It could happen to you: surviving a stroke

Presented to the Club in 2007 by Brad Spear

I’m going to ask your patience this evening, as I am going to devote my paper tonight to something that happened to me…not out of a sense of self-indulgence, mind you, but instead, as a cautionary tale. You see, this evening’s story is not really about me and how wonderful I might be. Instead, it’s about others and about how their composure, their thoughtfulness, and skill have made it possible for me to be here this evening.

I am proof-on-the-hoof that you can suffer a significant stroke, and be ready to talk about it nine months later…with almost no apparent aftereffects.

First a caveat: thanks to the fact that among my fellow members are those who practice the art of medicine, I will avoid being technical. In fact, I may get a term or two wrong. But what’s important about my tale is what happened to me…and what, if you are as lucky as I was, those around you must do to help you. You see, it could happen to you.

At the time of the stroke, I was 55 years old. I'd quit smoking cigarettes some twenty years before. In the previous three months or so, I’d made an effort to lose 25 pounds. As has been my habit before and since, I'd made a point of getting daily exercise…anywhere between and hour and ninety minutes of vigorous aerobic and anaerobic exercise. And though I was and I’m still fond of a nightly martini…I'd been minding what I ate.

In short I’d been doing what I was supposed to be doing. And yet it happened all the same.

It was the night before Mother’s Day. My wife, Ellen, who runs Hancock Shaker Village had been fussing all day over the details of the opening reception for her major exhibit for the summer season…Handle with Care…a collection of common objects manufactured in the 18th and 19th Centuries by the Shakers…and the private collection of a dentist from West Hartford, Connecticut. The objects are the beautifully designed and crafted tools of daily life…dust pans, hand saws, brushes, kettles….

The opening of the new exhibit called for a special preview for the corporate donors who made it possible, for the members of the board of directors for the village, for the West Hartford dentist and his wife, for important friends of the village, and for the senior staff. Oh, and I managed to wangle an invitation, too.

The affair was pleasant enough. We sipped on wine and munched on hors d'oeuvres, all the principal participants, my wife Ellen, the village's curator, Christian Goodwillie, and dentist/collector, all had a chance to speak their piece, and those who attended were able to preview the exhibit the night before it was due to open.

Ellen's plan was to take the principal participants to dinner at Rouge in West Stockbridge. We traveled in separate cars and reassembled at the restaurant… twelve in all. The staff had prepared a long table for us in the back room, and all were in a triumphant mood. The reception had been a success, the exhibit was well-received by those who had attended, the accompanying catalogue had been written, edited, laid-out and published successfully. 'Twas an evening to celebrate.

To facilitate conversation, we staggered the seating, asking each couple to have a person other than their spouse sit across the table from them. I sat against the wall with the board chairman's wife to one side and the dentist/collector's wife on the other. Across from me sat the dentist and to his left (my right) sat my wife.

The wine flowed freely, although I had no more to drink than anyone else. We ate appetizers, drank more wine, ordered our entrees, and had a thoroughly lovely time.

For an appetizer, I'd ordered snails, having enjoyed them in the past and not having had them in while. For the main course, I ordered Maryland soft-shelled crab. Interestingly enough, both my appetizer and entree seemed incredibly salty. However, as no one else at the table had ordered the same things, I made no mention of it. My job at my wife's work affairs is to add to the atmosphere, not detract from it. The table was buzzing with laughter and conversation. All seemed to enjoy each other's company.

While conversing with the dentist's wife, I felt the back of my neck tighten, a feeling which spread forward to my temples. Never having had a typical migraine headache, I thought to myself, this must be what's happening. What a time for this!

The tightness increased, and it felt almost as the back of my head had become a component in something mechanical...perhaps electric...some mechanism buried deep in the middle of an electric razor, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

To my embarrassment, I began to sweat profusely. The room hadn't been especially hot or close, and yet my brow was beginning to drip. I sought to discreetly mop my brow with the linen napkin on my lap...and discovered I couldn't raise my right hand more than an inch or so. I transferred the napkin to my left hand and blotted my forehead.

By this time, the table had been cleared of the main course, and the waitresses were taking dessert orders. My brow continued to perspire, and I continued to blot it dry. But in a matter of moments, it felt as through someone had smeared a peppery paste across the upper half of my face...including in my eyes, which tingled painfully.

The waitress worked her way down the table toward me. I felt panicky. Had I had too much to drink? Was I suffering from a reaction to the shellfish I'd eaten? How in the world could I extract myself from this without embarrassing my wife, her institution or myself?

The waitress was standing across from me now, holding her pad and pen, looking sternly in my direction. She had taken the dentist's order, his wife's order, and now it was my turn, “What is it that you would like, sir?” she said expectantly.

I'd ruled out having dessert, for I'd only recently lost the weight and I'd been particularly conscious of portion control. Coffee, that's what I'd have. Yes, coffee...that wonderful elixir that can seemingly revive the dead. And not some fancy pants coffee, either. Good old American coffee.

I raised my face to address her...only to discover that I couldn't summon speech.

American coffee...that's what I wanted to say...please! American coffee!

My lower lip trembled for what seemed an eternity as I looked to harness my vocal chords, my tongue, my lips and my teeth to speak. I pushed and pushed. Nothing. I pushed again. “American coffee” damn it, that's all I want to say. Nothing.

The pause was unbearable. The waitress began to look at me oddly. I pushed some more. Finally something came out, “Kaff!” was all I could manage. Oh Lord, I really had had too much to drink...and here I was so out of it I couldn't speak!

The folks around me found my outburst amusing, and they resumed their conversation. Luckily, the ladies on either side of me were quite voluable, and I was able to remain silent, participating in the patter by simply nodding and smiling.

By this time my wife, who'd been engaged in conversation with the other end of the table, noticed my odd behavior...the mopping of the brow and the sudden quietness that had overtaken me. She looked at me in puzzlement and mouthed the words, “What's wrong?”

Though I hadn't been able to vocalize a moment or so ago, I was able to mouth back, “I'm sick.” In reply, she mouthed, “Stand up.” I mouthed back, “I can't.”

She later told me that it was at this point she thought to herself, “Oh, brother, he's pooped in his pants!”

The desserts arrived...although my coffee never made the trip...and my wife made an effort to settle the bill then and there. She deftly got all to finish their meals, grab their coats, and say their farewells. I managed to lift myself to my feet behind the table...and nodded and gestured good-bye with my left hand.

My wife turned to me, as the last person departed. I had managed to get myself from behind the long table and out on the floor, but my right leg was floppy, and I couldn't use it to bear my weight. She came to my side and propped me up. “What's wrong?” she asked, thinking I'd had too much to drink. Somehow I was able to vocalize the words, “I’m awfully sick; I'm sorry.” You see, I too, was still thinking I'd had too much to drink.

She helped me out of the restaurant, and I asked her to drive home. There was no way I could have managed.

On the trip, she began to ask me what was happening. To the best of my ability, I attemped to tell her what was wrong. She later told me that all throughout the conversation, I'd manage to articulate clusters of thoughts...which suddenly in mid-sentence would switch to jabberwocky...and then, just as suddenly, would switch back to cogent speech. In my mind, what I was saying was all quite cogent, thank you very much. But apparently by the time it crossed my lips, it wasn't.

We drove up Swamp Road in West Stockbridge, making our way north to our home in Pittsfield. Ellen felt compelled to make me talk, fearing that I might pass out. I obliged her as best I could. But what had affected me so in the restaurant, seemed to pass, then to well up again.

As our then-eleven year old son Ben had been at home waiting for our return, we both agreed that it would be best if we went home. If I was feeling better by the time we got there, then we'd stay and wait whatever it was out. But my wife insisted that if I still was in the throes of whatever it was, we'd tuck Ben into bed and head for the hospital.

It was still coming and going in waves by the time we pulled into the garage. When it was waning, I could walk and speak with little but some difficulty. When it was waxing, my speech was garbled and my right side would flop around.

The symptoms in the restaurant had struck around 10:30...and by now it was approximately 11:15. Little did we realize that the clock was ticking...and that the worst thing we could have done was to remain home to wait it out.

I'd made it into the house on my own power, and my speech was beginning to return. However, once inside, the symptoms began their return. It was clear to both my wife and me that I should go to Berkshire Medical Center.

Ellen put Ben to bed, told him we were off to the emergency room as his father was very ill, but assured him that I was going to be all right. Though worried sick that the truth was otherwise, little did she realize how prescient she was being.

From our house off Holmes Road, it's less than 15 minutes to the Emergency Room. She helped me get into the car and we drove there directly. We parked in their garage, and as I got out of the car, I discovered I couldn't walk there by myself. Ellen propped herself beneath my right arm, and we slowly made our way into the waiting area.

Though it was a Saturday night, there were only a handful of prospective patients waiting for treatment. You may not realize how fortunate we are to have a fully qualified emergency facility that is not perpetually overwhelmed by patient demand. Were we in Albany, Springfield, Hartford, or any one of the Longwood-area Harvard teaching hospitals in Boston...the wait for medical attention, unless you are brought in by ambulance, is long and frustrating.

An attendant immediately seated me in a wheelchair, I was processed by an RN, and I was admitted to care in the emergency room within ten minutes.

Once in there, I had my basics (temperature, weight, blood pressure, etc) taken by a nurse, was asked to lie down in a room separated from the main area by a curtain, and within minutes was examined by the physician on duty.

It's at this point that many of the details of the events that followed are a bit hazy. I believe I received an injection and was given an aspirin the size of a horse pill. I also was examined by the neurologist on call. At her direction, I was wheeled to a small room, where I received a CAT-scan of my head.

As the physicians among us can attest, a CAT-scan is rather cursory device in this application, used primarily to see if I was suffering from bleeding in the brain. Luckily I wasn't.

At this point, about 1:30 am, the neurologist decided to admit me to the stroke unit. She consulted with my wife, who decided to go home to be with my son.

The physician promised she would call if I were to take a turn for the worse.

Not long after arriving in the stroke unit...which is a three-bed room with an attending RN at a desk in the room with you...I was once again wheeled off to another small room...this time to receive an MRI.

If you've never had an MRI, you lie on a table on a track that slides you into a tube. There you lie for about twenty minutes as all manner of pounding and clanking goes on about you.

I'd had an MRI before. I knew what to expect. Unfortunately, I am a claustrophobe, and the previous MRI I'd had some ten years earlier was an unbearable experience.

These days, before such a procedure, you take a sedative in pill form about an hour before, which causes you to be as serene as the Dali Lama. Unfortunately I wasn't able to tell the staff that night of my fear of enclosed spaces.

It was a bit of a struggle, and I balked at first. But once given a sedative intravenously, I became a compliant patient.

They returned me to my room, made me comfortable, and let me sleep.

The next morning there was plenty of poking and prodding. I had to demonstrate to the attending neurologist my grip and my leg strength...which, though lessened by the events of the night before, seemed to be on the return.

An occupational therapist came in to grill me about my eating and exercise habits.

My primary care physician came in to examine me.

My wife and my son came into the room around 8:00 am, and brought the
morning papers. I managed speech throughout all of this, though I noticed I was having difficulty organizing my thoughts. When asked a question, there seemed to me to be a delay between the time I recognized what was being asked, and the time it took to formulate and then utter a response. “Some way to celebrate Mothers' Day,” I told my wife.

While Ellen and Ben were with me, the neurologist who would ultimately oversee my case came in to see me. He explained what he believed had happened after having read the results of my MRI. He told me that I may have suffered from what's termed a “dissection” of the carotid artery in my brain stem. The artery is a tube within a tube, and a split in the inner wall can occur, collecting blood cells and bulging inward...eventually bulging enough to lessen and even cut off the blood flow to the brain. The substances I'd been given when I first arrived in the emergency room had succeeded in busting through the bulging dissection, restoring the flow of blood in the brain stem.

He later told me that the dissection was one of two possible scenarios. The other cause may have been a small hole between two chambers of my heart, which allowed a clot returning from my extremities to pass into the chamber which pumps oxygenated blood from the lungs into the brain. A later procedure conducted by a cardiologist confirmed that I do, indeed, have a small hole between the incoming and outgoing chambers of my heart...the cause of the stroke suffered by New England Patriots linebacker Teddy Bruschi.

I remained in the hospital for another two days, improving all the while. After being discharged, I spent the next week or so at home.

After yet another visit to the neurologist, I was given permission to return to work on a half-day basis and to resume my exercise regimen at roughly half the intensity of what I'd been doing before the stroke.

The physical symptoms were the ones that seem to diminish the fastest. My strength in my right arm and my right leg were back within the ten days. My ability to summon speech and organize and express my thoughts, though still labored for the following month or two, returned gradually. The one aftereffect that has all but disappeared...and lingered longest....was the tendency to tire after prolonged concentration. Nine months later, through probably 95 to 99%
recovered, I still don't have the mental stamina I could command before the stroke.

Lessons to be learned from all of this?

First, we are fortunate, indeed, to have a facility like Berkshire Medical Center in our midst. As I learned from Ron and his wife in the bar at Spice some months later, BMC has made a concerted effort to beef up its ability to respond to stroke emergencies. If you have a stroke, there's no better place than the Berkshires to have one.

Second, learn to recognize when either you or your spouse is having a stroke. I'm passing out a cartoon-y little brochure that uses the mnemonic device F-A-S-T to detail what you ought to do. It's a sixty second read...and one that may help you save a life. The bottom line is simple, if you can obtain treatment within three hours of the onset of a stroke, you, like me, stand a very good chance of recovery.

Third and last, be aware that no matter how long ago you quit smoking...or how properly you eat...or how much vigorous exercise you do...which we all must do to maintain good cardiovascular health...you still may end up suffering a stroke.

If it happened to me, it could happen to you.

Don't ask, don't tell: Living with Sturge-Weber Syndrome

Presented to the Club by Erik Bruun

“It is as easy to see yourself as it is to look backwards without turning around”
—Henry David Thoreau

I. The Wonders of Thalidomide

On July 16, 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Thalidomide as a treatment for Hansen’s disease, a form of leprosy. The decision prompted an immediate reaction from the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada.

“Thalidomiders (as we call ourselves) feel compelled to remind the world of the tragedy of the late fifties and early sixties when 10,000-12,000 babies were born needlessly disabled as a result of negligence and greed,” the association wrote in its statement the next day. “We remind the world that no one will ever have a full accounting of those children who were never born or died in the first three days of life…. We of the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada will never accept a world with Thalidomide in it.”

Thalidomide was first synthesized in 1953 in West Germany. Four years later on October 1, 1957, the German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grunenthal began marketing the drug as a sedative for pregnant mothers, mainly in Germany and Britain. Thalidomide became available in at least 46 other countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Thalidomide was hailed as a “wonder drug” that provided a safe, sound sleep for pregnant mothers. It was effective in fighting many of the symptoms of morning sickness.

Unknown to the doctors who prescribed the medicine and the mothers who swallowed the pills, Thalidomide molecules could cross the placental wall and affect the fetus with catastrophic consequences. It took more than four years to link Thalidomide with the spate of malformed babies that were being born across the world. Quite specifically, if the mother took Thalidomide between the 35th and 50th day of pregnancy, her baby was subject to an extremely high risk of deformities. Between Days 35 and 37, the baby was likely to lose his or her ears and be deaf; between Days 39 to 41, the baby was likely to be born without arms; between Days 43 and 48, there was a high risk of malformed fingers and joints. Thalidomide caused a wide range of severe defects to ears, arms, legs and internal formations. Doctors have identified more than 15,000 babies that were severely harmed by Thalidomide, at least 3,000 of whom died in the womb. Of the 12,000 known to be born with defects, more than 4,000 died within a year. There are about 5,000 survivors alive today, according to the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada.

The first doctor to make the connection between Thalidomide and the gruesome birth defects was an Australian gynecologist named Dr. McBride who believed the drug caused defects to three children he had seen at the Crown Street Hospital in Sydney in the middle of 1961. In November 1961 German and British physicians began to publicly blame Thalidomide for the outbreak of limb and ear malformations among newborns. Chemie Gruenenthal (which 10 years later settled a class action lawsuit with a 100 million Mark settlement paid to 2,866 German victims) fought the accusations. But on December 2, 1961, Thalidomide was withdrawn from the markets in West Germany and Great Britain. Inexplicably, the drug remained available in Canada and many other countries for several more months.

Chemie Gruenenthal had tried to market Thalidomide in the United States in 1960. The Food and Drug Administration assigned the request to the agency’s newest reviewer, Frances Oldham Kelsey, who had previously done animal toxicity research on the effects of medication in pregnancy. Kelsey refused to clear Thalidomide for sale until she obtained better documentation explaining the neurological effects of the drug on fetuses. The company had only done scant research on the effects of the drug on pregnancy and, it turned out later, had faked some of the results. The U.S. marketer William S. Merrell Company placed pressure on the FDA to clear Thalidomide for sale, but Kelsey would not budge until more data had been collected, preventing thousands of deformities and deaths. In August 1962, President John F. Kennedy presented Kelsey with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest civilian award in the United States.

II. Sturge-Weber Syndrome

By the time Kelsey received her award, my father—an intern intent on becoming a neurologist—had identified the red blemish that stains about 2/3 of my face as a symptom of a neurological disorder called Sturge-Weber Syndrome. Doctors call them angiomas, but they are more commonly called port-wine stains. Why they chose port wine, as opposed to say Pinot Noir, I don’t know. But this port-wine stain, or facial angioma, has marked my face from the day I was born until this moment. It is one of several symptoms that I carry. Others include a slight reading disorder, congenital glaucoma in my right eye, attention deficit disorder, some malformations called blebs along the lining of my lungs that led to my being treated for collapsed lungs three times, and an undetermined number of hemangiomas along the edges of my brain.

I understand hemangiomas to be like cans of worms in my brain, tight malformed collections of blood vessels that pose a risk to seizures of my brain if they break open. So far, I have not had any seizures. About half of Sturge-Weber victims have seizures, usually starting as small children. The other symptoms that I have not been fated with are mental retardation and epilepsy.

Sturge-Weber is a rare disease affecting approximately 1 in 50,000 people. The syndrome is named after two British physicians, a neurologist named William Sturge and Dr. Frederick Weber. Sturge first made the link between the facial markings and vascular malformations in the brain in a presentation to the Medical Society of London in 1879. Weber was a prodigious researcher and chronicler of unusual maladies whose name has been linked to at least four diseases. Weber’s connection to me originates from a 1922 radiological study on the atrophy of the brain associated with the disease.

None of the medical literature that I read (or more accurately, tried to read, as much of it is impenetrable to a non-physician) links Sturge-Weber to Thalidomide. However, my grandfather, a Danish doctor, gave my mother Thalidomide to help ease her through her pregnancy with me. As my parents lived in Denmark at the time, it was a simple matter to get the drug.

According to my father, a study in Sweden was done in the 1960s on the effects of Thalidomide on monkeys. Some of the newborn monkeys in the study had Sturge-Weber. The study was written in Swedish and has not been translated into English. Sturge-Weber manifests itself as a neurological disorder to the fetus in ways that sound all too familiar to the way Thalidomide affected babies when we were embryos. Doctors do not know what causes Sturge-Weber and there is no cure for the disease, although there are ways to control each of the symptoms.

III. The Stronger the Wind, the Tougher the Tree

Two months ago I knew virtually none of the information I just read to you. I knew I had Sturge-Weber and I was aware of my own symptoms, minus the hemangiomas. I refused to believe that my collapsed lungs were linked to the disease, preferring to identify the problem with the more appealing category of young, tall, thin, fair-haired men of Scandanavian backgrounds. I did not know any of the history or who or what Sturge or Weber was. My knowledge of Thalidomide was scant, though I knew that my father attributed my condition to the drug, and I had a college classmate with the tiny fins that are really the malformed arms of a Thalidomider. I didn’t even know how to spell Sturge-Weber or Thalidomide. It took me three tries to successfully Google Sturge-Weber. I was, in short, ignorant of the syndrome that marks who I am and colors virtually every initial perception of me. Before telling you about the experience of having this disease, I want to first describe what it has been like to discover the depth of my own blindness, or denial, about myself.

I first thought about choosing this as the topic of my paper about a year ago when a friend of mine had done some research on Thalidomide for a college paper. She was one of the few people who I had told about the possible connection between Thalidomide and my red skin. She reported some of the history of the drug and its physiological impacts. Nobody had ever done this with me before, taken an interest in the forbidden topic of my skin and then openly spoken to me about it. As silly as it may sound, her non-judgmental inquiry released me from my self-imposed prohibition in learning more about the condition. This was a place I would not trod, I think because of some unspoken agreement with my parents who I believe (and with good reason) did not want me to be curious, believing that it somehow protected me and/or fearing that they might be implicated by my knowledge.

Having figured out how to spell Thalidomide and Sturge-Weber, my head spun as I came on to web pages with photographs of babies without arms, angry statements denouncing the pharmaceutical industry, and then finally, the home page of The Sturge Weber Foundation, topped with a row of portraits of people with the same facial angiomas that I carry. The foundation is more than 20 years old, has two on-line support groups, invests in medical research of the disease, provides referrals for doctors, and published two books on the disease, both of which I bought. Its motto is “The stronger the wind, the tougher the trees,” a sentiment I instantly understood for the psychological impact of having a condition that is simultaneously a source of shame and pride, one that marks me as different and seemingly alone, and looking vulnerable, but also feeling very tough underneath.

Doing this research has been like being placed in a milkshake mixer, tossed upside down a couple of times, and then dumped, my head spinning, my legs wobbling, and me uncertain about the ground I am standing on. I have spent a lifetime being rigidly determined to not feel sorry for myself, a feeling affirmed by the stories of babies with seizures and armless adults who have suffered terribly. At the same time, as I think about my own experiences and read account after account of other people with similar experiences, waves of regret, sadness and confusion overtake me. Imagine reading about a man who had Sturge-Weber all his life without any seizures and then at 38 is killed by a massive seizure, or learning that 70% of people with port-wine stains believe it has affected our employability, a thought that never even crossed my mind before, but now makes me wonder. As I have read about the sadness, confusion and anger of parents and their struggles with the disease, I wonder about how my parents (divorced when I was 7) reacted to me, especially the complication of my father’s father giving my mother the pills that were tagged as the cause of the problem. Plus, the complicating fact that my father became a neurologist who could explain everything there was to know about the disease but was powerless to do anything about it.

IV. My Year as a Pirate

The first symptom that I recall being consciously aware of was the loss of sight in my right eye caused by glaucoma. When I was 6 years old my parents moved to New York City and took me to a wonderful eye doctor named Doctor Trokel who treated the eye, which had become a “lazy eye.” If as an infant one of your eyes has poor vision, the brain will program itself to rely more heavily on the good eye, and will increasingly ignore the bad eye. This creates a self-reinforcing pattern that makes the bad eye even worse, or lazy. The way to correct a lazy eye, or at least my lazy eye, was to place a patch on my good eye to force the brain to start paying attention again to the bad eye, helping to restore its vision with the aid of glasses as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle. So long as this is done before you are 7 years old, you can partially correct the deteriorated sight, which is what happened to me. Simple enough. I remember the first morning I went to school with these new glasses and a patch, though, standing in the doorway crying and crying, refusing to enter the classroom because the other children would see me in this condition. Never mind that they had all just walked by me without comment. Finally, my teacher came up with the clever idea of drawing a picture of a pirate on the patch. I have this image of myself, six years old, sitting among my classmates quite satisfied by this solution. For the next year, my teacher dutifully drew pirates, cowboys, and other images that would resonate for a 6-year-old boy forced to wear a patch.

Although my vision had been partially corrected, the root of the problem was glaucoma, which is not curable. It causes pressure in the back of the eye that eventually erodes the optic nerve and can lead to blindness. When I was about 15 years old a different doctor prescribed a new eye drop that had been invented called Timoptic to control the pressure. Although he was a knowledgeable doctor, he was a horrid man. I refuse to remember his name. One time, he had a resident under his stewardship come in to try to diagnose my condition. It was one of the most shaming moments of my life. They talked about my eye and the redness of my skin as if I was a blob of cells under a microscope without feelings or thoughts. “Severe acne?” the resident said when the doctor asked him what he thought was the problem with my skin. The combination of denial, my distaste for the doctor who prescribed the eye drops, and my well-founded suspicion of the pharmaceutical industry led me to be very lax about the application of the eye drops. The result, 30 years later, is that my eyesight is now deteriorating pretty rapidly, although I have in the last year or two become much better at using the eye drops, but it is a case of too little, too late.

V. Erik the Red

The second great favor that my first-grade teacher did was to give a lesson about Erik the Red, the marauding Danish Viking who conquered Iceland and discovered Greenland. I am from Denmark, my name is Erik, and my face is red. Woohoo, what a man! For a while, I had the nickname Erik the Red. This was a source of strength. Even as I write this I wonder if my teacher purposefully added him to the curriculum as a way to help me be accepted among my classmates. I went to a grade school—Manhattan Country School—that was founded in the 1960s with the mission of racial justice. My classmates were children of all colors, so I was just another part of the rainbow.

The redness of my skin is far and away my most visible symptom. In addition to my face, it covers most of my right arm, the right side of my chest and the lower part of my right leg. Realistically, I do not think it is that bad or unattractive. I think that it is one of the first things that people notice when they meet me. It is a matter of some curiosity, and then over time, it fades away, both as something that is seen in me or consciously thought about. Children between 5 and 8 years old are the only ones who reliably say out loud the question “What happened to your face?” Others think it, but they don’t ask. Was I in a fire? Do I have a tremendously bad sunburn? Is it a birthmark gone wild? Severe acne? I participate in this agreement to not say anything and the unspoken topic becomes an invisible barrier that silently helps isolate me from intimate friendships and relationships.

I can only recall one real conversation about it until a few years ago and that was with my father, by then a neurologist of many years. We were in his office and he was wearing his white doctor’s jacket. I had just done incredibly badly in a standardized 9th-grade English test, ranking me in the bottom 10 percent of the world in my writing skills, a notch above the mentally retarded. That was when I learned about Thalidomide and the connection between my skin, eye, and learning disorder. Aside from that conversation, nobody talked to me about the color of my skin. When I finally built up the nerve to ask my mother three years ago her feelings about it, her response was “What red skin?” And this was the way I lived, obliviously. Except, of course, whenever I looked in the mirror or, even worse, saw myself in photographs, vivid reminders of the unspoken reality.

The silence proved fertile ground for fantasies about how people “really” responded to me when I turned my back—with sneers and mockery? This response only happened in reality once, as far as I know. I was driving back from JFK Airport very late at night returning from Mexico City wearing a suit and tie. I stopped to get gas on Route 22. When I went inside to get a bottle of water, I walked past a small group of teenagers clustered around a car. All four stared at me and then as I entered the store, one of the young guys said “That dude’s seriously fucked up!” I spun around as the pretty blonde girls laughed. I stared at them in vicious silence and then went inside to get my water, furious, embarrassed, and proud.

VI. All That Other Stuff

Like my eye and skin, I have tried to blithely ignore my personal cluster of other symptoms at a certain level, but at another level I tackle them head on. A learning disorder? I went to the tutors and willed myself to prove the tests wrong. I became a professional writer. Some people don’t believe that I have a learning disability, but it is true. I also have an attention deficit disorder that I have overcompensated for with a work ethic that has at times bordered on the ridiculous. My faulty lungs? When people gasp at the term a “collapsed lung” I respond that it is no big deal, quoting a doctor-friend-of-the-family who described it as a giant hiccup, which is true, but it also requires a chest tube being jabbed through my ribs while I am awake and 6 to 10 days in the hospital. Does it affect my ability to run long distances? No way!

The medical literature talks about the secondary psychological effects, especially from the port-wine stains. It says that we tend to have low self-esteem. One article writes about the impact on parents. “Stages of deep-seated anger often complicate reactions to Sturge-Weber syndrome,” Patricia Gibson wrote in the textbook Sturge-Weber Syndrome. “Why me? Why my child? Why not someone else? Anger may be expressed toward God, parents, spouses, or health personnel…. This anger is misdirected, often to hide deeper feelings of fear, vulnerability, and loss of control.

“There may be another stage, one of mourning for the perfect child who is not to be, often accompanied by depression, sadness, and a sense of loss. The loss of the dreamed-of child is more than a sudden change or disappointment: it is the loss of something in which the parents have a significant emotional investment. This outcome was not expected. Unfortunately, the emotional effects of this loss of dreams are seldom addressed.” I would love to think that none of these things are true of me, but to say so would be misleading and to believe it, delusional.

The final symptom that I have just learned about is the hemoangiomas that line my brain. I almost wrote that this (finally!) was not a case of my own denial, but that wouldn’t be true as at any moment for my entire adult life I could have looked up the disease and learned about it. My father has known about them for a very long time, but did not tell me about them. When I asked him he said that they do not pose a health risk as I did not have any seizures as a child. At first I believed him, but now I don’t. My evidence is that just yesterday (10 days ago) I read an email from a man describing how his brother, Ronald de Souza, had Sturge-Weber and didn’t have his first seizure until he was 38. He then had three small seizures and a fourth one that killed him. This anecdote helps explain why it was impossible for me to get health insurance as an individual when I was working as a freelance writer. That story also cemented my decision to see a neurologist who is not my father.

VII. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

I am different from other people, but so are we all. I am not the only person in this room who has faced the prospects of his own mortality. Some of you have confronted this in ways much more present and daunting than my recent experience. We all have ticking time bombs inside of us. Picnic lighting has touched each of our lives in some way, I am certain. We each have topics that we avoid talking about and looking at because of the feelings of shame, guilt, anger or sadness that they trigger.

The distinction for me is that my difference is inescapably visible. Unlike others, I can point to the stain that colors my soul. Many of us fear that there is something wrong within us. Where it comes from I don’t know, but it is a haunting fear—as if we cannot trust ourselves to follow the luster of our own light. We create defenses around our insecurities, built upon our quests for knowing, doing things to make people like us, acting tough, and other tactics to reassure ourselves of our own soundness. I think this may also feed the desire to be alone or to run away to a new place where we can be who we imagine ourselves to be without fear of condemnation or judgment.

This, I am learning, is a humungous mistake. We build the defenses to keep the pain out, but we simultaneously erect the walls that hold ourselves in. There is no question in my mind that the “embarrassment” of my skin created a silent “Don’t-ask-Don’t-tell” agreement between me and most of the world. This is not to say that denial can’t serve a constructive purpose. We build the walls for the very valid reason of protecting ourselves from something very painful. I am an accomplished person filled with knowledge and success that have served me well. But there is a cost that I think we become blind to—at least I have learned that I have been blind to it. The price we pay is letting a fence of our own construction get in the way of pursuing our lives to the fullest or sharing them fully with others.

I am a non-practicing Jew, so I am not an expert on this, but I think this was the message of Christ when he said that the Kingdom of God lies within each of us and that we should each follow the paths to live a life of possibility. He lived his life as an example of this creed, advising his followers to cast off the shackles of inhibition and conformity to be like the lilies in the fields.

Robert Kennedy quoted the Greek philosopher Aeschylus when Martin Luther King, Jr., died. "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." The pain can be awful, as is the despair. But if we want to live full lives blessed with wisdom and knowledge, then we have to allow it in. Fighting it does not work. You cut yourself off from yourself and become inauthentic, a fraud to yourself and those around you.

I am very conscious as I finish this paper of how personal and potentially uncomfortable the topic is. I recently read a quotation from a very popular blogger who said that so long as you are honest you will always be interesting. Honesty, especially honesty to yourself, is a really difficult thing to achieve, but that is what I have tried to be here. I know it has been interesting, if at times difficult, for me, and I hope it has been interesting to you. I look forward to your responses.

Dynasty: The brilliance of Bobby Fischer

Presented to the Club November 24, 2008 by David T. Noyes

I would like to dedicate this paper to Roger Linscott. When I became a member of this club 23 years ago, I was told he was a curmudgeon (perhaps, if one is a Pulitzer Prize winner, one is entitled to be a curmudgeon.) and that he once offered the comment that a certain paper was not worthy of the Monday Evening Club. I lived in mortal dread that he might say the same thing about one of my papers. Consequently, I tried my best to be sure he would not make such a comment about one of my efforts. So, Roger, here’s to you.

If one looks up the word Dynasty on Google, the first three “hits” refer to the television show of that name. It was a prime time soap opera that ran for nine years in the 1980’s, starring George Peppard, John Forsyth and Joan Collins with guest appearances by Gerald and Betty Ford as well as Henry Kissinger. (It’s interesting that we no longer start papers by using a dictionary definition, but rather by describing what is found on Google). As for dynasty regarding television, probably nothing competes with the 50 year reign of The Price is Right. But I’m sure to Dick Nunley’s relief, television is not the topic of this endeavor.

In the governmental realm, we could talk about the Chinese Ming Dynasty or the Egyptian Pharoah Dynasties. Or if we wanted to expand the definition to include a dimension of breadth along with length we could talk about Empire, as in: “the sun never sets on the British Empire.”
In the business world we might associate dynasty with monopoly (think Microsoft), or just hugeness of scale (think Exxon-Mobile). And as with government dynasties there have been some failures here as well (think U.S. Steel or Polaroid). With the rise of the Euro, we may also be nearing the end of the economic reign of the U.S. Dollar.

In the sports realm, we could discuss Al Oerter’s four consecutive Olympic gold medals in the Discuss throw. Or Bob Beamon’s shattering of the world record in the long jump by almost 2 feet at a time when records were broken in fractions of an inch—40 years later his jump is still the Olympic Record. Of course Boston Celtic fans will point to their 17 World Championships. But for pure longevity, the 133 year run of the New York Yacht Club’s hold on the America’s Cup, from 1852 to 1983, must surely be considered dynastic.

(OK, I’ve now given you permission to discuss politics, sports, business, the economy, or TV—so there should be plenty of option for the post paper comments!)

Bobby Fischer died a lonely exile’s death earlier this year at the age of 64, in Reykjavik, Iceland. He was that most perplexing of human characters—an enormous genius and a repellent man. He was an American enigma who, at the height of the Cold War, single handedly destroyed the Russian chess dynasty. Even today, 36 years after his historic victory, he remains the only American to have ever held the title of World Chess Champion.

Robert J. Fischer was born March 9, 1943 in Chicago. His parentage, like much of his life, was somewhat convoluted and mysterious. His mother Regina, though raised in St.
Louis, was born in Switzerland of Polish-Jewish parentage. After graduating from the University of Colorado, she moved to Germany and then to Moscow where she lived for five years studying medicine. She married a German biophysicist, Hans Gerhardt Fischer. They had a daughter Joan, five years Bobby’s senior. Bobby’s birth Certificate states that Hans is Bobby’s father. And the conventional history records that Regina and Hans separated when Bobby was two years old. As historians have delved into the Fischer history, however, they discovered that when the family came back to the United States in 1939, Hans was refused entry and ended up in Chile. Although Regina kept in contact with Hans,—they never saw each other again.

In 1942 Regina had an affair with a Hungarian-Jewish mathematician, Paul Nemenyi. Many years later, to Bobby’s complete surprise, it became generally understood that Nemenyi—who had secretly paid monthly child support to Regina, was Bobby’s biological father. Thus both of Bobby’s parents were, in fact, Jewish .

In the early post war period, Regina, a single parent, found herself doing a variety of jobs, in a variety of locations to make ends meet. She was a stenographer, a typist, and a shipyard welder in Portland Oregon. She taught elementary school in Los Angeles, and subsequently, in a small rural town in Arizona. By 1948 the family found itself moving to Brooklyn, New York so Regina could study for a master’s degree in nursing at NYU and start a career as a nurse. Of course New York was the chess capital of America. Was this a fateful move or would Bobby have become enamored of chess even if his family had stayed in Arizona?

Bobby and Joan apparently were very close. At ages 6 and 11 the two entertained themselves during the many hours that Regina was out of the house by playing a variety of board games--Monopoly, Parcheesi and finally chess. It is said that the two of them taught themselves how to play. Bobby recalled later “At first it was just a game like any other only a little more complicated”

Bobby soon became so engrossed in the game that Regina feared he was spending too much time alone. As Bobby’s obsession persisted, she took him to the Children’s Psychiatric Division of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. Dr Harold Kline only told her there were a lot worse preoccupations.

Eventually Bobby came under the tutelage of Carmine Nigro, president of the Brooklyn chess club. On nights the club was closed, Bobby pressed his mother to take him to Washington Square Park where players ranged from the Wall Street Stockbrokers to the beer-drinking homeless. (If you have seen the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer”, you will recall such a scene.)

But Fischer was no instant prodigy. He spent many hours discussing strategy and outcomes with other noted chess masters. And avidly began the gigantic task of devouring the chess literature libraries of several mentors. It was not until 1954, at age eleven, that Bobby himself said he “just got good”. In July 1956 he won the Junior Chess Championship—the youngest to ever do so. A year later he won both the U.S. Junior championship for a second consecutive year and the U.S. Open Championship in Cleveland (on tie-breaking points). And a few months later, in January of 1958, he won the U.S. Championship title. He was three months shy of his fifteenth birthday. The chess world hummed with talk of Fischer. Was he an authentic genius? A reporter asked Bobby if he considered himself the best chess player in the U.S. He replied, “No, one tournament doesn’t mean that much.”

He was attracting headlines and becoming increasingly famous. He appeared on the television program “I’ve Got a Secret”. (His secret was that he was the U.S. Chess Champion.) He wrote a regular column on chess for “Boy’s Life” magazine. In one article he gave four tips on playing chess: 1, Concentrate; 2, Think ahead; 3, Learn from losing; 4, Study.

Back at Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High School, several of his classmates addressed him as “Master, Master Fischer”. Barbara Streisand was a classmate. A fellow student reported that Fischer would take out his pocket chess set and play over some games during class. When he was caught he would put the set away and stare into space in silence. His Geometry teacher remembers him as both a poor student and as antisocial. A teacher from the counseling office said: “Bobby’s I.Q. was in the 180’s. But he had no interest in schoolwork.” Apparently the only reading he pursued other than his chess material was comic books. Shortly after the required minimum age of 16, he left high school.

The next decade and a half of Fischer’s career was a protracted bumpy meandering trail toward the destination he most cared about—a seat at the World Championship Table. To become a challenger three hurdles had to be surmounted. First came the regional tournament, called the Zonal. Because the United States is a zone unto itself, the top three finishers in the U.S. Championship tournament go on to the next level—an international tournament, called the Interzonal. Finally, the six highest scoring players in the Interzonal would square off in a tournament known as the Candidates. The winner of the Candidates would challenge the world champion in a one-on-one match for the title. This cycle would repeat itself roughly every three years.

As the 1958 U.S. champion, Bobby qualified for the Interzonal in Yugoslavia where he won 6 games, lost 2 and finished 5th. As a result, still only 15, he became the youngest international grandmaster in history.

By his late teenage years, Bobby was showing signs of the personality that would make him forever dreaded as well as respected. In this period government documents contain a report that “the State Department did not want him overseas as a representative of the U.S.” His relationship with his mother had deteriorated to the point that she moved out to live with a friend, leaving him alone. Visitors reportedly found him living amid chaos, clothes strewn on the floor, chess books and magazines everywhere. There were four bedrooms in the family homestead. He is said to have slept in a different bed each night—a chessboard beside each one. He was filled with a boastful confidence that he was the best chess player in the world—and told everyone so. He was completely consumed by the goal of winning the world championship. Fischer admitted that being so single minded was a problem “because you’re kind of out of touch with real life. I’ve thought of giving it up, off and on, but then I always consider: What else could I do?”

Fischer’s demands began to escalate. His attendance became conditional upon outrageously high appearance fees—event organizers understood the American added glamour and stimulated public interest—so they somehow found the money. Fischer always maintained that his ambition was to get rich. “I am only interested in chess and money.” Cash was about status and control. If he was offered 5 he wanted 10; if he was offered 20 he wanted 50. His incessant financial demands were not well received in Europe where emphasis on money was considered embarrassing or even vulgar.

Playing conditions had to be up to Bobby’s rigorous standards. The lighting had to be just so. The crowd had to be kept far enough back to limit noise. Rounds had to be prearranged so as to accommodate his religious practice. Fischer had become involved in the Worldwide Church of God, though he never formally joined. Based in Pasadena California, this was a rapidly growing fundamentalist sect. Followers believed in bodily Baptismal immersion, strict interpretation of the Old Testament, Judaic dietary laws, and a Sabbath that starts on Friday at sundown and lasts until Saturday at sundown. During this period followers had virtually no contact with anyone and fasted. Bobby likely imposed his personal interpretation on the rules of the Church as he chose to ignore entirely the Church’s prohibition of “frivolous” board games. But he did refuse to play chess during his 24 hour Sabbbath.

In 1962 Fischer finished first in the Interzonal in Stockholm. He was the first non-Soviet to win an Interzonal. Thus he qualified for the Candidates tournament being held in Curacao, the Dutch West Indies later that year. He was considered one of the favorites. But he had a terrible start, and although he managed to claw his way back, he finished fourth. Commentators said Fischer was either off form or had not achieved full chess maturity. The would-be champion had another explanation, one that revealed his belief in his invincibility: Since he had not won, he must have been the victim of a conspiracy.

In a Sports Illustrated article, Bobby charged the Soviet players with collusion. All twelve games involving two Russian players ended as draws—many of them quickly. Bobby maintained that they had conspired to settle these games to conserve their intellectual and physical energies for matches against non Soviets—Fischer in particular. He concluded, “Russian control of chess has reached a point where there can be no honest competition for the World Championship.” Grandmaster Victor Korchnoi—then a Soviet—indicated that the allegation was true. However, other analysts have said that it was absurd to accuse the Soviets of cheating. Of course they had agreed to draws—they were ahead in the tournament and Fischer’s complaint was “sour grapes”. Fischer stated he would not compete for the 1966 world championship unless the rules were changed to prevent collusion. The International Chess Federation in a brave attempt to remedy Fischer’s complaint voted to radically reform the format from a round robin schedule to a series of knockout/single elimination matches. They also ruled for the first time since 1866, that for the world championship match itself, draws would not count. The title would go to the first person to win six games, no matter how many games that might take. Previously the champion had to accumulate 12 points to retain his crown, while the challenger had to win 12 1/2. One point for a win, ½ point for a draw. It was, therefore, technically possible for the reigning champion to make the tactical defensive decision to play for a draw in all the games and thereby win the championship without actually beating his challenger in a single game. It would not be the last time Bobby would get his way.

In December 1963 Bobby defended his U.S. Championship for the fifth time. Against 11 of the highest ranking players in the country, he won every game. It was an awesome historic performance. To win a national tournament is one thing, to win it six years in a row in another, but to win it without losing or even drawing a game was unprecedented. He had shown himself to be in a different league. Fellow grandmasters when asked to describe the trait that set Fischer apart, talked about his “will to win”. However Bobby responded: “I know people who have all the will in the world but can’t play good chess. You must have talent”. The Chess world was anxiously anticipating the Amsterdam Interzonal tournament of 1964. But Bobby was still raging against the “soviet swindlers” and refused to play. This meant it would be another three years before he might have a chance to realize his goal of being officially recognized as the best chess player in the world. Thus his fury turned in on himself and caused the rejection of what he wanted most. He did not play competitive chess for a year and a half. Despite pleas from many quarters, Bobby said: “I like to do what I want to do and not what other people want or expect me to do. This is what life is all about, I think”. At the age of 21, he had staged his first retirement.

Hate was among Fischer’s mechanisms for dealing with the world beyond the board. This hate could spring from the most trivial personal slight or from a worldview most would find bizarre. Once formed it was unshakable, he had no concept of forgiveness. After the Curacao tournament, his wariness and dislike of the Soviet Union slowly descended into a state of delusion. He said his aim for the world championship match was to teach the Soviets “a little humility”. Soviet players were not only “cheats” who were unfairly privileged by the support they received from the state, but they were out to get him personally. He felt the need to be vigilant, lest they try to poison his food and he worried about flying in case the Soviets had tampered with the engine.

Bobby also held anti-Semitic views—and was not shy about expressing them. He admired Adolph Hitler. Of course he himself was Jewish—but he firmly rejected that label. Once he discovered that he had been included in a list of famous Jews in the Encyclopedia Judaica, he wrote to the editor to declare how distressed this mistake had made him and to demand that it not be repeated. He was not and never had been Jewish, he said.

Of course, Bobby turned 21 in 1964, during the height of the Vietnam War. His status was 1-A. There had been some talk of his attending college, perhaps just to obtain the deferment. But his experience with school was so distasteful that he decided not to apply. Eventually he took his physical exam and was rejected for reasons that have never been made public.

Fischer’s next chance at his coveted prize came at the Interzonal held in Sousse, Tunesia in 1967. The tournament was beset by problems. Fischer complained the chandelier lighting was too glaring. At one point a photographer walked onto the stage while Bobby was playing—an obvious distraction. The officials told him nothing could be done as this man was the official photographer of the match. Although Fischer’s match ended in a draw, commentator’s analysis agreed the distraction caused deterioration in Bobby’s play. Fischer had won 6 of a possible seven points, and appeared to be unstoppable. But, he was scheduled to play the next 6 games in a row without a break day. No other player had a similar schedule. He had tried to communicate this problem with the tournament officials but they spoke only French. Bobby put his request in writing and it was denied. Why the request was denied or how the officials might otherwise have accommodated Fischer was not indicated. Because his needs were being totally ignored, Bobby withdrew from the tournament. Once again, his inability to deal with adverse rulings, or his interpretation that these rulings came in the form of a personal attack, prevented him from proceeding to the final qualifying round for the championship. “There is no obstacle to prevent Fischer from wending his way to the world’s championship…except Fischer himself” said one of his colleagues.

Bobby again disappeared from the world of chess for another 2 years. He refused to compete in the U.S. Championship because he said the field was not large enough. As the next opportunity to participate in the matches leading to the world championship approached in 1970, once again, his boycott meant he would not be able to achieve his lifelong goal. However, the leaders of the U.S. chess federation knew full well that the best hope of ultimately bringing an end to the dominant control the Russians had on the World Championship lay in Bobby Fischer. First they prevailed upon the International Chess Federation to be allowed to substitute Bobby for one of the three Americans who had earned the right to go to the Interzonal match by finishing in the top three of the U.S. Championship. Then they enticed Bobby by offering a guaranteed honorarium of $19,000—an unheard amount of money at that time. This was in addition to whatever prize money he might win, and his expenses would be paid for in the most luxurious hotels of his choosing.

And so began in 1970, the most miraculous year in the history of chess.

The Interzonal was held in Palma de Majorca. There were 24 competitors that analysts felt was the strongest field ever assembled. The top six would advance to the knockout stage—the Candidate match. Bobby won the tournament by the huge margin of 3 ½ points winning the last seven games in a row.

Now 27, he appeared as quite an imposing figure across the chessboard at 6ft., 2in. While other players might stretch their legs or move away from the table, Bobby would remain seated hunched forward over the board or leaning back with his long legs straight under the table, but always with his eyes boring deep into the squares, pieces and patterns. In no high-level sport does a player need to be tougher psychologically than in chess. In most sports nervousness dissipates in the flow of the action; in chess there are dangerously long pauses of time for second guessing. Most professional games last several hours. A match against the same opponent can go on for several weeks. A whole hour can pass waiting for an opponent to make a move, while the inevitable question nags constantly: Has a weakness been found? Yet Fischer has said: “I don’t believe in psychology—I believe in good moves.”

The beauty of Fischer’s style lies in his immense knowledge, his ability to calculate without error, his dependable memory, thoroughly rehearsed positions, and constant control. James Joyce Ulysses says: “A man of genius makes NO mistakes. His errors are purposeful, and are the portals to discovery.”

Bobby drew the Russian Mark Taimanov in the quarter finals of the Candidate matches. Taimanov thought Fischer was “too deeply convinced of his own genius”. However, Fischer won six straight games to dispatch his opponent. It is difficult to explain to non chess players the magnitude of such a shutout. A much more typical result between well matched players might be six wins to four with nine draws. Bobby had just beaten a world-class grandmaster by six games to none without a single draw. Analysts claimed his performance may have been the best ever recorded in a single competition.

His next opponent was the Dane Bent Larson. Once again Fischer won in six straight games.

Fischer’s final opponent on the quest to the Championship round was the previous world champion, Russian Tigan Petrosian. Their previous matches had yielded three victories apiece and 12 draws. Petrosian was known as the maestro of the draw. He shunned complexity, taking preemptive defensive measures whenever possible. When Bobby won the first game he had completed 20 consecutive grandmaster victories, without a loss or draw—a feat never accomplished before or since. Although he lost the next game, he ultimately prevailed by the impressive score of 6 1/2 points to 2 ½. Bobby had earned the chance to play Boris Spassky for the right to be formally acknowledged as what he knew himself to be--the best chess player in the world. Like Mohammed Ali, he had been telling everyone he was the greatest—now he would have to prove it. His compelling story was front page news. He had become a national hero.

But what of the Soviet domination of the sport. Along with the 1917 revolution, came the idea of the game as a socialist sport. Chess improved discipline; it taught patience, composure, and determination. It enhanced concentration, endurance and willpower. It sharpened and focused the mind. By 1938 several five-year plans had been achieved. Hundreds of experts began to receive stipends from the state. Major newspapers carried regular chess columns. The results were spectacular. In 1923 there were 1,000 registered chess players. By 1929 the number had risen to 150,000. By 1951—1 million, and by the mid 1960s—three million. The Soviets began their dominance by winning the world championship in 1937. Not only did they retain the championship for the next 35 years, but during this time the challenger for the crown was also a Russian—thereby guaranteeing that the championship remain in Soviet hands! This came to be seen as tangible proof that the communist system worked—something reliable that wouldn’t let the state down.

Similarly, you may recall how proud the Soviets were of Valerie Borzov in the 1972 Olympics. A white man winning a black man’s race—the 100 meter dash--for the title of World’s Fastest Man--a race that a Russian had never previously won. He had also been a product of the same state sponsored sports system. Again, proof positive for the Communist propaganda machine, that the Soviet Union’s socialist philosophy was far ahead of the West.

And so it was within this framework of Capitalism vs. Communism that negotiations to select a venue for the Fischer--Spassky match began. Earning the spot at the championship table was one thing, but getting there proved to be quite a challenge due to Fischer’s constant companion—controversy! According to International Chess Federation regulations, both the challenger’s and champion’s country had the right to host half the games. But Fischer was having none of that. “I won’t play in Russia, period—they would do everything to distract me.” So Fischer submitted a list of places he would play: Belgrade, Sarajevo, Buenos Aires, and Montreal. Spassky submitted Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Dortmund and Paris in that order. Ironically the Soviet first choice was a capitalist country and the American first choice was Communist. Fischer, as might be predicted, ultimately agreed to Reykjavik because that city offered the most prize money--$125,000—the equivalent of fifty cents for every man woman and child in Iceland! It is interesting to note that when Spassky beat Tigran Petrosian in Moscow for the title just three years earlier, the prize was s meager $1,400.

Of course, this was just the beginning of the controversy. Spassky belonged to a very elite club of players who actually had a winning record against Fischer. He had never lost to Bobby winning 4 and drawing 2 games. It has been surmised that, despite all of Bobby’s boastfulness, perhaps now that he was faced with the actual opportunity to prove himself, he realized he might fail. He raised objections to the amount of the prize money even though he had signed off on an agreement. He was scared away from his departing plane at JFK by the media crowd and thus did not make the flight in time for the official opening ceremony. He was threatened with disqualification—but perhaps he persisted with these antics because he considered that outcome preferable to losing?

Enter the US government. NATO ally Iceland stood to lose half a million dollars if the match did not occur. Thus an entreaty came to Secretary of State William Rogers from the prime minister of Iceland. Henry Kissinger made the call to Fischer and opened the conversation with these words: “This is the worst player in the world calling the best player in the world.” Apparently it worked—Fischer flew to Reykjavik the next day. Of course it probably didn’t hurt that a British millionaire, James Slater, offered to double the prize money to $250,000 if the match proceeded.

When Fischer visited the hall where the match was to be played, not much was to his liking. The $1,200 custom built mahogany table should have its legs shortened, the green and white marble chessboard was too shiny, the front rows of seats had to be removed, the camera towers had to be pushed back so far that filming would be nearly impossible, the lighting needed to be brighter. Icelandic officials noted that the only thing Fischer didn’t complain about was the air. However, they made the fateful error of trying to compromise on the camera position behind Fischer’s back.

On July 11th, precisely at 5 pm, the scheduled starting time, Spassky, playing with the white pieces made his first move. Fischer was not there—another of his by now infamous antics? No. Due to heavy traffic Fischer arrived 6 minutes late. He shook hands with Spassky, studied the board for 95 seconds and made his first move toward the championship.
As the time for adjournment approached at the five hour mark, the game appeared to be a draw. However, Fischer made what appeared to be an amateur’s mistake. Spassky, who had trained himself to not to betray emotion, appeared startled. Those pundits analyzing the match were equally dumbfounded. The match resumed the following day. Thirty-five minutes into the game, Fischer leaned back in his swivel chair and caught sight of the movie camera. He rabidly took off from the stage, calling the chief arbiter, Lother Schmid, a liar for saying the cameras had been removed when clearly they had not. If they were not removed immediately, Bobby would leave the match. Crushed by the force of Fischer’s vehemence, the arbiter complied, and the cameras vanished. When the dust finally settled, and play resumed, Bobby’s error from the previous day resulted in his losing the first game.

Enter the movie company which had paid big money for the exclusive rights to film the match and demands the access it was promised in their contract. Behind the walls a space is discovered in which the cameras could be hidden, but still see the board. Has the problem been finessed? No. Fischer learns that the cameras are still there and refuses to come to the hall for the second game.

The game is scheduled to begin at 5 pm. The Chief Arbiter, Schmid presses the clock on the dot. Rule 5 states, “If a player does not appear within one hour of the start of a game, he loses that game by forfeit.” The road between the hall and Fischer’s hotel is cleared. All the traffic lights are held at green. A police car stands at the ready to bring him. Behind the scenes, pleas to the movie company to remove the cameras for just this one game pending further discussion, are successful. At 5:30 pm with Fischer’s clock still ticking, the cameras are removed. Fischer now demands that his clock be restarted. Schmid refuses. He has the reigning world champion to consider; Spassky has now been waiting for 40 minutes. Despite further pleas to restart the game, Schmid refuses and goes onstage at 6pm to announce that Spassky has been awarded the game. He now holds the virtually insurmountable lead of two games to zero. Fischer appeals the decision to the match committee which finds no reason to reverse Schmid’s decision.

After much cajoling from friends and another call from Henry Kissinger, Fischer agrees to play game three of the match. But only if it is played in a separate, private room behind the stage and without cameras. Spassky, who later said he felt no honor in winning by default, wanted the challenge to continue and agreed. Bobby, playing brilliantly, beat the Russian for the first time.
Now it was Spassky’s turn to complain. The back room air conditioning and the ambient traffic sounds were too noisy. The venue was now moved back to the auditorium, and there would be no filming, despite the threat of legal action from the movie company.

Game four was a draw. Bobby won game five to pull even at 2 ½ points apiece. By game 13 Bobby led by a score of 8 to 5. Spassky asked for and received a medical postponement of game 14. When the match resumed, Bobby maintained his 3 point lead as the next 7 games were draws. On August 31, the 21st game of the match, Spassky came to recognize that his position was without hope and resigned. Bobby had won the match by a score of 12 1/2 to 8 1/2. He was the new World Chess Champion.

The next day at the closing ceremony, Fischer made no speech of thanks, no graceful comment on the hard work that had gone into the long contest, no tribute to his defeated opponent. Taking his prize, he immediately tore open the envelope and closely scrutinized the contents checking the figure. Satisfied, he returned to his seat.

Of course, he returned to a hero’s welcome, He received the key to the city from New York mayor John Lindsay. The world was his for the asking: He was young, handsome, wealthy, and women adored him. But later he said to a reporter, “The creeps are beginning to gather.” By creeps he was referring to the press, lawyers, and agents—everyone he thought was out to take advantage of him.

He played no matches as World Champion. Three years later as the time for negotiations for defending his title against a new challenger—Anatoly Karpov—began, Fischer was again making outrageous demands of the International Chess Federation. He ultimately resigned his title because he felt that his conditions did not receive the respect they deserved. This time money was not the issue. Manila offered the staggering prize of $5 Million dollars, said to be the second largest purse in sporting history, just below the Muhammad Ali—George Forman “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire.

Why he stopped playing tournaments, and how his life unraveled so pathetically, doesn’t seem to follow the usual celebrity gone bad scenario. He was not brought down by drugs or alcohol, by sex scandals or profligate spending. Instead, he became a victim of his own mind—paranoia, rage and arrogance. In many ways Bobby’s story resembles that of the mentally unstable Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr., the mathematician who inspired the book and Oscar winning movie “A Beautiful Mind”—only without the happy ending.

Bobby would go on to sacrifice nearly everything that makes life worth living: family friends, faith, country, a decent regard for other people, and finally, reason itself. Fischer’s life exemplifies F. Scott Fitzgerald’s proposition that “there are no second acts in American Lives.” Achieving his only goal destroyed Bobby’s reason for existence. Without that goal, he seemed to lose his already weak hold on reality. With nothing more to prove, fear of defeat won out over his desire to compete. But the manner in which Bobby charged his way to Reykjavik, his complete and utter dominance of the best of the best from an international field—all this was, indeed, unprecedented. Consequently, Bobby Fischer is likely to continue to be lionized as the best chess player of all time.

Photo from the German Federal Archive via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons license.

The meaning of money: a historical perspective

Presented to the Club on March 26 2007 by William J. Bartz

In 1965, the United States abandoned a practice that had underpinned human civilization for millennia. The process really began many decades earlier, and technically speaking, the complete disassociation wouldn’t be fully realized until a few years later in 1971. But 1965 signaled to that keen citizen that the nation’s monetary base was severed from a commodity – the age-old, very definition of money. Money had now become ultimately an abstraction. For silver coinage minted for daily economic exchange went extinct, to be replaced by base-metal alloy coins joining fiat paper currency. For most Americans, the change in our currency has given little pause for concern. The economy has had its ups and downs, our politics has wrangled back and forth, but on the whole, our money works well in the marketplace and the United States has enjoyed burgeoning prosperity in the last 40 years, so that now 1 in 11 households is classified with millionaire net-worth status – a mass upper class, so to speak, something unprecedented in history. For others, though, our money, which has become reliant on the control, credit and confidence in the United States Government to underpin its value, causes unease and trepidation about continuous inflation and keeping the whole system functioning without hard money assets. So what did money really mean throughout human history? How is it conceived of today? What does this mean for the future of our country? Tonight, I’ll take you through a broad, sweeping view of money from its beginnings, concentrating especially on its development in the United States and how we arrived at the money we use today.



Money arose out of the universal need for exchange. Primitive societies used barter – the direct swap of goods and services – but that was hardly better than self-sufficiency because it relies on the rare circumstance of perfectly matched trades. It was indirect exchange that permitted an expanding economy, better fulfilled human needs and even made civilization possible through specialization. Under indirect exchange, you sell your product or service not for a good you want directly, but instead for another good that you can, in turn, sell for the good or service that you do want. That intermediate good must have great marketability that you are confident can be resold. In other words, it must function easily as a medium of exchange that is widely recognized and acceptable. Some goods are more widely demanded than others, enhancing marketability: more divisible into smaller units without loss of value, more durable over time and more easily transported and safeguarded. Gradually certain goods will emerge as the most marketable and used as the general medium of exchange. These special goods are called money.

Many different goods have been used as exchange media: copper in ancient Egypt, cattle in ancient Greece, salt in Abyssinia, nails in Scotland, sugar in the West Indies, tobacco in colonial Virginia, and grain, beads, tea, cowrie shells, wampum, fishhooks and furs. But through cumulative development over the centuries, two precious-metal commodities, gold and silver, emerged as the most efficient and universal money. Naturally found gold was used for gold units in Egypt about 3000 BC or BCE, while silver was used in Mesopotamia. But the clear, practical and concrete device that would embody money for millennia were coins.

Gold and silver coinage was first produced in the time of Croesus, the last king of Lydia, in Asia Minor about 550 BC or BCE. A century earlier, the Lydians made coins from electrum, a natural river deposit of gold alloyed with 20 to 45% silver, but later developed the technology to separate the gold from silver and made both kinds of coins called staters, the name for a standard unit of weight. Seagoing merchants spread these coins all over the Greek world. Another ancient Greek unit of weight for monetary purposes was the talentum or talent. Babylonian in origin, the talent had been a weight used on a scale. Interestingly, these days, we use the word “talent” to qualify a person that has worth. In 400 BC or BCE, the Romans began circulating a bronze coin called the As, which originally weighed one Libra, that is, one Roman pound. Eventually, this coin was referred to simply as a Libra because of its weight. We get our abbreviation for pound, as “lb.” from this word Libra. The As was divided into twelve parts. Each of these parts was called Uncia, from which we get our English unit ounce. The Libra had a lasting influence in Britannia after the Romans were expelled. The British currency unit is denoted by the capital letter “L” crossed by a hyphen, but pronounced “pound” from the Latin word, pondus. The British Pound Sterling simply had its origin as the weight of one pound of silver. So, since the beginning of coinage we can see that value and weight of coins were intimately related.

The quality or fineness of metal coinage was also of utmost importance. People wanted to know that the coin not only had the proper weight, but also contained a known and reliable content of precious metal within the alloy. Sterling silver’s fineness, for example, is 92.5% pure silver alloyed with copper. In early coins, fineness could vary, so verification was commonly done by merchants by means of an assay. Coins from recognized minters that had a reputation for uniform weight and consistent fineness became the most desirable coins in the marketplace. One such coin known for its superb quality was a one-ounce silver weight minted by a Bohemian Count named Schlick beginning in 1519. The Count lived in region called Joachimsthal, or we would say Joachim’s Valley or Dale. These large, hefty coins were widely called Joachim’s thalers and finally, “thaler.” In 1528, the Hapsburg Emperor revoked the count’s charter and made thalers the coin of the realm. Thalers were adopted for the coinage of many other areas in Europe and eventually our name “dollar” emerged from “thaler.”

Probably the most widely circulated and once-famous-but now-forgotten coin in history was the silver Ocho Reales or “pieces of eight” – a reale meaning “royal money.” These large coins were minted in Mexico and Peru by Spain from the fabulously rich silver deposits of the New-World mines. They become the first truly global money, for they were used everywhere from the Americas, east to Europe, and west to China via the Spanish colony of the Philippines. The coins were known for uniform quality and were made more secure from the common tampering practice of coin clipping by having a milled or ridged edge. The obverse depicts a crown over two globes representing the old and new worlds. Flanking the globes are two pillars or columns representing the opposite promontories of the Straits of Gibraltar which signify the gates to the New World and symbol of Spanish power. Each column is draped with a S-shaped swag of ribbon which taken together read “Plus Ultra” – more beyond. The official name of this coin was the “Columnario,” but the Spanish-speaking regions just called them “peso” – the Spanish word for “weight.” In English speaking regions, these coins were called “Pillar dollars” or Spanish milled dollars. The symbol for dollar that we still use today is believed to be taken from the “S”-shaped swag superimposed on a pillar, it’s the vertical line we draw through a capital letter “S”.

In colonial America and the fledgling new nation just after the Revolution, Spanish coins were used as the principle metallic money, making it the currency used by our Founding Fathers. If George Washington did actually toss a coin across the Rappahannock River, it would have been a Spanish Pillar Dollar. So influential was the Spanish Dollar that when it came time for the United States to establish its own mint in 1792 and coin its own currency, it was modeled on the features of the Spanish coin. The U.S. silver dollar, first minted in 1794, was designed to match the value, dimensions, weight, fineness and features of the Spanish peso right down to the milled, ridged edges. This resemblance was a factor in making the new U.S. coins acceptable.

The Coinage Act of 1792 specified that the dollar would be the nation’s monetary unit, defined in terms of both gold and silver, with gold valued at exactly fifteen times higher than silver. The U.S. dollar was officially defined as the value of 371 ¼ grains of pure silver (that’s about 4/5ths of an ounce) and proportional fractions for the smaller silver pieces: half dollar, quarter dollar, dime and half-dime. The dollar was also defined as exactly 24 ¾ grains of gold (about 1/20th of an ounce). Defining the dollar in terms of both gold and silver without favoring the use of either metal came to be known as the “double standard” or bimetallism. Our good friend, Alexander Hamilton, as first Secretary of the Treasury, was a firm believer in coins of high intrinsic value. He deplored any form of debasement that would reduce the pure metal content of a coin to less than its money value. But the bimetal standard proved to cause severe difficulties as supply and prices of silver and gold metals fluctuated affecting their circulation. A large number of coins during the first thirty years of the mint’s operation never got into circulation. Hamilton’s 15 to 1 gold to silver valuation ratio differed from European ratios creating circumstances that at times overvalued or undervalued one metal in relation to the other. U.S. coins often fell into the hands of metal speculators, who would melt them down or ship them out of the country at a profit. There was little choice but to continue using Spanish dollars and other foreign coins.

Unlike the Spanish system of subdivision into 8 pieces, the United States chose to use a decimal system for its money. Because both U.S. and Spanish dollars co-circulated for the first few decades of this country, it’s interesting to see prices for items at 12 ½ cents or 37 ½ cents for merchandise at the time reflecting the use of Spanish dollars divisible into 8 reales or bits as American’s called them. Two bits lived on as an expression for a quarter – shave and a haircut – two bits! Another holdover of the piece-of-eight Spanish dollar into our time, was stock values on the New York Stock Exchange, which started in 1792. Stock prices were valued to the nearest eighth of a dollar as recently as 2001, when the system was finally converted over to decimals.

In the 1850s, the United States finally created and maintained, for the first time, an adequate supply of its own coins in circulation. First, the gold-silver ratio was changed to 16:1 in 1834, overvaluing it in the world market, allowing the gold coins finally to stay in circulation. Second, the pure silver content of the proportional coins, half dollar, quarter and dime, was reduced 7% to end speculation and melting of some silver coinage. When coins no longer have a pure-metal commodity value that matches their money value, they are called “subsidiary” coins. But, third, as most importantly, the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the gold rush following the next year was a momentous event for U.S. coinage. Gold coins were brought into use on an unprecedented scale. So finally in 1857, the U.S. was in a position to outlaw the use of the Spanish dollar and all other foreign coins as legal tender.

It wasn’t long thereafter that the Civil War erupted and brought a new form of money into use on a national scale - paper currency. (Okay, now we’re talkin’). Of course it’s true that paper money wasn’t really new. It had been tried during the Revolutionary War to finance that war. The Continental Congress tried to make the paper currency representational currency, meaning that it was fully backed by metallic money and redeemable in gold or silver coin, specifically mentioning the Spanish milled Dollar. But Congress didn’t have the power to enforce obtaining specie metal from the states; the populace saw through this and the value of Continentals became worthless. Paper money, in the form of bank notes representing silver and gold coin in vaults, were also issued from many banks in early America, but they were only good within a limited area and often were redeemed below par value depending on the bank’s reputation.

So it was a bold step for the United States government, which had previously shied away from issuing paper money, given the miserable experience of the paper Continentals, to try it again. But something had to be done. Hoarding at the start of the war took much of the gold and silver money out of circulation. Congress passed the Legal Tender Act in 1862 which made paper notes, called greenbacks - so-named for their all-over, backside green ink color - the principle lawful money in the North. These greenbacks were not representational money, they weren’t redeemable in coin or any other security, but had legal tender status solely on the ability of the United States to make them good. We call this “fiat” money. Fiat money allows a government to expand the money supply beyond the restriction of a finite commodity money supply. It only has value in an exchange of buyer and seller if both have full faith in the credit of the issuing authority. But, America still wasn’t ready for fiat money. The greenbacks began to depreciate as soon as they were issued and attendant price inflation caused their value to sink to about 75 cents on the dollar by the end of 1862, eventually reaching the lowest point of 35 cents on the dollar by 1864. They bounced up in value at the end of the war, and surprisingly, years later did eventually reach their full face value again in 1879. The United States had been on a de facto gold standard since the 1850’s with overvalued gold, and finally made it official in 1873 in concert with other European nations. Silver continued to circulate as subsidiary coinage. The gold standard brought price stability, even deflation, to the economic system. Bitter debates raged between those who wanted to return silver to full-metal status with gold as a way to inflate the money supply, and those who wanted to maintain the rigid discipline of the gold standard based on a pretty-much fixed metal monetary base.

In the end, the United States emerged in the last decades of the 19th century as a rising world economic power after developing powerful industries in railroads, oil, manufacturing and banking. Paper money held the confidence of the American populace, mostly because it was backed by gold or silver, but even those fiat greenbacks held their par value. In response to this success, the United States government embarked on a program to expand the quantity of representative money in the form of paper currency in 1879 and was looking for a paper manufacturer to offer a better, more cost-competitive product. A young man from Dalton, Massachusetts, Winthrop Murray Crane, representing a family papermaking concern traveled to Washington and placed a bid for the contract at 39 ¼ cents per pound against tough competition and won. Upon returning to Dalton, his first task was to find a mill in which to make all this paper and hire a work force. He bought the idle textile mill of Thomas Colt’s in Pittsfield and got the operation underway. Paper money continued to find acceptance with the American public and the world, and that contract has been renewed continuously now for over 128 years and represents the oldest contract in continuous existence with the United States government.
But, I digress…

The concept of money changed in other ways as a result of changes made during the Civil War. In 1863, Congress authorized the National Bank Act; this law created a system of national banks and regulated those functions involved with banking and currency issuing. The national banks had the power to issue bank notes backed up with government bonds. With the principle of fractional reserve banking – meaning that banks only had to hold a fraction, usually 15 – 25% of their total deposits in hard-money gold or silver instead of all of it to meet depositor’s potential demands for it – banks could loan out money they could create from thin air. This is called bank money. Making loans based on only partial reserves is a risk banks assume to make good returns, but it also works powerfully to expand the money supply to meet a growing and prosperous economy if controlled well. Bank money is inherently inflationary and if there is ever a loss of confidence by the public leading to a run on reserves that just aren’t there, the system breaks down. Even increasing government control of national banks had not been enough to prevent the panics of 1873, 1893 and 1907, for example.

The political response to these panics was the creation of a central bank for the United States, The Federal Reserve System, in 1913. The Federal Reserve was given controlling power over the nation’s economy with the ability to create the country’s paper money, to put money into circulation or take it out, to create credit and to raise and lower interest rates. The Federal Reserve also acted as the clearing house for bank checks, an increasingly preferred form of money for Americans to pay their bills a hundred years ago that has continued to this day.

War has a monumental effect on money and World War One proves the statement. That Great War resulted in upsetting the available resources and money supply of the major European powers. Early in the conflict, gold flowed into the United States from the European Allies on an unprecedented scale in payment for supplies and materials. By war’s end, the U.S. had 40% of all the world’s gold reserves. The war also contributed to an extremely heavy demand for paper money caused by the expansion of business and employment for the war effort. The Federal Reserve issued fiat “Federal Reserve Notes” in response, the initial issue of the only bank-note type still in existence today. As a result of the war, the American dollar became that world’s leading monetary unit, backed by increasingly large reserves and strong credit position.

England, France and other European nations had to abandon the gold standard as the war left them with depleted treasuries. The United States, however, maintained the gold standard and enjoyed fabulous gains in prosperity and leisure during the 1920’s. Then came the greatest economic calamity in the nation’s history, the Great Depression, precipitated by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 that not even the Federal Reserve at the time could really solve. The money supply contracted by one third; stocks fell by five-sixths of their pre-crash levels. Upon taking office in March 1933, President Roosevelt took quick action to stem the disappearance of gold by hoarders by prohibiting private ownership of gold, which culminated in taking the United States off the gold standard a month later. Gold was devalued to define the dollar as only 13.71 grains instead of 23.22 grains making its price $35 an ounce instead of $20.66. The nation no longer had a gold standard for its own citizens, but gold still backed the dollar for the purposes of valuing it for international trade. This “Gold Management Standard” as it was called, was codified in 1946 with the Bretton Woods agreement following World War Two. The Bretton Woods System created a system of fixed exchange rates that allowed governments to sell their gold to the United States treasury at the price of $35/ounce. The Bretton Woods system ended in 1971, when President Richard Nixon stopped the trading of gold at the fixed price of $35/ounce and let the price float. That point marks the first time in history that the formal connection between major world currencies and real commodities was severed.

Now for my final remarks…When the 20th century began, money was largely based on gold and consisted principally of gold certificates, gold coin, greenbacks and bond-secured notes. Subsidiary silver coins of 90% fineness for small change and silver paper certificates, backed by silver dollars that few people wanted to carry, also circulated until the price of silver on the open market reached $1.38/ounce in 1964, exceeding the face value of silver coinage. Nickel-copper clad coinage began in 1965 as a result, except for the newly issued Kennedy half-dollar which contained 40% silver until reverting itself to copper-nickel clad in 1971. Once a prevalent coin in daily transactions, half dollars stopped circulating as a result of people keeping the more valuable silver coin over silverless ones. In the 1970s, the only currency left was clad coins and fiat paper Federal Reserve Notes.

In the past 40 years, we have gone from money being or having some link to precious-metal commodities to money that is really just another form of credit. No longer are we wealthy because of claims to hordes of silver and gold treasure, our wealth is measured by the number of digits found on checking-account bank statements, mutual fund accounts, stock portfolios, social security and pension statements, and real estate valuations. If not satisfied with the magnitude of those digits from our income, we can readily add more on with easy credit to support a lifestyle we choose, but hope that we can keep the debits from overwhelming the credits while we enjoy the good life. The $700 billion of U.S. currency in circulation has become a tiny 1 ½ % of the over $47 trillion dollars of financial assets in the United States, a nation which itself owns 34% of all the world’s wealth. All the gold ever mined in human history, some 152,000 metric tons, and worth $3.2 trillion at current prices, wouldn’t begin to back the phenomenal wealth that exists in this country or the world for that matter. Our wealth may not be real in the time-honored sense of a basis in hard money, but our system seems to be working. But something the influential economist John Maynard Keynes said still gnaws at me. To quote: “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” I count myself among those unseeing millions, but I surely would like to find that one knowing man to ask him if this is all going to last.

Photo by Booleansplit, under Creative Commons License.

The Carters: A family of country musicians

Presented to the Monday Evening Club, May 12, 2008 by Albert E. Easton

Alvin Pleasant Carter, known as A.P., was born in 1891, the oldest child in his large family in the hills of southwestern Virginia. His father, Bob Carter, was one of two sons born to Nancy Carter, who had a weakness for pipe smoking and men. When asked about Bob Carter’s paternity, Nancy Carter just said: “Law, honey, when you run through a briar patch, you don’t know which one scratched you.” A. P.’s mother, Mollie Bays was a God-fearing woman who did her best at the task of raising eight children in the tiny town of Poor Valley. Poor Valley was so named not because the inhabitants were poor (although they were) but because the poor soil made it hard to earn a living from farming, the main occupation.

On the other side of Clinch Mountain was Rich Valley, with much better soil, and a somewhat better, but still modest standard of living. By 1914, A. P. was working selling fruit trees by walking from door to door. He didn’t mind walking, and one of his walks was over the mountain to try to sell some trees to Milburn and Melinda Nickels, distant relatives of his mother, and it was there that he met Sara Dougherty. Sara’s mother had died of typhoid when she was three, and the Nickels family had taken her in. Sara loved music, and when she was twelve, she had sold enough greeting cards to get an eight key autoharp. I’ll talk more about the auto harp in a minute. When A.P. met her, she was sixteen, and singing. He was enchanted. A year later, he married the 17 year old Sara.

I brought an autoharp, so you can see how it functions. The strings are tuned using a wrench, very similar to the tuning of piano strings. When the buttons designating the various chords are pushed, felt pads mute all the strings with notes not in the chord. Playing the autoharp is fairly simple, since it requires only that you be able to strum with your right hand, and push the buttons for the chord changes with your left. [Demonstrates]

A. P. had a younger brother, Ezra, called “Eck”, who was a real go-getter. Eck managed to land a job as a railroad mail clerk traveling from Bristol, Virginia to Washington and back. Eck bought the first automobile in Poor Valley, a Model A Ford. He also bought another modern convenience, a phonograph. In March, 1926, Eck, the most eligible bachelor in Poor Valley, married the girl of his dreams, Maybelle Addington. Eck met Maybelle through his sister-in-law, Sara, who was already teaming up with Maybelle to sing.


Maybelle Addington Carter was certainly a prize, even for the most eligible bachelor in Poor Valley. She could sing, dance, play the guitar, ride a horse or a motorcycle, and bake a banana cream pie to curl your toes. Like his brother A. P., Eck Carter chose a young bride. Maybelle was just sixteen when they slipped off to be married.

Maybelle’s guitar technique was an excellent and unusual one. With her thumb, she plucked the melody on the bass strings, and simultaneously strummed chords on the higher strings, bringing her fingers up to sound the chords, rather than down as most guitar players do. This distinctive style, now often encountered in country music, has become known as the “Carter Scratch”.

By the summer of 1926, A. P., Sara, and Maybelle began appearing together often in musical entertainments, singing the songs they had learned in the hills. With Eck out of town on the railroad about 4 days a week, Maybelle had plenty of time on her hands. In those days, there were very few phonographs, so musical entertainments at schoolhouses or church halls by small groups like the Carter family were very popular, and even at the low admission price of 15 cents, the musicians could go home with a few dollars in their pockets.

The Victor Company, primary producer of phonographs, had been famous for years as the premier source of high quality musical entertainment. Enrico Caruso’s exclusive American recording contract was with Victor, and they had recorded and marketed many other examples of excellent music for the parlor. But the top quality market they had served was saturated, and they had hopes of branching out into other fields. At this point, they hired Ralph Peer to seek out other kinds of music.

Ralph Peer haled from the Midwest, but was always seen wearing London tailored suits with a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. His personal tastes ran to opera and chamber music, but he was not averse to making a buck. Among other things, he is said to have coined the terms “race” and “hillbilly” to describe two types of music that were to become popular in the 1930’s. He claimed to despise some of the music he was recording, and was quick to exaggerate both the shortcomings of the artists and his own contribution to the effort. He made his fortune by launching the careers of two country music artists: Jimmie Rogers and the Original Carter Family.

Ralph Peer and the recording industry grew up together. In 1892, when Ralph Peer was born, phonographs were offered by the Edison Company for $190, making them exclusively a rich man’s toy. But less then two decades later, the price was down to $10. Abraham Peer, Ralph’s father, sold a good many from his furniture store in Independence, Missouri. Ralph was sure he had a future in the recording business, and began working in it when he was only 18. By 1921 he was recording all kinds of foreign language records: German, Polish, Swedish, etc., catering to the immigrant groups in the Midwest. The records were marketed by a label called “Okeh”, a subsidiary of Columbia. This was his background for the assignment he assumed for the Victor Company.

In July of 1927, A.P. Carter saw an ad in the Bristol, Virginia newspaper for the local Victor Phonograph dealer proclaiming “The Victor Co. will have a recording machine in Bristol for 10 days beginning Monday to record records – Inquire at our store”. A.P. believed that the musical heritage of the hills was a valuable one, and he hoped to prove it. After inquiries, he learned that a man named Ralph Peer would be in Bristol, paying the enormous sum of $50 for every song he liked well enough to record. He borrowed Eck’s car, and also Eck’s wife, Maybelle, who was 8 months pregnant, and the Original Carter Family (A. P., Sara, and Maybelle) set off for Bristol and their destiny.

I’m going to play a copy of the first song they recorded that day – “Bury Me under the Weeping Willow”. In it, you can hear just about everything the Carter Family had to offer – Maybelle’s guitar technique, Sara’s autoharp, and the vocal harmonies of Sara on lead, Maybelle in the alto range, and A. P. on Baritone. (#3) I’ll also be passing around a picture of the group at the time of that session. If you look closely, you can see Sara with her eight key autoharp, probably the one she had gotten ten years earlier selling greeting cards, and a very pregnant Maybelle.

The Carters recorded six sides at that session, held in a warehouse loft with blankets hanging on the walls, and took home the amazing sum of $300, plus a promise of future royalties. A.P. Carter is credited as the composer on almost all the music the Carters recorded. Even though most of the songs were commonly performed in the hills, Peer copyrighted them all, and paid royalties to A.P. A.P. managed the finances, and split all the income three ways. Several of the songs sold fairly well, and Peer arranged another recording session the following May, this one at the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey.

The Model A had had three flat tires on the short trip from Poor Valley to Bristol in July, 1927, so no plans were made to drive the 500 mile trip to Camden that May. Instead, the Carters went by overnight train. They had rehearsed about a dozen songs, working hard on the harmonies, and making sure they had versions that came in between 2 ¾ and 3 ¼ minutes, the available time on a Victor 78. That twelve song session in Camden made the Carters’ reputation. Many of the songs they cut that day have been recorded over and over, by various country and folk artists.

The first one I want to play for you became the Carters’ biggest hit, their only record to sell over a million copies. The song was one Maybelle and Sara had known since they were children, originally on a parlor song published in 1860 by Maud Irving and J. P. Webster, who also wrote “Lorena”. The original words were:

“I’ll twine ‘mid the ringlets of my raven black hair
The lilies so pale and the roses so fair
The myrtle so bright with an emerald hue
And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue.

By the way, so far as anyone knows, there is not and never has been a flower or plant called “aronatus” No wonder the words had been changed by the time the Carters learned it to “the pale and the leader”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make any sense either. Sara sings this one alone, backed up by Maybelle’s guitar. (#1)

A. P. even wrote a song himself for the session. I heard a cover of this by Joan Baez during the folk music years of the 60’s. (#5) You can hear all three of the Carters joining in on this one.

With Ralph Peer paying a royalty of ½ cent per record, in addition to regular fee of $50 a song, the Camden session made A.P. one of the most prosperous men in Poor Valley. He bought himself a house and a new red Chevrolet with the share he and Sara got. They had three children by now, and the room was welcome. The Carters were traveling around the hills now every week or so, doing entertainments in church halls and theaters, which helped to sell records and brought in some extra money. And Ralph Peer had no intention of letting things rest. He scheduled another Camden session for February 1929, and still another in Atlanta in November. Here is one more song from the Atlanta session. It’s another song that A.P. seems to have adapted himself, based on one by a mountaineer named Will Hayes. On this one, Sara sings alone, and Maybelle backs her up with some outstanding guitar. (#16)

A.P.’s fortunes rose and fell like a tide. With the depression, the royalties began to dry up. Ralph Peer was willing to record more numbers, but A.P. couldn’t come up with any more good material. A.P. began taking long trips through the hills, looking for songs. While he was away, he left his younger cousin, Coy Bays, in charge of the house. The inevitable happened. By the time he got back from a long trip, it was obvious that Coy and Sara were in love.

There were a lot of Carters and Bays in Poor Valley in that time, and they were outraged when they became aware of the situation. Finally, it was agreed that Coy would go to live with his mother in California, and he and Sara would see no more of each other. Problem solved? Of course not! Sara was distraught. Within a few weeks, she filed for divorce from A.P. When Ralph Peer learned of all this, he was not happy at having his gold mine dry up. Somehow, he managed to persuade Sara to continue with the group “for professional purposes only”.

Sara did stay with the group, and Maybelle’s three daughters, Helen, June and Anita began making occasional appearances. Ralph Peer booked them in to Radio City Music Hall in 1933 for a live radio broadcast. Radio was a good fit for the Carters. By 1938, they had moved to Texas and booked a contract for a weekly show on a 500,000 watt station XERA, just over the Texas border in Mexico. The most powerful commercial stations allowed today are 50,000 watts, so you can imagine the effect of a 500,000 watt transmitter. It was heard from Maine to Guatemala.

Station XERA was the pride and vehicle of Doctor John Brinkley. Doctor Brinkley’s story is an interesting one itself. In 1915, it was possible to get a license to practice medicine in Kansas by completing six weeks of study at the Kansas City School of Eclectic Medicine, and Doctor Brinkley had done so. He was an impoverished country doctor until one of his patients came to him complaining of “having lost the pep in his marriage”. Brinkley experimented with grafting goat gonads onto the patient, and for some reason, it worked. As a result, his fame spread.

Brinkley repeated this simple procedure on literally thousands of patients: Under general anesthetia, he would punch a hole in the patient’s testicle, and insert an appropriate sized section of goat testicle. He never worried about connecting nerves or blood vessels. He advertised his availability on his own radio station, KFKB. Even in the 1920’s Kansas had a Medical Society, and they eventually managed to put the doctor out of business. There were also, of course, a number of lawsuits resulting from patients who had become infected and died in the course of having their virility restored. At this point, Doc Brinkley moved his medical practice to Mexico, and obtained a license from the Mexican government for station XERA.

It was while broadcasting from Mexico one night that Sara, about to sing a song she had recorded many years before, announced: “This song is for Coy Bays, wherever he is.” (#11) Coy Bays happened to be listening in California, and when he heard this he set out to find Sara. He caught up with here in Texas, and they were married within a week; six years after their involuntary separation back in Poor Valley.

After being married to Coy, Sara’s involvement with the group began to dwindle. A new treaty between the US and Mexico shut down the 500,000 watt border stations, and the law finally caught up with Doctor Brinkley. A.P went into retirement and died in 1960. Maybelle and her daughters became a fairly famous country act. (At this point, Maybelle became known as “Mother Maybelle”. June Carter, Maybelle’s second daughter, married Johnny Cash in 1964, and is probably the best known member of the Carter family at the present time. Maybelle and Sara died within a few months of each other in 1978.

Photo of Maybelle Carter via Wikipedia.