Category Archives: Uncategorized

Greetings2FamilyandFriends, Uncategorized

A Memory from 1993—Parents’ Weekend in Cornell

June 9, 2020 Andy V. 2 Comments

Cleaning out a vintage purse, Tracy happened on the program of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity’s weekend in the spring of 1993 for parents of newly joined freshmen of the fraternity, my son Ryan being among them.

A pleasant weekend it was, with dinner cooked by an executive chef and wines served by a sommelier—both with III’s following their surnames. Only in Cornell?

Perusing the program, I found it contained a short essay entitled “The True Gentleman.” It is attributed to a John Walter Wayland (Virginia, 1899), according to a bit on the web from the North Dakota Chapter of SAE, which claims that it is the product of an essay contest held in Baltimore, Md., on the topic of defining the qualities of a gentleman–these are qualities that, naturally, can and should define gentle people of any gender.

I repeat the essay here as it lists qualities that I wish we saw more of in this day and age in our nation, especially in its leadership. Here is the essay:

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

– John Walter Wayland (Virginia 1899)

I’m glad that my son was associated as a young man with an organization that embraced them, and I believe he has come to embody them. From a proud father as Father’s Day approaches.

When is Son’s Day anyway?

Memories-USMC, Uncategorized

May 25, 2020: A Heavy Duty Memorial Day

May 23, 2020 Andy V. 3 Comments

Most Memorial Days I manage a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. That will not happen on this Monday. I don’t guess, given the state of the Covid-19 pandemic, that I will even venture into the District of Columbia to visit the Vietnam War Memorial. Unless things change shortly, I will stay home and think about the fallen, those I knew and those I did not.

Memorial Day Weekend at home in Reston, VA

I’ve posted on Memorial Days past:

“Memorial Day 2017–Paying Homage to Marine Classmates of 50 Years Ago” https://www.fanande.net?p=508

“Memorial Day 2017-Remembering a Solemn Duty” https://www.fanande.net?p=523

“Memorial Day 2018-Some Scenes, Some Thoughts” https://www.fanande.net?p=579

In those posts I thought of comrades who gave there lives believing they were defending the liberties of Americans. I think of them today. But I also must think of those who have died and are dying during this pandemic. And as I think of them, I can’t help but ask again, as those of us who put on uniforms of US military services have asked of themselves when taking our oaths, “What have I sworn myself to? What will be my solemn obligations? What will I be giving up to carry out those obligations?”

The members of my Marine cohort of 1966 knew their obligations included going to war in Vietnam. We also knew that our personal preferences stood low in the priorities of our service obligations. We knew our faces would be shaven daily, our hair cut weekly, our uniform standards and civilian clothing expectations non-negotiable—not subject to our whims or any sense that we had a “Constitutional” right to those choices while we were in service of the country and others (underline “service to others”). Invoking the Constitution to object to wearing a tie or getting a haircut under such circumstances was simply unimaginable.

Most Americans understood that sacrifices were in order during a crisis on the scale of World War II, at least I am not aware of any law suits objecting to rationing on Constitutional (or any other) grounds. Not having researched this, I can only guess, but in that emergency, it is hard to imagine a suit, if filed, could have succeeded.

All of this speaks, of course, to the anger, sometimes violent, over requirements or requests to wear face masks to reduce the risk that people will unwittingly spread the coronavirus to others. Perhaps this is a reflection of the fact that since World War II ordinary citizens have not been obliged to sacrifice even small freedoms to help advance a national cause. The chief obligation seems to have been to stand at sporting events and applaud men and women in uniform or first responders of one kind or another—all deserving to be sure, if somewhat tiresome to those for which it is intended.

Now, in this “war,” all Americans should think of themselves as combatants. How then is being asked to suffer the discomfort of facemasks to protect others too much to ask? How can such a small matter be such a grave infringement? I would ask those whose names appear below, “What is too much to ask in the service of fellow citizens?”

In memory of those many who have given their all in other wars. av

Postscript: Today (May 25) I received and read an emailed essay Maya Lin had written about her thinking behind the design and her experience in the competition and the completion of the memorial in 1982. She was only a senior at Yale when she entered her drawing into a design competition her architecture class fortuitously learned about. It was a competition that would draw more than 1300 entries. She wrote the essay soon after she designed the memorial, but it wasn’t published until the year 2000, when it appeared in the New York Review of Books. The above image, with B Company classmate Matthew O. McKnight’s name at the center, demonstrates precisely what Ms. Lin hoped to achieve. Read “Making the Memorial,” Maya Lin, November 2000.”

Memoiries-Parents, Memories-Childhood, Uncategorized

Stuck at Home: Catching Up on Images of Childhood

April 13, 2020 Andy V. Leave a comment

While I am doing work at home during the current crisis, the limits of the possible permit me to spend time doing other things. There is yardwork–a war of its own perhaps to be mentioned in another time.

For now, I have countless 35mm slides in our basement. So, I thought it might be fun to bring them into the digital world. I will try to do this mostly chronologically, but expect diversions.

I don’t know that I will have any deep thoughts here. Just reflections on memorable moments, moments illuminated by this long idle slide collection.

Part One: Father and Mother (Isa ja Ema) in the 1950s.

The collection, so far the earliest I have identified, contain a few images of my father and mother at times and places I remained home–an early latch key kid–another story I have toyed with.

The story I have told up to now has been of Ema’s devotion to me and to our mutual survival. As well, I have talked of Isa’s later arrival and his reunion with Ema and his pursuit of higher education and professional work in the United States. The image below shows the two together, with other Estonians at a small celebration of some kind–a marriage, a birthday, an anniversary? I’d bet on the former: flowers, champagne, a corsage of two.

Isa and Ema at a party — Isa and Ema at the far end of the table (in the right corner).

Another view of the party, Isa looking to be deep in some other thought.

For Isa, the early years in the United States involved work–eventually leading to a profession he had not been interested before the war. Music would have been his profession in Estonia. In the United States it turned elsewhere, work as a draftsman, schooling toward advanced degrees in civil engineering, and eventually computer programming early in the IT revolution. Below are two images that I can only speculate suggest an interest in the 50s in Columbia University, which had a major architecture program. Instead, he would eventually enter an eight-year night program at Cooper Union leading to a degree in engineering. It was a tuition-free program; Columbia’s would not have been. (Columbia rejected my application in 1961.)

Isa standing on the grounds of Columbia University. — Isa standing on the campus of Columbia University. Date unknown, probably mid-1950s. I would find myself there at commencement 2019, giving a presentation to the commissioning ceremony of the Columbia NROTC class in the Lowe Library, the building behind Isa.

Visible in the image above to the right of the Lowe Library is St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, a magnificent edifice that I would visit in 2019 when I participated in that event. Below during a lovely spring, Isa.

Isa t St. John the Divine Cathedral — A most impressive cathedral near Columbia University is St. John the Divine, by which Isa here stands.

Another view of Isa is in a visit to Battery Park. I imagine the view of the Statue of Liberty from there would have held great meaning in those early days of his life in New York. Fortunately, he did not live to see the television advertisements of the insurance company, Liberty Mutual, that have trivialized the great monument.

And finally, in this portion, I offer an image of Isa in front of the under-construction New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle in New York. The highly controversial project went up during 1954–56. I can only guess that at that point Isa was working for a drafting firm that had some share of responsibility for the project. One can’t say it would be lasting monument to anything. By 1986 it was gone. I remember it from the its years of existence as a destination for a pair of adolescent friends from the Bronx out to see the latest at the annual automobile show. The coliseum was also a feature of our journeys to New York Ranger hockey games at Madison Square Garden, just ten blocks down the street from the Columbus Circle subway station. That, too, would evaporate later, its name moved to a structure at Penn Station a mile south.

To be continued.

Memories-Childhood, Memories-Parents, Uncategorized

A Miracle Delivered to Our Doorstep

March 9, 2017 Andy V. 3 Comments

As an Estonian-American (some would say a lapsed one), I am a small contributor to the Estonian American National Council, which represents the interests and heritage of Estonians and their offspring living in the United States. Its most recent mailing urging renewed contributions contained a spot announcing the availability of its recently published book, “Exiles in a Land of Promise: Estonians in America, 1945–1995. ($90 plus shipping.)

The book arrived yesterday—the miracle of the subject line. It is a professionally done masterwork, one that should interest—actually enthrall—those still-living emigres in that community of exiles and their descendants. Indeed, the inside title page, with its image of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, taken from the harbor on September 22, 1944, set my heart a pounding. I immediately imagined my mother, with her two-month old son (me) in October 1944, taking in that same view as the ship on which we were embarked pulled away for its voyage to Germany—and away from a Soviet army soon to occupy all of Estonia.

Although written and published well before November 2016, the book’s first chapter speaks directly to today’s climate surrounding refugees and their immigration into the United States. “Who knew?” is the question that explodes from the book’s first chapter, “Arrival of the Viking Boats.” It recounts, based on solid research, the voyages and arrival in the late 1940s in the United States (all illegal) of Estonians and other Balts on sail boats that took weeks to cross the Atlantic. Rudimentary instruments and elementary maps and courageous pilots (and passengers) brought most across the wide Atlantic. Though the numbers researchers offer vary, one cited in the book says “46 boats left Sweden before 1949; seventeen landed in the US; and ten reached Canada. Six ended up in South Africa and five in Argentina. Three stopped in England, and one headed south to Brazil. Two others were lost without a trace. Perhaps 250 Estonians reached American shores after grueling, storm-lashed voyages.” Images accompanying this chapter suggest that calling these vessels “Viking Boats” grossly overstates their size.

But never mind, the most salient points of this chapter are that the passengers of this little collection of boats became illegal aliens in the United States and their arrival sparked a mixed, though ultimately favorable, reception. Some saw an invasion of potential Marxist subversives. Others saw the Estonian displaced persons (DPs) as “Delayed Pilgrims,” the narrative that won the day and became a key factor, the book argues, in opening the doors to legal immigration by an act of Congress that President Truman signed in 1948. As a beneficiary in 1950 with my mother (and a year later my father) of that act, I find this story both eye-opening and breath-taking.

From that beginning, the book settles into a well thought-out rhythm (beautifully illustrated and laid out over more than 550 pages) that addresses the political context in which the emigre populations lived in their various communities around the United States and the political movements within which its hopes evolved and were pronounced and ultimately realized with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the restoration of independence.

As a New York City-centric Estonian-American who empty-headedly figured all Estonian Americans existed within sight of the Empire State Building and who met to eat and drink at the Estonian House on 34th Street, I now beg forgiveness for my lack of awareness of communities of Estonians from Alaska to Cucamonga, California, to Fresno to Minnesota to Chicago and to Alabama and to Connecticut and places in between, which are described in this culmination of twenty years of work.

In addition, the book provides a wealth of material on Estonian-American organizations of all sorts, religious, musical, military, Scouts, and more. It contains reference material and extremely well done graphics displaying the distribution and number of Estonian-Americans and more.

Much more could be said, but let me end here with the most hearty congratulations to all involved in this work, including the leaders of the Council and the crew led by Editor Priit Vesilind.

And, most of all, a sincerely heartfelt Thank You!!

For information on the Council and the book, go to: http://www.estosite.org/

Rummaging through Andy's Memory Shack