The Rochester Review, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
In addition to earning a place as a noted naval historian, the retired commander of the USS Constitution has made a hobby out of fishing for the sea-faring roots of everyday language.
The fruits of his avocation appear in a column for Naval History magazine under the title "Salty Talk."
Perhaps befitting the language of an island nation, English is awash in nautical terms. The word "blazer" comes from the blue jackets originally designed for officers on the 19th-century Royal Navy warship of that name. In modern English, the word "deal" retains its original meaning of a plank of wood, but the phrase a "good deal" originated with shipbuilders who needed planks without imperfections. When wind had to be harnessed for ocean voyages, a "skyscraper" meant a small sail set at the top of a mast to capture every possible puff of wind. And, in the 18th and 19th centuries, some captains allowed sailors' wives (and other female companions) to sleep aboard ship when docked in port. The sailor charged with waking the crew often had to literally "shake a leg" at each hammock to make sure he was waking the right people.
"When you discover these things, they do generate an interest," Martin says. "You do say, 'Gee, that's neat.' "
To be above board about it (another phrase with nautical origins), Martin is ideally suited for this lexicographical work. Fascinated from an early age
by ships, the sea, and the stories about them, he wrote articles about naval history and naval strategy throughout his 25-year career in the service.
Martin majored in English and history on an NROTC scholarship that assigned him to Rochester, and after graduation he served several tours in the Pacific and in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C.
In 1974, he was named commander of the Constitution, also known as "Old Ironsides," just as the celebrated ship was undergoing a major renovation for the nation's 200th anniversary.
Commissioned in 1798, the 44-gun frigate led the Bicentennial procession of tall ships into Boston Harbor, the ship's home port.
After retiring in 1978, Martin was asked if he would write a book on the Constitution.
"Since I didn't have anything better to do and since I had compiled quite a bit of information about the ship during my four years, I said, 'Sure,'" Martin recalls.
That book became A Most Fortunate Ship, a narrative history of the Constitution first published in 1980. A revised and expanded edition of the book was awarded both the Robert G. Albion/James Madison Award for Historiography, from the National Maritime Historical Society, and the USS Constitution Bicentennial book prize, from the Naval Historical Center.
Martin also is the author of Undefeated, which follows the Constitution through the War of 1812, and Creating a Legend, a detailed examination of the ship's origins.
Due out this year is A Signal Honor, which introduces anecdotes about crew members over the years.
Not one to toe the line (another phrase first used at sea) when it comes to retirement, Martin also keeps busy maintaining a database of information about the Constitution from his home in Tryon, North Carolina. The computerized data (part of which is accessible through the Web at www3.teleplex.net/timonier) include biographical details on the more than 14,800 people who have served aboard the storied ship.
Martin also acted as the technical consultant for 35 shows in The Great Ships series on The History Channel and appeared on camera in nine of the episodes. The final four segments of the series are scheduled to premier in September.
"All of this is hobby work," he says. "I don't consider it real work in any way." No doubt it helps keep him on an even keel, however.
Pappas, the medical director for the Red Sox organization, often is watching closely as a particular pitcher (not always a member of the Red Sox) releases a curve ball. Was there too much arm rotation? Too little? Or he winces when a specific skater's knee bounces too much at the end of a double lutz.
Besides paying attention to balls and strikes and perfect scores, Pappas often is watching current and former patients compete.
"It's sort of enjoyable when people you have cared for end up in the Olympics or in the World Series," he says. "There's a level of pride there, and it's very gratifying to watch those athletes do well."
A physician specializing in orthopedics, Pappas is one of the nation's best-known specialists in sports medicine, a field that barely existed 40 years ago when he was a student at the School of Medicine and Dentistry. He now counts among his patients some of the biggest names in professional baseball (throughout the league) and in figure skating.
But he's just as proud of his work with patients who will never play in a professional baseball game, much less a World Series. As chairman and professor of orthopedics and physical rehabilitation at the University of Massachusetts medical school at Worcester, Pappas specializes in pediatric orthopedics, performing surgery on children who have congenital conditions or have been injured in accidents.
Always interested in sports (he played football at Harvard as an undergraduate), Pappas added a sports medicine specialty to his orthopedics expertise during his residency at Children's and Massachusetts General hospitals in Boston. Few doctors were in the field then--"Since that time, it's become one of the hot specialties of the '80s and '90s," Pappas says--and he found he enjoyed the challenge of working with athletes and their injuries. Soon hockey, football, and baseball players were seeking him out for advice on their knees, shoulders, arms, and elbows. Since 1968, he has had a former or current patient skating in each of the winter Olympics.
He hit a home run, of sorts, when it comes to sports and medicine in 1976, when he was named medical director for the Red Sox.
As the chief physician, he's responsible for the health of 250 baseball players on the Red Sox roster and on the organization's six minor league teams. At Fenway Park, he oversees a staff of five medical doctors, three trainers, and nine first-aid personnel.
The job is year-round: Pappas and his staff work with players on their specific health concerns and on conditioning programs during the baseball season and then continue throughout the off-season--which Pappas points out lasts just a few months, between the end of the regular season in October and the beginning of spring training in February.
He notes that players now are much more savvy about their health than those in earlier decades. With the salaries commanded by top stars, players cannot afford too many injuries.
"Now, when players report to spring training camp, they are ready to play baseball," he says.
He also says breakthroughs in technology have greatly expanded the options for doctors and athletes. For example, arthroscopic surgery allows surgeons to repair cartilage in a player's knee without having to complete an invasive surgical procedure.
"Much more can be done with a lot less impact on a player's overall health," Pappas says. "Athletes can play longer and play better than in the past."
But for all his contact with professional sports stars, Pappas says his real passion remains medicine, and in particular pediatric orthopedics.
At UMass, he works with children whose injuries would in years past have kept them from participating fully in life.
"You start with the children when they are very young and they stay with you pretty much for the rest of their lives," he says. "I'm always amazed at the number of children I've dealt with who end up somewhere in the medical profession, either in medical school or as a health professional elsewhere."
"That's my real life," Pappas says. "Baseball is my adjunct life."
Bryan's feet are firmly planted where they are, she says, because of the people who keep the airline flying. Her aim, says the company's newly named senior vice president for human resources, is to work toward making employees' goals and those of US Airways one and the same.
The path she took from law school (Georgetown) to an executive position with the sixth-largest U.S. airline (with $8.7 billion in revenue) might seem like a dogleg runway to some. But for Bryan, it's been "a natural transition--I've always had a major interest in human resources and labor issues."
What drew Bryan to the corporate world was her desire to be intimately involved with the business that's conducted there. "At a law firm, you tend to have an isolated view," she says. "So much of what goes on there is about getting business rather than spending time on legal analysis and providing advice. At a corporation, on the other hand, you're in an environment where you can see business results much more directly."
Bryan landed at US Airways via a post-law school stint with a consulting firm that specialized in human-resources work related to ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act). It was this credential that in 1983 got her in the door at the airline as a staff attorney in the legal department, where she focused on issues related to personnel and labor relations.
After that it was a smooth climb up the Jetway ladder: corporate secretary in 1988, vice president and deputy general counsel in 1995, to her present position in 1999.
As it happened (small-world serendipity?), when Bryan arrived at what was then called USAir, it was headed by a fellow Rochester alum, fellow Keidaean (a member of a now- defunct honor society for campus leaders), and fellow attorney. Edwin Colodny '48, a Rochester trustee (and later board president), was USAir's chairman, president, and CEO. As an attorney himself, the boss took a natural interest in the lawyers at the company, and, Bryan says, acted as a mentor to her.
Recognized as one of the best airline execs in the business at the time, Colodny was known for paying close attention not only to revenues but also to the concerns of customers--and employees.
Along with their shared Rochester background, Bryan, it would seem, shares with her mentor a concern for the well-being of the airline staff.
In a labor-intensive business, personnel is critical to US Airways' success, Bryan says, and she is working to foster what she foresees to be a positive, respectful, growth-oriented working environment.
And that's a tall order, considering there are some 41,000 active US Airways employees--among them thousands of pilots, flight attendants, reservation sales reps, mechanics, dispatchers, plane and crew schedulers, and others serving passengers in one form or another every day. But whatever the job, Bryan believes that by instilling a corporate culture of excellence, all of the airline's employees also will have the opportunity to soar.
It's not much slower the next morning at the double bassist's home, where call waiting clamors for his attention. He is leaving the next day, it turns out, for an eight-day jazz stint in Japan.
Jazz and advertising jingles are just a couple of the elements in the hectic career Finck has carved out over the past two decades. He's equally at home, and sought after, as a performer and recording artist in chamber, popular, folk, Broadway, Latin, and--who knows--probably Afghan mountain music, too.
André Previn is one artist who regularly taps Finck for a broad range of work. Last year, the pair released We Got Rhythm, a collection of Gershwin songs, following up on earlier CDs of Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen tunes. They capped that with a performance of Gershwin jazz at Lincoln Center in December. Last summer they played at the Tanglewood Music Festival, and this summer, at last word, they were about to record some Ellington songs.
Finck has also added teaching and writing to his eclectic resume. In 1995 he was one of the contributors to a Village Voice supplement, "Sinatra at Eighty." Then following the singer's death last year, he was invited to lecture at a Sinatra conference at Hofstra University.
A specialty in Ol' Blue Eyes? Not exactly. "I've just liked him since I was a little kid," Finck explains. "At home we always listened to him on the radio on weekends. He continues to be a tremendous influence on me musically."
Growing up in a musical home --Alfred Finck, his father, who got his doctorate in psychology from the University in 1959, played guitar, and his mother played clarinet--gave young Finck a broad musical base. And he got taken to concerts, "everything from the Philadelphia orchestra to Count Basie's band." After starting on the piano, he picked up the double bass at 10, later jamming with his father on tunes.
"It gave me a fundamental vocabulary for later," he says.
Finck has refined new vocabularies as well. Invited to join saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera's Havana--New York Ensemble in 1987, Finck found himself in a musical "sink-or-swim" situation.
"I like salsa, but it takes time to figure out the musical language, and, like learning any other language, you do it by speaking it and being spoken to," he says. "When you get an opportunity like that, well, you just have to figure out how to survive through it. But some of the musicians were very helpful in explaining--like, 'You know that thing you just played? We don't do that kind of thing in our music.'"
And with what D'Rivera recognized as a natural feel for the music, Finck has expanded his Latin experience. He has played with the group through the years, touring in the United States, Europe, South America, Japan, and Israel. One of his own compositions, a catchy samba number called "Look at You," has been picked as a future standard by Cadence magazine.
In 1994 Finck went to Rio de Janeiro to record with Brazilian composer Ivan Lins. Now he returns there at least once a year to record and play at jazz festivals.
Though he most enjoys the freedom of jazz and the unique combination of European and African influences in Brazilian music, Finck has built up a vast discography that ranges from performances with the Empire Brass Quintet and Orchestra Nova, Rosemary Clooney and Sylvia McNair, to Pete Seeger, Sinead O'Connor, and Natalie Cole. He's been on stage with Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd (Finck's first stint after graduation), the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, Hank Jones, Dizzy Gillespie (who tendered him a gratifying "I like the way you play" after a performance in Nice), and a myriad of other greats. And he's got Broadway shows like City of Angels, Sweet Charity, and Jekyll and Hyde under his belt, too.
But, to get back to the great Sinatra--did Finck ever have a chance to actually meet the Chairman of the Board?
"Once, in the early '80s he came into a nightclub where I was playing," Finck recalls. "One of the people there knew him and introduced me to him. I shook his hand and told him he was one of my favorite musicians.
"He said thank you . . . and then I decided not to bother him."
Luzine, an investment advisor by trade, spent nearly a year helping the people of Bosnia and Serbia recover from years of civil war, one small business at a time. As a reservist with the Civil Affairs unit of U.S. Army Special Operations, Luzine completed a nine-month tour of the region last summer.
While there, he helped put together a $20 million loan, financed in part by the World Bank, earmarked for small, private businesses in the region. He also helped advise government and banking officials on the privatization of banks and on the launch of a new currency.
Officially given the rank of captain, Luzine worked largely on his own, traveling throughout the two countries. Almost always in civilian clothes, he met with government leaders, community activists, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations like CARE and the Red Cross.
"I probably had the best job that any of the 40,000 troops had in Bosnia," he says.
An Army reservist since 1987, Luzine was tapped for the job because of his expertise in emerging markets. He currently is an analyst for Adirondack Capital Management in Manhattan.
A highlight of the assignment was securing the loan. Qualifying businesses could receive up to 250,000 deutsche marks (roughly $125,000), for a three-year, collateralized loan. That is enough for many businesses to buy small pieces of equipment and other major supplies.
"It really filled a major gap in their funding," he says. "It made a big difference."
Luzine was back home in New York well before NATO launched its bombing campaign this spring, sparked by Yugoslavia's actions in the province of Kosovo. Nor had he visited Kosovo while in the region.
But Luzine says the overall signs for the region are positive. For example, Slovenia quickly moved toward the West once it broke free of Yugoslavia, and Croatia moved in that direction, too, but more slowly.
Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic have all joined NATO, he points out.
"Hopefully, we'll see the same end as we saw at the finish of World War II," he says. "We saw peace and prosperity in Western Europe for 50 years. Hopefully, we'll see the same thing in Eastern Europe."
The Civilian Unit of U.S. Army Special Operations is a carryover from World War II, when the United States helped western European countries recover. While security forces were the major component of those operations, the Army quickly realized that people with skills in banking, management, personnel, and other business operations were needed to help in the transition.
Luzine's group included stockbrokers and bankers.
"There is still a need for soldiers who have civilian skills," Luzine says. "We help bridge the communication gap between the military and the community."
Before this spring's bombings, signs of recovery from years of civil war throughout the former Yugoslavia were visible, Luzine says.
"It's a beautiful country, rich in history," Luzine says. "It's difficult to understand why the people did this to one another."
The death of smallpox: On October 26, 1979, this ancient plague was declared to be eradicated, the result of a 10-year effort headed by Donald Henderson '54M (MD) and colleagues at the World Health Organization. The task was accomplished by a process of "surveillance and containment": breaking the chain of transmission by vigilantly tracking down every new outbreak and vaccinating everyone in the area. To identify new cases, workers went from village to village asking if any sick people had a rash like the one displayed in the photograph. Now, with the advent of bioterrorism, Henderson and others are raising concerns about the return of the disease.
But Henderson, the director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has spent the past several years trying to persuade medical and academic colleagues and policymakers from city hall to Capitol Hill to take seriously a scenario many think could happen only in a Hollywood thriller: A rogue state or terrorist group using anthrax, smallpox, plague, or some other deadly biological agent to mount an attack on an unsuspecting city.
"There is a possibility for catastrophe that wasn't there before," Henderson says. "We simply can't ignore it any longer."
Henderson, a former presidential advisor, is best known for leading a team of World Health Organization scientists on a campaign to identify every outbreak of smallpox and vaccinate as many people as possible against the disease. The effort, which earned Henderson a spot in Time magazine's special issue on the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century, was so successful that smallpox vaccinations ended in 1980.
Since the late 1980s, Henderson and other colleagues have been quietly working behind the scenes to alert policymakers to the growing threat of bioterrorism.
"There were very few at high levels who understood the significance of the problem," Henderson says.
That all changed in 1995, when members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on a Tokyo subway. Investigators later learned that the apocalyptic group also tried several times to release anthrax and botulism toxin throughout metropolitan Tokyo.
Couple that with information provided by military and scientific defectors from Iraq and the former Soviet Union, as well as the sorry economic state of Russia and its laboratories, and the threat of bioterrorism begins to loom very large. And very real.
The Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies officially opened last fall as an effort to spur discussion of the medical, social, and policy issues involved.
Henderson, who regularly speaks at conferences on the subject, has started reaching all levels of the medical and political infrastructure that are vital in responding to a medical crisis.
"We really need the best of our basic biomedical scientists to be involved, we need our infectious disease specialists, we need public health officials," he says.
Part of the problem is the unique nature of a biological attack. Unlike a massive bomb, a bioweapon could be launched with little notice, quietly drifting through the air of a building or a city. The symptoms for the most deadly diseases--anthrax, for example--don't show up for days or weeks after exposure. Such diseases are so rare that few in the medical community would diagnose them properly. And the stockpiles of vaccines are either dreadfully low, earmarked for the Department of Defense, or nonexistent.
The center has identified six biological agents that are most worrisome: smallpox, anthrax, plague, rabbit fever, botulism, and a group known as the "hemorrhagic fevers," which includes ebola.
Just a tiny amount of a virus, prepared and processed in the right way, would be enough to bring "a functioning city to its knees," Henderson says.
The first wave of those infected might be only 50 to 100 people, but by the time their symptoms showed up, they would have spread the disease 20-fold throughout their city and beyond. Before long, the spiral of infection and panic would overwhelm even a well-prepared city.
"It clearly could be a civilian catastrophe--as has been expressed by others--more severe than a nuclear bomb," he says.
One bright spot is that the most deadly agents are difficult to acquire and that preparing them for effective use as weapons is beyond the capacity of all but the most sophisticated, dedicated labs.
That gives policymakers some guidelines for tracking suspicious activity and gives the medical community a chance to prepare.
"The most effective step now is to strengthen the public health and infectious disease infrastructure," Henderson says.
'SALTY TALK'
Mention to Cmdr. Ty Martin '52 that you wore your best blazer to make sure you would get a good deal on renting space in a skyscraper, and you might have to shake a leg to keep up as he tells you how much sailors have done to liven up the language of landlubbers.
DR. RED SOX
When Arthur Pappas '57M (MD) watches the pinnacle contests in sports--the World Series, say, or the Olympics--the lifelong Boston Red Sox fan usually has a special interest in how the athletic competition shapes up.
FLYING HIGH
Michelle Viggiano Bryan '78 loves to fly. She also loves to travel. But that's not why she joined US Airways 16 years ago, and that's not why she's still there today.
HE'S GOT RHYTHM
It's Friday afternoon in Manhattan. David Finck '80E is at a street pay phone. Just out of a commercial recording session, he's answering a message from his voice mail. Buses and trucks rumble by, a car alarm goes off, a siren adds to the cacophony. "Let's talk tomorrow," he tells a would-be interviewer.
'CAPTAIN' FINANCE
When Edmund Luzine '89S (MBA) goes on a military assignment, the uniform is decidedly casual and the sidearm is often a briefcase.
THE NEXT THREAT?
The scientist credited with eradicating smallpox, Donald A. Henderson '54M (MD) (and honorary degree recipient in 1977), would rather spend his time worrying about medical threats other than bioterrorism.
Contributed by Scott Hauser, Helene Snihur, and Julie Welch
Maintained by University Public Relations