Ali Truwit’s story
I deeply identify with Ali Truwit’s experiences (“Pain and Courage: Reorienting a Life,” September/October). I lost my leg to a medical error in 2012, suffering an above-the-knee amputation. I was in my mid-60s at the time. I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to lose my leg at age 23. I, too, used athletics to recover. I was a masters rower before I lost my leg, and my prosthetist gave me a hinged leg that allowed me to get back to rowing. I created sufficient drive with my left above-knee amputation by contracting my gluteus muscles to straighten the prosthesis during each stroke. After six months, I returned to competitive masters rowing, where I raced against fellow rowers in my age group with two legs. My goal was not to come in last, and in nearly every race, I achieved this goal. In one race, I came in first.
Thank you for this sensitive and eye-opening story.
Fred Southwick ’68
Gainesville, FL
As an 81-year-old, I relate to the final quote from Ali Truwit in your article: “Learning that you can take those days, and have the days on the couch, and cry, and then get back up the next day and be grateful for what you do have, and who you do have, and move forward, has been such a huge thing.” As a person experiencing the loss that comes from aging, I have days when I (almost) cry, and her heroic example will now inspire me more to get back up the next day with even more gusto and gratitude to move forward. Beginning today. Thank you!
Morris Dean ’64
Mebane, NC
Click here for more on Ali Truwit and how she fared at the Paralympic Games.—Eds.
The work that nurses do
Thank you for recognizing the contributions of the Yale School of Nursing’s many graduates and years of service to the United States and the world (“They Care,” September/October). I commend the careers of the nurses presented in the article. I was glad to see that the author branched out and included alums doing work in other regions of the US and foreign countries. There are Yale nurses everywhere, not just New England. There are even two of us in my small town in Northwest Oregon—3,000 miles away.
Two points I felt were lacking. The major reason for people being hospitalized is that they need nursing care. Tests and surgeries can all be done as outpatients. Nursing assessments and skills bring about a return to health, education for self-care, or acceptance and adaptations to life changes. Second, Yale prepared all of us for leadership roles too numerous to count. All of us have had to be trailblazers in our communities working as change agents in stodgy systems for the rights of patients and our roles. Our rewards have been watching health improve, often having the best health statistics outcomes for marginal populations. Nurses care and heal and the country is better because of our profession.
Brenda Penner ’76MSN
Astoria, OR
It was a pleasure to find your article on the Yale School of Nursing, detailing the impressive careers of a number of its graduates. I smiled when I saw Linda Foxworthy featured, because she was in my class at YSN. She advised me to go to work at San Francisco General Hospital, a special place with a great nursing staff and interesting patients. Her advice was a defining moment. I worked at San Francisco General for 26 years and had an exciting and fulfilling career as a nursing administrator.
The Yale School of Nursing is a remarkable place with an incredible history, and just as Linda Foxworthy gave me a gift of her wisdom, YSN gave me everything I needed and more to succeed as a caregiver.
Stephen William Foster ’83MSN
Portland, OR
A historic printing press
I thoroughly enjoyed the article on the renovation of the L&B Room (“Old Friend,” September/October), but it left out one detail that might be of interest to none but me. My student job was Printer to Sterling Library, and I therefore used all the equipment that was in the basement printing room. (Best job I’ve ever had!) The last time I visited Yale I wanted to show my wife, Debra (’80MPH), where I had spent so many wonderful hours, but the room had been turned into a computer lab. As we were leaving Sterling I saw that the 1830s Albion press and some of the type had been moved into a glassed-in display area of the L&B. With the renovation of L&B, what has become of the Albion press and its paraphernalia?
Mark Bernhardt ’76, ’80MD
Boca Raton, FL
A library spokesperson tells us that the press is in storage in Sterling, “pending further discussion about its location and associated programming in the future.”—Eds.
Blackhawk's impact
During my tenure (1997–2015) as director, the Brooklyn Museum continued its leadership role in the repatriation (under NAGPRA) of works from its major Native American collections. As such, I vividly recall reading Violence Over the Land soon after it was published, but I never had the pleasure of “meeting” its courageous author, Professor Ned Blackhawk, until your important article by Dylan Walsh ’11MEM (“Reshaping the Story,” July/August).
In the recent reinstallation of Brooklyn’s American Art galleries, Nancy Rosoff, chair of the Arts of the Americas, and Dare Turner, Curator of Indigenous Art, and an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe, actively reflected Ned Blackhawk’s scholarship in the centering of Native people in the history of the US, actively incorporating Indigenous concepts, such as rematriation, a process toward restoring right relationships to the land, and to center reciprocity instead of extraction.
Throughout the galleries, Indigenous people are shown as having true agency in the history of the Americas.
My hope is that American art and history museums with Native American collections heed the brilliant and redefining scholarship from Ned Blackhawk, and other Indigenous historians, in their presentations of Native American objects and the histories associated with these materials.
I know that The Rediscovery of America is at the top of my reading list for this fall.
Arnold Lehman ’74PhD
New York, NY
Mixing up the Morrisons
Thank you for printing my letter with remembrances of performing the music of Charles Ives (Letters, July/August). The artistry of the Yale Concert Band and the antics of the Yale Precision Marching Band certainly contributed to my happy, golden bygone days. However, I need to point out that the magazine erred in listing my home as Burr Ridge, Illinois, mistaking me for my cousin John P. “Pete” Morrison ’78.
Your publication is not the first Yale institution to suffer this confusion; it has occurred several times. The first mix-up was by the Yale housing office, which erred in response to a letter Pete sent asking to be assigned to Berkeley, the residential college of his father (also John Morrison). It was a fortuitous mistake, for in the Berkeley dining hall I met Mary Anne Dooley ’79, to whom I have been married for 42 years.
Four years later, the registrar’s office mistakenly sent my transcript to the law schools Pete applied to. The error was discovered during a law school interview in which the admissions staff asked Pete about a freshman German course on the transcript with a grade of “D.” Having graduated cum laude, the transcript was clearly not his, but due to the snafu, none of the law schools accepted Pete’s application. After an (unintended) gap year, Pete reapplied, earned his JD, and had a successful career as an attorney in Chicago.
I seem to have fared more favorably by the Yale switcheroos, but Pete is often quick to remind me, “You know, you did get rejected by the Harvard Law School.”
John E. P. “Jeep” Morrison ’78
Chapel Hill, NC
We apologize to the Morrisons for the mix-up. We hate to make mistakes, but this one is almost worth the embarrassment, since it prompted this delightful letter.—Eds.
The Living Village
Concerning the new Living Village (“Communing with Creation,” July/August), Yale Divinity School is to be applauded for its approach to the new housing extension of its historical campus. Oriented with views to the east towards East Rock, the courtyard scheme creates a terraced landscape on the brow of Prospect Hill, accommodating a series of food demonstration gardens overlooking the city below.
Along with its other features, including energy efficiency, resilient materials, water conservation, and expression of values of social equity, the design embodies an approach to a more sustainable and ecological way of building and living. Seems like just the right environment for theologians and future spiritual leaders.
As an architect of one of the first fully certified Living Building Challenge projects in the US—the Health, Wellness and Nutrition Center at the Willow School in New Jersey—I salute the vision of the YDS leadership and the creativity and conviction in the work.
Michael Farewell ’75
Princeton, NJ
The excellent article about the Divinity School’s Living Village does not mention another time that YDS provided comfortable, enlightening, and broadening residences for its students. My husband Nick (’67BD) and I lived in the dorm on campus with a view of the Quad the first year. In the summer, we moved into an Orchard Place residence that was as much a progressive social ideal as the Living Village is today.
The two-story gray cinderblock townhouses were attached in block-long rows with tiny yards. Dixwell Avenue, with its multi-storied “projects,” was in front of us across an empty field with some debris and lots of empty whiskey bottles. We were lucky enough to be on a corner with a bigger yard. Across the street from us was another YDS family—a Black student, his wife, and five delightful children. His wife often made and shared delicious cinnamon rolls. Down the street was another YDS couple; the wife was part of a group who helped poor women get birth control supplies from Westchester County.
On our left was a self-described “working-class” Jewish couple who were past middle age and introduced us to all things Barbra Streisand. All of us visited back and forth and helped each other as needed. My husband could bike to YDS, and from the projects, the spires of Yale’s main campus could be seen.
Living in that residence was comfortable, luxuriously spacious for married students, and gave us experiences and understandings that enriched our lives and sometimes drove our actions, including starting a mentoring program that prioritized helping Black male freshmen at Auburn University adapt and persevere at the university.
Paula Backscheider
Auburn, AL
The church in the gallery
Thank you for the Dura-Europos article (“When Is a Church a House Church?” September/October). One of my most vivid memories of Yale was visiting that life-sized display in the Art Gallery in 1969. Our professor of Christian art, John Cook, went over every detail of its paintings and structure, especially those of Adam and Eve above the Good Shepherd at the back of the baptistry. He called it a “chapel.” I’m not sure he ever mentioned “house church.” He explained how the building had been intentionally collapsed to reinforce the city wall against a siege, and how the rubble preserved its remarkable survival. He also spoke of the synagogue and mithraeum discovered in Dura-Europos. Across the years I have enjoyed asking, “Where is the oldest known church in the world?” Answer: “On the third floor of the Yale Art Gallery, Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut.”
Jim Tongue ’71MDiv
Bridgewater, VA
At home with the Farnams
Thank you for your article on my old family home, now the President’s House (“Fit For a President,” September/October). Based on my knowledge, you got it exactly right.
A couple of interesting details: for such a large house, it only had four bedrooms. One was for Henry Farnam’s widow, one for Professor Farnam and his wife, both in the front, and two rooms in the back, one of which was occupied for many years by Louise Farnam, one of the first two women to graduate from the Yale medical school. My father, Henry W. Farnam Jr., was placed in the staff quarters on the third floor.
The first big reception in the house was a university event for President Grant in 1872, which was held before the house was finally completed. All the food was brought by train from Delmonico’s in New York, along with servers.
William D. Farnam ’66
Falls Church, VA
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CORRECTION
We attached the wrong class year to Victor Ashe’s name when we published his letter in our September/October issue. He is a member of the Class of 1967, not 1972. Our apologies.
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