2015 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Global Fellows Announced

Adams House and the FDR Foundation are delighted to announce the 2015 FDR Global Fellows:

Photo Teresa OszkinisTeresa Oszkinis ’16 of Leverett House and West Islip, New York, will be traveling to Rwanda to participate in the Engineering World Health Summer Institute, a unique program that will allow her to combine her passions for biomedical engineering and global health. According to a 2013 article in the Atlantic Monthly, “Across Sub-Saharan Africa, ‘medical device graveyards’ litter the empty closets and spare corners of hospitals. The World Health Organization estimates that ‘a large proportion (up to 70 percent) of equipment lies idle’ — without anyone to maintain or repair it. Teresa’s summer program directly addresses this urgent need. As part of the Summer Institute, Teresa will live with a local Rwandan family while receiving language training as well as gaining hands-on experience working in hospitals and clinics with scarce resources. Afterwards, she will be assigned to a local hospital or clinic to put her training to use in repairing the medical equipment needed to support critical health care in Rwanda.

A junior concentrating in biomedical engineering with a secondary in global health and health policy, Teresa serves as president of Students Taking on Poverty, is a board member for the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children, volunteers at a local homeless shelter and manages to find time to row for the Varsity Crew — all the while maintaining a near perfect GPA. As a Pre-Med student with a strong interest in global health and social medicine, Teresa is passionate about promoting health as a human right and addressing the root causes of the health disparities that plague our modern world.

Teresa’s program was chosen by the Fellowship Advisory Board for a 7K award as it perfectly corresponds to FDR’s firm belief that “that the only way to have a friend is to be one,” and completes our preference for proposals that not only provide an educational experience for the participant, but also produce some “quantifiable public good.” Additionally, Teresa will be named the 2015 Lillian Goldman scholar in recognition of her work towards the advancement of women’s causes globally.

10608667_457119597760087_678465885947990184_oKelvin Muriuki ’17 of Leverett House and Nyeri, Kenya, will be traveling to Paris this summer to investigate how the principles of biological evolution can help understand and solve the problems that plague modern-day cities. During his 8-week intensive Harvard Summer School Program, Kelvin will explore evolutionary parallels between major urban centers and human beings with an eye to designing specific projects that not only improve the quality of life in urban centers but also engage urban residents in comprehensively understanding and actively solving the issues that affect their cities.

A sophomore concentrating in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Kelvin is passionate about genetics, specifically its application in the understanding and treatment of non-communicable diseases like cancer which exert a heavy death toll in his native Kenya, and often go ignored. He is also fascinated by cities, their development, the complex web of social relations they foster, and the lifestyle changes they command. Having spent a significant part of his life in Nairobi, Kelvin particularly identifies with the problems and health consequences that urbanization necessarily produces. Kelvin has served both as a college counselor and a teacher for high school students in Kenya, and plans to pursue an MD-PhD after graduation with an eye to a career in the bio-tech industry.

Kelvin’s proposal was chosen for a 5K award because the Fellowship Advisory Board strongly feels that all too often today’s students are locked into pre-professional programs that limit their knowledge base to prescribed courses and methods of thinking. This unique program of evolutionary science and urban planning immediately urges students to think outside the box, and dovetails with our belief that the widest possible skill set — embracing both the humanities and sciences — will be required to solve the problems of the 21st century.

 

Here, There and Back Again: A Tale of A Sign

A couple months ago, I received a call from a very courteous gentlemen in Santa Fe, inquiring whether or not I might want to buy an old, wooden sign. But not just any sign: An old “Adams House sign,” the caller said. “It dates to about the time of the Civil War, and originally came from Boston.” Oh, my ears perked up immediately, as I had once seen a faded old letter in the House archives a few years back…now if I could just remember the specifics…  But perhaps I should tell you the story from the beginning.

You see, before there was Adams House, there was the Adams House, one of Boston’s earliest luxury hotels. Opened in 1846 on the Washington-Street site of the historic Lamb Tavern, The Adams House Hotel possessed a stern Federal stone facade — and, critical to our story —  a large wooden sign above the main entrance. Later expanded with an annex in the 1850s (which still stands on Washington Street) the original structure was replaced with a much larger Victorian edifice in 1883 (now demolished).

The original 1846 Adams House Hotel on Washington Street, Boston.  (Courtesy: Boston Atheneum)

The original 1846 Adams House Hotel on Washington Street, Boston. Click to enlarge. The sign pictured above may be the very one we acquired.  (Courtesy: Boston Atheneum)

In 1889, King’s Hand-Book of Boston noted that the Adams House was “one of the finest and best-equipped hotels in the city, of which its dining-rooms and café are … conspicuous features.”

The Victorian iteration. The Adams Hotel is the large whitish building to the left; the 1850s annex is immediately to the right

The Victorian iteration. The Adams Hotel is the large whitish building to the left; the 1850s annex is immediately to the right

By the early 1900s, however, the Adams House clientele began to change, with short-term guests ceding way to local politicians and businessmen looking to secure cheap extended lodging near the Statehouse. Calvin Coolidge, notorious for his frugality, took a room at the Adams House for $1 per day in 1906 as a new member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In an unusual display of extravagance a day after being elected governor in 1919, he expanded his digs at the Adams House to a two-room suite with bath on the third floor for $3.50 per diem. Coolidge was at the Adams House when he received the telephone call informing him of his nomination as Warren G. Harding’s vice presidential running mate in 1920.

The Adams House Hotel fell victim to declining revenues during Prohibition (deprived of the income from all those hard-drinking politicians and newsmen) and was closed in 1927. The main building was demolished in 1931. In 1930, Harvard, anxious to name one of its new Houses after the Adams family, acquired the name and goodwill from the bankrupt establishment as a legal precaution. That signed contract was the document I had remembered from the archives all those years ago, addressed to Professor James Baxter, who would shortly become the first Master of the new Adams House:

cover letter

contract-1So of course I was interested in the sign!

Pictures and descriptions flew back and forth as price negotiations got underway.

The sign as seen in Santa Fe.

The sign as seen in Santa Fe. Somewhere along the way, it was cut in two.

Based on typography and construction, the sign almost certainly dates from the 1846 iteration of the Adams House Hotel. (Whether it’s the sign you can see in the 1848 lithograph above we don’t know, but it looks almost identical, and the size and scale are an excellent match. The only real difference is that the sign in the illustration has raised capitals, but that might be artistic license. Regardless, this particular lettering style fell from fashion after the Civil War, so the sign most likely predates the 1882 Victorian incarnation.) The 18″ letters are gilt with paint, hand-carved into a single pine plank 2” thick, 2′ wide, and 16’ long, which weighs close to 80 pounds! The entire black background was then hand-chiseled to produce a rippled effect (click the picture below to enlarge). This was not an inexpensive sign, then or now. Though the exact provenance can’t be proven, a reasonable guess would be that the original hotel sign was retained as a showpiece when the first structure was demolished in 1882, and then later dispersed with the goods of the hotel during bankruptcy in the 30s. By the 1950s, the sign was documented in the hands of a Boston antiques dealer, who sold it to the mother of my caller, who also owned an antique shop — in fact, she named the business Adams House Antiques, where the sign remained over her Santa Fe door until she decided to retire this past year.

Long story short: a mutual price was agreed, the item shipped, and then I took a month or so to gently restore the sign, mending it back into its original single piece frame. Given its age, the sign’s condition is remarkable, no doubt due in part to the many decades spent in the humidity-free desert Southwest.

Here’s how it looks hanging in the Gold Room entrance to the dining hall:

signinsitu

The restored sign hanging in the Gold Room. Click to enlarge the image in order to see the fine chiseled detail.

So, a small piece of the first Adams House returns to its legal successor, the second Adams House, after one hundred-seventy years. A neat bit of cyclical history, don’t you think?

 


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Sending the Elevator Back Down

The other day while randomly flicking through channels, I caught a glimpse of an interview with Kevin Spacey. He’d been asked a question about why he spends so much free time working with young actors. His answer was remarkable. Quoting mentor Jack Lemmon ’47, Spacey said: “I believe that if you have been successful in the business you wanted to be successful in, and if you have achieved a lot of the dreams you’ve dreamed… it’s your obligation… to send the elevator back down.”

Sending the elevator back down.

For years, I’ve been looking for a simple way to describe the work we do at the Foundation. It’s various and variable, covering fields as diverse as historic preservation (through the Suite Museum and Collections); educational programming & scholarships (through our Global Citizenship programs); or real-world research (through the FDR Center for Global Engagement) to find practical solutions to the daunting challenges we face as a nation and a globe to successfully transit the 21st century. But I couldn’t have found a better phrase than this: Sending the elevator back down.

That’s what we do. Plain and simple. We — in this case, I, a dedicated group of alumni, our House Masters, our affiliated faculty, you, our supporters — we all attempt to take some of the incredible good fortune we’ve experienced and pass that forward.

But to continue, we need your help. Over the last year, we have nearly doubled our historic preservation efforts, educational programming, and scholarships due to exceptional demand. Requests to tour the Suite now come almost weekly; our student seminars have expanded in number from one to twelve; our Global Fellowship summer study grants from one to three. We’ve launched an entirely new endeavor, a non-partisan think-tank, the FDR Center for Global Engagement. Yet individual contributions supporting these efforts have fallen off. A common perception is that we receive substantial funds from the University or from major corporate sponsors. We don’t. We do all this solely through the contributions of dedicated volunteers and the generosity of people like you.

Now, I’d like to ask you to consider helping our efforts. (Or, if you already have in the past, to do so again.) There are many easy ways to do this, from sustaining monthly gifts via credit card, to direct donation of money, of airline frequent flyer miles, of stocks, bonds, or securities. We’re a registered 501(c)3, which means for US residents, your contributions are tax deductible. You may donate in someone’s name, from a private foundation, or anonymously. Simply email me a michael.weishan at fdrfoundation dot org and we’ll walk you through the process.

I know you receive appeals from many quarters. But we like to think that this very special place, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation, nestled in the best of all the houses, Adams, in the bosom of the world’s top university, Harvard, is in a unique position to utilize the legacy of one of our greatest presidents to better all our futures. We here have done our best to send that elevator back down. Please help us ensure that the next car up is packed to capacity.

With warmest wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Michael