And since Steinbach's had the only Easter Bunny in town, that's where she took her three young daughters to pose with the big guy with the floppy ears (the cute photos - available for purchase, of course - being the main object of the encounter, since wish lists and naughty-or-nice issues weren't part of the Easter narrative).
* * * * * * * * * *
Even for those of us who weren't particularly religious, Easter was a wonderful, happy holiday that signaled the arrival of Spring - a time of rebirth, a time when we could don our fanciest finery without freezing our bare legs, a time when we could start dreaming about summer vacation, about hunting for lady slippers and catching box turtles.

It also brought out our latent artistic impulses. When it came to the dyeing and decorating of eggs, families aligned themselves in two camps, those who hard-boiled their eggs and a smaller faction that hollowed them out. We were in the latter camp (and for that reason I still have eggs decorated by my daughters when they were children). We punctured both ends of the eggs and then blew on one end, somehow avoiding the twin hazards of salmonella from placing our lips on the raw eggs and apoplexy from the eye-popping effort required to blow the entire contents of an egg through that minuscule opening. (Trust me, this is no easy task, especially if you want the holes to remain small and inconspicuous. I usually ended up cheating and making the pinholes a little larger. It also helps to break up the yolk with your pin.)

The night before Easter, my mother filled our baskets (each of us had her own, recycled and restocked year after year) with Easter grass, the eggs we’d decorated, and a mouthwatering assortment of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and gumdrops. (No peeps - those weren’t mass produced till 1953.) My own favorites were those large crystallized sugar eggs with windows looking into a miniature alternative universe - not because of the sugar (though that was delicious when the confection finally dried out and crumbled) but because I liked to fantasize about crossing through that window into my own little Wonderland. You can still buy these eggs but somehow the interior landscape doesn't seem nearly as elaborate or compelling. Or maybe it's I who have changed.

After the baskets were assembled, my mother hid them, and the next morning we had to search for them. And by "hid them" I mean she really hid them, and never in easy, obvious places. One year she hid Sherry's basket in a seldom-used closet and swarms of ants found their way to the candy, so Leslie and I had to share our goodies with our little sister. Life’s like that sometimes.

Later in the day, having already stuffed ourselves with candy, we gorged on ham with pineapple slices studded with cloves, or perhaps on roast lamb with green mint jelly - both typical Easter fare of the era. Only Thanksgiving was a more tradition-laden dinner. For our friends who gave up something they cherished for Lent, the Easter feast ended forty days of deprivation. We enjoyed the goodies without the deprivation. Life’s like that sometimes, too.

CINDY STODOLA POMERLEAU

I was just shy of 3 years old when the US Army successfully bounced radar waves off the moon - the opening salvo in the Space Race, the birth of radioastronomy, and the first Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) communication. I was born on the Jersey coast for the same reason as Project Diana: my father, as scientific director of the Project, was intimately involved in both events. Like Project Diana, I was named for the goddess of the moon (in my case Cynthia, the Greeks' nickname for Artemis - their version of Diana - who was born on Mt Cynthos). Project Diana is baked into my DNA.

CONNECT WITH CINDY
Facebook: @cynthia.s.pomerleau
Twitter: @Cindy_Pomerleau

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