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This summer, I’ve asked our Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fellows to check in periodically to let us know how they are doing. Here’s the first report, from Amanda Hess, in Kenya: MDW
Amanda with the elders of the village.
So far this trip has been absolutely incredible! The classes and educational aspect of this experience are exceptional but it’s the Kenyan people who’ve made it so profound for me. I’m working with a community based organization called St. Ann’s. They represent a small village about 45 minutes outside of town. This little community has been nearly devastated from HIV/Aids, an annual cholera outbreak from nearly nonexistent water sanitation, and a generalized poverty which has it’s grip on every home I’ve visited so far.
I’m working closely with the matriarch of this village, Lorane. She is a widowed superwoman. After 5 children, the youngest suffering from a mental disability which prevents him from being able to speak, HIV killed her husband. She’s poured herself not only into her family (all of her capable children have either gone to or are in college) but also her community. She’s begun a micro lending program for the grandmothers of their village and she lead the plea for the installation of a water kiosk, which will provide everyone with clean drinking water.
My project is to offer this community with something sustainable that will lead to their betterment and a heightened quality of life with the fewest unintended negative consequences as possible. At first, this was a bit daunting. However, I believe that I’ve devised a program that will actually make a substantial difference for these beautiful people.
Because of the HIV/Aids pandemic about 97 children have been orphaned as a result. Most often these children have no family members who are either close enough in proximity to take care of them or they are too impoverished to offer them anything that would make much of a difference. Also, because these deceased parents were usually unable to work in the last year to several months of their life they’ve left their children with no inheritance. So, the eldest of the siblings is responsible for taking care of the younger children. (Often times the eldest is a boy and there is a huge cultural stigma against men rearing children and this has posed to be an unusual barrier in their advancing within society.)
My program will be a joint micro-lending/mentorship program geared towards supporting these eldest orphan children who have nothing but are still expected to provide for their siblings. These children will be paired with a mentor; someone from the community who is trustworthy and also a business owner. this mentor will act as a co-signer for a micro loan from Kiva (we’ve already begun the process for setting them up with profiles) that will be awarded to our young entrepreneurs once they have devised a business plan with the help of myself and their mentor. (Training will also include basic personal finance management and accounting.) The mentors will work closely with their apprentices to establish the business and repay the loan. As incentive for our mentors, once the loan is repaid and the business has stabilized (making an average daily living wage for the child and the child’s family) the mentor will receive %10 of the profits and will continue to aid the child with their accounting, savings, and finding and maintaining healthy business relationships with clientele. The %10 is also reason for the mentor to do everything possible to make sure the business is thriving because the better the business dose, the higher that %10 will be.
The mentor/apprentice pair will report bi-weekly to the community board. This includes the chair members of St. Ann’s as well as the Chief of the village. During these meetings the progress of the business will be reported and if any obstacles or problems have arisen the board will offer advice and assistance whenever necessary. Board members will also be given the authority to “check in” on the pairs whenever they like, similar to a health inspector, as a way to ensure the child’s protection from any sort of corruption.
The chief has volunteered to serve as a mentor to the mentors. They will have a monthly meeting to make sure everything is running smoothly and to offer one another ideas, advice, and potentially partner whenever possible. Once our young entrepreneurs are capable of running their business on their own (something that will be determined by the board and the child) they will take over 100% of the profits.
The community is incredibly excited to get started and I am so thrilled that they’ve been so receptive to my plan. Next week we’ll be pairing our mentors with the children. (On average these kids are around 16)
Thank you again for your support and I’ll be sure to send updates as the program develops!
A while back one of our Adams alums, Rick Porteus ’78, who also happens to be the Vice President of the Fly Club Board of Directors, had written to me kindly noting that perhaps it was time to pay a little more attention to the club FDR actually joined, rather than the club he didn’t. Fair enough. And to back up that sentiment, Rick invited a number of us to dinner the night before historian Geoffrey Ward’s lecture. It was a grand affair, made all the more pleasant by the company of Geoff, who sat fireside where FDR surely had, regaling us with fascinating bit of Roosevelt legend and lore. The Club also presented the Foundation with a lovely framed photo of FDR and his Fly Brothers from 1904. This visit got me thinking more and more about FDR and the Fly, and our quest to acquire a Fly Club medal, which coincided nicely with renewed interest at the Fly in its own history. FDR had played a prominent role there: he was club librarian, and eventually sent three sons to the Fly as well.
The Fly Club Exterior. The interior is remarkably preserved and looks much as it did in FDR’s time, especially the library.
Meanwhile, you may remember that recently—after a great search—we found a Porcellian Club medal for Lathrop. Now precisely why we ever thought that Lathrop was a member of the Porcellian is entirely murky. Lathrop’s descendants certainly thought so, having remembered reading it somewhere. I did, too—the part about one roommate getting into the Porcellian and the other getting his dreams crushed (FDR was still smarting 20 years later) has become a potent element of our narrative concerning these two men. How wonderful of them, I always thought, to have overcome what might have proved to be a large obstacle to their continuing friendship.
So, sparked by our visit, we renewed our efforts to find a Fly Club medal for poor old FDR. We’d been looking for a while, but this hunt was complicated. The Fly was originally part of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, which was founded at Hamilton College in 1832. Long story short: the Fly seceded not once, but twice from the national chapter, and was in the process of wrapping up this divorce just when FDR was active in the club. These days the Fly sports a leopard rampant on its crest, but previously it had been the star and crescent of the Alpha Delta Phi, which is what FDR would have possessed.
Then enter Elisha Lee ’80, who had come across my postings online, and who as a former collector of Harvard medals—exonumia for those in the know—pointed out to me several facts I had not been aware of, namely that the club medals were generally worn with their club color ribbons, not their class colors as we were showing in the Suite, and suggested several possible venues where I might locate a Fly Club medal. But which medal?
Thus one afternoon while I was stuck on the phone on what seemed an interminable hold, I dashed off a note to Bob Clark at the FDR Presidential Library asking him if perchance they had any Fly Club or Alpha Delta Phi medals in the Museum collection. It was a small chance, but I was banking on two well known facts: FDR almost never threw anything away; and that FDR had maintained an active relationship with the Fly for the rest of his life, even returning to Cambridge as president for Fly events. And sure enough, the Museum did indeed have an Alpha Delta Phi “medal,” inscribed with FDR’s name and class year, sill perfectly preserved in its leather box. Within seconds I was on eBay, looking; and miraculously, there was a vendor with a 1904 “medal” for sale.
The Fly Club Pin, Much Enlarged!
Hurrah! But wait: after triumphantly announcing my news, Elisha wrote back to me pointing out that this was the Fly pin, not the medal—a fact that became totally obvious when this tiny, tiny, tiny little box arrived in the mail to reveal a pin the size of my small fingernail. In all fairness, the picture at left was the one I viewed online, never reading the measurements. Caveat emptor! So foiled again! Well, partially: the pin is quite nice, enamel and gold, but oh, ever so small and expensive at $230! (Broad hint for a donor.) But FDR did have one, so it’s absolutely correct.
Ah, but the story gets even better! Elisha also produced the 1907 Fly Club member rolls, and who’s name should appear but Lathrop Brown’s? Uh-oh… A quick search of the FDR bios on hand reveal no mention of our remembered Porcellian association. Uh-ho, Uh-ho. Then a check of the Porcellian records reveals no Lathrop. Big uh-oh. Finally, Rick Porteus chimes in to say they have just received back from the book binder the club minutes from that precise period, and sure enough, Lathrop was not only a member, but also secretary and briefly president! His brother Archie (elder by a year) was also a member, as would be his younger brother Charles in a few years. In fact, Lathrop was a member before FDR, and he and Archie would have voted on FDR’s election.
Fly 2; Porcellian 0.
All this to say that we have been barking up the wrong tree. Howling might be more apt, and it goes to show what happens in history when facts aren’t thoroughly checked: if you repeat a lie often enough, Goebbels once said, it becomes the truth, or in this case, the accepted truth, however erroneous.
There is still one missing piece to this whole Porcellian-Fly Club biz, which Rick Porteus has promised to check on. Originally, there were only two “final” clubs, the A.D and the Porc, so called because they were the terminal points of the club system. You could only join one. All the others were “waiting” clubs, the Edwardian equivalent of circling the airport, waiting to land. One by one, however, these waiting clubs voted themselves final during this period. Precisely when this occurred at the Fly is still being researched. The only reason this matters is that it rewrites the narrative in a rather potent way: instead of some variant of the oft-used phrase “FDR was forced to settle for the less prestigious Fly,” which occurs in almost every FDR bio, the tale should possibly read “FDR chose the Fly with his Groton chum and roommate Lathrop Brown, but was foiled in his attempt to advance to the Porcellian.” Or, “FDR failed to get into the Porcellian and at the urging of his roommate Lathrop Brown, decided to join the Fly.”
We’ll see how this falls out. Either way it’s not quite the listless casting about portrayed in the history books; it makes great sense that these two life-long friends would have gone to the same club.
These revelations, however, put us in a real bind, because now we need not one but TWO very rare silver medals that look like the one above. If seen, please contact immediately! In the meantime, nostra culpa.
I’m pleased to announce that as of the 1st of May 2014, the Foundation will be changing its legal name from the FDR Suite Foundation to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation. This will generally be followed in print and online by the descriptive “at Adams House, Harvard College.”
In the six years since our founding, the mission of the Foundation has grown exponentially, and we decided it was time for our name to reflect these new fields of endeavor. The new Foundation will be comprised of three linked departments:
The Suite Museum & Historical Collections division will manage the day-to-day running of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Suite in Westmorly Hall and maintain the Suite’s collection of almost 2000 pieces of FDR and Harvard memorabilia. In addition, the Suite will continue to sponsor the annual FDR Memorial Lecture, lead Harvard Alumni Association historic tours, and host other cultural events to promote awareness of FDR, Adams House and Harvard College history.
The FDR Global Citizenship Program assumes charge of our non-historical undergraduate and alumni educational programs, including the FDR Global Fellowship, which each year awards summer grants to undergraduates whose international research in the sciences or humanities embodies FDR’s admonition that “that the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
The Foundation’s newest division, the FDR Center for Global Engagement, plans to honor FDR’s legacy by working with practitioners of international relations, global innovation, and public diplomacy on research and programs aimed at understanding and adjusting to the challenges of the 21st century. Jed Willard ’96 of the Harvard Kennedy School has kindly agreed to come on board to lead these endeavors as the Center’s first Director.
Heady times indeed, and all thanks to the continuing support of people like you.
Gina Kim ’15, of Adams House, who is also this year’s Lillian Goldman Scholar, will be traveling to China and South Korea to conduct senior thesis research on sex trafficking in East Asia. There she will interview government officials, NGO workers, journalists, and academic experts to research how sex trafficking works in the two countries and how they combat this horrific, amorphous issue in their own ways. Her senior thesis research question is: “Under what circumstances do sex trafficking policy changes occur in China and in the Republic of Korea? Do the factors influencing policy change also affect the effectiveness and implementation of the adopted policy?” After graduation, Gina plans to pursue a joint JD/MPP program, with a goal of working for the U.S. Department of State, Department of Justice or the White House in a legal advisory role.
Alicia Merganthaler ’15, of Winthrop House, will be spending two months in London interning with the Financial Times. As an economics concentrator and active writer, Alicia is interested in studying how the Times, as opposed to many US-based financial publications, presents economics news to inform the public in a nonpartisan manner. At the Times, she’ll have the unique opportunity to work alongside professional researchers to investigate meaningful economic phenomena worldwide, and learn how these economic stories can be disseminated in a way that is theoretically accurate, but also inclusive of individuals with limited economic background. After Commencement, Alicia plans on pursuing a career in economic journalism.
Amanda Hess, from the Harvard Extension School, will be traveling to Kisumu, Kenya where she’ll explore diverse approaches for using innovations and technologies to foster transformative and sustainable healthcare improvements in Africa. During her six-week intensive Harvard Summer School program, Amanda will learn an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare that emphasizes the importance of teamwork in the design, development, and testing of public heath initiatives, and how to integrate these improvements on the local level. This for-credit program also completes a number of her Extension requirements. After obtaining her degree, Amanda plans to work for an NGO in Africa or Asia.
This year the Foundation is also pleased to present an Award of Merit for an outstanding proposal it was unable to fund but found to be very much in the spirit of FDR’s belief that “the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Zeenia Framooze ’16, of Adams House, will spend the summer in Bombay, India, where she plans to volunteer with the Acorn Foundation’s Dharavi Project. Inspired by Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Zeenia will be working towards the organization’s goal of empowering the waste collectors of the Dharavi slum. Using her passion for teaching, public speaking and photography, she hopes to highlight the complex issues involved in waste disposal in a culminating photo project titled “Recycling Lives.” Zeenia plans a career in broadcast journalism.
Remember, this scholarship program receives no financial support from Harvard College and is entirely funded by contributions from people like you. Please give generously. You can donate safely and securely online by clicking the button below.
Historian Geoffrey Ward is the author of 16 books including three of the principal bios of young FDR
Ladies and gentlemen,
We still have a 10 or so tickets left for the 6th Annual FDR Memorial Lecture, Saturday April 5th, 4 PM with historian Geoffrey Ward. His talk, the Roosevelts at Harvard will be followed by a cocktail reception in the conservatory, featuring our now famous Roosevelt Raw Bar. Tickets may be purchased below. If you are unable to attend, won’t you consider sponsoring a student or tutor? We run our educational programs as a service, not a profit center, and we can always use your support.