On a Farther Shore
Page 43
Patuxent Library of the U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland
CHAPTER ONE: MISS CARSON’S BOOK
Late in the summer of 1962: Washington Post, August 29, 1962. 3 That same day, President John F. Kennedy appeared: News Conference 42, JFK Library.
Although not yet actually a book: Carson, “Silent Spring,” New Yorker, June 16, 23, and 30, 1962.
Although it had been first synthesized: New York Times, October 29, 1948.
When the U.S. Army sprayed: Ibid.
At the award ceremony: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1948, Presentation Speech, http://www.nobelprize.org/.
On June 5, 1945: Clarence Cottam and Elmer Higgins, “DDT: Its Effect on Fish and Wildlife,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Circular 11, 1946, Patuxent.
Further laboratory studies: Ibid.
On August 22, 1945: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release, August 22, 1945, NCTC.
By 1947, Patuxent had a staff biologist: Patuxent Research Refuge Field Program and Economic Investigations Laboratory, Quarterly Report, March 1947, NARA. The biologist was Joseph P. Linduska, then near the beginning of a long and storied career as a government scientist and conservationist. In 1950, Linduska warned that the aerial application of DDT over large areas would lead to “dire effects” on the balance of nature.
That same year: Patuxent Research Refuge Field Program and Economic Investigations Laboratory, Quarterly Report, June 1947, NARA.
In July 1945: Carson to Harold Lynch, July 15, 1945, Beinecke.
The uses for DDT seemed endless: “DDT: How to Use It,” Mechanix Illustrated, December 1945, Beinecke.
and in 1955 the World Health Organization launched: Packard, Making of a Tropical Disease, pp. 151–52.
By 1959, some eighty million pounds of DDT: “DDT Regulatory History: A Brief Survey (to 1975),” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, September 10, 2009, http://www.epa.gov/.
In early 1958, Carson: Carson to DeWitt Wallace, January 27, 1958, Beinecke.
About that same time: Carson to E. B. White, February 3, 1958, Beinecke. 10 Carson, disinclined: Ibid.
By spring, Carson had signed a contract: Carson to Paul Brooks, April 20, 1958, Beinecke. Brooks was the editor in chief of Houghton Mifflin. 10 In 1945, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Miller, Under the Cloud, pp. 34–57.
A moratorium was agreed to: U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, “United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992,” December 2000, p. vii.
Over the course of the next three months: “JFK in History: Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” JFK Library.
Between April and November: New York Times, June 1, 1963.
When a comprehensive ban: National Research Council, “Exposure of the American Population to Radioactive Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests: A Review of the CDC-NCI Draft Report on a Feasibility Study,” 2003, pp. 9–11. While it would seem easy to keep track of things as noticeable as nuclear explosions, the counting of atmospheric nuclear tests has not been precise, and different sources disagree about totals. Some tests involved more than one device at a time. Others used low-yield devices intended only to test safety features or new trigger mechanisms and did not result in large explosions or produce fallout. But the number of tests that did both—and the widespread radioactive contamination that resulted—is appalling.
A by-product of these tests: Ibid.
In 1957 a group of prominent scientists: Mead and Hager, Linus Pauling, pp. 212–13.
Carson recognized an “exact and inescapable” parallel: Carson, Silent Spring, p. 208.
Some compared the book: New York Times, September 27, 1962.
A major pesticide manufacturer: Louis A. McLean to Houghton Mifflin, August 2, 1962, Beinecke. McLean was secretary and general counsel for the Velsicol Chemical Corporation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture meanwhile: New York Times, July 22, 1962.
The Book-of-the-Month Club announced: Lovell Thompson to Carson, June 14, 1962, Beinecke.
A newspaper in London reported: London Evening Standard, September 5, 1962.
Along with the possibility of: Carson, Silent Spring, p. 8.
In 1959, just days before: New York Times, November 10, 1959.
Then, in 1961, came devastating news: Gilbert, Developmental Biology, pp. 18–19, 666–67.
The U.S. maker of thalidomide: Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 412.
When a reporter questioned: New York Post, September 14, 1962.
In October 1962, just after Silent Spring arrived: Chief of Naval Operations, “The Naval Quarantine of Cuba, 1962,” Naval Historical Center, http://www.history.navy.mil/.
The day after his press conference: New York Times, August 31, 1962.
Meanwhile, the FBI: U.S. Department of Justice, FBI investigative report, December 11, 1962, NCTC. The contents of this two-page document are, regrettably, lost to history. A severely redacted version, in which all but a handful of words were blacked out, was released in 1995 in response to a Freedom of Information of Information and Privacy Act request from Linda Lear. In May 2010, I initiated a second FOI/PA request for an unredacted version of the report. In August 2010, the FBI informed me that the record had been destroyed in a routine file clearing in 1997. I appealed this response in October 2010, asking the FBI to look for it in backup files. I also asked the FBI if it could determine who requested the investigation and who received the report. In March 2011, the FBI answered again, reaffirming its earlier finding that the report had been destroyed. The agency said it could not respond to my request for a “cross reference” search of other files or for additional information about the report unless I could provide, among other things, the dates, locations, and “specific circumstances” of contact between Carson and the FBI—the very information blacked out on the report—and at that point I gave up. All that can be gleaned from the redacted version is that the investigation was launched at least as early as August 30, 1962, the day after President Kennedy’s press conference, that it in some way involved the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and that Carson’s phone was either tapped or a record of her incoming calls was obtained. The report was marked “Confidential.” The date “December 11, 1962,” was corrected by overtyping and could alternatively be December 14.
Immediately following the New Yorker serialization: Orville Freeman, USDA internal memo, July 16, 1962, JFK Library.
Beleaguered over what to do: Ibid., July 18, 1962, JFK Library.
What did surprise her was how well: Paul Brooks to Carson, October 16, 1962, Beinecke.
And the Book-of-the-Month Club edition: Book-of-the-Month Club News, September 1962, Beinecke. 16 from U.S. Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas: Ibid. 16 Carson complained of “drowning”: Carson to Anne Ford, October 22, 1962, Beinecke.
One notable request: Ibid., September 17, 1962, Beinecke.
But Carson was hiding: Paul Brooks to Carson, March 18, 1960, and Carson to Paul Brooks, March 21, 1960, Beinecke.
a minor procedure ten years earlier: Carson to Marie Rodell, September 10, 1950, Beinecke.
Carson required a radical mastectomy: Carson to Marjorie Spock, April 12, 1960, Beinecke.
Carson eventually discovered: Lear, Rachel Carson, pp. 378–79. Carson finally discovered the truth after visiting Dr. Barney Crile at the Cleveland Clinic in early December 1960—though she perhaps suspected she’d been misled after her mastectomy. She told Paul Brooks in late December 1960 that she had asked her doctors “directly” after her surgery if there was a malignancy (Carson to Paul Brooks, December 27, 1960, Beinecke). Linda Lear illuminates the situation by explaining that in the 1950s and ’60s it was common for doctors to discuss a cancer diagnosis with a woman’s husband and not with the patient herself—a disturbing practice that left the unmarried Carson in the dark about her condition (Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 368). Dorothy Freeman, who’d been desperately worried ab
out Carson’s health, said at the end of 1960 that she was relieved Dr. Crile had set things straight (Dorothy Freeman to Carson, December 31, 1960, Muskie).
When the Life magazine piece came out: Life, October 1962, pp. 105–10.
Earlier that year Carson had been approached: Houghton Mifflin internal memo, April 27, 1962, Beinecke.
Carson and Houghton Mifflin thought: Anne Ford to Carson, November 9, 1962, Beinecke. Ford worked in the publicity department at Houghton Mifflin.
When a producer and cameraman: Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 421. Lear fleshed out the story of the CBS production by way of an interview with CBS Reports producer Jay McMullen.
In late November: Ibid., p. 425.
Carson looked terrible: Personal observation. Just as she had in the Life magazine piece, Carson looked old and unwell in front of the camera for CBS Reports: “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson” (Beinecke).
Afterward, Sevareid confided: Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 425.
Carson had already told Freeman: Carson to Dorothy Freeman, June 27, 1962, Muskie.
“I’m just beginning to find out”: Ibid., December 12, 1962, Muskie.
CHAPTER TWO: BRIGHT AS THE MIDDAY SUN
Since the stock market crash: “Timelines of the Great Depression,” http://www.huppi.com/.
Among the dispossessed: “The Legacy of the Bonus Army,” Washington History 19 and 20 (2007–8): pp. 87–95.
The veterans ended up: Ibid.
One of Ickes’s first orders of business: Look, Interior Building, pp. 11–17. I visited the Interior Building in the summer of 2010. Although Carson’s office is preserved, it is in an area that was closed for construction at the time.
In May 1942: Department of the Interior personnel records, promotion and transfer form, April 18, 1942, NCTC.
Colleagues, most of them men: Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 124. Lear gleaned this from her interviews with Bob Hines.
Like all federal employees: Department of the Interior personnel records, signed oath, May 29, 1940, NCTC. The Hatch Act became law on August 2, 1939. More broadly it also prohibits federal employees of the executive branch, other than president and vice president, from engaging in partisan political activities.
When she moved to the Interior Department: Department of the Interior personnel records, promotion and transfer form, April 18, 1942, NCTC.
Carson’s employment file did include: Department of the Interior personnel records, application for federal employment personal history form, April 20, 1943, NCTC.
In 1918, at the age of eleven: Carson, “A Battle in the Clouds,” St. Nicholas, September 1918, p. 1048, Beinecke.
News of this accomplishment: Personal observation. I visited the Rachel Carson Homestead, which is preserved as such, in spring 2010. Although the surrounding neighborhood is now fully developed, the house and its grounds are essentially unchanged since Carson’s girlhood.
Rachel Louise Carson entered the world: Maria Carson account, Lear Collection. Carson’s mother recorded observations about her daughter on three handwritten undated pages.
The Carson house was crowded: Lear, Rachel Carson, pp. 15–26.
The family’s financial situation: Ibid.
In 1910 he advertised: Springdale Record, February 5, 1910, Lear Collection.
Rachel continued submitting stories: Carson, St. Nicholas, January 1919, p. 280; St. Nicholas, August 1919, p. 951; St. Nicholas, July 1922, p. 999, NCTC.
Springdale’s school went only: Gail Williams, “Rachel Carson: Marine Biologist,” November 3, 1995, Chatham. Williams went to high school with Carson and wrote out this eight-page script for a speech she delivered to the Delta Kappa Gamma Society in Sun City, Arizona, on October 25, 1995.
Rachel’s like the mid-day sun: Ibid.
Rachel’s senior thesis: Carson, “Intellectual Dissipation,” senior thesis, Parnassus High School, 1925, Beinecke.
Pennsylvania College for Women: Dysart, Chatham College, p. 1. Pennsylvania College for Women—PCW as it was known when Carson attended—has undergone several name changes since its founding. It was originally Pennsylvania Female College, then PCW, later Chatham College, and now Chatham University.
The base of the high ground: Personal observation. I visited Chatham University in March 2010 to work in the Carson collection at the Jennie King Mellon Library and to see the campus, which retains its former charm.
The college itself comprised: Dysart, Chatham College, pp. 19, 86–87. Dysart’s book also includes a number of photographs of the college and its students.
She arrived on September 15, 1925: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Handbook,” 1925–26, p. 9, Chatham.
in a borrowed Ford Model T: Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 26.
Carson had won a $100 scholarship: Ibid., p. 25.
Tuition in Carson’s freshman year was $200: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925–26, p. 82, Chatham.
Later, tuition rose: Ibid., p. 78.
The Carsons managed to keep up: Legal agreement between Carson and PCW putting up two of her father’s lots as collateral, January 28, 1929, plus various notes, invoices, and correspondence between Carson and PCW, including two pleading letters to Margaret Stuart, the college’s secretary and assistant treasurer, on February 27, 1931, and August 26, 1932, Chatham.
When one of Rachel’s classmates: Dorothy Thompson Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 13, Chatham. Dorothy Thompson, later Dorothy Thompson Seif, attended PCW with Carson. Her one-hundred-page monograph about Carson’s college and postgraduate experiences includes Seif’s detailed recollections of PCW as well a number of letters between Carson, Seif, Mary Scott Skinker, and another student, Mary Frye. Seif’s monograph is unpublished but copyrighted by the Rachel Carson Council. The copyright on the letters from Carson reproduced in the Seif monograph is owned by Roger Christie. Copies of the Seif monograph seem to be in a number of archival collections.
There were eighty-eight women: Arrow, September 18, 1925, p. 2, Chatham. The Arrow was a twice-monthly campus magazine at PCW.
Students were not allowed: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 9–10, Chatham.
There were regular teas: Ibid., p. 11.
and a formal prom that was: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Handbook,” 1925–26, p. 9, Chatham.
Students were expected: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925–26, p. 78, Chatham.
though it was understood that the main aim: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 10, Chatham.
Students at PCW studied: Ibid., p. 9; and Dysart, Chatham College, pp. 176–81.
Carson, dressed in blue bloomers: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 8, Chatham.
At one game the cheering students: Arrow, December 16, 1927, p. 6, Chatham.
Carson suffered from acne: Linda Lear, interview with Helen Myers Knox, February 11, 1992, Lear Collection. Knox was friends with Carson at PCW. See also Lear, Rachel Carson, p. 30.
Like most of the other girls: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 17, Chatham.
Never shy in class: Linda Lear, interview with Dorothy Thompson Seif, January 31, 1991, Lear Collection.
A few girls who got to know her: Ibid., p. 13.
Maria Carson made: Ibid., p. 12.
One of Rachel’s friends: Linda Lear, interview with Dorothy Thompson Seif, January 31, 1991, Lear Collection.
Mrs. Carson spent so much time: Ibid.
Carson’s assignment to write: Carson, “Who I Am and Why I Came to PCW,” Beinecke. Carson kept everything she ever wrote, including all of her college assignments.
What seems more probable: Oxenham, Vision Splendid, p. 17.
For her next theme: Carson, “Field Hockey,” Beinecke.
Carson entered college as an English major: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 16, Chatham. 31 In the fall of 1925: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925-26, pp. 28–29, Chatham.
By Carson’s senio
r year: Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1928–29, pp. 24–27, Chatham.
The force behind this change: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 22–25, Chatham.
A dynamic and demanding teacher: Ibid., pp. 18, 22–25.
As a junior, she found herself: Ibid., p. 19.
In 1925, the National Academy: Personal communication with Janice F. Goldblum, National Academy of Sciences Archivist.
Even the gifted Miss Skinker: Dysart, Chatham College, p. 179.
She worked as a reporter for the Arrow: Arrow, January 13, 1928, p. 11, Chatham.
In 1928, she published: Ibid.
One night in the lab: Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 35, Chatham.
In late February 1928: Carson to Mary Frye, February 22, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 33–34, Chatham. The after-party for the sledding outing would have taken place in the first-floor common room of Woodland Hall, the newer dormitory Carson moved into for her junior year. Woodland Hall, though expanded since Carson’s time, is still there.
Carson and another girl in biology: Carson to Mary Frye, March 6, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 37–38, Chatham.
She amused herself by dissecting a dogfish: Ibid.
In March 1928, friends arranged: Ibid., and Carson to Mary Frye, March 14, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 39–40, Chatham.
Carson saw Bob Frye at least one more time: Carson to Mary Frye, March 14, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 40, Chatham.
And then she never dated again: At least that is the best that can be surmised. Nowhere in the long written record is there even a hint of Carson going out with anyone after leaving PCW. Shirley Briggs, in a filmed interview, suggested—unpersuasively—that Carson might have had “gentlemen friends” who took her to concerts or plays and that she had a “perfectly normal social life” when they worked together in Washington in the 1940s. But there is no other evidence of this. Carson’s relationship with Dorothy Freeman will be fully discussed later on.