Sending the Elevator Back Down

Posted on December 31, 2014 by in FDR Suite

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

 





ACHIEVING GLOBAL HEALTH EQUITY IN A GENERATION: A ROAD MAP WITH LARRY SUMMERS AND JULIO FRENK

Posted on October 6, 2014 by in FDR Suite

ACHIEVING GLOBAL HEALTH EQUITY IN A GENERATION:
A ROAD MAP WITH LARRY SUMMERS AND JULIO FRENK

Tuesday October 14, 2014 3:45-5:15
Science Center B, Harvard Yard

health

With the deepening global health crisis in West Africa, it has become ever more apparent, as FDR predicted in 1945, “that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away.” Even more specifically, we have been reminded that the health of America is directly linked to the health of the world. On October 14th, Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Economics Larry Summers and Julio Frenk, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, will discuss a way forward, based on a report published last fall in The Lancet: Global Health 2035. In it, Larry Summers and 23 renowned economists and health experts have proposed that if we make the right investments in the health sector today, the globe could achieve universally low rates of infectious, maternal and child deaths by 2035. In other words, we could shift directions to achieve a “grand convergence” in global health within just one generation.

Join us for a fascinating 45-minute discussion as Professors Summer and Frenk explore the practicalities of global health equity, followed by questions from the audience. The discussion will – given circumstance – also feature a short video update on the Ebola situation from Dr. Paul Farmer, who is heading the American medical response in Sierra Leone.

Tickets: $7.50 for undergraduates, $15 for all others to attend the live event. Tickets to the virtual lecture in Science Center C are free, but you must register. Details HERE

Here’s a Health to King Charles

Posted on October 5, 2014 by in Articles, FDR Suite

 

Screen Shot 2014-10-05 at 12.00.14 PMThroughout  the course of the the Restoration, I’ve been continually surprised and delighted to find little gateways back in time. Here’s another one. Last year, my dear friend Abbot Peterson ’58 died. Recently, his widow – another dear friend – Barbara, was cleaning out some files and came across an old 78. Labelled “Alvin V Laird sings to the class of 1904”, it had been mailed in 1950 to Abbot’s father, Abbot Peterson II, a member of FDR’s class. (As was Mr. Laird.)

The 78 contained two songs: “A Health to King Charles”  and “Dolores.” I haven’t been able to gather much information on “Dolores,” but “King Charles” was a very widely sung drinking ditty which would have been immediately recognized by FDR and Lathrop. The song is based on a poem by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) and perfectly embodies the Victorian romantic longing for causes lost:

BRING the bowl which you boast
Fill it up to the brim;
’Tis to him we love most,
And to all who love him.
Brave gallants, stand up,
And avaunt ye, base carles!
Were there death in the cup,
Here’s a health to King Charles.

Though he wanders through dangers,
Unaided, unknown,
Dependent on strangers,
Estranged from his own;
Though ’tis under our breath,
Amidst forfeits and perils,
Here’s to honor and faith,
And a health to King Charles!

Let such honors abound
As the time can afford,
The knee on the ground,
And the hand on the sword;
But the time shall come round
When, ’mid Lords, Dukes, and Earls,
The loud trumpet shall sound,
Here’s a health to King Charles!

So here, after tracking down someone who still had the means to play and digitize a 78 (!!!), for the first time in over a century, may I present to you: “Here’s a Health to King Charles”

Click the bar below to listen

This song, by the way, is part of an ongoing process to make a CD of “The Music of FDR’s Harvard” that will contain many of these wonderful old melodies well overdue for a come back. As always, your help in making this and our other work possible is greatly appreciated




We’re featured in Harvard Magazine!

Posted on September 12, 2014 by in FDR Suite

1900 glee club 18 x 18 copy

Taken in the fall of 1900, a young FDR (front row second from left) and Lathrop Brown (front row, far right) gaze serenely into their Harvard future.

To mark the debut of the Ken Burns PBS series on the Roosevelts this Sunday,  Harvard Magazine has reprinted Geoffrey Ward’s remarks at the Sixth Annual FDR Memorial Lecture this past May. For those of you who were unable to attend, here’s your chance. Take a look HERE.

The Real Gentleman’s C

Posted on June 30, 2014 by in Articles, FDR Suite

If you google the term “gentleman’s C,” chances are you’ll come up with some version of: “a grade given by certain schools (often Ivy League) to the children of wealthy or influential families in lieu of a failing grade” — that’s certainly what I always thought the term meant. But in FDR’s day, the meaning of a “gentleman’s C” was entirely different. A “C” was the grade a gentleman aspired to, so as not to seem too interested in studies and be considered a “grind.”

A 1909 verse by Robert Grant, ’73, LL.B. 1879, explains this neatly:

The able-bodied C man! He sails swimmingly along.
His philosophy is rosy as a skylark’s matin song.
The light of his ambition is respectably to pass,
And to hold a firm position in the middle of his class.

Should you try to hard, you became the stuff of parody, as the “The Grind’s Song” from the 1902 Hasty Pudding Show HI.KA.YA reveals:

I’m a typical College grind,
I look it, you’ll admit, you’ll admit, you’ll admit
You’ve heard it’s a grind to be a grind
Not a bit, not a bit, not a bit! Just the opposite!
Don’t let my words belie my looks
My happiness is in my books
I love to work, I hate to play
For me life’s simply the other way
Don’t enlist your sympathy, I’m as happy as can be,
For to read my Latin Grammar is life in Arcadie!

To document how much things have changed, I thought you might be interested in seeing the study cards of FDR and Lathrop, president and congressman of the United States, respectively. We’ve recently received copies from the Archives, and will reproduce them for viewing in the Suite.  The upper right hand corner reveals their entrance examination results, and year by year grades proceed from left to right across the bottom.

Click on each to view them full scale.

 

UAIII_15_75_10_F_Box_7_Brown_Lathrop UAIII_15_75_10_F_Box_7_Roosevelt_Franklin

As you can see, both FDR and Lathrop (especially Lathrop!) eschewed any possibility of being viewed as a grind! I find this fascinating, not only because it reveals a student ethos so foreign to the current one, but also because it shows the level of grade inflation since the Vietnam War when most universities across the country, including Harvard, felt the pressure of keeping students from falling below a B average and thereby opening them up to the draft. The result was a rapid escalation of grades, to the point where the average grade at Harvard is now -A. (One of our undergraduates recently made the suggestion during a Suite tour that there hadn’t been grade inflation at all, rather that the current students were just smarter, which left me and several of my peers a moment to wonder at the folly of youth.)

On an entirely different subject, today is the last day of the fiscal year, and our coffers are looking uncomfortably bare, given the roster of programming we have planned for the next academic year. I’d like to urge any of you who have been thinking about making a contribution to the numerous activities of the Foundation, that now is time to so! It’s quick, secure and takes only a few seconds online.